Cold Hard Steele (Daggers & Steele Book 2) (6 page)

“Ohh!” said Shay. “They’ve got a pan-seared barramundi with a mushroom velouté.”

“A what?” I said.

Shay looked at me. “I’m sorry—are you confused about the barramundi or the velouté?”

“Both, to be honest.”

“It’s fish with a mushroom butter sauce.”

“See, this is what I dislike about these places,” I said. “If it’s fish with a butter sauce, why don’t they just say that?”

My partner put down her menu. “Daggers, there’s more to food than just how many calories it has or how quickly you can cram it down your maw. It’s an
experience
. The techniques chefs use in their cooking enhance that experience, strengthen it, and turn the ingredients into more than the sum of their parts.”

I gave her a dubious look.

“Ok. Think of it this way,” said Shay. “You like those Rex Winters books, right?”

“Better believe it,” I said.

“Well, what is it about them you love?”

“Everything,” I said. “The fast-paced stories, the action, the adventure. Not to mention Rex Winters himself, who’s a total stud. Kind of like me.”

Shay ignored the boast. “Alright, well imagine if the author—what’s his name?”

“Frank Gregg.”

“Ok, so imagine Frank Gregg took those great stories you love so much and condensed them down to their bare essentials. Took out all those details you adore and left a bare plot summary with minimalist characters and settings. The stories wouldn’t be the same, would they? They’d be like food without the flair. Don’t you see? It’s the tiny elements—the flair—that make things so good.”

I sat there cupping my chin.

“Where did I lose you?” asked Shay.

“It’s not that,” I said. “It’s that you’ve made a very astute analogy. And while I understand exactly what you’re saying, I still can’t help but feel you’re going to enjoy your fish far more than I am my rabbit.”

A waiter came by and took our orders.

I rapped my fingers on the table as he left. “So… How’ve you been?”

Detective Steele narrowed her eyes. “Is that a trick question?”

“What? No. Why?”

“So you’re genuinely concerned about my well-being?”

“Oh, come off it,” I said. “I just want to make sure you’re adjusting to life on the force.”

The corner of Shay’s lips curled up in a hint of a smile. It was a rare gesture—not the smile, itself, mind you. Shay smiled at me all the time, but usually she did so ironically, to mock me after tossing a quip in my face. Much more uncommon was the genuine, heartfelt smile, the kind she only broke out when she gazed a little into someone else’s soul. She had that ability, though it had more to do with her gender than her level of clairvoyant prowess.

“Oh, Daggers, you really do care, don’t you?”

Her luminous, azure eyes sent a tremor through my knees, but luckily I was already sitting down. Funny feelings bubbled up inside me as she smiled, but I reached deep inside of myself and pushed the emotions back down—
way
down. I was fairly sure whatever feelings I was experiencing weren’t reciprocated, so I hunkered down behind my emotional wall of humor and played it cool, as I always do.

“Shhh,” I said. “Don’t tell the guys at the office.”

“I’m doing fine,” said Shay. “The first day was a little rough, but that’s mostly because I didn’t realize my partner’s jackassery was an expression of endearment.”

“You’d be surprised how few people realize that,” I said. “But don’t get too comfortable. You’re still on rookie probation. I just let the harshest of the hazing slide because you’re a girl.”

“Woman,”
corrected Steele. “But thanks for that noble gesture.”

“So what’s your feel on the current case?” I asked.

“Honestly?” Shay shook her head. “I don’t know, Daggers. I mean, I could probably wrap my head around one or two weird elements of a murder, but I have no idea what’s going on in this one. Why was the guy naked? Why weren’t there any cuts or bruises on his body when his apartment was totally destroyed? And of course, there’s that stiletto.”

“I’m with you,” I said. “The naked part doesn’t bother me. I mean, it bothered me when I had to stare at his pasty flesh, but it doesn’t bother me from a professional perspective. There’s plenty of weird fetishists in this city. It wouldn’t surprise me if one of them got off on seeing his place smashed to pieces while someone threatened his life. Maybe it was some kinky sex thing gone wrong. But that dagger’s the odd part. You really don’t think it’s magical?”

Shay shrugged. “As I said, I don’t think enchantments are real. But I’m no expert.”

I rubbed my chin. “I have to admit, though, that’s not the part that gets me. Why stab someone with a cold blade? Don’t you think if you wanted to off someone, knifing them in the heart with a run-of-the-mill, room temperature blade would do the trick?”

“Cold temperatures help in preservation. Maybe the killer didn’t want the stab wound getting infected.”

I gave Shay a look.

She shrugged. “Hey, I’m just throwing out ideas.”

“Well, maybe Cairny will have some
better
ideas,” I said, “because right now our best lead lies in a sleep-deprived night manager’s recollection of some dude who may or may not be involved with this crime.”

The waiter returned with our food, and we rerouted our jaws from verbal efforts to more physical ones. As much guff as I’d given Steele about the vittles, I did enjoy the rabbit. I’d never admit it to my elf-friend, though. The knowledge would just go to her head.

11

I belched as we entered the precinct.

“Excuse you,” said Shay.

I swallowed back a hiccup. “Ooph… Good thing I got that out now. Otherwise Quinto would know we went out to eat without him. He’d probably even know where. That guy’s a bloodhound when it comes to identifying the origins of bodily gasses. Sort of a belching savant, if you will.”

Shay shot me a disgusted glance. “Eww. Gross.”

“Hey, don’t look at me that way. I’m not the one with the oddly prescient knowledge of the human digestive system.”

We found Quinto at his desk chatting with Rodgers. The big guy did not look happy.

“You guys suck,” said Quinto.

I put on my best pained expression. “Why, Quinto, I have no idea what you’re talking about.”

Shay jerked a thumb at me. “It was his idea.”

“Hey! What the—wait a second!” I flapped my arms in distress. Shay’d sold me out—and so quickly! Never mind that we had, in fact, ditched Quinto. I just figured my deceit would’ve lasted a little longer.

Quinto crossed his arms and shook his head. “Not cool, Daggers. Not cool. Not only do you abandon me to canvas an entire apartment building’s worth of occupants by myself, but you have the gall to grab lunch without me?”

My eyebrows rose in surprise. Quinto’s nose wasn’t that acute, was it? “How did you…?”

“Come on, Daggers,” said Rodgers with a smile. “You’re not the only one here with a keen deductive sense. It’s well past one, which is your regular lunch hour. You’ve been gone quite a while, far longer than you would’ve needed to get to that book bindery and back. And you’ve got some sort of wine-colored sauce on the hem of your coat.”

I swore, then licked my thumb and tried to rub the stain off. “I knew we should’ve gone for a sandwich…”

Quinto frowned at me and shook his head. “I left something on your desk for you.”

I took a gander over at my own personal block of oak. The bloody stiletto from the crime scene lay there, resting on a square of black cloth.

“Ok, very funny,” I said. “Figured you’d make old Jake Daggers bag and tag the spooky, enchanted dagger, did you? Look, Quinto, I get that a little revenge is in order for the ditching and the lunch, but leaving that thing out in the open is dangerous. We don’t have any idea how it works. Somebody could walk by and get turned into a meat popsicle like that.” I snapped my fingers for emphasis.

Quinto was not amused. “I already tagged it.”

I took another glance. Turns out he had. I saw the paper slip peeking from behind the hilt.

“And that’s not why I left it on your desk,” finished Quinto.

“Then why did you?”

“Go touch it.”

“Are we really going to do this again?” I asked.

Quinto offered me an unsympathetic set of raised eyebrows.

“Fine,” I grumbled. “I already touched it once. I guess I’m probably not at risk of becoming a walking icicle.”

I sauntered over to my desk, snaked a hand out, and pressed my fingers to the hilt.

It was warm.

Well, not really. More like room temperature—but certainly not cold. I took a closer look and failed to see any ice crystals or shimmery fog on the blade.

“That’s interesting,” I said.

“Not cold anymore?” asked Shay.

I shook my head.

We both stood there looking at the blade for a moment. Then I snapped my fingers. “That’s it,” I said.

“What’s it?” asked Shay.

“It must’ve had a double enchantment. One to make it cold, another to wipe the cold away after a few hours.
Devious.
”

“Or, it just warmed up,” said Shay.

“Possibly,” I said. “But you yourself said it at the apartment. If someone cooled this dagger before sticking it in our guy Terrence, it would’ve warmed up in ten or fifteen minutes. This thing lasted a lot longer than that. Hey, Quinto?”

The surly one tilted his head in my direction. “Yeah?”

“When did you notice this dagger had warmed up?”

“I don’t know,” said Quinto. “Around when we got it back here, I guess. Maybe an hour ago?”

“So this dagger was frigid for at least three or four hours, then,” I said.

I looked at Shay. She gave me a slight shake of her head, as if to say she wasn’t sure what to make of it either.

Before I had much of a chance to batter my brain over the conundrum of the icy stiletto, I felt a tap on my shoulder.

“Excuse me, Detective Daggers?”

I turned around to find a short guy with a shaved head and stubble on his chin standing by my desk.

“Um…yes?” I said.

“I’m Boatreng,” he said.

My eyebrows furrowed.

“From upstairs. The sketch artist?”

I unknitted my furry eyeball shades. “Oh. Right.” I wondered if I needed to get my head checked. I couldn’t seem to remember anyone today. Then I remembered how lousy my insurance was and tossed the idea in the wastebasket in my mind where all my other crazy notions got deposited.

“I’ve got the sketch you requested,” the guy said.

“That was fast,” I said. “Let’s see it.”

The guy gave me an inscrutable look, but a growl from his stomach indicated his speed was really a byproduct of having worked through his lunch break. He dug a piece of paper out of a file he held at his side and handed it over before walking away.

I smiled as I gave the page a once over. “Well, it looks like we’ve identified our killer.”

“What? How do you figure that?” Shay snatched the page from my hands.

“Just look at the guy,” I said. “He’s a total creepazoid.”

The sketch depicted a guy with chin length black hair that hung loosely around his face. An elongated, crooked nose stuck out between the sagging bags that hung under his eyes, and craters on his cheeks hinted at a childhood fighting some pox or other. The page also listed him as somewhere between six foot three and six foot six, but on the skinny side.

Shay gave me a sidelong glance. “Come on, Daggers. You can’t judge a murderer based on appearance alone.”

“No?” I said. “I’ve solved cases with less to go on than that. That guy’s either a serial killer or
really
into his collection of lifelike miniature dolls that he surrounds himself with while he sleeps.”

“Well, at least it’s something to go off of,” said Steele. “Should we head back to Terrence’s apartment building—see if anyone can identify this guy for us?”

“Good idea,” I said. “But I have an even better one—one that involves more delegation and less legwork. Hey, Quinto!”

With his back still facing me, the big guy shot me the finger.

“Well that wasn’t very nice,” I said. “Fine. Let’s hit the road, partner.”

12

“Come on,” I said as we approached Terrence’s apartment building. “You can’t tell me you honestly have no idea how to go about firing bricks to produce a sublime, banana-yellow appearance such as that.”

“I already told you, Daggers,” said Steele, “I don’t know anything about brickmaking.”

“Yes, but you do know a fair amount about science, including chemistry. You don’t even have a guess?”

Shay shrugged. “It’s probably a compositional thing. I’m guessing red bricks have more iron. Yellow ones? Maybe they’ve got lime?”

“You’d think lemons would work better if the goal is yellow,” I said.

Shay stopped in her tracks, mouth half open.

“It’s a joke,” I said. “I know what you meant.”

The beat cops at the tenement had all returned to their patrols. I yanked on the door and held it open for my partner, but before she could get to it, some burly doofus with a mop of honey blond hair let himself out at my expense. At least he had the decency to mutter a hasty “Thanks” as he walked by. I shook my head. Chivalry really was dying. At least Shay appreciated my gesture.

“Thanks,” she said. “So, what do you think? Should we start with your favorite cat-loving matron and work our way down from there?”

I sighed. “I guess. Might as well take the rap on my knuckles now. It’ll make the rest of the afternoon feel like a prance through a flower-studded field—or at least smell like one.”

Shay led the way, knocking on Mrs. Mallory’s door once we’d reached the second floor. After a few moments, the grandmother cracked the gate to her castle. Her face lit up as soon as she saw me. I, on the other hand, recoiled as a wave of cat urine funk slapped me around with complete and total indiscretion.

“Detectives! I didn’t expect to see you again so soon. Please, come in. Come in.”

I barely managed to fight off the old lady’s cajoling and Shay’s not so subtle elbow to the ribs. “I’m sorry, Mrs. Mallory, but we’re in a bit of a hurry this afternoon. We just stopped by to see if you could identify a suspect.” I dug around in my jacket and produced the sketch. “Do you by any chance recognize this man?”