Dragons & Dwarves (26 page)

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Authors: S. Andrew Swann

BOOK: Dragons & Dwarves
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“What?” I said, slowly sliding back into my seat.
“We have no grounds to hold you,” she said. “You witnessed a felony, that’s all. You could walk out the door right now, if you wanted to.”
“Then why don’t I?” I asked Rayburn.
“Self-interest,” Rayburn replied.
 
In the end they had me, and they
knew
they had me. Rayburn knew from the beginning. That was why he was the mayor, and I was the one doing features on him.
The deal, which wasn’t really a deal, was simply this—
I cooperate, agree to be their stalking horse, I get a little limited Q&A with the Cleveland triumvirate. On the record.
I walk, and not only do I get to go without that particular interview, but I get to face an unknown quantity of killer mages without police protection—and with decent surveillance the cops still get to use me to flush the bad guys.
So, in the end, it was a no-brainer.
I pulled out my notebook and tried to get my money’s worth.
 
Nesmith did answer most of my questions. I got some limited background on Faust. The name began as a legendary figure, a native human who sold his soul by working with the mage underground. The rumors were born in the first few months, when the primary reaction to the Portal—and the things coming out of it—was one of fear.
The name became associated with secret societies, and what Nesmith described as a government-in-exile—almost as if Cleveland was a staging area for operations on the other side of the Portal. Faust and company could certainly communicate across the Portal, and the existing exchanges made it possible for agents to slip in and out.
I asked about the National Guard and forays into Ragnan, and got a predictable “no comment.” When I asked why the Feds shouldn’t be in charge of the Portal, with everything that was going on, I got a bombshell of an answer.
The Portal was not a natural phenomenon.
This thing that had been confounding scientists and mages for a decade had a very specific origin. The dragon Aloeus.
Not only was the dragon influential in shaping policy. Not only was he a primary source of intelligence about Ragnan. Not only was he a source of knowledge to work with mages and protect against them.
Aloeus was the last defense against the fifth column the Feds were worried about. He had created the Portal, and knew the mechanics of how to close it. As long as the dragon was friendly with the administration, the city didn’t have anything to fear from an invasion. It was possible for Aloeus to shut the door.
The idea that Faust murdered Aloeus was enough to send waves of panic from Lakeside Avenue all the way to Pennsylvania Avenue. Such a blatant stroke made it almost certain that there was going to be some sort of push from the other side of the Portal.
Which made everyone all the more desperate to find these guys.
By the time I got to this point, I think I was using up the information faucet. I tried to get confirmations or denials on a lot of the Feds’ accusations, but they weren’t about to comment about National Guard involvement in a coup. Or disappearing homeless, for that matter.
One question I asked did get a rise from Phillips. Not that he said anything, he remained mute through the whole Q & A. But when I brought the questions around to Aloeus’ business dealings. Rayburn, quite adroitly, pointed out that it was none of the city’s business what Aloeus, Inc., did with its money. Phillips, however, looked uncomfortable.
I asked how they knew there was a mole in the administration. It boiled down to timing. Faust and company knew too many things. The fact that Nixon suppressed forensic data. The location of Bone Daddy’s meet with O’Malley. The location of the FBI’s safe house. Cutler’s investigation . . .
I looked across at Phillips. “You’ve been quiet.”
“I do not agree with the decision to use you, or to talk to you.”
“Why is that?”
“I’ve explained my reasoning to the mayor. I do not need to do so to you. Suffice it to say that I believe you’re a risk the administration can ill afford at this time.”
“Why were you on the Coast Guard cutter, Phillips?”
“My job required it,” he snapped. “I think you’ve wasted enough of our time.”
Rayburn glanced at Phillips, and his hand went to the chain at his neck. He turned back, as if reassured by the touch of the chain. “Mr. Phillips felt that his presence was needed on site. You don’t need to question his loyalty to this city and this administration.”
Was that what I was questioning?
I was about to say something more when the mayor went on, “I trust the people in this room, Mr. Maxwell. Strangely enough, that includes you. But the time for questions is over.”
 
I left the bunker under City Hall in the back seat of a minivan escorted by my old friends, Elves One, Two, and Three.
Elf Three still held the Glock, and Elf One still did all the talking.
“Mr. Maxwell,” he said by way of greeting.
“Maelgwyn Caledvwlch,” I said, butchering the name.
If I’d hoped to rattle him by knowing his name, I was disappointed. He looked at me impassively, and said in his breathy near-Jamaican accent, “
Detective Sergeant
Maelgwyn Caledvwlch, Mr. Maxwell.”
I looked over to the elf with the Glock. At least he wasn’t pointing it at me.
As we rolled out of that bunker I knew that Nesmith was drafting a press release to be faxed to all the papers in time for the a.m. editions. A press release calculated to make Faust and the Mage Mafia rabid to get me. I was pretty sure it went something like, “Kline Maxwell, recently wanted for questioning in the murder of Kirk Cutler, has turned himself over to the police. He has been cooperating with the murder investigation, as well as several other related ongoing investigations. At the moment he is not a suspect in any criminal wrongdoing, and is being held in police custody at an undisclosed location for his own protection.” Something to rehabilitate me while simultaneously making me look threatening to Faust. That was how I’d write it.
“So where are you taking me, Detective Sergeant Caledvwlch?” I asked, expecting pretty much as unresponsive a ride as I had gotten to Bone Daddy’s ministrations.
“We’re taking you home, Mr. Maxwell,” he responded, confounding my expectations on several levels.
“Home,” I repeated, for a time unsure if he was referring to my home or his.
“You are in protective custody,” he told me. “We will remain with you until you are no longer in danger.”
“Uh-huh,” I said. “You’re painting yourselves a mighty big target, aren’t you?”
He didn’t respond to that.
The minivan rolled out of downtown, east, through neighborhoods of new townhouses and small strip malls. It was hard to believe that, at one time, the area around us had been some of the most depressed real estate in the county.
I felt backed into a corner, and I didn’t like it. For all their talk that I could just walk away, either choice I’d make essentially amounted to Rayburn and Nesmith throwing me out to draw the hunters. I didn’t like the fact that their scenario about Faust didn’t add up—a gut feeling, but a powerful one.
My doubts did have a foundation, albeit a shaky one. If Nesmith was correct in her theories, Aloeus was killed for something he
might
do, because he represented the administration’s control of the Portal in a crisis situation. I’d always found it much more likely that people are killed for what they
have
done, or what they
will
do.
As the night slid by, I asked, “So were you the cops the late Bone Daddy supposedly drew down on?”
Caledvwlch, as usual, was the one who answered me. “It was unfortunate.”
“More so for Bone, don’t you think?”
“It is the nature of mortal beings to die.” He paused a moment, as if in reflection. “The timing, in some cases, is inconvenient.” It was hard to tell if he spoke with anger, regret or some other, less accessible emotion.
“You work with him a long time?”
“An instant,” Caledvwlch said, making a gesture of dismissal. It rang false to me, even through the enigmatic elven reticence. I didn’t get the feeling that there was affection there, but I sensed that there might have been some sort of camaraderie that Caledvwlch wouldn’t want to admit. “He was useful for the work.”
“ ‘The work?’ ” I asked. “A rather pious way to put it. Or are you more than a city cop?”
“Our unit has a special role, Mr. Maxwell. Caleb Mosha Washington aided that role.”
We hit University Circle. As we drove through, I looked up at the Gothic cathedral at the edge of the Case campus. Trying to see the gargoyle that had yawned at me. I didn’t see anything but inert stone.
“What is your ‘role’? Do you guys have some sort of mission statement beyond ‘serve and protect’?”
“You are looking for hidden agendas, Mr. Maxwell.”
It wasn’t a question, so I didn’t answer it. “You—the SPU—were formed to be specialist cops, like Vice, or Homicide. Doesn’t look as if that’s the way things worked out.”
“We are police officers.”
“You’re doing covert black bag jobs for the administration. That night with Bone Daddy wasn’t your first midnight questioning of an unwilling subject.”
“Perhaps.” The minivan slowed to a stop outside my building.
They led me out of the van, and I hunched my shoulders, expecting an ambush out of the night. Three elves accompanied me inside, the driver staying with the car, as always.
Once we were in the stairwell and I felt a little safer, I asked, “How close was Cutler to what was really happening?”
Caledvwlch’s voice echoed hollowly, and somewhat ominously, in the stairwell, “Mr. Cutler asked the wrong questions.”
I had a real bad feeling. What were the
right
questions? Why did Cutler have to die? Why did they want me dead? Coroner Nixon? Bone Daddy? Several things that had been nagging at me began surfacing as the elf led me up to my condo. Nixon wasn’t killed to hide the dragon’s murder. Nesmith and company
already
knew, they had just invented an accident in an attempt to play things down. The city was doing Faust’s job in that respect.
Nixon was killed for some
other
reason.
Faust had a mole in the administration . . . .
I looked at Caledvwlch and asked, “How did Caleb Washington die?”
He looked at me and said, “Mr. Maxwell, Caleb Washington held a fellow officer, a human officer, at gunpoint. We had no choice but to shoot him.”
The air around me began to leach the heat off my skin. “Nesmith said—”
“Ms. Nesmith does not know.”
When I stared at him for a few moments, he repeated, “We had no choice,” as if I had missed the point.
Before I could ask him anything more, he had the door open and we were walking into my condo to face the hunched form of Thomas O’Malley. The elves flanked me and stood, almost at attention until O’Malley nodded and gestured them at ease. Caledvwlch was silent, and it started to strike me that, like Baldassare, this person I’d been pumping would never tell me a thing unless he had a concrete reason to do so.
As Commander O’Malley stood to greet us, I began to wonder exactly what that reason was.
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
 
“
W
ELL,” I said, “make yourself at home.” The bad feeling in my gut had just deepened several notches. What Caledvwlch had said in the stairwell didn’t sync with what Nesmith had said about Bone Daddy, unless O’Malley here was part of it.
 
How much of this did Cutler have right?
O’Malley shook his head. “I would have thought you’d be flattered at the attention.” He gave me a humorless grin. “You’re under ‘special police protection.’”
“The elf squad isn’t special enough?”
“We all follow Ms. Nesmith’s lead, don’t we boys?”
“Sir,” replied Caledvwlch. He was echoed by his two henchmen, the first time I had heard their voices. The feeling in the room was unnerving. I couldn’t read the elves, beyond the fact that they had become even more reserved upon entering the room—as impossible as that seemed. O’Malley on the other hand, radiated unease like the heat from a compost heap. His posture was tense, and he eyed the elves more than he eyed me.
I looked at the tableau in my living room, all back-lit by my wide-screen showing some nature documentary. The tension was taking its toll on me; I needed space to breathe, to think.
After a few long moments I said, “Okay, folks, if you all don’t mind, I’m going to take a long-overdue shower.”
 
I had just got my airport coveralls unzipped, an effort the way my hands still pained me, when Detective Caledvwlch opened the door.

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