Unshapely Things (16 page)

I woke near dawn, the sun beckoning me to acknowledge it. Feeling exhausted from the night before, I briefly toyed with ignoring the impulse to get up. The urge to urinate reared its head and decided for me. I stumbled to the bathroom and managed to finish and get in front of the window just as the sun crested the horizon. I felt better, but not refreshed. I fell back into bed and let myself drift into sleep again.

No sooner had I closed my eyes than I dreamed of floating spread-eagled on a plain of water, staring up at the night sky, the sound of screaming all around me. The water lapped at my ears, a cold moist texture that threatened to cover my face. An explosion split the air, and stars fell, brilliant red and orange, burning me as they pierced my skin, ripping open the flesh to expose my beating heart. I woke drenched in sweat.

It was well after noon by the time I stepped from the shower. As I settled at the desk with a cup of coffee, I realized my own suggestibility. The computer monitor displayed a scene photo of a naked spread-eagled fairy with a hole in his chest, his body tossed among the cartons, candle stubs, and rotting debris of a trash heap. It must have been weighing on my mind as I drifted into sleep. I closed the image file.

The light on the answering machine blinked at me from the corner of my desk, and I hit the REPLAY button. A long static hiss filled the room, followed by the sound of something being knocked over, a muttered curse, and finally Rory Dean's voice boomed out. "Connor! I'm calling you at the most ungodly hour I could manage, and you're still not there. Well, I'll keep it short and sweet since you're not around to annoy. I rang up the Atworth woman, found her rather easily, actually, and had to assure her everything was all right, which I hope is true. Anyway, she's just the most pleasant woman, a bit deaf actually, and most solicitous. Anyway, she informed me that her boy's been gone these past ten years, apparently some medical complication. I don't know if that's good or bad for you, but it must put him out terribly. Anyway, you were so bloody cryptic. Call a body sometime and let me know what's what and who you're drinking under the table these days."

The machine beeped and logged the call at three-thirty in the morning. I hadn't checked. Not that it mattered now. I updated the files anyway. Murdock would want them complete for the record. He had found Teri Esposito north of Boston, but her daughter was dead. Same went for the New York lead. I still hadn't heard from Germany. I was already discounting Britt Alfheim's kid Welfrey since she was female. That left Gethin, the son of Gerda Alfheim, and Corcan, the male child of Dealle Sidhe.

Thinking of Murdock made me pick up the phone and call. I managed to connect with the department secretary, but, naturally, she wouldn't tell me what was going on other than that he was not available. I didn't envy him the paperwork bullshit he was probably shoveling, nor the endless jerk-around meetings that always accompanied a media spin. I kept the television on in the background waiting for the press conference as I obsessively reviewed the files. The Fey Summit was still going on, the fairies and elves still arguing after all these years on how to behave with each other. Maeve didn't like being photographed, so reporters were left standing outside the mist wall that surrounded Tara—which made for a surreal backdrop. Not everyone was happy about a treaty between elves and fairies. Violent protests had broken out in London and Berlin.

The press conference came late in the afternoon, timed for live broadcast at the top of the first evening news hour. Commissioner Murdock stood at the podium, calm and self-assured, as though he had been involved with the case from the beginning. Murdock himself stood behind his father, reflexively scanning the crowd as though he expected a surprise criminal to show up for the circus. He never took a break. Off to the side of the cluster of police stood Lorcan macDuin. He didn't speak or move. No mention was made of his involvement in the capture of the accused. They even had the poor taste to parade the still-dazed-looking prisoner out to a wagon to be taken to the city lockup. It was enough to make me feel the world was safe for democracy, only I knew better. I turned the set off. At least now I knew where Murdock was.

I threw a baseball cap on my head and went out the door. The day did not want to cooperate with my mood. A brilliant azure sky, free of humidity, arced overhead. The surface of the harbor swelled placidly, so smoothly that it tricked the eye into thinking the water was a clean blue and not just a reflection of the sky.

District headquarters wasn't too long a cab ride. The mobile news trucks were still parked illegally when I reached the station house. While they finished packing up, I lingered on the sidewalk, debating whether to go look for Murdock. He resolved the issue by pushing out the door past the newspaper reporters who hadn't left yet. He spotted me immediately and jerked his head in the direction of his car. As he opened the door on the driver's side, he plucked a flyer out from under his windshield.

"How are you holding up?" I asked as I slid into the passenger seat.

"Fine." He looked at the flyer, then tossed it on the seat. We pulled onto the street and made our way back into the Weird.

"We're going to lose him," he said, making the turn onto Pittsburgh. He shook his head in annoyance. "My dad's going to spring him to the Guild. We got all the public relations out of it with the press conference, so he wants to dump it."

"Why?"

Murdock rolled his head and looked at me from under his brow. "You know the answer to that."

Unfortunately, I did. The police didn't want him. Or rather, the district attorney probably didn't want him. Most people were afraid of the fey, felt they had too much power, in both influential and real terms. A trial at the taxpayer's expense would go down sideways with a lot of folks. Add the profession of the victims, and even more sympathy vanished. Letting the Guild take him was a win-win solution: The state avoided prosecuting a human for crimes against a disliked minority, and the Guild got to look like it was taking care of its own mess.

He pulled up to Shay and Robin's building. "You're fired, by the way."

I laughed. "I figured that was coming."

He got out of the car. "I didn't have a chance to pick up my equipment this morning. You want to come in?"

"I'm not up for the show right now."

He peeled back the door and disappeared inside.

I picked up the flyer. An ogham glyph was centered on the page with some numbers across the bottom. Ogham writing is essentially a long vertical line with various hash marks to represent sounds. Letters can be ascribed by the relation of the hash marks to the central line, either to the left or right and horizontally or angled across. The flyer had a straight line across the central axis, followed by five lines to the left, two lines angled across, and three lines to the right, which roughly worked out to A, Q, G, F. Old Gaelic could be pretty hard on the ears and tongue, but this did not spell any word I knew.

Across the bottom were the numbers 12432. The glyph rang a small bell, like I'd seen it on a band advertisement recently on a wall somewhere. I let it fall back on the seat.

Murdock returned to the car with a scowl. "They're not here."

"You did say you would be here in the morning."

He shot me an annoyed look. "I was busy. Where do you want me to drop you?"

I looked at my watch. "Just take me home. I'm in the mood to wallow in annoyance."

We drove in silence, both of us scanning the sidewalks of the neighborhood. Sometimes you can gauge the night by seeing who was out and about. Too many known troublemakers, and something stupid is bound to happen. A mix of regular folk and the bad guys, a normal night of nervous scuffles proceeds. Absolutely no one around, and you just know all hell's going to break loose somewhere. Tonight seemed a mix, just a regular weeknight in the Weird. We pulled up in front of my building.

"Look, Connor," Murdock said, "don't go taking all this personally. To be in the game, you have to play the game. We did good work. We just didn't know we weren't supposed to this time."

"That's a load of bull coming from you."

He gave me a lopsided smile. "It's all part of the game. We're still playing it. The rules have just been changed. Now we have to figure out why."

I let myself out of the car. "I'm still going upstairs to wallow."

He shook his head at me and put the car in gear. "I'm getting some sleep."

I watched the car disappear around the corner. Murdock didn't fool me. He was angrier than he was letting on. I recognized the signs: the nonchalance about losing the case, the rationalizations of you-win-some-you-lose-some. I pitied the next person to get in his face. All that pent-up frustration letting loose is not a pretty sight. He was lucky he had a badge, or he'd've been up on assault charges long ago.

As I turned the key in the outside lock, I froze. The ogham glyph on the flyer in Murdock's car wasn't familiar because I'd seen a band advertisement. It was familiar because it had been staring me right in the face the last two days, gouged into the paint on my building's door. I touched the scratch, hoping for an echo of essence. I recognized the vague residue of some of my neighbors, but nothing distinctly around the glyph. It had been too long.

I let myself in, took the steps two at a time, and was running a CD-ROM dictionary before I'd even sat down. Nothing came up, so I tried a couple of online resources with no results either. I knew it wasn't a word, but just needed to confirm it. I had an ogham font for word processing, so I made a copy for the miscellaneous file and a note to show it to Murdock. It had to mean something. And who had left it was an interesting question.

A loud pounding on the door came from the living room. Out of paranoid habit, I checked through the peephole, but no one was visible. The pounding came again, startling me back. I frowned when I realized the sound was emanating from near the floor. I opened the door. Stinkwort stood in the hall, a smug look on his face.

"You put dents in the door!" I said, as he strutted in.

"You're never satisfied." He sighed and flitted up to the kitchen counter. He opened a cabinet, rummaged around, and came out with a box of raisins.

I dropped into the armchair. "Have you come to cheer me up?"

He made himself comfortable on the edge of the counter and started eating a raisin almost as big as his head. "Why do you need cheering up?"

"Weren't you listening last night? They took someone into custody."

Stinkwort paused in midbite. "I'm lost. Why is that a bad thing?"

"Because they've got the wrong guy."

He plunged into another raisin. "Are you sure?"

"He's human, for one thing."

Stinkwort dropped the raisin. "What! Who in their right mind thinks a human could take down three Dananns?"

"Lorcan macDuin."

Stinkwort laughed. "Now you're blowin' my wings."

I shook my head. "He brought the guy in. Says he caught him in the act."

Stinkwort shrugged. "Let them take it, Connor. You're always saying they don't do enough."

"But I'm not sure they're doing the right thing this time either. How are your contacts there?"

He laughed and flitted into the living room. "None at all. Flits take care of their own. Let's go drinking. We haven't been on a tear together in a long time."

I watched him hover around the window a few moments. There are worse things to do in a bad mood than drink with a friend who's mostly pink to begin with. I could tell Stinkwort was in too good a mood to let me spoil it. I became aware that he was humming to himself.

"You slept with someone!" I said.

He laughed and did a midair somersault. "I told you I would."

"Tansy?"

He spiraled down behind the couch, laughing all the way, and reappeared from underneath with a huge grin on his face. "It's amazing how impressed these rustic types can be when you show them your sword."

"I've seen your sword. It's not that impressive," I said.

He tapped a finger on his chin. "Hmmm, let me see. When was the last time anyone wanted to see yours?"

"All right, all right, if I go out for drinks, can we drop the bad double entendres?"

"Do I get to tell you all the salacious details?" he asked, racing for the door.

"Only after we're drunk." Which I had already decided meant yes. There was no stopping Stinkwort when he was boasting anyway. If the truth be known, he did get to tell more stories than I did, even if you counted my early twenties. Flits are nonchalant about sex, from the doing to the telling. It wouldn't surprise me if Tansy were somewhere oh-ing and ah-ing with a bunch of her friends.

We trailed into one crowded bar after another. News of the capture had spread. More than a few fairies who had kept a low profile were out and about celebrating their return to walking the streets. The unofficial weeklong party for Midsummer had begun a day early. Stinkwort was in high spirits, and his mood began to rub off on me.

We stumbled out of a nameless bar onto Stillings Street. Stinkwort flew ahead of me in a not particularly straight line. "Wait a minute, Joe, what if Lorcan's involved?" I said in a moment of alcoholic inspiration.

"You're drunk. Lorcan's too much of a coward." He pinged against the edge of a stop sign and almost hit the pavement before recovering his balance.

"I don't know ... I've heard some stuff about his time during the War. He sided with the elves. He can't be too happy about the Fey Summit."

"All those stories are about who he knew. There's no blood under his nails."

"Yeah, but first he's not interested in the case. Now he is and obviously wants to bury it. He's only gotten on the good side of the Guild in the last couple of decades. Maybe he's still a bad guy."

"And maybe he's just a jerk. You told me once he liked to screw up your cases."

"Gimme a sec." I faced a warehouse wall and relieved myself in violation of city ordinance and my usual modesty.

Stinkwort waited a few yards off as I finished my business. I paused as I approached him. He hovered about ten feet in the air, the edges of his wings vibrating so fast they hummed. Cocking his head to the left and right, he had a tight, strained look on his face as though he were trying hard to hear something.