Unshapely Things (20 page)

"Is that necessary?" I asked.

He gave me an annoyed look. "We lost Robin last night. You want to confess to the murders, I'll put it away."

I held my hands up. "All right, all right. I just think it's a little heavy-handed."

"Fine. You go in first."

I hesitated, and Murdock brushed past me with a smug look on his face. Just because I didn't think Shay was capable of murder didn't mean I was stupid. Murdock pulled open the door. The bright hall light was on. We moved slowly along one side of the hall, not quite touching the wall. When we reached the inside door, Murdock paused. We could hear movement on the other side of the door.

We kept back. "Shay?" Murdock called out. The movements inside stopped. "Police, Shay, open up." He didn't answer. Murdock looked at me, and I nodded. Murdock aimed his gun at the door as I crossed to the opposite side of the hall. The prickly sensation of my body shield activating swept over my head. Just as I tensed myself to kick open the door, it opened.

Shay stood on the threshold. He froze when he saw the gun just as Murdock lifted the muzzle away. "Jesus, Shay. You could have answered."

"Sorry," he said. He turned away and went back in the room. At first glance, the room looked like it hadn't been straightened up since the last time we were there. Clothes were still everywhere, mostly piled on the beds. Then I noticed the open suitcases on the floor. "What do you want this time?" Shay asked. He bent over and folded a pair of jeans.

"Are you going somewhere?" Murdock said. He hadn't put the gun away.

"Like I said the other day. I've had it. I'm getting out." He continued packing clothes as he spoke.

"I don't think you should leave right now," said Murdock.

Shay stopped and looked up. "Is this about the sketch? If you need a witness, you don't need me. Ask Robin. He lied. He saw him, too."

"Where were you last night, Shay?" Murdock asked.

Shay's cheeks colored as he nervously brushed his hair back over his shoulder. "I was working."

"Were you with Robin last night?" I asked.

"Yes. For a while. We argued about that stupid glamoui stone. I realized you guys just forgot it in the confusion, but Robin wanted to play with it anyway. I told him it was dangerous to pretend he was fey when he isn't."

"Why did you think it was dangerous? We had someone in custody," said Murdock.

He shrugged. "I heard that guy was human. I don't know what the guy I saw was, but he definitely was not human."

"When did you see Robin last?"

His eyes narrowed. "Why?"

"Just answer the question," said Murdock.

"About midnight." Shay sank slowly to the bed, not taking his eyes off us. "I left him at some dive on Congress. Why do you keep asking me about Robin? Where is he?" His voice grew calmer the more agitated he looked. Neither of us answered him. His face dropped a little.

He was neither in complete control nor overwrought, but had the barely contained hysteria of someone trying very hard not to believe what he was thinking. I'd worked enough cases to have seen it before. I looked at Murdock, and he nodded. "We found him in an alley last night, Shay."

Shay closed his eyes and slumped forward, clutching his waist. He sobbed quietly as we watched awkwardly. I didn't think he was faking. I stepped over to him and gently placed my hand on his back. Murdock frowned and shook his head, but I ignored him. I looked around for some tissue and found a box on the nightstand. I handed several to Shay, and he wiped his face roughly before lifting his head.

"He was murdered. The killer got Tansy, too," I said.

Anger fluttered across his face. "And the killer got away, didn't he?"

It felt like an accusation. I nodded.

"Why did you leave him?" Murdock asked.

"I had an appointment," said Shay.

"With?"

"He didn't show me his ID."

"I think that's a convenient way of telling me you recognized him anyway."

"Murdock ..." I said. I didn't see the point of his pursuing this.

"Even if I did know his name, do you think he'd admit being with me?" Shay glared at Murdock like he was an idiot. Frankly, I thought he was pretty damned close to it.

"Did you see the guy from your sketch last night?" I asked.

"No." He hesitated the slightest moment, just enough to make me uneasy. I still didn't see how Shay could be involved. All along, his stories had been plausible, if uncomfortably coincidental, and his involvement made no sense. He wasn't fey. He wasn't strong. And he wasn't trying to hide anything, or seemed not to be. Maybe it was that he was the least likely suspect that kept Murdock skeptical. No one really has so much bad luck. Except me, maybe.

"Where's my equipment?" Murdock said.

Shay rose from the bed and fished around in the pile of clothes on the bed opposite. He found the wire and handed it to Murdock.

"You're not going anywhere, Shay. Understood?"

He nodded.

Murdock walked out of the room, and I followed him. I turned at the door to see Shay staring forlornly at the floor. He really did look too young to have survived as long as he had, but then all the kids like him in the Weird did. "I'm sorry, Shay."

He gave me barest hint of a smile. "Thank you, Connor. It's nice to know someone else is."

Murdock was already in the car when I came out. As we drove back past Bar, we all waved halfheartedly.

"You were pretty hard on him," I said.

"What did you expect? He's the only real lead I have, and he has no alibi."

"I thought you had surveillance on him."

"We did. He went out an exit of the bar last night we didn't know about."

"It's not him, Murdock. He wasn't at the scene last night."

"How do you know he wasn't?"

"Because I would have sensed his essence."

Murdock pulled in front of my building. He put the car in park and turned to me. "How do you know you didn't?"

I looked at him in confusion for a moment, but he just sat patiently staring back.

"Connor, you said you get a funny vibe from him. Your words."

I still didn't say anything.

"And the killer has a weird essence you've never encountered before..."

I fell back against the seat. "Ha!" I said.

"Thank you," said Murdock.

"Let me think a minute." I didn't know if it were possible. Shay definitely had a strong essence, but he was also definitely human. He obviously had a lot of fey paraphernalia in his apartment. I suppose it was possible he had stumbled on something that could alter his essence and even give him strength out of proportion to his actual ability. It would have to be something pretty potent. I doubted a human could sustain it.

"Why kill Robin?" I asked.

"Maybe he found out," Murdock suggested.

"Even if it's him—and that's a big 'if'—what's the motive?"

Murdock shrugged. "Revenge? Jealousy? Thrill? Pick one."

I let out a sigh. "It's a stretch, but at this point, I won't discount it. I'm so exhausted, I can't think anymore, Murdock." I got out of the car.

"You look like hell." He smiled and drove off. I love his social skills.

I lifted my face to a sky white with haze. Already I could feel dense humidity descending. I needed a shower and my bed. I could feel weariness in every bone of my body. I yawned deeply as I let the elevator slowly pull me up through the building.

Maybe Briallen was right. Maybe I was taking it all too personally. Robin in all likelihood would have ended up dead one way or the other. And Tansy was too naïve to stay away from the wrong elements. As I let myself into the apartment, I thought maybe things might not have turned out differently. And I also thought that maybe, just maybe, Briallen was wrong.

I've always been fascinated that when I wake up wearing the same clothes from the previous night, they smell a lot worse than I thought they did when I went to bed. Of course, managing to sleep over fifteen hours before waking at four in the morning doesn't help either. I couldn't stand my own stench, so I hauled myself out of a nest of sheets and took a shower. Dried sweat and not a little blood sloughed off like a layer of dead skin. When I came out of the bathroom, I was too awake to go back to bed. I made myself some coffee, slipped on a pair of shorts, and went up to the roof.

Even though I was practically naked and it was still technically nighttime, the air felt hot on my skin. The humidity of the previous day had never fully dissipated, promising an even muggier day to come. I settled into the lawn chair and sipped from my mug. Regardless of the temperature, I always drink my coffee. A day with no caffeine is like a day with no meaning whatsoever.

Across the channel, a muddy haze hung around the docks like a dirty skirt. Lighted windows dotted the office towers where no one would be working for hours to come, empty offices vibrating with stillness. The taillights of cabs silently slipped in and out of sight on mysterious nightly errands. The only sounds were the hollow white noise of the city and the occasional siren off in the distance. After the bars have closed and even the drunks have made it home, the city still rustles like an insomniac. Complete rest hovers just out of reach until dawn arrives, then there's no time left. The city doesn't sleep, but it dreams. It dreams of regrets and promises.

I felt that way too damned much of the time. Ever since my accident, I'd been poised between future hope and past glory. I hated it, hated the unknown state in which I found myself. If I could never regain my abilities, what would I become? Briallen's words kept cycling through my head. What did it mean to be a body without talent? I know she meant that there's no such thing, but that didn't really answer the question.

For the longest time, I'd beaten myself up over my arrogance. How I didn't appreciate what I had until I lost it. How I'd looked down on everyone else who couldn't compete with me. But now I needed to get past the self-flagellation. I had to find my way back to the path, and the only way to do that was to act. Otherwise, I'd end up with nothing better to do but collect disability checks and sit half-naked sipping coffee in the middle of the night.

As the sky began to lighten, I sat in front of the computer. Methodically, I recorded everything that had occurred in the past forty-eight hours. It was the longest single entry in the file. Nothing is harder for an investigator than to become part of his own case. Even though Briallen and Murdock came at me from different angles, they had made the same point: Don't make it personal. It was hard not to. They were right, but it was hard.

The first thing I did was to retire the Tuesday Killer moniker. It had forced me into a mindset that left me unprepared for what had happened. I had forgotten that Occam's razor is a process, not a solution. By focusing on the obvious weekly cycle, it never occurred to me to look for something else. A cheap bank calendar would have spelled out the phases of the moon for me had I bothered to look.

I had the urge to toss all my analysis for fear that I had constrained myself too much. After Murdock's comment in the car, the whole ska thing was starting to bother me. Did Tansy, with her limited vocabulary, have only a word for wrong birth to describe the nasty essence she felt, or was she on the money? Was I congratulating myself a little too much for connecting the cross-species cases in Gillen's files? Avalon Memorial was the only fey hospital in the Northeast outside of New York. It would have been unusual if I hadn't found any. On top of that, I'd only found the connection by following other links. Computer search engines are notorious for linking completely disparate information because they're set up by people who don't think exactly like you do. I was surprised some pornography hadn't popped up. It usually does, no matter what gets searched.

I called up Murdock's notes on Shay. As far as I could tell, he was born of human parents. The only people from Faerie to appear after Convergence were fey—always some type of druid, fairy, elf, or dwarf—never a normal human without so-called fantastic abilities. According to the stories, humans certainly played a part in Faerie, but they didn't seem to come through in the unexplained merging of the two worlds. Without a distinct connection to Faerie, I could not see how to link Shay into the killer's profile.

It came down to essence. Essence is like an energy that can be manipulated in different ways. That's one of the things that make the fey races vary from each other. Druids actually join their personal essence to whatever other essence they're working with. It's why we're very good at it, but also why we get tired. Fairies don't have to do that. They can literally pluck essence out of anything with no depletion of their own essence, unless they want to use it. It makes them very powerful, but the trade-off is a lower level of skill in use. And elves manipulate essence only through chanting. They didn't seem to have any direct control of any essence except their own, which they use only in dire circumstances. Humans can activate essence, but only if someone fey has set things up for them. Someone like Shay couldn't do it on his own.

I jumped as my answering machine beeped loudly to indicate it was full. I had turned off the volume and the ringer before passing out the day before. I raised the volume in time to hear Murdock say, "You idiot." He disconnected. I hit playback. The first message was from Murdock telling me he was sending a case file update via email. The next four were also Murdock, all with the same message to call. The last one was the one that had just come in. An annoyed Murdock said, "Call me. Your cell phone's dead, you idiot."

I called, and he picked up immediately.

"The Guild took the case," he said. Good old Murdock, right to the point. I felt like I'd been sucker-punched. "The last victim's father kicked up a stink. I told you he was someone big in New York. I don't think macDuin had a choice."

"That's too easy. MacDuin knows something. I think he's wanted this buried all along," I said.

"Well, it's his case now," said Murdock. "Wrap up your notes and email them to me. I have to turn everything over to the Guildhouse this afternoon."