Fine Blue Steele (Daggers & Steele Book 4) (15 page)

Shay nodded.

“At first I thought the homeless man attacked you—” I gestured at Drake. “—and that you and Tim killed him in retaliation. But that’s not what happened, is it?”

The wetness around Kelly’s eye reached critical capacity, trickling down her cheek in a thin streak.

Drake responded through a clenched jaw. “No. It’s not.”

Steele gasped. “Oh my gosh… I see it now. It was Sergeant Holmes.”

“Exactly,” I said to Kelly. “The homeless man didn’t assault you. Holmes did, after he’d had enough drinks to let his inner asshole shine through. You resisted. Screamed. That brought Drake running. And seeing Holmes doing that to Kelly…well it threw you into a rage, didn’t it, Drake? You attacked Holmes. Thrashed him good, and probably would’ve kept right on going if not for the appearance of that homeless man, who showed up just as you told us, bloody and screaming.”

Drake gave a small, resigned nod as Kelly wiped away the tear.

I was on a mental roll, my faculties clicking. “The hobo’s appearance shocked you all into a state of alertness. You couldn’t sweep his death under the rug, which meant you needed a cover story for each other. Sergeant Holmes agreed to overlook Drake’s assault on him, a commanding officer, assuming the two of you forgot about his sexual assault. And you decided to keep your mouth shut, Kelly, because even though it goes against every grain in your body, you couldn’t stand to see Drake punished for coming to your aid.”

I left out the last part, the underlying reasoning for Drake and Kelly’s actions. From the personnel files, I knew they came from the same town and had enlisted together. It was how I suspected I’d find them at the DEITA station, looking for passage home. But their mutual enlistment, and Kelly’s silence on the assault, hinted at something more. Maybe Kelly had followed Drake to the army, enlisted alongside him because she fancied him, but perhaps Drake didn’t know. Or perhaps it was precisely the opposite. Perhaps Drake had followed Kelly, and only following Drake’s thrashing of Sergeant Timmy had she realized her hometown friend had feelings for her. Either way, I wasn’t about to stick my nose in the middle of their relationship when they might not know the status of it themselves.

Kelly ground her teeth, her fear and embarrassment quickly fading back to the anger I’d noticed yesterday morning. “Good job, Detective. You satisfied your curiosity and uncovered the truth. Now if you don’t mind answering my original question, what the hell do you want?”

“Exactly what I said I wanted. I need to know everything you can tell me about the vagrant who died.”

Drake shook his head. “Look, we didn’t lie about that part. I swear. He’d already been attacked when he came at us in that alley. He collapsed in the street right where you found him, and he died probably fifteen or twenty minutes after he first showed his face.”

“And you didn’t hear anything out of the ordinary beforehand?” I asked. “Or see anyone suspicious?”

“Are you kidding?” said Kelly. “I’d just been
assaulted
. Drake and that bastard Tim were busy killing each other, and I was screaming at them at the top of my lungs to stop. Nobody noticed that bloody hobo until he was practically on top of us.”

“Really? Nothing?” I asked. “Not even after the fact?”

I felt a light touch on my arm. Shay met my eyes and gave her head a taut shake. “Daggers…they’re telling the truth.”

I sighed. While having my curiosity sated was nice, it wouldn’t help me apprehend whoever was roaming the Delta district killing homeless people.

Drake stuffed his hands in his pockets. “So what now? If you’re going to drag me back to the army base, then do it, but let Kelly go. She didn’t do anything wrong. She didn’t even want to desert. I’m the one who convinced her.”

“That’s noble of you,” I said. “But I don’t think that’s quite how the army brass would see it. And as much as I’d love to see Sergeant Timmy get his ass handed to himself over his assault on Private Chavez here, the ACIC investigators would need Kelly’s testimony to make the charges stick. And since you’ve both deserted, there’s no way to keep your noses clean, even if the judicial committee found your actions warranted, Drake. Which means I only see one way out of this mess…”

“Being?” said Drake.

I gave my partner a sideways look. “Well, assuming Detective Steele here agrees with me…then as far as I’m concerned, this meeting never happened. We never saw you. Heck, we never travelled to the DEITA station in the first place. And if I were you two—which I’m not—I’d make sure to get my ass on that ship that’s headed north in about fifteen minutes or so. I’d change my name, never mention my army service to anyone ever again, and never look back. But hey, as I said. That’s me.”

I glanced at Steele. She didn’t say a thing, but her face softened and her lips curled upward in a warm smile, so I assume she agreed.

Kelly studied me through narrowed eyes. “Really? You’re letting us go?”

“Sometimes those boats leave early,” I said. “Better get a move on.”

Drake and Kelly took one look at each other and skedaddled, disappearing into the roving crowds. Meanwhile, Steele kept observing me with that goofy, closed-lip smile of hers.

“What?” I asked.

“Nothing,” she said, the grin finally fading. “But I can’t help but wonder…if Drake and Kelly—or Sergeant Holmes for that matter—didn’t kill Lanky, then who did?”

“No idea,” I said with a sigh. “Unfortunately, it puts us back at square one.”

“Not quite square one,” said Shay. “At least now we have another body, with the same M.O. as the first. And as long as Officers Peabody and Carter followed your directions, we should have a subject for Cairny to analyze.”

“Good point,” I said. “And speaking of which—we should get back to the precinct before that one disappears, too.”

23

As we walked down the steps to the morgue, the chill, subterranean air—far colder than that outside—hit me, and I shivered. Shay reacted much the same way, except after her shiver, her hands went to her throat, and she paused.

“Oh, no…”

“What?” I asked.

“My scarf,” she said. “I left it at Agent Blue’s office.”

Shay’s long brown curls hid a fair amount, including the top of her blazer and the majority of its lapel, but when I looked at her from the front, nothing blocked the delicate length of her neck from my eyes.

“Huh,” I said. “I didn’t even notice. Too focused on trying to catch Drake and Kelly, I guess.”

“Yeah, me too,” said Shay. “Bummer.”

“It’s not lost forever,” I said. “You can always go pick it up.”

“I know. But now I’ll be cold while we talk to Cairny.”

I lifted an eyebrow as we rounded the corner into the examination room. “Don’t you have a saying for times like this? What is it? If you’re going to be dumb, you’d better be tough?”

“Don’t throw that in my face,” said Steele.

“Why not?” I said. “I get the impression your dad always did.”

My partner silenced me with a reproachful glare.

Cairny stood over an exam table, wearing a lab coat over a black turtleneck that hugged her chin. Burly lay prone on the table, stripped to the waist and with a clean, white sheet thankfully obscuring everything south of the border.

Cairny looked up at the sound of our voices and tucked a few strands of loose, black as midnight hair behind her ear. “Oh. Hey, guys.”

I breathed a sigh of relief at the sight of Burly’s corpse. I’d been explicit with my instructions to Peabody and Carter, but the conspiracy theorist within me still harbored some doubts. Even now I had half a mind to put a security detail on the morgue’s entrance, but that might be letting my crazy a little too far out of its cage.

In addition to the sigh of relief, Burly’s corpse also induced in a me a less favorable reaction. He did
not
look good. The discolorations I’d noticed on his face were far more severe on the rest of his body, painting his skin in various shades of grey and purple and green. I couldn’t tell if he’d been badly beaten before the eventual death blow had been delivered to his skull or if perhaps he suffered from a severe fungal infection.

I grimaced as I came to stand by the table.

Shay’s nose wrinkled in response to the dead guy’s odor, but apart from that, she managed her facial tics better than I did. “Well. At least he’s here.”

Apparently I wasn’t the only one worried about the security of our charnel house.

“Don’t worry,” said Cairny. “I’m taking good care of him. Or at least as good as I can. He’s in rough shape.”

“No kidding,” I said. “He seems to be going south fast.”

Cairny consulted a clipboard on the table and made a note with a pencil tucked off to the side of it. “Speaking of which…can you fill me in on how you found this man? Those cops who dropped him off—Peabody and, what was it? Caruthers?—gave me a spiel, but I want to make sure I heard it straight.”

“Sure,” I said. “Early this morning, in the fog, a couple of drunk yahoos barreled into this poor bum—”

“Or he bumped into them,” said Shay. “They provided conflicting stories.”

“Right,” I said. “Anyway, however it happened, the guy got knocked over. The male half of the pair knelt down to help him and noticed the blood on the back of his head. Realized he’d been attacked. And they went to find help.”

“For what it’s worth, neither Daggers nor I think they had anything to do with the murder,” said Shay. “They were far too stupid for that.”

Cairny frowned and pulled her eyebrows together. “Ok… And you’re sure it was this guy?”

My conspiracy theory siren started to howl again. “Huh? What do you mean?”

I leaned in close to get a good look at Burly’s face. He sported the same beard, matted hair, and facial features I remembered from earlier this morning. Unless he had an identical twin brother who was also a down-on-his-luck transient with bad skin who’d
also
been violently murdered by a blow to the back of his head, then this was our guy.

“Yeah,” I said, stretching out to my full height. “This is him. Why do you ask?”

Cairny gave Steele a suspicious look, as if she didn’t believe me.

“What is it, Cairny?” asked Shay.

“Guys, I don’t know how to tell you this,” she said. “But this man’s been dead for about four days.”

I blinked. “Come again?”

“All the caveats apply about me not having performed a thorough examination yet,” said Cairny. “The beat cops dropped him off less than an hour ago. But it doesn’t take long to come to that conclusion. I mean…really. He’s not fresh.”

I wanted to argue with the coroner, but apart from the fact that she’d never led me astray, her assessment of his time of death would explain his lovely complexion and unique aroma.

I turned to Steele. “Alright. Things have
officially
started to get weird.”

“Agreed,” she said. “But on the bright side, at least this sheds some light on that couple’s testimony. Apparently, Norma knew what she was talking about, and Gary was full of hot air.”

“Yes, clearly he stumbled into Burly and not vice versa,” I said. “But that doesn’t help us answer the more pressing question, which is: why the hell would someone violently murder a hobo, and then four days later, prop the stiff up against the side of an embroidery shop in the middle of a midnight fog storm?”

Shay took a breath and held her hands up. “Yeah. I’m at a loss.”

“Not to mention,” I said, “that Norma said the guy grunted when Gary hit him. How does a corpse do that?”

Shay shook her head. “No. You’ve got it mixed up. Norma said Burly went down like a log, which thanks to rigor mortis, he more or less is at this point. It was Gary who said he grunted.”

Cairny’s ears perked up. “What’s this about a grunt?”

“One of our witnesses claimed the dead guy grunted during the collision,” said Steele. “The other one—the reliable one, apparently—said he didn’t.”

“Not necessarily,” said Cairny, holding up a finger. “It’s possible this man—you’re calling him Burly?”

I nodded. “It seemed to fit as well as anything else. And it’s a nickname that’s not deprecating of his chosen, cash-light lifestyle.”

“Right,” said Cairny. “Anyway, it’s possible he had air trapped in his lungs, and when this man, Gary, hit him, the air could’ve escaped through his windpipe. I’ve heard of it happening before, even with corpses that are a few days old like this one. In fact, the reports I’ve read of such incidents describe the sound as eerie and unsettling.” Cairny steepled her fingers and tapped them together. “Oh, I wish I could’ve heard it. That would’ve been exciting.”

I gave the raven-haired coroner the fisheye. “You’re disturbed, you know that?”

“You say disturbed,” said Cairny. “I say geeked out. This is my hobby as well as my profession, you know.”

I didn’t ask. Given the oaths I’d taken to uphold the law, I’d rather not know if Cairny spent off nights dissecting bodies in her own basement.

“Well, you learn something new every day,” I said. “But unfortunately, that rather unique piece of mortuary wisdom doesn’t explain Burly’s presence in the street last night. I don’t suppose you have any
other
insights?”

Cairny smiled. “Remember that caveat about me not having performed a thorough examination yet?”

“Let me guess,” I said. “You need more time.”

She gave me the old snap and point. “Bingo. Good thing you’ve got such a sharp knife in your drawer, Shay.”

My partner snickered. “He has his moments.”

“Alright,” I said. “Well, we’ll let you get back to work, Cairny. We have enough to do as it is.”

“Such as?” said Steele.

“Looking for the thread that ties Lanky’s and Burly’s murders together,” I said.

Which meant, for the most part, that we had a whole lot of legwork staring us in the face. I sighed. Have I ever mentioned how much I love my job?

24

I lied to Cairny.

My first order of business was to track down Boatreng, who I then escorted to the morgue so he could produce a drawing of Burly. I told the sketch artist to use an artistic license in his interpretation of the man’s original complexion, otherwise no one would recognize him when I showed the drawing around the Delta district in search of clues.