Unquiet Dreams (5 page)

“I don’t think you belong here,” he said. He didn’t change his voice. Given the way he was scoping me out, I guessed he was trying to figure if I was human or druid or glamoured. Dwarves don’t sense essence very well unless it’s pretty strong. Given my current disabled state, I doubt I gave off much of a druid aura at all. If trouble started, a human would be easy for them to handle; a lone druid would be manageable, even if he was in better shape than me; someone glamoured would be a wild card. It could be a fairy or an elf or some other powerful fey that might have an unpleasant reason for hiding his identity by appearing to be something else. Regardless, being on the receiving end of a dwarf fist is unpleasant for any of them.

“Sometimes I think I don’t belong anywhere,” I said in my best world-weary, leather-jacket-cool tone. It plays well in the Weird.

He moved a step closer. “I’m talking right here, right now.” Evidently, he had decided I was tuna.

“A kid died here last night. I’m working the case.”

Magic words. Of course, I didn’t actually say I was Guild or Boston P.D., but implying was enough. All three of them shifted their postures, not in relief, but with an air of nonchalance meant to convey they weren’t doing anything less legal than strolling down the sidewalk. In the Weird, people with badges are treated cautiously because they’re rarely friends.

“Know anything about that?” I asked into the silence.

Head shaking all around.

“He was wearing a black hoodie and a yellow bandana. Sound familiar?”

Again, more head shaking, with some shoulder shrugging thrown in. From three guys wearing black hoodies and yellow bandanas.

I slipped my hands in my pockets and looked around like I was appraising the real estate. “I heard this territory’s up for grabs.”

“You heard wrong,” said the first dwarf. The other two gave me hard, tough-guy stares.

“So, if I thought someone killed this kid in some kind of turf dispute, I’d be wrong?”

“There’s no dispute. This is Moke’s.”

I nodded as if in agreement. “I think I need to talk to Moke.”

The dwarf shrugged. “Maybe he’ll hear about that. He’s pretty busy, though.”

I smiled. “If you run into him, tell him Connor Grey said hello.”

The dwarf spun on his heel. “We got better things to do,” he said over his shoulder as he walked away. The other two gave me one last look and followed him. I decided not to try to keep them talking when they clearly didn’t want to.

I didn’t know of any dwarves named Moke. And I didn’t know if that was a good thing or a bad one. I didn’t go down this end of the Avenue much, and gangs are diligently territorial. My end of the neighborhood tended to have a lot of human and fairy groups hanging out. They didn’t get on much with dwarves, so this Moke probably stayed on his end.

As I suspected, the whole thing was looking like a gang dispute. It was hard not to be a little disappointed. Gang murders meant not much work. The likelihood of members discussing the situation with the police was small. And the perpetrator probably had more to fear from his rivals than the law. It looked like I would get maybe one or two days’ pay out of it before Murdock had to move on to other things. The case would probably remain unsolved with a gang reprisal that I would never know about.

For the second time in a half hour, something came flying down at me. I realized with horror that it was a winged Nike in all its pink and orange glory. As it got closer, Joe’s head appeared over the laces. He was actually sitting inside it.

“Why didn’t you say it was a sneaker? I know what a sneaker is,” he said.

“Joe, I said ‘find it’ not ‘take it.’ You’ve just contaminated evidence in a murder case.” For the record, it’s hard to look angry at someone sitting in a running shoe floating in the air.

He pulled a long face. “I’ll put it back then. You could have been clearer.”

“Where was it?”

“On a roof four or five buildings over that way,” he said. As he pointed, he almost lost the shoe. I resisted the urge to grab it.

“Please, put it back exactly where it was and in the same position. I’ll meet you there. Wait for me in front of the right building so I can find it.”

“What if someone sees me?” he said.

“That’s the least of my concerns right now, Joe. No one’s going to see you if you don’t want them to.” Most flits are shy to the point of reclusiveness. They’ve set themselves up for a vicious circle, though. They’re shy because their size often gives them unwanted attention, but because they’re rarely seen, they attract even more attention when they do appear. It wasn’t so bad in the Weird, since fey of different sizes were hardly unusual. Joe’s usually not so sensitive to it, but I could tell I upset him. He’ll get over it because he understands enough about my job to know he screwed up.

He turned the shoe and flew off. Skipping the shortcut through the mud, I made my way around the field to the next street over. More empty buildings, though a few of these looked like they might be inhabited. Rough curtains hung in warehouse windows, and sometimes people even showed their faces through sooty glass. This end of the Avenue was not known for entertainment. It was close to the Tangle, which meant trouble, so only the truly desperate lived here or, ironically, the kind of people that the desperate feared.

At the top of a building stoop, I found Joe standing defiantly in full view of the street. I knew he’d get over it.

“Sorry,” he said as I walked up the steps.

“Yeah, I know. I didn’t mean to yell. Can I get up to the roof from here?”

He nodded. “It’s empty as far as I can tell. Smells bad, too, and not in a good way.”

I pursed my lips, then decided not to ask for a clarification of that last part. We entered the building through a smashed-open door. Joe hovered over my right shoulder as we ascended the stairs. He was right. The place stank, bodily secretions being the main culprit. The sagging staircase rose dimly before me and would have had the same gray, dingy look should sunlight ever penetrate. Spray-painted graffiti was most evident the first two flights, in several languages and three alphabets, but dwindled as we went upward. The smell faded, too, but that was probably due more to open windows allowing wind through than any diminishment of the source.

The stairs topped out at the roof through a small, doorless penthouse enclosure. The sun blinded me briefly after the dark interior of the building. I examined the roof surface before stepping out. In this part of town, rotting roofs come with the package. This one looked more solid than most. Others had been there before, demonstrated by three mismatched lawn chairs, a wooden telephone cable spool set on its side as a table, and enough empty bottles and cans to open a recycling center.

“Where is it?” I asked.

Joe put on a mock-curious face. “What? You mean that strange orange Nike shoe sneaker over there by the washing machine that I’ve never seen before in my life?”

I can’t stay angry at Joe for long. Annoyed yes, but it’s not in his nature to provoke me, and he always feels bad when he does. “That would be the one,” I said.

I walked over to the incongruity that was a washing machine on a roof. Whenever I see something like that, I wonder about the motivation of the people who put it there, why it occurred to them to lug something so heavy to such an odd place. The Nike lay on its side near it. I could only sense Joe’s essence at the spot, so that was a good sign that no else had been there. It helped confirm my suspicion that the kid lost it in the air.

“Well, at least your essence fades quickly. No one will find it if they look.” Flit essence can be elusive. Flits being so small, their essence fades almost instantly under most conditions.

I scanned the nearby buildings. We were about a quarter mile away from the field where the kid had ended up. I couldn’t see any sight lines that might produce witnesses, just other roofs that no one would likely be on in the rain and cold of the previous night. Off to the south, someone floated up into view. Even at this distance, I could see a slight distortion in the air that indicated wings. The sun glinted off something metallic. The chrome helmet of a Guild security guard. He drifted back down.

I brought my attention back to the running shoe. Having been out in the rain, it had no more essence on it than the kid’s other clothing. I squatted down to look more closely. A few dark spots flecked the visible side.

“Joe, after you picked this up, did it touch the ground again or did anything drip on it?”

Stinkwort pulled his head out of the washing machine. “No. I picked it up by the laces and put it back exactly how I found it.”

I leaned as close as I could get my nose to the Nike without falling over. When you work for the Guild, no one blinks an eye at what a druid might do to sense essence. When you’re all alone on a roof with nothing to identify you as an investigator, you look like a guy with a shoe fetish. I hoped no one could see me. I waited for any essence to assert itself. After a long moment, just the slightest hint whispered up to me, so faint I was worried I might be imagining it. Elf essence. Only one thing would retain any indication of essence after that much rain. Blood.

I looked back toward the Tangle, then turned to sight the line to the field. The shoe was almost on a straight line between Kruge’s storefront and the dead kid. Could be a coincidence. Or could be this wasn’t just a gang feud.

“Did anyone see you, Joe?”

His eyes narrowed at me. “Just some dwarves.”

“Black hoodies? Yellow bandanas?”

He nodded. “I don’t want to ask. Why?”

I shrugged. “Just curious. There’s some elf blood on the shoe.”

He gave me an exasperated look. “Just some elf blood, he says. Like one of the most famous elves in the city didn’t just get exploded up the street on the same night. Like, oh, did you happen to see a gang of marauding dwarves, he says. Nothing to worry about, Joe. Nope, nope, nothing at all.”

“You’re letting your imagination run away with you, Joe,” I said. “I’m sure it’s just coincidental.”

“Just because it’s a coincidence, doesn’t mean I can’t get killed because I touched some smelly Ikey.”

“Calm down, Joe. And it’s a Nike. And it doesn’t smell. It’s brand-new.”

“Except for the elf blood,” he said.

I tried to give him a reasonable look. “It’s just a little. Hardly any. I can’t even tell if it’s Alvud Kruge’s.”

He rolled his eyes. “I feel so reassured.”

“Look, Joe, it’s a gang feud, pure and simple. He could have picked up the elf blood anywhere. He had an odd mix of essence on him, so there’s no telling where he got it. Murdock and I are running the gang angle, and once he gets some gang names to contact, this will be all over. No one even knows you were involved.”

He looked at me unconvinced. “You forget the marauding dwarves.”

“They weren’t marauding, and unless dwarves can suddenly fly, there’s no reason for them to connect you to a shoe on a roof they couldn’t even see.”

He nodded. A sly look came over his face. “I bet you want to know about gangs.”

“That’s the plan.”

He smiled knowingly. “I know someone who can help you. Knows all the gangs from here to Southie. Want me to set up a meeting?”

Joe is not a poker player. Every once in a while, he gets it in his head that I’m lonely. So he finds some poor soul that he thinks is just perfect for me. The problem is, most of the time “just perfect” to Joe means “odd person I met that no one else will go out with.” All evidence to the contrary, I tend to be a little more discriminating. “I don’t need a date, Joe.”

“No! Honor spit! I really know someone who knows gangs and would be juiced to talk to you.”

“Okay, set it up, then. I’ll bring Murdock.”

He hesitated for a moment, which made me think he might be fibbing about a date. “Okay. That’s okay. Just don’t say Murdock’s a cop. He might not be happy about that.”

“Fine,” I said. I pulled out my cell phone and called Murdock. He was not going to like how I was about to complicate the case.

In spite of being amused by Stinkwort’s paranoia, I was getting uncomfortable standing in front of the building waiting for Murdock. Clearly, word had spread about our presence on the street. An assortment of people found time to stroll by with no apparent errand in mind. A few peered at us curiously, as if a stranger hanging out in front of an abandoned building was surprising in this part of town. To a certain extent, it probably was. Around that part of the neighborhood, strangers didn’t like to attract too much attention unless they were trying to send a message. I hoped ours said keep away until the cops show up.

Most people looked at us suspiciously, though. Joe’s marauding dwarves showed themselves down at the one corner. They numbered six now. One more, and they’d be a cliché.

Murdock’s voice mail had picked up when I called, and he hadn’t called back yet. He usually called me back right away, but it had been almost twenty minutes. I didn’t want to leave a message about the running shoe at the station house without talking to him, though. It was his case, and he should be on-site when a unit came to pick up the evidence.

Joe fidgeted about the stoop. “Do I have to stay? The windows across the street have eyes in them, and they’re not an even number.”

“Yes, we have to see if Murdock wants to arrest you.”

“What?” he shrieked. Several heads turned in an avid hope that some action was about to happen. We disappointed them.

“Just kidding, Joe. We do need to tell him what happened. It’s up to him what he wants to report.”

“Well, I wish he’d hurry up. I’m bored.”

I just nodded. I was used to Joe’s definition of interesting. It had no logic to it, so I gave up trying to understand it years ago. I have seen him stare at a patch of grass for hours with an avidity I couldn’t fathom. And yet, here we were in one of the more sketchy parts of the Weird with a veritable parade of fey folk slinking by, and he was bored.

I idly wondered if the Tangle were a taste of what Faerie was like, if the old country still existed. Few humans lived down this end of the neighborhood. Humans did live in Faerie, but none seemed to have come through the Convergence. The concentration of fey folk had to have been high in Faerie, by definition. With all that power, all that essence manipulation, it’s no surprise that legends portray the place as dangerous and precarious. Even in the short time we stood on the sidewalk, I could feel little spell pings tossed our way. I could no longer actively discern their exact nature, but having been in places like this before my accident, I could guess.