Cold Hard Steele (Daggers & Steele Book 2) (16 page)

“Daggers? What are you doing here?”

I looked up from my desk, morning sunlight streaming in through the Captain’s office windows, to see Detective Steele standing over me, dressed in a stylish pair of drawstring capris and a flowing marigold-colored top. I rolled my tongue back into my mouth. She looked good.

I stated the obvious. “I’m reading.”

“Well, I can see that,” said Steele. “But why are you doing it here in the office? And at this hour? It’s barely after eight. I didn’t think you were aware this part of the day existed.”

“I couldn’t sleep,” I said as I shifted my eyes back to the page. “This book is too engrossing.”

“
You
couldn’t sleep?” Shay took a seat at her desk. “Maybe I’ll have to borrow that book when you’re done, after all.”

“Yeah, yeah, sure. Whatever,” I said, waving my hand at her to get her to leave me to the written word.

“So seeing as you were reading all night,” said Shay. “Wait—you weren’t reading the
entire
night, were you?”

I sighed. My chatty half-elf partner clearly had no intention of letting me keep my nose plugged into the novel. I grudgingly closed it and set it down on the hardwood.

“No,” I said. “I did sleep, just not particularly well. My brain was too stimulated.”

“Ok, just making sure,” said Shay. “So, seeing as you were reading most of the night, did you manage to dislodge anything useful up there in your squishy parts?”

I narrowed my eyes and set them firmly upon Steele.

“What?” she asked. “What nerve did I touch upon
this
time?”

“I’m trying to decide whether or not I should tell you,” I said. “I probably shouldn’t. You’ll laugh at me.”

“Me?” Shay pressed a hand to her chest. “I’d
never
do that.”

I raised an eyebrow.

“Ok, that’s a lie,” said Shay. “But if you really came up with a theory that could help solve our case, you know I’ll consider it thoroughly. I’d be upset if you didn’t share it.”

I pursed my lips. “Very well. I’ll give it a shot.” I took a deep breath. “So in the Rex Winters book, Rex is investigating the death of the mayor, right? Because he found the body while out yachting. Except he loses the body, and when he gets back to town, he finds the mayor is alive and well. But he’s certain he saw the mayor’s dead body before. So—”

“Daggers, I thought you were going to share insights about our murders, not relate the plot of your late-night reading.”

“I’m getting there,” I said. “Pay attention. Rex shares his concerns with his chief of police, but the guy doesn’t believe him, because the mayor is looking hale and hearty. And that’s when the murders start—of prominent figures around town. Except they happen at night. Rex finds out about them by proxy, and by the time he can report them, they mysteriously get cleaned up. Nobody believes Rex regarding what he’s found, but that’s not the important part. The interesting thing—and this is what you won’t believe—is how the murders are perpetrated.”

Steele gave me one of those dubious looks only women are adept at. “You don’t honestly expect me to believe people in your novel are getting murdered by having icy daggers plunged into their hearts, do you?”

“Well, no, not exactly,” I said. “But there are key similarities. Some people are clothed, some aren’t. There’s minimal blood. Possible drugs. It’s as if our murderer heard about the book’s plot through a friend of a friend and then started enacting the murders himself.”

Shay pressed a palm to her forehead. “Come on, Daggers,
really?
I thought you were going to decompress by reading, but instead you’ve turned into a sleep-deprived, conspiracy theory-spouting mess! I can’t believe I’m going to encourage you to imbibe more alcohol, but I think you would’ve been better off spending the evening with Cairny and I last night. We had a few drinks, had some fun, but look at me now. I’m refreshed and ready to attack the case. You, on the other hand—”

“Uh-oh,” I said.

“Uh-oh, what?” said Shay.

During her spiel, a runner had come in from the street and poked his head into the Captain’s office, but the bulldog was nowhere to be seen. I had a bad feeling about the kid’s presence so early in the morning.

“Hey sport,” I said. “Captain’s not in yet. If you’ve got a message for him, you can leave it with me. I’m in charge while he’s gone.”

Shay rolled her eyes, but my statement wasn’t a total lie. I had seniority.

“Um, alright,” said the kid as he stepped over. “I just got word. There’s been a murder near the Pearl. And the circumstances are a little, um…odd, I guess. Supposedly someone got stabbed—”

“With a cold dagger?” I finished.

The kid nodded. “Yeah. How’d you know?”

“Call it a hunch.”

I extracted an address from the runner and told him to wait out in front. Then I turned to my partner. “You ready to go?”

She nodded.

In a moment of serendipity, Rodgers and Quinto strolled into the precinct as we were readying to leave. I told them to grab their things and accompany us to the scene of the crime. Quinto expressed some hesitation, but he agreed once I described to him the shit storm likely to descend upon us the instant the Captain arrived and found out there’d been yet another icy-bladed stabbing. Two murders of a similar fashion could be written off as a coincidence, but three translated into an all-hands-on-deck public relations crisis. We needed to solve the murders, and
fast
.

28

The apartment complex lucky enough to win the ritualistic murder-of-the-day sweepstakes was easily the nicest of the three places we’d visited. Located a half-dozen blocks outside the edge of the ritzy Pearl district, the building stood five stories tall and featured rose-colored rendered cement walls that popped in the early morning sunshine. Arched windows on the upper levels gave the structure a bit of exotic flair.

I’d expected to find my good buddy, Phillips, standing guard outside the entrance to the complex, but either it was too early for him to be on duty or we were the first cops to arrive at the scene of the crime. I don’t think I’d ever experienced that before. Then again, I’d never been at work by eight in the morning, either.

We pushed into the building and were assaulted by swaths of pushy, middle-aged professionals all clambering for answers to questions I hadn’t even formulated yet. “What happened? What was that racket? Is everyone ok?” They milled about in their pajamas, newspapers and small dogs held under their arms, demanding I, as a representative of our city’s majestic justice system, cater to their immediate needs.

As I so often am, I was glad to have brought Quinto along for the ride. I unleashed him on the crowd, letting him sow seeds of reason and obedience into the mob. I figured the unruly masses would listen to him. His scowl had a way of giving even the most indignant people pause.

With Shay and Rodgers in tow, I worked my way to the address the runner had given me, an apartment located at the end of the hall on the second floor. The door was ajar, and so I pulled my trusty nightstick, Daisy, from my coat pocket and clenched her in my right fist.

The door squeaked as I pushed it open. As I absorbed the living room, I experienced a flashback to two days prior. The place was a complete mess—if possible, it was in even worse shape than Terry’s pad. Tables and chairs were smashed to splinters, huge gouges scarred the tops and sides of an otherwise lovely sofa set, torn drapes lay discarded in a heap, and a few gaping holes peered at me from the walls. Chunks of broken dishes and pottery, slivers of glass from smashed windows, and strips of torn cloth—as if someone had taken a machete to a rack of formal wear—littered the floor, as did something else.

A dead body. Victim number three.

It was a woman this time, and—surprise, surprise—she was as naked as the day her mother popped her out. Stretched out as she was on the floor, I’d guess she measured about five and a half feet tall, and though she was a bit on the pudgy side, she was far from unattractive. Her pale skin, blue eyes, and shoulder-length red hair combined to give her a sense of scholarly elegance. As with Terry’s body, no cuts or bruises marred her skin, despite the heinous condition of the apartment—except, of course, for the obvious laceration I was expecting.

A foot-and-a-half long piece of steel protruded from her left breast. As with our previous victims, only a thin trail of blood seeped from the wound. Delicate scrollwork graced the dagger’s hilt, and ice crystals budded from the base of the blade. I noticed white wisps of vapor twisting and floating around the blade and over the incision in the woman’s chest.

I turned from my inspection of the victim. “Well, it looks like—”

Shay stood with her arms out to the sides, fingers tickling the air as her eyes glossed over and rolled toward the back of her head. Rodgers stood behind her fidgeting, probably eager to search the place but unwilling to interfere with Steele’s psychic experience.

I put him out of his misery by putting him to work. “Rodgers, why don’t you go assist Quinto with the neighbors while Steele and I search the premises? I want to know everything there is to know about this woman—who she was, what she did for a living, who she knew, and what people heard and saw last night and early this morning. And try to be quick about it. The body’s still fresh. I can practically smell the blood trail fading as we speak.”

Rodgers nodded and shuffled out the door. After a moment, Shay relaxed and deglazed her eyes.

“We’re going to have to tell them eventually,” I said. “It doesn’t seem right to lie to them, even if we’re doing it implicitly.”

Shay sighed. “I know. I feel the same way. But let’s wait until a more opportune moment, ok? We’ve got enough on our plate as it is.”

“Fair enough,” I said. “Notice anything interesting while you were engaging in your séance?”

“Probably the same things you saw, for the most part. You notice the injection mark on her left arm?”

I hadn’t, but I hadn’t looked that closely, either. Sure enough, a small, circular mark graced the primary artery on the inside of her left elbow crease.

“Figures,” I said. “Cairny must’ve been right about that blood thickener stuff. Again we have a direct shot to the heart with only minimal bleeding.”

I searched around in the chaos for a scrap of cloth that suited my needs, eventually finding a swatch of flannel about the size of a potholder. I wrapped it gingerly around the hilt of the murder weapon and extracted it from the dead woman’s chest. I could feel the chill seeping through the fabric. With my other hand, I grasped the end of the hilt and twisted. The top came off, revealing a thin metal flask hidden inside the stiletto.

“Well, in a sense this is good,” I said as I replaced the cap. “Our situation here’s almost identical to Terry’s murder, from the state of the apartment to the victim’s nudity to the frigid murder weapon. Only real difference I see is the location of the body. And the sex of the victim, of course.”

“Something you’re loving, I’m sure,” said Steele.

“I admit I prefer the nude female anatomy to that of the male,” I said. “But when you say it, you make it sound so dirty—like I’ve got a weird fetish for dead bodies.”

My partner sniffed. “We should cover her up.”

“With what?” I asked. “You planning on sewing an impromptu quilt out of all these strips of cloth?”

Shay ignored me and wandered over toward the broken windows. “Unfortunately, there’s another similarity between this place and Terrence’s that won’t work in our favor. This place is a second story unit, too. Hopefully, Rodgers and Quinto will extract something useful from the neighbors, but let’s say I’m not terribly confident that anyone will have spotted our cloaked mystery man on his way out.”

I set the stiletto down next to our latest victim. The chill had started to make my fingers feel creaky and stiff. “We’ll just have to hope for the best in that regard. You never know. Even the smartest of criminals make mistakes, and mistakes can lead to clues. Speaking of which, let’s split up and search this place. Maybe we’ll find something the killer left behind in the scuffle, or some connection between this lady and our first two victims.”

29

“Find anything?” It was a big apartment. I was in the study, and Steele had escaped to the bedroom.

With a grunt I yanked open a desk drawer that was putting up a fight, mostly because the desk looked like it’d been beaten with a ten-pound hammer and then sat on by an overweight giant. Whoever had trashed the place had done a stand-up job.

Steele’s voice came back faint, echoing off several walls from a couple rooms away. “Not really, though these pieces of cloth are interesting. Did you notice their edges?”

“What about them?” I called.

“Well, they’re clearly bits of clothing,” she said. “But they’ve all been torn, not cut. You can tell by the thread pattern at the tears. The trashed apartment I can understand, but why bother tearing up all this woman’s clothing? What sort of grudge did the murderer harbor anyway? Normally when you find torn clothes at a crime scene it’s evidence of a sexual assault. But I don’t see any bruising in the obvious places on the victim for that to be the case. These clothes look like they’ve been through a shredder. Who does that?”

I shrugged before realizing Shay couldn’t see me, so I added an additional loud “Not sure.”

I reached into the savaged desk drawer and drew out a bright yellow folder. I flipped through the contents, which included a few vague letters referencing services of an indistinct nature, a ledger that included hours worked, but didn’t specify what work was being completed, and a dog-eared take-out menu for an authentic dark elven cuisine place nearby called Can O’ Pea’s. It made me smile.

At least I was able to glean from the letters that our victim’s name was Cynthia Gladwell. I just wished the pieces of correspondence were more concrete. Most were letters of thanks, stating that Cynthia had ‘really outdone herself’ and that she’d done a ‘fantastic job.’