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

“Anytime, Daggers.”

“So…where’s your better half?”

Rodgers scrunched his brow. “Allison? At home with the kids, probably. Why?”

I gave my head a shake. “Not her. Your brother from another mother. The walking brick wall.”

“Oh. You mean Quinto.” Rodgers shrugged. “He’s on assignment with your new gal pal. A runner came in this morning with news of a murder, and since you weren’t in, the Captain sent Quinto along to watch Steele’s back.”

I frowned. Apparently I couldn’t even take one morning off without the Captain trying to replace me with the only other detective in the unit uglier than me. “Why didn’t the old bulldog send you and Quinto instead?”

“Not sure, but from what I overheard—the particulars of the case are rather
curious
. The sort of thing that might be right up your partner’s alley.”

I chuckled. One of the best ancillary benefits of being charged with Shay as my partner was that, because of her abilities, she and I were assigned all the interesting murders while Rodgers and Quinto got relegated to the more mundane ones. I wondered what today might have in store for me. A mass murder of religious cultists? Pixies slaughtered by trained assassins? A sorcerer killed by his own freakish, undead abomination?

I didn’t have long to speculate. The Captain noticed me and Rodgers jawing in the hallway, so he stuck his head out from his glass-walled office and barked at me.

“Daggers! Get in here!”

Even if the Captain’s short-shorn hair and starched pants didn’t give him away as ex-military, his booming, no-nonsense shouts did. When he yelled, he expected immediate action, and woe be the fool who dillydallied or got in his way.

I’d been that fool before. By design, even, but only when I’d wanted to piss him off. Given that he wanted to assign me to a fun case for once, I had no intention of inciting him into a frothing rage.

I hopped to it. “Yes, Captain?”

The old bulldog’s jowls flapped as he talked. “Where the hell have you been all morning, Jake?”

“I was out spending time with my son. I told you about it yesterday.”

The Captain’s eyes narrowed. “What? No you didn’t.”

“You’re right,” I said. “I didn’t. But I left a note on your desk.”

The Captain added a raised eyebrow. “You did?”

“No. That’s a lie, too. But I meant to. Honest. I just—”

“Zip it, Daggers.” The Captain held up a hand. “I’m not interested in feeling your hot air on my face today. What I am interested in, however, is you getting your ass to work on time and not leaving your partner of only a few weeks high and dry when a case comes in the door. The rest of the world doesn’t consider ten-thirty to be the beginning of the work day. Do I make myself clear?”

I swallowed. “Yes, sir.”

“Good. Now get your butt over to Middlebelt and 7
^th
. There’s a yellow brick building on the corner. You’ll know which one. It’ll have bluecoats milling around the front. Apartment two-something. I don’t remember which exactly. Now go.”

“So what should I be expecting?” I asked. “Did the runner say anything about—”

The Captain shot me a murderous glare.

“On second thought, I’m sure I can figure it out once I get there.”

I turned around, hitched up my pants, and prepared to apply shoe leather to cobblestones. I’m pretty sure I heard Rodgers sniggering as I walked out the front doors.

3

I’m not entirely sure why the Captain felt it necessary to clarify that the building I’d be heading to would be guarded by a pack of bluecoats—as if there were any other banana-yellow five-story sore thumbs in the near vicinity.

Being the natural cynic I am, I assumed some lucky contractor got a steal of a deal on the garish bricks, but I couldn’t be sure. The city of New Welwic was so old that fashions and tastes had changed dozens of times over the centuries. For all I knew, banana-yellow was coming back into style. I’d know for sure if the building was full of pipe-smoking bohemians wearing plaid shirts and glassless spectacles.
Damn, stupid bohemians.

One of the bluecoats standing outside the door spotted me and flagged me down. He had a smile plastered across his face and seemed far too eager given the early hour. To be fair though, it was almost eleven.

“Detective Daggers,” he said. “Good to see you again.”

The guy’s youthful face seemed familiar, but for the life of me I couldn’t remember his name. “Hey…you. How’s it going?”

“It’s Phillips, sir. And I’m well.”

I tried to play it cool. “Phillips. Yeah, yeah, right. I remember. So why do they have you on nanny patrol here? Something dangerous up at the crime scene?”

“Not exactly, sir,” he said. “It’s just an…interesting scene, I guess. You’ll have to see it for yourself. Detectives Steele and Quinto are already up there.”

Given a slack leash, my mind took off like a greyhound, coming up with ludicrous ideas for what could’ve occurred at the murder scene. I couldn’t help it. My and Shay’s last two cases were cut-and-dried stab and runs, orchestrated by idiot savants of the criminal kind who happened to be lacking in the savant part of things. I needed something interesting to focus my restless mind on.

“Is everything all right, sir?”

I deglazed my eyes. “Oh…yeah Phelps. I’m fine. What room was it again?”

“Two twelve, sir. And it’s Phillips.”

I gave him a nod and headed in. A couple of middle-class human families milled about in the building’s lobby, pursing their lips and talking in hushed tones as I took the stairs. Who could blame them? This wasn’t the sort of neighborhood where people got axed frequently. By the looks of things, it wasn’t the sort of neighborhood where anything interesting happened ever. That wasn’t a bad thing, at least not for families with kids. Boring and safe beats exciting and dead any day in my book.

I stomped my way up the stairs and found the apartment in question. A flatfoot at the door let me through into the pad’s living room. As I took in my environs, I suddenly understood the nervous commotion downstairs.

The place was trashed. Not tossed, as a place would be if some ne’er-do-well had been searching for something, but utterly, completely, hopelessly wrecked. A thick oaken dining table in the middle of the room lay in pieces on the floor, as if a muscle-bound thug had delivered a flying pile driver to its midsection. Next to it, a green corduroy couch heaved its last breaths, huge gashes in the fabric displaying its innards to the world. Clumps of fluffy white cotton puffed from the tears like popcorn spilling from a hot kettle. Both windows in the space were smashed, and bits of glass, cotton, and variegated scraps of cloth littered the floorboards.

At the sides of the room, tall bookshelves full of hardbacks, paperbacks, and serials had been knocked to the ground, spilling their contents across the floor in a tide of cardboard and paper. I walked over to the pile and selected a couple random paperbacks.
Sam Simon and the Trolltown Beatdown
by Marcellus Pinkerton read one. The other was titled
The Beast with Twelve Arms
by Collette Plumlee. Both were frivolous pulp novels, and both sounded
awesome
.

I started to thumb through the Sam Simon book when Quinto’s big bass voice made me jump.

“Daggers! There you are,” he said. “Where’ve you been?”

I stood and turned. Folton Quinto was a good guy and a better cop but not someone you’d want to mess with unless your lifelong dream was to understand how muddled fruit at the bottom of a cocktail felt like. He was about six foot seven, with skin that resembled an elephant’s in both color and composition, and his mismatched buckteeth gave his smile a malicious quality, no matter how good his intentions were. He’d spent his time in goon squads on both sides of the law, but after a youth full of indiscretions, he’d eventually joined the force. Good thing, too. Our precinct’s health insurance premiums could’ve skyrocketed after a single untoward encounter with the guy.

“Ahh, Quinto,” I said. “You’re looking fit and trim today. You been working out?”

He stuffed his skillet-sized hands into his pockets. “Depends. Does throwing punks through walls count?”

“I’m going to go with yes.”

“Then sure,” he said. “I’ve been working up a sweat three, four times a week or so.”

“Ouch.” I puckered. “Does our fair city even have that many thugs in need of pummeling?”

“You’d be surprised,” said Quinto. “Though some repeat offenders get the old one-two on a regular basis. You’d think they’d learn after a couple smackdowns, but they keep on getting into trouble. I blame our crumbling school systems.”

“What do you expect?” I said. “Teachers are one of the few public servants paid even worse than we are.”

Quinto nodded. “Perhaps. So, are you going to answer my question? What took you so long? You wake up drunk again?”

I frowned. “Why is that everyone’s first assumption today?”

“It’s like playing the stocks,” said Quinto. “Past performance doesn’t necessarily predict future results, but at least it gives you something to go on.”

“Fair enough,” I said. “But no. I was out with Nicole.”

Quinto raised a questioning eyebrow.

I shook my head. “Just spending some time with the kid.”

“Ahh.”

Quinto didn’t pry any further. He possessed enough wisdom not to delve into that morass of tangled emotions and bitter feelings. I’m not sure if his good sense came from simple propriety or from the fact that he’d never been in a serious relationship himself and had no idea what the hell to say. Either way worked for me.

“So,” he said. “What’s in your pocket?”

“Maybe I’m just happy to see you.” I grinned.

“Seriously, Daggers.”

I pulled a white paper bag from my right coat pocket and opened it. “I got kolaches from Tolek’s. Apricot, blueberry, and honey. Want one? Not the apricot, of course. That one’s mine.”

“You’re kidding, right?” said Quinto. “It’s almost lunchtime.”

A warm voice came from the far side of the room. “Oh, Quinto. You should know better than that. Daggers
never
kids when it comes to kolaches.”

4

My partner, Detective Shay Steele, sauntered into the room, a playful smile splayed across her thin lips. Her dark chocolate-colored hair hung over her shoulder in a loose, knotted ponytail, and hints of subtle curves peeked out from underneath the bodice of her burgundy pantsuit. Her azure eyes twinkled with a quiet mirth, and her sharp nose was tilted ever so slightly toward the ceiling. I could tell I was in for some sass.

“Let’s see, Daggers,” said Steele as she walked up. “I know for a fact you only eat kolaches for breakfast, so given that you have them on hand, you must not have eaten your first meal of the day. Given how cranky you become without food, I have to assume you recently woke up. The question is why. Can I assume—”

I put a hand up. “I wasn’t drunk. And I’m not hungover.”

“I wasn’t going to say that,” said Shay. “I was going to speculate that perhaps you overslept and didn’t have time to grab a bite before you met up with your ex-wife and son.”

I nearly bit my tongue in surprise. “That’s not far from the truth. But how’d you know what I was up to this morning?”

“Are you sure you’re not drunk, Daggers?” asked Quinto. “She can see into the past, remember?”

Steele didn’t miss a beat. “Nothing so complex as that, Quinto. He told me.”

I eyed her suspiciously.

“Yesterday,” she said. “After work?”

The fisherman in my brain finally felt a bite. “That’s right! I knew I told someone. Captain thought I was crazy.”

“You say that in the past tense,” said Quinto. “I think the present tense is more appropriate.”

“For your information,” I said, “I’ve looked up the definition of crazy in the dictionary, and in my owned esteemed opinion, I don’t even come close to qualifying.”

“Did you look up the definition of amnesia, as well?” asked Quinto.

“Just for that, I’m rescinding my peace offering,” I said. “No kolaches for you.”

“Now look at what you’ve done, Quinto,” said Shay. “You’ve gone and made him moody. You know I have to hang out with him all day, don’t you?”

Quinto’s shrug implied he didn’t, but his crooked smile said he did. I plucked the apricot kolache from the bag and tore a chunk from it with my teeth. I chewed slowly, moaning with delight before sucking my fingers with overexaggerated vigor.

“No hard feelings,” I said. “You’ll just have to endure the succulent scent of these fried delicacies on an empty stomach, my friend.” I held the bag out to Shay. “Want one?”

She shrugged. “Ehh, why not?”

My partner plucked the honey kolache out of its paper perch with delicate fingers and took a bite. On our first lunch together, she’d ordered a meatless salad of wilted vegetables. I’d feared the worst, but apparently she’d been afraid to make the wrong first impression. Since then, the gal had proven to be a champion eater. Where she put the food, I’m still not sure—maybe elven stomachs work differently than human ones—so I reacted with only mild surprise when she accepted my offering of artery-clogging vittles.

I tucked the white sack back into my coat pocket. “You’ve been working on your intestinal fortitude, I see.”

“What? This?” said Steele around a mouthful of sugary bliss. “It’s just a doughnut.”

“That’s not what I meant. Given all this carnage, the body’s got to be a mess, and you’re still eating. I’m impressed.”

“Actually, about that,” said Quinto with a raised finger. “It’s not exactly what you’d expect.”

I raised an eyebrow.

“C’mon,” said Shay. “We’ll show you.”

My partner led our procession over to the bedroom, which held more evidence of the same sorts of carnage that infested the living space. Smashed furniture, a torn sofa chair, scrapes and gouges in the floorboards, and a mattress that looked like it’d been used as the playing surface in an epic game of five finger fillet. Unfortunately for the guy face up on the mattress, it looked like he might’ve taken part in the game as well.