Mark Del Franco - Unfallen Dead

Her head had turned to the side when she fell. I had to press myself against the staircase to lean over her without touching her body. Slashed across her forehead were six ogham runes. “Same as our guy the other night, Murdock.”

I pulled back and rejoined them at the threshold, trying not to think about the pain the woman must have felt. “Same killer, too. The essence matches what I felt at the warehouse.”

Murdock’s eyebrows were drawn down. “What could a homeless man in the Weird have in common with a retired woman in Dorchester?”

My eyes scanned the hall. “As victims, they’re too random to be random. No one kills like this without a reason. For one thing, you have to store up essence to do this. For another, it’s exhausting. The murderer had a real motive to connect them. That makes them calculated executions.”

Liz stared at me with a classic yeah-right look. Lots of cops did when I talked about essence or the fey or Faerie. It was easier to believe it was all something called magic, that there were no rules or process or limits.

Liz shook her head. “You know what the media’s going to do with this.”

I felt a little flash of anger. “You mean now that a nice old-lady charity volunteer bought it instead of just a homeless guy in the Weird?”

Murdock cleared his throat. “We’re all on the same side here, Connor. Liz is only stating the obvious.”

Liz gave me a tight smile. “Everyone’s tense right now. Let’s look at the bright side. With all the resources the mayor’s pulling for security, maybe a little media attention might remind him there’s still real crime out here.”

I glanced at her with an embarrassed smile. “Sorry. Some people think I have a hard time not getting personally involved in my cases.” With all the street fighting going on in the Weird the last couple of nights, the Josef Kaspar murder scored one sentence on the evening news. The one mention in the local section of the newspaper I found was an inside item. It’s hard not to get aggravated about it.

Whenever a crime involves the fey, a report goes to the Guild. They’re the best equipped to handle them. In reality, they picked and chose what they wanted and left the rest to the Boston P.D., which usually didn’t know what to do with them. More often than not, most of the cases got filed and ignored. Especially if they involved the Weird. It’s bad enough too many poor people don’t ever see justice done. It’s worse when officials claimed it was someone else’s problem to solve. If it weren’t for people like Murdock, people who didn’t care where you lived or what you were or how much money you made, the Weird would have had no hope at all.

Murdock stretched his neck and sighed. “Okay then, we should start cross-referencing the victims, see if we can find a connection.”

I wandered down the steps as he and Liz hashed through procedures. A large telephone switching unit stood on the curb across the street. It would make an inconspicuous place to stand with a straight-shot view of Merced’s building. I kept my body language casual so that the scene gawkers wouldn’t follow me. Sure enough, as soon as I neared the big silver box, I felt the essence. The killer had lingered there, using the box to hide behind. From the strength of the essence she had left, I’d guess she waited an hour or two. Again, I felt the strange layer of an essence signature that I could almost recognize. Familiar, but off somehow.

Olivia Merced lived on the first floor. The neighbor had said he heard a buzzer around 7 A.M., which would have been around dawn. The killer would have watched her lights come on and waited until she was sure Merced would be dressed to come to the door. That made twice the killer had shown up early and waited. Whoever she was, she was patient.

The metal surface registered several patches of the same druidess essence. She must have touched the box or leaned on it. I waved over one of the patrol officers and asked him to secure the area. It was a long shot, but they might be able to lift a fingerprint.

Murdock came down the stairs, and I joined him at the car. As I slid into the passenger seat, I gave Liz a wave, and she returned it. I took it as a sign she wasn’t angry. “Old friend?”

Murdock didn’t react as he pulled a U-turn. “Yep.”

“That’s all I get?”

“Yep.” Murdock kept his social life close to the vest. I couldn’t complain, though. I hadn’t told him much about what was going on with me and Meryl.

We rode back to the Weird in bumper-to-bumper traffic, watching the neighborhood change from a livable stretch in Dorchester, to a desolate stretch under the Southeast Express-way and elevated subway tracks, and into the residential section of South Boston. Home once. Long ago, my brother Callin and I played stickball on those streets. Cars were fewer then, and more families raised their kids in town.

Murdock knew those streets, too. His own family lived down on K Street. His sisters had an apartment together nearby, but he and his brothers still lived with their father, who was the police commissioner. They had all joined the force, except Kevin, the youngest, who was a fireman. Public service had become genetic.

With a few turns through side streets, Murdock avoided the lights and ran a straight shot up D Street. As we neared the Weird, the streets got dirtier, the sidewalks more crumbled, and the houses more run-down. Late-October weather made it all worse, with the vestigial front yards dried and patchy, and the few surviving trees bare. We slipped into the warehouse alleys and left South Boston.

Everyone who grew up in Southie and left says they want to move back there. But I had nothing to draw me back. My parents sold years ago and moved to Ireland, and my brother Callin lived who knows where. No, for me, Southie was just a memory. A good one, mostly, but not a place I could go back to.

Murdock pulled up in front of my building. “I’ll send you the file when I get it from Liz.”

I hopped out. “Trust me. We’re going to find an obvious connection on this one.”

Murdock gave me a crooked smile. “Yeah. It always works that way.”

As I waited for Carmine to arrive, the cold wind off the harbor couldn’t hide the odor of rot wafting up from the Fish Pier. No matter how often the loading docks were washed down, the parking lots swept, and the dumpsters sealed, the accumulation of years of dead fish permeated the concrete and asphalt. It was enough to put me off tuna. Only almost. If I knew how most of the food I ate had gotten on my plate, I’d probably be vegan. Clams might look like something hacked up from a watery hell, but, damn, they tasted fine with beer.

While you could find someone to pay for sex almost anywhere in the Weird, the Fish Pier was ground zero for it. That’s what people came down here for. Only steamy windows kept the place from becoming an orgy late at night. If people could see what was going on in the car next to them, I had no doubt they’d join in. Car after car circled in and out, cruising the loading docks to survey the merchandise huddling against the closed doors of the truck bays. Someone would see something he liked, point his car at the bay, and flash his lights. If more than one worker stood in the bay, the regular johns had a system for flashing their blinker lights to indicate whom they were interested in. The seller would respond with a sending giving a menu and prices. If the john was interested, he flashed again, and they closed the deal somewhere else in the lot. The city could do little to stop it. There was no verbal solicitation to record, and no fey who could lure a john with a sending worked on the force. The entire situation drove the Boston P.D. crazy.