Glen Cook - Red Iron Nights

Block nodded. He was having his troubles too. So were his boys. And they were angry besides. Hell, I was angry, but my anger hadn't had time to ripen.

No telling why she'd been gutted. Maybe for some of her organs. Her insides had been dumped on the ground but were gone now, carried off by dogs. They had been at the body too, some, but hadn't done much damage. Their squabbling had brought about the discovery of the corpse.

Block told me, "This is the fifth one, Garrett. All of them like this."

"All in the Bustee?"

"This's the first one down here. That we know of."

Yeah. This could happen here every day... I looked at her again. No. Even in the Bustee there are limits to the sickness they'll tolerate. They don't kill for sport or ritual, they kill for passion or because killing will, directly or indirectly, put food in their mouths. This girl had been killed by somebody insane.

I said, "She came from outside." She was too healthy, too pretty.

"None have been Bustee women, Garrett. They've turned up all over town."

"I haven't heard about anything like this." I hadn't been out listening, though.

"We been trying to keep it quiet, but word's starting to get around. Which is why we're about to go in the vise. The powers that be want this lunatic and they want him sudden."

On reflection, I said, "Captain Block, sir, I don't believe you're being entirely forthright. Maybe if there'd been fifteen or twenty of them and people were getting panicky, they'd bestir themselves up there. But you're not going to convince me they give one rat's ass what happens to four or five street girls."

"They don't care, Garrett. But these ain't street girls. They was all from top families. All of them gave some perfectly good, even trivial reason for going out the days they were killed. Extended errands. Visits to friends. Everything perfectly safe."

"Yeah? There's no such thing as perfectly safe in TunFaire. And that kind of woman doesn't go anywhere without armed guards. It's a status thing. So what about their guards?"

"Most of them don't got no idea what happened. They delivered their charges to friends' houses, went on about their rat-killing. There's something going on, but the guards aren't it. Though maybe their memories would improve some on the rack. Only we ain't been authorized to go that far. Yet."

"Any leads at all?"

"Diddly. Nobody's seen or heard nothing."

That's the standard state of affairs throughout TunFaire. Nobody sees anything.

I made a sick grunting noise and forced myself to look at the victim yet again. She'd been a beauty, slim, with long black hair. Unpleasant as the truth may be, you feel it more when they waste the pretty ones. Block looked at me like he expected some blast of wisdom. "So what do you want from me?" As if I didn't know.

"Find out who did this. Give us a name. We'll take it from there."

I didn't have to ask what was in it for me. He'd told me. His word was good. Like I said, he stayed bought. "What else do you know?"

"That's it. That's all we have."

"Bullshit. Come on, Block."

"What?"

"That right there tells you a bunch just by being what it is. Especially if the others were like it."

"They were."

"All right. They gutted them. They took their blood. That stinks of dark religion or black sorcery. But if it's a cult, it can't have a base, else the bodies would have been disposed of there."

"Unless they wanted them found."

"There's the weakness in my thinking. Maybe we're supposed to think it's ritual when it's just crazy. Or maybe crazy when it's ritual. Though it's crazy for sure. Nobody sane would do that."

"You keep saying ‘they.' You figure on more than one?"

I thought about it. It'd been a gut reaction. "Yeah. Somebody had to get her away from her bodyguards. Somebody had to bring her here. Somebody had to strip her and tie her and string her up and do that. I don't think a solo crazy could manage."

I flashed on a kidnapping I'd helped break up one rainy evening, went stiff and cold. Any connection seemed unlikely, but... "These girls got anything in common besides being high-class? They know each other? They all the same physical type?" This one couldn't have been confused with Chodo's brat, but she did have a similar build, black hair, and dark eyes.

"Age range is seventeen to twenty-two. All with dark hair and eyes except for one blond. All between five-four and five-eight. Built pretty much alike, near as I could tell, seeing them this way."

"Five of them."

"That we know about."

There was that. In TunFaire there might be that many more not yet found or reported. "You have yourself a blue-assed bitch of a problem, Captain. These things are hard to untangle because there's nothing to grab hold of that makes any sense to anybody who isn't crazy. If you get many more, the thing will turn into a circus."

"I know that, Garrett. Goddamnit, that's why I came to you. Look, you want me to beg, I'll beg. Only—"

"No, Block. I don't want you to beg." That had its appeal, but I couldn't stomach it. "I want you to calm down. I want you to come walk with me in the rain and tell me everything you know. And I mean everything. Whatever little thing you hold back, to keep from embarrassing somebody important, might be the key."

I hadn't decided to get involved. Not yet. I wanted to distract him long enough to walk him over to my place so he could have a sit-down with the Dead Man. The Dead Man could sort everything stashed in his feeble mind and, probably, hand him what he needed to solve his case. Thus would I satisfy my civic obligation. I could feel smug without having to stick my neck out.

Only thing was, going back out that narrow passage, Block's boys went with us, carrying their torches. Those spat and sputtered in the drizzle and gave me more light than I'd had coming in. Which meant there was enough light for me to spot the butterflies.

There were three of them. They weren't anything special. Just little green butterflies. But how come there were butterflies dead in an alley in the Bustee?

I stopped when we reached the narrow street. "Take that old man somewhere and feed him. Get a doctor to look after him. Do whatever you have to do to get him well enough to tell us what he saw. If he saw anything."

Block told his men, "Do it."

I headed for home, Block hustling along beside me, telling me anything he thought might help. I didn't listen as closely as I could have. Besides being horrified, I was bemused by the fact that I might hold the fate of the Watch in my hands. I could destroy the useless bastards. Or maybe even force them to become some small percentage of what they were supposed to be. Hell, people will do anything to keep their jobs. Sometimes even do their jobs.

I wasn't used to that kind of power. Maybe I'd have to have Dean follow me around whispering in my ear to remind me I was mortal.

Dean had noticed that the door was unlocked. He'd locked it. I whooped and pounded till he tore himself away from his evangelists. When he opened up, he had a gleam in his eye that had nothing to do with salvation.

"You rogue, you." He pretended he didn't understand what I meant. Hell, a fling would be good for him and them both. If it didn't kill him.

I'd never let Westman Block enter my house before. He did so warily, like a soldier visiting an enemy stronghold.

The Dead Man is no secret. Anyone interested in such things would know he lives with me. But hardly anyone has seen him. They go into his room with all sorts of wild prejudices, then find out the real thing is worse than anything they imagined.

I told Block, "You take the chair. I need to pace."

He couldn't stop staring. "What're we doing here?"

"Old Bones there is a genius. You don't believe me, ask him. I thought we'd lay it out for him. He'll find connections, tell you where to start looking." Old Bones wasn't talking. I couldn't tell if that was a good sign or bad. I did know that if he cooperated he would bring more than genius to bear here. He'd been around a long time. Something from yesteryear might be the key to today's horror. It had happened before.