Mark Del Franco - Undone Deeds

I allowed myself a tired smile. “You lied?”

“Well, not really. It didn’t seem the time to speculate on the matter. Shall we order tea?”

I dropped onto the couch. “Yes. Tea would be nice, but first I need to make a phone call.”

She waved at the handset on the table as she went into bedroom. “I’m going to finish dressing. I won’t be long.”

I called Eagan’s house, but no one picked up. I wasn’t sure whether to be surprised or not. I dialed Briallen.

She picked up on the first ring. “Are you all right?”

“Yes. Did you hear what happened?” I asked.

“Manus and Tibbet are fine. The attackers were human with a few Dananns who are being billed as rogue agents. A few were captured, but they have no identification, and they’re not talking, of course.”

Tibbet was fine. That’s all I heard that I cared about. She hadn’t gotten killed because of me. “Thanks, Briallen. I’m with my parents, but I’m not staying long. I don’t want them in the middle of this.”

“That’s probably wise,” she said.

“Still don’t want to tell me what I need to know?” I asked.

“Connor, it’s not like that,” she said.

“Sure it is,” I said.

“Someday you will understand,” she said.

“Maybe. Until then, I don’t.” I hung up. Her refusal to explain the sword infuriated me.

Joe danced a sun ritual in the window. I watched his aerial display, the loops and turns that coaxed the sunlight into energizing his body essence. I was too tired to join him. Besides, standing naked in front of an unprotected window was not the best course of action for me right then.

“I’m going to leave before my mother comes back, Joe. Tell her I’ll call her later,” I said.

He finished the ritual and dropped to his feet. “But what about the tea?”

“I’ll have to take a rain check. Tell Ma I’ll call her later. And tell her thank you,” I said.

After retrieving the car again, I drove to Albany Street in the South End. This early in the morning, the traffic consisted of ambulances and staff from Boston City Hospital. I reached the Office of the City Medical Examiner and parked across the street. A police car drove toward me, siren lights off, and I waited a tense minute until it passed. I got out and hustled across the street.

The back door to the OCME was guarded by a retired police officer. He sat reading the newspaper and drinking coffee. I wore my sunglasses even though it wasn’t light out yet, but I didn’t want him to see my eyes. Janey Likesmith had told me enough stories about the animosity for the fey in her office. Since druids didn’t look fey, the officer was more likely to think I was a drug addict.

“Is Janey Likesmith here?” I asked him.

He took a slow sip off his coffee and reached for the phone without looking at me and jabbed an extension line. “Name?”

I hesitated. “Connor.”

I held my breath, worried that my common Irish name would set off alarms. Instead, the guard repeated it into the phone, pressed a buzzer that released the door lock, and I was in. I made way to the stairs and went down to the basement. Coming out of the stairwell, I was surprised to see Murdock waiting with Janey in the pool of light from her office.

“What are you doing here?” I asked, then wanted to kick myself for asking.

Murdock didn’t show any annoyance, though. “Keeping Janey company. What’s wrong?”

Granted I was showing up at a daybreak, but it rankled that people assumed something was wrong when they saw me. “Eagan’s house was attacked. I got out, but Shay was shot and killed.”

“Damn,” he said.

Janey put a hand on his sleeve. “Who was it?”

“Street kid. Always in the wrong place at the wrong time,” he said. His voice was flat, which meant he was upset. Murdock had introduced me to Shay. He had encouraged him to get off the street. Shay did, but that didn’t stop him from getting messed up with me.

“I needed someplace to lie low while I figure out where to go,” I said.

“And you picked the morgue,” Murdock said.

“I was actually going to call you for a ride back to the Tangle. I thought whoever attacked me wouldn’t expect me hiding out in a law-enforcement building,” I said.

“You were the focus of the attack?” he asked.

I started to answer, then closed my mouth. After what happened on the lawn, I had assumed the attack was against me. “I don’t know. There were bullets flying everywhere. It might have been Eagan. His guards were killed, and his Guild security agents were missing. That had to be macGoren’s doing.”

Murdock pursed his lips and looked at Janey. “Maybe you need to see something.”

I didn’t move. “There’s something else, Leo. Gerry was involved. He threatened me in front of my parents’ hotel less than thirty minutes ago. He admitted to killing Shay.”

Janey let out a small gasp. In the uncomfortable silence, Leo stared at the floor. A muscle along his jaw jumped.

“Let’s look at the evidence, Janey,” he said.

“Leo….” I said.

He gave me a cold hard stare. “I will deal with it, Connor.”

He walked into the office. Janey and I exchanged concerned glances before following him in. Her office had always been cramped, but now it looked like a storage room. Files and boxes were piled everywhere with little room for more than the three of us. While bodies were being recovered from the Guildhouse site, everything went through the OCME until the victims were identified. There were a lot of victims.

Janey handed Murdock a folder. He turned it toward me, flipping it open to the report on the elf with the arrow in his chest. He pointed to Keeva’s signature as the Guild liaison. Closing that report, he opened another, the dead Danann. The body hadn’t even gone to the OCME since he had been a Guild agent. Though it wasn’t any surprise since she had been on the scene, Keeva had authorized the transfer of the body.

Janey gave me a single sheet of paper, a request from the Guild for the body of the merrow, signed by Keeva. “This came in last night. The body hasn’t been processed out yet.”

I handed the sheet back. “I see what you’re getting at, but Keeva’s the Community Liaison Director. Sign-offs like that are routine.”

“She’s signed off on only those cases since she returned,” said Janey.

“And unmarked vans have picked up the bodies. They won’t say where they’re taking them, and any follow-up has to go directly through Keeva,” Murdock said.

“Do you think she killed these people?” I asked.

Murdock made a curious face. “Either that, or she’s part of a cover-up. What do you think?”

Keeva and I had been partners for almost a decade. In that time, I had come to understand she could be efficient, ruthless, and single-minded in getting what she wanted. “I never saw her kill someone in cold blood. I’d be surprised.”

“She also spent several months at Tara,” Janey said.

I leaned back against the boxes. “I talked to Bastian. He says the victims were all agents working for him who were leaking information from the Guild. He basically said the Consortium didn’t kill them.”

“For undercover agents, things leak in both directions. Maybe they leaked too much in one direction,” Murdock said.

“Then it’s something about the waterfront. That’s where the bodies were. Since this mist wall went up, maybe that’s not a coincidence,” I said.

Murdock tapped the folder, straightening the papers inside. “Well, it’s out of my jurisdiction now. If what happened at Eagan’s was about you, you need bigger firepower than I can give you.”

“Bastian said the elf victim told him Eorla had a spy. Maybe because I’m close to her, they think I might know who it is,” I said.