Mark Del Franco - Uncertain Allies

The bustle inside the OCME startled me. It had been so long since I had been in the lower level during normal business hours that I had forgotten how many people worked there. Murdock flashed his badge at the security booth. Once inside, no one paid us any attention.

At the far end of the hallway, Janey Likesmith moved with a deliberate step as if she were concentrating on the act of walking. Dark circles under her eyes marred her smooth skin. “Nice to see some friendly faces,” she said.

“If Connor’s a friendly face, it must be bad,” Murdock said.

Janey shot him an uncertain smile.

“It’s Whack Connor Day. Feel free to join in,” I said.

“Ignore him. He thinks it’s Pity Connor Day,” Murdock said.

Janey’s smile became more amused as she led us up the hall. She dropped it as we entered the autopsy room. A plaque on the wall read Hic locus est ubi mors gaudet succurrere vitae. “This is the place where the dead delight in helping the living.” I don’t know how delighted they were, but more often than not they did provide answers.

The recent riots had produced a lot of death and now, months later, the unidentified and unmissed were being processed. Bodies occupied every table in the room, surrounded by pathology teams, some of them joined by photographers and evidence technicians. At the far end, a draped form lay without anyone attending. It wasn’t a coincidence that it was the only body in the room that had a fey body signature.

Janey received no support at the OCME. Dead fey bodies that ended up there were from the edges of society with nowhere else to go. She worked hard to give them dignity and some final recognition that they had once lived. The OCME had Janey on staff because someone had to take the fey cases the Guild didn’t want. That didn’t mean the humans welcomed her. Janey managed to ignore the politics of the situation a lot better than I would have.

She lifted the cloth off a shallow stainless-steel bowl with a single dull brown stone in it. “I’ve started the physical but thought you might want to see this.”

I used a set of tongs to pick it up. “There’s a touch of essence on it.”

“Too faint to make anything of it, though. Guess where I found it?” she asked.

“I’m not going to say what I’m thinking,” Murdock said.

Janey poked him. “I’m going to pretend you didn’t think that. It was in his stomach. I’m not seeing any bruising that might indicate a struggle. He may have been forced, but I’m inclined to suggest he swallowed it on his own.”

I turned the stone one way and the other. Except for a lone rune scratched on it that could mean anything, it looked like a plain stone. “You’re suggesting he wanted to hide it.”

Janey shook her head. “No, that’s for you guys to decide. I’m pointing out that the physical evidence might support it.”

“What’s the issue with the essence?” Murdock asked.

I dropped the stone in the bowl. “It was charged with essence, which makes it a ward stone of some kind. It was meant to do something, but the residue is too slight to figure out what.”

Murdock gave Janey a playful bump with his arm. “You called us down here for something that could be anything?”

She bumped him back. “Yes, and something else, Detective. Come take a look.”

She led us out of the examining room and down the hall to her office, a cramped space far from the other offices with a ground-level view of the parking lot. She handed Murdock a file. “This is the file for another body found on the edge of Southie three nights before our friend up the hall. He was a dwarf, too, with little essence on him.”

I read over Murdock’s shoulder. “That’s the other side of the Tangle. Same general location. Same species. Similar body signature status. Sounds like a lot, but nothing surprising for that area of town, no?”

Janey nodded. “True, but it prompted me to review the file. When the first one came in, I took tissue samples for testing because the body had negligible essence that didn’t track with the time of death. A little unusual, but not unheard of. The second body has reduced essence in a similar profile. That moves them into something less coincidental.”

“Why?” asked Murdock.

Janey leaned against the wall of drawers that held her files. “Because losing essence has a purpose. I’ve seen this patterning before, particularly in dwarves. I think you have two dead essence sellers on your hands.”

Surprised, Murdock looked up. “People sell essence?”

I held my hand out for the file. “Where do you think those ward-stone security systems come from? I have one. Even the governor does. Someone creates the stone wards, installs them in a building, then someone shows up regularly and charges them.”

Murdock opened the other file. “They get paid much for that?”

“Some do. Some don’t. It depends on how complicated the system is,” I said.

Janey opened a drawer and held out a small bag with a stone in it. “Guess what I found sewn into the lining of the Southie victim’s jacket?”

I held the bag toward the light. “Same rune marker on it, too.”

Murdock grunted in approval. “And two rap sheets that show they knew each other. Looks like we have some other associates here, but no known addresses.”

“And I know where to start looking,” I said.

Murdock pulled his car to the curb near the corner of Tide Street and Old Northern. “You sure you want to do this?”

I stared out the dusty windshield at the dark buildings leaning over the street. The Tangle was the worst of the worst of the Weird, a spidery network of dark alleys and dead ends. Essence fights, illegal potions, and strange trades filled the streets. A dark glamour hung over the area, casting shadows even during the day. Law enforcement had given up on it and stayed away. As long as the Tangle kept within its borders, it was allowed to exist.

I stayed out of the area as much as possible. Since the dark mass had appeared in my head, scrying caused me incredible pain. Whether someone was reading the future through fire or water, the black mass recoiled. The Tangle was filled with prognosticators of every stripe—druids and dwarves, the occasional nixie with a knack for weathercasting, and plenty of norns who could take one look at you and know when you were going to die. My head was hurting thinking about it. “That’s why we’re doing this together, Leo. Fire up the body shield, buddy, and let’s go.”

We left the car on Tide Street. Machines didn’t operate well in the Tangle. Many fey feared iron and steel because it warped essence and made it operate in unintended ways. In the Tangle, jamming spells stalled engines to keep them away, and good luck trying to get a tow truck to pull a car out without getting stuck itself.

The street narrowed, not an abrupt change from two lanes to one, but a sinuous compression that pulled in the buildings with it. The twilight sky darkened above as the sounds of Old Northern Avenue muted. Sharp points of pain prickled my brain, and I moved closer to Murdock. His body shield filtered out the brunt of the pain.

“This place gives me the creeps,” Murdock said.

“It’s supposed to,” I said.

As if a switch had been flipped, people appeared. The Tangle attracted humans and fey who liked things on the wild side. The people who lived in the Tangle obliged. The more esoteric the need, the higher the price. It was always a seller’s market. To enhance their image as talented practitioners of essence abilities, many fey wore traditional clothing out of Faerie. Nothing says genuine like a druid in a robe or a fairy in a diaphanous dress. What some lacked in skill and real ability, they made up for in appearance.