Crucible Steele (Daggers & Steele Book 5) Read online

  I let it slide. “Solomon. I heard he lives here. You rent lofts above the store, right?”

  The gnome relaxed. “Oh. Yeah. Stairs in the back. Try not to break them.”

  “An apartment number would be nice,” I said.

  “You’re visiting a guy and you don’t even know which pad is his?” The sleepy eyes got narrower. “What kind of friend are you?”

  I flashed my badge. “The official kind. The number?”

  Stool boy snorted. “What did you say his name was?”

  “Solomon Blin. Short, potbellied, and sprightly, if race is any indication. Goes by Flex.”

  “Oh. That idiot. 2C.”

  The second floor. For once, a stroke of luck. I nodded and crab walked over to the stairs. From there, I tested my flexibility, eventually twisting myself over and around and up to the second floor landing where I found Flex’s apartment.

  I paused at the door. I took it as a positive that it was still there, and attached to the frame no less. That meant I’d probably beaten Bonesaw, if not necessarily Kyra—not that the ogre could’ve possibly gotten as far as I had given the confines. But where did that leave me? Should I knock? Yell? Threaten? I wasn’t sure I could get enough of a good swing to kick down the door.

  I settled for the element of surprise and a flying shoulder blow with a short windup. Luckily, the apartment wasn’t of quality construction, and the thing gave way with a pitiful crack.

  I didn’t bother announcing myself. If Flex was home, he’d have heard me, and he certainly wouldn’t come out with his hands up if I declared myself a policeman. If anything, I’d find him in the wash closet flushing crank down the toilet.

  I took a quick survey of the apartment, made easier by the place’s size but made harder by the incredibly low ceiling. I had to get on all fours and turn my body sideways to get through doors, but after a few minutes of searching, I convinced myself Flex wasn’t in.

  That, of course, meant my options for retrieval of the information Cobb requested were down to one. Besides beating the knowledge out of the brownie, the Wyvern recruiter implied the information on the missing drug shipment could be stolen, but where was it, and in what form?

  I proceeded on the assumption that I’d find the info within the sprite’s apartment, mostly because I didn’t have anything else to go on.

  With a crack of my knuckles, I got to work tossing the place. Armoires and dressers tumbled under my heavy hand, and piles of clothes got cozy with the floor. Cupboards were thrown open and desk drawers rummaged. Bookshelves tipped. Wall art slipped. My back cricked.

  On the bright side, no burly-armed dwarven peacekeeping squads came to investigate the ruckus I created. On the downside, I didn’t find anything resembling files or a logbook with business information of any sort. I’d about given up as I tore through Flex’s bedroom. Then, as I flipped his mattress onto the ground, a ray of hope.

  In the corner of his bed frame, tucked under a slat in a makeshift pouch, was a small leather-bound book with a compass rose on the front. Somehow I doubted it was Solomon’s dream journal.

  I plucked it from its home and held it in my hands. It was pocket-sized—for a brownie. For me it felt like a novelty slightly too large to be used as a prop in a flea circus.

  I peeled it open with the tip of my fingernail and squinted as I read the contents, which of course were written in a miniscule hand. It took me a moment to adjust to the script. Then I had to figure out what it said. The final page, for example, read:

  11/16:

  NE3 S2 SW2 E4 N3 NW3 S1 SE1 W3 W3 NW2 S2 N1

  SW2 NE3 E1 E1 NW2 NE2 SW2 N1 N5 NE5 SW4 E4

  12/05:

  S2 E4 NE2 E2 W3 E1 E1 SW3 SE3 NE3 E2 W2 N1

  SW2 NE3 E1 E1 E2 NW3 SW3 S2 N5 S4 W4 NE5

  I immediately recognized it for what it was: a cipher. But how could I decode it?

  I slipped the tiny ledger into one of my interior coat pockets. Whatever the book said, I didn’t have time to decipher it now. My coffee’s jolt wore thin, and I didn’t know how much longer I’d last. Besides—I needed to move before either of my competitors uncovered an ingenious third way to uncover the location of Broadstone’s missing shipment.

  31

  I let myself into the warehouse through the same door I’d previously used. The interior lighting was dimmer than before, but only because Cobb had followed through on his claim. Shadows flickered and danced as they crept through the office windows on the manufactory’s far side.

  I allowed myself to take a less covert route this time, passing within eyeshot of the shipping containers at the front of the warehouse. They were of medium size, with corrugated metal sides and a series of holes punched through the tops, perhaps as a means to hook the crates into the rigging systems I’d seen at West and Smith. What were the Wyverns transporting in them? Drugs? Unless the city’s hunger for chemically-induced release far outpaced my suspicions, they seemed too large for that. Not to mention too easy to detect. Of course, despite the size of the warehouse, there weren’t many completed containers. Perhaps the Wyverns consolidated their shipments. If I were running a clandestine smuggling organization, I’d prefer to make fewer shipments for greater profit than vice versa. Fewer opportunities to be discovered that way.

  I wanted to search for evidence of Griggs’ or even Barrett’s presence, but I couldn’t. Surely Cobb had noticed my arrival, and curiosity could only explain my dawdling for so long. For the time being, I’d have to content myself with the knowledge that none of the heavy chains hanging from the rafters could’ve been used to strangle my ex-partner and the disheartening fact that all the floors appeared to be swept clean. Even in the darkness, I could tell there wasn’t any ash—not that I’d expect there to be given the business.

  With the smell of machine grease fresh in my nose, I headed to the office. I cracked the door. Inside, I found Cobb seated in a swivel chair reading a book by the light of the lantern, his feet propped up on a desk.

  He glanced at me coolly. “You’re back.”

  “Are you surprised or disappointed?” I asked.

  He declined to answer.

  I nodded toward his book. “What’re you reading?”

  “Does it matter?” he asked.

  “You’re not one for casual conversation, are you?”

  He answered that by omission. “Do you have something for me, or not?”

  I dug into my interior coat pocket and produced the journal. I flicked it onto the desk, as I might do with a loose coin.

  Cobb didn’t put down his book. He didn’t even close it. He did glance at my delivery, though. “This is…?”

  “Flex Broadstone’s shipment ledger. As far as I can tell, it details all his business dealings, from receipt of shipments, to deliveries, to sales, to the location of your own misplaced cargo.”

  “As far as you can tell?”

  “You’ll see.”

  Cobb closed his book and set it down. He replaced it with the doll-sized version. His eyes narrowed. “It’s encoded.”

  “Let no one say your employers didn’t hire the cream of the mental crop.”

  Cobb turned the narrowed eyes onto me. He closed the ledger and carefully set it down. “I like to think they brought me on more for my patience, for which you should be thankful. But unfortunately for you, this little book isn’t what I asked for. It’s useless to me in its current form.”

  I stuck up a finger and twisted my face. “To be technical, you asked for the information that would lead to your missing shipment. You never specified what condition that information had to be in. So, actually, I have provided you with what you asked for.”

  Cobb snorted and smiled. I didn’t like how his canines seemed abnormally pointed. “You fancy yourself a smart guy, don’t you?”

  “Not especially,” I said. “I’ve taken too many hits to the head over the years to suffer from delusions of brilliance. Unless you mean smart in the witty a
nd impertinent way, in which case yes.”

  Cobb pushed the tiny ledger across the desk in my direction. “Sorry, but I’m not buying. Try again.”

  “I’m not sure why you’re being so contrary,” I said. “Another contestant is going to come back with the information you’ve requested, having beaten it out of Broadstone the hard way—and for his sake, I hope it’s Kyra. That’s, of course, assuming they haven’t already. Either way, you’ll discover the location of the shipment. The information I’ve provided, regardless of condition, is irrelevant.”

  Cobb retrieved his book and cracked it open. “That’s not the point of the exercise. Now please go. You’re staling my air.”

  I eyed the man’s hands, lean and strong but pale, like a sailor’s without the years of weathering from sun and winds. Could he have been the one to wield the garrote? He had the cold, unflinching personality of an assassin.

  I swallowed my unfounded suspicions and took a shot in the dark. “If I’m right, then the point of the exercise wasn’t to retrieve a shipment at all. I’d wager you don’t even care about it. What you want is for those of us interested in joining your organization to show creativity and intuition, which I did in locating Flex and his tiny, tiny apartment. Perhaps you’re looking for smarts, too. The kind of smarts that can tell you how to decode the gibberish in a miniscule brownie drug pusher’s ledger, for instance…”

  Cobb lifted his eyes. “Do you intend to surprise me, Mr. Baggers?”

  I nodded toward the tiny, leather-bound ledger. “Notice what was on the cover?”

  Cobb looked. “The compass rose?”

  “Eight point, no less,” I said. “I’m not sure if you noticed, but each string of characters in Broadstone’s notebook features a cardinal direction and a number, none greater than five. Eight times five gives you forty—more than enough to cover the entire alphabet, the numerals zero through nine, and even some punctuation, if so desired.”

  Cobb couldn’t help but peek at the book’s contents to see if I was right. “That doesn’t seem like much of a cipher.”

  “Your man Flex is a drug pusher, not a cryptographer,” I said. “I’m impressed he came up with a system as complicated as that.”

  “So, then?” said Cobb. “If you’ve deciphered his code, what does it say about the location of our shipment?”

  “You won’t deviate from the script at all, will you?” I asked. “Sorry to burst your bubble, but I’m a human, and my eyes weren’t good enough to make out Broadstone’s chicken scratch by the light of the cloud-shrouded moon on my walk back here. If you scooch over and find me a chair, though, I’d be happy to decode the thing while you wait. Should only take me a few hours. Although, I should warn you, I get pretty chatty when I’m running low on sleep. Helps me engage my brain. I don’t suppose that would bother you?”

  Cobb’s eyes narrowed.

  I kept at it. “But, hey, if that’s not your cup of tea, I could take that ledger home with me and decode it there. But I’d probably end up decoding the whole thing, to make sure I’ve got my key right. And like you, I love to read. Maybe I’ll see what other secrets this little book contains—like what other jobs you and your organization have consulted with Mr. Broadstone on.”

  Cobb eyed me as if I were something that had squirted out of a dog’s sphincter and stuck to his shoe. “You’ve made your point, Baggers. You may go.”

  “Does that mean I’m still in the running?”

  “You were the first to arrive,” said Cobb. “We’ll be in touch.”

  I took that as a yes. I turned and slapped the door frame on my way out. “Cool beans, Cobb. See you tomorrow?”

  “Don’t become presumptuous.”

  “Right, right. The higher-up’s plans won’t change until they change, am I right?”

  I gave the guy a wink. I don’t think he appreciated it.

  32

  It couldn’t have been more than a couple hours until dawn when I finally stumbled back into my apartment’s warm embrace. Though my belly begged me for food, I made a beeline for my bedroom. I barely stripped off my shoes before collapsing face-first into the Jake Daggers-shaped body groove in my mattress.

  I woke to the sound of my grandfather clock striking noon. Though my brain tempted me with another hour of catnaps, my stomach would have none of it, so I rose, brewed more coffee, and fixed myself a simple meal of eggs, bacon, toast, and sliced fruit. If Shay would’ve been around, we could’ve argued about whether it constituted breakfast, lunch, or some nebulous thing in between, but she wasn’t, so I worked my jaw and sipped my coffee in peace. Lacking anything to latch onto, my mind defaulted to the obvious: the case.

  Despite the fact that the Captain had tasked me with solving Griggs’ murder via infiltration of the Wyverns, I couldn’t help but attack the crime through a more traditional lens as well. After all, I was a homicide detective, not an undercover cop—though I’d performed admirably at the latter if I could say so myself. The frustrating part was that even though I wanted to analyze clues and generate wild conclusions therefrom, I didn’t have enough to go on to do so. Before being kicked off the case, I’d built a solid knowledge base on Barrett, but I had almost nothing to go on with Griggs other than my memories of the years spent at his side and the tidbits I’d snuck, stolen, and pried from the mouths of my partner and fellow detectives.

  I greased my lips with a slice of bacon as I thought. Normally I preferred the stuff crispy, but a lack of time and patience had produced a less than ideal end product. At least the additional chew provided me a distraction.

  So what could I glean from the few clues thus far provided to me? Cairny’s initial report had listed Griggs as having lacerations on his legs, which could’ve meant the old man had been involved in anything from illegal late night knife battles to a cockfighting ring. Or he might’ve fallen down the stairs. Old people scraped easily.

  There was also Cairny’s bizarre conclusion that Griggs hadn’t suffocated. As a seasoned homicide veteran, I could come up with all sorts of outlandish ways for people to die, but why would a trained Wyvern assassin partially strangle a man only to kill him by other means? Or conversely, why strangle a man who was already dying from other causes?

  I had to call those two avenues of thought dead ends, at least given my limited knowledge. That left the ash angle. Cairny had found it on Griggs’ shoes, and Steele had found it in shipping containers at West and Smith, which tied Barrett and Griggs together in more than just their manners of death. However, I hadn’t seen any of the same ash at the container manufacturing plant. Why not?

  To be fair, the lighting had been dim. I could’ve missed it, and I hadn’t searched thoroughly. But why would ash be there in any case?

  I thought about heading back to the warehouse and doing some snooping, but I couldn’t. Not only would the place likely be in use during the day, but what if someone spotted me? Specifically, a Wyvern informant. All my efforts at infiltration would’ve been wasted. Worse than that. I might scare the killer responsible for Griggs’ death into an even deeper hole, scuttling the legitimate investigation going on at the 5th Street Precinct.

  No. I had to trust my friends to do their jobs and stick to mine—which meant I had one last night of trials before I might unearth some skeletons. Two challenges, and two thefts thus far. Would the third night hold true to form?

  I checked my front door, but finding no folded slips of paper there, I retreated to my easy chair. Six Feet Under stared at me from a lonely end table, a bookmark sticking out from between its pages roughly a third from the end. After considering my other options, I gave in to its call.

  It wasn’t the worst decision I’d ever made. Three or four hours later, I emerged victorious, no wiser but mildly entertained. While I appreciated the remaining chapters’ accelerated pace, I didn’t care for the dark, bitter, bloodthirsty ending. In my current mood, it infused me with a sense of foreboding.

  As I stood
and stretched, I noticed a familiar white glint near my door. I crossed the room, snagged it, and laid eyes on it:

  4334 Edelman Ave. Midnight.

  It was the most minimalistic note yet. The last part caught my eye, though. Midnight? How old did they think I was? I couldn’t keep this up, night after night—at least, not without preparation.

  I glanced at my clock. Quarter to five. That gave me plenty of time for a nap. I rummaged through my pantry for a snack, retreated to my bedroom, and hit the hay.

  Cherubim danced through my head, interspersed by thoughts of lustful women and occasional stretches of Seven Feet Under, the thrilling sequel to my most recent literary romp, starring none other than yours truly in the role of hard-boiled vigilante-cum-detective. I liked it, though like its predecessor, it devolved quickly. Before I knew it, I was traversing long hallways, filled with churning mist and undulating darkness, while hot on the heels of a depraved murderer with good looks, pale hands, and too-sharp teeth. I twisted and turned, jumping at spiders, until I finally found a door. I approached it, night enveloping me, and then it began. A thump. Once, twice, three times. Coming from the door. And yelling, too. I reached for the knob…

  I startled awake, the sheets around me tangled and sweaty. I blinked, but I couldn’t see—probably because it was dark. How long had I slept?

  Bang bang.

  I jumped. The thumping wasn’t in my head. It was real, and coming from the direction of my front door.

  “Daggers! Daggers!”

  It was a deep voice, booming and rough, but eminently familiar.

  I unwrapped myself from the sheets and made my way to the front. I yanked open the door.

  Quinto and Rodgers stood there, dressed in long, dark trench coats and with lines creasing their foreheads.

  Quinto ran a massive hand over his short-shorn hair. “Oh, thank the gods. You’re here.”