Alex consulted the brass compass and found the needle still pointing vaguely east. It had changed as the cab moved through the city, so he was sure it was still linked to Leroy Cunningham.
The marina was the only thing to his east, but Alex decided to be cautious. Stepping into the cover of an alley between a naval supply shop and what smelled like a fish market, he pulled out his 1911 and checked the magazine. This one had a small cross drawn on the bottom in red ink and he swapped it for the spare kept in his holster. The Spellbreaker runes on the bullets in the first magazine were hard to make, especially with his trembling hands.
Spellbreaker runes were just what they sounded like, magic designed to destroy other magic, like shield spells. He didn’t figure he’d need them against a normal group of kidnappers. Still, even ordinary thugs could be dangerous, so Alex cocked the pistol, clambering a round, and stuck it back into his holster with the safety on.
Satisfied he was suitably prepared, Alex crossed the street and began walking along the marina’s fence. As he moved, the compass needle turned, indicating a spot out toward the edge of the marina.
Alex pocketed the compass and walked down the paved road to the wooden building. It was a small office with a room above for the caretaker, a white-haired man with a bushy beard, an island shirt, and deck shoes. He sat, reading a paper and smoking a pipe in a comfortable-looking chair with a view of the bobbing boats through a massive bay window.
“You in charge?” Alex asked as he entered.
The old man glanced up over the top of his paper and ran an appraising eye over Alex, then returned to his reading.
“S’right,” he said, slurring his words lazily. “Wha’cho want?”
“Name’s Lockerby,” Alex said, stepping up beside the man. “I’m a P.I. A rich lady hired me to find her deadbeat husband; apparently he’s hiding out somewhere on his boat.”
“I ain’t no snich,” the man said. “Run along, sonny.”
Normally, this was when Alex would have to drop a fiver to loosen the man’s tongue. Unfortunately he only had two bucks on him, so he was going to have to do this the hard way.
Alex pulled the paper out of the man’s hands with a quick movement. The caretaker tried to stand, but Alex pushed him back into his chair with enough force to make his point.
“Listen, friend,” he said. “The guy took their kid. It’s part of some messy divorce that you don’t want any part of, so either you answer my questions, or I call the cops and tell them the kid might be here.”
The man’s angry look faded to one of irritation. The kind of people who parked their boats in private marinas tended to like their privacy. Ever since the last mayor dumped all the slot machines into the east river, a lot of Manhattan’s wealthy had moved their poker games to places like this to avoid the law. Alex was betting the caretaker didn’t want the cops crawling around looking for a missing kid.
“Fine,” he said after a long moment. “What’s this feller’s name?”
Alex shrugged.
“He wouldn’t be hiding under his own name,” he said. “Is there anyone here living on their boat?”
“Sure,” he said. “Lots of folks do that. Prob’ly five or six here right now.”
“Anyone acting cagey, you know, nervous? Staying out of sight, only coming and going at night, that sort of thing?”
The old man shook his head.
“Nothin’ like that,” he said. “But folks round here like to keep to themselves.”
Alex resisted the urge to swear and thanked the old man instead.
“Mind if I have a look around anyway?” he asked, heading for the door.
“Help yourself,” the caretaker said, picking his paper up off the floor and going back to it.
Alex made his way slowly down the dock. The sun shone brightly on the water and he had to squint to see clearly. He pulled the compass from the pocket of his jacket and consulted it.
This time he did swear.
The needle of the compass was pointing north.
There were plenty of boats on the north side of the marina, but the needle was pointing right down between a row of berths, right at the open water. He took a few steps back, but the needle didn’t even waver. The magical link was gone.
It wasn’t pointing at Leroy Cunningham anymore.
Alex took a deep breath and reined in his anger. Lots of things could cause magic to fail. Sometimes spells simply ran out of energy and expired, or the subject could have moved too far out of range. In the case of water, if Leroy had been on a boat out in the ocean, the presence of that much water could block the spell, even if he were relatively close by.
Looking around and finding himself alone, Alex knelt down on the dock and pulled the last finding rune from his rune book. He folded it quickly and put it atop the compass, adding Hannah’s silver wedding band from his pocket. The paper matchbook in his pocket only had three matches left and he lit one and touched it to the rune.
This time the silver ring went rolling right for the edge of the dock and Alex had to throw himself at it to keep it from being lost. When he turned back to the rune, he found it spinning aimlessly over the compass. The needle in the compass wasn’t moving at all.
He sat there, staring at it in stunned silence. The rune had failed to lock on to Leroy, yet Alex was certain the previous spell had traced him right to the marina.
Standing, he scanned the horizon out to sea. If Leroy had been on a boat that was already underway when Alex got here, it was possible he was now too far out for the spell to find him. As he looked, however, there were no boats to be seen. He didn’t think it was likely that he would have missed a boat leaving the marina when he arrived.
He resolved to go boat by boat and search, but realized the caretaker would call the cops on him if he hadn’t already. Plus, if Leroy was here somewhere, searching could end up getting him killed. Alex knew he couldn’t go to the police; they’d never take the word of his seemingly unrepeatable spell as cause to search a marina full of rich people’s boats. He was going to have to figure out another way to find Hannah’s husband.
“Hold on, Leroy,” he whispered to himself. “I’m still coming.”
Alex decided to save his money and took a crawler back to his office. The trip took him almost an hour and by the time he arrived, he had no better idea what had happened then he had standing on the dock at the Sunrise Marina. He’d never had a finding rune fail once it had made a connection with its target, and that bothered him.
“Did you find the husband?” Leslie asked when he walked into his office.
Alex shook his head in disgust and explained.
“Well, the wife called twice while you were out,” she said. “What are you going to tell her?”
Alex hadn’t thought about Hannah. He owed her an explanation and he wished he had one.
“I’ll call her,” he said. “But first I’m going to try another finding rune, just to be sure. Hold my calls,” he said, heading for his office.
An hour later, Alex sat at the drafting table in his vault. A half dozen discarded sheets of flash paper littered the ground around him and he tore the one he’d been working on from the clip that kept in in place and threw it after the rest.
“Damn it!” he should, throwing the pen he’d been using after the rune.
Finding runes weren’t that hard. He’d written over a hundred of them in his career. Now he’d just wasted an enormous amount of expensive, ruby-infused ink to make seven pieces of avant garde art on rectangles of flash paper.