Joe frowned as he looked at the muddy expanse. He fluttered away, hovered right over the spot where the body was, then returned to hang in the air in front of me. “He was dead when he got here.”
That took me by surprise. “How do you know that?”
“There’s no echo. When he left the world, he left his shout somewhere else.”
This was news to me. “I don’t understand.”
He, of course, looked at me like I’m an idiot. “His shout. His last shout. Everyone shouts when they leave, and it echoes for a while. There’s no echo here.”
That’s flits for you. Know one your entire life, and he’ll surprise you with an ability you had no idea he had. It made a sort of logical sense. I knew flits could hear when someone died. I’ve been in Joe’s presence when another flit died nearby. He knew what happened immediately. So did every flit in the vicinity. I didn’t know about the echo, though.
“He had a broken neck. I thought he might have died from being dropped.”
Joe pulled his chin in, a look of doubt on his face. “You think a fairy killed him?” Despite what he has experienced over a very long lifetime, Joe refuses to believe that a fairy—no matter what clan—could possibly have done something wrong. When proved otherwise, he invariably chalks it up to aberrant behavior that couldn’t possibly happen again. It’s amusingly prideful.
I glanced around the area. “It would fit with how we found the body. Can you do me a favor? The kid was missing a shoe. Can you check the area from above and look for an orange Nike?”
“Sure,” he said. He flew straight up and turned in a slow circle. After another moment, he came back down. “What’s an orange Nike?” he asked.
“A running shoe, Joe. Soft leather, rubber sole.”
He nodded vigoriously. “Oh, right. Heard about those.”
I shook my head and smiled as he popped back up and circled the field. No sooner did he sail out of sight over a building than three dwarves appeared at the end of the block opposite me. As they surveyed the scene, they stopped when they saw me and stared. I had a feeling I knew what was coming. They all wore the same black hoodies with yellow bandanas. They swaggered their way around the mud toward me.
“Got a problem?” said the one on the left. The other two hung back a little.
“We’ve all got problems,” I said, keeping my voice neutral. When you are alone in a desolate area, and three people wearing the same outfits come up to you, you don’t do two things: act scared or give attitude. The first is like tuna to a cat. The second is like a mouse. Unless, of course, they’re all wearing orange. Then, they’re probably just the late shift getting out of Dunkin’ Donuts.
“I don’t think you belong here,” he said. He didn’t change his voice. Given the way he was scoping me out, I guessed he was trying to figure if I was human or druid or glamoured. Dwarves don’t sense essence very well unless it’s pretty strong. Given my current disabled state, I doubt I gave off much of a druid aura at all. If trouble started, a human would be easy for them to handle; a lone druid would be manageable, even if he was in better shape than me; someone glamoured would be a wild card. It could be a fairy or an elf or some other powerful fey that might have an unpleasant reason for hiding his identity by appearing to be something else. Regardless, being on the receiving end of a dwarf fist is unpleasant for any of them.
“Sometimes I think I don’t belong anywhere,” I said in my best world-weary, leather-jacket-cool tone. It plays well in the Weird.
He moved a step closer. “I’m talking right here, right now.” Evidently, he had decided I was tuna.
“A kid died here last night. I’m working the case.”
Magic words. Of course, I didn’t actually say I was Guild or Boston P.D., but implying was enough. All three of them shifted their postures, not in relief, but with an air of nonchalance meant to convey they weren’t doing anything less legal than strolling down the sidewalk. In the Weird, people with badges are treated cautiously because they’re rarely friends.
“Know anything about that?” I asked into the silence.
Head shaking all around.
“He was wearing a black hoodie and a yellow bandana. Sound familiar?”
Again, more head shaking, with some shoulder shrugging thrown in. From three guys wearing black hoodies and yellow bandanas.
I slipped my hands in my pockets and looked around like I was appraising the real estate. “I heard this territory’s up for grabs.”
“You heard wrong,” said the first dwarf. The other two gave me hard, tough-guy stares.
“So, if I thought someone killed this kid in some kind of turf dispute, I’d be wrong?”
“There’s no dispute. This is Moke’s.”
I nodded as if in agreement. “I think I need to talk to Moke.”
The dwarf shrugged. “Maybe he’ll hear about that. He’s pretty busy, though.”
I smiled. “If you run into him, tell him Connor Grey said hello.”
The dwarf spun on his heel. “We got better things to do,” he said over his shoulder as he walked away. The other two gave me one last look and followed him. I decided not to try to keep them talking when they clearly didn’t want to.
I didn’t know of any dwarves named Moke. And I didn’t know if that was a good thing or a bad one. I didn’t go down this end of the Avenue much, and gangs are diligently territorial. My end of the neighborhood tended to have a lot of human and fairy groups hanging out. They didn’t get on much with dwarves, so this Moke probably stayed on his end.
As I suspected, the whole thing was looking like a gang dispute. It was hard not to be a little disappointed. Gang murders meant not much work. The likelihood of members discussing the situation with the police was small. And the perpetrator probably had more to fear from his rivals than the law. It looked like I would get maybe one or two days’ pay out of it before Murdock had to move on to other things. The case would probably remain unsolved with a gang reprisal that I would never know about.
For the second time in a half hour, something came flying down at me. I realized with horror that it was a winged Nike in all its pink and orange glory. As it got closer, Joe’s head appeared over the laces. He was actually sitting inside it.
“Why didn’t you say it was a sneaker? I know what a sneaker is,” he said.
“Joe, I said ‘find it’ not ‘take it.’ You’ve just contaminated evidence in a murder case.” For the record, it’s hard to look angry at someone sitting in a running shoe floating in the air.
He pulled a long face. “I’ll put it back then. You could have been clearer.”
“Where was it?”
“On a roof four or five buildings over that way,” he said. As he pointed, he almost lost the shoe. I resisted the urge to grab it.
“Please, put it back exactly where it was and in the same position. I’ll meet you there. Wait for me in front of the right building so I can find it.”
“What if someone sees me?” he said.
“That’s the least of my concerns right now, Joe. No one’s going to see you if you don’t want them to.” Most flits are shy to the point of reclusiveness. They’ve set themselves up for a vicious circle, though. They’re shy because their size often gives them unwanted attention, but because they’re rarely seen, they attract even more attention when they do appear. It wasn’t so bad in the Weird, since fey of different sizes were hardly unusual. Joe’s usually not so sensitive to it, but I could tell I upset him. He’ll get over it because he understands enough about my job to know he screwed up.
He turned the shoe and flew off. Skipping the shortcut through the mud, I made my way around the field to the next street over. More empty buildings, though a few of these looked like they might be inhabited. Rough curtains hung in warehouse windows, and sometimes people even showed their faces through sooty glass. This end of the Avenue was not known for entertainment. It was close to the Tangle, which meant trouble, so only the truly desperate lived here or, ironically, the kind of people that the desperate feared.