"The good news is that three dead bodies seem to have gotten the mayor's attention. He's about to authorize a task force," he said.
I smiled slyly. "Do I hear the sound of the Murdock brothers riding to the rescue?" Murdock comes from a big police family. Between friends and family, Sunday dinner at his father's house looks like roll call.
"Maybe," he said. "It's my case, but I don't see staff coming my way. Mostly, it'll be more uniforms on the street. He's more worried about tourist dollars and anti-fey protesters than the murders. The festival's right around the corner."
I nodded. Midsummer was two weeks away. What had its ancient roots in celebratory dancing had mutated into one long, wild party. Practically every religion ever had some kind of holiday associated with it, and every year the party got bigger. The Weird, as the local neighborhood with the highest concentration of pagans, became a nexus for the gatherings. It was a nightmare for residents, but it also brought huge amounts of money into the local economy. At least it wasn't England. No one in their right mind goes near Stonehenge for Midsummer. Some drugged-up fools always decide it's time to resurrect human sacrifices, and they're not picky about the virgin thing. It had become the longest day of the year in more ways than one.
"I don't want to think about Midsummer. I'm more interested in next Tuesday," I said.
We walked out into the evening twilight. Sunset had brought with it an early chill. Murdock stepped with his cop swagger, eyes instinctively scanning the sidewalk as though every passerby had some secret motive. We reached the Old Northern Avenue bridge and paused halfway, leaning in among the industrial girders to look at the water. Early-evening foot traffic passed behind us with little idea that we were probably the only ones in the city trying to figure out who had killed three people less than a mile away.
Across the channel, you could see the corner of my loft near the edge of what is still called Fan Pier. Around the turn of the century the pier, which was really filled-in harbor, was a railroad storage facility and switching station that from a height looked like a giant handheld fan. Hence the name. As the years went by, the rail yard shrank, and shacks and warehouses went up. It made the kind of picturesque jumble of shoreline that urban renewers just love to raze for luxury housing.
"What about a connection to the festival?" Murdock asked.
I gazed down at the rich gray water. Little bits of foam and debris spun slowly beneath our feet. "I don't see a connection yet. The Forest King is obvious. He dies on the summer solstice, completing the cycle of birth and death. But that's one person killed and pretty much a voluntary community event."
"Maybe just one person is doing the killing and the rest are keeping quiet about it," he suggested.
"Maybe. But I think we would hear about it. Of the sacrifice rituals I know, it doesn't make sense to go after fairies. Faith and belief by the sacrifice is just as important as the slayer's. I'm missing something. I just haven't figured out what."
"Want to hear what Shay thinks?" Murdock asked.
I rolled my eyes. "Sure, why not."
"Elves. He thinks it's connected to the old fairy/elf feud because if there were bad blood among the fairies, he would have heard about it." I cocked a doubtful eyebrow at him. Murdock just shrugged and smiled. "I wouldn't underestimate him, Connor. He may be young, but he's lasted a lot longer than a lot of kids his age."
Whenever something bad happened to elves or fairies, someone always brought up the tension between the two races. When the fey began to appear around 1900, fairies and elves were at war but reached a truce of sorts when they found themselves here instead of in what everyone calls Faerie. "Convergence" is the accepted term for the merging of the two worlds, and arguments still rage over whose world is the real one. The fact remains that the fey definitely came from someplace else, a place where time ran differently, and they had not faded into myth and legend. Whichever, in both places, elves and fairies didn't like each other very much. In fact, the two sides were currently meeting in Ireland for a Fey Summit to try to iron out their continuing differences.
"So, what's Shay's story?"
"Shay's of legal age, but he's a runaway, if you ask me. No boy that looks like a woman could have had it easy growing up," said Murdock.
Mildly surprised, I glanced over at him. "Murdock, I would have thought by now you would be over the gender thing."
"I didn't say I'd hassle him, Connor. I grew up here. I'm just stating a fact. Believe it or not, there are some places in this country where the fey don't live. You forget that not everyone is comfortable with fey folk, never mind the whole pansexual stuff."
He was right. Being fey and growing up in one of the highest concentrations of fey folk in the US, it's easy to forget the hinterlands are out there. Though the fey more often fall into opposite sex relationships, they're fairly indifferent to biology. Briallen tells me it has to do with low fertility and long lives. Promiscuity is hardly frowned upon when it often is the only way to propagate the species. Since the likelihood of producing children is so low, sex becomes more about the relationship and less about procreation. Extremely long lives leave plenty of time to breed if someone wants to try. No one would have thought anything strange about Shay in the schools I went to.
Murdock pushed away from the bridge railing, and we resumed walking. "He was born in Boston, but there's no other info before last year. He's either got a sealed juvie record somewhere, or he was clean. He's gonna get snagged on a soliciting rap eventually. It's just a matter of time."
"And Robin?"
Once over the bridge, we were officially back in the Weird. We crossed over Sleeper Street, which I lived on the end of, and walked slowly along the sidewalks of the Avenue, passing the packed parking lot of the Barking Crab, a seafood restaurant that had been around so long it was an institution. No one went there for the ambience except in a kitschy kind of way, but the food was incredible. If you lived nearby, you left it to the tourists and suburbanites on the weekends. We kept going up the street to where the local shops and bars began.
"Robin's story is a little different," Murdock said. "He's got a short soliciting rap sheet. No drugs as far as I can tell. Been on the losing end of a fight now and then. If you ask me, he provokes at least half the trouble he gets in. He's at that bulletproof age and has a nasty disposition to go with it."
"Yeah, I noticed," I said sarcastically.
"What else do we have to go on?" Murdock asked.
I hesitated before answering. Before I went to bed the night before, I had sent Joe a glow bee with the flit information from Shay, but hadn't heard back from him. I still hadn't told Murdock about the flit I sensed at the murder scene. Tossing it around in my head, I decided to come clean.
He frowned and shook his head. "That's cold, Connor. I never hold back on you."
"I wasn't really holding back, Murdock. I wasn't sure it was relevant and didn't want to sidetrack you."
He stopped to examine a window display of parade masks for the festival. Ogre, troll, wolf, and snake masks faced off against fairy, elf, and forest animals. Most of them were covered with glitter or feathers for that extra festive touch. "I could have given you names of flits that hang with the hookers."