Hank Mossberg, Private Ogre: Murder in the Boughs Read online

  But where was that, exactly? The only way to figure out who had taken Jenny was to get inside their heads, to figure out their motivation. I didn’t have much to go on. I had no clues in her records, no indicators in her past pointing to a likely suspect. The obvious answer was the worst. There are a lot of pedophiles and child killers out there. However, I didn’t think that was the answer. People like that are cautious. They’re patient. They hang out at parks and playgrounds, and at schools after hours; places where children are bound to be unsupervised. If someone like that wants to find a child, eventually they will. But this case was different.

  Jenny Paton was about as secure as a child could get. She was surrounded by caring, nurturing adults. She was continuously engaged and under constant supervision. The only time that supervision lacked was when she was at home under lock and key, and a state of the art alarm system. That’s what didn’t fit. I’m no expert in human psychology but I know that child killers and pedophiles are cowards. They don’t take risks. They’ll haunt playgrounds and schools for months, looking for the perfect opportunity. So what would cause someone like that to abduct Jenny, when she was always so well protected? It just didn’t make sense. I had to be missing something.

  For the second night in a row, I got less than five hours of sleep. I crawled out of bed at six-thirty, showered, and wandered down to the jail. I found Butch there, looking as bleary-eyed and exhausted as I was. He was sitting at my desk staring blankly at the ceiling, arms folded across his chest, feet kicked up on my desk.

  “Rough night, huh?” I said.

  He rolled his gaze toward me, and I saw how bloodshot his eyes were. I hoped I didn’t look that bad. “Aye,” he said wearily. “’Twas a night I won’t soon forget.”

  I sat down across from him. “You can’t let it get to you,” I said. “What we saw last night… something like that will haunt you, if you let it.”

  He narrowed his eyes. “What we saw? Oh, right, the pixies!”

  I frowned. “Yeah the pixies… what were you talking about?”

  He looked somewhat embarrassed. “Oh, you’re completely right. It was horrible, the thing with the pixies. Just horrible.”

  “Butch, what’s going on?”

  He sighed and gave me the most pitiful crestfallen look I’ve ever seen. “I’m in love, Hank.”

  It took me a second to respond. “Talia?” I said. “This is about the S.W.A.T. commander?”

  He nodded. “I don’t know what I’m goin’ to do. She’s too good for me, Hank.” The look on his face was so pleading and miserable that my impulse to laugh dissipated into thin air. He was serious. He was in love with an elf.

  “I don’t know… maybe you should just ask her out?”

  I grimaced slightly as I said it. Elves and dwarves don’t get together often, and the truth was that Butch’s chances were slim at best. Even if he did somehow overcome the huge racial and cultural divides, he had nothing in common with Talia. She was ambitious, dedicated, maybe even obsessed. She’d worked hard, devoted her life to law enforcement, and achieved major accomplishments. At a very young age, she’d managed to work her way into the S.W.A.T. team and eventually became commander. That was impressive, and it spoke volumes about her character.

  By way of contrast, Butch was best at drinking. Well, drinking and playing poker. Sure, he’d been dabbling in law enforcement, but that was really only because I’d drafted him on as my deputy. There hadn’t been anyone else available at the time, and he was willing to take on the job, probably because it provided a small salary and because his favorite drinking tavern was a hundred yards away. There had been a number of times that I’d doubted my decision, and he probably had as well. Frankly, even as a partially employed and mostly-drunk deputy, he barely got the job done.

  “Ask her out?” he said after a moment’s thought. His voice was distant, dreamy. “Nah, she’d never go for it. I wouldn’t dare… I’d be the laughingstock of the city.”

  “Well you’ve gotta do something,” I said. “You can’t just sit there being miserable for the rest of your life.”

  He put his feet on the floor. “You’re right,” he said. “I’m gonna get drunk.”

  “Whoa, hold on! We’ve got work to do. We still have a murderer to find, and I’m still at square one on the Paton case. I need that background check.”

  Butch sighed and glanced at the clock on my desk. “All right,” he said. “Where do we start?”

  “It’s too early to call Inspector Lee. Go ahead and run the usual checks. Criminal and public records. If you don’t find any dirt there, go to Facebook and Youtube.” Butch smiled. He considered searching the internet for people’s dirty laundry to be a perk of the job. “See,” I said, “you’re cheering up already.”

  I grabbed my hat and left him. He was grinning ear to ear as he waited for the computer to boot up. I was almost around the corner when he called out to me.

  “Oh, hang on! I’ve got something for you!”

  “Yeah?” I said, turning towards him.

  “I forgot to tell you…” he opened my desk drawer and pulled out a long, thin black case. He opened it to reveal a brass tube inside. I instantly recognized it.

  “My ethometer! Where did you find it?”

  “I didn’t. It was just sitting on the desk.”

  I took it from him and looked it over suspiciously. I knew for a fact that it hadn’t been there the previous day. I had searched my desk from top to bottom. Butch had even helped me look. “That’s strange,” I said. “Doesn’t look like it’s been tampered with.”

  “Maybe we just missed it,” he said.

  “Right.” Of course, we both knew we were lying. We hadn’t simply overlooked it. The ethometer had been gone, and now it was back. Something had happened to it. I got the uncomfortable feeling that my own office had been violated. An act like that took some courage. I glanced at Vinnie in his cell suspiciously, and immediately ruled him out. If he’d been able to get out of that cell, he’d have done it. Maybe it was time to get a security system installed. I turned to leave.

  “Give me a call if you learn anything.”

  “Will do, Boss.”

  Now that I had my ethometer back, I was tempted to drive straight to Roxy’s house and go searching for fae residue, even though I knew that too much time had already passed. It had now been three days since Jenny’s disappearance, and the chances of finding any residue after that much time were almost nil. Besides, a couple of hours wouldn’t change anything. I’d be better off in the long run if I did a background check on Roxy first, and then went to see her.

  I’d put Butch to work on that, but I didn’t honestly expect him to come up with anything. The kind of info I wanted wasn’t going to be available on Facebook. Mostly I was hoping it would keep Butch’s mind occupied and maybe keep him in the jail where he was supposed to be. In the meanwhile, I was going to see a friend.

  When it comes to special jobs, I always go see Tas, a hacker I consult with from time to time. He lives up in Belvedere, an affluent community on the north side of the bay. It can be a nasty drive, especially on a weekday, so I figured I’d better take the subway tram. I went back to the atrium and stepped into the elevator.

  “Undercity,” I said.

  “Right away,” Apophis said. “Are you in a hurry, SSSteward?”

  “Unfortunately.”

  I realized instantly that I shouldn’t have said that, but it was already too late. The elevator fell out from underneath me. We went shooting down so fast that I had to grab the handrail. I felt the g-forces pulling me back and forth as we zipped down through the Mother tree’s trunk and the tendrils of her root system like a roller coaster off the rails. Then Apophis decelerated so rapidly that I felt like my knees might give out beneath me. The elevator stopped with a rush of blood to my legs and a slight blurring around the edges of my vision. As the pounding of my heart receded into the background, the elevator doors slid open with a happy chime.

>   “Have a nice day,” Apophis said. I shot him a glare as I stumbled out. Instantly, he was gone.

  I saw a slight movement in the corner of my eye and jerked my head around. It was Zaxyl. He was floating in the air behind me, several feet over my left shoulder. “Bug off, I’m working,” I said. He made a hissing sound and sneered at me. Once again, I decided the best thing I could do was to just ignore him and hope he’d stay out of my way. I left the elevator lobby and headed for the tram platform on the western edge of the undercity.

  The undercity. How can I explain it? It’s a lot like a normal city, with paved roads and tall buildings and lots of traffic, especially at the center, but with the exception that it’s underground. The major arteries are well developed, just like the streets and subways of any big city. Around the edges in the dark, shadowy corners and alleys, you find trouble. The fae aren’t immune to crime or any of the other human problems, and you can find it all here. Hustlers, dealers, and hookers are everywhere, if you know where to look. Roving gangs of goblins and delvers are always a danger, and nymphs compete for business in the darkened alleys around the city’s perimeter. Fortunately, most of it’s not my problem. The undercity has its own police force empowered by the Elders to keep the peace. They have about as much luck as any police force in any major city.

  I’m not a big fan of the undercity subway system, not only because I don’t trust the technology, but because it’s hundreds of feet underground. I have a tendency towards claustrophobia. The tram system is neatly connected at convenient junctions around the city. You can hop on one of the cars and jet across town in just minutes, or take one of the outgoing trams into the surrounding countryside. It’s the quickest, most efficient form of travel yet. There are a few downsides to it, though. As I’ve mentioned, there’s the claustrophobia factor. Then there’s the plate tectonics issue. Being right on top of the San Andreas Fault, the ground moves constantly around the city. Hardly a month goes by that some section of the tunnel doesn’t give way, dumping several tons of earth right onto the tracks. Luckily, gnomish engineering is relatively safe, and casualties are rare.

  The North Bay line has a good reputation because most of the line doesn’t run underground, but rather along the bottom of the San Francisco Bay. The gnomes -in all of their engineering genius- thought it would be a good idea to construct the tunnel out of clear material, so that the passengers could look up into the water as they traveled. They neglected to realize that we’d be looking up through one hundred feet of icy cold shark-infested waters. That pleasant discovery they saved for guys like me, who are already crawling out of their skin just from being so far underground, and so much out of control.

  It was still early, and there wasn’t much traffic in the undercity. Most of the fae are nocturnal, so the place doesn’t really come alive until the evening. I went to the nearest depot and bought a round trip ticket to Belvedere. I stood at the platform for a few minutes until the tram zoomed up and screeched to a halt. I took a moment to look it over. From what I could tell, the car was clean and well maintained. The yellow and red paint gleamed under the subterranean lights. The metal connectors were clean and coated with fresh-looking black paint, and the rails under the car looked as good as new. Mentally, I knew that I had nothing to fear, but that didn’t make me feel any better because I also knew that at any moment, a million things could go wrong. They wouldn’t, but they could. Just like in the helicopter.

  I suppose it’s part of my genetic make up, that need to be in control. A thousand years ago, it would have served me well, when the world was covered with forests and it was an ogre’s duty to maintain the balance and protect the fae from the scattered tribes of humans. Now, in the modern world, my nature works against me. It’s easy to see how my kind went extinct. That’s what happens when the world evolves beyond you; when you’ve outlived your usefulness.

  I stepped off the platform and found a seat in the middle of the tram. I had my pick, because I was the only passenger. I settled onto the seat and opened a book I’d picked up at the ticket booth. I forced my eyes to the first page of the prologue. I heard the click-clack of footsteps in the distance and glanced up to see an elf walking across the platform. He was dressed in human clothes –a black Italian suit with a long wool trench coat and a bowler hat. He looked like one of Anthony’s goons. He was carrying a small package under his arm.

  I looked him over, but he didn’t seem to take any notice of me. He walked by the ticket booth and up the platform, towards the benches at the far end. He checked his watch, settled down on a bench, and pulled out an iPad. I decided he was no threat, and pulled my gaze away. This job makes a person jumpy and suspicious. He was probably one of those elves that works in the human world. That would explain the expensive clothes and the early morning tram ride.

  I scanned the first few lines of the prologue and then skipped to the end, fifty pages later. What kind of jerk writes a fifty-page prologue? I thought. Then I heard the sound that haunts my nightmares. The tram chimes rang out loudly, warning that the vehicle was about to embark. I grimaced, bracing myself as the tram lurched forward.

  “Hey Mossberg!”

  I glanced up and saw the elf standing at the edge of the platform, just ahead of me. I didn’t understand how he’d gotten there so quickly. “This is from Anthony Kaiser!” he shouted. He tossed the package he’d been carrying onto the tram. At that instant, the vehicle put on a burst of speed and shot out of the platform and into the tunnel.

  I tossed the book aside and rose cautiously from my seat as the tram gained speed. The g-forces pulled at me and I latched onto the steel pole next to me for stability. The lights flickered by overhead, creating a hypnotic flashing effect like something out of a horror movie. At the front of the tram, the package began to move. I blinked uncertainly, hardly trusting my eyes in the deceptive light. The thin brown paper wrapper bulged here and there and then split open as a shiny metal appendage poked through the top. It felt around wildly for a moment and then reached down to the floor. Another followed, and it stretched out to grab a steel pole a few feet away.

  I stared in disbelief as some sort of robotic creature rose up before me, dragging itself out of that impossibly tiny box. It appeared to be some sort of computerized robot or a drone, with a large bulbous body and long octopus-like tentacles. When it reached its full height, the creature stood eight feet tall. Its numerous appendages varied in length from a couple feet up to nearly ten. Several of these appendages served as stabilizers, latching onto the seats and the poles at the front of the car, while others were clearly designed to function as weapons. Some of the tentacles ended in mace-like hammers, others in knife blades and spinning saws.

  “Clever,” I muttered under my breath. This was obviously Brutus Kaiser’s doing. He was trying to get revenge on me for his brother’s murder. Naturally, he’d known better than to attack me with magic. Instead, he sent a robot to do his dirty work. He must have used magic to conceal it in that tiny little package. “Hey Zaxyl, how about giving me a hand?” I called over my shoulder. I glanced back to see if he was there. He wasn’t. The little rodent must have skedaddled at the first sign of danger.

  The robot creature struck out at me with one of the maces, and I dodged aside. The weapon slammed into the pole I’d been hanging onto and bent it nearly in half. The roof of the tram buckled, bending down until the sheet metal began to tear. Instantly another tentacle shot forward, nearly hitting me as I leapt behind the nearest seat. I crashed to the ground, cursing myself for not having my gun when I needed it. It was the second time in as many days I’d felt that way. It suddenly occurred to me that I’m really more human than fae. I had no spell to defend myself, no magic wand to counter the attack. I had only my wits and my strength. At the moment, that didn’t feel like much.

  I heard a screeching sound and glanced under the seats towards the front of the tram just in time to see a saw blade hurtling towards my face. I jumped up and spun around, kicking at the
bent stainless steel pole with all my weight. It pulled free of the roof with a screeching sound. I latched onto it and pulled, trying to rip it out of the floor. The sheet metal floor of the car moaned as I pulled on it, heaving and twisting it from side to side, but the welds wouldn’t give.

  I saw a flash of steel out of the corner of my eye and jerked my head aside. A long knife blade narrowly missed my forehead. It clanged against the pole, throwing off a shower of sparks. The tentacle twisted sideways as it missed the mark, and overshot me by a good distance. I reacted instinctively, reaching out to catch the thing in midair. Before the robot could react, I twisted the tentacle around the pole and looped it over itself, creating a weak knot.

  The robot pulled, but the tentacle was stuck. For a brief moment, the creature forgot about me. Its tentacles shot out, embedding themselves in the floor and roof. It pushed its body backwards, tugging at the knot with everything it had. Beneath me, the floor of the tram bent slowly upward. I could see the metal starting to tear, so I reached out and grabbed the pole. I gave it a little extra push and it ripped free. The tentacle slid easily off the end of the pole. The robot tumbled backwards, slamming into the wall at the front of the tram.

  “You wanna fight?” I shouted. I hefted the pole, which had now broken free of its welds, and felt the weight of it. It was about two hundred pounds, and mightily unbalanced. It was bent sharply at one end where it had broken off. The other end was heavy from the bolts and the chunk of metal that still clung to it. The weapon was about as unwieldy as a sledgehammer, but it felt good to have something in my hands.

  The robot gathered itself up and went on the offensive. Those tentacles came at me two and three at a time. I dodged and twisted, deflecting with the pole, moving towards the thing one step at a time. I was determined to get close enough to strike a blow. That was when it got clever. One sneaky little tentacle shot out from under the seats and wrapped itself around my ankles. My eyes went wide as the creature latched onto me and tugged. My feet went out from under me and I went down, slamming hard onto the tram floor. The pole came down on top of me. Another tentacle latched on and tried to pull it out of my hands. I held on for all I was worth.