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

  Crystal chandeliers cast a brilliant light throughout the main room, and halfway to the staircase I caught a glimpse of myself reflected in the front windows. I paused momentarily, realizing that I was seriously pushing my luck. I was beaten and wounded, dead tired, and trying to sneak through the front room of a brightly lit mansion. A six-foot-six ogre sneaking around in plain sight, leaving a trail of blood everywhere he goes, I thought. Nothin’ to worry about there. No matter, it was time to focus. I heard distant voices upstairs, and I recognized one of them as Brutus. I lurched toward the stairwell.

  I knew it was going to hurt climbing those stairs, but it turned out even worse than I’d expected. I lifted my leg at the first step and my right knee popped like a whiffle-ball. I wanted to cry like a little girl but I gingerly shifted my weight to the other side and took another step. And then another. Slowly, excruciatingly I brought my left leg up and then my right, again and again, keeping my thoughts focused on nothing but the steps in front of me.

  My bones screamed. My muscles threatened to give out. I felt like I might have to reach down and lift my legs one at a time just to make it to the top, only I couldn’t do that because I was grasping the handrail like my life depended on it.

  Jolts of electricity shot through my body with each jarring step. My bones popped like champagne corks at a New Year’s Eve ball. I could hardly believe Brutus and the others didn’t come running at the sound. Still, I pressed on.

  As I climbed the staircase, my joints loosened up and my heart got to pumping. I was panting and sweating by the time I made it to the top, but I was feeling better. Not great, but better.

  I hovered there at the edge of the staircase for a few seconds, plotting out my next move. I could hear Brutus talking with one of his friends down the hall. I crept closer, until I was just outside the doorway. “What’s the word on that pixie dust?” Brutus said.

  “We got nothin’. We’ve searched this entire city. It ain’t out there, boss.”

  “It has to be somewhere. The Steward said it got stolen out of his safe. Somebody’s got to have it.”

  “Maybe he still has it,” the mobster said. “Maybe he was savin’ it for himself.”

  “No, Mossberg wouldn’t use it. The Steward’s not a junkie.”

  “Yeah, but would he sell it?”

  Brutus thought about that. “I don’t know. Maybe we should ask him.” They both laughed at that. “Too late now,” Brutus said. “Besides, why would he decide to sell it when he had a solid case against Anthony? The bad blood between Anthony and the Steward goes way back. I don’t think he’d risking losing his chance to put my brother away.”

  “What if he knew Anthony was going to die?”

  Brutus was quiet for a moment, thinking that over. “I think that’s the smartest thing you’ve ever said, Quinn. I haven’t told anyone this, but Anthony was going to kill the Steward that night. I saw him put the poison in Mossberg’s wineglass myself. All this time, I’ve been wondering how or why Mossberg switched those glasses. What you just said explains everything.”

  My eyebrows shot up. That little piece of information changed everything. Since the night Anthony died, I had been looking for the person who’d killed him, thinking it had been a premeditated murder. I’d been looking for someone who had magically conjured a poison from a different world and somehow slipped it to Anthony. That wasn’t the case at all. If what Brutus said was true, Anthony conjured the poison himself, and he was going to use it to kill me! But what did that mean?

  I entertained the fleeting thought that someone might have switched the glasses, but immediately dismissed it. Anthony had gone to great lengths to pull off my murder. He certainly wouldn’t have done it with anyone watching. Except Brutus, of course. Brutus had known all along. And yet even Brutus had been surprised by Anthony’s accidental poisoning. If I hadn’t seen his reaction I might have even suspected Brutus, but not anymore. Not after having him beat me within an inch of my life. I was certain that Brutus hadn’t expected Anthony’s death. But could it really be so simple? Could the glasses simply have gotten switched by accident? Was it possible that Anthony Kaiser, in an attempt to murder me, had instead killed himself?

  “How do you mean, Boss?” said Quinn. “You think the Steward switched the glasses?”

  “He must have. I don’t know how he knew, but somehow, he knew. It doesn’t matter how, what matters is that the Steward switched those wineglasses and killed my brother. Once he’d gotten my brother out of the way, all he had to do was make up that excuse about the pixie dust getting stolen and he was in business. He killed two birds with one stone.”

  “One of those birds being Anthony,” Quinn added. I heard the sound of a loaded magazine sliding into a pistol.

  “Yeah,” said Brutus. “The Steward’s a lot smarter than I gave him credit for. Too bad for him, the only thing he didn’t count on was me.”

  “I didn’t count on you being a cold-blooded murderer,” I said, stepping into the room.

  Quinn wheeled around, raising his freshly loaded pistol. He pointed it straight at my head. Luckily, Quinn was close to the doorway. I leapt forward and caught his arm, holding the gun away from my face. The pistol discharged, firing straight into the ceiling. The bullet shattered one of the overhead lights and broken glass rained down over our heads.

  Quinn struggled for a second, but I brought my other hand around and wrapped it around his throat. The energy fled from his body, and the mobster slumped. I let him drop to the ground. As this happened, I saw Brutus flit by me like a shadow. I turned to follow him into the hall.

  Brutus vanished into the next room, slamming the door shut behind him. I reached for the handle, but just then I heard voices shouting behind me, and the rumbling sound of two more guards rushing up the stairs. I leapt back into Brutus’ office, and pressed myself up to the wall behind the door.

  There were two of them. They were shouting out that I had escaped. The first ran past me, and into the room where Anthony had vanished. The second turned and walked straight into the room where I was standing. I reached out and caught him by the throat. His hands went to my wrist, fighting to pull away, but he didn’t have much struggle in him. Three seconds later, I dropped his limp body on top of the still unconscious Quinn.

  I stepped back into the hallway and saw the door to the next room hanging ajar. I had the sinking feeling that Brutus and his guard were both standing on the other side of that door, waiting for me with loaded weapons. I shoved the door open, jumping back to the side so they wouldn’t hit me when they started shooting. The door whooshed open and then… silence. Nothing.

  I grimaced. They knew I was there, they had to know. That meant they were waiting for me to stick my head around the corner before they blew it off my shoulders. They were being careful. I took my hat off and held it gently by the brim, and extended it out into the doorway. Sure enough, three shots rang out in quick succession. My hat flew out of my hand and drifted across the hall.

  “You’re gonna pay for that,” I said.

  “Sure, come in and get your money.” That wasn’t Brutus, it was the guard. The last one. I glanced at my hat lying upside down on the floor with three perfect round holes in it. One last guard between me and Brutus. Nothing was gonna stop me now.

  Quietly, I stepped back into Brutus’ office and glanced around the room. I needed something big, something heavy. No, the desk was too big. I opened the small closet in the back corner and found a two-foot safe bolted to the floor. I smiled.

  The elf in the next room had no idea what was coming when he heard the creak of metal and the sound of splintering wood next door. He may have realized that I had moved back into Brutus’ office, but by then it was too late. A split second later, the safe came flying through the wall, ripping out two entire wall studs and a large section of sheetrock. He stumbled back, and the safe barely missed him as it crashed to the floor and rolled over a couple times.

  Before the guard had a chance to r
eact, I leapt through the hole in the wall after the safe. I landed a few paces in front of him. I hit the ground rolling, a grunt escaping my lips as my bruised body screamed in pain. I twisted as I came up, reaching out to grab his weapon.

  He threw his arms back and instinctively kicked at me. His leather wingtip smacked my forehead. It hurt. I roared like a wild animal. I launched myself on top of him. A look of sheer terror washed over his face and all of the color drained from his complexion. We went down in a heap and I held him there for a moment, gripping his wrists. He went limp and his eyes rolled back in his head. I reached for his pistol and tossed it aside.

  I jumped to my feet, eyes scanning the room for Brutus. He wasn’t there. Then I noticed the door in the corner and realized he must have snuck into an adjoining room. I rushed over and yanked it open. I found myself staring into what seemed to be a narrow hallway, facing a thick, steel wall. One dim light overhead illuminated the area. Directly in front of me was a heavy steel door.

  “A safe room?” I shouted, hoping Brutus could hear me. “You ran away and locked yourself in a safe room?”

  I tapped the wall here and there, testing it for weakness. It was thick, solidly built. There were no bolts or rivets to break: this was welded steel. It was custom made. I knew that somewhere around the perimeter of that room there had to be a ventilation shaft. That was the room’s only inherent vulnerability. Unfortunately, it would have taken hours to find it. Even then, I wouldn’t be able to fit through it. All I could do was try to smoke him out.

  I examined the door for weaknesses. The hinges were hidden, and the handle was a slim shaft of steel recessed into the surface. I grabbed it and pulled, easily ripping it out. That didn’t help, because the handle had been designed to break free. A spark of electricity shot off as I did it, and I recognized it as one of the elves’ protective spells. I wondered how many other spells I had set off, traipsing through the house.

  “Well, I guess you thought of just about everything,” I shouted at the door. “You’ve got security guards, protective spells, even a safe room. You just forgot one thing. I’m an ogre!”

  I hauled back and kicked the door as hard as I could. A dent several inches deep appeared under the sole of my shoe, and the edges of the door pulled slightly away from the frame. A jolt of pain shot up my spine, rattling my entire body. I was in no shape to be beating down doors. I wasn’t about to stop, though. Not this close.

  I took a step back and kicked it again, and again. On the fifth time, the door pulled away from the frame and swung inward. I stepped in, blinking in the dim light, the screaming pain in my head driving me nearly insane.

  “There you are,” I said as Brutus came into focus.

  “And there you go,” he said. He was just a dim outline, until he pulled the trigger on his semi-automatic pistol. The muzzle flash lit the room like lightning. I grunted as a shot hit me in the center of the chest, and then another in the shoulder. The sound echoed in the small room, multiplying in volume until I thought my eardrums would bleed. Brutus fired two more rounds; both missed. Finally, he pulled the trigger and nothing happened. His small concealable weapon was out of ammo.

  “Ha!” he shouted. “Spells may not work on big dumb ogres, but lead does!” He stared at me, grinning from ear to ear, waiting for me to drop dead. Much to his chagrin, I didn’t. I ripped my shirt open and dug out the steaming hot 9mm slug that was embedded in my chest. I threw it aside with a disgusted look.

  “What-” He stared at me incredulously. “It’s not possible!”

  I pulled the second slug out of my shoulder and tossed it at his face. “Nine millimeter? Now you’re just pissing me off.”

  I took a step towards him and Brutus jumped aside. He feigned a movement to the left and then dodged right, trying to sneak past me. I was faster. I caught him and lifted him into the air so that his head smacked into the ceiling. I clenched my teeth and stared into his face, resisting the urge to break his scrawny little neck.

  Brutus passed out instantly. His pistol slipped from his fingers and clattered to the floor. I stared at him for a minute, wishing I was a bad guy so I could do to him what he’d done to me. It would’ve been too easy. I could have snapped his bones like toothpicks.

  I heard a siren in the distance and realized I’d better get out of there in a hurry. Between the shouting, the fighting, and the gunshots, it was no wonder that the neighbors had called the police again. I tossed Brutus over my shoulder stepped back into the hallway. As I passed his office, one of the unconscious bodyguards roused himself enough to pull his wand and point it at me. He half-muttered the words of a spell and a little bolt of lightning zipped past me.

  I reached down and grabbed his hand. He went limp. I wanted to haul all of them out of there, but it just wasn’t humanly possible. My Blazer was across the golf course and down the hill. It would take ten minutes or more just to make one trip, and by the time I got back the place would be swarming with cops. Frustrated, I walked off with Brutus and left the rest of the Kaiser gang lying there. With more than a little trepidation, I started my long, painful hike back to the Blazer.

  Chapter 13

  It was almost six a.m. when I got back to the tree. The place was quiet, most of the fae having just gone to bed for the day. I hustled down to the jail with Brutus hanging over my shoulder and tossed him into the cell next to Vinnie. The noise woke Vinnie, who silently watched me drop Brutus onto the empty cot. After I closed the cell, he whispered:

  “You did it, Steward! You actually got Brutus!”

  “Yeah,” I said. My voice cracked with exhaustion.

  “You look terrible… what happened to you?”

  “Your old boss happened.”

  I picked up the phone and dialed Butch’s apartment. He didn’t answer but I left him a message explaining everything in brief. I told him Annie was in the hospital and Brutus was in jail, and if he had any questions he couldn’t call me because my cell phone was broken. When I hung up, Vinnie was staring at me through the bars.

  “So you gonna let me go now?”

  “Let you go?” I said. “Why would I do that?”

  He glanced askew at the unconscious mobster next door. “Because, you know,” he whispered.

  “Ah, right, because you were cooperative?”

  “Yeah, I thought we had a deal.”

  “The deal was that I protect you, not that I let you go.”

  His lip curled into a snarl. “You dirty swamp rat. You’re as bad as they are.”

  I cocked an eyebrow. “Calm down, Vinnie. You’re not gonna be in here long, but I’m not ready to let you go just yet.”

  He glared at me as I left. That was understandable. Truth was, he had been a big help in blowing the case open. The problem was that I still had a few unanswered questions and I wasn’t about to cut him loose before I had everything figured out. Especially not after the night I’d had.

  My next stop was SF General Hospital. I changed into some clean clothes and then drove across town, a dark cloud of worry hanging over me the whole way. Annie had gotten out of surgery some time during the night. It was well before visiting hours when I arrived, but the kindred nurse from the night before was still on duty. She let me into Annie’s room with the promise that I’d keep quiet and let her rest.

  As I sat next to Annie’s bed watching her slow, even breathing, I had some time to think. For the first time in days, my thoughts weren’t overshadowed by the situation with the Kaisers. They were all in jail, waiting for justice. They were no longer a threat to me, or the community. That was liberating, and it gave a clarity to my thoughts that I hadn’t had in a long time.

  I still needed to figure out who’d switched the wineglasses and killed Anthony, but I didn’t consider it a high priority. A small part of me almost wanted the killer to get away. I suppose it was wrong to think like that, but from where I was standing Anthony’s murder looked a lot like justice.

  At some point, my mind wandered back to th
e Paton girl. I’d thought about her off and on ever since Roxy fired me. It still bothered me that she was out there somewhere, helpless and alone, but my hands were tied to help her. Her mother wouldn’t tell the truth about what happened, or at least she wasn’t telling the whole truth. Nobody makes a deal with the fae and then forgets about it, and I knew that was what had happened.

  Then, as the sun was coming up over the bay and the sounds of the city came drifting through the open window, it hit me. The reason Roxy Paton had been so offended when I implicated her in the crime wasn’t because she was trying to cover the truth up, it was because she really was innocent. She wasn’t in denial, either. She had been telling the truth. That didn’t mean I was wrong, though. In an instant, I knew who the kidnapper was and why he’d done it. And I knew how to get Jenny back.

  I used the hospital phone to call Butch and explain everything. It was almost eight o’clock by then, and surprisingly he was in the office. I could tell from the sound of his voice that he’d been worrying about me. He must have gotten my message. “Boss!” he said when he picked up the phone. “How are you? What’s going on?”

  “I’m going to need two tickets to Hawaii,” I said. “One for me and one for Roxy Paton. Have them waiting for me at SFO.”

  “Will do,” he said. “You sure everything’s all right?”

  “Yeah, I’m fine. I’ll fill you in later.”

  “Oh… did you want me to feed you-know-who?”

  I thought about it. I had an obligation to keep Brutus healthy while he was in my jail, but part of me thought he was already lucky just to be alive. Besides, a high-elf could live for months without food. “No rush,” I said. “If you do feed him, make sure it’s something he hates.” Butch chuckled and hung up.