3. Few appreciated magic.

THREE

Few appreciated magic.

Wednesday, May 2, 2057

Mid North Lake, Precinct 153

Cauldron City, Nebraska.

Shortly after midnight, once we had both learned how to safely bypass Lance’s wards, Miranda guided me through the maintenance tunnels beneath Cauldron City. The stench might do me in, but I came up with a solution to that problem: making use of two pebbles, I fashioned a ward, one that offered us fresh air in a swirling, protective cocoon. The woman played with the tiny stone, rubbing her fingers over the etched runes. Her delight might be the end of me. How could I refuse showing her a few more of my tricks when something as simple as providing us with breathable oxygen evoked such wonder?

Few appreciated magic. Between exposure and easy access, it had become just another part of daily life .

Carving the rune had been done with magic and a sewing needle I kept in a wooden tube in my pocket. Using anything larger meant I couldn’t render the fine details needed to infuse a stone with power—at least a stone the size of the ones I’d selected for my trick.

In my world, larger wasn’t better. For me, finer details and smaller workings rendered more potent magic.

I worried that once the captain found out what I was up to, I would need every stone in my possession to survive his wrath.

Every now and then, Miranda referenced her phone, guiding us underneath the city. Fortunately for us, Captain Farthan lived a little over two miles away from me by road. Underground, we were able to take a more direct route, although it didn’t cut off as much of the distance as I would have liked. She stopped, pointed up, and said, “This should be beneath his house.”

Captain Farthan would skin me alive when he woke up to find his left shoes, his slippers, and his favorite hat missing. It would take him all of twenty seconds to identify the culprit.

I was the only one in the station partnered with a known thief.

If he hadn’t changed his mind about working us as a trio, I wouldn’t have wanted to make off with his shoes, slippers, and hat.

I would have considered stealing only the hat instead.

“All right. How does this work?” I asked, careful to keep quiet in case anyone else had decided to make use of the unconventional travel method.

Miranda reached up, and with a finger, began to draw a pattern on the top of the maintenance tunnel. A network of runes appeared, running in a line at the passage’s apex. “When Cauldron City was built, they installed access sigils to give maintenance workers a way to repair pipes without damaging everything above them. These sigils allow for the temporary removal of material—from a peephole to a manhole. The first step is checking through the peephole to make certain nothing bad will happen if we open up a larger hole.” Miranda tapped on one of the sigils twice, and a thin rod, no wider than a pea but over a foot long, slid out of the ceiling. After handing it to me, she squinted, peering up. “Nothing is obviously amiss, so let’s open that a little wider.”

She took back the plug, returned it into place, and tapped on several more sigils, removing a rod of ceiling and flooring the size of her fist. Judging from the tiling on the end, we’d enter in one of the captain’s bathrooms or the kitchen.

Further removal of larger plugs revealed we’d located the dragon’s kitchen. Without missing a beat, Miranda jumped, grabbed hold of the circular lip, and pulled herself up.

I admired the strength required to accomplish the task, and once she was in, I joined her, grunting from the effort of hauling my larger mass and build through the hole. In a way, I regretted not having a bulletproof vest.

It might save us from the captain should he catch us in the act.

Then again, could anything save us from an enraged dragon dealing with unauthorized beings in his home?

On second thought, a vest would only make preparing our charred bodies a little more difficult on the morticians.

“Please tell me you can confirm if this is the right place,” Miranda whispered .

I nodded. “If we really want to screw around with him, we’ll move everything on his kitchen counters. He’s notoriously meticulous about where everything goes.” I’d only been to the captain’s home twice, but I recognized the place as his. “Does that trick restore the flooring?”

“It does. Apparently, it was cheaper to make these fancy access points that restore everything than it was to do demolition and reconstruction. That’s all I know about how this works, though.”

I could understand that, especially if there was a problem with the sewer system. I questioned who had paid for such a system—and why nobody had considered who might want to abuse such magic. Had we known how simple it was to access the sigils and pull out sections of floor, the police would have solved the cases much sooner.

Worse, we might have been able to prevent the murders, as the thefts would have taken us directly to Mercy and their lethal activities.

Rather than allow myself to fixate and become infuriated over the lost opportunities to see justice done sooner, I went to work rearranging the captain’s home, moving his coffee mugs out of his cabinet, placing them on his small kitchen table, and organizing them in such a way the opal dragon would understand somebody loved him.

“That seems a little sickly sweet,” my new partner commented.

“Someone has to show him affection now and then.” As I refused to invite ants into the captain’s home, I found his sugar packets and added to the chaos. “There. Now it’s a little more literal.”

“His shoes,” Miranda prompted .

I nodded, forced myself away from my secondary mission, and tiptoed my way through the home, which was about three times the size of mine on the first floor alone. As Captain Farthan liked order in his home when his work life tended to be nothing but chaos, it was a simple enough task to grab all of his left shoes, checking the closet for any winter gear and making off with the captain’s hat, a fedora he’d owned for several decades. Once his left boots joined his regular shoes, we ferried them to the maintenance tunnel. As the man owned fifteen pairs of shoes and three pairs of boots, we made off with several reusable bags to help us carry our plunder.

Then we went for his slippers, discovering the captain owned thirty-two pairs, which were scattered throughout his home. As planned, we left one slipper near his bedroom door.

It took every scrap of my will to keep from giggling like some lunatic before we exited his property, resealed the entrance to the maintenance tunnel, and otherwise covered our tracks.

The captain would go to work with a right shoe and a slipper or no shoes at all, and I would savor every moment of his arrival.

“You are enjoying this far more than I expected,” Miranda commented, and she raised a brow at me.

“We dream of this, Miranda. Captain Farthan can be a bastard, and his reach is as long as his temper can be short. In the morning, while tired, we will get to go to work and observe an opal dragon’s sanity crumble away to nothing—and there’s nothing he can do about it. This time, we win, and this will earn us the adoration of our fellow officers for a long time to come. It won’t top the trickery Jace has done, but I’m happy coming in a close second.”

“What trickery?”

“He’s a literal unicorn with a fancy degree, and he managed to convince us all he was just some lowly mundane human man with a diploma. He’s been doing it for years. Don’t tell him this, but we all admire him more for it. With his degree, he could have gotten promoted faster. But faster wasn’t what he wanted. He wants to do his best. Honestly, he doesn’t know how to do anything other than his best, but I’m hoping we can teach him in time.”

“Why wouldn’t you want him to do his best all the time?”

I regarded the woman with a solemn expression. “Burnout is a real thing that happens to people who try too hard all the time. I’d rather him do a good job most of the time but truly shine when needed. The same applies to everyone. How can any of us shine if we’re exhausted from trying to do our best all the time?”

Miranda opened her mouth, and then the way her eyes widened offered some hope she understood the truth behind the message. “I never thought of that.”

“Most don’t, and that’s how those who want to bleed us dry would like us to keep thinking. Do a good job, but save your best for when it’s truly needed.”

Wednesday, May 2, 2057

Lower North Lakes, Precinct 15 3

Cauldron City, Nebraska.

Little sucked more than only getting three hours of sleep. I preferred a minimum of seven, and I viewed myself as rested after nine. After getting home, showing Miranda my guest bedroom and settling her, and doing my basic chores, I’d managed a measly three.

Running on three hours of sleep might lead me to murder my co-workers, all of whom I generally liked unless I ran on fumes and coffee.

To make certain I didn’t snap from consuming shit coffee, I dug out a few extra travel mugs, filled them, and made use of a small cooler to carry them all in without spilling them.

“Should I be concerned?” Miranda asked, staring at my haul while we trudged across the station’s parking garage towards the persnickety elevators, dragging all the captain’s left shoes and his slippers behind us.

If the elevators stopped working, the woman would experience me at my worst.

“Under normal circumstances, I wouldn’t have come in for another few hours, but if we’re going to stage these shoes, alas, sacrifices must be made.” I inhaled until my lungs ached, held my breath, and counted to ten. Then I exhaled, counting down from ten. The exercise helped.

I would need to be calm and peaceful when I dug out some fishing line from the supply closet, stood on a chair, and went to work hanging the captain’s shoes and slippers from the ceiling.

I would hang the captain’s hat from his door so there was zero chance of him missing it.

“You’ve sacrificed your sanity from the looks of it. You went to bed a seemingly normal human being and woke up rather demonic.” Miranda shook her head, waited for the elevator to open, and pressed the button for the third floor. “I can write down everything I know that might be of use to you while you catch a nap in your office. I can even write the notes in your office so it looks like you’re working.”

“Once the captain comes into work, likely wearing a shoe and a slipper or barefoot, he is going to make certain I suffer.” I forced myself to grin despite my serious case of morning grouch. “It will be worth it, but you will find that I will be eager to go home and go to bed.”

“Considering how comfortable your guest bedroom is, I’m going to be rather eager to go to bed, too.” Miranda sighed. “The apartment, while furnished, has the hardest mattress ever to have been sold, and I suspect it may have been handed down from a prison complex. It’s not often I can say that a prison bed is more comfortable.”

If I had my way, she would not be returning to the apartment complex at all. I would continue to lure her to my home using coffee until she forgot she was supposed to live somewhere else. I would ease her into moving some bills over to my place, canceling her lease at her apartment complex, and making my address her address. If the lure of coffee did not prove sufficient enough to keep her around, I’d help her find somewhere safe—and I’d hire Lance and Rubella to ward the property to the same excessive level of my home and Jace’s place.

The elevator opened, and an entire flock of hummingbirds swarmed me. Most of them clicked their excitement, and I came to the conclusion I would be the one saddled with feeding them .

Like mundane hummingbirds, the sentient ones required a lot of nectar, and by the time morning came, they wanted it fresh and served chilled. Something about their magic allowed them to handle the temperature differential better—and I came armed with magic that could serve their nectar at the perfect temperature.

Miranda’s expression brightened with her delight.

Upon correctly identifying another sucker willing to serve them, the birds swarmed her, roosting in her hair, on her shoulders, and perching wherever they could find a spot.

It took me a minute to find one of the ones I knew by name, a young boy with an unusual blue and black banding around his throat. I reached over and stroked his breast. “Hey, Marrinni. Did those mean tyrants fail to give you enough nectar last night?”

Marrinni abandoned the cadet and hopped onto my finger. “We have some. But only some. Not much. Almost gone.”

Marrinni had a long way to go with his speech, but well aware he still learned, I praised him. “I’ll make sure everyone has their breakfast. I’ll even chill it nicely. Can you go retrieve the other detectives? I have an art project we need to work on. You can help. See if the songbirds would like to join us.”

“Hawks are in today. Want them, too?”

“Sure. Go summon all the birds, and I’ll make sure everyone has their breakfast. Please ask them to be honest about what they get. We have to show Cadet Miranda that we’re sensible sometimes .”

The birds chirped and zipped away to do my bidding.

“They really talk,” Miranda whispered, her eyes wide with awe .

“They do. If you take to any of the birds, they may be available for partnerships. Jace has formed a relationship with Mikhal, who is one of the younger hummingbirds. Marrinni, who is the one I was talking to, is still in training, but I will probably ask for him once he’s capable of joining a team. Most of the birds in our station are in training. The ones that aren’t in training usually go home with their partners or live at Jace’s place. He has an orchard, and his landscapers care for all the birds there. There are wards that protect them from predators.”

“I don’t suppose he’d let us see the birds, would he?”

“Jace would love showing you the grounds. I’ll even ask if he’ll indulge and give you a ride as a unicorn. Apparently, he has little patience for riders, and he needs to get better at giving cops rides without bucking them off the instant the ride is over.” I laughed, hauled my cooler of coffee to my office, and went around the floor collecting the hummingbird feeders and checking on the seed dishes for the other birds.

Marrinni hadn’t been joking; they were down to the dregs, and there were few enough seeds I worried that someone had forgotten to feed them before leaving. Or worse—there were more mouths to feed.

It was the right time of year for fledgling birds to show up in our flock, resulting in us having to do a headcount of birds to find out how many younglings we had to care for.

Their parents often forgot to notify us humans of the additions to the flock.

As mold could sicken—or even kill—our hummingbird charges, I used soap and magic to sterilize each feeder before filling them, using another magicker trick to lower the nectar’s temperature to what they liked, and returning them to their places. I also refilled the seed dishes. As I finished, the flock returned, and sure enough, I spotted at least six new fledgling hawks, the songbird numbers had doubled, and I worried we had triple the number of young hummingbirds.

Despite the chaos the new birds would cause, I smiled at the lot of them. “All right. The veterans of the station, go have your breakfast. The new babies, who haven’t been to a trainer yet, please perch on the backs of all chairs in the cubical farm.”

The older birds chirped, sang, and otherwise communicated the instructions to the younglings, who zipped off as told. As the hawks hated leaving their babies, I went to the nearby supply closet, grabbed two pairs of leather gloves, and tossed a set to Miranda. Expecting to be covered with birds, I held both arms out, making sure they had sufficient room to land. “Hold your arms out like this.”

Once Miranda was positioned to receive the birds of prey, I said, “All right, hawks and other lethal bird kings and queens, try to land only on the gloves, all right?”

Judging from the calls, I had three sets of proud parents with two fledgling babies each. After some general confusion, I ended up with all the fledglings while the parents covered Miranda’s fists, wrists, and forearms.

I introduced myself to the babies, smiling as the young birds struggled with their words. After a few minutes, I learned the sole male was named Petri and his sister was Llama. The next pair of siblings were Mary and Migella. The final pair was Slate and Granite. I had no idea why a pair of hawks might name their daughter Llama, but I knew better than to question it.

The birds of prey became rather depressed if anyone showed disapproval of their names for their children.

One day, we might have some better luck teaching them the nuances of life and naming schemes.

Marrinni returned with Paul in tow, and he zipped around the elephant’s head. “See? See? He is here, Paul-Paul!”

Somehow, Paul had taught the birds the concept of nicknames, although they tended to just repeat someone’s name rather than come up with something unique. As their efforts reduced us to gibbering idiots, we left it alone and bragged if we happened to earn being addressed as such.

I nodded in the direction of the captain’s shoes. “I stole all the captain’s left shoes and all but one of his slippers, Paul. Miranda helped, but I masterminded the theft. She’s an excellent partner in crime, however—and I feel we have a solid chance of getting away with it.”

The elephant got onto the floor and bowed down before us. “We are not worthy, Lovell.”

I grinned at his antics. “Want to help me hang his shoes from the ceiling?”

“Do I ever. The captain broke Jace’s heart yesterday. He must pay for his crimes.”

What had I missed while out of the station? However, if Jace had had his heart broken, I could make a few guesses. “Did Captain Farthan refuse to let him bring that turkey in?”

“Worse. The female turkey laid eggs yesterday morning, which she is protecting most fiercely. Due to Sir Blackie’s borderline sentient state, the captain wants the birds to be kept safely at home where the nest is guarded—and he wants Mamma Mia doing the guarding. Jace had called in that he’d be late because of the eggs and had been given orders.”

I raised my hand, pinched the bridge of my nose, and sighed. “And Misfit is going to training camp, isn’t she?”

“She will be gone for the next six weeks. She generally qualified and received an exemption for her lack of general aggression.”

“That’s a kind way of saying she won’t even attack a tissue,” I muttered.

“As such, Jace is bereft of all his animals and birds. He is not happy about being bereft his furred and feathered friends. Mikhal is likewise off for schooling, but the captain was nice enough to confirm that Jace would be permanently keeping the little guy.”

Well, that was something. “I’m going to ask for Marrinni.”

The hummingbird whistled and clicked, and he landed on my shoulder before proceeding to throw his tiny body against my neck, doing the avian equivalent of writhing in pleasure.

Paul got up, observed the bird’s antics, and huffed a laugh, which beat his typical trumpeting—or at least spared my eardrums. “With how you dote on him? I’ll make a comment to the captain, assuming you survive stealing his shoes. At the rate we’re going, all the detectives will have a hummingbird.” The elephant eyed our collection of hawks. “I’ll get a pair of gloves and help ferry them to the aviary—and warn them they have a lot of incoming birds.”

“And they all need breakfast. I already fed the hummingbirds and the songbirds, and these, excepting the birds Miranda is escorting, are all fledglings.”

“Well, the aviary is going to be busy registering everyone.” Paul cleared his throat, drew in a breath, and bellowed, “Will all parents of fledglings please report to me for fledgling registration?”

I thought about telling Paul he’d made a mistake, but within two minutes, birds covered him and he had no way to help us with the hawks. I shook my head, heading for the elevator. “I’ll show you to the aviary, we’ll drop these beauties off so they can get their breakfast, and they can rescue Paul while we hang shoes from the ceiling. Just take your time and keep your stride steady. They’re used to being carried.”

“When I’d wanted to join the cops, I had no idea it was anything like this.”

“Just wait until the dog and pony show arrives. The fun is just beginning.”

Wednesday, May 2, 2057

Lower North Lakes, Precinct 153

Cauldron City, Nebraska.

While I had an office, I joined the rest of the cops in the cubicle farm for the best view of the captain when he stormed into our station. As warned, a bereft Jace joined the party, and he swore vengeance on the opal. To make it clear he was the true ruler of the station, he waited as a unicorn, and he’d gotten us to help saddle and bridle him in his work parade gear, gear he’d accidentally manifested in the aftermath of his trip to New Hampshire.

A leatherworker had added some embellishments along with the Cauldron City Police logo, identifying him as an official police unicorn.

Nobody had warned me that the unicorn’s dragoness had also been confiscated, forced to return to New York to handle some work matters. In good news, she would return by Friday.

Judging from the rate the unicorn fidgeted, we’d have to put the dragoness in protective custody just to preserve his sanity.

While Paul could destroy buildings when he got into a similar mood, I held some faith that Jace would keep his sullenness to the rare sigh, snort, and stomp of his hoof. As we wanted a front seat to the show, we’d taken over the desks of the cops on a different shift. As I valued my life, I had my phone out and ready to record beginning when the captain stepped out of the elevator.

Two minutes before nine, Captain Farthan emerged from the elevators with the Black Dragon of New York. According to his expression, we were dead cops, the building might be flattened, and he’d enjoy every minute he spent licking the meat off our bones.

I pressed the record button and captured his stately march in my direction. A quick pan to his feet revealed he wore a pair of cheap slippers, so new he’d likely walked to a store down the street from his house after calling in a black dragon to go inside for him—unless he’d gone in as a dragon.

It could go either way. Aware that if I grinned, my life would end sooner, I managed to keep my expression neutral .

“Detective Lovell, you could have just left a note informing me of your successful experiment.”

As a good thief did not confess at the first sign of pressure, I met my captain’s gaze and replied, “I’m not sure what you’re talking about, sir.”

Raising a brow, the opal dragon pointed up at the collection of shoes hanging from the ceiling. “There is only one man, dragon, or other bold enough in this station to dare enter my home without permission and steal my shoes. Specifically, my left shoes. Is there a reason you also decided to take all but one of my slippers?”

My time had come. Which one of the many variants of the joke would I crack?

“He’s probably trying to communicate that you are out of your right mind, sir,” Jace announced, and he lifted his head, poked at one of the strings with his horn, and cut the shoe down, which thumped to the floor. Taking care with his pristine silvery white medical boot, the unicorn nudged the piece of footwear. “Or, perhaps, that you need to get new shoes?” After regarding the rather worn loafer, he picked it up in his mouth and dumped it on the desk in front of me. “You should have made the shoes disappear, Lovell. You would have been doing him a favor. We should report those shoes as a crime.”

Right. Jace had a thing about his shoes. After he’d gotten his frog punctured, the unicorn had taught us a very important lesson on how certain cops, when provoked, became menaces worse than Paul on a bad day.

“This is not about the state of my shoes,” the opal dragon growled.

The Black Dragon of New York strolled over, picked up the offending shoe, and held it up for a closer examination. “We are going shopping, Nathan. The boys are right. This is not acceptable. You can rant and rave about their cruel mistreatments of your most magnificent self while we have coffee and enjoy our outing. They can stay here and work.”

The opal dragon’s wrath fell onto the mean old black, who couldn’t have cared less about my captain’s displeasure. “Why are you siding with them?”

I grinned at the complaint in my captain’s tone. “Cadet Miranda will be spending the day in our office while we go over the theft cases and potential connections with Smithson’s case. Making use of the new information, I’m going to raid Jace’s office, steal his digital board, and reevaluate the case for him. He can watch and learn. In exchange, you can raid the Portuguese place for chicken, you can grab some cheese and tortillas, and we can have quesadillas for lunch.”

The unicorn heaved a sigh. “Why do you want me to suffer, Lovell? I just finished suffering. I have no interest in having chicken or cheese right now.”

“I’ll get you a steak from the Brazilian place,” the Black Dragon of New York promised. “Detective Lovell and Cadet Miranda might be able to give you a break in that case that’s been driving you insane because you know there are inconsistencies but you haven’t been able to figure out which bits are the truth and which bits are leading you astray. It’s better than going insane, which is what you’re going to do if you keep banging your head against the wall.”

The unicorn eyed the black dragon. “Can you get me something extra spicy?”

“There’s a Mexican place with good salsa that’ll clear a dragon’s sinuses out. I’ll go get you some,” the Black Dragon of New York promised. “I will handle the replacement shoes. Dispose of any you deem too old or worn. Leave the slippers alone.”

“I can do that.”

To my amusement, Jace put his horn to good use and went to work cutting down the shoes and slippers, undoing our hard work in a matter of minutes. I helped until my fellow officers drove me off to do something productive while they made the evidence of my misdeeds disappear.

With no other reasons left to delay, I retreated to begin the tedious work of putting together the pieces of a brutal and complicated puzzle.

Wednesday, May 2, 2057

Lower North Lakes, Precinct 153

Cauldron City, Nebraska.

The complications of crime investigations would one day drive me insane. Armed with Jace’s digital board, I opened a new file and started from the beginning, importing everything we had on Dr. Timothy Lerrans. In most cases, we ignored the circumstances of someone’s birth, but I opted to check our prime subject’s vital information for any clues.

According to the recent records, Dr. Lerrans was fifty-seven, had spent most of his career living on Block Island, and had been considered an upstanding member of society, volunteering for hospitals in his spare time, standing in for other surgeons as needed, and otherwise doing what he could to save lives.

His birth certificate told me two different stories. The first one I uncovered supported the claim of Dr. Lerrans being fifty-seven.

The second one claimed he was sixty-two.

Taking care to explain the why behind my every action to Miranda, I began the tedious process of hunting for clues on how to solve the mystery that was the murderous surgeon.

Puzzled over how one man could have two birth certificates, I grabbed my phone, dug through our directories for the number of the hospital associated with the first birth certificate, and played a convoluted game of phone tag.

Once I got ahold of somebody, it took me less than twenty minutes to determine the birth certificate was a clever fake. The hospital had no records of a Mrs. Lerrans giving birth at their institution nor did their digital records have any evidence of a Lerrans family baby having been born there. After consulting with local police, I learned the hospital had been targeted by a theft involving documentation twenty-seven years prior.

When I cross-referenced the rest of the records associated with Dr. Lerrans, I found a connection.

He’d begun working as a surgeon twenty-five years ago after two years of additional education at a state university. The university records, which cost me a call to a local judge for a warrant, another round of phone tag, and most of my sanity, told yet another tale of lies and deceit.

The University of New Hampshire had accepted him based on his performance at a university in Maine. However, a single phone call to the school in Maine, the first made without needing to play any games, revealed the man had never attended their institution. To even the educated eye, the transcript appeared to be legitimate, but there were no matching records in their system.

Unlike the hospital, there was no evidence of theft.

Either Dr. Lerrans had falsified the transcript or he’d somehow deleted the evidence of his attendance. I suspected a falsified transcription, but I read off the list of courses and professors, received a verification those were legitimate, and waited while someone at the school placed a few calls on my behalf.

They promised to call me back. To sweeten the deal for me, the universities would begin acquiring justice for us.

Dr. Lerrans, by the end of the day, would be a public shame of the medical community, as neither school was willing to have their name smeared by a con artist’s poor behavior. Cauldron City would assist the schools through the distribution of the man’s photographs, ranging from when he was a young adult to current. Unless he completely changed his appearance, he wouldn’t be able to rely on common magicker tricks to deceive people.

Magic worked best when it had a strong foundation. I could, with more effort than I typically cared to invest, make it appear as though I were twenty years older. From time to time, I used the skill to aid in my investigations. Youth helped sometimes, but it often hampered. Many discounted people because of their apparent age.

Appearances often lied, and people tended to believe what their eyes told them, no matter how much evidence existed indicating the truth.

Hunting ghosts irritated me, and while I waited for the two universities to solve the mystery of the doctor’s education, I glared at Jace’s digital murder board. If I returned it to its owner, would everyone forget about my offer to help sort out the mess that was the dead weight case?

“That’s quite the expression,” Miranda commented. “Should I ask? Or is this way over my pay grade?”

“It’s not over your pay grade,” I replied, hoping my response would begin the process of building the woman’s confidence. “We both might be cursing by the end of the day, though. Our goal is to help Jace get enough good information to start making progress on this nightmare. However, everything we thought we knew about the case seems to be incorrect, so we’re going to have to start from the very beginning, eliminate inconsistencies and misconceptions, and try to build this case from the ground up. Jace was just promoted, and he has no experience handling a case. I’m experienced, and I tend to have a good eye for convoluted messes. Our job is to see how much we can get untangled before sending this back over to Jace to manage. Honestly, this is way over everyone’s pay grade. If it was an option, I’d toss this over to the FBI, but from my understanding of the situation, the FBI believes we’re in a better position to handle the majority of the work. We’ll have to deal with the FBI eventually, though. This case will definitely qualify.”

“And the FBI and local law enforcement don’t get along.”

I appreciated that she issued her comment as a statement rather than a question. While I viewed myself as eternally patient, my sanity would fray if I needed to go into detail on why the police and the FBI couldn’t manage to share the same room without posturing. On a case as complicated as the one we needed to handle, cooperation would help us solve it a great deal faster. Wading through the bullshit would test me, but I wanted to set a good example for the cadet.

She wanted a chance at a new life, and it was my job to stack the deck in her favor, giving her every opportunity to succeed.

An unfortunate number of people would view the woman through the lens of her past with zero care of her future.

I took the time to breathe and sip at my coffee, considering the new snarls tangling the case. While Jace wouldn’t appreciate me cluttering up his precious new board, I started a third case file, and rather than begin with the suspect, I decided to get a better look at the victims. “I don’t suppose you happen to know where Mercy is storing their bodies, do you?”

“I know where the one facility is. As far as I know, there are three. Two are in the necropolis. One is somewhere in Cauldron City. The rumors say it’s in a quiet precinct with a park.”

“There’s a precinct that’s a park. It’s next to ours, and it just has a few shops, a restaurant, and the park itself. It’s a staycation spot. It was designed to give people a place to escape without having to leave the city. I wasn’t aware there might be a place to stash bodies, though.”

As I couldn’t afford to travel, I made good use of Precinct 154’s park, taking a day here and there to just wander, relax, and disconnect from life for a while. Without the bonuses from containing Paul, I expected to be taking fewer days for the park and finding other ways to help my parents and family get by .

A little elbow grease could help, and I bet my childhood home could use a little tender, loving care from me.

That would be a problem for another day. Forcing myself back to my work, I made entries in the new file.

“Like the necropolis, it’s underneath the park. I believe it was intended to be a warehouse—a place to store things during the construction or an emergency. It’s not quite enough to serve as a bunker, but it might? It’s not connected to the necropolis, and there aren’t any sewer connections. You have to access it through a utility building in the park—or right outside of it, like a storm cellar. If we can find the entrance, I can get us in, though. If the rumors are to be believed, Mercy only goes to dump bodies, and those bodies are all in stasis so they can be experimented on again later.”

“Do you think any of them are still alive?” I asked, grimacing at the thought of someone hanging in the fragile space between life and death.

Jace’s decision to save a serial killer would haunt just about everybody. Many cases would be closed, but everyone I’d talked to about the situation had come to the same conclusion: we hunted a true monster.

“I don’t know.”

I labeled two of my new entries as for within the necropolis. As she hadn’t specified the park was a precinct, I pulled up a list of every park in the city and populated every bit of information I could on them into individual files within the entry. I worried for our sanity, as Cauldron City had hundreds of parks. Some were the size of a city block. Others were large enough people could—and did—get lost in them, requiring law enforcement to send out the birds to help locate and rescue those who hadn’t exercised sufficient caution.

Every time we had an incident, we contacted the managers of the parks to improve signage and take steps to prevent the need for rescue parties.

“That’s a lot of parks,” Miranda commented in a rather neutral tone.

“And we’re going to have to visit each and every one of them to eliminate them from the list. I hope you like exploring, because it seems our job is going to involve a great deal of wandering around while looking for a needle in a haystack. But if we can find this storage warehouse, I think we’ll be in a much better position to learn about this bastard’s operations—and how to take him down once and for all.”

While I doubted we could stop him before he struck again, I would do my best to track the bastard down and live up to my oath to protect and serve my community.