56

  Nairo and Ridley came back to the office dog tired, wary, sweating, and soaking wet. They plodded, ran, and rode cabs from one side of Valderia to the other. Their search for Schumacher turned up nothing but dead ends and cold shoulders. No one had seen the wealthy owner or had heard from him. The last known sighting they had of him was going back almost a week. Traipsing around the city asking after an owner wasn't exactly the most sane or safe thing one could do, and most people were more than wary about divulging any information concerning the whereabouts of an owner who hadn't specifically wanted to be found.

  "It's ridiculous!" Ridley snapped, throwing off his soaking wet coat and tossing it to one crumpled corner of the office. "We've chased every possible lead on this guy and no one has seen him! What, has he just upped and vanished from the face of the earth?"

  Nairo sighed and hung her long black trench coat up carefully, tutting at the mud spattered hem and sat down behind her desk, massaging her sore feet. Ridley wasn't wrong. It had been an exhausting 24 hours. Ever since they found out about Schumacher's nefarious past, they hadn't stopped in their relentless pursuit of him. They'd searched from moonlight to dawn to sundown to moonlight again, and there was no sign of Schumacher. They had even spent a fruitless night camped outside of his mansion, hiding in the bushes and watching for him. But other than the comings and goings of the monstrous manservant, they saw little signs of life at the Schumacher estate.

  "He couldn't have just disappeared," Nairo said. "Someone that wealthy and that accustomed to living in luxury, he has to have gone somewhere. He has to have taken gold with him, and if there's gold, people take notice. Even if he's gone somewhere where no one knows who he is, he would have had to have resurfaced, he has too much interest in Valderia to be gone for long."

  "What I don't understand," Ridley said in frustration. "Is why he's gone missing in the first place?"

  "Why does any criminal skip town?" Nairo replied.

  "But why would he skip town?" Ridley shot back. "He doesn't know we're after him. He doesn't know how much evidence we have, so why would he be spooked enough to run? And not only run but disappear altogether, leaving his wife and his child at home?"

  "He did have his man take out files," Nairo said. "He might have thought we were getting too close and decided that he needed to get out of town."

  "He's one of the richest people in the city, he could make us disappear like that!" Ridley snapped his fingers together. "And besides, the information that he had his man nick from us didn't really implicate him in anything. We only got dirt on him in the last day or two. Before that, Schumacher was just a person of interest because he was connected to the victim. We even interviewed the guy and dismissed him from the suspect list, so why disappear now?

  "Who knows what he knows," Nairo said in exasperation. "He could have had us followed this entire time. He might have somebody on the inside of the coroners or in the police. He's an owner, there's no telling how deep his fingers go."

  "Ha! You're starting to sound like me now." Ridley said as he poured a drink for himself and Nairo.

  "Well... it's true, isn't it?" Nairo said, accepting the drink from him. "If he's been doing this for decades, then he must have coroners, the police, and judges all in his pocket, shielding him and keeping him far from a court or a jail cell."

  "I agree with you on that," Ridley said, tipping his glass toward her before taking a sip.

  Suddenly there was a thumping at the door. Ridley froze with his drink to his lips, and his eyes flashed to Nairo.

  "We expecting anyone?" Ridley asked.

  Nairo shook her head. There was another desperate thump at the door, and they heard someone shouting on the other side. Ridley quickly downed his drink and slid down the walls of the hallway, grabbing a bat he kept just behind the door. He pressed into the door and listened for a second before the thumping began again.

  "Sergeant! Sergeant! I mean Ms. Nairo!" a desperate voice shouted through the door.

  Ridley looked over his shoulder at Nairo and raised an eyebrow.

  "Sounds like it's for you, Sarge."

  Nairo pushed him out of the way and then opened the door. Through it tumbled two bloody, dishevelled, homeless people.

  "What the..." Nairo gasped as the two pale vagrants tumbled through the doorway and splatted across the hallway floor.

  "Sergeant, it's us!" the skinnier of the two vagrants said, pulling the chubby one back to his feet.

  Nairo squinted in the half-lit hallway at them, and then her eyes widened.

  "Washbottom?" Nairo said incredulously.

  "And Edgewater, ma'am," the grimy-faced Wally said.

  "Hello ma'am," Timmy gasped.

  "What the hell was happening to you two?? Nairo said, looking them up and down.

  They were filthy and dressed in rags. Wally was baleful and covered in blood.

  "You bleeding on my rug, Edgewater?" Ridley said, slowly placing the bat down against the wall.

  "Sorry sir," Timmy mumbled, wobbling slightly. His face was a pallid white and caked in freshly dripping blood.

  "Quick, get him inside and sit him down!" Nairo commanded, realising the poor boy was maybe a few seconds away from unconsciousness.

  Nairo and Wally helped Timmy into the office while Ridley went to collect the first-aid box that Nairo insisted they purchase when they moved in. Nairo and Wally half-carried and half-dragged Timmy into the office and sat him down on the sagging couch. In the warm light of the office, Nairo could see just how badly he was hurt. There was a nasty split across his skull that was dripping blood. The skin around the cut was purple and puckered. His head looked like a bruised, overripe melon that had split open. She looked over at Wally for an explanation and saw him hugging his side. Without a word, she pulled his elbow away and saw the side of his shirt was drenched in blood. She looked him in the eye, cocked an eyebrow and with her best steely sergeant's voice she said:

  "Corporal, what the hell have you two been up to?"

  The story came tumbling from Wally. He babbled on about overdoses and undercover operations, something called a Sarpele, a Gnommish restaurant, dead Triads, Conway, Corporal Nelson in the hospital, and all the other ghosts of Nairo's past. The story made little sense, but it kept him calm while she examined his wounds while Ridley tried to get Timmy to stop bleeding. Timmy would chime in now and again with a half-lucid, half-remembered detail, but otherwise he just breathed heavily and moaned while Ridley pinched his flesh together and tried to try to clean his wounds, a smoke clamped between his lips.

  "He needs to go to the hospital," Ridley said, pulling a face as blood squirted from the top of Timmy's head. "No way we can stitch this up here."

  "You're going to need stitches too," Nairo said to Wally after cleaning up the fresh slice in his side. "Why have you come here instead of going to the hospital?"

  "Well... because we couldn't," Wally stammered. "You see... we're on administrative leave."

  "So?" Nairo said.

  "We're not supposed to be goin' round doin' any investigatin' are we?" Wally said. "And we thought we'd get in trouble for going undercover and trying to catch the man in black."

  "I understand that," Nairo said. "But why did you not go to the hospital?"

  "We thought they'd snitch," Wally said with a shrug. "Plus we needed to tell somebody wot happened. We couldn't go back to the precinct because we'll get in all sorts of trouble. Sergeant Errol would spread our guts on his toast, and Conway would probably smash our heads in, and then the Captain would fire what's left of us."

  "Probably for the best," Ridley said. "You two will probably get yourselves killed at this rate."

  "Yeah probably," Wally said with a sad downturn at the corner of his mouth, his skinny body sagging. "We just couldn't stand by though while this guy was out there killin' people, you know? He hurt our friend."

  "Justice must be done!" Timmy muttered, his eyes rolling under his half-closed eyelids.

  "So you two rookie wallies thought you would have a go at playing hero?" Ridley snorted. "Take down some homeless bum murdering psychopath by yourselves."

  "When you say it like that, it sounds kinda silly," Wally said. "We didn't have any backup when it all happened, and then he got away, and Timmy was bleeding, and I panicked, and you was the only person we thought would listen to us."

  Nairo sighed and placed down the bloody bandages, pushing hair out of her face.

  "I don't know what we can do to help you Wally," Nairo said. "I'm not a police officer anymore. I can't make arrests, and I certainly don't have any sway in the precinct anymore."

  "You can help us catch him," Wally said earnestly. "You're still a detective, right?"

  "Yes, but we're already working a case..."

  "Please Sarge! This guy's pure evil! You should have seen him, he was he was enjoying killing those people! Who knows how many he's killed."

  "So what, he's like a homeless person serial killer?" Ridley asked, only half hiding the sarcasm in his voice.

  "Exactly!" Wally said excitedly. "He might have killed like hundreds or thousands of people! Who knows? He's a proper sicko Sarge, he needs to be stopped."

  Nairo sighed again and then sat back.

  "Do you have any description of him that could help maybe?"

  "Not really," Wally said, deflating again. "He was really tall, and I'm pretty sure he was a human, and well, he wore a balaclava, so we didn't get to see what he looked like, but he sounded like he was from the city."

  The narrative has been taken without permission. Report any sightings.

  "You heard him speak?" Nairo said.

  "He called me a piggy," Timmy said faintly.

  "We know he has good vision then," Ridley snorted.

  "So he's a really tall human from the city who can see?" Nairo said, not hiding her disappointment in the vague description. "Honestly guys, I think you need to take this to the captain or Conway. You need the police, not a pair of PIs that are up to their necks in it already. This sounds serious."

  "We know that's where we came to you," Wally said. He looked away, and his eyes darkened. "It was the way he was doing it Sarge, like he wasn't even killing people... just like doing chores or somethin'. The way he was choosin' 'em like he was picking cuts at the butcher shop. It was just so cold and ruthless."

  "How did you say he was killing his victims?" Nairo asked.

  "I don't know," Wally said. "It was too dark, but I think he was poking them with something like one of those needles that doctors use."

  "Maybe he's a psychopathic serial killing doctor," Ridley said.

  "I dunno, he didn't seem like a doctor," Wally said, scratching the side of his face. "'E seemed more like a thug or a criminal of some sort. 'E could definitely scrap."

  "Well he was definitely a criminal, since he was killing people," Nairo said.

  "Oh right yeah, course," Wally said laughing nervously.

  "Anything else?" Nairo asked. "Anything that could help identify him. Or maybe even link him to a previous killing?"

  "Like wot?" Wally asked.

  "I don't know. Maybe a particular way of killing or a methodology..."

  "He was whistling while he did it," Wally said.

  "Whistling?" Ridley said perking up like a dog when the postman arrives. "How?"

  "With his lips I guess," Wally said.

  "No, I mean what was he whistling?"

  "Oh I dunno it sounded familiar, but I'm a bit tone deaf I couldn't tell you what it was."

  "Could you repeat it?" Ridley asked, and Nairo looked at him curiously.

  "No, never been good at whistling me." Wally gave him an embarrassed shrug.

  Ridley chewed his lip for a moment, and then Timmy began whistling. It was a tuneless, breathy noise at first, but then he found his rhythm and began whistling a familiar tune. Ridley's eyes widened, and he shook his head as if he couldn't believe the idea that just crossed his own mind.

  "What is that called, Sarge?" he asked, his voice slow and pondering.

  "The Farmer's Dell," Nairo said, her tone hushed as her mind began to traverse down the path Ridley's had just stumbled.

  "It can't be," Ridley hissed.

  "You said this guy was tall?" Nairo asked Wally.

  "Yeah, he was taller than me by a good bit," Wally said.

  "Was he young or old?" Ridley snapped.

  "I dunno, I didn't see his face."

  "If you had to guess if your life was on the line right now Wally, was he young or was he old?" Ridley growled at him.

  "Well... I think he was older than me... and probably youse two," Wally stammered nervously, not enjoying Ridley's undivided attention. "But I wouldn't say he was like a old git or nuffin'"

  "And he was stabbing these people to death?" Ridley asked.

  "No not really, he was poking them."

  "With a needle?"

  "Yeah, it looked like a needle."

  "And that old man told you they die a horrible, agonising, and painful death, all twisted up?" Ridley said, his voice on the edge of mania.

  "Yeah, sounded like the overdoses. We reckon it was this feller who had been doing 'em."

  "Oh my stars," Nairo gasped. "It can't be."

  "Can't it?" Ridley said, his voice deathly calm, his blank eyes flicking back and forth as the cogs in his mind whirred trying to make sense of this new information.

  "A tall psychopath poisoning people while whistling the farmer's dell?" Ridley muttered.

  It can't be," Nairo said. "He's long dead. They found his body..."

  "A body was found," Ridley corrected her. "Remember, he was so smashed to pieces they couldn't properly identify him."

  "So he fakes his death and then comes back a decade later to murder homeless people and the girlfriends of Schumacker... on behalf of Schumacker?"

  "The thief that broke in and robbed us was tall and wearing a black coat," Ridley said. "And the bastard that killed Cecilia Brown and stabbed me was tall in a black coat with a black hat and a black mask. It's all the same person!"

  "Who was found dead and smashed up? Who's Cecilia? When did you get stabbed? I got stabbed too. Who's Schumacker? Why's his girlfriends getting killed? What's going on?" Wally said his voice almost tipping into hysteria.

  Nairo looked at him as if she had forgotten he was there and then looked back at Ridley.

  "It can't be. It just has to be a coincidence. This guy could be any cat's paw assassin that Schumacker's hired."

  "It's why Quinn wanted us to go to his grave!" Ridley said almost shouting at Nairo. "Why else would HH have been in his notes? Why else would he have wanted us to go there? He must've found the connection!"

  "I don't know Ridley, it sounds too far-fetched... Wait..." Nairo paused and thought for a minute. "Remember when we spoke to his dad?"

  "Yeah?"

  "Something he said sat weird with me, but I didn't understand why at the time, but if he's alive it makes sense!"

  "What does?" Ridley asked.

  "He spoke about his son in the present tense."

  "What?" Ridley asked, confused.

  "Wait, hold on one second." Nairo raced off to grab her crumpled notepad out of the drawer. She came running back over, flicking through it rapidly. "I wrote it down because it struck me as weird. I didn't know why at the time, but he asked us what has he done now when we questioned him. And then, just at the end, before the nurse shooed us away, he said my son is evil not my son was evil."

  "He's a batty old man," Ridley suggested.

  "Exactly! We thought he was just confused. When I asked him when was the last time he spoke to his son, he said it's been a long time, and he would like to keep it that way! As in he doesn't want contact with him not that he can't contact him because he's dead! We thought the old man was senile, but what if in reality he knew his son was alive and he was too confused to pretend he wasn't and we misinterpreted it?"

  "Who's a crazy old man?" Wally asked, trying to keep up with what was going on in front of him. "Was his son dead, or is he not dead? What's that got to do with the man in black?"

  Nairo turned to Wally, understanding dawning in her eyes.

  "Hubert Hess was a two-bit crook and a distant relative of some forgotten branch of the Owner's family. He was a small-time pimp who ran afoul of the Firm and was supposedly found, stabbed to death with his face smashed in, floating in the river. And now you're telling us that Hubert Hess is alive and has been killing people in the same way as the killer in our case has been!"

  "I am?" Wally blurted out.

  "Yes! Our killer's been masking his murders with these overdoses. The poison he's been using mirrors the effects of burn overdoses. He's used it as a smokescreen to kill at least five people that we know of."

  "Smokescreen?" Wally said.

  "It makes sense," Timmy grunted.

  "It does?" Wally said incredulously.

  "Why the burn overdoses continued even though we took it all off the street." Timmy sat up with the help of Nairo, clutching a pile of bloody rags on top of his head, blinking owlishly like he had just woken up from a deep slumber. "You see, we've been working in the Drug Enforcement Squad with Lieutenant Conway," Timmy explained to Nairo and Ridley. "We thought we had taken all the burn of the street. It was why the captain did that press conference after we busted a big-time burn dealer.

  "Yeah, his name was Cameron, and I was stabbed while we were doing it," Wally added, happy to finally understand some part of this conversation.

  "And apparently, Goblins have been running all over the city snatching Burn up as well. Our informant told us that there wasn't even any on the streets yet people started dying again," Timmy said.

  "Why would Hess be killing homeless people?" Ridley asked. "And why would he be killing people on behalf of Schumacker?"

  "But it makes sense," Nairo said. "Not the homeless people, but why he would be working with Schumacker; he is an Owner after all. Perhaps they knew each other growing up. We know that Hubert went to school with some Owners or they met while Hess ran his brothel. Maybe he met Schumacker and when he got in trouble and had to dissapear he went to him for protection. Hess, with his proclivities for violence plus his overall misogyny, would have made the perfect cat's paw for Schumacker to handle all of his dirty work."

  "So you're saying all this time Hess has been working for Schumacker and cleaning up his dirty little mistakes?" Ridley said.

  "From what we know about Hubert Hess, it makes sense," Nairo said. "He was a right nasty piece of work, and going around poisoning pregnant women wouldn't be out of his comfort zone."

  "He's been poisoning pregnant women!" Wally said, his eyes bugging wide "What kind of case have you two been working on?"

  "You don't even want to know the half of it," Ridley said to him.

  "If we can track down Hubert Hess, then we can get to Schumacker," Nairo said.

  "Hold on, let's not get ahead of ourselves, we don't even know if Hess is alive, let alone if he's this man in black who's been murdering homeless people," Ridley said. "And again I ask, why would Hess be murdering homeless people on behalf of Schumacker? I can't imagine he's got all of them pregnant as well."

  "It could be another smokescreen," Nairo said exasperatedly. "Maybe when the overdoses stopped, it would draw too much attention if they kept killing, so they needed to pretend that the overdoses were still happening."

  "Why?" Ridley asked. "LaRue's dead, Quinn's dead, and anybody who could link Schumacker to these murders is dead. Why would they need the smokescreen to continue?"

  "I don't know," Nairo admitted. "It doesn't all fit together perfectly, but it's the best lead we have for finding Schumacker."

  "If it is Hubert Hess and if Hess is even still alive," Ridley said.

  "Then we need to link these new murders to the old ones, and we need to track down Hess," Nairo said.

  "Well, unless you've added being a mystic to your considerable skill set Sarge, I don't know how we would find Hess." Ridley said, turning to Wally. "You know any of those talk to the dead old witchy types kid?"

  "There was a lady down my street who reckoned she could raise dead pets, but you have to give half a gold if you..." Wally said.

  "Mouth rot! Nairo blurted out.

  "I'm not lying, honestly. We can go and find her now if you want," Wally said.

  "No, I don't mean that," Nairo said. "I mean, if those homeless people are tied to our murders and the same method has been used to kill them, then they will have…"

  "Mouth rot! Ridley cried out. "Of course! We need to get down to the coroners. Is Drake still a shift?"

  "He better be," Nairo said excitedly before turning to Timmy and Wally. "You said that you were working some dead bodies yesterday?"

  "A couple of days ago now," Timmy mumbled.

  "So they will be with the coroner then? Nairo asked.

  "I guess so," Timmy said.

  "Then we can examine those bodies and find out if they have mouth rot, and if they do, then whoever is killing those homeless people is also the one that murdered Lana and Quinn and Manny and Eliza and Stacey and all of them!"

  "D'you reckon our man in black is your killer? Wally asked.

  "I'm almost certain of it," Nairo said.

  "Then we're going to help," Wally said, his fists clenched.

  "You're not even in a fit state to even help yourself, let alone catch a dangerous killer," Nairo said gently.

  "But Sarge..." Timmy mumbled through his swollen lips.

  "No Timmy, you need to get to the hospital like an hour ago. That wound is going to keep bleeding, and eventually you're going to pass out and die from blood loss," she said slowly as if explaining to a small child.

  "But that bastard hurt a friend of ours," Wally said.

  "And we will get him," Nairo said, patting him gently on his shoulder. "But your part in this is done now, boys. By the sounds of it, you had more than enough on your shoulders. Leave it to us now, and if we need backup, we'll know where to find you. Right now, I need you to get to a hospital, and I need you to get those wounds looked at before you end up next to your friend in that bed."

  "You done good kids," Ridley said, patting them both on the back. "Not often I'm happy to eat my words, but you two have turned out to be alright coppers."

  "Really?" Timmy said earnestly.

  "Yeah, but all coppers are pretty incompetent, so it's not a very high bar," Ridley said before looking back at Nairo. "Even if we prove the link between these murders, it doesn't prove that Hess is the killer."

  "First, we prove the link, then we find Herbert Hess," Nairo said.

  "And if that son of a bitch is still alive and he killed Quinn, then I'm gonna put him in the ground for good." Ridley said, his jaw set, and his mouth a cold slash.