Bloodfever

O’Duffy sat down on the sofa next to me, gently, for such an overweight man. “I know what you think of me,” he said.

When I would have protested politely—good southern manners die hard, if at all—he gave me what my mother calls the “shush wave.”

“I’ve been doing this job for twenty-two years, Ms. Lane. I know what the families of closed murder cases feel when they look at me. Pain. Anger.” He gave a dry laugh. “The conviction that I must be a chuffing idiot who spends too much time in the pubs and not enough time on the job, or their loved one would be resting in vindicated peace while the perp rotted in jail.”

Rotting in jail was far too kind a fate for my sister’s murderer. Besides, I wasn’t sure any jail cell could hold him. The crimson-robed leader of the Unseelie might draw symbols on the floor, stamp his staff, and disappear through a convenient portal. Though Barrons had cautioned against assumptions, I saw no reason to doubt the Lord Master was responsible for my sister’s death.

O’Duffy paused, perhaps giving me a chance to rebut. I didn’t. He was right. I’d felt all that and more, but weighing the jelly stains on his tie and the girth overhanging his belt as circumstantial evidence, I’d convicted him of loitering overlong in bakeries and cafés, not pubs.

He selected two maps of Dublin from the table and handed them to me.

I gave him a quizzical look.

“The one on top is from last year. The one beneath it was published seven years earlier.”

I shrugged. “And?” A few weeks ago I would have been delighted for any help from the Garda I could get. Now that I knew what I knew about the Dark Zone neighboring Barrons Books and Baubles—that terrible wasteland where I’d found 1247 LaRuhe, had a violent confrontation with the Lord Master, and nearly been killed—I wanted the police to stay as far out of my life as I could keep them. I didn’t want any more deaths on my conscience. There was nothing the Garda could do to help me anyway. Only a sidhe-seer could see the monsters that had taken over the abandoned neighborhood and turned it into a death trap. The average human wouldn’t know they were in danger until they were knee-deep in dead.

“I found your 1247 LaRuhe, Ms. Lane. It’s on the map published seven years ago. Oddly enough, it’s not on the one published last year. Grand Walk, one block down from this bookstore, isn’t on the new map, either. Neither is Connelly Street, a block beyond that. I know. I went down there before I came to see you.”

Oh, God, he’d walked into the Dark Zone this morning? The day was barely bright enough to keep the Shades hunkered down wherever it was the nasty things hide! If the storm had blown in even one more dense, sky-obliterating cloud, the boldest of those life-suckers might have dared the day for a human Happy Meal. O’Duffy had just been waltzing cheek-to-cheek with Death, and didn’t even know it!

The unsuspecting inspector waved a hand at the pile of maps. They looked well examined. One of them appeared to have been balled up in shock or perhaps angry disbelief, then re-smoothed. I was no stranger to those emotions. “In fact, Ms. Lane,” O’Duffy continued, “none of the streets I just mentioned are on any recently published map.”

I gave him my best blank look. “What are you saying, Inspector? Has the city renamed the streets in this part of Dublin? Is that why they’re not on the new maps?”

His face tightened and his gaze cut away. “Nobody renamed the streets,” he growled. “Unless they did it without notifying a single person in authority.” He looked back at me, hard. “I thought there might be something else you wanted to tell me, Ms. Lane. Something that might sound…a bit…unusual?”

I saw it then, in his eyes. Something had happened to the inspector recently that had drastically changed his paradigm. I had no idea what had shaken the hard-boiled, overworked, fact-finding detective from his pragmatic view of the world but he, too, was now thinking outside his box.

I needed him back inside his box—ASAP. Outside the box in this city was a dangerous place to be.

I thought fast. I didn’t have much to work with. “Inspector,” I said, sweetening and softening my Georgia drawl, “putting on the southern,” as we call it back home, a sort of verbal honey-butter that masks the unpalatable taste of whatever we’re slathering it on, “I know you must think me a complete idiot, coming over here and questioning your investigative techniques when anyone can see you’re the expert in the field and I don’t have an ounce of training in detecting matters, and I appreciate how patient you’ve been with me, but I no longer have any concerns about your investigation into my sister’s death. I know now that you did everything you could to solve her case. I meant to stop by and speak with you before I left, but…well, the truth is I was feeling a bit embarrassed about our previous encounters. I went back to the alley the other day and took a good look around, without crying and letting my emotions get away from me, and I realized that my sister didn’t leave me any clues. It was grief and anger and a whole boatload of wishful thinking on my part. Whatever was scratched into that alley had been done years ago.”

“Whatever was scratched into that alley?” O’Duffy repeated carefully, and I knew he was recalling how adamant I’d been only last week about exactly what was scratched into that alley.

“Really, I could barely make it out at all. It might have been anything.”

“Is that so, Ms. Lane?”

“Yes. And I meant to tell you it wasn’t her cosmetic bag, either. I got that mixed up, too. Mom said she gave Alina the silver one and it wasn’t quilted. Mom wanted us to be able to tell them apart. We were forever arguing over whose was what and what was whose. The fact is I was grasping at straws and I’m sorry I wasted your time. You were right when you told me I should pack up, go home, and help my family get through these difficult times.”

“I see,” he said slowly, and I was afraid he really did—right through me.

Didn’t overworked, underpaid civil servants only grease squeaky wheels? I wasn’t squeaking anymore, so why wasn’t he getting the message and holstering his oilcan? Alina’s case had been closed before I’d come over, he’d refused to reopen it, and I’d be darned if he was reopening it now. He’d get himself killed!

I abandoned the oversweetened drawl. “Look, Inspector, what I’m saying is that I’ve given up. I’m not asking you or anyone else to continue the investigation. I know your department is overloaded. I know there are no leads. I know it’s unsolved and I accept that my sister’s case is closed.”