coldironbadge.com

Bradley stared into the darkness of the outflow pipe. “This,” he said, “Would be a really damn good time to explain what you have in mind.”

At our feet, in an ugly, rust-stained concrete channel, water trickled out towards the lake. I stepped into it.

“I hope you aren’t too attached to those shoes,” I told him.

“I’ve stepped in worse,” he said, and walked into the water.

Into, not on, I thought sourly, no matter what he thinks.

“Now,” he began.

But I could feel my cell phone buzzing in my pocket. I took it out and checked the caller ID. “I’ll be able to tell you more in a second,” I said.

I flipped open the phone, “George,” I said, “What have you got?”

“What I have got?” he asked, “I’ve got a partner who nearly got herself killed, is what I’ve got. What the spurk do you think you’re doing?”

“Your concern is touching, as always,” I said. “But we’re busy solving a crime over here, and I need information.”

“Hey, we’re –” George said, but I cut him off.

“Right, you’re working the case too. But we’re the one who, you and Colby decided should go chasing down the real lead while you talked to Jackson’s sister. And let me guess, her story checked out. No matter what went down, she was out of the loop, right?”

He muttered something that he was probably lucky I didn’t hear, then added, “Yes.”

“So what I need from you, George, is two things. I need you and Colby to go to Jackson’s place, secure the crime scene and look for evidence. Everyone else is manning the Border, and you guys are already briefed.”

He said something else, to Colby at his end, I think, then said, “Fine.”

“You can’t miss it,” I told him, “It’s the room with the bullet holes, the smell of scorched leaves, and a cop-shaped hole in the door.”

“Yes, Bobs,” he said, “Fine. I understand, okay?”

“Good. Just so we’re like spurking crystal on the comprehension front,”

“The other thing,” I went on before he could grace me with another comeback, “Is to know more about what the spurk I…” I glanced at Bradley, “That we’re dealing with. You saw the APB. What is this thing?”

He was silent for a minute, and I could almost hear him thinking. “Well…You’re right, he’s not a standard mythotype. Probably a localized personification of nature. I see two possibilities. One is, he’s an autumn fairy associated with trees. The other is that he’s –”

“I swear,” I said, “If you say, ‘a tree fairy associated with autumn’ then I will reach right through the phone to punch you.”

“Well, excuse the spurk out of me,” he said, “But those are the choices, and yes, the difference is relevant, okay? Would you like some suggestions about how to deal with this guy, or keep winging it? Since that’s been working out so well.”

“Oh, by all means enlighten me,” I said.

“The fact that he scorched, rather than melted, that says to me that he’s a tree fairy. But the problem with that is, Fae associated with trees are associated with specific trees.”

“So,” I replied, wincing at the unavoidable pun, “We need to know why he’s out of his tree.”

“Exactly,” George said with a professorial sort of chuckle.

“But why the autumn?” I asked.

“Not sure,” he said, and I could infer the shrug. I waited for him to continue, but no. Apparently that was it.

“That really, really doesn’t give me a lot to go on,”

“I could speculate,” he said, “But it would just be giving you a license to yell at me some more.”

“Hey!” I began, then stopped myself.

I hate it when George is right.

I inhaled. Exhaled.

“I just got punched in the head,” I said.

“I know. Look, I’ve told you what I know. The tree is the key. Sight unseen, I can’t be sure of anything else,” George said, and he even managed to sound apologetic.

“We should all get moving,” I told him.

“Yeah,” he said, “Look, Bobs, just… just take care of yourself, partner.”

I tried to think of something clever and mood-lightening.

I finally settled for, “You too. I’ll be in touch.”

“Okay,” I said over my shoulder as I slipped the phone back into my pocket, “We know a little more than we did before.”

It was, I suddenly noticed, oddly quiet.

I looked up. “Hey, Bradley,” I said.

But Bradley was gone.

To Be Continued

Bradley was still sitting on the floor as I walked out into the hall, my cell phone at my ear.

“Barry, I can’t hear you,” I enunciated loudly, “Do you copy? I need – oh.”

Feeling really spurking stupid, I switched the phone to the ear that hadn’t suffered what I still hoped was temporary hearing loss.

“Sorry, Barry. Go ahead.”

I held out a hand to Bradley. He took it without a word, without looking me in the eye, and I helped him to his feet.

“Bobs, I copy,” said the dispatcher over the phone, “But I need confirmation. Are you calling in…”

“A Brick House Alert. Yeah, confirmed. It’s Brick House Alert,” I said, “Tell the Captain we need to close the Border. Put out an APB to all patrols and checkpoints for Alias Glenn Jackson.”

I gave Barry a description of our perp in both his guises, and added the armed-and-dangerous warning.

“Affirmative,” Barry said when I was done, “Now, get your cop back on the leash and get back here. Sounds like you both need medical attention.”

“We’re okay,” I replied.

“Bobs –” Barry started, but I cut him off.

“Barry, don’t spurking mother me. I have a lead to run down and you need to fill the Captain in. I’m okay. We’re both fine.” I turned to Bradley, “You’re fine, right, Detective?”

Bradley was still staring into Jackson’s apartment, “He says he’s fine, Barry.”

“Right. Whatever you say, Roberta,” Barry said. He only calls me that when he wants me to know that I’m not fooling him even a little bit, but since he wasn’t arguing the point anymore, it didn’t much matter if I was fooling him or not, “Just be careful,” he added.

“Okay, Mom,” I said, “Keep me posted,” and I snapped my phone closed.

I looked at Bradley. He still hadn’t said a word, and I wondered if maybe I’d been a little too flippant about his condition. “Bradley?” I asked him, “You there, or did he break you?”

He finally looked at me, his forehead a freshly-plowed field of consternation, “How did he get through the window?” he asked me.

I must have looked almost as puzzled as he did for a moment, then understood.

“He was… huge,” Bradley went on, “Just freaking huge, a giant…”

Bradley was wrong, of course. I saw a giant once. From a distance, thank Goddess. Alias-Glenn-Jackson wasn’t even as big as a small giant, but I knew what he meant.

“So how,” Bradley demanded, “The hell. Did he get. Through that tiny little window?”

“Come on, Detective,” I said, but gently, because I’ve seen logical thinkers confront Fairyland for the first time before, “You know how.”

He sagged. “Magic,” he said.

“Yeah,” I nodded, “Spurking magic. So seriously, you okay? Because I have an idea where we might find him.”

He ran a hand through his hair. “Let’s go,” he said.

I don’t know if noticing that is what made me snap back to full consciousness. Maybe a rush of adrenaline kicked in, or my system had just had time to bounce back. Whatever the reason, and despite being in a considerable amount of pain, I was pretty close to fully alert.

Close enough to find my badge, lying under the radiator.

I grabbed it and pushed myself off the floor into a sort of defensive crouch. The closest to it I could manage, anyway. Note to self – take that unarmed combat course you’ve been putting off, I thought.

At least I could see what was happening again, and there was a lot to see.

Bradley was out – of the fight, and of the room too. It looked like the perp had thrown him right through the door. Bradley was lucky the door wasn’t made of something more resilient, because I suspected he’d have gone through it anyway. As it was, he was in the hall, prone, and I couldn’t tell much more than that – like if he was conscious, or alive for that matter – because the perp was between us, his back to me, and making for Bradley.

I pulled my gun, and fired.

The shot went wide – I was shooting one-handed because I was not going to let go of my spurking badge one more time today, so of course the recoil was fierce. I was aiming for his head, and managed to hit his left shoulder.

Even at his size, the shot should have spun him off his feet and left him on his knees hugging the doorframe. Nothing that satisfying happened, but he did stop going after Bradley.

On the downside, he turned back to face me, and behind his matted grey hair and below his shaggy eyebrows, I could see cold rage burning in dark November eyes.

“I’ll have your guts for garters, Iron Badge” he hissed, then added, “Literally.” He started for me, the claws that catch raised in the air.

I held up my badge. He stopped, and drew back, just a touch.

“Are you going to come quietly?” I asked him, “Or do I have to get rough?” and I managed to keep my voice and hands from shaking. Mostly.

He smiled, showing far too much ivory for my liking. “You can hold me off with your little shield, woman. But you can’t hurt me with it.”

“Yeah? It seemed to get your attention before,”

He growled. “You got lucky,” he said.

I desperately wanted to look around, find something that might be more help than the gun, which was going to be mostly useless. But I didn’t dare take my eyes off him. Was there anything behind me I could use?

Nothing. Just a shelf with a single plate, a single fork, a chipped mug and…

A hot plate.

I reached behind me, still watching him, and set my gun down on the shelf.

He feinted to my left, then lunged from the right. I kept my badge held high and level. He backed off again, his fingers twitching and claws clicking with impatience.

I fumbled around until I found the dial of the hot plate, and turned it – to maximum if I was guessing right, to something less than that if I was screwed.

I reached and grabbed until I found my gun again, grabbed it and swung it around to bear on him – knocking the mug off the shelf in the process. It bounced off the radiator and landed somewhere off to my left.

“I think I chipped your mug,” I said. “Sorry about that.”

“I’ll use your skull for a mug, bitch,” he snapped.

“Not while I’ve got this, you won’t” I said, shaking the badge at him.

It looked like an impasse, but it wasn’t, not really. We both had a way out of the standoff, but I was hoping to keep him busy enough that neither option would occur to him. Point for me: I had my cell phone in my pocket. Point for him…

“Fine!” he snapped, “If you won’t fight fair, maybe I’ll just see what your friend there keeps inside his insides, eh?”

Yeah, that was his impasse-breaker. He started to turn away towards Bradley, who still wasn’t moving.

I shot him in the balls.

I never said that my gun was totally useless. He was big, and strong enough that even the fairly specialized ammunition that I use had about the same effect on him as getting punched by a two-year-old. But just like everyone else who’s ever had to baby-sit a toddler, I knew that sometimes, where force is directed is much, much more important than how strong it is. Even the toughest guy on the block is going to react if he gets sucker-punched in the stones by a two-year-old.

So, mission accomplished. I definitely had his attention.

Yay?

I didn’t smell what I expected, but more on that in a moment. What occurred to me immediately, along with a rush of relief, was that certain smells were absent. What smells? Well, clearly Glenn Jackson wasn’t in the habit of using scented fabric softeners, or detergent, for that matter. But other smells were missing too, smells that you might have expected to be there.

Like alcohol, or stale pee, vomit, or unwashed body. Not even a hint.

I sat up quickly. Bradley, by now, could tell that something was up, and looked at me with eyes full of questions.

I glanced at Jackson, still down on his hands and knees peering at the papers on the floor. I thought of trying to express in gestures, Hold on, something’s very off here. Hang back and follow my lead. But ASL is not one of my languages, so I settled for holding up a hand, hoping he’d get that I wanted him to wait.

I know that I’m kind of dwelling on smells, or lack thereof, but there’s a reason for that. I had just consciously verified something that my intuition had noticed a spurk of a long time before I did: That nothing in Glenn Jackson’s little room smelled, except for him. And that just didn’t make sense, if he’d been in here for hours sleeping it off and being indiscriminate with his bodily functions.

It did make sense, though, if he was wearing that stench like a suit of armour… or a costume.

Now my intuition was telling me that something was worrisome about what I did smell in Jackson’s bedding, but I didn’t have time to think about that right away.

Because I looked down, and there, at my feet, in plain sight, were what looked to me like discharge papers from the Canadian Armed Forces.

But I’d seen him search that part of the floor already. He could be stalling us, I thought. But why?

The other possibility, of course, was that he had no idea what the papers he was trying to find actually looked like.

I stood up, reached into my pocket and palmed my badge. I cleared my throat.

Jackson stopped going through the paperwork, and looked up at me.

“Do you like living here, Mr. Jackson?” I asked.

He shrugged. “We can’t all live in a fancy condominium, eh? It’s crap here, but it beats the shelter, or sleeping rough. Ever tried living under a bridge this time of year? I’m dry, I’ve got a bed and a door that locks.”

“You’re awfully close to the Border, though,”

He stood up, grimacing – a bit theatrically, I thought. “Eh, I don’t bother the Little People, and they don’t bother me. Where’s the fun in troubling a broken-down old man with their tricks, right?”

“Some of the Little People aren’t so little. And not all of them care much who they play tricks on… or what they eat, for that matter. I noticed that you don’t even have a ward on the door, like your neighbours do.”

“Used to, used to,” he said, not meeting my eyes, “But I lost it.”

Then, “You don’t ask a cop’s questions, Officer MacAvoy.”

“Sorry,” I said brightly, “I should have introduced myself. Officer Roberta MacAvoy,”

I held out my hand. Reflexively, he clasped it – clasped my hand, where I was still concealing my Iron Badge.

“Borderland Guard.” I added.

He screamed, in pain and in rage at the touch of cold iron, shoved me away. I flailed as I fell and dropped my badge.

And he staggered back, clutching his hand to his chest as though it burned him.

And he changed.

At last, a long, low groan broke the almost-silence, the first real indicator that there was someone alive on the other side of that door – although, from the sound of it, he wished he wasn’t.

“Glenn Jackson?” Bradley called, more quietly now.

Silence fell again.

“Mr. Jackson, this is the police. Open the door.”

Another groan. Then, some muttering that sounded like muted but strongly-felt profanity.

We waited

More sounds: Feet shuffling, more cursing and then – from just on the other side of the door – a long bout of tubucular coughing.

We waited.

Finally, a voice, albeit slurred and shaky, “Can’t fool me. Already talked to the cops. Go ‘way.”

“We have a couple more questions for you,” Bradley said to the door, and added, with a glance at me, “This shouldn’t take long.”

“Yeah, well… If you’re a cop, let’s see a badge, flat-foot.”

Bradley blinked, then said, with what I thought was, for him, a remarkable degree of patience, “The door is closed, Mr. Jackson. How can I show you my badge?”

A moment passed, during which I like to imagine that Jackson blinked as well, just for symmetry’s sake, then: “Well-reasoned, well-reasoned,” he said.

The door opened, and Glenn Jackson poked his head out.

He looked very much like Jenny Kim had described him: Skinny, hunched over in a way that made it hard to say how tall he was, ill-fitting clothes that looked like Goodwill fodder, long uncombed grey hair and a scraggly beard to match.

Not that I took all this in right away, because the stink that erupted from the open door to his apartment made my eyes water too much for finer details at first. Puke, and stale booze and the tang of unwashed body.

He was a textbook example of a derelict on a bender.

Maybe… a little too textbook?

Bradley, when we could both see again, held up his badge, “I’m Detective Bradley. This is Officer MacAvoy. You’re Glenn Jackson?”

Jackson peered at Bradley’s badge, “Well, of course I’m me. Who else would I be?”

“So you won’t mind showing us some I.D.?” I asked.

He scratched his head. “I got the papers they gave me when I got out of the army.”

“That’ll do for a start,” Bradley said.

Jackson turned and walked into the room, “Well, come on in then. I’ll find them for you. They’re around.”

Bradley turned to me, “After you,” he said.

“Oh, thanks,” I replied, and followed Jackson in.