Текст книги "Known Devil"

Автор книги: Justin Gustainis

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Justin Gustainis

Known Devil

AN OCCULT CRIMES UNIT INVESTIGATION

To Josephine Dougherty,

dinosaur fan and baby woman.

Hope you like it here, kid.

“All sin tends to be addictive, and

the terminal point of addiction

is what is called damnation.”

W. H. Auden

“Criminals do not die by the hands of the law;

they die by the hands of other men.”

George Bernard Shaw

“Revenge proves its own executioner.”

John Ford

I’ve never had a lot of use for elves. In my experience, they’re lazy and dumb – nothing like those drones in the stories, who supposedly work for the Fat Guy up north. I don’t like elves, and elves with guns I like even less. And when those guns are pointed at me – well, it’s like that Mafia guy on TV used to say: fahgettaboudit.

But first, a few words from my partner.

“So now him and this killer ogre are on top of the railroad car, dukin’ it out, haina? Bond can’t do any fancy karate moves with the train going forty miles an hour, but he’s holding his own, against this thing that’s about twice his size. You know how big fuckin’ ogres can get.”

“Yeah, I sure as hell do. So do you, comes to that.”

Karl Renfer took a sip of lightly microwaved Type A.

“What Bond doesn’t know, cause he’s facing the wrong way, is that the train’s coming up fast on a tunnel…”

Police union rules say we’re allowed one coffee break per shift, along with half an hour for dinner. Karl and I were taking the coffee break in our usual spot, Jerry’s Diner, although I was the only one at our table actually drinking coffee – Karl’s beverage preferences are a little different.

It was just past 1am. Being open twenty-four hours, Jerry’s place gets a fair amount of undead trade, so the menu includes Type A, Type O, and an AB negative plasma that Karl says is overpriced. I was content – if that’s the word – with a cup of the dark roast that Jerry’s is infamous for. It’s not too bad with cream and sugar – a lot of cream and sugar.

Yesterday had been our day off. Karl had spent part of it checking out the new James Bond movie, Skyfang, and I was half-listening while he told me about it.

I gathered that Daniel Craig was fast replacing Sean Connery as Karl’s favorite actor to play Agent 007. I could see his point. Yeah, I watch those movies, too – but unlike Karl, I only see them once.

We agreed that Craig was the first actor to play the role who looked like he might actually be a professional killer – and that’s what Bond is, when you get down to it. I’ve known a few real life-takers in my time, and thought that Craig had the attitude down cold, so to speak. Even if he did have a better tailor.

It was just another Wednesday night, maybe a little quieter than usual. But that was before those two fucking elves came in and started waving guns around.

One of them used a chair to climb onto a vacant table and started yelling, in that high voice they have, “Nobody move! Everybody freeze!”

Good luck with that, shorty. Instead of acting like statues, everybody in the diner turned to see who the hell was making all the noise. Maybe that’s what the elf had really wanted, anyway.

He looked typical for the species – around 4’6”, with the blond hair and pointed ears that they all have. I’ve seen a few try to pass for human by dying their hair and wearing it long enough to cover the ears, but they can’t do much about the fact that elves are what the PC crowd calls “vertically impaired”.

This one was wearing jeans and a gray sweatshirt that said “College Misericordia” on the front. The part of my mind that wasn’t focused on the Colt Python he was holding in both hands wondered if he might’ve come by the shirt honestly.

Even if he had attended Misery – as everybody calls it – I assumed the elf was a dropout. College Misericordia doesn’t graduate thieves – at least not deliberately. It’s true there are quite a few lawyers and politicians among their alums, but you can’t blame the college for that.

The elf’s partner in crime was wearing a navy blue sport shirt and khakis. They fit him pretty well – you can find clothing in all sizes these days, from Pixie Extra Tiny to Ogre XXXXXL. This guy was pointing some kind of automatic at Donna, the cashier, who’d gone pale enough to pass for a vampire’s girlfriend.

“Open the register!” the elf yelled. “Put the cash in this – just the bills, no coins!” He tossed her one of those fabric tote bags that the crunchy granola types do their grocery shopping with. Donna fumbled the catch, and the bag fell to the floor at her feet. I thought the elf was going to have a coronary. “Pick it up, bitch! Put the money in it quick, before I blow your fucking head off! Do it!”

His buddy was still on the table, sweeping the room back and forth with the barrel of that big pistol. The Python fires a .357 Magnum cartridge, and it’s got quite a kick – I wondered if it had knocked the elf on his ass the first time he fired it. Assuming he ever had fired it.

“Hands on the table!” he screeched at the customers. “Nobody move!”

Even from twenty-some feet away, I could see that the elf’s eyes were bloodshot and bulging. I wondered if there was something coursing through his system besides adrenaline. If he’d been human, I’d have figured him for an addict of some kind. But apart from the fucking goblins – who’ve shown an unfortunate fondness for meth – human recreational drugs don’t have any effect on supernaturals. Just as well – some of them give us more than enough trouble as it is.

Donna had finally got all the cash from the register into the canvas bag. The elf snatched it out of her hands, then turned and trained his gun on the customers, just like his buddy on the table was doing.

“OK now, listen up!” Like we were gonna ignore him, under the circumstances. “I’m goin’ around the room now. When I get to your table, the men are gonna reach for their wallets slow and put ’em in the bag here. Then the bitches are gonna dump their purses out on the table, so I can see what you got inside. Anybody doesn’t do what they’re told, or who gives me any shit – I am gonna fuckin’ kill you and everybody with you, too!”

He glanced toward the other elf, who was still on the table, nervously traversing the room with his gun.

“You cool, man?”

I thought he looked about as calm as Jell-O in an earthquake.

“Yeah, I’m cool. Go get the fuckin’ money. I gotcha covered.”

I wondered just how often these two losers had watched Red Pulp Fiction. Quentin Tarantino’s got a lot to answer for.

“What’re you packing?” I murmured, just loud enough for Karl to hear me.

“Straight silver. You?”

“Silver and cold iron, mixed.”

Silver bullets are good against some kinds of supes, like vamps and weres. But they’re useless on any members of the faerie family – including goblins, trolls, orcs… and elves. Karl’s gun would be useless if the shit hit the fan in the next few minutes.

Cold iron, on the other hand, will take out any member of the faerie clan. The mixed load in my Beretta meant I’d have to double-tap each elf, to make sure he’d catch a bullet that would hurt him.

But our situation here was kind of complicated.

Cops are expected to protect the public at all times. That’s why we all pack a gun when we go out, even off-duty. But the public, especially the portion of it currently inside Jerry’s Diner, wouldn’t be well served by a bloodbath.

Being undead gave Karl an edge that the elves didn’t know about. He’s faster than a human, and he’d be invulnerable to the bullets in the elves’ guns – assuming all they were packing was lead. But they might have loaded some silver rounds, too.

Since we didn’t know what the elves’ ammo was, the smart move was for Karl and me to sit there like chumps and let those two little fuckers rob us, instead of risking a gunfight with all these civilians so close.

But that posed a problem, too, and it was going to arise when the elf with the bag got to our table. Even if Karl and I were meek as mice, once we reached for our wallets the guns on our belts would become visible. God only knows what the elf, who was close to the edge already, would do when he saw our weapons. He might start shooting out of sheer panic.

Besides, anything somebody else did could set one of these twitchy bastards off – anything. One of the customers could sneeze, or faint, or scratch an itchy armpit. Even worse, somebody might get a phone call.

Karl and I were going to have to take action before something happened to push the situation out of control. We had to find some way to take these two assholes down, without anybody getting killed – especially us.

We didn’t have long to think about it, either. The elf was just three tables away now.

Then inspiration struck. At least, I hoped it was inspiration and not a sudden attack of stupidity.

There were salt and pepper shakers on every table. When I was sure the two elves were looking elsewhere, I palmed the salt shaker and used my thumbnail to pry off the plastic stopper. About three ounces of salt flowed into my palm. I closed my fist, trying to hang on to as much of it as possible.

Some species of supes are repelled by salt. Others aren’t. But nobody likes it you throw the stuff in their eyes.

I was looking at Karl again. Vampires have super-acute hearing, so I knew he’d hear me when I whispered, “Double play. When I say ‘Please’, take out the one on the table.” Karl gave me a slight nod.

It wasn’t long before the elf with the bag was standing in front of us. “Alright, come on, wallets,” he said tightly. “In the fuckin’ bag – let’s go.”

I slowly turned toward him, then made my face scrunch up like I was about to cry. Like a third-grader who’s been called to the principal’s office, I said, “Pleeease.”

Before the elf could do more than gape at me, Karl’s chair went over backwards as he came out of it vampire-fast. Half a second later, he was up on the table with the other elf before the little bastard even knew it.

The elf standing in front of me looked up toward his pal – he couldn’t help himself. That’s when I threw the fistful of salt into his eyes.

He screamed, dropped the bag, and brought his free hand up to cover his burning eyes. I reached over and grabbed his gun hand. Pointing the automatic away from me, I slammed his wrist down on the table, disarming him. With my other hand, I punched him in the throat.

I heard a scream from the other elf and looked up. Karl had the Magnum now, while the elf was holding his gun hand against his chest, moaning. No surprise there – a broken wrist hurts like hell.

My guy had gotten off easy. He was on the floor, eyes streaming, as he clutched his throat with both hands and tried to remember how to breathe.

I stood up and pulled out the leather folder holding my badge and ID. “Police officer! We’re both police officers! Relax, folks, it’s all over.”

We read both prisoners their rights, put them in cuffs – much to the discomfort of the elf with the broken wrist. – and called for backup. I was going to be spending the rest of my shift back at the station house. I looked forward to interrogating these two idiots once they’d been processed into the system. I wanted to know why elves – who, despite being shiftless and stupid, are normally peaceful creatures – were trying to take down Jerry’s Diner.

I never did finish my coffee. Small loss, really.

The paramedics checked both suspects out at the scene. With my guy, they gently rinsed his eyes with a boric acid solution, determined that he was breathing OK, and declared him fit to be arrested. The other elf’s wrist was broken, just as I’d figured. One of the EMTs put an inflatable cast on it and politely asked Karl not to handcuff that arm again. So the two of them went off to Mercy Hospital’s ER together, the elf’s undamaged wrist cuffed to one of Karl’s.

Karl hadn’t complained about taking the damaged elf to the hospital. He wouldn’t be allowed to take part in any interrogation, anyway. The Supreme Court had ruled in Barlow v. Maine almost forty years ago that anything a suspect said in the presence of a vampire – police officer or not – was inadmissible, since there was no way to establish whether vampiric Influence was used to induce cooperation.

Cops have learned to be careful about this kind of stuff. Nobody wants to see some scumbag’s conviction overturned because his lawyer claims there was a vampire three doors down the hall while the scumbag was answering questions.

That meant the other elf was all mine – sort of. The Scranton PD policy says that no detective is ever supposed to be alone in an interrogation room with a suspect. A lot of other police departments around the country have the same rule. In years past, some cops had been careless or stupid and actually been taken hostage by supposedly harmless prisoners. So now you’re supposed to have at least two detectives present to carry out an interrogation.

Since Karl was at the hospital with the elf he’d maimed, I’d have to get another detective to join me while I talked to our suspect, who hadn’t yet asked for a lawyer. His name was Thorontur Carnesin, according to his driver’s license.

Yeah, lots of them have driver’s licenses. You won’t be surprised to learn that they mostly drive subcompacts.

When I looked inside the Occult Crimes squad room, the only detective around was Marty Sefchik. I knew his shift would start in about an hour – which was when his partner, Carmela Aquilina, usually showed up. Unlike Carmela, Sefchik often came in early. I heard he and his wife didn’t get along so well.

Sefchik was looking at the early edition of the Times-Tribune, but he looked up when I appeared in the squad room door.

“Hey, Stan, what’s up? I hear you and Karl almost got taken off the count by a couple of fuckin’ trolls with slingshots or something.”

“They were doing a little better than slingshots, asshole,” I told him. “One had a 9mm Walther, and the other bastard was packing a Colt Python.”

He whistled. “Serious iron.”

“Uh-huh. And they were elves, not trolls.”

“Get the fuck outta here – elves? When did they get all badass?”

“I don’t know, but I was just about to ask one that very question. Wanna sit in?”

“Fuck, yeah. Gotta be more fun than the paper.”

“Almost anything is. OK, come on.”

The interrogation rooms are ten feet by ten, with furniture consisting of a scarred wooden table and a few beat-up chairs. A big iron ring is screwed onto the top of each table, and a suspect under interrogation gets one wrist handcuffed to the ring. Having a hand free allows the suspect to write or hold paperwork, but makes it pretty hard to commit mayhem. And that table is bolted to the floor.

Thorontur Carnesin had been sitting bent over, with his head resting in the crook of his shackled arm. But he sat up quick enough when we came in. Sefchik and I each pulled up a chair across the table from him.

The elf didn’t look too good. I wasn’t surprised that he had the reddest eyes this side of Transylvania – not after the salt I’d thrown in his face. But he was sweating, and it wasn’t warm in the room, which gets AC pumped in just like the rest of the building. I also noticed some tremor in his hands that hadn’t been present in the diner. Otherwise, he wouldn’t have been able to hold the damn gun steady.

If this had been a human, I’d have said he was strung out – needing a fix of something and needing it bad. But supes don’t do drugs. Give or take the fucking goblins.

“How ya doin?” I said. “We’ve met before, although we weren’t introduced. I’m Detective Sergeant Markowski, and this is Detective Sefchik.”

“Yeah, hi,” the elf said. His right hand actually moved a couple of inches from the shackle, as if he’d intended to shake hands. I guess he bore no ill will for what happened in Jerry’s Diner.

The fact his right hand was shackled meant he was a leftie, like a lot of elves are. We always leave their pen hand free, in case they feel like writing a confession.

“You’ve been advised of your rights,” I said. “I know that, since I’m the one who did it. You understand that you don’t have to talk to us without a lawyer present.”

“Yeah, yeah,” he said. “I know. It’s cool.”

“Your name’s Thorontur,” I said.

“Yeah.”

“People call you ‘Thor’?”

“Yeah – how’d you know?”

“Lucky guess,” I said. “Mind if we call you that? It’s less of a mouthful than ‘Thorontur’.”

“Yeah, sure. Whatever. Listen, dude, you gotta–”

“Don’t call me ‘dude’. It’s ‘Detective’,” I said.

“OK, sorry. Thing is, I’m feelin’ real bad, OK? I gotta see a doc, have him give me somethin’.”

“We might be able to help you with that,” Sefchik said. “But, we call a doctor, you know, first thing he’s gonna ask is what’s wrong with the patient. So, how’re you feeling bad, exactly? You got the flu, or something?”

“Naw, it ain’t that. I need some meds, you know?”

A junkie. The little bastard was acting just like a human going through withdrawal. And that just wasn’t possible.

“What kind of medication are we talkin’ about, Thor?” I said. “You under a doctor’s care right now?”

“No, dude,” he said. “It’s just that–”

My right palm slapped the table, hard. “I told you not to call me ‘dude’. I’m not gonna tell you again.”

Thor jumped a little, which is what I’d intended. “Sorry, uh, Detective,” he said. “I didn’t mean nothin’ by it. It’s just how I talk, you know?”

“Not in here, you don’t,” I said.

I was acting like a real hardass because I wanted psychological domination over this guy. Something very fucked up was going on here, and I wanted to know everything about it. Everything.

“Yeah, OK, Detective. Whatever you want.”

“I’m glad to hear you say that, Thor. Because what I want to know is what’s up with you, and I want it without a lot of bullshit.”

I sat back in my chair to give him a little space.

“You claim you need some kind of medication,” I said. “What exactly is it you think you need – and why?”

“Hell, I don’t know the scientific name, or nothing, man – uh, Detective. We call it Slide.”

“We? Who’s we?”

“Me and Car. And some other dudes we know.”

“Car’s the guy who was with you in the diner tonight? The one standing on the table?”

“Yeah, that’s him.”

“What his real name?”

“Caranthir Helyanwe. But most of us just call him Car.”

“So, you and ‘Car’ and your buddies take this stuff called ‘Slide’,” I said, “and now you’re hooked on it?”

Drug-addicted elves. Shit.

“Nah, I ain’t hooked on nothing. I can quit whenever I want.”

The elf even talked like a fucking junkie.

“OK, you can quit whenever you want,” Sefchik said. “So why don’t you just quit it now?”

Thor licked his lips. “It ain’t that I need it, OK? But I ain’t had any in a while. I just like the stuff – that’s all.”

“A while – how long ago is that, exactly?” I asked. “When did you last have some of this Slide?”

The tongue ran over his cracked lips again. “I dunno. Couple days ago, I guess.”

“And you like this stuff so much,” Sefchik said, “that you and your buddy were willing to stick up a fucking diner just to get money for some?”

Another shrug. “Slide ain’t cheap.”

“What’s it do for you, anyway?” I asked him.

He looked at me as if I’d just spoken in Polish. “Say what?”

“He means,” Sefchik said, “How do you feel when you’re using it?”

“It hits you in, like two stages, man… uh, Detective. At first, it’s like fireworks are goin’ off inside your head, you know? There’s flashes of light, all different colors – some that ain’t even been invented yet.”

“How long does that usually last?” Sefchik asked.

“Oh, m… Detective, I don’t fuckin’ know. I never looked at my watch – hell, I probably couldn’t have seen it, anyway, with all the colors goin’ off inside my head.”

“So, there’s two stages,” I said. “What happens after the flashing lights?”

“After that, you just feel gooood, you know? All relaxed and happy and shit. It’s like you just got laid, but about ten times better.”

“And how long does that go on for?” I asked him.

“Like I already told you–”

“I know,” I said. “You don’t check your watch. But give me a ballpark estimate – an hour, three hours, half a day, all day?”

He wiped a shaky hand over his face. “I dunno, maybe three hours, could be a little more. But that’s about right, I guess.”

Sefchik frowned. “How much per pop?”

“Twenty-five bucks.”

“How do you take it?” I asked him.

Thor turned his sweaty face toward me. “Huh?”

I will not hit the suspect in the head. I will not hit the suspect in the head.

“Do you snort the shit, inject it, smoke it, stuff it up your ass – what?” I said.

“Me and Car mostly smoke it,” he said. “But I know a couple guys who say snortin’ gives you a bigger blast. I dunno; I never tried it that way. Look – can you guys, uh, Detectives help me out here? I need to see a doc pretty bad. I feel like I’m gonna jump out of my fuckin’ skin or something.”

I got to my feet. “Detective Sefchik and I are gonna step outside for a couple of minutes.”

Sefchik stood up too and followed me to the door.

“You guys gonna call the doctor?” Thor asked. The need in his voice was unmistakable.

“We’ll think about it,” I said.

“Cause if you ain’t, then I want a fuckin’ lawyer in here! He’ll get me to a doc. This is fucking inhumane treatment! I got my–”

Then we were in the hall, and I closed the door behind us, cutting off Thor in mid-rant. Sefchik looked at me, his face a study in disbelief.

“Elf junkies?” he said. “Is this asshole fucking kidding?”

“Does he look like he’s kidding?”

Sefchik shook his head a couple of times. “I knew fucking gobs could get hooked on meth, and that’s bad enough – but elves? What’s next – werewolves shooting heroin? Vamps on speed? Makes my head hurt, just tryin’ to think about it.”

“Yeah, I know just what you mean.”

“So, why’d you take a break?” he asked me. “Just want to vent a little? Not that I blame you.”

“Nothing wrong with venting,” I said. “But the main reason is I have to make a phone call, and I don’t want my man Thor listening in on it.”

I pushed a button on my speed dial, and a few seconds later Karl’s voice said in my ear, “Hey, Stan.”

“Hey,” I said. “Where are you?”

“We’re still in the waiting room at the ER. You know how it is – they give you a quick once-over, and if you’re not actually dying, you can go sit and wait for a few hours. I figure an elf’s busted wrist isn’t real high on their priority list tonight.”

“There’s a couple of things I’d like you to do while you’re down there.”

“Like what?”

“When they finally get your little buddy into a treatment room, make sure the docs get a blood sample and send it to the lab.”

“Lookin’ for what, exactly?”

“I don’t know,” I said. “Anything that shouldn’t be in an elf’s blood, I guess.”

“I’ll take care of it. What else you need?”

“Since you’re gonna be waiting a while, why don’t you ask your pal about something called Slide.”

“What the fuck’s that?”

“I’m not positive, but I think it might be a drug that elves can get hooked on.”

“Well, fuck me,” Karl said. “You sure about this stuff?”

“No, I’m not. That’s why I want you to talk to Car about it. You know that’s his name, right?”

“Yeah, he told me. Guess he got tired of me saying, ‘Hey, you’.”

“Later on, I want to compare whatever you get from him with what I already heard from his partner, Thor.”

“Thor, you said? Like that old pixie joke, ‘I’m tho thor, I can hardly pith’?”

“That’s the one. And listen, if you have to use a little vampire mojo to get him talking about Slide, that’s OK.”

“Seriously? I don’t even know if it’ll work, Stan – but if it does, anything I get from him’s gonna be inadmissible in court. You know that.”

“Doesn’t matter. I don’t want this for the DA’s office – I want it for me, so I can maybe figure out what the fuck is going on here.”

“OK, I’ll see what I can do. We’re gonna be here a while, anyway.”

“Good. Besides, if Influence doesn’t get you anywhere, you can always flash your fangs at him.”

“I’ll keep that in reserve, just in case.”

I checked my watch: 4.22. Sunrise would be about ten after seven.

“Listen, if you’re still there an hour from now, give me a call,” I said. “I’ll bring one of the other detectives over, or even a uniform, if I have to. He can take over custody of Car, and I’ll give you a ride back here, so you can head home in time.”

“Thanks, Stan, I appreciate it.”

“No problem. OK, I gotta go back and see Thor. He was yelling about a lawyer when I left him, and I sure wouldn’t want to violate his constitutional rights by denying him timely access to counsel.”

“Heaven forbid. Alright, I’ll talk to you later, dude.”

“Don’t call me dude.”

Thor was as good as his word. Once he was sure I wasn’t going to bring in a doctor to give him a hit of Slide, he clammed up and demanded a lawyer.

I took him back down to Booking, where they’d put him in a holding cell and give him a phone, just like the law requires. I was pretty sure that once his lawyer got here, Thor wasn’t going to be nearly as chatty as he had been upstairs.

If Thor was a human going through withdrawal from heroin, a doctor might actually have do him some good – and we’d provide one. That’s the law, too. Some junkie bouncing off the walls because his dopamine receptor cells were going crazy wasn’t exactly a new phenomenon around here.

A doc wouldn’t give a prisoner any heroin, but a dose of methadone wasn’t out of the question, or maybe a strong sedative. Even if we had a fucking goblin going nuts because he can’t get any of the meth he’s hooked on – the medical community knows how to handle that, too.

But an addicted elf? Hooked on a drug that nobody’s ever heard of? No doctor could be sure that any drug he gave Thor might not interact with the stuff already in his system and kill the little bastard. So Thor was going to have to sweat it out, literally, until a specialist in elf medicine could get a look at him.

I went back to the squad room and got started on the paperwork stemming from the arrest of the two elves at the diner. I was almost done when Karl called around 5.30, saying he was still stuck at Mercy’s ER. Car hadn’t even made it into a treatment room yet.

“OK, I’ll find somebody to take over for you,” I said. “We oughta be there in ten, fifteen minutes.”

“Roger that.” Karl loves that kind of talk.

Sefchik had started his shift by now, and he and Aquilina were out on the street somewhere. But McLane and Pearce were in the squad room, drinking coffee and waiting to handle the next call that came in. Lieutenant McGuire was in his glass-enclosed office at the back, and I told him that Karl was stuck over at the ER with sunrise fast approaching. McGuire said I could run over there and take one of the other detectives with me to relieve Karl.

Ten minutes later, Pearce was at the ER, handcuffed to Car, and Karl was riding shotgun in my Toyota Lycan as I headed back to the station house. I had a lot to tell him. Turned out, he had a few items for me, too.

When I finished telling Karl about my interview with Thor, I said, “If I hadn’t seen it with my own eyes, I’d have said it was bullshit. But there he was, right in front of me – an elf who was obviously strung out on something.”

“I think you’re being too hard on yourself, Stan. You were going on what you’d been taught at the academy, and they taught me the same thing: supes don’t get hooked on drugs, apart from goblins, I mean. Now it looks like some motherfucker has come up with a new kind of drug, and that throws all the old knowledge into the wastebasket.”

“A game changer,” I said.

“Uh-huh – like the old game wasn’t tough enough already.” Karl shook his head. “Well, I got a couple of things from talking to my buddy Car that I can add, and one of them’s gonna blow your mind. I know it did mine.”

“I can hardly wait,” I said.

“I’ll start with the other one. Car told me that there’s another street name for Slide, and he thinks this one came first. He says some of his homies call it HG.”

I didn’t take my eyes off the road to stare at him, but I wanted to. “HG,” I said. “Seriously.”

“That’s what Car said.”

“It sounds like some old-time movie director – Ready when you are, HG!’’

“Turns out, I can give you a better idea of its etymology,” Karl said.

“Etymology.”

“Yeah – it means the study of word origins.”

I looked sideways at him. “You been looking at those copies of Reader’s Digest I keep in my desk?”

I saw his shrug from the corner of my eye. “I sneak one every once in a while.”

“OK,” I said. “So, enlighten me as to the, uh…”

“Etymology.”

“Yeah. The etymology of ‘HG’.’”

“Car says he’s pretty sure it stands for ‘Hemoglobin-Plus’, on account of hemoglobin being the basic ingredient.”

“Hemoglobin plus what?” I asked him.

“Car didn’t know. He says nobody does.”

“With a guy like Car,” I said, “nobody probably consists of him and three other losers like him.”

“Probably. We’re gonna have to start working our street contacts, see if somebody out there knows more about this stuff.”

“OK, so the name is one piece of news,” I said. “What’s the other item – the one that’s gonna blow my mind?”

“Thing is, it could be just bullshit – considering Car was the source and all.”

“Fine – I’ll keep that in mind. It might keep my skull from imploding. So what is it?”

“Car says he knows a vampire who’s hooked on the shit, too.”

With dawn coming soon, Karl had to split as soon as we pulled into the parking lot behind the station house. My shift was over, too, but I still went inside to see McGuire.

I told him what Karl and I had learned from the two junkie elves. He was as disbelieving as I’d been, at first. But he agreed with me that it was something the unit needed to know more about. He said each shift of detectives would be told to ask their snitches about Slide and exactly who might be addicted to it.

When I got home, Christine’s car was parked in the driveway. Since the sun was already well above the horizon, I knew she’d be in her basement bedroom by now, wrapped in a sleeping bag and literally dead to the world until dusk. I’d talk to her then.

I went upstairs and traded my detective outfit for a sweatshirt and jeans. Time was, I’d head off to sleep right after getting home from work, but lately I’ve got into the habit of unwinding for an hour before I go to bed. I have fewer nightmares that way.