Steeplejack (Alternative Detective, #1)(15)

I had expected the lobby to be a bustle of noisy activity, but it was silent, and my feet echoed on the tiled floor of a vast, open chamber with a high counter at the far end. I’m taller than most girls, but I still had to look up to speak to the desk sergeant, though I refused to use the wooden step stool. I took a long steadying breath and tried to find the words.

“Can I help you?” he began, looking up from his evening paper and mug of tea, his smile curdling slightly when he saw me.

“The steeplejack case,” I blurted. My heart was beating fast and my mouth was dry. “I want to talk to someone. An officer working the steeplejack case.”

“Steeplejack case?” he said. “What steeplejack would that be?”

“The boy,” I said. “Fell from a chimney.” I was gripping the edge of the wooden counter with both hands, knuckles whitening.

“Oh, that,” he said, shaking off his momentary confusion. “There’s no case. He fell.”

“He didn’t,” I cut in. “I told the … the officer at the scene. He was stabbed.”

He frowned. “Saw it, did you?”

“I saw the wound,” I said.

“So someone killed him, then hauled his body all the way up one of those chimneys just to throw him off again?”

“No,” I said. “They killed him up there. They waited for him on a ledge below the cap. They used a body harness or rubble skip hooked to the edge. Then they attacked him from behind.”

The policeman was unmoved. “All that to kill a street kid?” he said.

“He was a steeplejack,” I said, defiance bristling. The muscles of my forearms were tight with the pressure of my grip on the counter.

“So?” he said. “Not exactly a rare commodity in Bar-Selehm, are they?” He looked me over pointedly.

I fought back the urge to run. I reached across his desk and tapped the headline of the newspaper he was reading. It blared, BEACON THEFT.

A change came over him then. He put down the mug he had been cradling, and his eyes narrowed. “You know something about the Beacon?” he demanded.

“No,” I said. “But whoever took it would need a skilled climber.”

He was alert now, his eyes fixed on me as one hand groped for a pencil. “What’s your full name?” he began, but I had said all I meant to. “Miss!” he called after me as I crossed the empty vestibule and pushed through the revolving door into the street.

“Miss!”





CHAPTER

6

THE MAHWENI GIRL WITH the tied-back hair who worked the newspaper stand was packing up as I arrived, and she gave me a baleful stare as she loaded unsold copies onto a pallet. The evening edition had added a new wrinkle to the story of the missing Beacon, one with actual content, and in spite of my distraction, I stopped to glance over the front page.

LUXORITE MERCHANT SUICIDE! screamed the headline.

“Not a library, you know,” said the girl.

I scowled, my eyes flashing over the text.

In a shocking development apparently related to the theft of Bar-Selehm’s landmark Beacon, authorities revealed that the body of a prominent luxorite dealer was found in the exchange building early this morning. He appears to have taken his own life. Speaking on behalf of the investigation, Detective Sergeant F. L. Andrews of the Bar-Selehm police department said that the identity of the trader was not being released at this time, nor was it clear what connection he might have had to the theft of the Beacon. He went on to say …

“Did you not hear what I said?” asked the girl, placing one hand over the print.

“Is there anything about the death of a steeplejack?” I asked. “A Lani boy.”

She frowned, considering Florihn’s cuts on my cheeks. “Fell from a chimney, right?” she said, flipping the first page, then the second. She indicated a tiny square of print squeezed in between an advert for corsets and a piece about a garden party.

BOY FALLS FROM CHIMNEY.

The entire story was six short lines, and the only thing it said that I didn’t already know was that his last name was Samar.

“Friend of yours?” asked the girl.

I didn’t know what to say and took the opportunity of her distraction by a customer to slip away, breaking into a half run as I shed what was left of the evening rush.

*

I BEGGED A CRUST from the baker on Lean Street as he was closing and wandered for an hour, inquiring at the shops and market stalls that were still open to see if anyone had work I might do. Most of them took one look at my soot-stained clothes and the slash marks on my face and cut me off. Two threatened to set the dogs on me. I tried the domestic agency at Branmoor Steps, hoping I could find an entry-level position as a charlady or scullery maid, but the white lady in charge just nodded toward the door with a sour, disapproving look.

In truth, I had other things on my mind. Each moment I waited, the gang leader’s fate became surer.

Will he live or will he die?

Either way, the outcome for me was flight or death, but I needed to know, if only so I could come to terms with what I had done. Surely, by now, Tanish would be able to tell me that.

I closed my eyes at the thought of returning to Seventh Street, but when I opened them, I saw, standing across the road and looking directly at me, a familiar white man.