The Imaginary Corpse, page 11
“Jonesy,” I say, bright and breathless. “You remember Freedom Frieda?”
Jones gawps at us. Frieda’s expression isn’t much different, her eyes turning full revolutions in their sockets as she takes everything in.
Frieda draws in a long, deep breath, and starts sobbing.
I step closer to her, let her rest a wing on me. The crying doesn’t stop, but she’s less tense, anyway.
The marbles say something to Jones in a Semitic language I don’t understand. Jones gives them a workmanlike smile and shoves a new clipboard their way. They give me and Frieda an entitled glower before they float over to a nearby bench to deal with the fresh bureaucracy.
“Who’s that?” I ask, still letting Frieda rest her weight on me.
“The Kingdom of Living Marbles,” Jones rumbles. “Going to be rough adapting to the Stillreal.”
“Is it smooth for any of us?” I ask.
Frieda’s sobs start to wane, bringing me back to the unpleasant and not-unrelated business at hand.
“She’s going to need a room,” I say.
“She has a room,” Jones says, a stone eyebrow cocked her way. “A couple dozen of them, in fact – what in the true name of God is Freedom Frieda doing in Playtime Town?”
I open my mouth, but go quiet when Frieda gives me a gentle warning squeeze.
“There was a man,” she says, her eyes sickly blue with fear.
“A man?” Jones asks.
“A man,” she quavers, “all in brown.” She looks down at her wings, and her eyes shift to sunrise pink. “He chased off all my guests. I was hidin’, but Tippy–”
“Tippy saved you,” Golem Jones says. A little de rigeur in tone, if you ask me.
“He did,” says Frieda. “I’m… grateful.”
“Why couldn’t you just leave?” Jones asks.
Frieda looks at him like he proposed growing two extra heads. “I run the Freedom Motel,” she says. “They count on me… all those poor Friends, walkin’ right into that man’s trap?” Against expectations, her eyes shift to red. “I had to be sure no more were comin’. I had to be sure word got out. I couldn’t just… I couldn’t leave them…”
I sort of wondered why Frieda was hanging out in the back room instead of the front desk.
“Yeah,” Golem Jones says. “Yeah… I understand that.” He gives her a long, uncertain look, and turns away to the wall of keys, mumbling to himself.
It’s about now that my emotions catch up to me. Guilt about Frieda, mostly, but also a nice swirl of confused fury at Big Business’ attempted hit. I have a tidal wave of questions for Frieda, but I keep coming back to the obvious one: how long were you trapped in that office? When I consider asking it, I know I can’t ask her anything at all. Not today.
“Jones will get you set up,” I say to her.
“Set up?” Frieda asks, shocked back into white.
“He’ll get you a place to stay.” I mean, I know we have at least one vacancy…
Frieda blinks. “I… stay?”
“An apartment.” The word I don’t dare say is ‘home.’ “He’s going to need to ask you some questions. Have you fill out some paperwork.” I swallow. “He can pick a place that’ll be good for a short-term stay.”
Frieda smiles, but it’s thin and fake, like someone doing a bad impression.
“You don’t need to pretend in front of us,” I say.
Frieda stops, baffled. She sniffs, and gives me a wan smile. “I always did like you, Tippy.”
I hesitate, questions lining up to spill out of my mouth. I dismiss them with a shake of my head. “I’ve always liked you too, Frieda. Please, let Jonesy take care of you.”
“My name is not Jonesy,” Golem Jones says, back still turned to us.
I give Frieda a sarcastic wag of the brows – this guy, right? – tip an imaginary hat to her, and turn to leave, only to freeze at a sound that I’ve heard way too recently to be hearing it again: the long, high whine of a Playtime Town police siren.
I’m tired. I’ve had my life threatened twice today, and someone I’ve worked with for a long time is dead, and basically my entire world-view has been thrown into question. So you’ll forgive me when I tell you that I stand there as confused and slack-jawed as Jones, Frieda, and the Kingdom of Living Marbles, wondering with mounting horror what could have Officer Cold out and running the siren like this.
The familiar armored van comes careening up the street, sending a pair of monitor lizards fleeing into an alley as it swerves up onto the curb and bears down on me, taking out a street sign before it screeches to a halt ten feet away. Officer Cold lunges out the driver’s side door, his freeze ray already unholstered and glowing blue. He looks at me, his expression either triumphant or hungry. That, unfortunately, is when it clicks.
“Officer?” I say.
“You’re under arrest.”
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
Officer Cold cuffs my forelegs with a set of golden handcuffs. They leave my hindlegs free, but a tingle of magic saps my strength to the approximate level of a wet noodle.
“Why am I under arrest?” I ask.
Officer Cold circles behind me. “Conspiracy. Fraud. Assault. Obstruction of justice. And murder.” He gives me a get-moving prod with the freeze ray. It’s even colder than I expected.
“I didn’t murder–”
“Save it for the judge,” Cold says, and gives my tail a prod that carries a distinct note of ‘last warning.’
Cold’s parking job has attracted basically all of Playtime Town. I see Rocky, Spiderhand, and the Sadness Penguins, but the face that stands out to me is Golem Jones. He doesn’t look curious, or angry; he looks overwhelmed and, even more painfully, disappointed.
Cold opens the back of the van, gestures for me to hop in. I oblige, head held high, hoping confidence will make everyone think I’m innocent. As Cold closes the door I see Spiderhand, waving frantically at me before I disappear from sight. His earnestness hurts worse than the look on Jones.
“What makes you think I did it?” I ask through the barred window.
Cold just starts the van and pulls out onto Virtue Street, headed downtown.
“Evidence fall in your lap?” I ask. “Elemental’s intuition?”
There’s a glance my way, but that’s it. I don’t pursue the matter any further; my day’s bad enough as it is.
We stop at the Police Station in record time. Cold hops out, throws the doors open, and beckons me with the gun to get out of the van. I do as instructed, and we get through the front door, past the front desk, and most of the way to the stairs before I pause. I don’t hear any footsteps but mine.
I take a calculated risk, and turn around. Officer Cold is stopped in front of the two desks, staring at one of them so intently it looks like he’s memorizing it. His mouth is pulled down in his usual disapproving frown, but his eyes are two black pits, like he’s been washing his face with permanent marker. He’s not stuck in his original pain, he’s somewhere beyond that. He’s half of a pair that will never be a pair again. My heart’s broken, and the way this case is going I’m not reaching for the duct tape yet.
“I’ll miss him, too,” I say.
Cold looks at me, and I immediately know I’ve made a mistake. The loathing in his eyes could peel paint.
“Downstairs. Now.”
Cold points the ray at me as he advances, forcing me to hustle downstairs or be run over. Even going double-time, he runs into me at the bottom. He growls as he shoves me into an empty cell.
“Why do you think I killed him?” I ask.
Cold pauses, the key still half-turned in the lock. He shakes his head, locks the door, and starts back toward the stairs.
“Seriously, why me?”
He looks back at me, considering whether just shooting me would be easier than having this conversation. “You know the Freedom Motel.”
“Everyone knows the Freedom Motel,” I say.
“But not everyone was an eyewitness when Spindleman died,” he spits back. “You’re the only one who’s been to both places where we’ve had a… a death.”
I’ve got him arguing, at least. This is a place where I can seize the high ground. (Sometimes.) “Big Business travels all over the place,” I say. “And Dr Atrocity, she can do almost anything you can think of if she’s got a lab–”
“Oh, I know Big Business is involved, too,” Cold insists, his lip curling.
“And what, because I went to meet with him, I’m involved? Officer, when have you ever even known me to be violent?”
“If you think it’ll get you to a clue?” he says. “Very.”
“I’m not violent!” I protest. Tires screech in the back of my mind. I shake, trying to force them back out. “Not really… not like the Man in the Coat…” Not now, please, not now.
“The Man in the Coat,” Cold says. He steps closer, swinging the freeze ray with a casual ease I am not at all comfortable with. “You know, funny thing about that.” He gets right up next to the bars, glares through them with those haunted eyes. “The only time other Friends have seen this man of yours? You were there, too.”
“What? But you–”
“I wasn’t there,” Officer Cold blurts, with the special intensity of pure, uncut denial. “I was in a different room, I was looking at a–”
The last word vanishes in a tightly drawn breath. Cold rakes an arm across his eyes, and quickly re-draws his bead on me with the freeze ray. “I felt him die, you monster. I. Felt. Him. Die.”
My stomach is a dried-up riverbed. “I’m so sorry, Col – Officer. I’m so sorry.”
“Are you?”
“I didn’t have anything to do with it,” I insist.
His eyes open flying-saucer wide. “Prove it.”
I go to fire off a comeback, and come up empty. He’s right. The only Friend who can prove I’m not connected to the Man in the Coat is Big Business – and judging by today, I doubt he’s interested in saving me.
Cold sniffs in satisfaction, holsters his freeze ray, and walks off toward the stairs again.
“Don’t bother trying to think out of here,” he calls over his shoulder. “No one in those handcuffs can escape.”
“I kind of sort of figured,” I reply. “You’re mean, but you aren’t careless.”
Cold’s teeth grind. He stalks up the stairs, leaving me alone with the shadows. I limp to the back of the cell, and I sit, letting my thoughts drift while I consider options for escape.
There’s no telling how long I’m going to be in here. Suspects in Playtime Town are held until Judge Stoneface is ready to try them, and that can take anywhere from a few hours to whenever the officers remember to tell him. Cold might drag it out in spite, or just because he’s busy being the only cop left in town. My life isn’t over, but it sure as heck is on pause. Which is great timing, what with an actual killer on the loose.
I’m just considering what kind of daring breakout I could pull off with a single loose rock and a crushing sense of dread when I hear a scuffling movement from the cell on my left. I recognize the Snitching Snipe’s odor before I recognize his shape: dirt, bird droppings, and layers of cigar smoke, like some kind of olfactory lasagna. He lumbers up to the bars between our cells, gawking at me with those unblinking bloodshot eyes.
“You didn’t kill Hot,” he warbles, cocking his head to one side.
I am not in the mood to have this conversation. “Officer Cold thinks I did, and in the end that’s all that matters.”
The Snipe cocks his head one way, then the other, and shakes out his filthy feathers. “Why’s he think you killed Hot?”
“Does it really matter?”
The Snipe widens his eyes again, gazing at me with unceasing intensity. “You didn’t kill Hot.”
“I’m glad at least someone believes me.”
“Not belief. Truth.”
My detective stuff kicks in. The Snipe is speaking with the weight of the absolutely certain. Suddenly, this conversation fits my mood.
“How do you know that?” I ask, struggling to my feet, trying to decipher the language of his face.
The Snipe shrugs. “Ear to the ground,” he says.
“What?”
“Ear to the ground,” he repeats, without a lick of annoyance. “It hears things.”
“Things.”
“About crime,” the Snitching Snipe says. Finally, mercifully, he blinks.
My thoughts rotate a couple times around my brain stem. I’m processing what he’s implying, but I’m not sure I want to be. “You have a literal ear to the ground that tells you about crime?”
“Not literal,” he says. “Just… an ear to the ground.”
“Is this like my detective stuff?”
The Snipe just stares.
“My… detective stuff?” I say. I’m mystified. He hasn’t heard about Detective Tippy’s detective stuff? “My extra sense? My gift from my person?”
“Yes,” the Snipe says.
“So you have heard of it?”
“No. Yes,” he says.
“And what’s on second?” I say, as sarcastic as I can.
“What?”
I’m about to steer us away from my regrettable wit addiction, but my next thought hides at the sound of footsteps on the stairs.
Officer Cold’s freeze ray is still holstered, but the look on his face says that isn’t because he’s relaxed. He looks like someone’s been feeding him a steady diet of salt. He walks past the Snipe’s cell without a glance the bird’s way, and stops in front of mine.
“Are you ready to talk?” he asks. His face is still dark, but it’s a colder darkness, closer to the disgust he used to show me during interrogations.
“You mean confess? Because I’ll confess, sure.” I clear my throat. “I don’t always tip twenty percent at Mr Float’s.”
Officer Cold’s lip curls. “A good officer is dead, Tippy.”
“And a good nightmare, too. And it’s awful.” I work overtime to soften my voice. “But I didn’t do it.”
“The Man in the Coat killed Hot,” squawks the Snipe.
Officer Cold gives the Snipe the same contemptuous look he gave me when I said I missed his partner. He resets his face to the usual Cold annoyance, waves a dismissive hand at the Snipe. The Snipe goes back to pecking at a spot under his wing like nothing has changed.
“I don’t think you killed Hot,” he says. He gives me a leer like he’s just caught me in his trap. “I think you had him killed.”
What is with this week? “Why the heck would I want to do that?” I blurt. “He was a jerk, sure, but–”
“Exactly,” Cold snickers. “That’s exactly why.”
I puff up my chest. “Okay, Sherlock Snowman. You want to show me some proof?”
“Why else would you have been at both murder scenes?”
“Because I’m a detective?”
Cold stands up tall and triumphant “And who hired you?”
“I don’t need to be paid to help people.”
“Not historically, no,” he says, twisting the knife. “But historically, no one’s been able to permanently kill a Friend, either.”
For a second, I watch him, really watch. The set of his shoulders is from someone who is dead certain he’s won, but his teeth are still gnashing together, and at the very back of his eyes, where no one can hide what they really feel, there’s doubt.
“Okay, Cold,” I say, sitting down and trying to act casual. “I’ll play. For old times’ sake.” Yeah, slather on that guilt. “Why don’t you tell me exactly how I committed this crime?”
Cold starts pacing back and forth in front of my cell as he explains. “You got the nightmare done-in first. Knowing you, you probably thought he was a risk to Playtime Town. Something off about him; you found out when you investigated.”
“Spindleman was an it,” I say, “not a he. And what, after I arranged its murder, I creatively made sure I was there to witness the killing and try desperately to help my own victim?”
“You had to confirm the kill.” He jabs a finger in my direction. “Being a witness did that, and trying to save it established your alibi.”
I glance over at the Snipe, give him a look of are-you-seeing-this-too? The Snipe is too busy staring at Cold to share it with me.
“Then Officer Hot and I started looking into it,” Cold continues. “So you got your buddy in the big hat to take us out too, before we could figure out you were involved. But you didn’t count on Hot going in alone.”
His delivery keeps going more and more off; he’s powering through his sentences, gasping for air when he should be breathing. It’s the delivery of someone who needs to get his thoughts out before his brain has time to really reflect on them. I try to make him pause.
“And Big Business figures into this master plan… how?”
Cold steps on his verbal gas pedal. “Big Business is the most connected Friend in the Stillreal. He’s how you arranged all this. You were probably thinking over to see him when I nabbed you, right?”
“No,” says the Snipe.
Officer Cold misses one beat, but only one. I try to work the opening the Snipe has left me.
“There were other murders before you dragged me in,” I say. “I didn’t know about them. You were mad when Hot told me.”
“Wouldn’t be the first crook who played ignorant under interrogation,” Cold responds, like it’s obvious.
I give Cold a long, careful study. He studies me back, looking down his nose, his arms crossed in victory. I take a deep breath, and I pick at the loose thread.
“So… I hired a nightmare to kill another nightmare, and I used Big Business to find me the one nightmare who could make it permanent?” I try not to get too sardonic. I mostly succeed.
“Not a nightmare,” the Snipe gobbles, to no reaction from Officer Cold.
“Precisely,” says Officer Cold, but there’s a wild look in his eyes that says he already knows what’s coming.
“And I hired the same hitman to rub out you and Officer Hot – knowing that the hitman was capable of making this permanent somehow, that you would be gone forever, not just on the shelf for a little while – but with this somehow being that important to me, I executed a plan that not only required you two to go to a very specific place that I couldn’t be sure anyone would think to check, but that also put Freedom Frieda, one of my oldest friends, in danger?”
