Crucible Steele (Daggers & Steele Book 5) Read Free Page B

glanced at Steele and mouthed under my breath, “Romp. Told you so.”
    She silenced me with a glance. “Don’t be so hard on yourself, Quinto. Everyone misses clues now and then.”
    The wind picked up, and I shivered. “Which doesn’t mean you’re not being relegated to grunt duty. Someone needs to search for the murder weapon, however futile an effort that might be, and it wouldn’t be a bad idea to canvass the local homeless population. Someone might’ve seen our victim entering or exiting the shipyard last night. If they did, chances are they spotted the killer, too.”
    Quinto gave his partner an apologetic look. “Sorry, bud. Looks like it’s up to us to brave the cold for a bit longer.”
    “What? Me?” said Rodgers. “What about Cairny?”
    “I’m not his partner,” she said. “And I need to start my analysis of the victim. Besides—I don’t like the cold, either.” A smile accompanied that last part.
    Rodgers harrumphed. “All I have to say is that somebody better buy me coffee. And soon.”
    “What about you two?” Quinto nodded in Shay’s and my direction.
    My half-elf compatriot removed the deceased’s ring and stood. “We’ll accompany Cairny back to the precinct with the body. They it’s off to see where this little baby—” She flashed the class ring. “—can lead us.”
     

3
    True to our word, we stuck with Cairny until we’d delivered our dead mystery man to the morgue, but like a true gentleman, I let Gorman and Poundstone do most of the heavy lifting. Of course, even after the delivery of the stiff, we couldn’t quite take off toward the university like racehorses. For one thing, the consumption of my tall morning coffee necessitated a quick trip to the facilities, but more importantly—and that’s a word my bladder would’ve argued against—we needed to add another piece to our arsenal before heading out.
    From the subterranean morgue, Shay and I headed upstairs to the precinct’s second floor where we found our friendly neighborhood sketch artist, Boatreng Davis. Boatreng had a little bit of a hair problem, in that he didn’t really have any left, but I’d found him to be an agreeable enough chap after he and I squashed our beef, one that had basically consisted of me being a huge jerk and him not particularly liking it. After a wink and a smile on Shay’s part, he hustled down to the realm of the dead and returned fifteen minutes later with a sketch of our dead strong-armed grandpa.
    With that in hand, we once again braved the cold en route to one of the city’s two flagship institutions of higher learning, the aptly named New Welwic University or NWU. While the University of New Welwic, or UNW, specialized in math, science, and engineering, NWU was better known for its fine and liberal arts programs, not to mention its law school, which had produced more of my interrogation room adversaries than even the meanest streets of the Erming.
    Our rickshaw dropped us off in front of the university’s main building, a sprawling four story limestone structure whose construction had been footed by wealthy donors. A bell tower sprouted from the center of the stone, rising several stories above the building proper before ending in a conical end cap painted in the university’s distinctive purple and maize. Huge oak trees lined the sides of a grassy promenade leading up to the building, their boughs bare due to winter’s chill. Though the space was largely deserted, I imagined students clogged it in the summer months, sunning themselves and tossing leather balls and smoking dried herbal mixtures of dubious legality.
    Steele spotted me staring at the bell tower’s bicolored tip as I stood at the foot of the mall. “You ever been to the NWU campus, Daggers?”
    “Once or twice,” I said. “For research purposes. You?”
    “Oh, sure,” she said with a shrug. “Morton’s was a wonderful school, and far better for paranormal studies than NWU, but with that said,