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The office identified “dante_dies_at_dawn” as the same man that had sponsored Lynch’s Cryptid Conspiracies channel. Chad Faircloth ran a private agricultural credit union in town and had given Lynch three thousand dollars to advertise his bank on the next stream. He lived outside Fairfax in a farmhouse with solar panels and a tall privacy fence. The front yard was planted with corn instead of grass, obscuring most of the house, and a diesel Ford F-150 sat in the driveway.
“I’ll bet his neighbors love him.” Rick eyed the perfectly landscaped yard next door as he parked behind the pickup truck.
Dante looked from the neatly trimmed grass to the shoulder-height corn with a look of sheer confusion.
"Don't tell me you've never seen a corn lawn before?" Rick barked a sharp laugh, more amused by Dante’s reaction than the lawn itself. "My parents’ neighbors in Indiana did this one summer, drove them nuts, but at least he stopped mowing the lawn in his underwear.”
“Please don’t tell me this is a common thing.” Dante narrowed his eyes at him like he thought he was teasing him.
“I mean, apparently not as common as vampires in DC, but yeah, it’s a thing.” Rick looked again at his partner suspiciously. The flamboyant agent wore a Lacoste polo shirt and a pair of Ralph Lauren khakis. “What are you wearing?”
“The man goes by ‘dante_dies_at_dawn.’ You are correct, I cannot afford to keep losing suits like this.” His face flushed with embarrassment. “Please do not say anything to Charles. Or Lynch. Or Ravinia.” The redness in Dante’s face faded to a greenish gray. “If you say anything about this to anyone, I will cast myself into the Potomac.”
Rick focused ahead of him and coughed twice to keep from breaking up into laughter. “Let’s try to avoid getting shot at in the first place.” Honestly, Rick wasn’t certain why they were sent to question a guy who clearly had it in for mythics in general and his partner specifically, other than PNI’s flippant reliance on Dante’s resurrection ability to cover for otherwise sketchy situations. “You realize if we were both human, they wouldn’t let us within five hundred feet of this place.”
“Then it is a good thing one of us is not human, no?” Dante shrugged off his former embarrassment and took the lead up to the door.
Dante knocked, waited, then knocked again. After the second time, someone peeked through the blinds covering the window beside the door. Rick shoved his badge against the glass and the face disappeared. A moment later, the door cracked open, held to only a couple inches by at least four chains.
“I shoot salesmen.” The guy inside shoved the barrel of a sawed off shotgun through the crack.
“I’m Agent Rick McCoy and this is my partner.” Rick cut off Dante before he could say his name. Better the guy didn’t flip out immediately. “I know you saw my badge. Open the door, we have questions for you.”
“I know my rights.” The man grunted as he pulled the door closed and started undoing chains.
“You’re absolutely right. You don’t have to talk to us. That’s fine.” Rick rolled his eyes. “Except, well, that shotgun you’re waving around is illegal. We can make it official and read you your Miranda rights and take this to the office.”
“Fine, make it quick.” Faircloth swung the door open, but didn’t aim the gun away from them. He bobbed the gun barrel at Dante. “I thought you’d show up eventually. I’m prepared. Loaded it with bird shot.”
“Are you serious?” Dante rolled his eyes and gestured to himself. “Do I look like a bird to you?”
“Maybe not in those clothes.” Rick made a short laugh through his nose. “Your regular outfit does make you look a little like a peacock.”
Dante gave him a withering look.
“VampirePhoenix said...” Faircloth hesitated and lowered his rifle a little, but raised it quickly as soon as Rick made a move toward him. “It doesn't matter. Hurts like heck whatever you are.” He swung it to point at Rick. “And what are you?”
“Human, same as you.” He kept his hands up and visible as he took a careful step closer and to the left. If they spread out a bit, he couldn’t cover both of them. “I can show you my badge again if you let me pull it from my pocket.”
“I ain’t got a problem with cops.” He gestured with a thumb behind him at a sticker in his front window of a black and white flag with a blue line through it. “Just with weirdos.”
“Well, you got us there. Agent Brand is definitely a weirdo.” Rick ignored the indignant sound Dante made and kept going, drawing closer to the angry man as he did. “Does it make a difference that he’s one of the good weirdos? Even VampirePhoenix’s channel can tell you that.”
Faircloth considered that for a moment. “The only good weirdo is a dead weirdo.” He raised his gun to point at Dante’s chest.
Rick wedged himself between the barrel of the gun and his partner, ignoring Dante’s low protest and the pounding of his own heart. Faircloth knew shooting Dante would cause no permanent damage, and so had no reason to hesitate over pulling the trigger apart from the risk of damage to his own front porch. A human target was a different story, and one Rick prayed would give the other man pause. “Is that how it went down with the waitress and the yacht owner? Did you kill them because you wanted everyone to hate the mythics as much as you do?”
“What? No, I didn’t kill anyone!” Faircloth stabbed his breastbone with the shotgun.
Dante cleared his throat and reached around Rick to grab the barrel of the gun with his bare hand, melting it into an unusable puddle of metal. “Seeing the way you wave that around, you’ll have to pardon us if we don’t take your word for it. You do have an alibi, I hope?”
Faircloth looked at the mangled gun dumbfounded. “How would I know?” he finally responded sullenly. “I don’t even know what dates I need an alibi for.”
Dante pulled on his glove and listed the dates and times of the murders they suspected were connected.
“My wife can vouch for the ones that happened over night.” Faircloth jabbed a thumb at the house behind him. “My partner out at the credit union can testify for the others.”
An interview with his wife didn’t lead to anything more than an angry tirade about all Faircloth ever did was work, sleep, and chat on social media with his doomsday friends. Somewhere in that load of bile, Rick and Dante gathered that the couple had been fighting during a couple of the murders, and that Faircloth had been at work for a couple more. After a goodbye that neither member of the couple seemed to hear, Rick and Dante left for the credit union.
“Don’t you ever do that again.” Dante said softly once they were back at the car.
It took Rick a moment of mental scrambling to figure out exactly what “that” was. “Talk down a homicidal hillbilly? Keep you from getting killed again?”
“Step between me and a threat.” Dante clenched a gloved fist.
“He wasn’t going to shoot me. He didn’t want to go to prison for shooting a human cop. I was in no danger. He clearly had it in for you, though.” Rick curled his lip as the graphic memories of the three times Dante had died already since he took the job played in his head and turned his stomach. “I don’t care if you do resurrect, it’s still horrible watching you die. I don’t know how any of your partners become jaded enough to just let themselves ignore that feeling.”
“Most don’t.” Dante sighed. “And those that do lose something of their humanity in the process.” He shook his head as if at an unpleasant memory, and added with a hard voice, “It doesn’t change the fact that I do resurrect, and you do not. If one of us is going to die, it simply has to be me.”
“And if neither of us has to die, how about we don’t?” Rick shrugged. “Saves us both a lot of hassles. You’re welcome to take a bullet for me if it’s unavoidable, but maybe we both look for ways to keep from coming into contact with them in the first place.”
“That is fair.” Dante laughed. “Dying is only an unpleasant interruption for me, I forget sometimes that it is traumatic to those forced to observe it.”
Rick grunted. “That would be an incredible understatement, but we’ll go with that.”
A chime from Dante’s pocket had him reaching for his phone.
“As I thought, Lynch didn’t have the resources to pay for a hit man.” Dante read from his phone. “Faircloth’s financials are a bit less clear. He has multiple unusual large expenditures.”
“Probably investing in a doomsday bunker in Kansas.” Rick scoffed as he pulled into a parking spot at the credit union.
“That’s on here, too. Partner’s name is– Mince!” Dante slammed the phone against his lap. “Shamus Finnegan.”
“Oooh-kay?” Rick took a deep breath. “Let me guess, he’s a leprechaun.”
“The king of the leprechauns, actually.”
“My first question is, does Faircloth know?” Rick started laughing. “Can you imagine a mythic being working with that guy every day?”
“It does seem like it would be unpleasant, yes.” Dante frowned. “He was on the council.”
“The short guy who stood up for you?”
“Umm Hmm.”
“That shouldn’t be a problem, then. He’ll be more disposed to cooperate with us than a werewolf or vampire.” Rick opened his door and climbed out.
“Suspecting an ally’s partner of murder is not a great look.” Dante rounded the trunk and pulled his spare suit coat out of his duffel bag, and shrugged it on. It was black with bright yellow embroidery that complimented his polo shirt. “We must tread lightly.”
“You’d better ask the questions, then.” Rick bowed mockingly for Dante to lead the way. “We don’t have a lot of mythic allies left.”
“More than you think, but yes, we should be careful.” Dante smoothed his coat, tugged at his gloves, and set his face toward the bank.
A cute blonde that looked as human as possible greeted them from behind the counter. “Good afternoon, gentlemen. Can I help you?”
“Yes.” Dante smiled at her brightly as he showed her his badge. “We’re with the Secret Service. We need to ask Mr. Finnegan a few questions.”
Her smile faltered. “I hope there’s no trouble?”
“I don’t expect there to be Miss Tiffany.” Dante waved a gloved hand carelessly. “Just a few simple questions, and we’ll be gone. You can tell him Agent Dante Brand and his partner are here.”
Seeming somewhat appeased. The girl at the counter entered a side office for a moment, then came back to them. “Mr. Finnegan will see you.”
They entered the banker’s office to see a very short man with red hair and beard sitting in a raised chair behind a large desk. The office was richly decorated with brocade curtains, textured carpet, and a massive aquarium with tropical fish taking up the wall behind the banker’s desk.
“Agent Brand, Agent McCoy.” The leprechaun stood on his chair and leaned forward to extend his hand to Dante. “I hope there’s no trouble?”
“We’re just here to ask a couple questions about your partner.” Dante took one of the seats opposite the desk and Rick followed suit.
“Oh, dear, what did he do now?” The leprechaun rolled his eyes to the ceiling.
“Maybe nothing worse than internet harassment.” Rick shrugged. Being a jerk wasn’t a crime, and Finnegan’s reaction indicated he already knew his partner was that. “We’re hoping you can fill in a couple gaps for us.”
Dante gave the banker the dates and times Faircloth still needed alibis for, and the leprechaun relaxed.
“He was here. He’s always here by then, and sometimes even sleeps on a Murphy bed in his office. You’re welcome to check our security camera footage.” The banker shrugged. “He’s a blowhard, but I swear his bark is worse than his bite.”
"He advertised the credit union on a video channel inciting war between mythics and humans. Has he ever used bank funds to further his views or in any other suspicious ways?" Dante asked gently.
“Not that I’m aware of.” Finnegan stroked his beard thoughtfully. “I’ll say though, I’ve handled a lot of odd loans lately from people looking to prepare for ‘the worst’ – not that that’s particularly new – it’s just gotten more frequent since the murders started. A lot of them are mythics or humans with mythic connections, like Giovanni Ciccarelli.”
“Ciccarelli took out a loan? Did he say why?” Rick narrowed his eyes. The shady mobster being involved wouldn’t surprise him in the least.
“Officially, for capital improvements on the club.” The banker shrugged. “But he kept hinting that there was a deeper reason and implied I should know what it was.”
“And why should you know what it was?” Rick glanced over to see Dante’s grim expression. Chick just climbed up the suspects list to the top.
“He laughed as he was leaving and said something I attributed at the time to his, ahem, less than savory reputation,‘War loans are a very lucrative business, aren’t they Mr. Finnegan.’”