The next time someone warned me an acid self-replicated, I would be more prepared for the reality of the situation. Within five minutes, the light coating on the non-organic materials the caustic fluid hadn’t eaten through yet had tripled in volume and spread out over the steel table. Given time, I expected the fluid would eat through the table. The victim’s credit cards already showed signs of deteriorating, although I hadn’t realized some caustic fluids existed capable of breaking down even plastic.
“Remind me to do research into caustic fluids, Alec.” I held up a deteriorating credit card, which was intact sufficiently to pull off the important details, including the card number, expiration date, and security code. While I handled the evidence, he took photos of everything. “It’s even eating through the plastic of these credit cards. Maybe we have to use glass to store it? Nobody warned me becoming a detective involved a solid knowledge of chemistry.”
“Is this practical chemistry?” Alec asked with a frown. “I took more math than science in school, and I can’t remember if chemistry was the acid test section of my education. It went by in a blur, honestly.”
“I’m fairly sure this is chemistry,” I replied, grateful the CDC had provided fancy gloves capable of withstanding the hell fluid dripping off the credit card. “I am noticing a trend, though.”
“That everything here is somehow financially related or identity related?” Alec pointed at the pile we’d already dealt with, which ranged from the soggy pulped mess of life-insurance papers; we’d dealt with that first, and we’d managed to get the policy numbers off as many of the sheets as possible, along with some names. That information would turn into warrants for the original copies. “Insurance, taxes, credit—it’s all here. And covered with this slime.”
The slime did remind me of the hagfish incident, with a goopy consistency and a tendency to stick to everything. “I’m getting the Blob vibe out of this, truth be told.”
“I hope you won’t think less of me for saying this, but I want to go home now.”
I laughed, as I wouldn’t mind heading home, especially now that I knew he lived in the same building I did. “Thanks to a bunch of incubi showing up in an effort to seduce me, I’m the proud owner of a bunch of board games. When I refused to take off my clothes but their boss said they had to spend time trying, we came to a suitable alternative: we play board games during breaks. As the inconvenienced party, I get to keep the board games.” I narrowed my eyes. “I also just realized my apartment is large enough to host gaming parties, and I’m thinking I need to have gaming sessions over the weekends. I may not be accepting the advances of incubi, but there is no reason I can’t invite them over for gaming.” My eyes widened. “Well, shit. I’ve been trained to have fun by my bosses. But then they make me do shit like play with dangerous acids while on the job.”
“There are no shortcuts we can take on this, are there?” Alec continued to take photographs of everything I handled from every angle, and every now and then, he made use of our digital tablet to make a notation about something we wanted to remember that wasn’t immortalized in image format. “Is this what you do daily?”
“Fortunately, no. I mean, there is a significant amount of tedium, but I usually don’t have to wear a partial hazmat while handling evidence. Usually, I have to deal with blood or other bodily fluids, especially if I’m being sent to a homicide scene. The chiefs don’t tend to send me out on the rape cases. I have earned a reputation.”
“What sort of reputation?”
“I will work myself to death on a rape case, even though the odds of getting a successful prosecution are low. My success rate for a prosecution is pretty good, but they only put me on the cases they think we have a decent chance of winning. Otherwise, I overwork on them.”
“I’m confused. Isn’t it a good thing to work hard?”
“No, working to death is never a good thing. Working hard in a sensible fashion is a good thing, but I am not sensible on those cases. I’m usually assigned theft or homicide cases, as I work hard without working myself to death. We’ll have to test your tendencies, too. That’s a thing here. The chiefs want to put people where they shine, but they need to shine in a healthy fashion. I get too involved with the rape cases, so it’s not as good of a fit as you might think.”
“You may as well classify me as the same way,” Alec stated.
Interesting. “I’ll tell the chiefs. If you’re like me, we’d be powerhouse detectives on the rape cases with good odds of securing a prosecution. But we have to be perfect on our end to get them. Most rapists walk.”
“That disgusts me.”
I understood, and I appreciated we stood on the same ground on the subject. I’d seen detective pairs split up due to differences of opinion in how cases should be approached before, although the chiefs took care to handle those situations with grace for all parties involved. “It disgusts me, too. Also, when we are tasked with domestic violence cases where the woman is the perp, we need to take extra care with the victims; men often withhold the reality of the situation because society has declared, foolishly, that men shouldn’t be the victims of rape. They are. They’re just far less likely to tell someone they’re a victim, so prosecuting their rapist is that much harder.”
We processed five more credit cards before I blinked, went to the pile we’d already checked, and began counting cards, confirming each one was unique. “Make a notation that this is an abnormal number of credit cards, Alec.”
“Oh, I already did that. I noticed the high number of cards after we hit card number ten. Most people only have an average of four cards.”
I had one card, and I obsessively paid it off on a weekly basis, terrified it would grow teeth and bite me. “I guess my one card is unusual?”
“It’s smart. It gives you access to a credit card without giving you too many routes to enter debt. I wouldn’t have any credit cards, except they’re convenient for paying the bills and some stores, especially online.” Alec shrugged. “One seems smart and sane to me.”
“Can you tell if these are real credit cards or if they’re prepaid?”
“There are names on the card, so they’re not prepaid cards. These are real credit cards. Now, they might be secured cards, but that is a different kettle of fish from a prepaid card. I can’t tell if the card is joint with someone unless we get access to the financials, however.”
I nodded, and as my curiosity threatened to take over, I sorted through the remaining items, separating the cards into various piles. Ten credit cards went into an expired pile. Twenty-seven went into the active pile. He had a passport, a passport card, a driver’s license, an insurance card, and four library cards. The library cards puzzled me, as he had one for the New York Public Library system, one for in Delaware, one for a county system in Maryland, and one for Chicago. “Make a note to look into the legalities for library cards in places you don’t have residency, Alec.”
“Noted,” he reported after fiddling with the tablet.
In the box of personal items, which included the soggy ruins of three pairs of shoes, a mess of deteriorated clothing, and a bunch of knick-knacks, I located a wooden box showing zero signs the caustic fluid bothered it. “Hello. What do we have here?” Setting the box on the table, I cleared away space so we could photograph it and make notes. Like everything else, it secreted the slimy substance, although it seemed impervious to harm.
Alec pointed at something engraved on the top of the surface. “That’s a practitioner working.”
I blinked, squinted, and sure enough, several symbols were etched into the wood. At first glance, I’d missed them, as they bore resemblance to the box’s natural grain. “Excellent eye, Alec. How much practitioner magic do you know?”
“Not enough to identify what that does,” he admitted.
“Okay. Did Chief Quinn give you a phone for work yet?”
“Yes, but it’s in storage with my personal belongings. I thought it’d be wise to avoid ruining my phone on my first day.”
Good call. “Use the phone on the wall, call Mr. Chief Quinn, and ask him to send someone who is familiar with practitioner magic to review this before we proceed. The last thing we need is setting off some trap playing around with magic we don’t understand.”
“Sounds like a good idea to me.” Alec obeyed, and after referring to the extension list posted beside the phone, he used the end of his stylus to tap the numbers on the phone. “Hey, Samuel? It’s Alec, and we found something fishy in the evidence.”
I pressed my lips together so I wouldn’t snicker at the man’s ruthlessly used pun.
“It is not an actual fish in this specific case.” The man grinned and winked at me. “When I scale it down to the bare minimum, there is a box with a practitioner working on it. Otherwise, we would have already tackled this task.”
Oh, hell. If Alec leveled any one of those wordplays at Bailey, she’d lose her mind. Not only would she lose her mind, she’d go out of the way to make sure he never left our precinct.
The more painful the pun or zinger, the more she loved it.
“She’s staring at me. Why do you ask?”
Right. Our boss had matchmaking tendencies almost as bad as any angel, and I would need to remind Alec he was under no obligation to form any relationships with anyone unless he wanted to. Shaking my head at the insanity, I set aside the box and pulled out the next item.
Grabbing a live and angry hagfish had not been in my plans, and with a shriek, I flung the slime-producing eel-like creature across the room, where it hit the wall with a sickening splat. It stuck and began a slow, squishing descent towards the floor.
“I think we may have located the source of the slime, sir. It is approximately a foot long and resembles some form of strange eel.”
“It’s a hagfish,” I informed him in a whisper, staring at my gloved hands, which had at least an inch of the slime clinging to the plastic. Between the gloves and the other protective clothing, I’d avoided getting any of it on my skin. “I need to be decontaminated, and if you could tell my boss I think I am done for today, that would be appreciated.”
“I think Josefina has reached her general tolerance for slime, as she has a rather amazing amount of it all over her hands. She requests a decontamination. I also think she may want to go home, judging from additional commentary.” Alec hesitated before saying, “He says you can’t go home early. Once you’re decontaminated, he has to hover protectively while Bailey makes you coffee and profusely apologizes.”
While I expected something along those lines, I sighed and glared at the hagfish, which continued its extended journey down the wall to the floor, adding to the slime problem. “He wants me to go to the hospital just in case, doesn’t he?”
“If it makes you feel better, he is expecting me to be checked, too.”
It didn’t, as I would have preferred neither one of us needing to be checked over due to exposure to abused wildlife involved with a murder case. “He’s going to need a bucket for the hagfish. And a mop.”
“He’s already called for the CDC. He is also questioning where the hagfish came from, as there were no hagfish when the box was packed.”
“It’s just yet another mystery that needs to be solved,” I complained. “When I was promoted, nobody warned me about the hazards of actively solving mysteries, Alec. I was not given full disclosure!”
“But were you given an appropriate paycheck?” he countered.
“Right now, it’s questionable.”
Alec chuckled and said, “Instead of sending her home, how about a raise? Because I don’t think anyone makes enough to deal with the caustic slime of a possibly undead hagfish.”
Was the fish an undead fish? I eyed it warily, wondering if hagfish could come back from the dead. I questioned how it was still alive.
It wiggled on its otherwise languid journey to the tiled floor.
“It could be an undead hagfish,” I conceded. “And if it is, I am definitely not paid enough for this and request a raise. I will accept my raise in a form of the best pixie dust we stock and some new board games for my collection. Since this is something Lucifer would come up with just to torment me, he can pay for it.”
Laughing, Alec relayed my commentary. “He says he is coming down with our resident hazardous materials expert. She’s changing into her fur coat now. The other expert, who will purify us using the fires of heaven and hell, apparently, will be here within twenty minutes unless we start showing symptoms.”
“What the hell does he mean by showing symptoms? Of insanity? Being in this room is a symptom of insanity.” I inhaled, counted to ten, and exhaled. “Okay, I feel better now.”
“Understood, sir.” Alec hung up the phone. “We are to stay near the door but remain in the room unless the hagfish makes any dangerous moves, in which case we sneak out of the room and lock it in until someone deals with it. As for symptoms, I think he means burning and itching.”
Thanks to frequent exposure to incubi who enjoyed testing my limits, I often suffered from a different sort of burning itch, and my preferred candidate for the removal of said itch had taken the idea of joining the force seriously.
I needed some time to think about the various fraternization rules, which mostly boiled down to avoiding personal conflicts from interfering with work, attending mandatory couples therapy, and otherwise spending an excessive amount of time with my potential partner.
The hagfish seemed like an easier problem to deal with. “Is wiggling while stuck to the wall dangerous? This is definitely among the more disgusting of the cases I’ve been assigned.”
“Honestly, I’m impressed it’s still stuck to the wall,” he admitted. “At the rate it’s going, the chiefs will get here before it actually hits the ground. At least it doesn’t seem to be burning through the paint.”
“Yet. It doesn’t seem to be burning through the paint yet.” I joined Alec near the door and kept a close eye on the hagfish. “I can’t even blame your curse on this one. Samuel likely used the case as an excuse to pluck you out of the academy.”
“He’s been looking for a reason for weeks. My instructors put me on notice I’d end up with a lot of on-the-job training. They shuffled my education schedule so the fraternization course was part of my introduction to the academy.”
I snorted a laugh at that. “That’s not just sending hints. That’s bludgeoning you with them. Let’s start with a friendship, Alec. If you can handle being stuck with me for three weeks at work and then come to my place for games every evening for the same period of time, and we haven’t tried to kill each other, then there might be something to their matchmaking ways. Be forewarned, however. The precinct is loaded full of busybody matchmakers. There is no escaping. If you aren’t being matched with someone, you’ll end up being sucked into the matchmaking ploys. It’s contagious—and prone to leading to surprisingly happy relationships as far as I can tell. I’m the precinct’s most stubborn woman at this stage.”
“So I have been warned. When I suggested they just let you decide how to handle things, they stared at me like I’d grown a second head or something.”
I gestured to the hagfish, which concluded its adventure to the floor and writhed around in a puddle of its own slime. “Do you think it’s a magical hagfish, Alec? It’s produced at least ten times its body size in slime so far, and it hasn’t died yet. Do hagfish need water to survive? I’m concerned.” While I hoped the hagfish survived its misadventure and use in someone’s murder, someone else could sacrifice their body and sanity dealing with it.
I had lines.
Handling the hagfish crossed those lines.
“I don’t know what it is, but honestly? I never thought I’d say the fish scares me more than the magical teleporting steamroller.”
I thought about it, and I nodded my agreement. “Insane caustic mucus fish are definitely scarier than the magical teleporting steamroller. That one went in the cold case pile, by the way, in case you were wondering.”
“I was, actually. Do you think that was the perfect crime?”
“You know what? I’m really not sure. Think we’ll get hazard pay for this?” To my relief, I heard footsteps outside of the door, and I took the opportunity to escape the room and its many horrors. I decided Chief Samuel Quinn deserved most of my wrath, as his cindercorn wife would be handling the cleanup jobs she abhorred. “You are a horrible person, Chief Samuel Quinn!”
“Middle name Le-vit-i-cus. Use, diss-uh-prov-ing-ly,” Bailey instructed.
As the cindercorn would heave sighs until I obeyed her, I dutifully altered my scolding and said, “I am going to need therapy for what happened in that room, Chief Samuel Leviticus Quinn!”
“What happened?” he asked with a raised brow.
“I reached into the box and got a handful of hagfish. Then I threw it, it stuck to the wall, and oozed down. Now it’s writhing on the floor. I’m going to feel guilty if it dies. I even screamed before throwing it. It was an instinctive reaction.”
Perky, who got saddled with the precinct’s odd jobs thanks to his education as a doctor, strolled down the hall with a sloshing bucket in hand. “We will attempt to assuage your guilt, McMarin. Did any of the evidence survive?”
“I don’t know. Ask me after you find out if the hagfish makes it. It’s evidence now.” I wrinkled my nose. “We got a good number of photographs before I located the hagfish, but I don’t know if the box with the practitioner working survived under all that slime—or if it’s responsible for the appearance of the hagfish.”
“We’re naming this the Fishy Case,” Perky informed me.
“And I’m guessing you’re expecting me to tackle it, bait in our perp, and balance the scales of justice while I’m at it,” I replied in my driest tone.
“It’s like you work here or something.” Without bothering with any safety gear, he strode into the slime-filled room and headed for the rogue fish.
“Safety gear is a thing, and I don’t care if your wife is around to pull her damned tricks,” I hollered at him.
“I was actually the one who pulled the tricks this time,” Samuel admitted. “It would have taken twenty minutes to gear him up, and the CDC likes yelling at me that I need to justify my paycheck through practical usage of magic. He’s basically wearing an invisible layer of hazmat clothing, and I’ll dispel it once he’s detoxed. He just wants the hazard pay so he can buy more toys for his kids.”
As Perky had four kids with another one on the way, he needed all of the hazard paychecks he could get his hands on. “Maybe I should give him my share of the hazard pay.”
“You need your hazard pay to pay for the board games we all know you want, and we also know you’re eyeballing a gaming computer. If you don’t want us to know what you’re lusting for, you shouldn’t sigh wistfully at it in the break room while hoping you catch Bailey and you can guilt her into making you coffee.”
Damn. At the rate he was busting me, I would need to hand over my badge and ask to be escorted to the nearest holding cell. “Four kids is enough to rattle somebody, but he’s going to have another in a few months, Samuel.”
“You’re fretting, McMarin. Perky is only half of the puzzle that is the Perkins household, and they’re perfectly capable of handling the next kid to come along.”
According to Perky’s snort, he did not agree with our chief’s statement, and even the cindercorn whinnied her laughter.
“Next time, you re-mem-ber you need birth control, silly Perky.”
“You say that like there was anything accidental about the decision to take leave of our senses in the hopes of another kid. I’ll remember that the next time you get stars in your eyes and want more kids under hoof.” Perky came back out with the bucket, which housed the hagfish. “You may as well call the CDC again, Sam. This is not a standard hagfish.”
“Well, shit,” the chief muttered, heaving a sigh and grabbing his phone. “If this damned thing is endangered, do you know what’s going to happen, Perky?”
“We will either have to agree to house it or find some poor bastard to house it for us,” the doctor dutifully arrived. “We could set up a tank in the lobby. As long as we ward it against any unexpected ruffians and rowdy criminals resisting arrest, it can be a good talking piece or something.”
“There will be no talking hagfish in my precinct,” Sam grumbled.
I raised a brow and stated, “It’s a hagfish, sir, not a nagfish.”
Bailey tossed her head and whinnied. “For that, I make you coffee. Perky, salvage the evidence you can with other bucket, then we lock box in box, then purify office. Then you get clean and get coffee, too.”
“I do like when the hazard pay comes with good coffee,” Perky stated before doing as our chief ordered. “Since you’re still kitted, see what you can salvage in the time it takes me to hand over the fish, McMarin.”
“You got it.” I waded back into the office and aimed for the pile of credit cards to discover the fluids had finished them off. Of the evidence we’d already sorted, only the box remained intact. The hagfish had also taken out the contents of the other box, leaving us with a sodden mess. “It’s all ruined,” I said, shaking my head at the lengths the perp had gone to remove evidence we’d be able to trace through the victim’s financial portfolio and identification records. “I fear we have a stupid criminal on our hands, sir.”
“I’d say we have a criminal capable of erasing evidence. Why do you feel this one is stupid? I mean, most are stupid, but what has this one done to be stupid?”
“All of the destroyed evidence, outside of this box, is data we can pull out from the financial records, sir. That’s pretty stupid.”
“Maybe they wanted to make it a little harder on us?”
Both chiefs sighed, and I recognized the moment when they realized I was right.
“I hate stu-pid crim-i-nals,” Bailey wailed.
We all did. “I’m sure the criminal believed there was a good reason to go through all that work,” I said to appease the woman. “If we’re particularly lucky, we can close it out after a review of the financials, and you’ll have extra justification to keep your new cadet.”
The cindercorn pricked her ears forward. “Yes, yes. Good idea. McMarin, clean up, take your cadet upstairs, do fi-nan-cials. It not paper goo; we smart, not put with goo fish.”
“Time to earn your paycheck, Alec,” I said, heading for the sterile room we used to decontaminate if any of the evidence proved to be more hazardous than we preferred. “I hope you weren’t hoping to escape math with your job choice, because if so, I have bad news for you.”