My dreams that night were full of buzzing, ominous voices echoing from the static. When I awoke, the buzzing was simply my alarm clock’s persistent drone and I found that once it was silenced, I could finally get some rest. I stumbled in to the Bunker by late morning, coffee in one hand and newspaper in the other. I wove my way through the hallways of general processing, greeted by the usual array of shouts, screams, swearing, and sobbing. A never-ending fugue of victims lodging complaints and perpetrators being booked. The noise receded as the elevator doors closed and I ascended to the third floor. I made my way down the hall to the Bullpen, the open-office layout space in the center of the Homicide department. It was where Homicide detectives researched, worked the phones, and procrastinated doing their most unpleasant tasks. I took a breath and enjoyed the relative silence. Our victims were silent, the next of kin were visited in their homes. We worked apart from the public, and the only sound of broken lives was our own.
On the edge of the Bullpen I stopped by my mailbox and found a trio of messages. Two were garbage memos, but the third was golden. Saul Petrevisch’s contact info had been delivered as promised. I broke into a grin and headed toward the pair of desks that Ajax and I called our own.
It was immediately apparent something was wrong. Instead of his usual tidy stacks of forms and reference material, Ajax’s desk was in disarray. As I approached, he crawled out from under the knee well. His head was bandaged, his eyes were wide, and his mandibles were quivering like a junkie in need of a fix.
I set down my paper and inbox messages, and sipped the coffee. “Lose something?”
His eyes darted around the room and he leaned closer before speaking in a low whisper. “My badge.”
“Okay.” I matched his hushed tone. “Walk me through it.”
“I had it at the concert site. I know I had it then. And I always put my badge and gun in a lockbox below my dresser when I go to bed. But this morning I opened the box and only my weapon was in there. I turned my apartment upside down, and the nurses’ station said I didn’t leave it when I got bandaged. If it’s not here, then I lost it in the snow-runner, the bus, or the festival site.”
“Was it your real badge?”
He stared at me. “What kind of question is that?”
“Kid, you need to get a copy made. Keep your real shield in a safe at home, and carry the dupe with you.”
He glanced around again, as if Captain Bryyh was going to jump out from behind a desk and write him up. “That’s not policy, is it?”
Jax was so good at his job, it was easy to forget how fresh he was to the city and the force.
“No, but it’s common sense. Look how panicked you are right now.”
“Wait, what good would that do? Someone will still be out with my badge.”
“Yeah, but anyone can go to a shady pawnshop and pick up a fake badge with a random number on it. Collectors, wanna-bes, you name it. The original shield, though, that’s one of a kind. I don’t know what the actual penalty for a lost badge is, but it can’t be—”
“Ten days suspension and a two hundred tael fine,” he said. “I looked it up this morning.”
I whistled. “Okay, that’s bad. But relax. It’s probably at the festival site. You got pretty ruffled during the arrest, and it dropped off your jacket. We’ll get it from the old rig worker, CaDell. He’s already been helpful.”
I dug into my stack of papers on my desk, somehow still messier than Ajax’s even after his desperate search, and retrieved the business card Murphy CaDell had given me the night before. It read Director of Operations, Tremby Property Management, with the letters TPM braiding together to form a distinctive logo. But what really caught my eye was the mailing address. “The Estante district. That’s a ritzy address for a management company.”
Jax snatched the card out of my hand.
“Calm down,” I said. “There’s no phone service to the rig site. We’ll need to radio him, and you don’t want to ask for a police shield over the air.”
“So what do we do?”
“We’ll have to make a trip, or get word to him. But first, we get you covered for today.”
He stared at me blankly. “How?”
“We’re gonna do like everyone else—go to a shady pawnshop and pick up a fake badge.”
Tomorrow’s Treasures was a pawn shop on Gaius Street. It was owned and operated by Big Mike, a gregarious fin-headed Gillmyn who’d forgotten more about weapons and antiques than most people learned in a lifetime. He was a source of expertise and information.
When he saw me he flared his buccal sacs and jabbed a finger at the door.
“We’re closed!”
Jax shoved his hands in his pockets and looked at me. “A friend of yours?” He was trying to be funny, but the nervous shake in his voice betrayed him.
I gestured at the other shoppers browsing the aisles of used guitars and power tools, trading cards and family heirlooms. “Someone oughta explain that to them.”
Mike threw his head back and slammed a palm on the counter. “I’m just pulling your leg! Good to see some of Titanshade’s finest in here.” Mike always spoke loudly, but this he practically bellowed. From the corner of my eye, I watched a teenager set something back on the shelf and make a path for the exit.
Mike tracked the kid’s path until he was
