Fine Blue Steele (Daggers & Steele Book 4) by Alex P. Berg

as well as a voice: Phillips’, coming from nearby.
    We found our prey in the alley adjacent to the station, chatting with a pair of other bluecoats, one of whom took a long draught from a briar pipe and puffed the smoke out of the corner of his lips.
    “Phillips!” I said. “Where the hell have you been!”
    Thankfully for Phillips, he wasn’t the one sucking on the pipe, otherwise the thing might’ve gone flying.
    “Daggers! Sir,” he said as he came to attention. “What can I do for you?”
    Steele dug her fingers into my side and whispered in my ear. “Remember. Be nice.”
    I forced myself to take a deep breath before continuing. “The body, Phillips. What happened to it?”
    “The body, sir?”
    “Yes,” I said. “Lanky. The corpse from the crime scene this morning. With the hair and the beard and the noticeable funk. I understand you brought it back to the precinct alongside Detective Quinto.” I jerked my thumb in the big guy’s direction, who did his best to block out the sun at the alley’s mouth. “Where is it?”
    “I…delivered it,” said Phillips.
    “Where?” I asked.
    “To the morgue.”
    “Our morgue?”
    “Of course.”
    I lifted an eyebrow. “Are you sure about that?”
    I flinched as Steele’s claws dug into my ribcage.
    Phillips’ lips flattened as he pushed them together, but other than that he did a good job of hiding his displeasure. “Absolutely. Ask Poundstone, or the other beat cop who helped us out. Whatever his name is. Ferguson, I think.”
    I frowned, but I also kept my composure—thanks in large part to Shay and her needlelike fingers. “Perhaps you could show us exactly where you left it?”
    Phillips nodded and pushed his way past me and the living wall of muscle that constituted Quinto. We followed him back inside the precinct, down the stairs, and into the morgue, where we found Cairny slicing into the narc’s throat with a wicked-looking scalpel.
    “You’re back!” Cairny smiled and waved with the scalpel in hand.
    I averted my eyes from the cadaver’s skin flaps by resting them on Phillips. His jaw fell, and I saw his tongue twist as he raked it across his teeth. His eyes darted back and forth across the room, and he blinked.
    “I…don’t understand,” he said. “The body’s gone.”
    I thought of a vulgar response, but pared it down for Shay’s benefit. “No kidding.”
    I leveled a cool glance at Phillips, but I needn’t have. As the gravity of the charge settled in, the poor kid’s attitude spontaneously melted from a frosty frustration to a blubbering puddle of ass-covering.
    “Sir, you’ve got to believe me. We left the body right there, on that table.” Phillips pointed it out. “Poundstone and Ferguson will back me up, I swear. We even filled out and stamped the clipboard at the door!”
    Quinto walked over and glanced at the clipboard in question. He nodded. “They did. Ink’s still fresh.”
    “Did anyone sign the body out?” I asked.
    If family members came to collect the body for burial or cremation, they’d need proper authorization, and the event would be recorded on the clipboard, among other places. Not that anyone could sign off on the collection of a murder victim before Cairny conducted her investigation, or that any family members would be around to collect Lanky at all. We didn’t even know his real name yet, much less had we contacted his next of kin.
    Quinto looked again. “Nope.”
    Steele pressed her lips together and wet them with her tongue. “So…what? Are we to assume someone broke in here and stole the body? Who would do such a thing?”
    I ground my teeth together and growled under my breath. “I think I have a pretty good idea.”
     

14
    I burst into the military police offices at the New Welwic Main army base like a tornado of piss and vinegar, spraying everything and everyone in my way with the unsavory cocktail.
    “Where’s Agent Blue?” I demanded. “Where is that sneak thief? In his