The Dragon of Falconer Read online

  “You can show me the way, Constable Kask,” Harley told Bohdan. “Mojag, see what you can do about getting the stove working. It’s freezing in here.”

  “You might want to open the damper in the chimney, first,” Akicita said.

  Mojag cursed softly. “A damper!”

  •

  BOHDAN POINTED OUT THE FOUR-year-old dark Ford sedan parked on the hardpan in front of the store. “That’s hers.”

  Harley held the car key out to him. “You’ll have to drive.” She pulled the cloak in around her as tightly as possible to close off chinks of cold air trying to creep beneath.

  Bohdan took the key. “You can’t drive?” His gaze flicked to the little humps of her wings beneath the cloak.

  “I don’t have a license,” she said stiffly.

  “So? This is Falconer. We have our own way of doing things. You must have noticed by now.”

  “Falconer is a town in Alberta, a province which has laws about driving without a license.” Harley moved around to the passenger side of the sedan. “What is the point of upholding laws we don’t intend to follow ourselves? If the old races want full citizenship, they should live by the same standards that citizens do.”

  Bohdan looked thoughtful as he unlocked the car and got behind the wheel.

  Harley spent a few minutes adjusting the passenger seat, tilting it back a few degrees more, then got in very carefully. She’d learned the hard way that getting into and out of small vehicles provided challenges the average human did not have to deal with.

  First, she lifted her left wing and tucked the end carefully between the seat and the center console. Then she settled on the seat herself. Then she even more carefully tucked her right wing between the door post and the seat. The declined seat provided room for the bulk of her wings, up between her shoulder blades.

  Then she could lift the seatbelt over her wings and shoulder and clip it closed.

  Bohdan watched her arrange herself with close attention. When she was settled, she dropped her Aviators into place, for the sun was bright in the cloudless blue sky. They were also large enough to hide the horn dots over her brows. She nodded at Bohdan. “Okay, let’s go.”

  Silently, he started the car. It was still warm from Akicita’s journey from her house to the store. Just as silently, Bohdan turned the heater on full, and flipped all the vents away from himself and toward Harley. She appreciated the gesture and could feel herself relax as the hot air blasted her feet and her face.

  Bohdan turned onto the main street and drove north at a steady fifty kilometers an hour, obeying the speed limit. Harley turned her head, watching the few stores and private homes slide by. Most of the homes showed bright lights through their front windows, for nearly everyone in Falconer grew their food, now. In winter, that meant turning their homes into grow-ops.

  Harley had spent years breaking up illegal grow-ops in Edmonton and overseeing the disposal of marijuana plants. Now marijuana was legal, and a grow-op house instead held a small farm’s worth of vegetables and herbs.

  “Do you know where I can buy bed sheets?” she asked Bohdan, as a general store flashed by, reminding her.

  “Sheets?” He sounded startled. “Nowhere here, I guess. You could get them online…” He winced. “I suppose we could figure out a way for you to order them online.”

  She shook her head, the idea repugnant. “Never mind. I’ll figure it out.”

  There was no mistaking when they had reached Campbell von Havre’s establishment. Akicita had spoken of a business. She had failed to indicate the size of that business.

  Bohdan turned into a parking lot in front of a shed which looked as though it might have been an indoor arena, once. The iron cladding had been recently painted a pleasant dark green color and two dozen cars were parked on either side of the lot. A glassed-in section in the far corner of the shed held a door and Harley could see a reception desk behind the glass, complete with receptionist.

  “This is Campbell’s business?”

  “Pot farm,” Bohdan supplied, switching off the engine. “This used to be the town’s hockey rink, only there hasn’t been a hockey team since I was in elementary school. When Campbell came to town, he bought it up and converted it to an indoor farm. Uses hydroponics and grow lights…well, you’ll see for yourself.”

  Harley extracted herself out of the car with the same care as she entered it, while Bohdan waited for her on the footpath running along the front of the shed. She grimaced and resettled the cloak over her shoulders. “Sorry. I’ll get faster at it.”

  “Out of practice?” Bohdan asked.

  “This is only the second car I’ve been in since I emerged.”

  His brow lifted very high. “Shit damn,” he said softly. He hesitated, then said, with an air of confession, “There’s dozens of orcs in Falconer, but no firebirds. You’re the first I’ve met.”

  “I’ve never met another one, either.” She moved along the path swiftly, looking forward to getting out of the crisp, cold air and into stuffy manufactured heat.

  The receptionist was very young and very nervous when she saw what Harley had under her cloak, when she took it off. “Please, have a seat. I’ll call Mr. von Havre…” She picked up her phone.

  Harley moved away from the desk and took in the fresh paint, the motivational posters on the wall and the tall palm tree in the corner, which was real, as far as she could tell. At least it was warm in here.

  Bohdan plucked his shirt away from his chest. “Phew.”

  “Is it always like this?” Harley asked, thinking of the dead body somewhere inside.

  “Ideal growing conditions, I suppose,” Bohdan murmured. He tapped the wall, which sounded hollow and thin. “The heat in there bleeds into here.”

  Harley nodded. “This is your first official body. Let me do the talking, okay? Got a notepad?”

  He patted at his breast pocket, testing it. Then his back pocket. He pulled out a thin coil bound notebook and yanked a pen out of the coil.

  “First, write the time and date it is right now,” she told him, and he wrote swiftly.

  He checked his watch.

  “Then, you record every name of every single person we see or speak to. You can ask them to repeat their names if you don’t catch them and ask them to spell them if you don’t know how. Also, anyone who speaks to us, you get their phone number or email address, or both. Then, whatever anyone says that is a fact—dates, times, locations, events—you write that down, too. You’ll have to figure out a shorthand for yourself and learn to listen while you’re writing.”

  Bohdan nodded, writing fast.

  The inner door opened and a man stepped through, around five ten, with thick honey blond hair and keen blue eyes. He looked to be in his late thirties, with a day’s growth on his chin, and a straight nose. Over his brows were the same reducing dots of horny growth, following the line of his brows. His gaze was direct and he came over to Harley with his hand already thrust forward, the sleeve of his very expensive grey business suit sliding back to reveal a white shirt and strong wrist. “Chief Canmore…or do you prefer von Canmore?”

  “Canmore is fine,” Harley said, startled. She hadn’t realized she had a choice. And just Canmore sounded more human.

  He shook her hand, and nodded hello to Bohdan.

  Only now did Harley feel the tug of Campbell’s presence. She had been warned that those of the fire element could sense each other, but this was more than detecting a nearby presence, the way humans could “feel” someone standing behind them. She could feel herself being pulled toward him and the need to pay attention to every word he said and obey.

  It was a little like standing in the same room with the Commissioner of the RCMP, as she had when she had received her commendation. But this was more physical than the simple awe she’d felt then. Campbell was an elemental.

  Harley mentally shook herself. She kept her tone firm as she said, “I believe you have come across a body, Mr. von Havre.”
<
br />   “Campbell,” he corrected her. His smile was warm. “Was your hair always red, Chief Canmore? Or did it change when you did?”

  She blinked. “I…um…I was strawberry blonde.” And she could feel her cheeks heating. He was disarming.

  “A lovely change.” He stepped back. “This way.” He pushed the inner door open and held it for her.

  Harley moved through, with the little swivel that let her wings through without the edges tangling with the frame, for this was a standard two-foot-wide door.

  It was even hotter on the other side of the door and Harley could feel herself relaxing even more. Campbell raised his brow, watching her. “It is pleasant, isn’t it?” He looked cool and comfortable, while Bohdan’s temples were already glistening with sweat, and he swiftly shrugged out of his heavy dark peacoat.

  “Doesn’t it cost you a fortune to heat such a big room to this level?” she asked, for the former hockey rink was an enormous cavern, with the banks of seating and the rink removed, leaving a flat expanse of concrete.

  “All part of the cost of doing business,” Campbell said, striding toward the first bank of towers. The towers were everywhere in the room, climbing up thirty feet or more. Iron stairs on wheels rolled between them, allowing staff to tend to the plants.

  Each tower was a support structure for dozens of square white trays, each a meter per side. A few inches above each tray was a square pad emitting bright light—grow lights. The trays on the nearest tower held soil and immature marijuana plants, about a dozen per tray.

  “As the plants mature, we replant them in deeper trays, and raise the lights over them,” Campbell said. “This is the nursery area.”

  There had to be more than a hundred towers in the old arena, and Harley could see at least twenty people moving along the lanes between them, climbing the stairs, inspecting the soil and plants and making notes on clipboards. Everyone wore white lab coats and those with long hair had it pinned or tied back and held under nets.

  It was all very clinical and efficient, yet the thick, cloying and musty smell of marijuana gripped her throat and triggered old instincts. She had arrested people for standing in rooms like this.

  Still, the legalization of pot was just a tiny drop in the whole sea of changes that had swept across the globe in the last decade.

  Harley kept her attention sharp and followed Campbell along the lanes. He turned into another lane toward the back of the arena, which was closed off with a makeshift barrier made from ordinary duct tape.

  Harley made a note that they should acquire some police barricade tape from somewhere. They would need it sooner or later. Duct tape didn’t have the official feel the real tape did.

  Campbell lifted the duct tape barrier and she ducked under it carefully, flattening her wings, and straightened up.

  “Just around the corner,” Campbell said. “To the left.”

  She stepped around the corner. The body laid on the concrete, sprawled face down.

  Bohdan gave a gusty exhalation, next to her.

  “Got a phone?” she said.

  He nodded, his gaze on the body.

  “Take photos. All angles, close up, middle distance.”

  He fumbled for his phone while Harley moved closer and crouched to look at what was left of the old one.

  “What is he?” Bohdan whispered.

  “Martin was a dryad,” Campbell said, behind them. “Martin ap Golden.”

  Harley barely heard him. Listening was Bohdan’s job. She examined the corpse, old habits and long ingrained instincts firing. Her heart thudded as she took in the anomalies of the scene. The odd notes. The plain wrong notes.

  “Is that green color in his skin…um…normal?” Bohdan murmured.

  Again, Campbell answered. “Dryads are of the air, constable. The trees are theirs to command. Growing things thrive under their care.”

  “Guess that makes sense,” Bohdan muttered, snapping more pictures.

  “Mr.… Campbell,” Harley said over her shoulder. “Could you scare up a sheet or a blanket? Until we can arrange to remove the body?”

  Campbell frowned. “Now?”

  “Please.”

  “I’ll be right back.” He turned and moved away, walking fast.

  As soon as he was out of sight, Harley said, “Quickly, help me put him on his back.”

  Bohdan pocketed his phone and helped her turn him. “No rigor?”

  “The body is too old for that,” she said.

  “You sent Campbell away.”

  “See this?” She pointed to the man’s mouth. The skin around it was blue.

  “Lack of oxygen?”

  She nodded. “And this…” She traced the line along Martin ap Golden’s cheek, from the corner of his mouth up toward his eye socket, not quite touching the flesh.

  Bohdan twisted his head to study it. “Is that…drool?”

  “Dried drool, yes. It travelled up his face. His head was hanging upside down when he died, but we found him on his face.” She looked at Bohdan. “The body has been moved since he died. Campbell is hiding something.”

  Be careful with Campbell. Akicita’s warning came back to her. Now she understood why she had said it.

  Bohdan glanced over his shoulder. “What now?”

  Harley bent and sniffed the body. Death was a familiar smell to her and there was nothing else odd or unusual emanating from the body. It wore a lab coat, just like the other workers on the floor.

  She radiated her inspection out from the body, mentally drawing a circle around it. A cylinder, actually, for there might be evidence up higher than eye level. But she started with the floor.

  Under the bottom tray of the nearest grow tower, she spotted something which glinted in the bright lights. “Is that garbage, under there?” she asked Bohdan. “No, hook it out with your pen,” she said quickly, as he reached for it. They needed evidence bags—a box of zip-lock bags from the grocery store would do. But for now she moved over to the tower and bent close to look at what Bohdan had pulled out.

  It was an innocent-looking blister pack, empty, with the backing foil peeled back. The foil had caught the light of the grow lights. She held out her hand and Bohdan put his pen in it. She used the tip to flip the pack onto its back so she could see the shape of the clear blister.

  It was a broad house shape—flat bottom, vertical sides, angled roof, but in the middle a blunt steeple rose.

  Her heart thudded as she stared at the thing.

  Faint steps sounded on the concrete. Harley snatched up the blister pack, shoved it into her jeans pocket and moved back to the body. She gave Campbell a hard smile as he came around the corner, carrying a red and white blanket, which he shook out to reveal a Calgary Flames logo. “Don’t tell me…you’re an Oilers fan.”

  “I am,” she said, for it gave her an excuse for her stiff posture. She was out of practice at dissembling. “Here, let me help.”

  The three of them spread the blanket over the top of Martin ap Golden.

  “Someone will be by to pick up the body,” Harley told Campbell. “We can’t tell anything about what happened without an autopsy—”

  “Or even with one,” Campbell added. “He was a dryad. Human doctors are still trying to figure out our physiologies.”

  “The blue lips are suggestive,” Harley said smoothly. “It is possible for us to die of strokes and heart attacks.” Us. She wasn’t sure if she had used that inclusive term with another of the old races before today. It felt strange. Odd on the tongue.

  She made herself continue. “If he hasn’t been properly controlling his protein intake, he might have had a fatal seizure. He was found here? No one heard anything?”

  “Not a thing,” Campbell said smoothly. “My night shift manager found him when he was doing his last round for the night.”

  “Can I talk to him?”

  Campbell hesitated. “Well, if you really must. But David’s an orc.”

  “Got it,” Harley said. “I might swing by
tonight, when David’s up, if that’s okay?”

  “Absolutely,” Campbell replied, his smile bright once more.

  “It was good to meet you, Mr.…Campbell.”

  “And you, Chief Canmore.”

  “Harley.”

  “Harley.” Campbell’s smile was even warmer. His eyes danced. “Welcome to Falconer, Harley von Canmore.”

  •

  THEY WERE IN THE CAR before Harley would let Bohdan speak.

  “Man, you’re one cool cookie, chief,” he said, his tone admiring. “I thought you were going to puke or pass out when you saw the wrapper, but when he came back, you coulda fooled me that you weren’t concerned about how the dude died.”

  “Where are you heading?”

  “Back to the station, I thought.”

  “Head for Sundre.”

  “Sundre?”

  “I need to speak to the RCMP in Sundre. This is a criminal investigation, now.”

  “It is?”

  Harley pulled the blister pack out of her pocket and rested it on the console between them. “Know what that is?”

  He shook his head.

  “You should remember what it looks like. That’s a Naloxone inhaler.”

  Bohdan still looked puzzled.

  “Naloxone is an emergency treatment for opioid overdose. It holds off the effects of an overdose until the victim can get full medical help.”

  “Like an EpiPen?”

  “Just like that. They hand these kits out free these days, because besides being super addictive and dangerous as fuck, Fentanyl is an opioid.”

  “Fentanyl? Here?” Bohdan shook his head. “This is Falconer, ma’am. You’d be hard pressed to find an illegal stash of anything, let alone a whole Fentanyl lab.”

  “Maybe Naloxone doesn’t work on the old races,” Harley said. “Or maybe they didn’t give it to him fast enough, or the overdose was too large…but Campbell is hiding something and I can’t help thinking that it was weird all his gardeners were wearing lab coats.”

  “You think they’re hiding a lab in there somewhere?”

  “I’m thinking that they had someone on their watch die of an opioid overdose and they moved the body to hide that fact. They even dressed him in a fresh lab coat. I won’t say anything else right now. This is beyond petty theft, Bohdan. The RCMP must take it up, now.”