The aetherphone rang into the darkness. It took three rings to break through the fog of Spades' sleep, and had him rolling over to find it.

  Picking up the handset, he swung his bare feet to the cold wooden floor, cleared his throat once, then again, and then finally spoke into the receiver.

  “Ya. Spade.”

  “Lu?” an echoey voice said.

  “Ya, that’s what I said. Who is this?”

  “Lu, it’s Tom. I’ve got a body up the street here by the Tunstock tunnel, east entrance. It’s Archer, Lu. Can you come down?”

  “Dead? Yah. I can be there in fifteen Tom. And Tom? Thanks for calling me.”

  Miles Archer. Dead. The thought didn’t produce much feeling if he was being honest with himself. Archer had lived in such a way that it really wasn’t much of a surprise that the world might eventually decide it had had enough of him. He hadn’t been a great person. Not to Spade, not to Iva. But he had given Spade a spot when he needed a job.

  He realized he was still holding the phone and leaned forward and hung it up. He rolled his neck, trying to wake the rest of the way up. What a night this was turning into. He reached over to the wooden side table and retrieved his last cigar of the night. It was only quarter gone and he relit it with one of the wooden matches scattered across the surface.

  Cold misty air blew in through the windows on either wall of his corner apartment. The sheets on his bed were damp from it. He picked up his wristwatch, one of the few good things the military had let him keep, and strapped it on. The glowing hands read a little past two in the dark of the room.

  He took a couple long drags from the thin cigar and picked the aetherphone back up. He dialed one of the few numbers he called regularly and had memorized. After a few moments the other end picked up and he ordered himself a taxi and hung up the receiver for the second time.

  With a groan, he pushed himself off the bed and made his way to the closet pausing a moment at the mirror on the back of the door to look at the bruises just starting to bloom across his torso. His lip was split along one edge and had swollen during the night and a bruise had formed high on his cheekbone where one of the alley bruisers had caught him clean.

  He gently probed his lip and grimaced. “Good work Lu. Managed just fine for yourself.”

  Shaking his head he grabbed a fresh shirt and slowly got dressed for his next late night rendezvous.

  That done, he slowly shrugged himself into his overcoat, stuffed his keys and money into his pocket and headed down to the street to wait for his cab.

  ***

  The fog still lay thick over the city when Spade paid his fare and exited his ride. He moved over the broad sidewalk, between the staircases that descended down into the tunnel and leaned up against the parapet railing. Leaning over, he looked down at the tunnel entrance below just as two vehicles burst silently out of the tunnel and turned down Lakefront at the end of the block.

  A group of men stood up against the tall fence that blocked off the hillside between the buildings on the other side, trying to get a glimpse of the police activity up the hillside. From his perch over the tunnel he could see down into the alley where several men were walking up and down the steep incline. They had a number of portable aetherlights set up so they could see what they were up to.

  There was a time when the Aetherlamps would have burned bright enough to see. Back when they were powered by the living flames of Aurelion. Spade made the old sign on his chest and turned towards the alley further up the street.

  A number of people stood around the mouth of the alley, not that they would be able to see anything from where they stood. He was surprised there were people this time of night, but then the big city never really went fully to bed.

  A rope had been stretched across the mouth of an alley and a pair of stonefaced patrolmen stood nearby, discouraging pedestrians from stepping under it and not answering any questions.

  Spade went to duck under the rope when one of the patrolmen stepped up to block his way. He was about to say something when the other man tapped the first on the shoulder and shook his head. Spade looked at the man but didn’t recognize him. He smiled anyway. It was too late to have to argue his way into a place he’d been invited to.

  Spade walked down the dark alley and stepped around an ambulance wagon. He scratched the ear of the nearest horse on the way by and made his way to the small lot at the end of the short road. Sergeant Polhaus stood near the drop off to the street below with his hands in his pockets.

  “Tom,” he said in the way of a greeting and to get the other man’s attention.

  Polhaus spun around and smiled, then immediately wiped the smile away again and nodded.

  “Bad business Lu.”

  “Bad enough I suppose.” Spade walked over to the policeman and looked over the waist-high boards that acted like a fence on this side. The ground dropped steeply away to the tall fence at the bottom. He could see the shadows of the men on the other side, still trying to look through.

  Spade turned back around to Polhaus and caught the man examining the damage to his face, but pretended he didn’t notice.

  “So, the bad business?” he asked.

  “Yah, well, it’s Archer, Lu. I figured you’d want to see this before we took him away.”

  “Did he fall then?” Spade asked, but he knew that wasn’t it. One of the fence boards had fallen down the hill too. Whatever happened, it had happened hard enough to knock both of them over the edge.

  “Punched him in the chest. Single shot.” Tom raised a mudcaked hand and tapped his overcoat a couple of times on the left side of his chest. He obviously hadn’t been standing up here in the nice clean parking lot all night.

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  Spade looked back down the hill. His partner lay on his back, caught on something halfway down the steep hill, staring up at the fog. It looked familiar, thought Spade, although he had been hit with fists and feet. He wondered if it had been the same men that got him. If they knew Miss Wonderly had come to the office, they were likely following both men after all.

  Archer had been a large man when he was alive. Lying there in the fog he looked smaller, as if the night had taken some of the size out of him. Or maybe that was just a trick of the hill and the crappy lighting.

  He turned back to Polhaus who was holding something out to him. As he turned he noticed Miles’ fedora against a rain gutter in the parking lot and wondered why it didn’t end up down the hill with him. He scratched the back of his neck and leaned forward to examine what Polhuas was holding out.

  Polhaus jerked it towards him, but Spade held up both hands, palms out and shook his head.

  “Well, look at it at least,” Polhaus said. “Haven’t seen one of these before...”

  “Yeah,” Spade said. “That’s a Whitlock & Fairbairn Repeating Rune Revolver.”

  “You know it then?”

  “Yeah. it’s a .455 recoil-cycling revolver.” He pointed at the rectangular block along the top. “When it fires that assembly there slides backward and automagically rotates the cylinder. How many shots?”

  “Just the one. Close up, that’s all was needed. You know this gun?” Polhaus asked, proffering it closer to Spade.

  Spade nodded and stuck his hands down in his pockets hard. “I’ve seen Whilock-Fairbairns sure. Not around here though. They’re made across the pond in Albion. Fancy too. Public mooks like us couldn’t ever afford one.” Spade turned back to the fence, trying to change the topic. “He was shot from up here then?”

  Polhaus nodded “Yeah, standing about there, where you are now. So, Lu, how’d you ever see one of these guns if they’re so rich?”

  Spade sighed and turned back to the policeman. “I had a Captain in the army that carried one. He couldn’t afford it either. Took it off a dead man if I remember correctly.” He moved over towards the parking lot and turned back to look at the fence.

  “So I guess the shooter stood here somewhere?” He raised a hand and pointed a finger gun towards the slope. “One to the chest and Miles crashes backwards and through that punky fence board, taking it down the slope with him. That about right?”

  “About. He was probably closer. There was blast marks on his coat, around the wound.”

  “Huh, a lot closer then.” Spade walked forward a few steps and took a long look at the space around him. Then he took a deep breath and opened his system menu.

  >>> Cognizance

  _________________________

  >>> Heightens senses. Identifies abnormalities and concealment efforts.

  >>> Captures and stores the physical configuration of a location at the

  >>> time of activation, including object placement, distances, and

  >>> spatial relationships. Stored scenes may be reviewed and adjusted

  >>> to simulate possible movement paths and event sequences.

  Scene Reconstruction was one of the best skills the system had given him with his new Detective class, even if he hadn’t had much call to use it yet. It allowed him to capture a model of a scene and review it later. But it also made all the little details jump out in his mind. Things that would be easy to miss otherwise.

  As the skill activated, he slowly scanned the area. He saw Archer’s hat first. Sitting there in the gutter. Where he was standing there were footprints, but too many policemen had trod over the area for them to mean anything now.

  He moved across the lot and saw tire marks. And there, near the wall of the building at the end of the lot, right near Archer’s hat where they had both rolled, was a single casing. He walked over and picked it up along with the hat.

  “See something?” Polhaus asked disinterestedly.

  “Just Miles’ hat. Maybe I’ll return it to the Missus,” Spade said. Polhaus just nodded.

  “Who found him, Tom?”

  “Shilling. The patrolman on the beat in this neighbourhood. Says he saw the broken fence from the bridge and came in for a closer look.”

  “Right. Witnesses?”

  “Nothing Lu. It was past midnight. Nobody in this part of town that late.”

  Spade looked back down the alley at the small group of people still milling around the ropes but Polhaus wasn’t watching him. Instead he asked, “Where’d you find that gun?”

  Polhaus pointed towards the hillside. “Down there, near enough to Miles.”

  “And nobody saw anything? Or hear the shots? There’s apartments across the way there.”

  “For the love of the living Gods, Lu! We haven’t been here long. If someone saw or heard something we’ll find them, but we’re not going to go banging down doors in the middle of the night.”

  Spade stood on the edge of the drop and looked down into Archer’s face. The dead man’s expression had settled into something faintly puzzled, as though he was still trying to figure out what the hells happened to him.

  He turned to Polhaus. “Miles carried a gun too.”

  “Still on his hip. Never even drew it. His overcoat was still buttoned up. We found a lot of money on him Lu. Eagles and Talons, a handful of Marks. Was he on the job?”

  Spade looked down at Archer, then back at Polhaus. He rubbed his tired eyes and winced when he caught his bruised cheekbone. “Yeah. He was working.”

  Polhaus waited for more, but Spade just looked back at him.

  “Come on Lu, what was he doing? It’ll help us figure this out.”

  “He was tailing some guy from New Kroy, new in town. His name was Floyd Wedby,” Spade said. He described the man as he had been told the description, then added: “He was Albian.”

  “Why?”

  “Why was he Albian?”

  “Lu, stop being difficult. Why was he tailing this guy?”

  “Look Tom, I don’t know what this was all about exactly okay? We were trying to find out where he lived so we could pin things down better. It’s just a case.”

  Polhaus frowned at him but didn’t say anything.

  “Look, I should go and return this to Mile’s wife and break the news. It’s going to be a long night, so I should go.”

  He turned away from the body and walked back toward the rope but stopped when Polhaus called out to him.

  “Damn shame, this. We didn’t always see eye to eye, but he deserved better than a ditch for an end.”

  “Don’t we all Tom?” Spade said. But really, he wasn’t all that sure in Miles case.

  ***

  Spade walked down the street in the general direction of his apartment. After a few blocks he found an all night apothecary with a public aetherphone. He dialed one of the only other numbers he had memorized and waited seven rings before a tired Eiffie picked up the other end.

  “Hey Eiffie, sorry to wake you, but I have some tough news.” Spade shifted the receiver to his other ear and leaned against the counter behind him. “Miles has been shot.”

  “What?”

  “Yeah. Like I said, tough news. I need you to break it to Iva.”

  “What? Now? Lu, you should be the one to do it anyway.”

  “No! I can’t do that Effie. Please. I’m here talking to the police at the crime scene. Iva deserves to hear this right away.”

  There was a long pause on the other end of the line, but eventually Effie sighed and agreed.

  “Great. Great. Thank you Effie. Do what you have to do, but keep her away from the office too. I can’t be dealing with her on top of everything else too.”

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