Dead Waters

13

I nearly wept in thanks for the sturdiness of the railing leading up the stairs to the Inspectre’s office. Without it, I doubt I would have made it past step one. The burn in my legs from chasing the green woman was less than last night, but stairs were a whole different torture device after all that running. By the time I reached the top step and turned right heading for the Inspectre’s office, I had a nice, slow mummy shuffle going on.

The sounds of struggle came from behind the Inspectre’s office door. I went for my bat and pushed the door open only to find Argyle Quimbley all by himself. To my surprise he wasn’t in one of his usual hundred tweed coats today, nor was he sitting at his desk. The Inspectre was in jeans and a black turtleneck, his broken sword from the cane in hand as he advanced back and forth across his office floor. His face was red with the effort, but he swung the sword with slow, practiced patterns. Impressive as the moves were overall, I had the feeling that I could have easily dodged them had they been aimed at me. Regardless, I hoped that I had half the skill he showed at his age. I watched in silence for several minutes more until he ended his practice with one final enveloping flourish in the air. He still hadn’t noticed me standing at the door.

“Is it Casual Friday already?” I asked.

The Inspectre started, fumbling the sword cane. It spun out of control in his hand, but he had the quick thinking to pull back from it rather than grab for it, probably saving a few fingers. The blade clattered to the floor, taking a chip out of his desk with its broken tip on the way down. The Inspectre bent down and picked it up, then stood up slowly, his breath coming in short, winded gasps.

“Inspectre?” I said, stepping to him, arms ready to catch him if he fell.

Argyle Quimbley waved me away with his free hand. “It’s nothing, my boy, I assure you. Merely an old man feeling the full effects of his years.”

I nodded silently. I couldn’t argue with him. My psychometry had shown me what he was like in his prime, and he was far past those days.

“I’m dressed down today because I have the sneaking suspicion I’ll be back in the field soon enough the way the budget seems to be dwindling,” he said. “I still haven’t read through all the cuts yet. Thought I’d brush up on some of my old moves, but I fear my hinges need oiling before this Tin Man goes active again.”

“Not bad form, though,” I said, hoping to give some encouragement.

The Inspectre gave me a polite smile before walking back to his desk, where he grabbed up the empty cane and slid the broken sword back into it. “Thank you for humoring me,” he said, “but it’s not necessary.” He moved behind his desk and put the sword cane back up on the top shelf with care. “I trust you didn’t come here to watch me spar with shadows. Any developments on what happened to Mason?”

I always hated giving bad news, but it was worse since I didn’t have anything positive to tell my mentor about so personal a case to him. He listened as I went on about asking around campus about the professor, minus my in-store incident with the dresser, to the attack Jane and I had endured from the green woman.

“That’s everything?” he asked when I was done.

I nodded. “The students who did talk to me about Professor Redfield spoke very highly of him,” I said, going with encouragement again. “But even after that aquatic she-beast attacked and marked Jane last night, we still don’t know why she killed Mason Redfield. On the plus side, Aqua-Woman did try to drown Jane as she was trying to escape us when we cornered her, so we must be getting closer to the truth.”

The Inspectre slammed his fist on his desk. “People are dying and this city would rather have us worrying about how much printer paper we use and who we can live without in the Department.” He shuffled through the files on his desk, snatching up a piece of paper, shaking it at me. “Do you know that we spent over ten thousand dollars last year on pens alone? How on earth did we even do that?”

“Actually,” I said, “I have an answer for that one.”

“Oh?” the Inspectre said, raising one of his busy eyebrows. He stroked at his mustache.

“Jane mentioned it to me. It seems the ink in them is a perfect replacement for Wyrm’s Blood. Easier to find, too. Greater and Lesser Arcana have been going through them like crazy. At first I thought maybe Jane was a closet pen fetishist, but nope. Just Wesker and his crew scrounging up spell components.”

Inspectre Quimbley sighed and rubbed his eyes. “Well, then! Maybe the Enchancellors should put Director Wesker in charge of everything here. I haven’t the heart for all this red tape or letting people go.”

“I suspect Thaddeus Wesker would take a perverse pleasure in assuming the throne,” I said.

“The budget cuts,” he said, angry. “The passing of old friends . . . How is one supposed to mourn let alone get anything done around here?”

“I’m sorry there hasn’t been more progress,” I said. “It’s no excuse, but like you said, everyone is overworked these days. It’s causing a lot of stress, even more so with me and Jane.”

“Power still flaring up on you?” he asked.

“You’ve heard about it, too?”

“A good leader keeps his ears open for what may be troubling his agents,” he said. “A lesson I learned far too late to help Mason with his problems years ago, I’m afraid.”

“I don’t want to trouble you with it, sir.”

“Nonsense,” the Inspectre said, gesturing toward the free chair across from him on the other side of the desk. “Clearly it’s troubling you or you wouldn’t have brought it up. If something’s distracting you from your work, I’d like to know about it. An undistracted agent is a living agent, as it were.”

“Very well,” I said as I sank into the leather chair, feeling a bit like I was in therapy. “Ever since helping out our sunlight-challenged friends over at the Gibson-Case Center, I’ve been channeling all this jealous anger and rage. This ghost tattooist left me trying to shake off all these twisted feelings of hers from when she had been living, and it’s been causing me to snap at Jane. She had been asking me about more space for her at my apartment, and I don’t know. After feeling the tattooist’s rage after trusting someone and being betrayed, it’s just messing with me being close to someone right now. It really gives me pause.”

“So, what?” the Inspectre asked.

“I’m not sure,” I said. “I want to take it slow, but I found myself looking at antique dressers the other day when I should have been concentrating on fieldwork. When I was hunting around for students who knew the professor.”

“Be sure to note that on your time card,” the Inspectre said.

“I’m salaried, so . . .” I started to say, and then stopped myself when I saw him smiling. “See? Even my sense of humor is thrown off.”

All the anger was gone from the Inspectre’s face now. He looked me in the eye, his hands folded together in front of him. “My boy,” he said. “I’ve seen a lot of things over the years that I don’t understand. Things that naturally defy understanding, but there are some things I do understand. That girl Jane loves you. Not everyone gets that in this world, not the way I see she looks at you.”

I didn’t know what to say, but I could feel my face going red.

“Now, now,” the Inspectre said. “I also understand this: our lives, especially in the Department and at F.O.G., are always too brief. That is always a possibility in our simple day-to-day existence. You want to make sure you do right by her. Pushing people away, well, that’s something I do know a little bit about. It makes you live with regret, and regret is a monster that slowly eats away at you.”

“It killed you when you heard Professor Redfield was dead, didn’t it?”

The Inspectre closed his eyes and nodded. “More than you know, my boy,” he said. “When Mason left the Fraternal Order of Goodness, I all but pushed him out of my life. I simply didn’t have time for someone who walked away from what I considered the noblest of causes. If he didn’t care enough to stand against evil, he was dead to me.”

“But after hearing about his life as a teacher in my preliminary reports, you felt different.”

The Inspectre nodded. “A life had happened to that man since I knew him,” he said, “one that I never got to know. From what you’ve told me of his university life and his students, it sounds like it was a good one.”

“From what I can tell so far,” I said, “yes.”

The Inspectre looked distant. “I should have liked to have known it, that’s all.” He turned to look at me. “Sometimes I envy you your power, Mr. Canderous, your ability to reach into the pasts of others and truly see it.”

“It’s funny,” I said. “I’ve spent so much time trying to avoid reading anyone I was close to psychometrically because it always ruined things for me in the past. I always saw what I did as a bit of a curse or, at best, a way to score a quick buck. I never thought of it like that.”

“I’m afraid that I am partly to blame for that,” the Inspectre said.

“How so?”

“I’ve pushed you too hard with this, on top of your regular caseload,” he said. “I’ve let my own personal involvement get in the way. For that, I am truly sorry.”

“It’s okay,” I said. “I’m a big boy. I can handle it . . .”

The Inspectre stood and came around his desk. He patted me on the shoulder, and then started toward his office door. I stood and followed.

“Do me a favor, would you?” he asked. He stopped at the door, his hand on the knob, and turned to look at me.

“Sure. What is it?”

“Take the rest of the afternoon off.”

I stepped back, shocked. Was I hearing him right? “Now?” I asked. “What about everything we just talked about? The budget cuts and the workload . . .”

“That can wait,” he said. “And that wasn’t all we talked about.”

“This is about Jane, isn’t it?”

The Inspectre opened his office door. “I want you to give it some thought,” he said. “About what really matters, about who really matters to you. Do it without distraction, but take a little gratis downtime approved by me to do so.”

Something deep inside me felt like it had just been freed and a tension I didn’t even realize I had been carrying released. Maybe a few hours of downtime would do me some good after all. “Thank you,” I said.

He nodded.

“A few of us are meeting up tonight after work at Eccentric Circles,” he said. “Nothing formal, just getting together to celebrate the passing of one of our own.”

“But Mason left the Fraternal Order of Goodness,” I said.

“Nonetheless,” he said. “I think the other agents are mostly humoring me. Still, I could use a few drinks to loosen my lips and wax nostalgic.”

“I’ll try to be there,” I said, stepping out of his office. “Thanks.”

As the Inspectre closed the door behind me, his face registered a silent sadness. I wasn’t sure if it was from old age having seeped into his bones or not, but I decided that after taking a little time off for myself, at least a round or two of drinks would be on me tonight. Getting the Inspectre a little drunk seemed like a fine way to respect my elders, and now that I thought of it, I never did ask him for the damned boat requisition I had come up here for in the first place. Ah, well, it could wait. That would probably go over better with a few drinks in him, too.