Crucible Steele (Daggers & Steele Book 5) (3 page)

With that in hand, we once again braved the cold en route to one of the city’s two flagship institutions of higher learning, the aptly named New Welwic University or NWU. While the University of New Welwic, or UNW, specialized in math, science, and engineering, NWU was better known for its fine and liberal arts programs, not to mention its law school, which had produced more of my interrogation room adversaries than even the meanest streets of the Erming.

Our rickshaw dropped us off in front of the university’s main building, a sprawling four story limestone structure whose construction had been footed by wealthy donors. A bell tower sprouted from the center of the stone, rising several stories above the building proper before ending in a conical end cap painted in the university’s distinctive purple and maize. Huge oak trees lined the sides of a grassy promenade leading up to the building, their boughs bare due to winter’s chill. Though the space was largely deserted, I imagined students clogged it in the summer months, sunning themselves and tossing leather balls and smoking dried herbal mixtures of dubious legality.

Steele spotted me staring at the bell tower’s bicolored tip as I stood at the foot of the mall. “You ever been to the NWU campus, Daggers?”

“Once or twice,” I said. “For research purposes. You?”

“Oh, sure,” she said with a shrug. “Morton’s was a wonderful school, and far better for paranormal studies than NWU, but with that said, most of the students were what you’d consider total drips. NWU was where the parties were.”

I lifted a dubious eyebrow as we set out toward the building.
“You
came here to party?”

My partner gave me a sly smile. “You don’t think I’m fun?”

“Don’t put words in my mouth.”

“Oh, but perhaps I should,” she said. “There are too many worthless ones that come out of there without my input.”

I snorted. “My point is you’re so…responsible. I can’t quite picture you getting sloshed and defacing a treasured university monument or running around with nothing but a paper cone on your head.” Which was a lie, to be honest. I
could
picture Steele in such revealing attire, and I did so more often than I cared to admit—which was never.

Steele pulled on the door handle to the main’s interior. “I was never involved in anything quite so self-indulgent—or illegal. Although there was that one time sophomore year…”

I stopped dead in my tracks. “Oh, come on. You can’t throw out a teaser like that and not finish the story.”

“Maybe I’m pulling your leg,” she said.

“Are you?”

Steele rolled her eyes and smirked before hopping through her own open door. I followed her, knowing she’d string me along with that particular piece of information for hours, but I couldn’t blame her. I’d do the same thing if I were in her shoes. The only reason I hadn’t was due to a lack of wild parties in my past and my complete and utter certainty Shay had no interest whatsoever in my drunken exploits.

We arrived at the door to the NWU admissions and records office. This time I led the way, pushing through into a room featuring copious amounts of wooden paneling and a line of service kiosks that reminded me of a bank’s. A rope strung between brass posts snaked back and forth for three passes, but lucky for us, the queue to speak to a person was momentarily empty. I crossed to the only station currently occupied and approached the teller, a middle-aged woman with a bob cut and glazed eyes.

“Admissions, or records?” she asked in a bored monotone.

“Records,” I said, “though I suppose I should be flattered you think I might be here for admissions.”

The woman behind the counter blinked slowly, and her lips didn’t move upward one iota. If anything, they crept down.

I think Steele caught onto the woman’s job-induced malaise faster than I did. She pulled out her badge and presented it. “We’re not prospective students. We’re with the police department. We were hoping you might be able to help us identify an alum.”

The teller afforded Steele the same unbridled joy that she had me. “Name?”

“We actually don’t have a name,” I said.

“You don’t have a name?” she said.

“No name,” I confirmed.

That seemed to throw a wrench into the woman’s gears. She looked at us blankly, unsure of how to proceed.

I could’ve elaborated, but I was starting to become interested in how this might play out. Part of me thought she might be a soulless automaton controlled from within by snickering homunculi as a grand ruse perpetrated against clueless college kids.

Steele unwittingly ruined my experiment by pulling out our stiff’s ring and the sketch Boatreng had produced. “We’re trying to identify the man in this drawing. We think he’s an NWU alum because of his ring. I’m not sure what sorts of data you collect on students, or what you might still have from back then, but perhaps we could see the files on the class from twenty-nine?”

“You want to see the files from the class from twenty-nine?”

I narrowed my eyes and peered at the woman. Her eyes, though dull, didn’t appear to be constructed of glass, and she moved too well to be made of anything but flesh and blood. Nonetheless…

“Are you familiar with the myna bird?” I asked.

“A what?” said the woman.

“Never mind,” I said.

The woman blinked and shook her head, then broke out of character. “Looking at the files won’t help you if you don’t have a name. But…can I see that ring?”

“Sure.” Steele handed it over.

The woman held the ring close to her face and narrowed her eyes.

“I already checked for a serial number,” I said as she peered at it. “No dice, though. It does have a hallmark, which could help us track down the silversmith who made the thing, but I don’t see how that would be of any help.”

“It wouldn’t,” said the woman without shifting her eyes from the ring. “And I can tell you who fabricated it right off the bat. Rundell, Smith, and Sons. They’ve supplied NWU’s class rings for over a century.”

“So, if you don’t mind my asking,” said Steele, “what are you looking for?”

“The rings aren’t all identical,” said the woman. “The silversmiths have dozens of different dies they use to personalize the rings for different university organizations. Fraternities and sororities, honor societies, clubs, athletic programs. You name it. If this ring had one or more of those symbols on it, that would narrow your search quite a bit. And sure enough—”

She held the ring back out, her index finger pointing to a small oblong ball hidden between a rendition of the university’s bell tower and an official seal.

“Is that a scrummage ball?” asked Steele.

“Scrummage?”
I asked.

“It is,” said the woman, “and how in the world do you not know what scrummage is? Did you go to UNW or something?”

“I gather that’s amusing because you think of those guys as nerds,” I said, “but for your information, I’m the exact opposite. I didn’t go to college at all.”

“Well, that explains it,” said the teller.

I frowned. “I think I liked you better when you just repeated everything that trickled into your ears.”

The woman grunted. “Go talk to the scrummage coach. He might be able to help you. I certainly can’t. Next!”

I glanced behind us, but there still wasn’t anyone else in line. “Um…we’re the only ones—”

“NEXT!”

Steele tilted her head toward the door. “Come on, Daggers. I know how to get to the athletic campus.”

4

Shay led me across half the campus, past ivy-covered libraries and dreary dormitories, before eventually stopping at a nondescript brick building featuring a small bronze sign that read ‘Champion’s Hall.’

“I think this is the place,” said Shay. “As far as I know the scrummage coaches’ offices are located here, as it’s close to the stadium. Whether or not they’re in at the moment is a different story.”

We headed inside, through halls lined with trophy cases that gave credibility to the building’s name. Inside the glass-fronted cases were large bronze cups with ornately crafted handles, plaques bearing names and dates, as well as numerous pieces of vintage athletic equipment. Leather balls of varying shapes and sizes, rackets, hoops, bats, skates, and sticks, most of them looking as if they’d been handed down through generations. Commissioned artwork hung in what little wall space wasn’t covered by display cabinets, most of it depicting coaches and players of days long past, or so I gathered from the plaques affixed to the bottoms.

We wandered around for a while in search of the scrummage coach, but the only person we chanced across was a minimum wage mop jockey doing his best to keep the wooden floors shiny. He glared at our feet as we asked him about the coach’s whereabouts and pointed us in the direction of a nearby practice field—though part of me wondered if he did so simply as a way to remove us and our grimy shoes from his presence.

Nonetheless, we followed his advice, crossing the street and bearing left at a field house before arriving at the fields in question. There, about three score young men, most of them of admirable size and all of them clad in muddy uniforms and brown leather skullcaps, ran wind sprints back and forth across a wide expanse of what at some point in the summer must’ve been grass. Now it was a mixture of dirt, pulverized hay, and unearthed roots interspersed with the occasional hearty weed. At least someone had painted lines of chalk over the filthy blend at thirty foot intervals, giving the broad dirt lot some semblance of structure.

At the nearest sideline, an immensely fat middle-aged man wearing a purple and yellow sweatshirt barked a mixture of encouragement and insults at the young men. A whistle hung from a lanyard around his neck, a large section of which was enveloped by the man’s ample flesh and multiple chins. A quartet of younger men of varying degrees of better health stretched along the sideline to the man’s left and right, clapping and whistling and pointing at the student athletes.

I approached the morbidly obese man, Shay at my side. “Excuse me…are you the head scrummage coach?”

The man took a quick glance at me before turning his eyes back to the field. “No open practices until the spring, so get lost. And no, I won’t sign an autograph.”

I shot a look at Steele. “You know, I’m starting to get the impression people at this university aren’t very friendly. Good thing you went to Morton’s.”

The corpulent one spared me another glance. “Are you still here? Don’t make me run you off.”

I didn’t think the man was capable of such a thing, but Shay’s quick response prevented me from saying so.

“We’re not fans. We’re with the NWPD. We’re investigating a murder.”

“Murder?”
That last bit caught the man off guard. His eyes widened, though they still appeared small compared to the rest of him.

“Precisely,” I said. “So if you don’t mind returning to my first query—you’re the head scrummage coach?”

The man passed a hand through his short shorn hair, which set his chins to jiggling. “Um. Yeah. That’s right. Head coach Phillister Choke, but you can call me Phil.”

I suppressed a snicker. “I can’t imagine why you wouldn’t want to go by Coach Choke.”

The man frowned. “Trust me, I’ve heard every joke in the book about that, so don’t waste your breath. Just a moment, though.” He waved a hand and called out to his apprentices. “Standemüller! Levert! Take over, will you?”

The two assistants in question laid into the athletes with a renewed verve as Coach Choke led us to some flimsy metal bleachers at the side of the practice field. He took a seat and helped himself to a cup of water no doubt intended for the students currently sweating buckets under his lackeys’ yells.

“So, uh…what did you say your names were?”

“We didn’t. I’m Detective Steele, and this is Detective Daggers.” Shay performed some finger gymnastics. “Mind if we ask you some questions?”

“Sure, sure,” said Phil. “But I’ve got to let you know—whatever happened, I knew nothing about it. I’ve been fully compliant with all the ICAA’s guidelines. The gods know I have! If one of these knuckleheads got into a fight and killed somebody, then by all means, throw the book at him—the biggest one you can find. But try to make it quiet, and please leave the rest of the team out of this. I mean, it’s almost playoff time, for Pete’s sake!”

I blinked. “ICAA?”

“Relax, Mr. Choke,” said Steele, ignoring me. “We’re not investigating any of your student athletes.”

Choke sighed in relief. “Oh, thank the gods.”

“Rather we think the victim of our murder might’ve been a former player.” Shay drew the ring and sketch out of her pocket and handed them to Choke, who accepted them with his sausage fingers. “We found that ring on the victim. NWU class of twenty-nine. I don’t suppose you recognize the man?”

Phil talked as he absorbed the drawing. “Twenty-nine? That’s almost forty years ago. No, no. I only arrived a decade ago. I’ve no idea who this is.”

“But surely you can point us toward someone who might,” I said. “Or show us a roster of players from that year’s team.”

“A roster, sure,” he said. “I can dig one up in my office. Or heck, if your guy graduated in twenty-nine, then he must’ve been on the twenty-eight championship team. We’ve got a plaque commemorating that group of guys back in Champion’s Hall. But you won’t be able to identify him from a plaque. You’d have to talk to someone who knew him. His coach, maybe. Unfortunately Coach Heath, who was the head of that twenty-eight team, passed away some six or seven years ago.”

Phil massaged his primary chin with his free hand. “Let’s see… You could talk to a position coach. Problem is you don’t know what position this guy played. I mean, they might recognize him, even if they didn’t coach him specifically, but, man… Forty years.”

More chin stroking ensued, culminating with a meaty snap of Phil’s fingers. “I’ve got an idea.” He held out his hand and, after a few seconds of inactivity, gestured to me with it. “A little help?”

I planted my feet and grasped the man’s hand. With simultaneous grunts, Phil rose to his feet, though his exertion clearly dwarfed my own.

Phil headed in the direction of Champion’s Hall, and though I initially tried to follow him, I quickly realized my feet couldn’t possibly move any slower than his, so I joined the man at his side and engaged him in some light chatter.