“Douglas.“
Abel stared at the name on a scrap of paper that had been stuffed through his flat’s mail slot.
Finally, the Spider has a name.
Abel shoved the slip of paper into his notebook. He knew he should tuck the book back into its hiding place, but he was late for an appointment with his informant as it was. He dressed to avoid drawing attention in Riverside—frayed coat, limp hat, detective badge in pocket.
A gust of snow blasted Abel as he locked his door. He tucked his hands into his pockets and hunched into the cold, hurrying across the slick cobblestones. The sooner he could get this meeting over with and get back to his warm fire, the better. Ducking and weaving through the crowds, all of whom were as eager to get out of the cold as he was, Abel shivered his way to the docks. Three years of investigation and he was finally getting close. His partner didn’t get his obsession with the Spider, telling Abel that the thefts and explosions and kidnappings were all Guild work and that he was going to get himself noticed and killed. Abel huffed at the thought. Of course the incidents looked like they were from different Guilds. That was the point. But they were a little too different, too perfect. They all had gossamer threads of evidence that pointed back to one person. The Spider, Abel had called him, until tonight. And while the Guilds were untouchable, nabbing a man working in the background . . . the Guilds might even thank Abel for ridding them of an upstart rival.
He caught a whiff of fry bread as he turned down a tunnel leading to the river’s edge, causing his stomach to grumble. Maybe he would stop at the Drunken Airbus on his way home. Best kippers in town, no contest. Checking his pocket watch as he approached the river, Abel cursed. He was late. While his informant liked to be tardy, Abel always got to their meetings on time. As he ducked under the bridge to their rendezvous point—many escape routes, few people, perfect location—Abel stopped short to see Dixon already there, smoking a cigar, its sickly sweet smoke cloying the air.
“You’re late,” Dixon said. “Unusual for you.”
“You’re on time,” Abel replied. “Unusual for you.”
A bit rude, perhaps, but Dixon was the lackadaisical type.
“If you’d ever bothered to scope out any of your meeting points beforehand, like I do, you’d know that’s not true.”
Abel grunted at that. He didn’t like Dixon’s tone, but Abel had gotten lax about that.
“I don’t have time to dance tonight, Detective, what do you want to know?”
Abel paused, taking Dixon in. Something was off tonight. Dixon looked the same—shoulder length gray hair and a straight posture in a sea of stooped shoulders, threadbare clothes—but there was an edge to Dixon’s voice tonight, a finality.
“The hit on the Main Street Foundry last week—”
“The one Fenrir’s crew did?”
“No,” Abel responded. “Whoever did it wanted it to look like Fenrir, but the body count was too low. Can you check with Michael Oswald? I suspect he might know something.”
“Why him?”
Because I know Michael’s worked with the Spider before, but you don’t need to know that.
“Michael teams with a lot of the mercenaries, he might know more information.”
“Money?”
Abel sighed and pulled out bills from the clip behind his badge. Nearly a month’s pay to sleaze-balls like this, but if he kept tugging at those threads, eventually he’d take down the Spider and prove to everyone he was right.
“Also,” Abel said as he handed over the cash, “does the name Douglas mean anything to you?”
Dixon’s hand slipped past Abel’s and latched onto his wrist. He yanked Abel forward—a knife had replaced his cigar and slipped between Abel’s ribs, once, twice, three times.
Abel tried to scream, but the air ignored his collapsed lungs and blood hacked its way from his throat.
“It means,” Dixon said, “that you’ve gotten too close.”
Abel collapsed to the ground, trying to crawl away and whimper for help, but Dixon kept a knee on his shoulder, rifling through Abel’s pockets. “You know why you detectives fail so much? You can’t give proper bribes. This won’t even cover the cigar I just lost. Police badges always come in handy, though, and they’re tough to get. Thank you. Oh ho! What do we have here?”
Dixon thumbed through Abel’s notebook on the Spider, tsking. “So close, yet so far. Still, I’ll need to clean up a few things. Thanks for the tips.”
“Douglas,” Abel wheezed. “You’re Douglas.”
Douglas smirked as he tucked Abel’s notebook past a shabby overcoat that Abel could now see hid an ermine-lined jacket.
“Nice working with you, Detective,” Douglas said as he kicked Abel into the ice-crusted water.
Abel struggled to swim back to the surface, but his limbs refused to kick and paddle. The freezing water shocked out the last of his lungs’ air. He sank, staring into Douglas’ pitiless eyes. The shadowed water pulled him under the fledgling ice, embracing him until it could safely deliver his bloated, fish-pecked corpse to a faraway village come spring.
