The Collected Christopher Connery Read online

  THE COLLECTED CHRISTOPHER CONNERY

  LEE

  Text copyright © 2014 Lindsay Eimert

  All Rights Reserved

  To Jenny for not being disturbed when I said, “Hey, I’ve got this book about a dismemberment scavenger hunt.”

  And, of course, to my family for their faith and support.

  EXCERPT FROM THE PERSONAL CASE JOURNAL OF PRIVATE DETECTIVE GAIL LIN

  Case ID: CC25 – Connery, Christopher

  Report Summary:

  I was talking to Amar yesterday, one of my old precinct colleagues – and more notably one of the only ones I never wanted to set on fire. He’d just come off a bad case and he put an interesting thought in my head. He wanted to know how I rationalized all the shit we see. He knows I’ve been working the Connery case for years, so he asked me how I figured a nasty bastard like Christopher Connery could come to be. What kind of world lets such an evil piece of shit exist? The answer is simple: our world, and more specifically, our city. Our New Crossbridge.

  Even now, decades and decades after the Academy of Magicians got done mopping the streets with the anti-magical governments, most of the world is still an unlivable wasteland. So, with nowhere else to go, we squeeze like rats in these independent cities of ours, keeping contact with other cities only in a cautious ‘we won’t start anything if you don’t start anything,’ kind of way. That kind of crap breeds distrust toward all outsiders and fierce loyalty to our own little rathole, no matter how poorly run or corrupt it is. And New Crossbridge is both.

  Yeah, sure, it New Crossbridge may be the most powerful of the independent cities, with the most fertile farm domes and the largest and most powerful Academy. The Academy’s supposed to keep us all fed, entertained, and in good water. And for the most part, they do okay – so long as you aren’t one of the poor bastards down in Gracetown – but the richer and more powerful a place is, the darker its underbelly.

  The darkest spots on New Crossbridge’s underbelly are people like Christopher Connery. See, in the upper echelons of New Crossbridge, populated primarily by magicians and those laymen rich enough or lucky enough to squirm into their inner circles, all that magic and magical technology has led to two things: time and money. And while most people spend time and money going to picture shows and gambling with attractive strangers, some people try to make something of themselves and some of them do it on the wrong side of the law. Christopher Connery was one of those. Born in the Academy, he apparently got sick of living a life of comfort and leisure and left to pursue other interests. Unfortunately for everyone in New Crossbridge, Connery’s main interest was vernix and how much money he could make selling it.

  Vernix: a chemical compound that increases magical power, allowing magicians do more difficult magic than usual. Effect on magicians? Kind of like three extra cups of coffee without the jitters. Result of overdose: Slight headache. Effect on laymen? Vivid hallucinations. Result of overdose: Psychosis and eventual death.

  Naturally, it’s always been a big hit among the rich and the bored as well as the poor and the miserable. Since only a little vernix leaks out of the Academy at a time, those who get ahold of it in quantity often end up involved in a very lucrative – and very illegal – enterprise. Of course, if you’re Connery then the vernix doesn’t leak so much as pour. I’ve been working this case for years, and I never did work out who his contact was. He must have had more than one, but whoever they were, they kept damn quiet. I don’t flatter myself that they were scared of the layman police, or even the magician police (the Illuminators). No, they were scared of Connery. And when someone is really fucking scared of someone else, no bribes or threats will force a peep out of them.

  So New Crossbridge in all its glory and fuckery gave Connery the opportunity to become the biggest and most dangerous professional criminal in modern memory, and his particular talent for being a scary, evil bastard kept him on top.

  Or at least it did until he finally did everyone a favor died. Yep, that’s right, at least my answer to Amar’s depressing question had at least a sort of happy answer. Even the evilest bastards eventually die. Two days ago, Christopher Connery breathed his last breath on this earth. And good fucking riddance.

  Date of Writing: 6/15/350

  Case Status: Closed Ongoing

  Gail Lin

  1

  Gail Lin

  Private Investigator, formerly of the New Crossbridge Laypolice

  Gail was used to receiving strange letters. The person who used to rent the tiny space that served as her office had apparently been a prostitute with very interesting clients and said clients refused to believe that he or she had changed locations. And then there was Gail’s work correspondence, which was weird enough in its own right. Most of her income came from taking cases that the regular cops either couldn’t or wouldn’t and that often meant take some very unique undercover assignments. Once she’d spent three weeks pretending to be a member of a local circus act in hopes of getting closer their resident magician, a key link in Christopher Connery’s vernix chain. She’d found the drugs, but had never gotten the hang of the tightrope.

  But this letter was different. First of all, it had come direct from the Academy, which had been a rare enough occurrence even when she had been reporting to them regularly while arms deep in the Connery case. Second, the letter contained only a few lines of print, stating that if she signed the bottom of the page, she would be given more information but would also be sworn to secrecy. Now, normally Gail didn’t sign things without knowing exactly what she was agreeing to, but her curiosity – and the fact that rent was due pretty soon – got the better of her and she scrawled her name at the bottom of the page. After a moment, new letters swam up to replace the contract and Gail got the first look at her new assignment.

  And that was when things got really weird.

  The contract wasn’t particularly straight forward – letters from the Academy never were – but she got the gist of it. They wanted her to find Connery.

  But Connery was dead. During the most recent raid, when they’d finally nearly cornered him in his hideout, some of his lackeys had panicked and torn him to pieces.

  Literally.

  When the cops and Illuminators had slammed their way inside, there’d been nothing left but a bloody smear on the floor. If one of the Illuminators – the Academy was convinced that the laymen police couldn’t handle Connery on their own – hadn’t confirmed that Connery had died there, Gail probably would have suspected a set-up.

  But, no, the Illuminator had done his magic and gone sickly pale, breaking the spell only seconds after casting it and rubbing out the chalk circle with his shoe.

  “Messy?” Gail remembered asking, but he hadn’t been up to answering and she’d had to wait for his report to get the full story. She supposed messy was one word for a man butchered and carried away in pieces, though the Illuminator couldn’t define just how big those pieces had been. And since chunks of flesh and bone couldn’t stand trial, Gail had assumed that had been the end of that.

  But now…

  Pushing her empty coffee cup out of the way with her elbow, Gail read through the letter more carefully. She had plenty of other work to do – Connery’s sudden death had created a vacuum in New Crossbridge’s underworld, a vacuum that many of his former lackeys were rushing to fill – but she couldn’t help being curious. Why would anyone would want to find pieces of a dead man, especially a dead man that no one liked?

  She scanned the letter three more times, then snatched up her phone, slamming in the number the Academy had provided for her if she “had any questions.”

  “Hi,” she said when a bored-sounding magician picked up. “
This is Detective Gail Lin and I have a lot of fucking questions.”

  2

  Gail Lin

  After about an hour on the phone, she had a basic idea of what they wanted. And what they wanted was absolutely nuts.

  Apparently, based on fragments of Connery’s personal papers recovered during the raid on his hideout, the Academy had discovered that he’d been performing magic that hadn’t been successfully performed for a century or more. Gail’s contact on the phone had reluctantly admitted that even the most powerful of Academy magicians were absolutely at a loss as to how he had managed it.

  Gail didn’t think that was all that impressive by itself. The Academy always seemed to be reviving some old magic or another. Only a week ago, she’d read an article in the paper about a recently revived spell that turned drops of blood into sound. Impressive, she thought, if limited in application. But clearly the Academy thought different and they were all in a tizzy about Connery’s scraps. They kept coming back to one fact: they needed Connery in the flesh, no matter how many pieces that flesh happened to be in.

  They were sending one of their promising young Illuminators out to search, but they wanted Gail to join the investigation as well, “because of her long experience working with Connery.”

  Did spending several years trying to arrest someone count as working with them? Gail didn’t ask. Anyway, she had a strong feeling that they really wanted her to babysit their fledgling Illuminator, who had apparently never worked a case outside of the Academy before. In her experience, even the best and brightest magicians were absolute shit at booking hotel rooms and not getting their wallets stolen, so laymen police were often recruited to run interference so they didn’t get hit by cars or lose all their money to rigged card games.

  “And what are you going to do with Connery if we find him?”

  The response on the other end of the line was muffled.

  “Say that again?”

  “I said, the body will be returned to the Academy where it will be revived and questioned.”

  “What?”

  “Once the necessary information has been extracted, he will be humanely returned to his former state. Now, Detective Lin –”

  “Wait a second, you want to bring Connery back to life?”

  “Yes, Detective Lin. Now –”

  “But why?”

  “Because according to the greatest and most highly educated magicians in this city, the knowledge he possesses could drastically improve the quality of life of the entire population of New Crossbridge. If you help us with this investigation, we are willing to offer you compensation to the tune of –”

  Gail snorted. “Connery improve lives? That hasn’t been his pattern so far. I really don’t like the sound of –”

  The voice on the phone offered a sum.

  Gail’s mouth snapped closed. She looked at her battle-scarred desk which always tilted slightly to the left, at her unpainted walls which served as a home for what sounded like half the rats in the city, and finally at her ceiling which would soon be leaking despite the half-hearted magical waterproofing the landlord had done twice a year.

  Well, shit, it looks like my professional integrity has a price after all.

  “Okay, when do I start?”

  “Tomorrow, seven AM. Would outside of the police station work for you?”

  Gail rapped her pen against the edge of her desk. It was always a bit awkward going back to the precinct, but that kind of money would more than pay for a little awkwardness. “All right, I’ll be waiting on the steps.”

  “Thank you, Detective Lin. Half of the promised amount will be transferred into your account within the hour, the rest upon receipt of the – items.”

  “One dismembered dead bastard coming up.”

  The only response was a soft click and a dial tone.

  Setting the phone down, Gail turned her chair to look through the small window behind her. Her apartment didn’t have any windows and honestly, she preferred it. Sure, the air got a little stale, but all the air in New Crossbridge was a little stale and she hated looking at the goddamn rain.

  And in New Crossbridge, she had to look at rain a whole lot. Gail didn’t think she had seen the sun since last Wednesday and that had been a watery self-effacing kind of sun that had taken every opportunity to duck shyly behind the nearest cloud. And they hadn’t even hit the proper start of the rainy season yet.

  Worse, the rain wasn’t even good for anything except getting shit wet and poisoning anything or anyone stupid enough to drink too much of it. The farms on the borders of New Crossbridge had magical domes to keep the unpurified water away from the crops, but the magicians said that maintaining one over the city itself would require too much energy and too much manpower and, as they always added, “The filtration plants provide plenty of clean water for our citizens, so it’s not as if the rain truly hurts anyone.”

  No one you know, Gail thought bitterly. She gave the rain splattered window one last moody look and turned her back. She’d better start planning for her new assignment.

  3

  Illuminator Nia Graves

  Academy Magician, First Class

  Nia Graves studied herself in the full-length mirror, carefully adjusting the fall of her skirt. She had purchased a new dress for her assignment, wanting something both fashionable and professional. For the first time in her career, she would be representing the Academy on the outside and she didn’t want to look like she had just spent a night hunched over books in the library.

  And considering that was how she spent most of her nights, the selection of her new wardrobe had taken some serious consideration.

  Frowning, she reached up to adjust her hat again. She couldn’t decide if it looked better tilted to the left or the right.

  “We’re already late, you know,” her twin brother Arthur said from behind her.

  Nia scowled at him in the mirror. “The way you drive, it won’t take us more than a few minutes to get to the police station. We’ll be on time.”

  “It’s a car, not a time machine.”

  Nia tilted her hat again and stepped back, finally satisfied. “Nearly ready.”

  Arthur sighed, but for once refrained from rolling his eyes, though Nia could imagine the gesture perfectly well from years of experience. He and Nia had the same eyes, as well as the same deep brown skin and tightly curled hair. When they were children, the magicians in the nursery had never been able to tell them apart. That had ended when Arthur had grown several inches seemingly overnight when he was twelve.

  “Is the car packed?” Nia asked as she pulled on her coat.

  “Since last night.”

  Ignoring his tone, Nia searched through her box of diamond rings and selected one big enough to be functional without being ostentatious. If Nia found herself in a situation where her only canvass for spell drawing was a window or a mirror, the diamond would prove invaluable. An Illuminator, especially one working beyond the Academy walls, had to be prepared to make use of any surface and any tools. Along with the ring, Nia always carried several pens, pencils, and pieces of chalk in her handbag and there was more of the same tucked in hidden pockets in her coat, dress, and the band of her hat. An Illuminator who could not draw was helpless and Nia never meant to be helpless. In fact, she –

  “Are you sure you’re not nervous?” Arthur asked her. “You look like you’re about to throw up.”

  “I do not,” Nia informed him, though she couldn’t deny that her stomach was more fluttery than she liked. But she was not nervous, simply – simply necessarily aware that this was her first solo assignment outside of the Academy, and that she had a great deal to prove. A great deal that she would prove.

  Pulling the strap of her handbag over her shoulder, she turned to Arthur. “I’m ready.”

  She expected him to make another stunningly witty comment such as “finally,” but instead he just smiled gently. “I know you are. You’re the youngest fully accredited Illuminator in
seventy years, remember?”

  She smiled back. “Well, not quite. Stoll was twenty-four when she received her first individual assignment and that was only sixty-seven years ago.” She paused. “She died during it, if I recall.”

  “Yeah, that was sort of why I left her out. ‘Youngest currently living Illuminator in seventy years’ doesn’t have the same ring to it. Feel better yet?”

  Nia laughed and discovered, to her surprise, that she did. “I will try not to live up to her legacy.”

  “Good.” Arthur picked up his own small bag. “I can take your bag for you if you want.”

  “Thank you.” Nia handed it over, laughing when Arthur winced.

  “What’s in here, your lead collection?” When Nia only laughed again, he added, “Is it too late to revoke my gallantry?”

  “Yes.” Nia swept by him and through the door.

  “Do you have to meet with the Directors before we go?” Arthur asked as they made their way down the wide central stairs. Several other magicians hurried past them on various errands. Some of the better sort greeted them both with equal friendliness, but there were several who offered Nia chipper good mornings as they averted their eyes from Arthur. He didn’t seem to notice, but Nia made sure her answering greetings were appropriately chilly.

  “No, I spoke to the Directors yesterday,” she answered as they stepped into the entrance hall, their shoes tapping on the polished marble. Delicate magic had been used to place color inside the stone and keep it safe from the constant drag and scuff of passing feet. The colors formed detailed pictures of dragons and other beasts which twisted into complex spells of protection that could be activated at any time by the correct sequence of words.

  Arthur paused inside a circle formed by the wormlike body of a cave dragon trying to devour the tail of a fire-breathing manticore. “Did they mention me?”