The alley is dark, and the air is stale with the sweet perfume of restaurant dumpsters and urine. Night shift, ain’t it grand?
One of the uniforms guarding the crime scene goes through the motions with me after I flash my shield.
“Detective Ace Heart.” She takes a moment to verify my ID before entering me into the log. Her gaze drifts to the single red heart on my chest, not that anyone couldn’t make me out for a card by the square of my shoulders.
Is anyone from Homicide on the scene? I ask.
“Detective Thomson was here. You just missed him.”
Of course, it had to be Thompson. I haven’t dealt with him much, but everyone knows he’s no friend to rabbit-holers. “He say anything?”
She hesitates.
“Spit it out,” I say. I don’t want to spend all night playing tea party out here on the sidewalk.
“He might have said a few colorful words about flat-men. No offence, Detective,”
“None taken,” I assure her. I’ll save my offence for Thompson. And I’ll explain it real clear next time I run into him at Shenanigans.
If Jack left it for me, then there’s no doubt someone from the other side of the rabbit hole is involved. I let the uniform get back to holding up the nearest wall and head down the alley. At the far end, three bodies are waiting for me: two rabbit-holers and one human male.
A playing card with a red and white pinwheel pattern across his back lies face down in the muck. He’s been cleaved clean in two, and I don’t even bother to glove up for a closer examination. I won’t know if they’re a number or a face card until the medical examiner arrives hours from now and gives the ‘okay’ to turn them over.
The human is a few steps away. This one is sunny-side up, with his baby blues staring deep into the stars. I hit my light to get a better look-see. There are faint ligature marks and bruising around his throat. He must have had a terrible singing voice, because the killer went out of their way to shut him up hard.
I turn to my right to size up our final contestant. It’s a pawn. The marble-white chess piece has a ruby red gash on the side of its head. A fist-sized stone is sunk into the dumpster ooze nearby, and it’s splashed in matching red decor. I shine the light along the victim’s outstretched arm and catch a glint of steel in his hand. It’s nothing more than a scratched-up pig sticker.
But these three aren’t the only ones in the alley. The entire time I’ve been walking the crime scene, someone’s been hiding behind one of the dumpsters watching. They were quiet, but not quiet enough.
“I know you’re there,” I don’t even say it too loud, just matter-of-fact. But when they try to call my bluff, I scoop up a pebble and ping it off the metal bin. “Don’t make me come down the rabbit hole after you. Step out nice and slow with your hands where I can see ‘em.”
My breath catches when a girl in a blue dress and white pinafore appears.
All of a sudden, I’m back in Wonderland with the Queen of Hearts shouting at me to take her head.
She stops at the corner, still half-hidden in the shadows.
I let out a breath that I didn’t even realize I was still holding—a sigh of relief that floats long and loose into the stagnant night air. It’s not her. Not this time. Not Alice. It’s just another damn pinafore girl, a pretender, a Wonderland tourist.
“All the way out,” I tell her.
I hit her with my beam, and that’s when I see a little splatter of blood on her as well.
“Please don’t shoot,” she says.
My .38 police special appears in my hand out of cautious habit, but after I size her up, I send it back to the ether.
“How long have you been here?” My light travels down the length of the alley until it hits a brick wall, and I confirm my suspicions. There’s no other way in or out.
“A while, I guess.”
“Were you part of this?” I point in the general vicinity of the dead bodies.
“No, not really, I—” And then the water works start.
I offer a handkerchief and wait for her to wipe away the tears.
She stares at me reluctantly, so I let the silence stretch out until she gets back to talking. “I wanted to find a shortcut to River Street, and when I came down the alley, I found these three arguing.”
“Who threw the first—” My light flashes from stone, to card, to knife, “—punch?”
“Well, the chess piece shoved the man to the ground, and when he got back to his feet, the man had a rock in his hand, and he—” she sobs, and blows her nose.
“—bashed the pawn’s brains in,” I offer.
“That’s right,” she says, “and then the card threw himself at the man and started choking him. It all happened so quickly, you understand. And then a knife appeared, and the pawn slashed the card. There was so much blood.”
She wails some more into my now ruined hanky. I take a moment to re-examine the three corpses. It’s plausible. I’ve seen weirder things happen on both sides of the rabbit-hole, and don’t get me started on Looking-glass Land. No wonder Thompson left this one for me.
“And that blood splatter on your pinafore?”
She clutches the hem of her dress and pulls it taunt and searches about until she spots the droplets. “From the blow to his head, I think.”
I don’t tug any further on that thread for now. Again, it’s plausible. Instead, I point to the blade in the pawn’s hand. “And this is the knife he used to kill the card?”
“Yes, that very knife.”
“You’re sure?” I ask again. I get a double nod for my trouble.
I holler for the uniform to join me from where she’s barely being useful out on the sidewalk, talking to passersby.
“Put the cuffs on her,” I say when she reaches us.
“What?” the pretend Alice sputters. “Why?”
A hatchet appears in my hand as if summoned out of mid air, which it sort of was.
“You see, Alice,” I say with no small amount of sarcasm as I pluck my handkerchief out of her hand. I drag it across the blade of my axe, and we all watch as the fabric parts in twain as though it had always been two pieces. “A vorpal blade like mine doesn’t cut so much as it simply… undoes a thing. If the shiv in the pawn’s hand made the slash, that poor card would be as torn and tattered as the Mad Hatter. But it’s not. It’s badger hair smooth.”
The waterworks stop, and I catch the moment when her eyes smolder between defiance and defeat. Now she doesn’t resemble Alice at all.
“I’m betting when the sun comes up, and the rest of the Looking Glass Unit rips this alley apart, we’re gonna find a second blade, a vorpal blade, aren’t we? So, what was this really about? Bandersnatch smuggling? Or maybe a potion deal gone bad?”
The uniform pats the girl down and finds a baggie of diced mushroom caps and a wad of cash hidden in the pockets of her pinafore.
Her shoulders sag, and it slowly sinks in that the game is up. She kicks rocks but then lifts her chin to meet my gaze. “Well, there is nothing like cutting down the competition with a friendly game of rock, paper, scissors,” she says with a shrug.
I shake my head. “But nothing beats vorpal, does it, Alice?”
The Broken Queen of Hearts
If you enjoyed Rock, Paper, Vorpal then put your eyes on a full-size Ace Heart mystery. The Broken Queen of Hearts is available on Amazon. (And if you’ve already gone down that rabbit hole, then thanks again. There’s a mug with your name on it waiting for you at Shenanigans.)
Available now in eBook and paperback at Amazon.