Murdock stretched his neck and sighed. “Okay then, we should start cross-referencing the victims, see if we can find a connection.”

I wandered down the steps as he and Liz hashed through procedures. A large telephone switching unit stood on the curb across the street. It would make an inconspicuous place to stand with a straight-shot view of Merced’s building. I kept my body language casual so that the scene gawkers wouldn’t follow me. Sure enough, as soon as I neared the big silver box, I felt the essence. The killer had lingered there, using the box to hide behind. From the strength of the essence she had left, I’d guess she waited an hour or two. Again, I felt the strange layer of an essence signature that I could almost recognize. Familiar, but off somehow.

Olivia Merced lived on the first floor. The neighbor had said he heard a buzzer around 7 A.M., which would have been around dawn. The killer would have watched her lights come on and waited until she was sure Merced would be dressed to come to the door. That made twice the killer had shown up early and waited. Whoever she was, she was patient.

The metal surface registered several patches of the same druidess essence. She must have touched the box or leaned on it. I waved over one of the patrol officers and asked him to secure the area. It was a long shot, but they might be able to lift a fingerprint.

Murdock came down the stairs, and I joined him at the car. As I slid into the passenger seat, I gave Liz a wave, and she returned it. I took it as a sign she wasn’t angry. “Old friend?”

Murdock didn’t react as he pulled a U-turn. “Yep.”

“That’s all I get?”

“Yep.” Murdock kept his social life close to the vest. I couldn’t complain, though. I hadn’t told him much about what was going on with me and Meryl.

We rode back to the Weird in bumper-to-bumper traffic, watching the neighborhood change from a livable stretch in Dorchester, to a desolate stretch under the Southeast Express-way and elevated subway tracks, and into the residential section of South Boston. Home once. Long ago, my brother Callin and I played stickball on those streets. Cars were fewer then, and more families raised their kids in town.

Murdock knew those streets, too. His own family lived down on K Street. His sisters had an apartment together nearby, but he and his brothers still lived with their father, who was the police commissioner. They had all joined the force, except Kevin, the youngest, who was a fireman. Public service had become genetic.

With a few turns through side streets, Murdock avoided the lights and ran a straight shot up D Street. As we neared the Weird, the streets got dirtier, the sidewalks more crumbled, and the houses more run-down. Late-October weather made it all worse, with the vestigial front yards dried and patchy, and the few surviving trees bare. We slipped into the warehouse alleys and left South Boston.

Everyone who grew up in Southie and left says they want to move back there. But I had nothing to draw me back. My parents sold years ago and moved to Ireland, and my brother Callin lived who knows where. No, for me, Southie was just a memory. A good one, mostly, but not a place I could go back to.

Murdock pulled up in front of my building. “I’ll send you the file when I get it from Liz.”

I hopped out. “Trust me. We’re going to find an obvious connection on this one.”

Murdock gave me a crooked smile. “Yeah. It always works that way.”

As I waited for Carmine to arrive, the cold wind off the harbor couldn’t hide the odor of rot wafting up from the Fish Pier. No matter how often the loading docks were washed down, the parking lots swept, and the dumpsters sealed, the accumulation of years of dead fish permeated the concrete and asphalt. It was enough to put me off tuna. Only almost. If I knew how most of the food I ate had gotten on my plate, I’d probably be vegan. Clams might look like something hacked up from a watery hell, but, damn, they tasted fine with beer.

While you could find someone to pay for sex almost anywhere in the Weird, the Fish Pier was ground zero for it. That’s what people came down here for. Only steamy windows kept the place from becoming an orgy late at night. If people could see what was going on in the car next to them, I had no doubt they’d join in. Car after car circled in and out, cruising the loading docks to survey the merchandise huddling against the closed doors of the truck bays. Someone would see something he liked, point his car at the bay, and flash his lights. If more than one worker stood in the bay, the regular johns had a system for flashing their blinker lights to indicate whom they were interested in. The seller would respond with a sending giving a menu and prices. If the john was interested, he flashed again, and they closed the deal somewhere else in the lot. The city could do little to stop it. There was no verbal solicitation to record, and no fey who could lure a john with a sending worked on the force. The entire situation drove the Boston P.D. crazy.

Because of the cold, Murdock offered to drive me to the meeting so I wouldn’t freeze standing out in the frigid air. He slumped in the driver’s seat, not wrinkling his clothes by some miracle. From outside the car, someone might think he was asleep, but up close, no one could mistake his alert eyes. I leaned against the door, trying to keep awake against the onslaught of heat from the vents. The temperature control in Murdock’s car was nonexistent. Joe fluttered around in the backseat, singing dirty bar songs and making us chuckle.

“He knows you’re here, right?” Murdock asked.

I nodded. “He’ll be here.”

Joe fluttered up and hooked his knees around the rearview mirror. He seemed to be into hanging upside down lately. “He’ll be here. I had lunch with Carmine this morning.”

“You had lunch in the morning?” I asked.

When Joe nodded, it amused me that it works the same upside down but wasn’t nearly as nauseating to see when I was sober. “Well… wait… or was it breakfast last night? What do you call it when you eat at dawn and then go to bed?”

“Drunk pizza,” said Murdock.

Joe laughed so hard, he slipped off the mirror and hit his head on the police radio. The whiff of alcohol on his way down told me there was pizza in his future. He crawled in the back, muttering about unstable car accessories.

“I got a subpoena from the Guild today,” Murdock said.

Last spring, Murdock was hit with a stray bolt of essence during a fight with a crazed fey guy. He went into a brief coma, and when he woke up, his body essence had increased. Since then, he seemed to be some kind of living dynamo. He’s not fey, though. His body essence still reads human, but what a human from Faerie might feel like. I don’t know for sure. The humans in Faerie didn’t come through during Convergence, so I don’t know precisely what their essence would be like.

Murdock had been at Forest Hills. His strange essence had kicked in, and he plowed through the fighting like a bulldozer. The last thing I remembered about Murdock that night was hiding in a grave with him hoping no one would kill us. According to Meryl, he was out cold when the big stuff hit the fan. “Don’t let Ceridwen rattle you. She’s only a mouthpiece.”

Joe hooted. “Ha! Don’t let her hear you say that. The underQueens all want to be High Queen, only Maeve knows how to keep everyone arguing with each other long enough to leave her alone.”

“What the hell is an underQueen?” asked Murdock.

“It’s a queen who hasn’t figured out how to kill the High Queen without anyone realizing she did it so that she can get elected the new High Queen,” said Joe.

I threw Joe an amused look. He threw his hands in the air. “What? You think I don’t pay attention?”