The Basement Full of White Candy

The moment he opened the car door, a puff of white breath spilled out into the cold. Snow had piled up thickly on the road while they'd been away. Liam followed Davion out through the passenger side.

An investigator waiting for them at the mouth of the alley snapped off a salute. "Captain."

"Skip the pleasantries. The victims?"

The investigator stepped aside, revealing two bodies lying in the corner, draped with blankets. The size of their feet told him the sex of each. Roughly fifteen hours had passed since the crime.

Davion exchanged a silent look with Liam. At his nod, Davion drew a deep breath, crouched beside the woman's body, and with trembling hands pulled back the blanket to check the face.

Just as the police chief had said, someone had hacked the body apart with a blade.

But one glance was enough to tell it wasn't Cecilia.

Ah…

Relief surged up so deep that Davion let out a long breath, his head dropping forward. With the tension gone, the cigarette he'd forgotten about began to nag at him. As he rummaged through the inside pocket of his coat for a lighter, he gave an order to the investigator, who had meanwhile been talking with Liam.

"As soon as you've identified them, notify the families."

"Yes, sir."

Davion then lifted the blanket from the man's face as well — and, struck speechless by shock, dropped his lit cigarette into the snow.

"One moment."

Seeing him frozen stiff, Liam asked the investigator for a moment's leave and crouched down beside him.

Davion silently pointed at the corpse's face. Liam, too, went rigid with shock.

"My lord, this is…"

"A snake," Davion said, dragging the blanket back over the body. "So my wife was here."

Easthollow saw every kind of crime imaginable, but this was entirely beyond expectation. He'd never dreamed Cecilia would be entangled in a case like this.

Still, judging by what had been done to the man, she must have gotten out safely. No — strike "safely" from the record. She could have been hurt while fleeing. What if she'd broken a bone somewhere. It had been a shooting; what if even a single bullet had found her…

That woman, with her body still in such a fragile state…

The relief curdled back into black anxiety and began, insidiously, to gnaw at Davion. He sat in silence for a long while, hand pressed to his forehead, until Liam carefully took his shoulder.

"My lord, are you all right?"

"I'm fine."

He answered calmly, brushing away the lingering image of Cecilia. Grieving here would accomplish nothing. Davion rose, took out a fresh cigarette, and tilted his chin toward the house where the women had been held.

"Let's check the interior first."

The atrocity of abducting women who walked alone and selling them abroad was a chronic, festering disease of Lismere society. The dirty money gathered this way fed the dealers' coffers, and to trace the origins of the vicious cycle one had to reach all the way back to the end of the war.

The government had imported cheap painkillers for its discharged soldiers. But when the drugs' fierce addictive properties came to light too late, the medicine was twisted into a back-alley profit scheme — and became one of the engines of human trafficking.

Something had clearly happened here: the front doorknob had been half torn from the door. The moment they set foot inside, a vile stench stabbed at their noses, and Liam hastily pressed his handkerchief over his mouth before he could gag.

"Stay close behind me."

With his revolver gripped tight, Davion advanced cautiously into the house.

The investigators had swept the place several times already, but there was no telling when or where a variable might appear. This was a man who had rolled through battlefields and made captain by twenty-seven. And on the battlefield, trouble always struck at the moment you let your guard down.

As it happened, while scanning the room Davion soon frowned and rapped the floorboards with his heel.

A hollow sound rang out.

Sure enough, when he peeled the carpet back with the toe of his boot, a small door leading down to a cellar was revealed.

"What's this…"

Apparently the investigators hadn't even discovered the basement existed. While Davion kept watch, Liam bent down, feeling for a handle, and muttered to himself.

"So there was a cellar. The building didn't look like anything that could have been dug out legally…"

"It was renovated. To store something they couldn't afford to be caught with."

"Ah — found it."

When he hauled the door upward, a narrow staircase emerged in a cloud of dust.

Davion went down first. It was dark enough that he couldn't see an inch ahead, but with no knowing what waited below, he couldn't risk the lighter either.

He'd made his way by touch alone for some distance when he reached the basement storeroom, where a chill hung in the air. By luck, a bare bulb dangled from the ceiling.

The instant he switched it on, Davion held his breath and warned Liam behind him.

"Cover your nose. It's piled up in here."

Cans labeled sardines were stacked dozens upon dozens, forming enormous towers. What was actually inside, of course, would have been something else entirely — something with nothing to do with sardines.

The truth was obvious. Holding his breath, Liam examined the white powder scattered around the cans and said quietly, "So this is the source."

The painkiller was known as "Lampi" — or "White Candy."

It earned the nickname because it tasted sweet as sugar. A powerful analgesic developed for veterans, it exceeded any safe dose the moment it passed beyond dulling pain and began to numb the nerves themselves.

"Stockpiled in these quantities — if we hadn't found it, it truly could have been a catastrophe."

"More likely some of it's already been moved elsewhere. Amateurs hoard everything in one place. Professionals don't…"

Davion's voice trailed off.

The instant light flashed off a nearby can, he shouted.

"Get down!"

Liam dropped his head at once.

"You sons of bitches!"

An iron bar swung with full force from behind tore loose from the assailant's grip and slammed into the stack of cans. The thunderous clatter of collapsing tins shook the whole cellar.

Bang. Bang.

Davion fired twice in quick succession at the man's knees. As the man went down screaming, Davion pinned him at the waist and bound his hands.

Alerted by the gunshots, the investigators came running and shouted down from the top of the stairs.

"Captain! Are you all right?!"

"Bring the cuffs!"

Before long the investigators, hurrying down, clamped the manacles around the assailant's wrists and dragged him out of the cellar.

His face was a mask of blood — he must have broken his nose in the fall. Before he could spit, Davion's fist cracked against his skull first, and then he turned to the investigator.

"Once his identity is confirmed, lock him in the cellar under my estate. I'll interrogate him myself."

"Yes, sir."

"And there's a large quantity of drugs down there. File the report, and I'll come back tomorrow with Treasury agents. Until then, let no one near this place."

It was, if anything, a fortunate turn. If the man belonged to the organization that had taken Cecilia, he might know where she was.

Davion stripped off his blood- and dust-caked coat and tossed it into the back seat of the car, then threw his keys toward Liam. Liam, catching his breath as he watched the man being hauled away, fumbled the catch and had to bend down to retrieve them.

"Am I driving this time, my lord?"

"Go on ahead to the estate. It's a new car — don't scratch it."

"You're not coming with me?"

"I find myself in need of a drink drunk alone. I'll take a taxi back. I'll be there within the hour, so skip the lecture and just let it pass."

Since the case involved Cecilia, he would need time to gather his thoughts. Liam nodded, got behind the wheel, and drove off.

Old inns selling liquor lined the edges of Easthollow.

Gasoline motorcars plied the roads outside, and yet the place didn't even use incandescent bulbs. The moment Davion stepped into one of the inns, a hollow laugh escaped him.

So places like this still existed…

He sat down at the bar, slid a bill across, and ordered the house's bestseller.

Perhaps because he'd barely slept, the moment he entered the dim room his eyelids grew heavy and his head began to ache.

Then, elbow on the table, wiping a hand down his forehead, he caught sight of a white-haired woman at the edge of his vision — and shot to his feet in shock.

…Cecilia?

The spare glass he'd left on the table crashed to the floor and shattered with a clatter.

Could it be an illusion?

Davion couldn't bring himself to believe what was before his eyes.

It was an achingly familiar silhouette. The same build as Cecilia, the same height. Even the length of hair swaying at her waist was the same.

She was climbing the stairs with a shopping basket in one hand. Cecilia's name leapt unbidden to the back of Davion's throat.