Dead dude’s Freddie Baldwin Cuaron.
“So what happened to them?” I asked.
“Sr. Baldwin Cuaron,” said Lt. Foster. “He had a switch-sword; it looks like he got it out after they stabbed him in the gut, then started doing some stabbing of his own.” Foster waved at the alley. “It all got messy after that.”
I crouched, to get a closer look at one of the Redtowners. “Did Baldwin Cuaron have a permit for the switch-sword?”
Foster snorted. “Yeah, right.”
“You never know,” I said. “Every so often, somebody in the nobility decides that the law on magic weapons applies to them, too.” Not that regular New Californians fall over themselves to obey those laws, either. And as long as the cops never have to see the weapons, nobody’s going to fall over themselves to enforce those laws. Everybody’s got better things to do, right?
Lt. Foster stood over me, probably deliberately. “You want to give me a hint here, Shamus?” she asked. “The family’s gonna want to know right away why one of their sprigs got trimmed down, and it’d be real nice if I didn’t have to check and get back to them on that.”
I conceded that Foster had a point. “It’s to do with the Case, yeah,” I said. “Kid had some information for me about it. I took the info, thanked him, and told him to keep his nose out of the rest of it. Guess he didn’t listen to me.”
“So you didn’t tell him to keep digging?” asked Lt. Foster.
“Oh Hell no,” I replied. “I didn’t want Freddie here on my conscience.” I stood up. “Guess I should have told him harder.”