by Sarah Biglow
My mood hadn’t improved since the morning and the unwanted well wishes from my father. The sense that we were dealing with a serial offender only amped up my annoyance level. I knew there was magic involved. If I could get close enough to whoever was slinging spells, I’d be able to identify them and stop them before they could hurt anyone else. But magic was not an approved departmental method of investigation thanks to having to keep the truth under the radar.
The chair at the desk across from mine squeaked as Jacquie sat down at her computer.
“What are you doing here so early?” I asked, looking up from the report.
She smiled. “I was about to ask you the same thing.”
“I just wanted to get a jump on the forensics from the first case, since we won’t have Tricia’s preliminary report on Mr. Cho until at least tonight.”
“Read anything interesting?” She pulled herself around the desk to sit beside me.
“Nothing we didn’t already know from our scene. Same injuries, same dust residue and some partial prints. I went down to the scene this morning. There were some nearby cameras. I was just about to call the tech guys and see if they had pulled footage yet.”
“Well, don’t let me stop you.”
I picked up the phone’s receiver and punched in the extension, waiting while it rang five then six times. Finally, when my hand was halfway back to the cradle, a nasally male voice answered, “Yeah?”
My hand snapped back, pressing the earpiece to my left ear. “Uh, hi. This is Detective Trenton in Major Crimes. I was calling to see if you’d pulled footage from the Altagracia Mendoza crime scene.”
“Hold on.” I could hear his fingers click-clacking over a keyboard on the other end of the call. “Just came in. Haven’t had a chance to review it.”
“That’s fine. Just send it over and I’ll take care of it on my end,” I said, eager to move the case along. Every minute we didn’t have any new information or some new line of evidence to follow the more the bad guys slipped away—and the closer we got to the Equinox with all of this dark magic in play.
“That’s not really protocol.”
I bit my lip. “How long do you need?”
“Twenty minutes. Maybe a half hour depending on how much of a timeframe the request asked for.”
“Great. Just send it over as fast as you can.”
I slammed the receiver down harder than I’d intended. Jacquie looked up from her computer screen. “Everything okay over there?’
“Yeah, fine. Just the tech guy being an ass.”
“Sounded like he was just doing his job. Can’t fault him for that.”
“Yeah, I know. I’m just … frustrated. We’ve already got two victims and no witnesses. No idea why they were targeted. This surveillance footage could break this case wide open. I just don’t want to end up with another body when we could have done something sooner.”
“You can’t take the whole world onto your shoulders. You have to be patient. This doesn’t go like they show in the movies, rookie.”
Knowing I needed to calm down, I took a deep breath and exhaled slowly. I let out a tiny bit of will, the fresh scent of my magic washing over me, grounding me. “I took a look through the Mendoza file and I still can’t find any obvious connections to Mr. Cho. She was a retired FBI analyst but I think maybe we should go to the university and see if there was a connection there. Maybe she’d worked a case there or something or was a guest speaker.”
“I’m going to pull the Mendoza file and make sure we aren’t missing anything in the electronic copy,” Jacquie answered, as if she hadn’t heard me.
Just as she turned away, a new email from Tricia popped into my inbox. I started to call after my partner but she was already out of shouting range, so I settled in to read the report from Mr. Cho’s preliminary work-up. As we’d assumed, the same dust particulates had been left on his clothing. I skimmed over the description of what the compression of his rib cage had done to his internal organs and focused on the findings related to the actual compression. She’d found indentations that looked almost like handprints. She’d managed to pull some skin cells on top of the partial prints and they were being run through the local database. That was almost as good as a picture of our killer to work with. I dragged a copy of the report into our system, updating the log, and linked it to Mrs. Mendoza’s file. Even the evidence seemed to affirm my belief that these deaths were related, even if the victims themselves didn’t appear to be.
I was so focused on the file in front of me that I jumped out of my chair when the phone rang beside me. I took a steadying breath and answered. “Detective Trenton.”
“This is Vinnie from the tech department. There’s a problem with the footage you requested.”
I swallowed the groan in my throat. “What kind of problem?”
“It might be easier if you just came down and I could show you.”
“Okay. We’ll be there as soon as we can.”
Jacquie returned with a slim physical file in both hands but I was already out of my seat, jacket in hand. “We need to head down to the tech guys. There’s some sort of problem with the footage.”
“Did they say what the problem was?”
“Nope. Just that it would be easier to show us in person.”
She grabbed her jacket and car keys and slung the file under her arm. Without a word, we left the precinct and headed for the tech department. Much like how the rest of the department was spread out in different locations, we didn’t have a central location for tech support so it was a trek across the city out toward Faneuil Hall and the Old State House. Jacquie pulled into a spot near the front door and we headed inside, another bitter afternoon wind biting at exposed skin. I was still shivering when we got to Vinnie’s desk.
He was a beefy guy with a shaved head and gauges in both earlobes. He spun to face us and I could feel his gaze traveling up and down my body. I noticed he didn’t give Jacquie the same treatment. I put it down to the more than decade age difference between me and my partner and the fact that I’d turned down the guy for a date. I fixed him with a glare and he backed down.
“What was so important about this video you couldn’t tell us over the phone?” Jacquie prompted, taking control of the situation.
Vinnie cleared his throat and double clicked the mouse on his computer a few times. “Here’s what we pulled from the surrounding cameras for your victim on the ninth.” He hit “play” and a scene unfolded. I watched as people meandered along the street in small groups. I scanned the passersby, trying to seek out our victim.
“That’s our victim, right there,” Jacquie finally said and pointed to a gray-haired woman.
I tracked her movements like a hawk, waiting for her attackers to surface. She got to the corner where she’d been found and everything went black. Not fuzzy snow on a bad signal, just completely black as if they’d been shut off remotely.
“Wait, what happened? Did someone kill the signal?” Jacquie asked.
“No idea. We’ve got guys looking at the actual cameras but, so far, they seem like they were operating within normal parameters and we didn’t pick up anything messing with the signal remotely. Anyway, the video stays black like this for five minutes and then picks up again.” He fast forwarded four minutes and twenty seconds and, sure enough, the video came back up showing Mrs. Mendoza lying on the sidewalk, motionless. I tried to find someone reacting to the dead woman, calling 9-1-1, but no one seemed to notice her.
“What time did the 9-1-1 call come in?” I asked.
Jacquie flipped open the file. “Looks like nine forty-one.”
I pointed to the time stamp on the video. “By nine twenty-four she was dead. There are people walking around. And no one called 9-1-1 or even checked to see if an old lady was okay for nearly twenty minutes?”
Jacquie pressed her lips into a thin line and studied the screen. Whoever had killed Mrs. Mendoza had used some serious magic if it not only blinded our technology but
people around the scene long enough for the killers to melt into the crowd. I suspected whoever had cast that spell had done so before the killing started. People without magical ability would have just kept walking around them as if they didn’t exist. They wouldn’t stop to think why they were giving the spot on the sidewalk a wide berth.
“Detectives, I have the footage for your victim from last night ready too,” Vinnie said, interrupting my train of thought.
“Play it,” I ordered. I had a sinking feeling we were going to find the same black screen when Mr. Cho’s death came along, but it was worth confirming.
Vinnie queued up the next video and, sure enough, once we spotted Mr. Cho strolling down the street, the video went black for five minutes and then reappeared. The video showed his dead body lying on the sidewalk and everyone moving around him as though he wasn’t even there.
“How can none of them see him there and not do anything?” Jacquie grumbled.
“I don’t know,” I lied. “But I think it’s time to talk to the victims’ families and see if there’s any connection we’re missing because this isn’t going to get us anywhere.”
Jacquie nodded in agreement.
I turned to Vinnie. “It’s going to sound stupid, but can you send me the files anyway?”
He shrugged. “Whatever you want.”
“Thanks.”
With that, we left Vinnie with his useless video footage. I wanted to tell Jacquie my suspicions about these deaths and their connection to my impending date with destiny, but bringing non-magical people into the community was frowned upon. Plus, I didn’t want my partner thinking I was crazy on my first big case. For now, I’d keep the magic to myself and play along with the rest of the investigation.
Five
It was almost five o’clock by the time we got back to the precinct. We hadn’t spoken most of the ride. I’d been trying to figure out if there was any way I could use magic to manipulate the video footage and restore what had been blacked out. As Vinnie had said, the cameras had still been recording they just captured nothing. I’d never tried to use my abilities for such a task, but it shouldn’t be too difficult. For a fleeting moment, I considered reaching out to the Authority. They’d have someone with this particular skillset. But the moment passed and the anger that had been building for a decade washed over me again. I would not give them the satisfaction of crawling back to them in my hour of need when they weren’t there to help a grieving teenage girl in search of answers.
“You’ve been quiet. Want to fill me in?” Jacquie asked.
“What? Sorry. Just thinking.”
“So I gathered. Want to share?”
“No. It’s nothing.”
She studied me with a quizzical expression, opened her mouth as if to say something but stopped and shook her head. For the second time I contemplated cluing Jacquie in on my magic-based theory of the crime and, again, I kept my mouth shut. The way she looked at me, her eyes narrowed just a little bit and her lips pursed, told me she was aware of my frequent trips into my own head and she didn’t like it. I’d been a detective for less than two months and this was my first big case. Sure, we’d all been involved with the marathon bombing but I’d been just a beat cop then. People hadn’t expected me to carry the case. Maybe Jacquie had reason to be worried about me.
I followed after her and stopped outside one of the interview rooms. Just beyond the window an elderly man and younger woman sat side by side in silence. Mrs. Mendoza’s family. When had the family been called in?
“You got this,” Jacquie whispered in my ear.
She backed away and let me enter the room on my own. Despite her encouraging words, I had no doubt she was going to be tracking my every move in the interview.
“Mr. Mendoza, my name is Ezri Trenton. I’m one of the detectives working your wife’s case. I’m so very sorry for your loss,” I said and sat down across from the pair.
The woman translated what I’d said into rapid Spanish. Mr. Mendoza nodded and said something back that I couldn’t follow.
“This is my grandfather, Eduardo. He says thank you for your condolences.” The woman paused and, when I didn’t say anything else, she added, “And I’m Maribel, his granddaughter.”
“Thank you both for coming down today. I know this is a very hard time. But I have some questions that I’d like to ask you if that’s okay.”
Maribel translated my words in her grandfather’s ear and he nodded again. I flipped open Mr. Cho’s case file and pulled out a photo of him. “Do you know this man?”
Eduardo pulled the picture close and studied it. I could appreciate he was actually trying to help. I couldn’t count the number of times a canvas ended with everyone either outright ignoring me or glancing and shaking their head before moving on.
“No,” he said and passed the picture to his granddaughter.
Maribel looked at the photo and pushed it back to me. “He doesn’t look familiar to me. Why?”
“Is it possible he knew your grandmother through a church group or book club?”
“I don’t think so. Why? Who is he?” Maribel repeated.
“He died last night in a similar way to your grandmother. We’re just trying to figure out if there is some connection between them.”
The pair of them conversed in rapid-fire Spanish and I waited for them to finish. Finally, Maribel said, “I don’t think we know this man. I’m sorry.”
Through the glass looking out into the heart of the bullpen I saw Jacquie lead Mrs. Cho and her daughter by. They paused long enough for Maribel and Eduardo to get a look at the older woman but they gave no reaction that they knew her. I didn’t register any recognition on Mrs. Cho’s face either. This only fueled my belief that these victims were chosen at random.
“I know that your wife was former FBI. Do you know if she had any enemies from her work?”
Maribel translated my question and her grandfather shook his head before answering. She looked at me and said, “She was only an analyst. She didn’t go into the field.”
“Did she maybe lecture at any of the local universities since she retired?”
“I don’t think so.”
I jotted down the information—unhelpful as it was—and surveyed the pair across from me. “We’re going to need you to put together a list of anyone who may have known your grandmother and any groups she participated in so we can look into them,” I said.
“Do we really have to do that?” Maribel asked without filling her grandfather in on my request.
“Right now, we don’t have a lot to go on and we need to really look at her life and see what might have motivated the attack.”
Eduardo whispered something in Maribel’s ear and I thought I caught the word “camera”. I braced myself for the question I assumed was coming. “She was found near the Esplanade. Aren’t there cameras there?”
“We are working all possible avenues.” I reached across the table and placed my hand atop Maribel’s. “Please, this would really help us.”
She finally translated my request for her grandfather and I watched as he nodded and wiped away some tears from his eyes. Maribel gently patted his forearm and we waited for him to compose himself.
“Yes, we will do this.”
“Thank you. And if you think of anything else that might be helpful, anything at all even if it’s something small, please call me.” I pushed my card across the table to them.
“We will.” Maribel pocketed the card, stood up and ushered her grandfather from the room.
The silence of the empty interview room pressed in on me and the hair on the nape of my neck tingled. That same feeling of being watched at the Esplanade returned, but when I glanced over my shoulder there was no one watching me. Shaking the feeling, I retreated to my desk to find two emails from Vinnie with the requested footage. What I needed to do would have been better at home where I was free of the distractions and prying eyes of the precinct, but I couldn’t just go running home to do wha
t needed to be done in the middle of a shift. I’d have to risk it here.
“You got this,” I whispered under my breath, opening the file from Mr. Cho’s scene.
Much like I’d done at the Esplanade, I let the world fade away from my senses. The hum of voices talking on the phone dimmed. The metallic clack of keyboard keys vanished. Even the smell of day-old breakroom coffee became so diluted I couldn’t even tell it was there. All I saw was the video file on my screen. I hit play and watched the video from the beginning. Finally, Mr. Cho appeared and then the screen went black. I rewound and hit pause, debating how to proceed. I touched the screen, focusing on the pixels in just the video, and hit play. The video moved frame by frame in something even slower than slow motion, but the result was unchanged. Just after Mr. Cho came into frame, the video went black. Even playing the botched frames in slow-slow motion did nothing to reveal what should have been recorded there.
“Come on.” Letting out a frustrated breath, I raked my fingers through some loose curls that had fallen out of my messy do. Winding strands of red around my finger, I caught a hint of the magic I’d used to dry it. “Of course!”
I was such an idiot. Why focus on the video itself when I should be focusing on the magic woven into it? The pixels couldn’t show me what they’d actually recorded because the magic was still blocking them. If I could undo the spell, I’d be set. “Bet you didn’t count on me,” I snickered smugly under my breath.
I closed my eyes and reached out, trying to find any evidence that the practitioner’s magic was still there. I called up the scents I’d found at the scene into my sense memory, first seeking out the dampness of the limestone. Nothing. Moving on to the garlic, I nearly gagged when my magic brushed up against it. An involuntary sneeze made me jump and nearly broke my concentration. Strawberry blossomed around me and I started to disentangle the other practitioner’s grip on the video. Once I got hold of the edge of the magic, I should have been able to just will it out of the video, in a sense healing the video with my own brand of spell. Instead, the putrid scent grew stronger, fighting back as if it were alive and still connected to the person who’d cast it.