by King, R. L.
He had no idea whether it was true, or whether it would even work. He didn’t have time to consider it. Instead, ignoring the pain from the multiple impacts, the thudding in his chest, and the stabbing spike in his head, he jogged away from the barn.
One last shimmering fist slammed him from behind. It was the last straw for his shield. It flared and faded in a haze of psychic feedback, blunting most of the impact Stone took from being propelled into the trunk of a large oak tree. He sank to his knees against it, steeling himself to take the blows he knew were coming—
But they didn’t come.
He raised his head, looking back toward the barn, shifting to his magical senses.
Nothing.
Had he been right? Had the things, whatever they were, been attached to the barn, and couldn’t range out past their metaphorical tethers?
He took a deep breath and slowly, ever so slowly, hauled himself back to his feet. For a moment he just stood there, listening to his harsh breathing and the thumping of his heart. He’d been luckier than he ever had any reasonable expectation of being. But now he knew he was alone against something unknown, quite probably out of his power league, and able to call in friends.
For the moment, though, none of that mattered. All that mattered was that, against all odds, he’d gotten away. At least for now he was safe.
And then a voice boomed at him from off to his right:
“Don’t move! Put your hands against the tree and remain still. This is the police!”
Chapter Eight
Stone spun, his adrenaline from the fight with the shimmering things still cranked up to the point where reacting to additional threats was instinctual.
Two guns were pointing at him from two different directions.
“I said, put your hands on that tree now!” a sharp male voice barked. “This is your last warning!”
For about a half second, Stone thought about making a break for it, but the thought died before it even took full form. Getting shot by the police would not be a pleasant end to an already unpleasant day. Instead, he did as directed, turning slowly with his hands up and pressing them against the tree.
Two cops, one large and imposing-looking, the other smaller and younger, hurried up to him, guns still drawn. The younger one stood back and kept his weapon trained on Stone while the larger one patted him down. “He’s clean.”
“It’s not me you want to be dealing with,” Stone said, fighting to keep his voice even and calm. “It’s what’s in that barn over there.”
The large cop grabbed his arm and pulled him back from the tree. “Take off the coat,” he ordered. “Slowly, and hand it over here.”
Stone kept his gaze on the cop as, with careful deliberateness, he slid out of his overcoat and held it out. The cop, whose nametag above his badge identified him as Aguirre, took it and draped it over a nearby tree branch. “Okay, hands behind you, please.”
This was getting ridiculous. “Officer, I—”
“Behind you,” Aguirre repeated, clamping a meaty hand on one of his wrists and twisting it around behind him. Not hard, just inexorably. He removed a set of handcuffs from his belt and snapped them around Stone’s wrists.
“Am I under arrest, then?” he asked.
“Not yet. If that changes, you’ll be the first to know.” He hooked a thumb toward the barn. “What were you saying about what’s over there?”
Stone took a deep breath. This was not going to look good, no matter how he spun it. “I think I’ve found another victim of your murderer,” he said quietly. “Have a care—it’s not pretty in there.”
The two cops exchanged glances. Some unspoken communication passed between them; the younger one backed off, gun still pointed in Stone’s general direction, and began speaking into the mic clipped to his uniform shoulder.
Stone remained silent, his gaze moving between the two cops and back toward the barn. He hoped he’d been right about the shimmering guardians: that they’d be uninterested in anything that wasn’t magically potent. Otherwise, these policemen might be in for some trouble and there was nothing he could do about it with his hands locked behind his back and a gun aimed at him.
The two cops, obviously waiting for backup before they investigated the barn, remained near Stone. “Let’s have you just sit down there against the tree while we wait,” the younger one, whose nametag read Farrell, said. He and Aguirre took hold of Stone’s arms and lowered him to a seated position. Stone gritted his teeth; he didn’t think he’d taken any serious injury from being battered by the shimmering forms, but his body felt like he’d just done five rounds with Ali and this wasn’t helping at all.
“Do you have any identification?” Aguirre asked.
Stone knew the whole “anything you say can and will be used against you” bit, and that he should probably keep his mouth shut, but he had nothing to hide. “My wallet is in my coat,” he said, nodding toward the tree where they’d put it.
Farrell retrieved it and glanced inside. “Says your name’s Alastair Stone. Resident of Palo Alto.”
Stone nodded. “That’s right.”
“What are you doing down here in Ojai, Mr. Stone?” Aguirre asked.
“Looking for a friend.” Stone shifted his arms behind him. The position they’d put him in was not at all comfortable.
“Out here?”
“He’s gone missing,” Stone said. “I had reason to believe he might be here.”
They were spared further conversation by the sound of someone crunching through the carpet of dead leaves. In a moment, two more cops emerged: a man and a woman. They both had their guns drawn as well, though they were currently pointed at the ground.
“What’s the situation?” the male half of the pair demanded.
“Picked this guy up out here after some kid reported hearing something weird in the woods, sir,” Aguirre said, pointing at Stone. “He says there’s another murder victim in the barn up there.”
“Does he?” This cop was older than Aguirre, with a square, open face and thinning hair. “All right, let’s check it out. You two keep an eye on him. Come on, Wu.”
Stone sat silently against the tree, focusing his magical senses toward the barn and the two new cops disappearing behind some trees. If the entities in the barn attacked them, he’d have to decide whether he wanted to do things that would end up making him have to answer a lot of uncomfortable questions—assuming he didn’t get killed outright by a skittish Aguirre and Farrell before he could do anything useful.
It was only five minutes before the other cops returned. Wu’s face was ashen, and even the older cop looked like he was trying hard not to throw up. “Dear God...” he murmured.
Aguirre looked alarmed. “He was right? You found something?” He glanced at Stone and then back at the cop.
The older cop nodded, eyes haunted. “Yeah, and it’s bad. Get on the radio and call it in. Get the crime-scene guys up here, and tell ’em not to make any plans to go home tonight.”
Wu hurried off, clearly relieved to get away from the scene, and the male cop turned back to face Stone, his face growing hard. “You,” he said. “What do you know about this?”
“I told you—I was searching for a friend and came upon it. I was about to head back to call you gentlemen when—” he indicated them all with a head movement “—I found I didn’t have to.”
The cop’s eyes narrowed. “Really. You just happened upon this abandoned barn out in the middle of nowhere, that just happened to have a messy murder victim inside.”
Stone sighed. “Officer, please. Surely you don’t think I killed him? I’ve no experience with forensics, but even the brief look I got before I left told me that whoever your victim is, he’s been dead for several days at least. I only just arrived in town yesterday.”
The cop ignored his tone. “Okay,” he told Aguirre inste
ad. “You and Farrell take him back to the station for questioning. We’re gonna be here a while.”
Aguirre and Farrell nodded, hauling Stone up to his feet. Again, they weren’t rough with him, but didn’t seem particularly fazed by his wince of pain. They prodded him along and he walked in silence back up out of the trees. Two squad cars were parked just off the road.
Stone paused as they reached them. “ My car’s up the road a bit. Black BMW. The keys are in my coat pocket. If you’d be so kind as to see it gets back, I’d appreciate it.”
“Don’t you worry, Mr. Stone. We’ll take care of it.” They loaded him into one of the squad cars, still handcuffed, and drove off.
They took him back to the police station, a small, neat building not far from downtown, ushered him into a featureless room with a table and two chairs, and left him there, telling him someone would be along to talk to him in just a few minutes.
He shifted in the uncomfortable chair, acutely aware of the camera high up in the corner of the opposite wall. He was sure they were watching his every move, so he had no reasonable choice but to sit here and wait for them. He was sure he could get away if he needed to, but they had his wallet so they knew who he was and where he lived (and if they looked through it in any more depth, they’d also know where he worked), meaning that he’d cause more problems than he’d solve by doing anything but cooperating. It wasn’t like they had anything on him, nor that he didn’t want to cooperate with them. They were trying to find Jason too.
The door opened and another man came in, this one dressed in a suit rather than a police uniform, his badge in a holder clipped to his breast pocket. He was tall and balding, one of those sorts who had probably been athletic twenty years ago but had let himself go to seed a bit in the intervening time. He carried a file folder in one hand and a cup of coffee in the other, and put both of them down on the table.
“Dr. Stone,” he said, nodding. “I’m Lieutenant Casner. We spoke on the phone recently, do you remember?”
Stone’s eyebrow rose. This was unexpected, though he supposed it shouldn’t have been. “Of course I do.”
“Would you like something to drink? Water? Coffee?”
“What I’d like, Lieutenant, is for you to let me out of these handcuffs. It’s not as if I’m planning to escape.”
Casner considered, then nodded. He came around behind Stone, pulled a set of keys from his pocket, and removed the cuffs. “Better?”
“Yes, much better. Thank you.” Stone shook his arms, making rather more of a show of rubbing his wrists and rolling his shoulders than was truly necessary, then settled back in the chair. “Am I under arrest?”
The detective shook his head. “No, Dr. Stone. But I do have some questions for you before we let you go, if you’re willing to answer them. You don’t have to, of course, and if you’d like to consult an attorney and have one present, we can arrange for you to do that before we talk.”
Stone shrugged. “I have nothing to hide, Lieutenant. Ask your questions.”
Casner opened his file folder, extracted a sheet of yellow legal-pad paper with a few scribbles on it that Stone couldn’t read from where he was, and pulled out a pen from his inner jacket pocket. “Why did you come to Ojai?”
“That should be obvious. To look for my friend Jason Thayer.”
Casner wrote something on his piece of paper. “Why? Do you have some reason to believe that you’d have a better chance of finding him than we would?”
“No.” The lie came easily. “Other than the fact that I know him better than you do, so I might think of avenues to follow that your men might miss. Also, I’m sure the police are quite busy—I don’t know how it is here in Ojai, but where I’m from they’re usually so overwhelmed by murder and other violent crime investigations that they don’t have as much time as they’d like to pursue these kinds of cases.” A diplomatic response: it was better than saying, “I really didn’t think you lot would waste your time trying to locate a grown man who’s been missing for less than three days.”
Casner wrote something else down. “How long have you been friends with Mr. Thayer?”
“About two years.”
“Mmm-hmm.” Some more jotting on the page. “Have you had any luck finding leads to his whereabouts since you arrived in town? When was that, by the way?”
“Yesterday afternoon. And no, not much. Although I understand that the police suspect that he might have something to do with the murder of the girl who was found in the Arbolada.”
Casner looked up at him, surprised. “Where did you hear that, Dr. Stone?”
“Not at liberty to say. It’s true, then? Was that what you weren’t saying on the phone when we spoke last?”
“We’re—looking at many possible persons of interest. Naturally, because Mr. Thayer was placed in the area close to where the murder occurred during the same time frame, we’d like to have a chance to talk with him. He might have seen or heard something.”
Stone raised an eyebrow. “Lieutenant, please.”
“It’s true. I won’t lie to you: he’s definitely among those we’d like to talk to due to the suspicious circumstances and timing of his disappearance, but there’s also another potential reason: he might have stumbled onto the crime scene and the murderer took him to keep him from talking.”
“Not likely, though: if the murderer was capable of slitting the throat of a sixteen-year-old girl, then surely he’d have no compunctions about killing another person to preserve his secret?”
“Those are all excellent questions, Dr. Stone. But please: may I continue?” At Stone’s nod, he tapped his paper with his pen. “Let’s talk about what you were doing at an abandoned barn off Creek Road this afternoon. That seems like a very odd place for you to have even located, given that you’re not familiar with the town and have been here such a short time.”
Stone took a deep breath. This was where things could start getting sticky if he didn’t tread carefully. He didn’t have any mundane reason why he’d know about the location of the second murder. He couldn’t exactly say, “I examined the scene of the first murder using my magical senses and followed an astral cord connecting the two sites.” Even if he were foolhardy enough to make such a statement, he knew Casner’s response would be either to accuse him of being a smart-ass or to assume he wasn’t firing on all mental cylinders. Neither of which would help his chances of getting out of here and back to his search for Jason any time soon. He decided to go with a variation of the truth. He’d still look a bit unhinged, but that couldn’t be helped. At least he could back it up with his credentials. “I know you won’t believe this, Lieutenant, but—I had a dream that led me to that location.”
“A dream.” Casner’s tone was politely dubious, and he wrote something else on his paper.
Stone nodded. “You’ve still got my wallet—did you look through it at all?”
“No. We just looked at your identification. Your personal items will be returned to you when you leave.”
“Well, if you had, you’d see that my place of employment is Stanford University. I’m a professor of Occult Studies there. I believe I mentioned that when we spoke as well.”
Casner stared at him, forgetting to write anything down. “A professor of what?”
“Occult Studies. You know—magical rituals, witches, ghosts, ley lines, paranormal occurrences, psychic phenomena, that sort of thing.”
Casner simply continued staring at him for several more seconds, and then he said carefully, “I...see.”
Stone shrugged. “You don’t believe it. I’m not surprised—most people wouldn’t.”
“You can’t blame me for being skeptical, Dr. Stone. And—you say they teach this kind of stuff at college?”
“It’s a small program and we’re not exactly a big draw, but for the sort of people who appreciate that sort of thing, it’s a legitim
ate discipline.”
Casner paused, jotted something else down on his paper, then looked up. “So, you’re telling me you’re psychic.”
“I have…flashes. It’s not a speciality, and I can’t do it at will. But sometimes I have dreams that end up being—well—useful.”
“And this dream told you—what? Where to find a murder victim that nobody else had found yet?”
“It told me that I’d find something of interest in a place that looked like that, and the general vicinity where it might be. Naturally, since I’m searching for Jason, I thought it might have been referring to him.”
Casner let out a long, slow exhalation, tapping his pen on the table. “Let’s get back to the—um—non-supernatural for a minute, if we can. I’m assuming you can account for your whereabouts for the past few days?”
“Of course. I was home, in Palo Alto. You know I was there when you called me. Before that, I can give you the names and phone numbers of at least four people who can vouch for my whereabouts.” He leaned forward, meeting Casner’s eyes with his own focused blue gaze. “Lieutenant, you don’t think I killed those people, do you?”
The cop shook his head. “No, Dr. Stone, I don’t. If I did, you’d be under arrest already. But I do think you know more about something—and I’m not even sure what, exactly—than you’re telling. I don’t know how much of this ‘I had a dream’ stuff you’re feeding me that I should believe. I know there’s a lot of that kind of thing around here: Ojai’s got a lot of harmless weirdos. It’s part of what brings the tourists in. But that doesn’t mean I believe any of it.”
“Nor do you need to, if you don’t plan on arresting me,” Stone said. “Am I free to go, then?”
“You’re free to go whenever you like,” Casner said. “But I will ask you to tell me where you’re staying, and be reachable in case I come up with any other questions. I’m assuming that our crime-scene guys won’t find anything you wouldn’t want us to know about?”
“I was in the barn,” Stone said. “I didn’t get more than a few feet from the body, and of course I didn’t touch it or anything near it. You might also find witnesses or evidence that I was at the scene of the other murder, earlier today. I wanted to see the place, given that my friend is under suspicion. I also wanted to see if I could find any evidence that he was there.” He considered not mentioning the circle, since it probably wouldn’t be obvious to anyone unfamiliar with the occult that it was a circle, but then reconsidered. “One thing, though...”