Harvest Of Evil

by William Lehman

  9

  When I got home, Lars had dinner in the microwave, ready to heat up, and had done all of the dishes. I could get used to having a house Lars. He didn't ask anything, just handed me a beer, hit start on the microwave and pulled out a chair at the kitchen table. Two minutes later the microwave went ding, and out came Swedish meatballs. After about two pounds of meatballs, I felt human again. As I think I mentioned, the down side to being a Lycanthrope is you go through a lot of calories, even if you don't change, if you do change, you go through a WHOLE LOT. I was tired, not from doing anything, just from the tension and stress of waiting to go in. But Lars was due an explanation. It was the least I could do, after the man had chow on when I got home. So I filled him in on everything I learned today, or was it yesterday? Look at the clock, 01:15, yep, definitely yesterday. After I caught him up to date, he asked a couple of questions about Bird and Mary, mainly of the elder uncle sort.

  Then he shifted gears. "So, is Mary going to give any help with the magic end of things?" he said with an inquiring face.

  "I didn't even ask. I'm not about to get a civilian in the crossfire." I replied.

  "Don't you think you ought to ask her how she feels about that concept?" Now he was back to the elder uncle mode.

  "No, I don't." I said without thinking. "If she was a law enforcement officer, that would be different. Hel, if she had any military training, it might be different, but she's a history teacher for Tyr's sake."

  He just looked at me with a sort of a funny smile and said, "OK, if that's what your plans are, we need to get working on the lessons." The next few hours were full of guided meditation, and other such work, that are none of your business. If you want to find out how to be a high priest, find your own teacher. By the time we were done, I could barely keep my eyes open. I staggered up to bed and passed out.

  The next morning I woke up at about 08:30 which is way late for me, and had to sketch out a very brief workout before heading to the office. It's not that I have to punch a clock or anything, but I felt self conscious about showing up late for work. Lars was already up and puttering around the kitchen, I guess at that age you don't need as much sleep, that or he's got some other secret. The drive in was nothing special, and when I got to the office, miracle of miracles, there was no crisis waiting for once.

  I went over the morning paperwork. By the way, anyone that tells you that the most important part of cop work is patrol, or SWAT, or procedure, or gut, or… is full of shit. The most important part of cop work is the paper work. You may have a great gut instinct, an eye for detail that would make an artist cry from envy. You may have a memory for and ability to follow procedure that makes Dudley Do-Right look like Harry Callahan, but if you can't write the report properly and do all of the paperwork perfectly, the mutt will walk, and you will be explaining why to the Lieutenant. Among my paperwork (some of which was dated from before my brief lockup in the CDC's little traveling jail they call an isolation ward) was a subpoena. Unto the recipient blah, blah, blah, fail not at your peril, blah, blah, before Federal Superior court on Monday the 24th of October, to provide testimony in the case of The United States vs. Green. Yeah, yeah. Wait, 24 October, that's this Monday. Shit!!! Quick call to the Federal Prosecutor.

  *****

  "Yes, Jim Rodriguez, please. Sure I'll hold… Jim, buddy, it's John Fisher here at the PSP, just got the subpoena for the Green case. Can't we get an extension?" Jim was the prosecutor handling the case, we had worked together before.

  Jim came on the line. "Oh, hi John, what do you mean you just got the subpoena, I sent that out over a week and a half ago, is your mail room that fucked up, or do you just get your mail once a month." He sounded a bit irritated.

  "Jim, maybe you didn't hear about it down there, but I spent most of the last week in an isolation ward, and I have a murder by magic case that I'm working on. I've been just a little bit busy." It was actually quite possible that Jim hadn't heard the full details yet, though he's usually better informed than this.

  "Damn it John, I can't get an extension on this. The defense has dragged this out, with motions etc. until the last second, and now we're up against the 'speedy trial' window. If I don't get this case to trial now, Mr. Green walks. The next opening on the docket is three weeks away, and that's over the limit. Come on John, this guy's a scum bag, you know it, I know it, hell even the defense attorney knows it, that's why Green hired the best guns-for-hire in the business. He knows he's going down unless they can find some sort of technicality. That's why they waived a jury trial, they've got a better chance of getting a technicality out of a judge. You want this guy to walk?" Jim has obviously been having problems on this one.

  I thought back to the case. It should be open-and-shut. I was on a routine patrol when I came across a campsite with a fire burning. At the time, we had a state-wide burn ban on. Now if there's adequate safety being observed, and they have the means to put out the fire if needed, I generally just give a lecture on fire safety. Then I leave them alone if I can get a warm fuzzy that they'll be safe with it. But as I walked up on this camp, I didn't see anyone. A normal wouldn't have heard anything either, but of course, I ain't exactly normal. As I walked up, I could hear the sounds of 'wild animal sex'. And what's worse (at least from my slightly uptight perspective) it was two male voices. Well, what the Hel I thought, what two consenting adults chose to do in the privacy of their own house (or in this case tent) is none of my affair (pardon the pun). Still, I had this 'fire during a burn ban thing' going on, so at the least a lecture was in order. I walked up and 'helloed' the camp, and two heads peeked out of the tent flap, while the action continued inside. And that was when everything came to a screeching halt. The guy on the bottom couldn't have been (and turned out not to be) a day over fifteen. The guy pitching was about thirty to thirty five. EEWWW!!!! I had Mr. Green out of the tent and in cuffs faster than you can say Habeas Corpus. Turned out he was a school teacher! Double EEWWW!!! No, I didn't want Mr. Green to walk.

  "Ok, I'll be there Jim, but you're killing me on this one. I have some nut out there that's killing folks with magic, and from a distance. I want this mutt even more than I want Green." Well, that meant taking home work on the weekend. I needed to review my notes and my report prior to testifying. The last thing I want is some legal beagle to get Green off on a inconsistency in my testimony compared to my report. Jim and I exchanged a few pleasantries and I let him get back to work. Then I got back to my work.

  Let's see, two requests for more information, from the prosecutors office. I did those real quick, email and computers are a wonderful thing, or have I mentioned that. Three refusals to prosecute. One of these I expected, I had found a teenager with a shotgun in his possession and a dead deer 150 yards away. I charged him with poaching, but I couldn't break his story, and all of the evidence was circumstantial, so the prosecutor dropped the charges. The second, I'm not too surprised about, I did a routine traffic stop (insofar as any traffic stop is routine) for a speeding violation. When I got to the car, I smelled explosives, LOTS of explosives. So I called for backup, out-assed the driver from the car, cuffed and stuffed him, and went on a sniff search. What I found was about five hundred M-80s. Not what I was looking for, and not what I expected. Frankly I expected a bomb, and while that many large firecrackers would make a hell of an explosion, it wasn't a bomb. I thought I had a freaking terrorist, turns out I had a fireworks manufacturer. So I charged him with the illegal manufacture of fireworks, with intent to distribute, and went on my merry way. The prosecutor felt that he would get overturned on appeal for Illegal Search and Seizure. He may be right, there is very little precedent for the use of 'Thrope senses in a search. After all, there have only been 'Thrope cops for about thirty years, and it just isn't something that comes up a lot. Oh well, we confiscated the fireworks, and the BATF boys blew them up at Ft. Lewis. That's at least one batch that will not be blowing some stupid kid's fingers off. The third refusal really pissed me off though. I had
been called on a burglary in progress. (Little known fact, there are lots of houses on Federal BLM and Federal forest land.) When I got there, a brown sedan was leaving the vicinity of the house. Now I will admit, I didn't see him pull out of the driveway, but when he saw me, he hauled ass. I pulled up, and there was no one around, but the house had been forced, and was burglarized. So I immediately put out a call on the brown sedan. A state trooper found him four minutes later. When the officer pulled him over, he found burglary tools, and several items that were identified by the victim as having been in the house. The tools found matched the marks on the door. And after all of this, the fucking Federal prosecutors office refused to prosecute! Great Tyr, what in the Hel do I have to do, wrap it up in a bow! Some days it just doesn't pay to be a cop. Well, at least this one didn't come from Jim's desk, if it had, I might have had to strangle him.

  By ten thirty, I was done with the backlog of paper, and ready to actually go 'do some of that cop shit'. I went over to the Lieutenant's office, and asked if Pete was available to go with me on a walk and talk to some of the migrant shanty towns. She said that he was just doing patrol, and that she would square it with the shift sergeant. Twenty minutes later, Pete was back at the station, and we were ready to go.

  We pulled out of the station and headed east on Hwy 2 in the direction of Wenatchee. This drive is one of the most beautiful scenic drives in the entire United States (at least to my way of thinking). The drive climbs 4000 feet in under sixty miles, weaving through some of the most rugged mountains this side of Alaska. There are waterfalls all over the place, from little freshets that only show up in season, to great falls that would beat your brains out if you walked under them, all visible from the road. Without too much luck, you will see ten or fifteen deer, and an elk herd. Eagles are commonplace, and the hawks are too numerous to count. Unfortunately for me: 1) I was driving, and couldn't sightsee (no matter how long I live here, this stretch of road makes me want to); and 2)I was in no mood to sightsee, I had an ex friend to bitch out. We were about five minutes out of the station when I started in.

  "So Pete, how many times have you had to tranquilize me?" I glanced over at him as I said it, but couldn't watch his face, the road is too winding for more than a glance now and then.

  Pete looked over at me with a puzzled expression, and said "Huh?"

  "Oh come on, the game's up, how many times have I gone kill crazy?"

  "Uh, I'm not sure what you mean." Pete was starting to get that guarded expression that everyone who's ever been in the military recognizes. The one that says "I don't think I can talk about this, and what do you know about it? You're not cleared for this."

  "Look Pete, I have had several long talks with my great uncle lately, and guess what? That thing I do, if they didn't tell you, it's got a name, it's called Baresark, and it's hereditary. He wanted to know if the military had a cure, because he knew that there was no way in Hel that I could have done twenty years in the Teams and not flipped it on at least once. We did some hypnotic work, PAL. The gig's up." I was more than just a little pissed about this. You don't keep things from your team mates, and you don't keep anything from your swim buddy. Pete knew things my own mother, and my wife, if I ever get that stupid again, will never know.

  "OK John, look, here it is," I glanced over at Pete, and he had a hound dog expression, "The powers that be, were afraid that if you knew, you would either wig out, or develop this utter fearlessness thing. Either one would be bad in the bush, and you know it. After the first time, when you killed an entire village, they weren't sure they could put you back together. You lost it man, you lost it big time. Of course the fact that you killed a team mate was part of it. The fact that he was guilty of setting you all up didn't come into it, in your mind. So they brought me in. I had seen it happen before to another team mate, also a big Norse type, so I knew what to look for. The fact that we ended up friends was not part of the deal. I was just supposed to be your shadow." Pete had a genuine look of contrition. Of course, I had played poker against him, so I knew that his facial expressions were not necessarily truth.

  "Fine, I can see the Man's perspective, Hel I would have done the same I reckon. But, you played 'I got a secret' on me man, what the fuck is up with that?" I wasn't ready to let this go quite yet, and I think it showed in my voice.

  "Hey, what the fuck was I supposed to do, walk up to you in the squad bay some morning, or at the bar some night over drinks, and say 'Oh, by the way, did you know that when the shit gets hairy you turn into some sort of remote control killing machine, and that even babies aren't safe if they're in your line of fire'? John, there's just no good way to tell that to someone."

  "Fine, but I paid out a lot of political currency and incurred more than a few debts to get you this job when you got out. Did I waste that? Are you here on the 'lets keep a tab on the crazed killer' program?"

  "No John, the PTB know what triggers the syndrome, and it's not something that a cop will ever see. However, you wouldn't be on the FSRT without me being here. No one at the Department knows about this, it's just us and our old bosses," Pete said while looking out the window. "Look John, I know I owe you, and we've been friends for a long time. I'm sorry I didn't tell you about this, but there really was no good way to do it. You know I was under orders not to say anything, but that doesn't make any difference. If I could have found a way to tell you, I would have. Now that you know, how are you handling it?"

  I had to think about that for a second. How was I handling it? I've never been much on the whole introspection thing, though this Goti gig has sort of driven me to a new understanding of myself. Trust me on this, in the personal presence of a God, you can't lie to yourself. So, I examined my feelings, and came to the realization that I was all right with it. OK, if I was in a true life or death situation prior to the new controls Lars was working on with me, I was deadly to anyone in the vicinity. But if the situation was so dire that I went into baresark, all of our troops were pretty much screwed anyway if I didn't find some way out. And knowing that the troops had some warning to get out of the way due to Pete meant that my team was safe. Did I care that innocent bystanders might get harmed? No, not particularly. First, this shit only kicked in in a freefire zone, so any witness was probably a combatant, and if they weren't then they were TERMINALLY stupid. Second, we didn't deploy to friendly countries. If SEAL team twelve was deployed, anyone in the area was at the very least the citizen of a nation hostile to the US, and probably was an enemy of the United States, as determined by executive order, or congressional finding. The devil's advocate in my mind asked, 'but what about the kids?' OK, what about them? What about the kids that lived in Dresden, or Hanoi, or Baghdad? What moral difference is there, between the bomber pilot who drops on an enemy unit and gets some collateral damage due to secondary explosions, and me? As I saw it, and for that matter still see it, none. I don't mean to kill innocents, and have no intention to, but if they're in a war zone, and they get hit by accident, well that sucks, move on. I know that may sound horrible, but I'm not willing to trade one of my teammates for five enemy noncombatants, nor for five hundred, that's just the way it is. So I turned to Pete and said "You know? I'm OK. I still sort of resent you keeping it a secret from me, but I'm OK with the whole baresark thing."

  "Great, then can you just kick my ass or something, so we can go back to catching the bad guys?" Pete said as he looked at me with that patented devil-may-care grin of his.

  "OK, consider yourself owed one ass kicking, I'll pay you later." I spent the rest of the drive out to Wenatchee catching him up on the case. We weren't actually headed for Wenatchee itself, but for a little town west of West Wenatchee called Peshastin whose name isn't even on the map. Its only claims to fame are the huge fruit barns and the shanty towns of the migrant pickers.

  *****

  When we got into Peshastin, the schools were just letting out, so lots of the moms were at home. We went door to door asking anyone if they could identify this indivi
dual, and then showed them the picture of the guy we had found buried in the pot field. Of course it was obviously a corpse, and the few folks who were willing to talk to us, were much less happy about being chatty when the pics of the body came out. One or two people did say that it might be 'Marina's son, Mixcoatl'. No one would give us anything on this Marina's whereabouts though, they closed down immediately. It was painfully obvious that the whole area was afraid of her, which was a telling point of data in and of itself. That doesn't count the hurried genuflections when some of the folks saw the picture, or heard Marina's name, and the mutters of 'Bruja' when her name was mentioned. By the time we left, I had a primary suspect, but it was just a name, and a location. No description, no address, nothing. I wondered if Mary Two Elks had learned anything.

  10