Modern Sorcery: A Jonathan Shade Novel

by Gary Jonas

  The picture was in color, but it was a bit grainy. The camera was positioned above the entrance to the store, so it showed the lobby and the first check stand from a high angle. The store was busy. Customers entered and left. Tanner had queued the recording so I didn’t have to watch long before Kathy pushed her cart into frame.

  She was with a man, but I couldn’t see his face.

  A moment later, David Miller entered the frame and grabbed Kathy by the shoulder. Miller wore a long, tan trench coat, even though it was June.

  David and Kathy spoke agitatedly for a moment as customers filed past. The man with Kathy started out by looking around, as if embarrassed by the scene, but when David shoved Kathy against the cart, the man caught her and kept her from falling. The cart rolled out of frame as David pulled the sword from his coat. It looked like a Japanese katana.

  He lunged forward, slashing down, then up. Blood splattered the floor and sprayed in all directions as David hacked and slashed.

  It was far worse than the paper had indicated and, although I knew it was coming, it hurt to watch. David kept hacking at her as she fell to the floor. He slipped in the blood, trying to slash at Kathy’s unknown companion when the man tried to intervene. The man tried to jump back, but he also slipped in the blood and hit the ground.

  David resumed hacking away at his wife. Chunks of flesh littered the floor.

  I wanted to turn away but couldn’t.

  The blade sliced into Kathy’s face, and though I’ve seen worse, I flinched. While I was inured to violence, it’s always different when you see it happen to someone you know. It’s more immediate and it hits deep emotional levels you don’t expect. At least, that’s how it was for me. Memories of the kind things Kathy had done for me flashed in my mind, and seeing her get slashed apart almost made it feel like the blade was slicing into me too. In a sense, I suppose it was.

  It seemed like an eternity passed before the security guard, a large, Black man, rushed in and tackled David.

  The man with Kathy scrambled over to help hold David down. He was clearly yelling, and when he turned his face toward the camera, I recognized him. His name was Al Davidson, and he worked with David and Kathy. He was another wizard.

  David fought for a moment, but the guard and Al managed to keep him pinned down. Then David looked over at his dead wife and the growing pool of blood on the fresh, white floor, and he suddenly stopped struggling. He stared for a moment as if he couldn’t believe what he saw, then he tried to move toward her, but Al and the guard prevented it. David clutched Al tightly and buried his face in Al’s sleeve for a few seconds then looked back at Kathy.

  It was hard to tell from the camera angle, but it appeared that David was crying.

  I clicked the mouse to stop the image. Then I noticed I was seated. I didn’t remember sitting down. I sat there in silence for a time then shook my head.

  O’Malley stepped back into the room. “Ready to rock and roll?”

  I remained seated, just staring at the frozen image on the computer screen.

  “You okay?”

  When I spoke, my voice was practically a whisper. “Can I see David?”

  “You just saw that he did it, Jonathan. No ifs, ands, or buts about it.”

  “I need to know why.”

  “We’re just in the habit of catching bad guys. We don’t worry too much about the why when we nab one with his pants down and his pecker in his hand.”

  “Can you set it up?”

  O’Malley shrugged. “I can make a call, but that’s mostly up to Miller. He doesn’t want to see you, there’s nothing I can do about it.”

  “Make the call.”

  “It’s gonna cost you.”

  “I just bought you lunch. You can’t still be hungry.”

  He waved off my comment. “You still working with that dyke?”

  “Kelly isn’t a lesbian.”

  O’Malley puffed out his chest. “Shit, man. She turned me down for a date, so she’s gotta be a rug muncher. I’m a lovable kinda guy.”

  “Let me guess, you want me to put in a good word for you?”

  “Fuck no. I’m not in middle school. What I want is for you to bring her to my Fourth of July barbecue. You do that, I’ll set up a visitation pass for you.”

  “Kelly hates socializing so I can’t make any promises, but I will invite her. Cool?”

  “That’s all I’m asking. She’s one damn fine-looking woman.” He opened the door and gave me a wink. “You’re on for two o’clock at the P.A.D.F.”

  CHAPTER THREE

  I had a few hours to kill, so I figured I might as well track down the security guard. I called the Safeway and spoke to an assistant manager to determine that the guard was not on duty and was actually employed by a service. I had the guard’s name, thanks to O’Malley, so I called the service and found that he was working another grocery store that afternoon. The store was over on East Colfax in Aurora. It was not the nicest of neighborhoods. Most of the storefronts had bars on the windows.

  The guard wasn’t at the front of the store, so I approached the customer service desk.

  An elderly, Asian woman had a good portion of the counter blocked off as she stood there, scratching lottery tickets. She had a big stack of losers, but that didn’t seem to deter her. She kept scratching away and would mutter, “Damn,” as she finished each ticket. Every now and then, she said, “Yes!”

  A portly man stood behind the counter, selling various Lotto and Powerball tickets and money orders and such. Most of the people in line seemed to be looking for refunds, and most of them did not have receipts. I waited my turn and eventually reached the front of the line.

  “Damn,” said the Asian woman and added several more tickets to her pile of losers. There had to be at least a hundred of them.

  “Can I help you?” the portly man asked me.

  “I’m looking for Eugene. He’s with Arlo Security.”

  “He’s upstairs in the office with a couple of shoplifters.”

  “Damn,” said the Asian woman. “These are no good. You need to sell winners.”

  The portly man grinned at her. “I’m trying, Anita.”

  “You not try hard enough.”

  “You’re doing better today than yesterday.”

  “Excuse me,” Anita said, pushing her way in front of me and sliding five winning tickets across the counter. “Five more, plus another twenty.” She slapped a twenty-dollar bill on the counter.

  “Can I just go up?” I asked.

  “Last door on the left,” he said, pointing up the stairs beside the counter.

  I nodded and went upstairs. Behind me, I heard someone grumbling about Anita cutting in line.

  The upstairs level held the break room, which had windows to watch customers shopping. A hallway led down to the restrooms and the store manager’s office. Inside the office, Eugene towered over two kids wearing baggy clothes with the pants down around their knees. They thought they looked cool that way, and law enforcement loved this style because people with their pants around their knees can’t run fast. Of course, sometimes the pants dropped low due to the weight of weapons, but ya pays yer money and takes yer chances.

  “Let us go, man,” one of the kids said.

  “Shut up,” Eugene said. “You’re lucky I only called your parents.”

  “Rather you call the cops, man. My old man’s gonna whoop me good.”

  “Should have thought of that before you pocketed those pregnancy tests.”

  “They’s for my sister, man.”

  “Five of them?”

  “She gets lots of action.”

  Eugene turned toward me. “Manager’s in the back room.”

  “I’m here to see you, actually.”

  “I’m kinda busy.”

  “It’ll just take a minute. It’s about the murder yesterday at the Downing Safeway.”

  “You’re not a cop.”

  “Private investigator,” I said and showed him my li
cense.

  He shook his head. “I made my statement with the cops. I got nothing to say to you.”

  “I just want to know if you noticed anything strange about the murder.”

  “Some asshole swinging a samurai sword ain’t strange enough for you?”

  “Shit, man, that was you?” one of the kids said. “Fuckin’ A. I saw something about that on the news last night.”

  “I’ve been dodging reporters all day,” Eugene said but seemed pleased that his street cred had gone up a notch with the kids.

  “Did you hear Miller say anything before, during, or after the murder?”

  Now that the kids were paying attention, Eugene was more willing to talk. “I didn’t see anything beforehand because I was dealing with a shoplifter.” He glanced over at the kids as if to tell them he dealt with them all the time. “When I saw the guy with a sword, I tackled the son of a bitch. Some other guy helped me hold him down. The guy struggled and he was pretty strong, but when he looked over at the dead lady, he stopped trying to fight and just tried to get to her. I didn’t know if he wanted to hack her up some more or what. For all I know, he wanted to eat her.”

  The kids grimaced at the thought.

  Eugene looked at me. “I guess it did get a bit strange then because he started crying. He seemed shocked that he’d gone all berserker. He didn’t fight at all from that point on. He said, ‘Oh, God, no,’ a few times. We held him until the cops came, they took our statements, checked the security recording, and carted the psycho off to jail.”

  “When he started crying, did he seem remorseful as well as surprised and shocked?”

  “I hope so but I don’t know.”

  I thanked him for his time, gave him a business card in case he thought of anything else, and took off.

  The Pre-Arraignment Detention Facility is in downtown Denver. They process more than sixty thousand prisoners a year. Normally they house two prisoners per cell, but David Miller had one to himself. I don’t know if that was because he was a murderer or because he was on suicide watch.

  I met with him in the visitors’ area. We had a privacy booth and were separated by Plexiglas. I picked up the phone, and once he sat down, David did the same. We had ten minutes. After that our conversation would end whether we were finished or not.

  “You here to gloat?” David asked.

  I kept my voice even, though I wanted to reach through the Plexiglas and strangle the son of a bitch. “Actually your daughter believes you’re innocent, and she hired me to prove it.”

  “You believe her?”

  I shook my head. “I saw the security recording.”

  He gave me a disapproving look. “But you’re still taking her money.”

  “Bills to pay.”

  “After watching the video, you’ve determined that I’m guilty, so why are you here?”

  “Because I want to know what the hell is wrong with you. How could you hack her up like that?”

  David winced at my words. “I’m already deemed unworthy, so I see no point in answering.”

  He was referring to a meeting from five years before, but I knew he was actually sidestepping because my question had hurt him. “You’re not answering for me,” I said. “You’re answering for your daughter, and the way I see it, she’s the only person in the whole world willing to entertain even the possibility that you’re innocent in spite of clear-cut evidence to the contrary.”

  He looked away and lowered the phone for a moment. When he looked back at me, his eyes were brimming, but he fought back the tears. He raised the receiver. “You won’t believe me. And when you present it to her, I know you’ll slant it so that she doesn’t believe me either.”

  “I won’t need to slant anything.”

  He considered that then shrugged. “The honest answer is that I don’t remember. One moment, I was working in my office at DGI, and the next thing I knew, I found myself pinned down a few yards away from Kathy. Oh my god, the blood.”

  He took a moment to collect himself then continued speaking. “She was dead,” he said. “But I couldn’t reach her. All I wanted was to hold her and try to force the blood back into her tattered body, try to heal the wounds, but she was too far away and the wounds were too great. But why would I kill her? I love her!”

  “Was she sleeping with Al Davidson?”

  “What?” The question clearly caught him off guard as if he’d never even considered the possibility.

  “The green-eyed monster is a pretty good motive. She was with Al in the store.”

  “They were friends, not lovers. We’ve all been friends for years, but you know that.”

  “Just looking at possibilities.”

  “Look elsewhere. My wife would never sleep around. She has—had morals. She had high standards, and she held herself to them at all times.”

  “I don’t know about that. She married you.”

  David shook his head. “You can say what you want about me, but don’t you dare imply that Kathy wasn’t a good woman.”

  Kathy was one of the best people I knew. People change, though, especially when they’re unhappy. The woman deserved sainthood for living with David for so many years. While I couldn’t imagine her being unfaithful, I’ve been surprised before.

  “Hey, it’s been five years. For all I know, you two were separated or even divorced.”

  “Bullshit. You may not be worthy of the magical community, but you aren’t stupid. You’ve already checked on the marital status.”

  I shrugged. He was right, of course. One constant in my business is that people will lie to you, and that includes clients. Since it had been five years, I had made a few calls to verify certain information, such as marital status and financials, before I went to see the recording. When someone goes out of his way to kill someone, he usually has a motive such as jealousy or money. David and Kathy’s financials were solid.

  “So why did you kill her?”

  “I would never kill my wife.”

  “You already killed her, David. She’s dead. You’re the murderer. I know it. You know it. End of story, roll credits.”

  “I’m innocent. I may not remember everything but I’m innocent.”

  “Come on, David. If you believed you were innocent, you wouldn’t be behind bars. You may not be worthy of humanity in my eyes, but your magic is certainly strong enough that you could unlock your cell with a wave of your hand and walk out of this facility any time you wanted. So don’t give me any shit about not remembering. You remember full well.”

  “So why are you talking to me?”

  “Because I want to know why.”

  “Bullshit.”

  He had me there. When it came right down to it, I didn’t really care why. I was stalling because I hadn’t figured out how to handle things. I wanted another shot with Naomi, and if all I did was prove her father guilty inside of a few hours, she would never talk to me again. So I gave him part of the truth.

  “It’s simple. I haven’t figured out an easy way to let Naomi down. She believes in you, and it will break her heart to discover that you’re a cold-blooded killer.”

  “Jonathan, that night is a blur. I can see Kathy lying there. Blood everywhere. But it’s as if I just woke up from a terrible nightmare only to discover all of it was real.”

  “I hope you don’t plan to lawyer up and go for the ‘irresistible impulse’ defense.”

  Colorado is one of the states that allows the irresistible impulse defense, based on the M’Naghten rule, M’Naghten being the first to get off by reason of insanity in England back in 1843. To top it off, the burden of proof is on the state. After seeing the security feed of David killing Kathy, I wanted him to rot in jail forever. Of course, the jail would never hold him if he actually wanted to leave, but I figured his personal guilt and remorse might keep him locked up.

  “I haven’t decided what I’m going to do,” he said. He stared at me for a moment. “You don’t like me.”

  “Gee, is it
that obvious?”

  “But I want you to do me a favor. Really, it’s for Naomi, not for me.”

  He knew just what to say to get to me. I shrugged. “I’m listening.”

  “Please,” he said. “Please don’t let her see me like this.”