Sparked: The Nephalem Files (Book 1)

by Douglas Wayne

  Sometimes I wished Stacy had this level of enthusiasm for the job, but I'd take Stacy's ability to research over anything the clerk had to offer.

  "Here," he said, handing me a badge. "You need to wear this while you are here."

  I took the badge and clipped it to the pocket of my blue button up shirt. Normally I'm more casual than this, opting for a tee shirt and blue jeans over business casual, but I figured it may be worth making a good impression. For the money I'm making here, I wouldn't have a problem coming back again.

  He led me down a narrow hallway towards the garage. The smell of fresh paint hit my nose the further we got down the hallway.

  "Ignore the mess," he said as he pushed a stack of boxes closer to the wall. "We've been doing renovations."

  I nodded and stepped over a spot on the floor where some of the tiles were pulled up, creating a small hole in the floor.

  He led me into another hallway to a set of white double doors with the word 'garage' painted on them in red lettering. Inside I saw the first of the cars, a fairly new Honda Accord. By my guess it couldn't be more than a few years old, judging from the body style. Other than the fancy yellow paint job, there wasn't anything special about the car other than the engine sitting in the front half of the cab.

  "How many people touched it?" I asked. Even with the precautions they take, there is always a chance that one of them could have jeopardized the signature.

  "Probably a dozen," he said as he reached for a nearby clipboard. "Two officers, a pair of paramedics, and the three firefighters that helped on the scene." He flipped over the paper. "Then our two lab techs." He put the paperwork back down on the desk. "We were supposed to have a pair of mechanics here to look things over too. There wasn't anything on the paperwork, but they might not have logged it yet."

  I sighed. "You know this makes my job difficult." My job being to test the vehicles for any magical signatures that might have been left behind.

  "Then you won't like knowing where the other three cars are," he said.

  "Let me guess. Outside."

  He nodded. For someone who wanted my help, he sure wasn't making my job any easier.

  - 3 -

  I looked into the hole that was once the driver's side window and saw the car was definitely in park. There is no way for me to know how long it was like that, but it at least showed the story was consistent.

  "Who is this, and why is he touching evidence?" I heard a woman's voice say from behind me. I turned around to see a taller woman, easily mid-fives standing in front of me wearing the trademark black-on-black outfits the other cops in the precinct were wearing. On her left breast was the Boulder PD badge and a gold pin with her name on the other.

  "Raymond Gilmore, paranormal investigator." I reached out to shake her hand, a gesture she ignored. "Detective Fields called me in to look into the accidents."

  She walked past me to kneel next to the Accord. "Why would we need a paranormal investigator for four suicides?"

  "I said the same thing before I made the trip." I walked around to the other side of the car. "Trevor is insistent there is something off."

  "We've had three mechanics, not to mention our lab technicians and officers looking at the cars. There is nothing that points to anything out of the ordinary."

  "I'm on your side here," I said, doing my best to put on a pleasant smile, which was difficult after noticing the scowl on her face. "But the Boulder taxpayers are on the hook for a substantial amount of money. They might as well get what they're paying for."

  "If it was up to me, I would lock people like you up. Your fees are nothing short of criminal." She turned around and stomped off towards the doorway. "He has thirty minutes, then I want him out."

  "I'll only need ten." I gave her a half-hearted salute, more to mock her than show her respect. People like her are the jealous type. The ones that believe that they should make more money than everyone else because they racked up thousands of dollars in student loans. I'd bet there is an office in here decorated with a wall full of overpriced degrees with her name on them.

  It's hard to feel bad for people like her. She may envy the amount of money I can make, but there were plenty of times I would've traded it all for a steady paycheck.

  I looked over at Trevor. "I need the garage cleared for a few minutes to do my thing."

  "Got it."

  It took him a few minutes, but he pulled everyone out of the garage. Half of them mumbled under their breaths about being forced out. I'd probably be upset too if I had to stop what I was doing to please someone new. When the last of the techs was out of the garage, Trevor shut the door behind him.

  The spell I needed to cast was nothing overly special. It was very similar to using a black-light bulb to check a room for bodily fluids. The only difference is that it allowed me to see a signature, not too dissimilar from a fingerprint. There was one huge flaw with the spell though. If there was anyone close who has the spark, it could skew the results. It wouldn't send me a false trail or anything like that, but there would be an aura surrounding the person. With enough latent power, it could trickle into the radius of the car, giving me a false positive.

  I'd estimate there are a few million people in the world who have the potential to use magic, not counting the ones who do it on accident. It's not out of the question for a few of them to be working here at the police station.

  Before you ask, I can't check for my own signature. The concept is similar to how you get nose blind to a smell if you are around it long enough, except you can't tune your senses to notice again, like you can with some smells. You can use it to detect wizards and witches in your general area though, so it has its uses outside of this.

  I took a few minutes to mentally prepare, making sure my cell phone was off before I started. The spell wasn't difficult to cast, but it's one that I needed to channel for an extended period for the best results. If anything were to break my attention, I would have to deal with what I happened to get.

  I tapped into my essence reserves to weave the construct. To the layman it looked like I was creating a cloud of thick, pink smoke, but it had an important purpose. When the smoke touches any area that has been touched by magic, it will turn a darker shade of red and stick to the area after I release it. While I'm not good enough with the spell to tell who cast the spell, it did at least tell me if it was involved. This one spell saves me a lot of time, and my potential clients a lot of money. It is hard enough to find regular work without ripping off the few that actually come to you.

  I channeled the spell for nearly fifteen minutes before letting it go though it took five more before the ventilation system finally cleared the room enough for me to work. With that out of the way, I searched the car, looking for any spots where the smoke pooled.

  If you were looking for magic in a normal object, there was a good chance you will notice it while channeling the spell. In the case of a car, or other electronic devices, there's a chance the magic is contained in an area the smoke has no chance to hit, like the wiring. There is a chance it's in there, but it's really unlikely since there was only one type of wizard that is capable of touching that part of the car. And they need to work by line of sight.

  Technomancers were relatively new to the world of the paranormal, surfacing within the last thirty years. Right about the time technology took off. They work by controlling the inner workings of electronic devices, allowing them to work the way the wizard wants them to. If one of them was involved, the residue would be somewhere in the wiring, leaving me back to where I started unless they wanted to give me enough time to strip them down and try again.

  A luxury Captain Andrews wasn't likely to give me.

  I spent the remaining time on my hands and knees, hoping to find something but I came up empty. When I heard the door open, I leapt to my feet and dusted myself off while I waited to break the bad news.

  "Find anything?" Trevor asked when he walked into the room.

  "Nothing. It's
a shame I couldn't have got here sooner, but it's been too long for me to find anything interesting," I lied, hoping to make him feel better. "There is one person I would like to talk to though."

  "Name it."

  "The coroner." He would have cut open and examined the bodies long before now and be able to give me his opinion on the cause of death.

  The coroner's office was on the other side of the building, well away from the garage. The setup didn't surprise me, considering the amount of people who are squeamish at the sight of blood and dead bodies.

  That's without mentioning that coroners don't tend to be the most sane people alive. It takes a special breed of person to do that line of work. The kind of people that made Stephen King look like a patron saint for the Catholic Church.

  When Trevor opened the door, he unleashed a blend of smells that could only be combined in a place like this. I made out the metallic smell of blood mixed in with a bit of formaldehyde with a hint of bleach, and that's just the smells I could point out. There's no telling what else was in there.

  In the middle of the room a blond woman stood over a body on a metallic table. I could make out two legs, both heavily bruised though the rest of the body was mangled beyond recognition. Everything above the waist was a dark purple mess though what remains of the chest had been stapled shut. Odd enough, there wasn't an expression on its face, though it might have something to do with the misshapen jaw and its crushed nose.

  "Ray, this is Kelly Giles, the coroner."

  "Nice to meet you." I reached my hand out to take hers, quickly pulling it back when I saw the blood coated rubber gloves on her hands.

  "What can I do for you, Trevor?" she asked, sighing at our intrusion. Kelly was a beautiful woman, definitely the last person I expected to see in here. She had a smooth, polished face I would have expected featuring on the next blockbuster movie. That or the nine o'clock news. If you watched CSI, you would believe that this job was only done by older men who probably aren't too far from retirement. I've worked with my fair share of coroners, and most of them fill that description or are close enough to it to ignore.

  "Raymond is here helping on this case," he said as he looked over the body.

  "It's a suicide," she said, handing him the file. "Why would we need to hire outside help to tell you that?"

  "I specialize in the paranormal, Ms. Giles. Trevor believes there is more to the story."

  She took a step back before looking into my eyes. "And what do you think it is?"

  I shrugged my shoulder. "Looks a lot like a suicide unless the toxicology report comes up with another story."

  "Those take a while to come back in, but there was a trace amount of cocaine in his system they found in the hospital blood work. Our preliminary tests came back inconclusive." With two different results, they will write off both of them until the toxicology report comes back in. The last thing they wanted to do is send out false information that could lead to a defamation suit down the road.

  "My gut tells me there is more to this," He said, setting his jaw. "After twenty years, I've learned to listen to it."

  Kelly sighed. "I'm sorry, Trevor. As much as I want to believe you, your theory isn't looking too good. Sometimes our instincts aren't right. You should know that by now." She put her hand on his shoulder, the edges of her lips curled slightly.

  "I'll tell you what, bud. I'll stick around in Boulder for a few days, just to make sure we are covering our bases." I figured the lab techs would have a firm grasp on what happened by Thursday or so. From what money I'd already made, staying an extra day or two here wouldn't hurt.

  It's not like I had anything else going on.

  "I appreciate it, Ray." He looked over at Kelly and thanked her before we walked out of her office.

  "There isn't a whole lot more I can do here today," Trevor said. "What do you say we head out to grab a beer or two?"

  "Sounds like a plan." A beer or three would hit the spot right about now. It would also give me some time to think things out a bit more.

  - 4 -

  The bar Trevor took me to is amazingly empty for this time of day though it could be that I've lived in a college town for too many years not to be biased about it. As we walked in, the first thing I noticed was the amount of sports memorabilia hung on the walls. To my left was an Elway jersey displayed in a glass case next to a pristine Manning jersey, both of them surrounded with newspaper clippings and ticket stubs from the last few years. On the opposite wall was a puck autographed by Patrick Roy between pictures of the 2001 and '96 championship teams. The owners didn't leave the Rockies out of the decorations completely, but they only seemed to be represented in retrospect by a single picture of the 2007 team that got swept by the Red Sox.

  None of this would've been odd except that there was a general lack of TVs in the place. For a place that screamed 'sport's bar,' I would have expected at least a dozen more screens.

  Trevor led me to a dark wooden table back in the corner of the place, next to a large panoramic picture of the inside of Sport's Authority Field. I took the seat in the corner to get a better view of the people.

  Our server walked up to us a few moments after we are seated. A lovely woman with long blond hair and a set of baby blue eyes that matched the shirt she wore over a pair of tight fitting blue jeans. Trevor ordered a bottle of Coors and I countered by letting her choose something for me with the only request being it's something dark. I had her throw in a double order of cheese sticks when my stomach growled loud enough for half the bar to notice.

  "How are the wife and kids?" I asked.

  "Amy is doing well. She works at the airport in Denver as a desk clerk for one of the airlines."

  "Wouldn't catch me doing that. Too stressful."

  The server walked back up and set the double order of cheese sticks in the middle of the table with a small bowl of marinara to the side then handed Trev his Coors and me a bottle of oatmeal stout. He shot me a sideways look when he noticed the bottle, but it quickly faded when he saw me down half of it moments later.

  "The kids are both in college now." He grabbed one of the cheese sticks, drowning it in marinara before shoving the whole thing in his mouth. "Mindy is up in Michigan and Martin is down in Florida."

  "Tell me they didn't grow up to be like dad." It's not that being a cop is a bad thing, but it wasn't the easiest line of work. While I didn't have kids, or plan on having any, I couldn't imagine living my life knowing my child was putting his life on the line every day. I'd be honored that they wanted to follow my footsteps, but I'd ask them to reconsider.

  "I had to talk Martin out of it," he said. "He ended up studying aviation. The best part, he ended up with a full ride basketball scholarship. He isn't good enough to make it to the NBA or anything, but he plans on entering the draft after he graduates, just to see how the cards fall."

  I would too if I was in his position. League minimum for a first year player is around a half-million dollars. Two years of that and he will have made more money than most people do in a lifetime. Worse case scenario has him not being drafted and trying to find a job on an airline, yet another high paying field. The kid had more sense than I did, that much was sure.

  "And let me guess," I said, finishing my stout. "Little Mindy is going to be a teacher."

  "Good guess." Trev had a wide grin on his face, beaming from his children's accomplishments.

  "She always came off as that type. Extra patient, even when we struggled not to pull our hair out."

  "That she is. She is hoping to come home after she graduates in a couple years to find a job around here. Amy has been spending all her free time making sure Mindy's room is kept up, just in case she needs a place to stay while she gets on her feet."

  "Sounds like Amy."

  "How about you? What have you been up to these last few years? You aren't an easy man to get in touch with."

  "Not as much as I used to. Work has been slow."

  "You try calling the area poli
ce departments and placing out feelers. There are plenty of times we work with outside investigators here, just like in KC."

  I shrugged my shoulders. "I try to work with the cops as little as possible. Too many regulations. Then you have to wait forever on the check."

  "Try being a cop," he said. "Regulations like crazy."

  The blond server walked back to our table, dropping off a fresh round of beers. "Keep them coming." Trevor placed a five in the woman's hand and handed her our empty bottles. She responded with a cheeky smile that exposed her flawless white teeth before walking back to the bar.

  "You're sold on them being suicides still?"

  "Unless there is something I'm missing, that's the way it looks. Stranger things have happened than four accidents on the same stretch of road in a few days."

  "You may be right. Maybe I should take some time off. I'm sitting on three weeks as it is."

  Trevor stood up to hit the little boy's room, leaving me alone in the corner with a perfect view of one of the TVs in the joint. I watched the screen intently, hoping to catch the score of last nights Cardinal's game since I spent the night on the road. Right as they were about to show the highlights the screen flickered to the local news. I was about to say something to the bartender when I saw the reason for the change.

  "You may want to see this," I said to Trevor as he walked back to the table, pointing out the car chase on the TV.

  "Not every day we get a police chase here." He moved his chair closer to get a better view.

  "Any way you can turn the sound up?" I yell at the bartender, who ignored my pleas.

  The screen panned to a closeup from the news helicopter following the chase. The car swerved back and forth between the traffic as it tried to lose the cops. It never ceased to amaze me how people thought they would get away once a helicopter was on the scene. Even if the cops backed off, the helicopter could follow them virtually anywhere. Anyone who watched an episode or three of Cops has seen that happen at least once.