Our blond waitress walked back into the bar from the nearby kitchen door and stopped right in front of the TV, stealing the best view in the house. Trevor and I got up to stand next to her to get a better view.
The screen switched between closeups of the car and a wider view of the approaching roadway before showing coverage of Boulder PD blocking entrances onto 36 hoping to keep as many civilians off the highway as they could.
"Did you see that?" Trevor nearly dropped his beer though his jaw nearly hit the floor in its place.
"Yep," I said.
I handed our waitress a twenty and we rushed out of the bar.
"Looks like you're right," I said, sitting in the passenger seat of his car.
It's not every day you saw a car drive itself.
"How the hell can the car drive itself?" Trevor asked as he pulled onto 36, south of the chase.
"Either someone is using telekinesis to move the car by thought, or we are dealing with a technomancer."
"Technomancer?" He glanced over at me for a moment before putting his focus back on the road. "What's that?"
"They are wizards who can use magic to control technology. They have a way of controlling things through the wiring." I looked at Trevor. "That would explain why I wasn't able to find any magical residue on the car."
I pulled out my phone to keep up with the developments of the chase. Technomancy was a new field of magic, so I didn't have many chances to see it in action. that may have been the only chance I had to see it live.
"So they can get in and control things like cars and planes?"
I nodded. "Pretty much. I'm sure they have some other tricks I don't know about." I'm sure they have been around since the beginning, but they wouldn't have known they had the spark until the recent advancements in technology. If the world kept going the way it was, I could see them becoming some of the most powerful wizards alive.
"How do you stop them if all they have to do is control your car and crash you into a wall?"
"I'll let you know when I find out." From what I've heard, they weren't too powerful on their own, but they were very valuable to the right people.
These days, everything about our lives is digital, which just so happens to be their domain. It didn't take a genius to realize how beneficial one could be to have around.
"It's over." I turned off the news feed and put the phone back in my pocket. "Looks like there's another notch in that concrete barrier."
"Driver dead?"
"They didn't say anything, but I'd put what little money I have on yes." With four drivers dead already, I'd find it hard to believe he would let the fifth one live. There was always a chance he could have survived it, but I doubted it.
It took us a good ninety minutes to get to the crash site thanks to the rash of traffic on the highway. Trevor had his siren on most the time, but there wasn't anywhere for the traffic to go, forcing us to cover what ground we could half on the shoulder.
Thanks to the traffic, we showed up well after Boulder PD which made me nervous. I didn't have a problem with cops, per se, but they like to ask a lot of questions when you show up to a crime scene uninvited. If I was on the list of regular contractors, it may have been a different story.
"What brings you here, Detective Fields?" and older man, easily in his mid fifties asked as he walked over to us. He was a short, pudgy man who had a thick pair of bifocals that didn't distract from his really bad comb-over hairdo. Looking at his gut I can tell the only exercise this cop does involves arm curls and donuts.
"I have reason to believe that this crash is related to the others," Trevor said. "I want to take a look at things before they get towed back to the lab."
"Not sure what you expect to find. We had a warrant for the kid on federal tax evasion charges. He probably decided to kill himself instead of spending a few years in a federal prison." He handed Trevor a blue plastic clipboard. "But if you insist, you can call the wrecker when you are done."
The officer walked over and took a seat in the driver's side of his car.
"He was pleasant," I said. "Bad blood between you?"
"You could say that," Trevor said, looking inside the car. "He was upset that I was hired into the position he'd applied for years ago. They probably would have given it to him if he wasn't so liberal with his gun."
I walked around the back of the green Taurus, stopping to look inside the opened trunk. "One of those guys, eh?"
"One of the lucky ones." He handed me a pair of those powdery rubber gloves I hate. They always made my hands itch for an hour after I took them off, but I knew they were a must here. "They would hang him if he killed someone today. It's not as easy to sweep something like that under the rug anymore."
I nodded as I reached inside to unlock the back passenger-side door since the front door wouldn't budge. A layer of fresh blood covered what was left of the steering wheel and dashboard from the driver's impact point on the windshield. This was one of those accidents you would have been lucky to survive if you had a seatbelt on. With it off, it was nothing short of a death sentence.
"The report said all the doors were locked when they got to the scene. Whoever did this wanted to make sure he didn't get out."
"I only have one question," I said. "Why would he crash the cars here, out of all places? What makes this spot so special?"
"Guaranteed kills, maybe. Or he has a view of the scene."
I leaned into the car and noticed this one was in park like the others. "Maybe we need to pay some people a visit. When I get to the hotel tonight, I'll make a list of the houses and buildings in the area. We can check them out first thing tomorrow."
Trevor looked at me with a large smile on his face. "Does that mean you're staying?"
I nodded. "I'm not in the business of letting rogue wizards kill anyone they want. If there's one here, I'll help you take him down."
- 5 -
I pulled up to the Boulder Holiday Inn around nine o'clock completely exhausted thanks to the tow truck driver getting lost not once, but twice on the way to the scene. You would think there would have been a driver sitting near the accident scenes considering the amount of accidents there in the last few days. I know if I owned a tow truck company, I would've paid a driver to stay close.
The inside of the hotel was not too different from any of the others I've visited over the years. There were two fake palm trees on either side of a long red runner with the Holiday Inn symbol embroidered in the center that led to the front desk. The rest of the lobby was decorated more for comfort than convenience with two blue couches surrounding an oak coffee table covered with magazines and travel brochures.
"Welcome to Holiday Inn," the man behind the counter asked, keeping his head focused down towards the counter. He was wearing a black jacket and a pair of black pants that match his slicked back black hair.
"Room for one. Definitely one night, possibly for more." I learned the hard way to double check this ahead of time. Nothing is worse than expecting to have your room carry over and getting a call mid-afternoon asking why you haven't checked out yet. To be fair, I didn't know there was a comic book convention being hosted nearby, but it would have been nice to get some warning by the staff.
"Here for business," he looked up at me for the first time. "Or pleasure?"
"Business, unfortunately." I didn't have anything against Boulder, but it didn't exactly top the list of places I wanted to spend my vacation time. I'd stop about an hour away in Denver long before I came up here for fun.
To be fair, the last time I visited Colorado was for a Chiefs' game. After they got smoked by the Broncos I swore to never come back.
Until today, I kept that promise.
He tapped on his computer for a minute before giving me another look. "I have you in room 106."
I shook my head. "Won't work. I can't stand staying on the ground floor. Give me something on the top." You can call me paranoid and I wouldn't argue. But I in my line of work I liked to have opti
ons. If I took a room on the ground floor, I'd have a lot fewer.
Just in a hypothetical scenario, let's say something nasty, like a minotaur or a werewolf comes looking for you, they start on the ground floor. Thankfully, nature hasn't seen the need to give them the ability to fly. If they ever do, I'll be on the first person in line to book my ticket to another plane of existence.
The top floor gave me one option that the rest of humanity didn't have. The ability to jump out of the window to escape.
Sure, any crazy person could open the window on the sixth floor and jump, but few of them would actually survive the fall. Those that did would spend the next few years in and out of surgery and physical therapy, the whole time wishing they never tried.
What I had, that you don't, was the ability to create a cushion of air to fall onto. Not that different from the airbags that stunt people use in the movies. I get all the benefits, without the high electric bill and blown breakers. It wasn't fully reliable, and it took a few minutes to prepare, but it was better than finding myself trapped in your room.
"I only have one room on the top floor," he said, rubbing the brim of his nose with his fingers. "It's a suite. Runs one-fifty a night."
As a rule, there were two things I refused to pay too much for. One was airfare. The other was a hotel room. In both cases, any rooms or seats not filled were normally considered a loss. The flight, and the night, will come and go regardless of whether its filled to capacity. So you had a little wiggle room to negotiate a better price on the fly.
I spent the next half hour negotiating a price with the manager before we settled on a hundred for the night under the condition that I moved to a nearby room shortly after checkout in the morning. It was still well above what I liked to spend, but the extra fifty was worth the peace of mind.
"The elevators are..." he said before I interrupted.
"Stairs?"
"Down to the end of the hallway, and to the right." He shook his head before returning to whatever he was doing before. Probably a book or a game on his tablet.
If you thought the top floor room was odd, then I better explain the stairs.
Normally, I didn't have a problem with elevators, but I refused to take any chances if there was a rogue technomancer on the loose. Elevators are on the list of things they can control and manipulate.
The trip to the top took me about ten minutes longer than it should have, but I stopped every other floor to give my arms and legs a break. I am one of those guys you see in the Internet memes carrying dozens of plastic bags. If I could avoid making any extra trips, I was going to.
I got to the room and placed a few things down on the floor to try the card. Amazingly it worked the first time. I considered it a bonus when that happens since it didn't very often. I grabbed a business card from the desk before I left the desk, just in case it didn't.
When I opened the door and flicked on the light, seeing why they charged so much for the room. It was easily three times the size of a normal room. There were three main areas to this room. Near the door was a green pillow-topped couch flanked on each side by two green La-Z-Boy recliners set up in front of a forty inch flat-screen TV. Between each recliner and the couch is a square end table, both with a golden glass lamp covered by a white laced lampshade.
The middle of the room had a large conference table surrounded by eight wooden chairs. To my surprise, there was enough room to walk around the table comfortably, even if there was someone seated in it. Nearby, in the far corner, was a single drawer wooden desk loaded with brochures, a local phone book, and coupons for local eateries. I grabbed one for Chinese take-out and placed it on the table for later.
Then in the back there was a large king-sized bed between two wooden night stands with a matching lamp and alarm clock on each of them. I looked at the bed in wonder, having always wanted one like it at home. If I spent more time at home, or had someone to share my bed with, I would consider buying one for the house. The thought of actually being able to flop around on the bed is nice.
I placed my stuff on the conference table and plopped down on the couch. The order of business was to catch up on the news and to make a list of the buildings near the crash site. Then at some point I wanted to catch up with Trevor, just to make sure he hasn't come up with something new.
Three minutes into the newscast, mention of the accident comes and goes with barely a mention. There's going to be a bunch of investigative reporters fired the moment the station managers find out they are all linked. It didn't upset me too much though. The last thing I needed was news reporters in my way. It was going to be bad enough with Boulder PD.
I cursed when the phone rings as the sports part of the news starts since I had hoped to catch up on the baseball scores. I grabbed my phone off the couch, noticing it was Trevor.
"Find anything new?"
"Just what I expected. Besides the tax evasion charges, the kid was clean." There was a sound of resignation in his voice.
"Any link between the victims?"
"Nothing yet, but we are looking into it. I'll phone you the moment comes up."
"Sounds good," I said before hanging up. Something was off about this whole mess. Why would someone not only kill one person this way, but five? I only hoped that we could figure it out before anyone else lost their life.
I pulled out my laptop, wanting to start my research around the accident site. What I needed was the address of any houses or businesses with direct line of sight to the scene. I wasn't completely positive that a technomancer needs line of sight to its target, but I was going to play the hunch. We needed a place to start, and it was as good a place as any.
It took me a good five minutes to connect to the hotel's wi-fi connection only to see it was slow as molasses when I'm finally on.
I'll be honest though. Half the problem may have been my laptop. It was an older model I purchased about four years ago. Back then it was faster than anything else on the market, but today it couldn't hold a candle to my old flip phone. I could've taken the easy route and have Stacy do all the research for me, but I hated to bother her this late at night unless it was an emergency so I sucked it up and got to work.
What I planned to do was pull up the accident scene on Google Maps. It has a feature where you can get a view of an area from street level, which should tell me exactly who we need to talk to in the morning. Thanks to the lag, it took me a few minutes to get to my spot.
With a smile, I pressed the street view icon.
The power went out instead of pulling up the view.
It was going to be a long night.
- 6 -
When the power didn't come back on after a few minutes, I stepped into the hall for some air. While I had a lot of work to do, I couldn't do any of it without wi-fi. I figured the walk around the lake could do me some good, both for the exercise and to help me think.
I stepped outside the door, making sure the door latched before I walked away. That was a lesson I learned the hard way a while back. I took a weekend trip to Miami to catch an NBA game not long after LeBron signed on down there. Basketball usually isn't my cup of tea, but I wasn't going to turn down free court-side tickets. Even if I thought Mr. James was a sellout.
I got back to the hotel late that night to find my hotel room door wide open and all my stuff missing. Not only did they take the things you would expect to come up missing, like my laptop, but they also walked out with all my clothes. Underwear and all. I don't know what kind of sick being would want to steal someone else's underwear, but he probably needs to be lashed a few dozen times.
When I complained to the manager, she told me I had left the door propped open all night. I argued against it, even asking how she knew about the door being open, yet left it open, but the blame ended up on me.
Long story short, I wasn't the most pleasant smelling person to sit next to on the flight home.
Out in the hall, the emergency lights flickered off and on as the power tried to cycle back
on. My room was on the far end of the hotel, not far away from the far set of stairs. A fact I was thankful for when I noticed the light reflecting off the barrel of a gun carried by one of the men walking my way.
Situations like this are why I love being a wizard. While I have the ability to take them down without much effort, I also have a few neat tricks to let me get away. The later comes in very handy when you are trying to avoid police attention. Killing the pair, even in self-defense, would have the place swarming with cops for the next few days asking me all sorts of questions. Then the second they realize a wizard has been responsible for the accidents, and see I can also use magic, they might make me spend time in jail while they sort it out. In a snap I would go from consultant to prime suspect.
Not only that, but the International Council of Wizards frowns on using magic to kill other people. If you think the police like to ask a ton of questions, you haven't seen the council in action. The place would be swarming with paranormal activity within the hour.
It's hard to explain the council in terms that others would understand, so I will say it's almost like our version of a union. We even have our own version of union dues that need to be paid on a regular basis. Thankfully, they don't want payment in money, since I don't have much. Of course, they want something even more valuable.
My time. Two weeks service is what they ask. You get to choose, but you have to have your time set well ahead of time. That way they can schedule tasks based around the people they will have present at any point. Smart way for them to do business even if it's a pain in the butt for mine.
Before the men noticed me, I made a beeline for the stairwell and ducked inside. While I would've loved to put more distance between me and the men, it would have left me exposed to their bullets.
Sparked: The Nephalem Files (Book 1) Page 3