"You haven't been lying low. Have you, Mr. Gilmore?"
"I guess not," I said, turning away from the TV. "So. What happens next?"
He grabbed his briefcase that was sitting on the ground next to my bed and pulled out a large yellow envelope and placed it on my lap. "You are to be tried in front of the council on August third. I advise you to get your affairs in order fairly quickly, Mr. Gilmore. They won't judge you favorably if you continue on this path." He closed the briefcase, picked it up, and walked towards the door. "One last thing." He turned around. "Please make sure you attend."
"What happens if I don't?"
"Let's just say my next visit won't be so pleasant." He pulled a set of keys out of his pocket and placed them on a chair next to my bed. "I took the liberty of having your car moved to the hospital parking lot. I'll see you in a few weeks."
The door slammed as he left the room. I knew it was just a matter of time until I crossed the council. I only hoped it would have been for a better cause. None of that mattered anymore.
The positive news was that they were willing to talk. If I had crossed the line, they would have done something to make sure I didn't wake up. It still didn't answer any of the questions I had, but I got the gist that he wasn't here to answer any of mine. In any case, I needed to get out of this hospital as soon as possible if I hoped to take down Bradley. I only had two weeks to do it before facing the wrath of the council.
- 16 -
I picked up the phone to call Stacy the moment I got settled in. Now that I had a name, she would be able to really show off her skill at research.
"Oh my god," she screamed, forcing me to pull the phone away from my ear. "Are you OK?"
"That's not the greeting I'm looking for," I said, annoyed. "But yes, I'm doing fine."
"You've been all over the national news. What made you think that crashing your car through a fence and trying to blow up a plane was a good idea?"
I sighed. "It wasn't destroyed. Just needs a new engine. Besides, how do you know it was me?"
"I set a credit alert on all the identities that Same sent you to use. When I saw a new Ford Edge with Colorado temp tags, I knew it was you."
Something told me my little fiasco at the airport would cost me a few thousand more a year to keep her quiet. She's never been one to blackmail me over every little mistake, but I've never given her a reason to try. One of these days I needed to sit down with her to learn how she does her thing. Until then, another pay raise would be a bargain.
"I needed to stop it," I said. "There was no telling what he would have done if it got into the air."
"Well, I can tell you one thing. They put the people you hoped to save onto another flight. They arrived in Miami a few hours later than they wanted, but they didn't have any other problems."
Wasn't the first time I've slightly overreacted to time sensitive information. Something told me it wouldn't be the last either.
"As much as I like defending myself over the phone, I actually called to get you to do some work."
"What is it now?" She said. "Want me to find a train for you to destroy for the trifecta?"
"Ha, ha," I said, shaking my head. "I need you to dig up information on Bradley Tucker. I think he might be the man behind all the trouble here in Boulder."
"How much do you need?"
"The whole shebang. I want everything from his birthday to his favorite cereal and everything in between. While you are at it, find any information you can on his grandmother, Martha."
"Same last name?"
"Not sure. All I know is that he inherited the house from her. It was the same one the helicopter crashed into the other day."
"Wow!" she said loudly. "That was you too?"
"How many people do you know that can throw fireballs at cars?"
"Good point," she said. "Try to relax for a few hours. "I'll call you once I have everything you're looking for."
"Talk to you then," I said, hanging up the phone.
With that out of the way, there was only one thing left to do. I peeled off my nasty clothing, placing the pants and shirt into a trash bag and took a nice long shower before laying down for a nap on the couch.
I nearly fell off the couch when the phone finally rung.
"This is Raymond," I said, struggling to keep the phone to my ear.
"Have a nice nap?" she said, laughing.
I looked around the room, trying to find a clock of some sort. Usually there would be one on a nightstand next to the bed. Either this hotel was cheap or someone needed on for their house. Neither answer would've surprised me.
"What time is it?" I said, giving up the hunt.
"Nine in the morning here. So eight your time."
"Not like you to take this long digging up intel," I said. "End up at another frat party last night?"
"Actually..." she hesitated. "I did, but I found everything you were looking for before I left."
"Then why didn't you call me?"
"I figured you needed some rest."
I sighed. "You realize I woke up in a hospital yesterday, right?" I asked. "I can't afford to give Brad any more time than I have to."
"Waking up from a coma is hardly rest," she said.
"What are you talking about? I wasn't in a coma."
"According to the medical report, you were out cold before they even got to the house," she said. "That was five days ago."
"Wait," I said, shocked. "I was out for four days?"
"Yeah. The reports said you looked healthy, but for some reason your brain just shut down."
Guess I was a lot closer to burnout than I thought. Only the most severe cases of magical overuse cause you to go comatose for a time. If I had to guess, it was the final enhancing of the house that pushed me over the edge, not that I regretted it. I only hoped Tom's house wasn't torn up any worse than it looked.
There was a high point to going comatose though. Generally, that is what the brain does to repair the damage you've done to it. The odds of having any lasting effects after waking up from a magically induced coma are usually much lower than if I had stayed upright the whole time. Of course, I'll have to deal with it for the next few days. A small price to pay to keep my abilities.
"You didn't call to talk about me. Tell me what you found?"
"It looks like Brad was an Internet millionaire. I found no less than two dozen websites linked to him. There's no telling how many more he had in other names or business accounts."
"Gathered that much when I saw his house. Computers from wall to wall in every room. What else did you get?"
"If that didn't surprise you, then perhaps knowing he didn't have a work history," she said. "At all."
"Not even as a teenager?" I asked. Everyone my age or younger has flipped a burger or two in their lives. I even did my stint when I got out of high school. The job didn't last that long though. Got fired within two months for insubordination. I was surprised it took that long. When you call out your boss on his laziness and refuse to do things his hard and stupid way, it's only a matter of time.
"Never," she said. "Not only that, but he also has clear criminal and driving records."
"So he was a good person before all of this. Wouldn't be the first time someone snapped out of the blue."
"He didn't snap."
"What makes you say that?" I asked.
"It was hard to find, but two years ago he was contacted by a member of The Liberation, an old crime ring that moved to the Denver area a few years ago."
"Didn't think Denver had a crime problem. Not like that anyways." I knew they weren't like Detroit or St. Louis anyways. Those two cities liked to fight for the top spot on a yearly basis.
"They don't really. The Liberation moved there to start doing things legit."
"A crime ring, legit?" I laughed. "Since when?"
"Since Colorado legalized marijuana. They helped push the law through legislature knowing they would be in the perfect position to set up shop once it went
through."
"I understand why they would want to be here then, but what would make them seek out Brad? Until a week or so ago he didn't seem like the kind of guy to get involved in things like that."
"They needed someone to set up a web presence," she said. "Now he handles everything on the electronic side of the business, from accounting to inventory. Lately he has been working to diversify the company's assets through other investments."
"Through the investment firm."
"You got it," she said. "He just picked the one investment banker with a conscience."
"Sounds about right," I said. There couldn't be more than a handful of them around the world. I was shocked enough to know there was one. All he had to do was keep his mouth shut and he would have raked in some money just based upon commissions, not counting the added business he got thanks to his 'luck.' "Find anything about Martha?"
"That's the weird part," she said. "He wasn't related to her at all."
"Don't tell me. He had a thing for older women," I said, cringing at the thought.
"Doesn't look like it. From what I saw, her husband died three weeks before she did. Unless she was having an affair after thirty years of marriage, there wasn't a connection."
"Then what would make her give a stranger everything like that?"
"When her husband died, he left everything to her. A day or two after his funeral, someone came in to change her will to reflect his passing."
"Still. Why wouldn't she have left everything to her kids and grandchildren?"
"I'm not so sure she didn't think she was. I found two separate wills, both filed twenty-four hours apart. The first one had family members named, the second just Brad."
"Let me guess. Electronically filed."
"Precisely."
"Looks like he was an even bigger dirt-bag than I thought he was," I said. "Tell me you have a better location for me to find this piece of work. I'm oh-for-two on his houses so far."
"The only thing I've got is the location of his office, but there isn't a guarantee he will even be there."
"If not, I'll get one of his guys to talk."
"Aren't you in enough trouble with the Grand Council already?" she asked.
"How do you...?"
"Some guy named Cedric stopped by with a letter. He wanted me to make sure you took his summons seriously."
"He would," I said. "Don't worry about the council, I'll deal with them later." While the council is usually against using the death penalty on cases like mine, they are more than wiling to snuff out my ability to use magic. If this was going to be my last case with it, I was going to make it count. "Send me the address."
- 17 -
I pulled into the parking lot of the Sticky Hemp Shop, finding it amazingly full. It looked like I grossly underestimated the amount of interest in recreational marijuana over the last dozen years. I always thought it was one of those things people talked about doing, but few actually did. From the crowd gathered just outside the front door, I can tell I was wrong.
Way wrong.
A bell rang as a greeting when I opened the door, the smell of skunk hit my nose as I stepped inside. It had been a while since I smelled pot, not that I missed it. I've never been a fan of chemical or plant induced pleasure. Especially when it reduces my ability with magic. If you gave me a choice between a high or my powers, I would choose the later every time. The first time you create a fireball out of thin air, or spray your girlfriend with water in the middle of a parking lot, you'll understand why.
My high is much better, without all the after effects.
A short man, probably a hair taller than five foot walked out from a room in the back. Both of his ears were full of piercings, with two of them connected to a pair of nose rings by dangling silver chains. He had long black hair, tied up in a pony tail just below his neck and had a six inch long soul patch below his bottom lip. Both of his arms were full of tattoos to the point that I couldn't make out any of the drawings. I never had a problem with tattoos, but I never got the point of getting so much ink in such a little area. Unless he spent hours doing his makeup, or wore long sleeve shirts, there was no way he would have a normal job, which was probably why he worked here.
"I take it you are here for the tour?" he asked.
"Sure," I said. I knew you could go on a tour of most breweries, but I never once thought to go on a pot tour. Even without wanting to look for Brad, I wasn't going to turn down the opportunity. I had a thing about learning what makes businesses tick. Always figured there might be one or two things I could adapt to my firm to improve things.
He pulls a badge from behind the back counter, writing my name on the front with a red dry-erase marker. My name was Robert Dawson, pot aficionado for the day.
"Here, follow me," he said. "They are too far along for us to catch up with, so I'll give you a personal tour."
We passed through a wooden door into a large, humid greenhouse. There were eight distinct rows of plants set up in four foot wide wooden planters, leaving a three foot walkway between each of them. In the planters were plants in various stages of life, from the small saplings near the walls on the left to the fully budded plants in the center. One thing that caught my attention was the differing colors of the plants. I had always assumed pot was always green, but I'm seeing I was wrong.
"How many varieties of pot are there?" I asked. "I never knew the industry was that diverse."
"We grow about three dozen different varieties at this location," he said. "Our main farm grows nearly sixty different strains."
My jaw drops when I hear that number. "I'm new to this whole thing, but I always thought pot was pot. It's just here to get you high, isn't it?"
"No sir," he said. "Well, for the regulars you saw out front, that's the only part they care about, but there's a lot more to it. Most people who come to the store only care about THC levels or how it tastes, but there are strains that are used primarily for medical purposes. They don't like those because they don't give you a buzz. We don't grow those here, but if that's what you were interested in, we can have some shipped from the farm in a few days."
I nodded my head. "So, how long have you worked here?" I asked, looking down at his name tag. Zack Stevens.
"They hired me the moment the store opened," he said. "While they were setting things up, they had a sign out front to find some employees. They couldn't hire anyone until the law was passed, otherwise I would have been here sooner."
"You aren't one of the owners?" I asked. "You seem to know a lot about the place."
"Oh, heavens no. I'm not good with all the business stuff." He pulled a ripped up cannabis card from his wallet. "I moved here from Cali once it looked like they were going to legalize it for recreational use. It was getting expensive to pay a doctor to prescribe it to me back home."
"I thought they only prescribed it for certain things."
"Yep," he nodded. "The things I paid the doctor to put on my medical sheet."
I shook my head and smiled. "Seems like a lot of work just to get high."
"It was better than being arrested for possession every few weeks. If you think paying off a doctor is expensive, try hiring a lawyer."
"You have a point."
We left the greenhouse using a glass door in the back that lead into an open field surrounded by the walls of the building. At the top of the building there were rolls of razor wire to prevent anyone from sneaking in. Along the walls, at ten foot intervals, were rotating security cameras keeping an eye on everything. The field was set up similar to the greenhouse though without the planters.
"We typically start the plants inside, then move them out here once they are large enough," he said. "The hole above us is really a retractable roof, so we can keep the fields going year round."
"I was about to ask about that. You can't get more than a few months of growing season around here."
"No, but there are strains we can grow that still bud up in the winter months. Even here."<
br />
He led me across the fields, to a steel door on the other side labeled 'processing.'
"I guess this is where you bag it all up for sale?" I said.
He opened a door revealing a room full of tables with bags of marijuana stacked on most of them, nearly two foot tall in spots with stacks of boxes all around them. Two women, both wearing hairnets and rubber gloves, were breaking up the plants and placing them into small plastic bags, using a nearby scale to weigh them before boxing it all up. I half expected them to divert their attention on us as we entered the room, but the women kept at their jobs not caring that we were there.
"Sure is," he said, leading between the tables. "The girls are also in charge of boxing delivery orders."
"You can ship this stuff?" I asked, running my hand against the stack of bags.
"Only in the state," he said. "And not using the post office. The feds still have a problem with it even though it is legal here."
"State law is supposed to trump federal law, isn't it?"
"Common misconception. For the most part, they won't bother the people using it, only places like this that sell it. We just had a DEA agent here a week ago doing an inspection."
I scanned the room, noticing five more cameras inside. One is focused on each of the girls with two of the others on the doors leading in and out of the room. The last camera was trained on me, moving as we walked across the room.
"How many people do you have working here?"
"About twenty, not including the bosses."
"With the kind of money this place makes, I'm sure they are around all the time," I said, trying to get Zack to step into the loaded question.
"You'd be surprised," he said. "The only that's ever around is Brad. He watches over the books and handles all the paperwork. Apparently there is a ton of stuff he has to submit to the state constantly to stay in business, so we try to leave him alone."
"Sounds like a lot of work," I said, smile reaching my lips.
Sparked: The Nephalem Files (Book 1) Page 10