by Faith Hunter
As more and more emergency vehicles rolled in, many from surrounding counties, the local citizens kicked in, dropping off food and supplies at the gate: hot coffee and donuts came from a coffee shop and bakery, a local convenience store donated drinks and ice, a church delivered fried chicken and fixin’s from a local Krispy Krunchy Chicken. A portable toilet was offered by a contractor but wasn’t needed because there was a human-bathroom in the barn. A pharmacy provided sunscreen, bug spray, tubes of lip protection, Tylenol, Tums, and assorted such things. Bags of chips and protein bars were delivered from a local grocery. Another church delivered bottled water, bleach, paper towels, and toilet paper. Bringing in food and supplies was good advertising for the local stores and churches, as the media sent out footage to the entire nation. Stella Mae Ragel was a national treasure.
Her death also meant unwanted publicity for anyone who got into camera range. Except for the time I erected tents, I kept my jacket on, a unit baseball hat on, and my face turned away from drones and telescopic camera lenses.
Once the quarantine tents were set up and full of people, Alvin and I took a break. Sitting on the steps to the side porch, we drank water and shared a bag of pretzels. Nearby, T. Laine begged for help from Tennessee’s witches, calling from her super-secret witch databank. Ending one especially frustrating call, she muttered, cussing under her breath.
Alvin said softly, “I feel sorry for her. Purdy li’l thing like that, having to be in charge of all this.”
“Alvin. You do know she does this all the time. It’s her job. She loves it. She’s good at it.” When he looked puzzled, I said, “She isn’t doing this job to snag a husband, quit work, and raise babies.”
He looked truly confused. “Every woman wants babies.”
I closed my eyes. Breathed. Though I feared the stupid might be in the air, something contagious. “No. They don’t. Lots of women don’t want kids.”
“Well, sheeeit. These modern women jist don’t make no sense.” He shook his head and looked over my shoulder. “Incoming,” he said.
I looked where his eyes led, to see Sheriff Jackett striding toward us, between us, and up to Unit Eighteen’s witch. T. Laine had just dropped into a chair on the side porch, frustrated, tired, and worried, pinching the bridge of her nose between two fingers, eyes closed. “I want access to that basement,” he demanded.
T. Laine dropped her hand and looked up at the sheriff. She said nothing. I had a feeling she was counting to a hundred. Or mentally using the sheriff as target practice for ninja throwing knives. “Oh?” she said.
“Wiggle your nose or blink hard or whatever you do. But make it safe to enter. We need our crime scene.”
It was an insult based on old TV shows. Softly, T. Laine said, “Really.” Her face was cold, expressionless.
“I can’t see that you’re doing anything at all but wasting my time.”
Occam, sensing or hearing the ruckus, appeared from a tent and ambled closer. Unit Eighteen closing ranks.
Lainie stood and pocketed all her null pens. Every face in the yard was turned to her, waiting as she arranged things in her pockets to her satisfaction. I couldn’t see Jackett’s face, but his body language suggested he was getting riled. Ruminatively, T. Laine said, “While you’ve been running around glad-handing, getting ready for the next election, and chatting with the press despite your own gag order, I’ve been evaluating the efficacy of the spelled unis and the null pens against the things happening in the basement. I think I’m close to a conclusion, but I’m not there yet. You got spelled unis? No. You got null pens? No. You don’t. So, go on in, but you and your deputies go in without my gear. Which means your people may die. Otherwise, you’ll wait on my evaluation. Now. Get outta my face and take your insulting witch comments, and let me do my job.” T. Laine pushed past Jackett and gestured to Occam and to me.
We met in the grassy area and I said, “You are my hero.” It was something I’d heard people on TV say to anyone who stood up to unfairness.
T. Laine blew out her frustration. “I look like I’m wasting time, but I’m taking readings every five minutes. Which is what I should have told him instead of mouthing off.” She shook her head. “Men like that push my buttons. Anyway. It looks as if the unis and null pens, when used together, create a narrow circle of protection around the wearer/holder. But the pens drain fast and need a three-person coven to recharge them, which I don’t have, and I’m down to one box of unis. I haven’t yet determined how wide the protection is, if it totally encircles the wearer, how long the protection lasts, and how much gets through to responders the closer we get to the victims and the bodies. I’m thinking about limiting access to the patients and the basement to twenty minutes, with a sixty-minute break between stints, unis hanging in the sunlight, to reduce recontamination. Then, after sixty minutes total in the house or with victims, the wearer and his gear have to spend time in the null room. If it ever gets here.”
“The North Nashville coven said yes to bringing a null room here?” I asked.
“Yes. But now I can’t raise them on their cells, so I don’t know what to do next or if help is really coming.”
I said, “Maybe pulling a null room messes with the signal?”
“A better answer than them not coming.” She took a deep breath, pulled a water bottle from a pocket of her uni, and drank it down. “And I have to keep everyone away from the basement until I know I have a way to treat their contamination. Stupid-ass sheriff.”
“Your plan sounds good,” Occam drawled. “Sounds like the appropriate thing to do, if not the politically correct way to do it.”
T. Laine made that breathy irritated sound again. “Politically correct? Are you saying I need to apologize?”
“Hell no. He was an ass.”
T. Laine grinned and looked at me. “You got a good one here.”
Occam propped his hands on his hips and agreed. “I am a right fine specimen of manhood.”
T. Laine gave a soft snort.
I fought a smile, looking down at my hands, clasped in front of me. Occam was . . . Occam was my cat-man. Accent on the word my.
“Jackett,” T. Laine called out. “I have a compromise between speed and safety.”
Jackett ambled over, his face saying he wasn’t sure how to act but didn’t want to look as if he was being difficult or as if he was giving in to a federal cop and witch.
“The unis we’ve been using,” T. Laine said, “are antispelled unis made by the Seattle coven especially for law enforcement and crime scene techs at paranormal hazardous crime scene sites. They are expensive and hard to come by. We went through an entire yearly supply of them on the last big case we worked and after today, I’m dangerously low. I have twenty null pens and they drain fast. I need a coven to recharge them, and before you ask, no, they can’t be charged with electricity. Your agency does not have access to a coven, correct?”
“Correct. I’m listening,” Jackett said.
“I’ve determined the most likely time parameters to keep the gear working and the people safe.” She explained the time on, time off, and time in a null room protocol. “That’s based on us having access to a portable null room, which is supposed to be on its way from Nashville. If it doesn’t arrive, then your people will have to drive to PsyLED Knoxville and sit in ours, according to the protocol I’ve outlined.”
Jackett nodded, still listening.
“While we’re talking supplies, equipment use is specified and coded by budgetary demands. PsyLED’s eastern regional director is talking to the governor to declare this an emergency, which will free up people and equipment, but I haven’t heard back and I need to order and overnight more unis and equipment for this scene. We need to talk jurisdiction and money.”
I was inordinately proud of T. Laine, standing up to male authority figures without getting all prickly. I wanted to give her a hug, but I
figured that should wait.
Jackett looked out over the property, clearly seeing a high-profile situation he wanted to be part of but didn’t have the resources to handle. He frowned, thinking. “I ain’t ready to turn over full jurisdiction just yet. Hell, my own investigators ain’t even sure this is a crime, and my hazardous materials response team ain’t sure what this is either. Let’s keep working together. I got a budgetary line item for paranormal investigations I can put toward the supplies. It’s never been used, since we don’t have witches or weres or fangheads in this county.” His tone said that made his county superior to others.
T. Laine took a slow breath, holding back her annoyance. “Fine. Here’s my deal. You reimburse PsyLED Unit Eighteen for the unis your people wear and the cost to recharge the null pens they use, you agree to make sure your people spend the proper amount of time in a null room, no matter where they have to go, and you can get in there.”
Jackett rubbed his chin as if it itched. “That’s agreeable to me. Send me a text with the itemized costs. I’ll approve it and get the paperwork to your HQ. If it does become a federal PsyLED case, I’ll eat the cost of unis used now and during the paperwork transition.” He dropped his hand. “And I’m sorry I used inappropriate words about the witch situation. One of my deputies informed me why they were ill chosen.”
T. Laine took a moment to let the words sink in between them. Stiffly, she said, “Sorry I mouthed off. I don’t know what these energies are, and I need to make sure all our people are safe.” She stuck out a hand. They shook. “Oh,” she said. “No electronics inside. I can’t protect them.”
Jackett nodded agreement before he turned and started shouting orders. To us, T. Laine said, “And that, boys and girls, is how to smooth troubled waters and ruffled feathers, lessons courtesy of SWAT’s Gonzales.” I wasn’t sure who had soothed who, but I didn’t disagree.
Two deputies, who had already been inside and knew the protocol, requested gear and null pens. Dressed out, they started manual timers, as opposed to electronic ones, and went inside. The stench in the house puffed out each time the door opened, and I reapplied mentholated rub to my handkerchief and kept it folded inside my shirt collar.
Around us flies buzzed, the biting kind, and the sun beat down, making me miserable. At least the sound of horses and birds in the distance was pleasant.
I still didn’t know exactly why I was here, but I knew how to make myself useful. Sitting on a deck chair in the shade behind the house, I expanded my database, this time on my laptop, exporting it every few minutes to HQ in case the paranormal energies of death whatever messed with the electronics. Along with Occam, I initiated prelim interviews with the victims who were still conscious, and stayed out of the way of the paramedics.
* * *
* * *
By midafternoon, the sickest victims had been transported to UTMC for evaluation and treatment, we had indications that time in HQ’s null room had helped mitigate the two cops’ minor symptoms, and the media furor had reached a fever pitch. Rumors that witches had attacked Stella Mae were rampant. Photos taken by some of the band members were making their way to the Internet and going viral. Public hysteria was building. And we still had little idea what was really happening.
As we worked, Alvin kept a sharp eye out and caught two reporters sneaking in through the back acreage. They were arrested on trespassing charges, but the arrests did nothing to stem the tide of nosiness. More and more media vehicles were lining the road out front. At one point, I counted six drones and two helicopters filming overhead.
Most importantly, the Nashville witch coven finally showed up, two cars and a van pulling a cargo trailer down the road. The trailer was the portable null room, which the LEOs, the paramedics, and the remaining human victims on-site needed badly. T. Laine had to request a police escort to get the witches onto the grounds, but their faces were apparently known to the locals because their movements were followed by a Primitive Baptist preacher with a bullhorn.
The preacher seemed to feel he had a right to give everyone migraines while he assigned every soul but his own to hell. He was stopped at the entrance to the drive and turned back, but even so, things weren’t copacetic with the witches, and the media drones were making sure everything went out to the public.
I watched as they pulled up, parked in the middle of the driveway, got out, and—in unison—slammed their vehicle doors. They were all wearing long black skirts and black shirts, like tropes out of a novel about witches. There wasn’t a smile in place as they spread out in a semicircle across the lawn, seven of them, a good number for a coven. They approached the house and the quarantine tents like hunters flushing game. They seemed to have a collective mad on, their eyes taking in everything from the tents to the victims in the unis to the law enforcement types, who were watching them back with penetrating curiosity and a measure of hostility.
I moved closer to get a better view and ended up near Officer Alvin Hembest, who stood with one hand on the butt of his service weapon. It wasn’t a very calming stance, and it was echoed by the other LEOs. Putnam County and the surrounding environs appeared unwelcoming to the witches who’d come to save them.
When the witches stopped, every eye was on them and the officers were silent, watchful. The witch in the middle was a short woman with shoulders like a linebacker. She was clearly the leader, and she raised her voice, shouting, “Why should we help you, when you took one of ours into custody?”
“One of yours is in custody?” T. Laine asked, her tone practical and her volume moderated. Though she surely knew the answer to her own question.
“Catriona Doyle,” the leader said. “The FBI took her into custody as a person of interest and they won’t let us see her. The agent sent social services to pick up her kid. At school. Her child has been remanded into the system instead of to her sister or to one of us.”
“The child’s other parent?” T. Laine asked.
“We’ve attempted to notify the child’s father, but he and his second wife are on a documentary photoshoot somewhere in the Australian outback. Doyle’s sister showed social services notarized papers giving her custody in the event of problems. Social services and the FBI refused to even look at them.”
“Sheriff Jackett,” T. Laine said, without looking away from the witches. “You know anything about that?”
“I don’t, Special Agent Kent. The FBI shares office space with the Cookeville PD. The chief agreed this scene was outside his jurisdiction, and he left around noon,” Jackett drawled, his voice a familiar-sounding Tennessee cadence. “I’ll find out what’s happ’nin’, but I got to say, what the witch is describing is all by the book. It ain’t uncommon to hold a person of interest and, according to established protocol, to make sure any children are safe for the duration. Social services will hold a custodial ruling as soon as possible and see that the child is returned to the rightful family member, but short term, the safe place is with a foster home.”
“I don’t think so,” the leader said. “Foster homes are notoriously dangerous, especially to children of witches.”
“It’s protocol, ma’am,” the sheriff said, his tone composed and unemotional.
“Really?” T. Laine said. “Protocol can be interpreted. This sounds like extreme measures to me. Measures that might suggest Catriona is dangerous just for being a witch, measures that would pit the magic workers we need at this scene against us in law enforcement, at a particularly bad time. We are not looking at a death working or curse. You aren’t even certain that this isn’t an accident of some sort. Catriona isn’t a death witch, so she isn’t a suspect.”
“Maybe, maybe not,” Jackett said, equably. “I ain’t here to argue. But in the interest of interspecies harmony, I can make a call.”
“We aren’t different spe—” she started.
Occam stepped up to the sheriff, all man-to-man, a hand on the olde
r man’s shoulder. The change in the sheriff’s demeanor was immediate: his shoulders relaxed and his face lost the hardness he’d worn when watching all the womenfolk.
I’d seen just that reaction among churchmen. Fear of women created a need to control them, especially among weak men who didn’t know their place in the world and feared anything that might take their little bit of power from them. T. Laine’s eyes went narrow and hard at the obvious body language. Occam’s tactics would not have worked for a woman. Had Lainie stepped up all backslapping bonhomie, a man like Jackett would have been put off. Of course, had Jackett been a woman, Lainie might have had the best results. Sexism was a peculiar thing.
Occam pulled Jackett back into our little group and said, “From what I’ve heard of him, FBI Senior Special Agent Macauley Smythe is a racist, a misogynist, and a witch hater. Everybody here knows it. Most all your people saw it when he handcuffed the witch in question and hauled her away. He was not gentle. He enjoyed it a mite too much.” Occam looked around, as if to point out the numbers of people who had seen the unprofessional and unnecessary tactics. “I think you might want to do more than call the chief of police and the FBI office. Maybe you would consider a personal appearance and make sure nothing untoward is happenin’ to Catriona Doyle, a woman currently living in your county. A citizen of Ireland, with rights under U.S. and international law. A citizen protected by her embassy. Your cooperation and assistance might make the Nashville witches a tad more willing to assist us. And we do need their assistance to keep all your people and our people and the civilian victims here alive.”
Jackett was a middle-aged man with a paunch that moved when he took a deep breath. He didn’t look happy at being maneuvered into doing anything to help the witches, but sheriffs are political beings. They want to keep the voting public happy and anything that got in the way of finding Stella Mae’s killer would be bad for Jackett’s future occupational and happiness factor. “I reckon I can do that for you’uns.”