Precinct 13

by Tate Hallaway

  “Serve and protect,” Devon said, quoting the police officer’s pledge.

  Jones’s eyebrows jerked upward slightly, and then he stared down at the muddy human shape for a long moment. Slowly, he began to nod. “Yes,” he said. “I’ll make some calls.”

  Several of Stone’s brothers in uniform volunteered to stand as an honor guard over her body until a rabbi could be found who was willing to perform the magical rite to reanimate her.

  The rest of us agreed to meet back at the station house for debriefing. Though I expected he’d take off now that the excitement was over, Valentine stayed. Somehow he, Devon, and I all ended up crammed in the back of Jones’s squad. Jack sat in the front, in Stone’s usual spot. The dent of Stone’s finger was still visible in the center of the Refocus.

  The moment Devon sat down beside me, I blurted, “I’m so sorry.”

  “Don’t be,” he said. Of course, he happened to sit with his bad eye closest to me, so he had to twist around awkwardly to see. “You burned the magic out off all those zombies. It was awesome.” Then, as if an afterthought, he added, “It’ll heal eventually. Maybe even the next time I feed. Of course, if you feel really guilty about it, you could volunteer a little blood.”

  “Funny,” Valentine said in a way that made it clear he didn’t find Devon’s offer amusing on any level. His head tilted back against the seat, his eyes closed, he sat with his hands resting lightly in his lap. The pose reminded me far too keenly of how he’d looked the last time I’d seen him in the back of a cop car. “Considering your current predicament, I’d think you’d be wiser about your choices in dinner companions.”

  Devon bristled. Trying to get a good look at Valentine, he asked, “Excuse me, do I know you?”

  “Oh, I guess you two haven’t officially met,” I said, feeling very much in between these two men in more ways than just physically. “Devon, this is Valentine. He’s my, uh…”

  “The dragon,” Devon said, his eyes widening slightly. “So you do exist.”

  Valentine lifted his head and opened one eye. “There was some question?”

  “No,” I said. “Devon’s just being a jerk.”

  “Nothing new,” Jack muttered from the front.

  Jones just shook his head, obviously concentrating on driving and thoughts of his own.

  Valentine lay his head back down. Devon turned his bad eye to me, and watched the buildings pass through the window.

  “I hope Stone will be okay,” I said to no one in particular.

  “It’s hard to say,” Jones said, fiddling with the heat knob on the dash. “The rabbi I talked to had a few concerns. If you’re right”—he found my eyes in the rearview—“and Hannah has a soul, she could be restored exactly the way we remember her. But he thought it could be an illusion. If that’s the case, she could come back nothing more than an automaton, a robot.”

  I frowned. In that scenario, it might have been better to let her go. It would be ghoulish to see her walking around the office devoid of her personality. It’d be like having a zombie in her clothes.

  Valentine squeezed my thigh.

  He looked at me, imploringly, sympathetically. He didn’t have to say anything; I knew he had my back no matter what. Anyway, I was sure she had a soul. I should hold on to hope.

  We turned into a Dunkin’ Donuts parking lot. I was about to make a joke about cops and their penchant for sweets when I realized that it was less than half a block from the precinct house. It was actually a clever place to leave a police car.

  Jones and Jack got out and opened the doors for us.

  We fell into a kind of order as we made our way along the sidewalk. Jones and Jack walked side by side in the front, leading the way, Valentine and I in the middle, and Devon in the very back. When we approached the door, Valentine slowed to walk beside Devon. He leaned in closely and murmured something. Whatever he said shocked Devon into doing a double take, and coming to a complete standstill.

  Devon watched Valentine walk away with his mouth hanging open and a deep blush creeping up his collar. He smiled dopily, like he’d just found out he’d won the lottery.

  I held the door open for Valentine. “What did you say to him?” I whispered.

  “I told him I know of a spell that may free him from his bondage to the fairy prince.”

  The atmosphere in the conference room was muted and somber. Everyone turned out, however, to hear the news about Stone and the necromancer case. The crowd parted to let Jones through to the front, where he started to remove all the photographs and notes from the dry-erase board.

  Valentine and I found an empty spot near the door. Most of those gathered watched Valentine with concern and gave us a wide berth. Across the room, Denis, the George, caught my eye and waved. I almost thought he might come over and chat with us, but Valentine glared at him and he stayed put.

  Someone bumped my elbow. I turned to see Boyd, who I recognized from his freckles and the fact that he was holding the necromancer’s toe tag. “I guess we won’t need this, eh?”

  “Yeah,” I said, but I frowned at him. Had he picked nothing up from it? Jack had been so excited that I’d remembered to grab the tag; it seemed strange that Boyd had never even gotten around to reading the vibes or whatever it was he did. I shrugged. It seemed my autopsy had really messed up the necromancer. He hardly seemed human at the graveyard. I didn’t know how Boyd’s powers worked. Maybe he could only read human traces. It was possible there wasn’t much residue of anything coherent on the toe tag.

  Jones finished putting away the last photo. The only thing left on the board was the cow mutilations. He started to erase those, but stopped. He turned around and raised his hands for everyone’s attention.

  “First, because I know most of you have probably heard that something happened to Officer Stone, I can confirm. Unfortunately, it is true. The word was erased from her forehead.”

  The room erupted in gasps and murmurs of concern.

  Jones lifted his hands to quiet the room. “I can only say that, while there is a chance she can be reanimated, we won’t know how successful it will be until after the ceremony is performed,” he said, sadness etched in his face.

  He paused, leaning both hands heavily on the table. “I’m afraid there’s more bad news. Devon has been blinded in one eye, and, effective immediately, I’m putting myself on administrative leave, until Internal Affairs can make a full inquiry into my conduct on this case. Alex,” he said, looking up and pinning me with his gaze. “Why don’t you take over this meeting?”

  In the stunned silence that followed, Jones sat down and bowed his head.

  Everyone shifted to look at me. Beside me, I felt Valentine bristle defensively.

  “It’s okay,” I told him. Even so, he followed as I made my way through the parting crowd to the front of the room. Jack gave me a smile as I passed him. Even Devon gave me a little nod of a salute, though maybe it was for Valentine, since he beamed almost goofily at him as we continued on.

  It was weird to be the focus of so much attention. From this perspective, the room was populated by an inordinate amount of blue police uniforms. That was disconcerting to say the least, especially since I wasn’t even sure where to begin. I was grateful I’d have the whiteboard to write on. I chose a blue dry-erase marker from a group on the table, and wrote, “Steve, the necromancer,” in squeaky letters across the top of the board.

  Valentine settled against the back of the wall, like my shadow.

  “We still need to confirm a lot of what happened before we can close the case,” I said. “But it seems that Steve has…uh…”

  “Dematerialized,” Jack offered helpfully from the sidelines.

  “Right, dematerialized, and Brooklyn, his sister and accomplice, is in custody.”

  An officer I didn’t recognize raised his hand and simultaneously asked, “How did that happen, the dematerializing?”

  I looked to Jack, who shrugged. Right, he was passed out. “I’m not sure,”
I admitted. My fingers traced the still aching edges of the snake’s body. The outside, which had been rimmed in red, had faded to a yellow. I turned to Valentine. “The snake bit him, the necromancer, I mean. Could that have caused it?”

  “A paradox, perhaps?” Valentine suggested, looking to Jones, who had perked up at this part of the conversation. “Spell bites creator?”

  Jones nodded, as though thinking through the implications of Val’s suggestion. “Combined with her spontaneous improbability?”

  “Could work,” Jack agreed. To me: “You cursed him, I presume.”

  “Six ways from Sunday,” I said. “But I didn’t think it was working.”

  “Spontaneous improbable magic can be unstable and unpredictable,” Jack said. “It’s the magic of miracles.”

  I tried to keep my eyes from rolling. It would be my luck to get magic that was hard to control.

  “So that’s it then,” Boyd said from the back, still sounding relieved, but in a strained way. “The necromancer is gone. Threat neutralized.”

  “Why is Spenser resigning?” someone else wanted to know. A lot of others took up the same question.

  “Uh…” I looked at Jones, but he was studying the wood grain in front of his interlaced fingers where they rested on the tabletop. I supposed I could go through all the instances of Jones’s negligence, but it didn’t seem right, especially since he was going to have Internal Affairs look into the case.

  “I passively obstructed the case,” he said, his eyes still cast down, but his voice clear.

  A lot of people seemed truly shocked by this revelation.

  He stood up, slowly. “I’m sure people still have a lot of questions, but the team needs to go over the case. I’m appointing Peterson as the acting head of the precinct; I’ll answer any questions you have, privately.”

  It was clearly a dismissal for everyone but the team working the necromancer case, but it took a long time for the room to clear. People seemed to be in a daze, and clung together in a clot, as if for comfort.

  It shouldn’t have surprised me, but it seemed that Jones was well liked and respected by his colleagues.

  When everyone finally filed out, the room felt expansive and empty. Devon and Jack took seats on either side of Jones. Boyd, still clutching the toe tag, hung near the back of the room.

  “Look, I’ve got that other case, guys,” he said apologetically, glancing at the still-open door.

  “Sure,” Jones said, apparently forgetting he wasn’t in charge anymore, and waved him off.

  Boyd all but dashed out.

  He certainly was an odd one. “We should have asked him to say,” I said. “He’s the one who wrote the initial police report.”

  “Are you sure?” Jones said. “I thought it was Peterson.”

  I was beginning to wonder if Boyd had some kind of forget-me glamour, or if he was really that unremarkable. I dug my phone out of my pocket, and opened up my e-mail app. “See?” I showed Jones.

  “Huh,” Jones said. “Well, you’ve got the report, at least. I’m sure we can reconstruct everything.”

  I supposed he was right. “Did you get any more of a confession out of Brooklyn while we were looking for Stone?” I asked.

  “Oh, yes,” Valentine said, from his spot against the wall. “Though Jones wouldn’t let me use my freeze breath on her.”

  Everyone paled at the idea, except Devon, who attempted a little nervous laughter.

  “So, what did she say?” I asked, choosing not to comment.

  “It seems you were on the right track,” Jones said. “Their plan had been twofold. They wanted to trigger the Tinker Bell Theorem, and, if possible, get rid of me as chief investigator, as well.”

  I blushed. I’d inadvertently helped them achieve one of their goals. I had to swallow the urge to apologize to Jones. Luckily, Jack raised his hand.

  Once he had our attention, Jack lowered his hand and asked, “Has anyone told her that her brother is dead?”

  We all looked awkward about that.

  “No. I will,” Jones said. He shook his head. “It’ll be hard but she’s already grieving him. He’s been half-dead since the autopsy. She revived him as much as she could, but, well…”

  I shivered at the memory of his badly stitched-up chest. “Did I kill him?”

  “Which time? Twice, I think,” Devon said.

  Valentine came up behind me, and put his hands lightly on my shoulders. “As good as he was at appearing dead he was a conversely poor judge of character.”

  Right, he’d thought Jones would spirit his body away rather than put me in the crosshairs. I wondered what Internal Affairs would make of that.

  A tense silence passed.

  “Let me get this straight,” Jack said. “The necromancer, Steve, faked his death, which became partially accurate.” We all nodded along as he recounted the facts. “But, why, again? How does faking his death cause the Tinker Bell Theorem to be triggered?”

  “It doesn’t,” I said. “That was part of a plan to discredit Jones.”

  “How?” Jack asked.

  “Uh,” I started.

  In his usual half-interested pose, with his head resting in his hand, Devon casually said, “Spense and Brooklyn were hot and heavy for years.”

  Years?

  “Oh, you dark horse,” Jack said teasingly.

  I’d say, though it explained Jones’s reticence to go after Brooklyn. In fact, given how close they must have been, I actually was impressed with Jones’s behavior. As far as I knew, he’d never gone to her with the precinct’s plan or any of that. If it had been Valentine, who knows to what lengths I would have gone to protect him?

  “I broke things off when we started to suspect Steve of grave robbing. Sometime after that they must have added discrediting me to their list of to-dos.”

  Jack continued to ponder the case. He tapped a long-boned finger against his lip. “The zombie at the diner. That was for the Tinker Bell.”

  “And, I think, the grave robbing,” I added. “I’ve been wondering: How did you guys hide those crimes from the public?”

  “It’s taken all my efforts to keep it off the web,” Jack admitted.

  “I’ve been tempted to just send a forget-me spell bomb to the local newspaper,” Jones admitted.

  “It’s been extremely tough,” Jack continued. “The families always knew. They’ve been harassing the chief about the case almost continually. Why do you think he was so livid about the zombie?”

  I hadn’t known. “So, it’s been working?”

  “Sounds like it,” Valentine murmured. His hands had been unconsciously massaging my shoulders slightly.

  “Are the cow mutilations related?” Jack asked. “The officers said it was really difficult to get people to forget they saw lights. And it made it into the paper.”

  My gaze strayed to the whiteboard and the words fairy ring under the cow mutilation case. I thought back to the crazy visit to Jones’s mother. He’d said the whole house was some kind of fairy ring and that without the salt we could be lost in time.

  “What do fairy rings do?” I asked.

  “What?”

  “When we visited your mom, we were in a completely different place, weren’t we? Can you use a fairy ring to travel in time as well as space?”

  Jones, who had been stuffing the loose papers and notes into a case file, considered it. “I suppose. They connect places, but they could connect times, too, if there’s one in the future or the past to connect to. Time is pretty meaningless to fairy.”

  “Could we use one to go back and see what killed the rancher’s cows?”

  “Theoretically, but you’d need a fairy with a spare ring…” he started. He must have seen my idea glittering in my eyes, because he shook his head. “It’s not happening, Connor. I’m off the job.”

  “You are now,” I said. “But you weren’t then.”

  Jack smiled at my nerd logic, but Jones continued to shake his head. “I’m on leave.
”

  I tapped my finger on the remaining open case on the whiteboard. “Wouldn’t you rather go on leave with all the mysteries solved?”

  I knew I’d gotten him with that. “Fine.”

  Jones told us to meet at his place after dinner. He had a fairy ring in his backyard we could use.

  In the meantime, Jack offered to give Valentine and me a ride back to Robert’s place. On the way, he told us that he was headed back to the cemetery to take his turn guarding Stone.

  “How long until the rabbi comes?” I asked.

  “One is driving in from Iowa right now,” he said. “He’ll be here sometime tomorrow morning.”

  I tried not to be astonished that Iowa had a kabbalah-practicing rabbi. After all, I would never have guessed South Dakota had so many zombies. “Let me know if there’s anything I can do.”

  “Solve the case,” he said. “I think Hannah would appreciate coming back to that.”

  A little lump formed in my throat at the thought that if she didn’t it would make a fitting memorial. “Okay,” I managed to say.

  Before getting out, I touched Jack’s sleeve. “What’s the deal with Boyd? Why can no one remember he was the police officer at the scene?”

  “It’s the Dakotas, man”—Jack cut me off with a little laugh—“everyone around here has a name like Peterson, Olson, Hanson, Johnson. Hell, it’s tough for me sometimes.”

  “Uh, Boyd sounds nothing like Hanson,” I noted.

  “Oh,” he said, sobering suddenly. “I can keep an eye on him for you, if it’s important.”

  “Very,” I said. “But be subtle, okay?”

  He tried to look offended, but failed. “I’ll do my best.”

  When I talked to him at dinner, Valentine was adamantly against coming with me through the fairy ring.

  “You’ve proven yourself very capable.” Valentine yawned. He’d curled up in a spot of fading sunlight on edge of the bed. We’d had cheese and green pepper quesadillas, salsa, and the few crumbs of tortilla chips I found in the bag I pulled from the back of the top shelf in the pantry. Shortly after eating, Valentine had settled in like a satisfied cat. “You don’t need me. Besides, fairy magic is smelly. It makes me sneeze.”