by T S Paul
Bill looked around, seeing Ana's gleaming eyes underneath the RV. "What did I miss?"
~~~~~~~
"Where is she now?" Montgomery peered at the computer screen over the technician's shoulder.
"The bug stopped working. I can tell you where she was the last time we pinged it. If that helps?"
"No, it doesn't help! We need to know what she knows and when she knew it. She should never have been allowed to live in the first place!" Montgomery resisted the urge to cuff the technician and stormed from the room.
The other councilors were hard at work playing some sort of dice game while watching the human news when he reached the gathering room.
"Hey look, Monty, there is the result of your incompetence!"
The dice players looked up and smiled at the television.
"...Now some News from the strange side. The National Parks Department announced today that they were declaring open season upon an invasive species. Jackalopes are over-running many southern parks. At first, we thought it a joke by the new administration, but this independent footage was supplied to our network. Insiders have told us it's no joke and hunters can apply for permits in all authorized states." Footage played on the screen of Jackalopes frolicking in a field and charging each other like elk.
Montgomery pointed his finger at the screen. "That is not my fault, and you know it! That girl should have been put down. She continues to be a problem and an issue. Do I have to go to Marcella myself and demand satisfaction?"
"Why don't you do that? I'm sure she'll listen to whatever you say. Yeah right. Nice knowing you Montgomery."
"She is not all powerful. Just because she leads the Council of..." Montgomery never got to finish.
"Enough!" The cloaked leader of the American Witches Council turned away from the meal she was consuming. "You know the rules concerning them as well as any of us. Bringing down the wrath of nations is not something I wish to deal with today. What has your panties in such a twist today?"
Still fuming Montgomery flung himself into an open chair. "We've lost her. Again. The tracker is either out of range of a signal, or she found the device."
"I doubt she found the device. It has survived much worse than her for far longer than she has been assigned to the Division. The assignment we sent her on has taken her to an extremely rural area. Be patient. They will have to leave for fuel or supplies before too long, and we can listen to the download.Those RVs aren't self-sufficient. All is never lost."
"As always the voice of reason."
"Just shut up Fitz. I want this to be over. She needs to be put down. That is the perfect example of why." He pointed at the television screen.
"She is necessary Montgomery. Much more of this and I will put you down. Do you understand me?" The leader of the Council's voice was now icy cold. Balls of ice shimmered in her hands as she made her point clear.
Montgomery realized he had pushed her too far. He swallowed a few times and bowed his head. "Yes, Mistress. I understand Frost Mistress."
"Hmmph. That name is a bit dated don't you think? Just chill, or I will make you. I doubt you will survive it." The cloaked woman returned to her meal.
~~~~~~
I suppose I should work on my aim in the future. I'm much better with my sidearm at close range than this. Everything was frozen in a wide swath of about a half mile, and I was not sure how far my freeze spell reached.
"As near as I can tell it's about three hundred yards wide judging by the frozen squirrels and birds." Chuck jogged up to us as we walked. The area near the fish camp was heavily wooded and filled with bramble pits and bogs.
"I guess I should be thankful I didn't make them all purple or blue. There are enough of those sort of squirrels at home in Maine." I pointed to the tree with a rodent frozen in mid-leap.
"It would make them easier to see. I like squirrel gumbo." Chuck tromped over. He reached up to grab the frozen creature.
"Charles Winthrop leave that poor animal alone! There's jerky in my pack, go eat some of that if you're hungry." Cat snapped at him.
Wincing at being called his real name by his Pack Alpha, Chuck pulled his hand back and dug into the pack for food.
"Always thinking about his stomach. Men." I gave Cat a nudge. There was potentially a good leader hiding in her small body.
"Do we know anything about this fire tower, Bill?"
Bill pulled out his phone. "According to the state, this particular one is monitored by volunteers that rotate out every four months. The tower itself was built in the 1930s during Herbert Hoover's New Deal. The Parks Department used prisoners from the county system to construct fire towers, park facilities, and sporting arenas all over the place. Most of them were built of wood, but this is one of the few steel survivors. There is supposed to be a man named Leroy Theroit in residence up there."
Cat stepped over a fallen log checking for snakes out of habit. "Do we know anything about Leroy?"
"He's a bird watcher and naturalist. According to the State Police, he takes pictures and protests local building projects. He can't be our shooter. They say he's afraid of guns." Bill checked over his notes again.
"How about heights? Do we know anything about his habits?" Chuck peered over a dead fallen tree.
"I've got nothing. If he was scared of heights, why live up there?" Bill pointed up.
"Well, maybe he jumped then because his body is over there behind the tree." Chuck hooked a thumb over his shoulder.
Leroy Theroit was head down in a bog. It appeared that he took a header off the tower.
"Well, that sucks. Do you think he was alone up there?" Bill stared up at the tower.
"He's not the shooter." I shook my head.
"Agatha, are you sure about that?" Cat checked the body for a pulse just in case.
"If Leroy here were the shooter, he would still be up there frozen. Remember the squirrels? There has to be someone else up there."
"He's dead. Just checking. Agatha, are you going to be OK?"
I stared at flight after flight of stairs leading up to the tower. Stairs. Why did it have to be stairs? I so preferred levitation.
"I'll be OK. I have to go with you to drop the spell. At least wait for me before entering the cabin." I watched the others jog up the stairs heading for the top.
The stairs on this thing were the worse. Naked steps reaching up to the sky without rails to hold onto. Ever since nearly falling down the main stairs at Grandmother's house they freak me out. Levitating up those were my favorite part of going upstairs. Here, however, I needed to just walk them. One consolation was if I slipped, I could catch myself.
The climb gave me a few moments to think. Who is trying to kill me? The Council would use Magick, not a rifle. My only thought was the rogue government Agents that attacked me in my second year. They were the only ones I could think of with an ax to grind. At least thinking about it kept my mind off the long ass climb to the top.
"Tired?" Cat watched me take the last couple of steps.
"Surprisingly not. The height doesn't bother me either. It's just childhood memories that left scars." I looked up into the cabin. "Now him I recognize."
Through the hole in the floor, I could see the large, hulking body of one of Daniel Jaeger's bodyguards and part-time police officers.
"Some of this is starting to make sense now." Cat stuck her head up into the cabin. "Both of them are here."
I climbed up and looked for myself. One large man was bend over what I believed to be the stolen Barrett rifle. It was aimed toward the Fish Camp, and I presume, my head. The other man was what was interesting. He stood behind the first one with his weapon drawn and aimed at the other man's head.
"Get pictures of everything, Cat. I don't think they will go quietly here." The cabin itself showed a few signs of a struggle as well as a broken window. The two men must have thrown Leroy out. I watched as Cat took pictures with her phone.
"Why would the local Alpha try to have me killed? We started thi
s investigation at the death of his youngest son. Why would he jeopardize it by killing us?"
"I don't know. Could he be involved in the slave trade? If he is, he must be in really deep." Cat began searching the two men.
"We know that Daniel killed his father, taking over both the Pack and the town. He is in competition with Stephan Petrov, his brother, for ownership of the town. There can't be all that much money in the town. So what is worth so much that killing an FBI Agent is acceptable?" I shook my head.
"Is there a way to get these guys out and down without waking them up? If they fight us up here, we all might die." Cat was looking at the windows.
"Maybe? I think I can levitate them up and out. I've never tried lifting two humans at once before."
"There is no try. Only can and cannot." Cat smirked at me.
Shaking my head, I smiled back at her. "Very funny frog girl. Very funny. I'll have you know that I watch movies too."
We sent Bill and Chuck down the stairs to wait for us to remove the men. Chuck and Ana would need to come back and process the scene, but removing my attackers was the primary goal. Bill put in a call to the State Police informing them of Leroy's death and our recovery of the Barrett. Since we have no jail facilities, we planned to 'store' the two of them. Once we got them down. There were only a few hours of darkness left in the sky.
Thinking of them as humans or Weres was too hard. In my mind, I imagined paper towel rolls. Spin them one way, the paper stays on, spin the other direction, and it falls off. That is what they were to me. Like the block game Cat got me addicted to back in school I angled them around and worked them through the window. That was the easy part. Carefully, I floated them down to the ground. My nighttime spell had worn off, and I could barely see in the gloom of night. 'One spell at a time,' is what I muttered to myself.
Still seeing them as objects, I lowered them to the ground. Chuck and Ana raced past us on the stairs to get to work on the cabin before the State Police got here. "Hey what did you do to Ivan? Is he still safe?"
"We left him playing checkers with Billie Jean's son while she stood nearby with a loaded shotgun. He's okay." Anastasia spoke as she glided by. That was what Vampires called their unnatural speed and motion. Gliding.
I waited for the State Police before unfreezing the Weres.
"Why do you have Bob and Tod frozen like that? Set them free right now!" The two officers looked sharp in their uniforms.
"They are both your thieves and my assassins. We caught them up there in the act of assassination holding your gun as well as some of your drugs." I pointed to the Barrett and some evidence bags.
"Assassins? Who did they kill?"
"They tried to kill me. I can show you the hole in my RV if you like."
"Tried? Lady if someone shoots at you with one of these you are dead!" The fancy-pants officer smirked at me.
"Shooting is like touching. Nobody, and I do mean nobody, touches the Witch!"
Chapter 13
Both Tod and Bob refused to say a single word in either of their defenses. They might as well have been statues in prison garb. We had them on charges of attempted murder, murder, possession, possession with the intent to distribute, as well as whatever the locals could think up. They were pretty pissed that the theft led back to local law enforcement.
"Why won't they say anything?"
Cat and I stood watching the cells they were in from the observation suite with both a profiler and State Police officers standing with us. Arkansas had upgraded its prison system recently doing away with the Hell holes left over from Hoover's New Deal. Having prisoners build their own prison may sound ideal, but in practice, it doesn't work. The State had used them as-is for over seventy years. Time for a change for the better is what the new Governor like to say.
"We have them cold. They may be evaluating their choices. They have worked in law enforcement. They have to know what is coming."
I glanced at the speaker. He was what the State Police used as a profiler. "How did they get to be police in the first place?" That was a question that had plagued me for a while. Sheriff Geri told us that his 'volunteers' were not of his choosing. They still had to pass some sort of test and requirements to become even part-time officers. How did they do it?
"We investigated that after they were locked up. Our records say their classwork and test scores were mediocre at best. It was their time in the Military that counts the most. Unlike many of the applicants we get, they were round pegs in round holes."
Fortuitously my phone pinged me while the profiler was still here. There was something to be said for Were hearing. I was starting to think Chuck's was even better than Cat's. Staring at the information, I smiled. I really shouldn't pick on the locals, but sometimes, it felt good.
"I'm sorry. You said that their time in the military made them excellent candidates for police work?" I asked both the profiler and the Captain standing at the back of the room.
"That is what I said. We value our Vets in this State. New opportunities are offered them continuously." The Captain looked down his nose at the two of us.
"So what branch were they in: Army, Navy, Coast Guard, or boy scouts? We checked with the Octagon's records. They never served in any authorized branch of the military. Fingerprints don't usually lie."
The surprised Captain stood up straighter. "What?"
I held up my phone. "I said we checked. No record exists for either Bob or Tod having been in the military. Their fingerprints popped up in a rarely used database, though."
"Which one?" The profiler whispered to the Captain and got him to sit down.
"MEC. The missing and exploited children database. Charles and William Clinton are their real names. They disappeared while walking home from school fifteen years ago from Mena, Arkansas. The database doesn't give Pack affiliations. There was a search for them, and DFS has them down as runaways. Something odd about that report. It, like others we have found, is identical to police records."
"Why is that strange? My people like to be consistent." The police captain was nodding and so very sure of himself.
"Except it's too perfect. In every instance of a suspected kidnapping, the conclusions of the investigators and those of Family Services match up perfectly. Same words and punctuation. It's as if they wrote the reports together in the same room, comparing notes. Statistically, that is impossible. Even with computers, there should be a typo somewhere." I motioned to Chuck, he stepped over to the Captain and handed him a folder.
"There are over two dozen reports in that file from over a dozen or so years. There are identical entries on each of them. Even the ones years apart. No way it's a coincidence." I pointed at the folder again.
The Captain was face down in the file an almost permanent scowl on his face. "What are you accusing us of?"
"That's just it Captain. I'm not accusing you of anything. Most of those reports have nothing to do with the State Police. Local departments wrote them. We are urging an investigation of DFS. It's our belief that the slavery ring we are pursuing has people planted in that agency. Sheriff Geri in Arbor is on our side. He only wants to protect the town."
"Geri... Yes. Arbor is strange. Has been for years. He's a good man in a bad situation." The Captain leaned back in his chair.
"You knew?" My mouth dropped open.
"Of course, I'm not stupid. There is only so much we can do if they don't request our help. Judicial history in this State has shown that the court will lean in the local's direction more than half the time. We must be requested to help. Only in a state-of-emergency are we allowed to interfere. Someone has to call us. It's that simple. The current Geri has lasted longer than his predecessors. Of the slavery, we knew nothing. That we can try to stop."
"One question. If you knew, why not call us before now?"
"The FBI has a reputation of bulldozing their way into our investigations and then leaving us to clean up the mess they leave behind. Your unit may be different, but you are still FBI.
You are here now. I can't control or stop you, so try not to burn my State down." He gathered up the files and pulled the profiler out of the room.
"What just happened?" I turned to look at Cat and Chuck.
"I think he gave you permission to do what we need to. For a local, he's pretty canny. You did the right thing, Agatha." Cat smiled at me. She motioned for Chuck to leave.
"Are we that bad an Agency?" I was confused.
"Sweetie, it's all about perception. They see us as intruders that mess everything up. Good or bad, they hate us for it. I ran into a small bit of it in Georgia last year. Ignore it. At least that officer likes us."