The Empathic Detective: A Mystery Thriller

by Jaxon Reed

  Wilton nodded. “Come on up.”

  -+-

  After shaking hands all around, and engaging in polite small talk, LeBlanc set his briefcase on the Captain’s desk and thumbed the locks.

  “Mademoiselle Renard, I knew your parents. In fact, I attended university with your father. When I heard Europol needed our assistance in quickly getting this package to you, I was delighted to be able to bring it on the final leg of its journey, directly to you.”

  “Thank you so much,” Renard murmured.

  She looked at the others, all staring at her. She shrugged.

  “It is a small world, as they say.”

  From inside the briefcase, LeBlanc pulled out another container, a white cardboard box almost as big as the briefcase itself. Bright red letters spelled out various warnings and something similar to postal instructions. Bryce noted French instructions below the English markings, and caught a few words like “valise diplomatique.”

  LeBlanc handed the package to Renard with a bow.

  She took it from him and murmured, “Merci.”

  LeBlanc turned and shook hands with everyone again.

  “Now if you will please excuse me, I must return to San Antonio.”

  He hugged Renard, kissing both her cheeks.

  “Adieu!”

  Once he left, everyone’s attention shifted to the package. Wilton produced an old-fashioned letter opener from his desk drawer, and Renard busied herself cutting through the cardboard.

  She extracted a dark metal box from the cardboard one. On the top lid, white stenciled letters spelled out in all caps: “HEXENHAMMER.”

  The brows of the three Texans furrowed. Wilton pointed at the word.

  “What’s that?”

  Desmet said, “It is sort of an inside joke, Captain.”

  “Yes,” Renard said. “You see, in the old days, during the Middle Ages, people who revealed their gifts were sometimes mistaken for witches. Some managed to integrate their abilities into town life. Many were simply known as ‘cunning folk,’ and were considered to have magical abilities but not practicing the ‘dark arts.’

  “Nonetheless, some were swept up into the witch trials that spread across Europe. In the late fourteen hundreds a German clergyman published a ‘how-to’ manual on prosecuting witches. He titled it Malleus Maleficarum. In German, it’s translated as Der Hexenhammer. ‘The Witch Hammer.’

  “The book was widely published. This was at the dawn of the printing press, and the book stayed in print over a century. But the Church was abhorred by it. The book contained falsehoods and inaccuracies, and the Church officially condemned the text. It was not allowed to be used by priests or inquisitors.

  “But, among other things, the book offered step by step instructions for conducting a witch trial. So it was widely used by secular European courts for many years.”

  Renard paused as the Captain and detectives considered her information for a bit.

  Finally, the Captain spoke up.

  “You people have an odd sense of humor. So, you’re saying some of the harpies were burned at the stake as witches?”

  Desmet chuckled.

  “No, Captain. If you go through the records of the old witch trials, the harpies were often those women who escaped punishment, if they ever went to trial at all.”

  Renard nodded.

  “Yes. There are some records of women who were judged guilty. Then, unaccountably, they were set free by the courts. Or a local ruler intervened, or something else happened, and they simply walked away. No, harpies are much more difficult to catch and punish than witches.”

  Parker smiled.

  “Sounds like our difficulties prosecuting Lamont have been experienced by others over the centuries, Captain.”

  The Captain sighed in exasperation. He made a dismissive gesture with his hand.

  “Okay, fine. Harpies are hard to prosecute, we know that. What’s in the box?”

  Renard popped the latches on the metal box.

  “There is not really special technology that can be used against harpies, beyond that which is employed against normal criminals. We haven’t developed a ‘harpy gun,’ if that is what you are expecting.”

  She lifted the lid on the box, and everyone crowded around, bending over for a look.

  Inside, dozens of vials lined up in neat rows, containing hundreds and hundreds of pills and liquids. Renard picked one out, holding it up for everyone to see.

  Parker broke the silence.

  “Pills?”

  “Yes, pills. Drugs, in capsule and liquid form.”

  “No wonder you had trouble getting them through Customs.”

  “More importantly, how’re they going to help us take down Lamont?”

  “A good question, Captain. Explain it to him, François.”

  Desmet cleared his throat nervously as everyone looked at him.

  “Our scientists developed a combination of drugs that severely dampen emotions. The subject simply takes the compound as a pill. It is fully effective in about fifteen or twenty minutes. The subject feels nothing. No anger, no happiness. He or she becomes almost completely emotion-free. It lasts about an hour before another dosage is required.”

  Bryce and Parker exchanged glances.

  “That’s actually a pretty good idea,” Bryce said. “Someone arresting the harpy would be immune to emotional manipulation.”

  Parker nodded.

  “What’s in it? What are the pills made out of?”

  Desmet and Renard exchanged glances this time. Bryce sensed mild embarrassment.

  “We’re not sure,” Renard said. “They haven’t told us. I know it’s a combination of lithium and other emotion-controlling drugs.”

  Desmet said, “Synthetic mood stabilizers. Psychotropics.”

  “We believe it is very safe, and highly effective. The pills deaden emotions almost completely. A task force, a group of police, can dose up and approach the harpy. She will not be able to control them.”

  Bryce and Parker exchanged glances again, then they both looked at Captain Wilton.

  The Captain took a deep breath, held it, then let it out in a sigh.

  “Okay. You people have experience dealing with this type of thing. I’ll trust your judgment. Next time she shows her face, we’ll dose everybody up and go take her out.”

  He shooed everybody out of his office, closing the door behind them. As they made their way back to their desks, Bryce leaned over to speak with Renard.

  “So, how effective is the drug regimen? You’ve used this before?”

  She glanced up at him, and he felt her embarrassment again.

  “Oh, no. We haven’t had to deal with a strong harpy in fifty years or so. This will be our first time to try the drugs in the field. They work fine in the lab, though.”

  Bryce chuckled as he realized why she’d been so embarrassed. He decided to give her a piece of advice.

  “Don’t let the Captain find out.”

  Chapter Twelve

  Days flew by with no sign of Desiree Lamont. After her failed approach at Bryce’s apartment she simply disappeared again, and remained off the grid.

  The detectives began wondering if she was even in the city, and began searching for traces of her in the Dallas-Fort Worth metroplex, Houston, and San Antonio.

  Desmet adjusted his computer scans to cover smaller cities like Bryan, Laredo, and Corpus Christi, as well as more distant ones like Lubbock, Amarillo, and El Paso.

  But they still could find no sign of her. Had she left Texas? Traveling out of state without leaving a trace seemed doubtful. So, the search continued.

  Bryce found himself entertaining the Europol agents most evenings at Nightsky. As time progressed, however, Desmet declined more invitations, preferring to spend his evenings in front of a computer terminal.

  Parker, too, felt the pull of her marriage, and often deferred to her obligations of sharing supper with her husband. So, many evenings Renard and Bryce found the
mselves dining alone on a private lanai at Nightsky, looking out over the Capitol Building bathed in light.

  The club employees were delighted to find an epicurean and oenophile in their midst. Bryce noted the staff seemed to take extra care and attention with their meals, and everyone expressed genuine delight in seeing Renard each evening.

  He found their increased level of detail and concern curious. Then he shrugged it off. Previously, he took most of his evening meals at Marti’s, visiting the club primarily for cigars. His culinary tastes were simple, and he never ordered anything that would be considered fancy. He liked to drink beer. The club employees must have considered him predictable and boring, he realized.

  Phoebe Renard, on the other hand, seemed like a breath of fresh air to them. She had several conversations with the chef, a fellow who had trained in New Orleans, and she often would disappear for half an hour or so after supper to ask him how a particular dish had been prepared or discuss some other aspect of their food.

  Bryce noted an uptick in the quality of meals. It seemed when the chef knew Renard would be partaking, he put forth extra effort. Perhaps he was trying to impress her.

  Not content with just the chef, she befriended the sommelier too, spending an equal amount of time in deep discussion with him regarding various vintages the club carried. He was an expert on Texas wines as well as European, and suggested several delightful selections she had never tried before.

  So the time passed, and many nights found Bryce and Renard alone on the balcony. It remained a professional and platonic relationship, the evenings ending with Bryce dropping Renard off at her hotel around eleven each night.

  Renard poked around the edges, probing more out of curiosity than anything, asking leading questions about Bryce’s romantic life. He deflected them by mentioning his divorce, suggesting it was still too soon for him to jump back into the dating scene.

  She frowned in confusion, reflecting back on what she had read in his file. She wondered if she was mistaken and decided to ask.

  “How long has it been since your divorce?”

  “About eight years. But I still love her.”

  She laughed then in surprise, that this would be his excuse, and in relief that her memory proved accurate. But she received his message: not interested. Not just in her, but anybody.

  And so, conversation stayed on mostly neutral topics through supper and afterwards over wine, beer, and cigars.

  In fact, Bryce valued the friendships blooming between himself, Parker and Renard. Renard in particular seemed easygoing and open. Something about the friendly little police woman from Brussels intrigued him. Like Parker, Renard seemed to not mind spending lots of time with him despite his abilities. Maybe Europeans were more open to such things, he thought.

  However, Bryce sensed something Renard was not telling him. He controlled the urge to probe too deeply. In fact, the way she had studiously avoided discussing his abilities during their dinnertime conversations led Bryce to conclude the unspoken concerns she had were, in fact, centered on him.

  Privately he decided if there might be something she was holding back, it was probably professional in nature. If it was important, he hoped, eventually she would share it with him. So he muzzled his curiosity. With her friendly conversation and pleasant personality, he decided not to fix something unbroken. Instead, he decided to enjoy the companionship for as long as possible.

  “This must be costing you a lot of money, Jerry.”

  Renard waved around the lanai, and at the remains of their meal. She sipped on a glass of wine as he fired up a cigar.

  “Your club membership doesn’t cover food and alcohol, does it? And we’ve been eating here almost every night. I am an expensive habit, no?”

  Bryce puffed on the newly lit cigar, and waved at the wall to activate the smoke vents. They clicked on and the billowy cloud he produced wafted up and away, sparing her the smell. He waved at the other wall to activate the vid screen so they could watch the ten o’clock news.

  He shrugged.

  “I’m single. I have no hobbies, no kids. Besides, they pay detectives well over here.”

  Her eyebrows shot up, and he felt her curiosity.

  “The thinking is, if you pay a cop well, he’ll be less likely to become corrupted. So, we pay our police very well.”

  “And you have nothing to spend it on.”

  “I have no problem spending it on time with friends.”

  He smiled, the cigar clenched in his teeth. She smiled back as the news started up and the anchor appeared onscreen.

  “In our top news tonight, Governor Zavala has been seen around town recently with someone who is apparently his new significant other: billionaire widow Desiree Lamont.”

  -+-

  “I was afraid something like this would happen.”

  Bryce, Parker, Renard, Desmet, and Captain Wilton sat in the Chief’s office. The previous night’s news looped on the vid screen. The Chief waved at his computer console, and fresh information poured onto the screen.

  “She’s holed up in the Governor’s Mansion. People, we have serious problems. She’s being guarded by a phalanx of state troopers now. And it looks like all persons within the vicinity of the mansion are completely under her control.”

  The Chief leaned back in his chair, the corners of his mouth turned down. Bryce didn’t need to be an empath to feel the frustration pouring out of him. Others in the room shared in his despair.

  Renard tried to calm everyone down.

  “This is typical of a strong harpy. She will always try to gather power around herself. Sometimes that involves a prince, a king, or a governor. Sometimes she will simply take the reins of government herself. But it’s not unprecedented, and we can handle it.

  “Besides,” she smiled brightly, trying harder to lift the mood. “Now we know where she is, no?”

  The Chief sighed.

  “How are we going to get through the guards? Never mind the fact they’re all highly trained bodyguards who have taken an oath to protect the Governor. They’re state troopers! How many innocent men and women are we going to have to take down just to get near her?”

  “We do not have to take any innocent lives. We have Der Hexenhammer.”

  “Yes, Captain Wilton briefed me on your magic pills. How do you expect to convince all those troopers to swallow a pill, Agent Renard? Especially while they’re under her spell?”

  “They will not need to swallow it. We simply knock them out with tranquilizer darts. They can’t be controlled by her when they are sleeping. We can mix in some liquid form of Der Hexenhammer as well, so their emotions remain controlled after they wake up.”

  Everybody exchanged glances with one another as they took a moment to process the idea.

  “And this will work? You can provide your drug in a liquid form and we can shoot them with it using tranq darts?”

  Renard vigorously nodded her head.

  “And you’ve done this before? You’ve used this Hexenhammer compound successfully?”

  Renard and Desmet looked at one another. Desmet shifted his weight in the chair, uncomfortably. He cleared his throat.

  “We have not attempted a similar operation before with the drug. The last time our people attacked a harpy’s forces, we did not have it available to us. A lot of innocent people died. They were controlled by the harpy and fought to defend her. Many police fell under her spell during the battle and became her defenders, even after killing her original defenders. It was . . . messy.”

  Renard nodded. Bryce felt the assurance she wanted to convey even before she started speaking again.

  “That battle fifty years ago is one of the reasons Europol developed this drug. We decided the next time it happened, the next time a harpy this powerful started gathering forces like that, we could stop her without the same level of carnage. The whole purpose of having this drug is to save innocent lives.

  “We have the drug in liquid form as well as pill form. We c
an deliver it to her defenders by dart. It is a contingency Europol has planned for. We have been thinking about it and planning for this very scenario for half a century. We can do it.”

  -+-

  Bryce and Renard flew east, out of the city. He left Parker behind at the station, on the pretext of needing to discuss something Europol-related with Renard in private. Desmet had been easier to ditch. All he wanted to do was get back to his computer programs.

  The car soon left heavy traffic behind as they skimmed above the old U.S. 79.

  “Where are we going?”

  “To visit my mother.”

  Bryce felt Renard’s shock. He glanced over and watched her eyes grow wide.

  “But, we thought she was dead! She was . . .”

  She stopped, abruptly. Her cheeks blushed, and he sensed her embarrassment over the faux pas.

  He chuckled.

  “It’s okay. You said it yourself, that Europol has tracked the families of the ‘cunning folk’ down through the years. I know you’ve read my dossier.”

  “But how is she alive? I mean, we have a copy of her death certificate on file.”

  Bryce shrugged, unwilling to share all his secrets. The death certificate had in fact been a deliberate false lead he planted at the courthouse in order to lead anyone looking for trouble away from his only family. It seemed superfluous at the time, but now he was glad he had gone to the trouble.

  The insurance company continued paying his mother’s care facility despite the death certificate. He was not quite sure how the hacker had pulled it off, but so far everything had worked out well. The insurance company paid the bills so long as the care facility submitted invoices. But, to anyone looking at the courthouse, a cursory glance of the public records indicated that Ashley Bryce was dead.

  When she died for real, a new death certificate would be issued in Milam County. He planned on paying the hacker to go back and delete the false certificate when that day arrived.

  “I faked her death. She had a stroke a few years back, and I’ve been having her cared for in a private facility ever since.”

  Renard nodded, and he felt her trying to process the new information. He glanced over at her again. She stared out the window, thinking.