by RJ Blain
“And stares at me with those horribly sad eyes that I hadn’t sent Ethan.”
I grinned, turning to face the medium. “I’m telling my mother you and Meredith are single and don’t do a good job hiding your trysts.”
“You’re an evil woman, boss,” Ethan muttered.
“Hey, whatever it takes to get my mother off my back for a while.”
“What about my back?” Raymond asked.
“It’s lovely,” I replied.
Everyone stared at me, and the detective raised a brow.
“What? It’s true. I’ve been watching your back. My mother isn’t on it. If she attempts to do anything with your back, I’ll beat her off with a stick.”
“I appreciate that. Thank you.”
I gave the medium my full attention. “Hey, Ethan?”
“Can I say no and get away with it?”
“I’m afraid not. When you’re talking to Meredith about the warrants, ask her if she’s heard anything weird on the wire. We seem to be dealing with the weird and weirder, so maybe we’ll get a hit.”
“Sure. You want me to call and have her run someone to us?”
“If you can convince her to do that, please. I’ll let her borrow you for a day as her lackey. I’ll even be nice and stand in for you for the day.”
“I think you vastly overestimate what we’re doing in her office.”
I laughed. “She’s probably conning you into playing a game of chess with her. She loves nothing more than a good, challenging game of chess. And if you’re not playing chess, I don’t want to know about it.”
The detective dared to leer at me. “Playing chess? Is that what the kids are calling it these days?”
I stared him in the eyes and wore my best poker face. “I play a very mean game of chess.”
He chuckled and glanced at the decrepit apartment complex. “It’s probably loaded with squatters.”
I read between the lines; among the squatters might be more dangerous individuals. “I wouldn’t worry your pretty head over it, Raymond. I’m fresh.”
Luke sighed. “You’re going to take the abandoned building on your own, aren’t you?”
“Would it make you feel better if I stood here with Ethan while he calls Meredith and then take him with me?”
“It would.”
“All right. Call Meredith, Ethan. I’ll wait here with my scanner.”
Ethan got out of the SUV, stepped onto the sidewalk, and called Meredith. While waiting for him to finish, I eyed Isaac. “You and Jamie keep an eye on Luke. Don’t let him break into any apartments, don’t let him get cranky with the civs when they don’t want to talk with him, and don’t let him go beyond the limits of the warrant.”
Luke sighed. “You make me sound so irresponsible.”
“You’re not a quad leader because of your ability to talk to people without getting pushy. I’m going to be right across the street. If you start losing your temper, come get me.”
“It was only the one time, boss!”
“Once is enough times. Behave yourself today. We’ve got enough stress on our plate without you getting reported for being a dick to the locals.”
“All right, all right. Just be careful.”
“Of course. I’m not expecting anything to happen unless the person behind this shows up. If he does, well, that’s hardly my fault. The trail dies here. So, I’ll do the preliminary walk around of the complex, you question the residents.” I shifted my attention over to the cop, who watched me with furrowed brows. “If the locals don’t have anything of use, what’re your thoughts on looking into Elizabeth’s adopted siblings? Particularly, I want to find out who made the statuettes. Whoever made it is packing some sort of high-level ability. Have you had any contact with Elizabeth’s family?”
Raymond shook his head. “None at all. None of them live in the United States. Most are either in China, India, or Europe.”
I could understand why he’d initially eliminated them from his list of potential culprits. “Any contact info for them?”
“I can get it, but it’ll take me some time. When I do, I’ll notify them of Ms. Donalds’s death.”
I grimaced. “Sorry, Detective Davis.”
“Raymond,” he ordered. “You make me feel old when you do that.”
Luke nudged me. “We call him Ray.”
Raymond smirked. “I’ll even ignore your mother’s overtures if you call me Raymond.”
“All right, Raymond, but you’re severely underestimating my mother if you think you can actually ignore her.”
“While free rent and utilities are serious business, I’ve no intention of marrying an unwilling partner. I’m also choosing to ignore all commentary about cuffs.”
I wanted to ignore the cuffs, but I had a very long and exhaustive list of fun things I could do with a pair of cuffs. “That’s probably wise. Luke, take Raymond with you. I’ll take the scanner and start my walk as soon as Ethan’s off the phone. While we wait on the warrant, go around the block and see if you can spot anything unusual.”
“Sounds like a plan. Be careful,” he ordered.
“I’ll be careful. I’m really not expecting to find anything of use, but we may as well do this right.” I got out of Luke’s SUV and waited for Ethan nearby.
Within a few minutes, he hung up and joined me. “We should have several warrants within an hour. She’s drawing up the forms now, and she’ll grab one of the cops loitering at the courthouse to bring them over.”
“Good. You’re with me. If there are any lingering residues from haunter activity, I want to know.”
I fiddled with the settings on the scanner until it ignored anything other than the statuette’s signature, hoping I could refine exactly where the trail ended. I headed for the abandoned complex, alternating between watching the screen and where I walked.
According to the scanner, the statuette’s trail ended on the other side of the decaying building, outside of the structure. Ethan kept close, and he muttered curses under his breath, which I chose to ignore.
The next time I thought about declaring something a waste of time, I’d keep my mouth shut. Right where the scanner claimed the trail ended, a glint of gold beneath a layer of dust and dirt drew my eye. I squinted. The golden statuette of a koi with a dragon decorating its base rested on the ground. I pinched myself.
The statuette remained.
“Are you seeing what I’m seeing, Ethan?”
“Worth about five million, now belongs to you, and sitting on the ground just waiting for someone to find it?”
“Yeah, that. Picking up anything?”
“It’s inert. Is the scanner detecting anything?”
I crouched and held the scanner over the statuette, tapping the screen so it would work its magic and run a complete reading for me. Within a minute, it pinged and reported a trace signature, a perfect match for the one at the Oakland City Center. “It’s a match.”
We stared at the statuette for a long time, and I scratched my head. “I’ve got nothing,” I admitted. “Why would he just dump the statuette here of all places?”
“Maybe he dumped it after it stopped working?” Ethan suggested.
I’d never understand some criminals. “Photograph it with our work camera and call in our forensics people.” I smirked, took a picture of the statuette, and texted it to Detective Raymond Davis despite the man being in shouting range. Then I gave him a call. When he answered, I said, “Finders, keepers.”
“That only works because it was bequeathed to you. That’s definitely the statuette. You found it on the other side of the building? It looks intact.”
“The scanner matched the signature from the Oakland City Center, too. Ethan is giving our forensics guys a call and taking our official photographs of it. Maybe we can get some good intel on the thief.” I wouldn’t hold my breath.
The smart criminals found a way to eliminate the evidence of their wrongdoing.
“Why do I get the feelin
g we’re not going to learn anything questioning the residents?” Raymond muttered before heaving a sigh. “I’m not sure I want you to actually answer that.”
“You’ve been paying attention. It’s par for the course on these jobs. The smart criminals do their best to make sure they’re not caught. Leaving the statuette for us to find is likely someone really confident in their ability to get away with it. With the lack of evidence from the Oakland City Center, I don’t think we’re dealing with a dumb criminal.”
“Or the thief got cornered and had to make a run for it, dropping the statuette,” he countered.
“That’s always a possibility. Anyway, if our forensics guys don’t find anything and we can’t get a single lead, this one goes into my filing cabinet of unsolved mysteries. We need something more substantial than ‘somebody did it.’ I’d take a single description.”
“Well, if it makes you feel any better, I’ve eliminated the Chinese-American woman working at the FBI resident agency as a culprit. Upon further investigation, I’ve discovered she rarely leaves her office and wouldn’t have the time to commit such an elaborate crime.”
“What would she even do with it?” I rolled my eyes. “Cute, Raymond.”
“I recommend against keeping it on your nightstand.”
Shuddering at the thought of being sucked back into the inky void where so many had been held captive, I eyed the source of so many of my troubles. “Good idea.”
“So, is this the hurry up and wait stage of terrorism investigations?”
“It sure is. Have Luke take you back to your real job after you fruitlessly question everyone you can. I’ll keep you in the loop if we get anything useful. Tell Luke I’m keeping Ethan, and we’ll hitch a ride with the forensics guys.”
Raymond grunted. “I’ll track down her family and speak to them, but I don’t think I’m going to find anything new.”
“While you’re doing that, I’m going to go bury the statuette in the Bay, so deep it stays put.”
“Olivia, you can’t do that. It’s evidence.”
“That is the absolute worst word today. I don’t have any actual evidence.”
“And that’s why you can’t bury the one piece of evidence we do have.”
“I was wrong. This entire damned case is the worst.”
“You won’t hear me arguing with you on that one.”
The forensics team went over the entire interior and exterior of the building without finding a damned thing. The statuette went into a lead-lined box and would undergo testing and evaluation before being returned to its owner, me. When I called my boss to update him on the situation, he sighed and expected the worst.
Everyone expected the worst, especially me.
I hated cold cases.
I gave the box containing the statuette a final glare before sending the forensics guys off to learn what they could about the blasted thing. If Elizabeth hadn’t flat-out made me keep the koi, I wouldn’t have hesitated for a second before unloading the thing. With luck, it would take the forensics crew months to examine it.
A smart woman avoided trouble, and that statuette was nothing but trouble.
Until I got a solid lead, the case was dead in the water. I’d do my due diligence, but I had limited options. My best—and only—hope of learning something productive came in the form of traffic camera footage taken the day the statuette had torn through the Oakland City Center.
Within an hour of placing the call, I had digital copies that needed my attention.
Spotting the golden statuette in the footage, assuming it had been visible to any of the cameras, would take hours of close scrutiny. I’d need to isolate the yellow spectrum for my best chance, hoping the color would show well against a gray background.
I’d done color tricks reviewing footage before with good results, but I wasn’t going to hold my breath. The last time I’d done it, I’d tried to get a little too fancy with the software and made a mess of my entire computer.
I didn’t have the time to make an entire mess of my computer, so I prepared to victimize the poor techie.
Dan had almost made it to my door before I cleared my throat to keep him from escaping. “Could you set my viewing software to filter out all color except yellow, please? The last time I fiddled, you yelled at me.”
I’d fiddled so much I had completely trashed my system.
“How is it someone so damned smart can be so damned dumb?” Dan complained, returning to my desk and shooting me a glare.
“It’s not my fault my computer can’t read my mind.”
“In your playback program, there’s a color wheel. Deselect red and blue. Touch nothing else and hit play.”
“You’re making that sound deceptively simple.”
“Are you doing this to be a pain, Olivia?”
“I have a minimum of six hours of tape reviews to do, and I’m filtering out all but yellow hoping to spot my thief with the statuette. I’m scraping the bottom of the barrel here, Dan. The one in pain here is me. Want to join me? I’ll buy pizza. It’ll be fun.”
“I have to clean dust out of towers today. By hand. Using tweezers.”
“That sounds more enjoyable than monitoring these tapes,” I admitted.
“I thought so, too. If you need actual help, call me. If you feel any urges to change the settings, call me. If you don’t understand something in the footage, call me. If you feel a need to report a crime, call someone else.”
I laughed. “All right. Message received. I’ll do my best to keep from breaking anything this time.”
“I’m not going to hold my breath,” the techie muttered before fleeing my office.
I couldn’t blame him, so I didn’t. I wouldn’t trust me, either.
Three hours into reviewing the footage, I had a migraine and a suspect. Filtering out all but yellow had done the trick. When I spotted the statuette, I stared at my screen in disbelief. It’d only appeared on the footage for a split second, a flash of yellow and gold that drew my eye.
I replayed the footage several times to confirm I wasn’t seeing things, and to be triply sure I wasn’t losing my mind, I checked the other cameras at the same intersection.
The statuette only showed on one, a hidden camera most never realized was mounted inside a brick on a nearby building.
I watched the clip several times before capturing a screenshot of the thin American man, who I pegged to be in his forties. When I restored color to the footage, his skin tone raised several red flags. World War III had changed humanity, and some death zone survivors had emerged from the destruction bleached white. Albinism had also become more common, but his age led me to believe he’d survived a nuke and had lost the pigmentation in his skin as a result.
It would make identifying him easier, especially since his strain of albinism lacked the classic pink eyes; his were an icy blue.
I saved his picture, loaded it into the FBI digital database, and set the appropriate filters so the system wouldn’t have to churn through as much data.
Five minutes later, my computer beeped and reported a match.
I opened the FBI’s file on Dimitri Damascus Euthal, a resident of Detroit and a fringe survivor boasting an unusually high magic rating. In big, red letters, a warning popped onto my screen:
Suspected Warlock.
My migraine intensified, and I slumped over my desk. Fumbling for my phone, I got it in the general proximity of my ear before reaching across my desk and punching in my boss’s number.
“What do you have for me, Olivia?”
“How does a migraine and a suspect sound to you?”
“Can I pass on the migraine?”
“No.”
He sighed. “All right. Fill me in from the top.”
“I reviewed the video footage from the Oakland City Center traffic cameras and filtered out all color except yellow.” I triple-checked the source of the footage, turning my head enough to view my monitor. “There’s a hidden traffic camera at the
intersection where the incident began. Our database identifies him as Dimitri Damascus—”
“Euthal. Probable warlock and known drug dealer with a rap sheet including murder, blackmail, and assault. If it’s a crime, he’s likely been accused of committing it. Every time we get close to nailing the bastard, he slips out of our grasp. You say you spotted him in the traffic camera footage?”
“The statuette is in his hand at the start of the incident.”
“Well, that gives us the who, the what, the when, and the where. The how is a little sketchy, but I’ll accept what we have on it for now. That just leaves the why, and the who gives me a few ideas on that front.”
“Power and leverage?” I guessed. Being able to knock out large numbers of people would put him in a very powerful position. A mass hostage incident couldn’t be ignored, and as far as I could tell, the statuette could let him take hostages in the hundreds—potentially the thousands. I didn’t understand why he’d ditched the statuette, although I had one speculation on why he’d just leave it on the ground for anyone to find: he didn’t need it anymore.
“I suspect more on the power front. We don’t have anything he wants. He finds us a mild annoyance at most.”
How comforting. Not. “Will Detective Davis be punted as my co-lead?”
“Is there a reason to pull him?”
“Well, no, but I can think of at least ten reasons to punt me and reassign this shit show to Washington. Seriously? A warlock?”
“Well, he’ll be a challenge for you.”
I didn’t want a challenge. I wanted to go home at night for a change, get some sleep, and pretend I actually lived in my apartment—and had an actual reason to buy a house from my mother. If I got saddled with hunting a warlock, I’d be lucky if I went home once a week.
Sighing, I considered banging my head into my desk until I fell unconscious. Instead, I asked, “Who is the case lead for this guy?”
“Alex Donners of Washington.”
I flinched. Donners had been in charge of my case after I’d been found in New York in a state of shock so deep I hadn’t been able to tell anyone my name or where I lived. My name had been the last memory to snap into place, and I’d been one of Donners’s triumphs. “Great. Can I quit?”