“Mark Clifford?” I asked, standing about ten feet in front of him. “Jonas Marcus Clifford?”
He stopped, but I couldn’t detect any surprise or question in his face. I realized that he probably recognized me. I had been on the news in connection with several high profile cases, and especially those involving the HLA.
“I need to ask you some questions,” I continued.
His reaction was to point a finger at me. A white-hot jet of pencil-thin flame shot out. If I hadn’t been shielded, it would have burned a hole completely through me.
I responded with a lightning bolt from my box. It hit and rocked him, and he staggered. But it didn’t knock him down. His response was to kindle a wall of flame around himself. I felt the heat for a moment, and then it shut off, even though the flames were still there. Mychal and Janice had cast a shield over Clifford.
The people around us backed off, some running, stumbling, tripping over each other. A girl screamed. A man shouted. I vaguely heard someone else shouting over the loud speakers.
The plaza was turning into a madhouse. Another voice over a different loud speaker system called for calm. A quick glance around me showed the campus police and Conway’s SWAT unit moving in. And although most people near us were trying to get away from us, other people in the crowd were moving toward us.
“Get that containment van in here, now!” I said into my comm device.
A fireball arced out of the crowd toward us. Something hit my shield at the same time as I heard a gunshot, followed by a volley of automatic weapons fire. I prayed the fool who pulled the trigger was aiming in the air.
The demonstration morphed into the riot I feared. A lot of people were trying to escape the plaza, but the cops and SWAT members stood in their way. Demonstrators attacked the cops, the cops fought back.
“Conway! Pull your men back! If people want to leave, let them! And for God’s sake, tell your men not to shoot anyone!”
“On it,” was his response. I hoped he was able to do something. News-media drones hovered over the scene, attracted by the demonstration. I shuddered to think of what Whittaker was going to say.
The flame surrounding Clifford died. He stood there, staring at me and swaying. Then he collapsed, falling to his knees, and then onto his face.”
“We cut off his oxygen,” Mychal said.
For the first time, I focused on what the guy with a microphone was spouting through the loud speakers. “…and this is why we must challenge the entrenched hierarchies. The demons and the Magi conspire together to silence our voices, but we will not be silenced!”
“Mychal, can you let Janice handle Clifford while you shut that loudmouth up?”
He grinned. “It will be a pleasure.”
It took another ten minutes to get the van to where we were. We loaded Clifford and two other protest organizers into the van, and it drove away. Then I spent the next hour in the office of the university chancellor trying to calm him down. Luckily, no one had been shot, no one died, and only two people had to go to the hospital for treatment of their injuries.
Compared to what could have happened, I considered the operation a rousing success. The chancellor didn’t see it that way, and neither did Commissioner Whittaker when I reported back to my office.
Chapter 14
Mark Clifford was powerful and antagonistic enough that Whittaker forbade anyone being in the same room with him. That made Clifford’s interrogation a unique experience. I sat in a room with a truthsayer and an illusionist, while Clifford sat in another room facing an image of me the illusionist projected.
“What am I being charged with?” he asked as my image sat down across the table from him.
“Assault on a police officer and resisting arrest. Both of which you could have avoided by simply agreeing to talk with me instead of trying to kill me.”
He snorted. “I’m well aware of how you storm troopers deal with peaceful protests. I was just defending myself.”
“We have an informant who is willing to testify in court that you brokered a deal for ten kilos of magikally enhanced thallium sulfate.”
“I don’t admit to doing that, and I wasn’t aware that thallium was illegal. It’s used quite commonly.”
“Do you know a woman named Susan Reed?”
“She was a student of mine.”
“When did you last see her?”
“I don’t recall.”
We spent three hours going around and around without him ever admitting to anything or answering any of my questions. He refused to tell me anything about Susan. Eventually, I got tired.
“Well, I guess that’s it,” I said. “I thought you might be able to help me. But since you can’t, I’ll be recommending a life sentence to Antarctica. Attempted murder of a police officer, conspiracy to commit mass murder, and sedition. It really won’t make any difference. I’ll catch Susan, or Reina if you wish, and she’ll join you down there.”
As my image started for the door, he called out. “Wait!”
I turned back. “Yes?”
“Antarctica seems a bit harsh. What could I do to mitigate that?”
“One, tell me where Susan is. Two, tell me about the next target.”
Clifford shook his head. “I don’t know who’s being targeted, or the method of attack. But I do know where Susan is. No Antarctica?”
“If you tell me the truth.”
I didn’t like the smirk on his face. “She’s staying with an old lover of mine. Courtney Findlay-Moncrieff.”
My Aunt Courtney? It didn’t make any sense. Courtney and the HLA? But as I thought about it, Susan and Courtney together did make some sense. Leaving the HLA out of it, both were criminals with a strong drive for power, and both were on the run from the Council. And was there anyone of dubious character who Courtney hadn’t slept with?
I glanced at the truthsayer who was physically sitting beside me. “He believes he’s telling the truth,” she said.
“I’ll check it out,” I said, nodding to the illusionist who finished removing my image from Clifford’s presence.
I hadn’t paid any attention to Aunt Courtney recently. The last time I did, she was locked into the Findlay estate on Worthington Ridge north of Baltimore. The Council didn’t want to risk the effort and manpower necessary to assault the heavily fortified estate, and relented on humanitarian grounds to allow food deliveries and for her hair dresser to attend her.
There were a thousand guardians defending the estate, and Courtney’s allies—the Akiyama Family—had twenty thousand more fighters at their holdings in Wilmington.
“There have been some additional concessions,” Whittaker told me when I reported on Clifford’s interrogation. “The Council has allowed traffic along one road into the estate from Wilmington, and she’s getting her supplies that way.”
“So, is she allowed to come and go?” I asked.
“Yes, although I don’t know if she does.”
“Which means that Susan Reed can get in and out. She’s found a place from which she can run her criminal enterprise with impunity.”
“If she leaves, and gets off the safe passage route to Wilmington, you can arrest her,” Whittaker said.
“Great. And you’ll give me the manpower to watch that route twenty-four seven?”
He gave me a look that wasn’t promising. “You can give her picture to the troops I already have guarding that route.”
“She’s an illusionist.”
He shrugged. “Best I can do. If you want to argue with the Council about the situation, be my guest.”
For amusing ways to pass the time, arguing with the Council ranked up there with poking a sharp object in my eye. Arguing with Whittaker was bad enough, but he always let me live. I excused myself and went back downstairs.
I briefly toyed with the idea of loading a magitek bomb on a drone and dropping it into the Findlay mansion, but if my grandmother ever found out, she’d skin me alive. I knew that in spite of her being
exiled to Scotland, she hoped to return to her home one day. Preferably with Courtney’s skin for a pair of new lampshades.
Out of desperation, I called my business partner, another magitek.
“Mary Sue. Do you know any way to monitor magikal or magitek communications?”
“You mean like to eavesdrop? And by the way, I’ve left a dozen messages for you. Don’t you ever return calls?”
“I’ve been a little busy. Yeah, like a magikal wiretap. I think someone I’m investigating is living at Findlay House. We’ve got wiretaps on all their mundane communications—phone, radio, wireless—but they use those only to say nasty things about me and the Council. Nothing substantial.”
There followed a full minute of silence. “Let me do some research and I’ll get back to you. Assuming you bother to answer your phone. And as long as I’ve got you, we need to talk. Can you meet me at your mom’s sometime soon? I’ve got orders and money and papers that need to be signed and a lot of other piddly stuff.”
“Money?”
“Yeah. We’re making money. You never did give me any bank account info to pay you. And Olivia wants you to call her. I guess you don’t answer her calls, either.”
Grandmother Olivia was the third partner in our magitek business. “Okay. Let me see when I can make it, and I’ll call you.”
While I was mulling over what my grandmother could possibly want, Carmelita knocked on the door and came into my office.
“There are some parents downstairs who say their kids have gone missing. A couple of University of Maryland students.”
“Have them fill out the standard complaint. Why are you telling me this?”
“The parents say the last time they saw their kids, they were going to a service at the Harvesting Souls Church. Said the kids had been going there a lot, getting really involved, and then one day they just disappeared.”
Alarms went off. “Check with Missing Persons and see if that church is mentioned in any other cases.”
“Will do.”
A church built by vampires and demons? Why would I possibly be suspicious?
I took a look at my paperwork backlog. I knew other captains spent most of their time in the office. Whittaker spent most of his time in the office, and he did when he was deputy commissioner, also.
I got up and went into the outer office. “Luanne, do you know of anyone—a lieutenant—in the Arcane Division who is obsessed with paperwork? You know, the kind of nerd who is more concerned about getting reports in on time than in catching criminals?”
She laughed. “Yeah. Lieutenant Billie Cargill. She works in the Northwest DC station. Spit and polish. I hear she really is a good cop, but she seems to worship the bureaucratic crap. Why?”
“Because I hate the bureaucratic crap. I’ve got more bad guys than cops, and more paperwork and reports than time. How do you know Billie?”
“She’s my cousin. You know her?”
“Yeah, we went through the Police Academy together. Give her a call and tell her to get her ass up here Friday morning, nine o’clock. And make sure I don’t forget.”
Luanne stared at me. Her expression wasn’t happy. “Am I going to end up reporting to Billie Cargill?”
I grinned. “Possibly, but I’m going to tell her she can’t charge any of my officers with insubordination. As long as you do your job and don’t slug her, you’ll be okay.” With a chuckle, I said, “Which is the same thing Whittaker told me about her when she made lieutenant.”
Dutifully, I went back to my office and slogged through the most urgent tasks demanding my attention. It was about quitting time when Carmelita came back.
“We have reports on a total of seven missing young adults—ages seventeen to twenty-three—that mention the Harvesting Souls Church. And the place has been open for business only a couple of weeks.”
Chapter 15
Luanne did some in-depth research on the Harvesting Souls Church. It turned out to have physical churches in half a dozen locations, with its headquarters in a huge hundreds-year-old complex north of DC abandoned by another church. We couldn’t find any online presence.
Everyone knew the headquarters location, as its tall spires could be seen above the trees miles away. It was evacuated when the first nuke hit DC. It later became a refugee camp and a squatters’ slum over the course of the wars that saw DC nuked two more times.
Demons overran the place during the Rift War, were evicted by the Magi, retook it later, and abandoned it when they retreated to the Waste at the end of the war.
The Harvesting Souls Church bought it from the Brown Family for a pittance just before the Council War started. They also took over the burned out church I knew about in downtown Baltimore, a derelict church in Annapolis, one near College Park, one in Delaware, one in Pennsylvania, and one in Charleston, West Virginia. All of that within a six-week period.
But prior to that activity, Luanne couldn’t find any record of the church or any of its officials whatsoever. Reverend Wilding seemed to have been conjured from thin air. Very curious.
What was more than curious was the number of disappearances tied to the church at all its locations. By the time Luanne finished compiling her report, we had twenty-seven missing people—all under thirty—who had attended services at the church or talked about the church to people they knew. As far as I could tell, my office was the only group that had identified that connection—if it was a connection.
I grabbed my coat. “Carmelita, with me.”
“Where are we going?”
I realized she was trotting to keep up with me and slowed down. My legs were twice as long as hers.
“To talk with Reverend Wilding. I want to learn a little more about his church.”
She grinned at me. “Worried about your immortal soul?”
“Something like that. Or other people’s immortal souls. What’s the difference between a church and a cult?”
We got in the elevator, and I punched the button for ground level.
“Probably depends on whether you agree with what the church teaches,” she said.
“Or your perception of what the church teaches. From my point of view, a lot of the differences between various churches are pretty trivial.”
She nodded. “That’s true. Fine points of theology tend to excite the clergy, but not anyone else.”
When we got there, a schedule of events was posted outside the church, listing times of services, youth group meetings, Bible study, and prayer groups, along with a pot-luck dinner on Saturday evening. For a church that hadn’t been there very long, it seemed impressive. Two Bible study groups were listed at the time we arrived—one for adults and one for early teens.
“Busy place,” I said.
“Uh-huh.”
The study groups were meeting in rooms off to the side of the nave. We glanced in and saw that both were being led by men in priestly black suits with reversed collars. The man leading the adult group was probably in late thirties to mid-forties, and the youth group leader looked to be in his early twenties. I counted twenty adults of all ages and twelve children.
Wandering deeper into the church, we saw a small sign on a side passageway that said, ‘Church Office,’ with an arrow. Following that led us to a suite of rooms that looked like any modern business office. A smiling secretary directed us to Reverend Wilding in a spacious office with a large desk and a small conference table.
“Ah, back again?” he said with a smile, getting up and coming around the desk to greet us.
I flashed my ID, carefully watching his face. “Captain Danica James, Metropolitan Police. This is Detective Sergeant Carmelita Domingo. We’d like to ask you a few questions.”
The smile didn’t alter, nor did the sparkle in his eyes. “Well, I shall try to answer them,” he said. “Come, sit. May I get you some coffee or tea?”
“I think we’re fine,” I said, taking a seat. I pulled out the pictures of the two students reported missing the previous day. “The
se young people have been reported missing. Their parents said they have been attending your church. I’m hoping you might recognize them.”
He studied the pictures, then said, “Robert and Elizabeth. Yes, they attend services here. They have become very devoted, and they’ve chosen to become more involved. The last time I saw them, I believe they planned to attend one of the services at the cathedral in Kensington.”
“And when was that?”
“Sunday morning. They came to our early service, and I spoke to them afterward.”
“Their families said that they never came home on Sunday.”
Wilding shrugged. “I believe both are of legal age. Sometimes children and their parents disagree, especially when it comes to life choices.”
He turned his attention to Carmelita. “I’m sure in your family there have been differences of opinion when someone decides to take holy orders.”
She looked surprised, then said, “Yes, sometimes. Are you saying that Robert and Elizabeth were contemplating a more formal relationship with the Church?”
“They have questioned me and Brother Patrick about our choices.”
I wondered if Wilding had any Elf in his ancestry. He was very good at answers that didn’t directly answer the questions asked.
“If they are at your facility in Kensington,” I said, “I would appreciate it if you could ask them to contact my office.” I handed him my card. “At this point, we have them officially listed as missing persons, and I would like to clarify their situations.”
“I certainly shall. Is there anything else I can help you with?”
“Do you have a seminary in Kensington?” Carmelita asked. “Or something similar?”
“Yes, we do. Training for both the ministry and the superfluity. There are also facilities for those who seek a more contemplative relationship with God.”
After he showed us out, I said to Carmelita, “I hope you noticed, Wilding knew who you are, and who your Family is.”
“Yeah, I noticed. He’s been doing his research.”
Soul Harvest (The Rift Chronicles Book 3) Page 8