by Tom Keller
"Come on," he said, walking toward the street where his car was parked. "It'll be easier to show you."
We had almost made it to the street when a voice called out.
"Who's the Dan Tanna, Lieutenant?" the voice asked. "Do you have any more information you can provide now that he's here?"
"Miss Brickey," O'Malley remarked, his lips curving downward in a frown. "My favorite reporter."
As we reached his car he popped the passenger door open and gestured for me to get inside.
"He's just an insurance investigator," O'Malley said, walking around the car. "I've given you everything I can."
"Don’t bullshit me, Lieutenant. You know there's something odd about all this…," I heard her say as O'Malley slammed the door.
He ignored her and started the car. Driving off before she could reach the driver's side door.
"Dan Tanna?" he repeated. "You just had to drive the Corvette today, didn't you? Can't you ever stay low profile?"
"Maybe if you'd have told me what was going on I would have thought about it," I countered. "As it was, I got here as soon as I could… without magic, that is. I haven't seen her in a while. Wondered what she'd been up to. Do I need to worry about her?"
"Brickey? Nah… she's tenacious, but now that we've got things in play, there won’t be anything left for her to find."
O'Malley drove around the building and turned right on Oakey, pulling over near the rear of the business. The side gate to the property was open, and the tall security fenced in yard was almost empty. A few of his team were still there, cleaning up.
"Got a call from a Fae truck driver," O'Malley began. "Got an uneasy feeling when he was driving by. Thought it felt strange so he called the hotline. Our people got here as fast as they could, but dispatch also gets calls about accidents so regular Patrol showed up as well. Took me 45 minutes to get the story down and get a handle on the situation. What a pain in the ass that was. Anyway, suspect cut the chains on the gates and entered and exited through here. He picked out a classic, used a magic talisman to start it, and then drove it back to the highway. I don’t think he expected what happened next."
"Magic and technology don’t always mix well. What did happen next?"
"That's the funny part," O'Malley said. "The magic worked fine. At least in the beginning. Car started right up from what we can tell. What he didn’t expect is that as he drove out through the gate, some 50 plus other cars also started up and began to follow him down the road."
"Ouch," I said, grimacing.
"Affirmative," he replied, flipping a U-turn. "Nikki's got the surveillance disc from the dealer. You can look at it later, but you can guess what happened from there. He started up toward Fremont, then saw the convoy of cars behind him. Must have panicked because he was all over the roadway after that. Finally crashed behind the hardware store on Charleston. He was still in the car when we got there. He's being booked now but that's where we're heading. Nikki's still finishing up the scene. As to the cars that followed… Well, you can see that for yourself. As expected, things went to shit from there. The only good thing was that whatever magic was used stopped working when he crashed. Everything's contained in a two-mile square area. Makes it a lot easier on my end all things considered. At least as far as containment goes."
"And this guy's supposed to be what? A novice?" I said, looking at the myriad of stopped and wrecked sports cars that still sat on and beside the roadway.
"Negative," O'Malley said, weaving his way around them. "Not even that. He swears he doesn't know shit. He went ballistic and clammed up after we started questioning him, so we'll have to see."
"You believe him?" I asked.
"Doesn't matter what I think," he replied. "Shithead used a magic device to commit a crime. Not to mention the damage he caused. He's toast. At the very least he's going to get his mind wiped. Although with his rap sheet, we'll probably be doing him a favor."
"I'll want to talk to him before that happens," I said, as he turned onto the road next to the hardware store.
"Shouldn’t be a problem," he replied. "It'll probably take a while for whatever Mage or Wizard is assigned to dig into him anyway. I'll put you on the list. He's enroute to the North Valley Detention Complex. We've got one of the outbuildings. Just show your I.D. at the back gate and they'll direct you from there."
"Yeah, I've been there before," I said as we pulled into the back.
Nikki had her head in the passenger compartment of a custom-built, silver '63 Vette that had crashed into the block wall in the alley surrounding the dumpster. Having one myself, albeit an earlier year, I wanted to cry when I saw the damage. Nikki stuck her head out and waved as O'Malley pulled up next to the crime scene tape and parked.
"Hey, Dad," Nikki said as I got out of the car. "Give me a minute. I'm just about done here."
O'Malley's phone rang while we waited. A minute later, she walked over to me, holding out several almost clear plastic evidence bags. The kind I knew acted like a faraday bag, only instead of preventing the transmission of electronic emissions, they stopped the flow of magic.
"You gotta see this," she said, placing them on the hood of the car.
O'Malley was still on the phone, so I went over to see what she had. She held up a bag containing what looked like a small garage door opener. It had been opened, and it was now obvious that it wasn't a working model. The plastic case had broken and there was no battery. The electronics it would normally have housed were missing.
"What's this?" I asked.
"You're going to love it," she said, gathering up all three bags. "These were what he allegedly used to steal the car. He claims he bought the opener from some gal that lives near here. Swears he thought they were just modified electronics. I almost believe him. Guy blew his lid when the Detective mentioned magic." She held up the other two bags. "Inside the opener was a piece of quartz that had cracked into multiple pieces. It had been taped so that it wouldn’t rattle. At least until it broke apart." She opened the bag that contained the dime sized crystal pieces. "Here, check it out. It's pretty much spent, but you'll get a trace of Fae magic when you open it."
I took the bag and lifted it to my face. It's hard to describe what sense one uses to feel magic, but it's almost like we smell it, and what I smelled here was familiar. There wasn't much left, of course. But a wisp of something lingered, enough to agree that it was indeed Fae magic. Then I realized I'd encountered something like it before. Only this was darker and smelled wrong. Maybe the Devil had been telling the truth after all. I looked out at the shadows of the dark alley we were in.
"What is it, Dad?" Niki asked, seeing my expression. "Do you recognize it?"
"I'm not sure," I said, keeping my suspicions to myself for the moment. "It seems familiar. In any case, I agree it's Fae. Any idea what caused the crystal to fragment like that?"
"I think it's just because it was cheap," she replied, taking back the bags. "I'll have to wait till we get it to the lab to run some tests, but you can get low quality crystals like this online for $15.00 a bag. They aren't exactly sold to store magic. That, or whoever crafted the spell didn’t know what they were doing. Now that I think of it, it was probably a little of both."
"But you're sure a Fae did this, right?" I asked.
"I didn't say that exactly," she replied, shaking her head. "What I said was that I'm sure it's Fae magic. That doesn’t mean it was crafted by a Fae. More likely someone got hold of a Fae artifact. Some kind of amulet, or a charm maybe. Something that juiced up whatever spell they used. I just don’t know. But that's what it feels like to me."
"So, he triggers the spell when he jacks the car," I said, pointing to the Vette. "Then what? The crystal breaks and the spell cascades?"
"Something like that," she agreed. "The only thing I can’t be certain about is exactly why the crystal broke. Oh, I'm pretty sure he pushed the button to begin the process that allowed him to steal the car, that was the idea. I'm guessing the spell ove
rloaded the crystal at that point, but whether that was planned, or just the product of a poorly crafted spell, I can’t say for sure."
About that time O'Malley finished his call and met with Nikki, then asked her to give me a ride back to my car when we were finished. He had to get back to the dealership. After promising to keep me up to date, he left.
"Why don’t you come over to my car. You can watch the surveillance footage from the dealer while I finish up. He had low light cameras and the suspect had his head covered. But you can see the sequence of events that happened before he left the lot. One of the guys is looking to see if he got picked up on any of the other cameras in the area, but so far he hasn’t found anything."
I followed Nikki to her car which was parked adjacent to the back wall of the hardware store. She handed me a laptop and then went back to the crash scene. I got in the passenger side, then set it for full screen and pressed the play button.
The video was slightly grainy, probably due to the cameras being used. But even in low light, the pictures were clear enough to see what had happened. The dealership had multiple cameras, so the lot could be seen from several angles. As the video began, the subject, wearing what looked like dark clothes and a hoodie that concealed his face. He was walking toward the side gate, holding what turned out to be a pair of large bolt cutters. Using those, he cut the lock and entered the compound. He wandered between the cars a bit, looking inside a few before stopping in front of the Vette he'd later crashed in. I watched as he looked around the lot once more before removing something from his pocket and held it up to the car. It acted like a remote, as the car's lights flashed twice. Then he opened the door and got in. A second later, the car backed out of its space and drove out the same gate he'd came in through. That's when things got interesting.
Nothing happened at first, then suddenly the lights on almost all the vehicles in the lot came on at once. At the same time, the white puffs of smoke caused by condensation from their exhausts became visible in the video. One by one, they began to drive themselves out of the lot. Like a procession, they followed each other out the gate and out of view of the camera until only a few remained. That's when the video ended.
"Too bad we don’t have any other witnesses that were here when he came out of the lot," I said, stepping out to talk to Nikki.
"Yeah," she agreed. "O'Malley's guys looked, but this happened at about 0230 hrs. Even the hookers had moved further down Boulder Highway. It's too dark down here, and except for a few fleabag motels, all the businesses are closed by then. Even the birds have gone to bed. They didn't find anyone that saw anything before the wrecks occurred."
Nikki was right. This was mostly an industrial part of town these days. The closest open bar was two miles further down the road. Although a few hookers were known to wander down this far in the daytime to meet some of their blue-collar clients, most moved further south where the casino's and bars were located when it got dark. That's where the business was in the nighttime hours. Anything down here would be relegated to the shadows. Interesting.
As for the birds, Nikki was the Fae Queen of the Dryad. As such, she could speak to animals. Birds were her favorite, they tended to recognize her for what she was. But early morning in this neighborhood wasn't exactly the place for them either. Still, it might be something worth checking out over the next few days. Witnesses tended to scatter when police cars show up. Looking for them now was a dead end, at least as far as the rest of the night was concerned. Then Nikki's radio squawked.
"Tell him I'm in the back," I heard her say into her mic. Then she looked up. "Tow's here."
She walked around the corner and met with the driver of the P.D. wrecker that was pulling up. After a minute's discussion, she came back and walked me to her car and opened the trunk.
"Let me grab the rest of the evidence and then I'll take you back. Nothing else I can do here tonight. They're taking everything important to the lab. I'll finish up tomorrow when it's all in one place."
"I think your theory is about as good as anything," I said a few minutes later, as she was driving me back to my car.
"Which one was that?" she asked,
"The one about a Fae artifact," I replied. "Kind of reminds me of the jeweled necklace that formed that spell a while back. It was supposed to open a gate to Tartarus but something backfired. Ended up opening gates all over the Underworld, if you recall."
"That’s the problem with old magic," she said, turning onto Boulder Highway. "Shit like that's dangerous. Any idea what could do that?"
"Nope," I replied, not being entirely truthful. I had an idea, I just wasn't ready to share it at the moment, even with Nikki until I was sure. "Pick your poison. They're still looking for Neptune's trident. How many other magical items are still missing out there that could provide this level of magic? It's not like they kept an inventory. Vulcan made shit for the Gods all the time. Could be a whole item, or a piece of something. A lot of magic swords had jewels encrusted in them. Hopefully you'll find more when you get to the lab. In the meantime, I'll put Alf on it and do a little digging myself, starting with the suspect."
"Be nice if you can find out where he got it from," she said, turning into the dealership. The crime scene tape was still up, and the same officer I had met when I arrived flagged us through. "All they could get out of him before he freaked out was that it was close by. Maybe there is something there we can trace if you can get an exact location."
"I'll see what I can find out," I replied.
After saying goodnight, I got out and walked back to my car. There wasn't anything else I could do for the moment, so I turned the car north and headed back to the freeway, and home. It had been a thought-provoking morning, and after discussing what I'd learned with Alf. I had more questions than answers.
Chapter 10
The fact that magic exists still blows me away. I know. That sounds crazy coming from someone like me, but it's true. I only say that because for the first 50 years of my life I thought it was just fairy tales. But it all comes to roost when I deal with things that are a part of my old life that I never knew existed. Case in point, I had just walked into the Northwest Annex. That's a misdemeanor facility in the north side of town that's part of the Clark County Jail system. It's also the location where users of magic that break the rules get processed. It wasn't around when I was on the Police Department, but that's not the point. The point is that something like it was, and I never knew it was there. So much for me being an investigator, eh? I'm joking, of course. I mean, how could I have known? I wasn't part of the world of magic in those days and it's not visible to the rest of us. That's the part that amazes me. It's right there under your nose.
There's a whole other world existing next to the one you’re in. Fae and Demons, Witches and Wizards, they are all operating in the same town at the same time that you are. Even when you’re driving to the fast food place to grab a burger. Like me in the old days, you don't know it's there. Well, not usually anyway, and for that you should be thankful. Because when a non-magical human does get involved all bets are off. Especially if they're a criminal.
Criminal Justice exists in our world just like it does in yours. It's just a little more streamlined. Okay, it's a lot more streamlined. Usually the bad guy just winds up dead. It's easier that way. Black magic is a big no-no, and there's only one penalty, for the most part. There are exceptions, of course, and that's where things get interesting.
Take the case of Mr. Ronald Simpson here. That's the name of our not too successful car thief. In most cases, Ronny would be squeezed for everything he knew, then he'd get his mind wiped and back he'd go, never the wiser. It was rare, but Mr. Simpson was proving to be a difficult case, and the Mage assigned to deal with him had some concerns.
"So what's the problem?" I asked the Mage.
"Simply put, your subject is a narcissistic asshole," the Mage replied. "His belief system is shit and he seems to think this is an elaborate hoax. He has no religious
faith and no concept of right and wrong. He's been in and out of institutions since he was 14. Over that time, he's developed quite a resistance to interrogation. That same resistance makes probing him with magic dangerous. Normally I'd ignore that fact and take what I want anyway. We'd be doing the world a favor if he spent the rest of his days drooling in a mental institution. But the Lieutenant strongly suggested I hold off until you arrived. He's not so much worried about damage, but he is afraid I might miss something if I have to force it out of him. It's a valid concern, and he may be correct in that regard. His memories of the events in question could be distorted if he resists too much. This isn't an exact science, after all."
"I see," I said, nodding my head. There were ways I could read someone as well, so I had to give this Mage credit, some memories were best forgotten. I looked over his rap sheet. It was mostly small-time stuff, but not all of it. On more than one occasion he'd gotten violent. I guess the one that really got to me was the time he snatched some 80-year old's purse and put her in the hospital because she wouldn’t let go. I had an idea. It wasn't pretty, but then again, dealing with his kind seldom was.
"I know his type," I said, walking over to the two-way mirror that allowed me to see into the room. Ronald Simpson was leaning back in his chair, looking as if he didn’t have a care in the world. Hmm… No religious faith, eh. That was something I could work with. I hated to be the bad cop, but sometimes that's the only way to deal with people like this. I turned back to the Mage. "We're going to disappear for a few minutes. You gotta problem with that?"
"You're the highest-ranking Fae in the Valley," the Mage replied, knowing who I was. "I don’t care what you do with him as long as you bring him back when you're done. Unless, of course, you're willing to take full custody of him. Then he's all yours."
"'I'll let you know when I'm done," I said, reaching for the door. "With your permission then."
The Mage nodded, and I stepped into the room.
"Who are you supposed to be?" Simpson asked as I sat down across from him. He put his hands behind his head.