Magitek (The Rift Chronicles Book 1) Page 3

  My father’s voice said matter-of-factly, “Back to the drawing board.”

  I woke up, terrified and feeling detached from reality. My skin was icy cold, and I felt like I was floating. I sat there and shook for about fifteen minutes, then dragged myself into the shower. Even though I set the water to scalding, it seemed to take forever for me to warm up.

  The first thing I did when I got to the office was save Novak from the coffee he was trying to buy from the vending machine.

  “Don’t drink that stuff unless you’re trying for a disability pension,” I said, grabbing the sleeve of his jacket. A wool-silk blend. Very nice and very pricey. “Come with me.”

  I dragged him down to the quartermaster’s office.

  “Del, this man needs some better equipment. Mychal, show him that piece of crap you’re trying to scare demons with.”

  Novak opened his mouth to protest, but the look I gave him shut him up. He pulled out his pistol and laid it on the counter. Del picked it up and scrutinized it.

  “Nice piece.” He looked over the top of his glasses at me. “You shouldn’t be so judgmental.” He held up his hand to still my protest. “Yes, I agree, it’s entirely unsuitable for following you around, but it is a fine pistol.” He stuck his hand out in Mychal’s direction. “Give me your holster and ammo.”

  After collecting all of Novak’s department-issued weaponry, Del disappeared into the back of his domain. When he returned ten minutes later, he had his arms full.

  “You’re going to take him out to the range and make sure he knows how to use this, right?”

  “Yeah. I don’t want him blowing my head off.”

  Del nodded his satisfaction and began handing Novak his new gear. “This is a Raider 50. The ammunition is magikally enhanced explosive-incendiaries with a twenty percent silver content.” Del gave him the pistol in its holster, along with four boxes of cartridges. “Next, this is a knife. You do know what a knife is, right? And you were shown at the academy how to use one, correct?”

  Novak stared at the knife Del held out. The haft had a brass knuckle grip, and the heavy Bowie-type blade was a foot long.

  “Is that thing even legal?” Novak didn’t reach out to take it.

  “Not unless you’re a cop,” Del said and set it down on the counter.

  “How am I supposed to wear this thing under my coat?” Novak asked, hefting the pistol.

  “You don’t,” I said. “But don’t worry, you won’t be going undercover into any demon gangs. You don’t have the complexion for it.”

  Del put a shotgun on the counter. Pump action, short barrel, holding six rounds of explosive double-aught buckshot. Just like the one I carried in my car. For things too big and nasty for the Raider to handle.

  The last thing Del pulled out was a bandolier with a dozen mini-grenades attached to it. “You punch this button on top. You have to punch it hard on purpose, because you don’t want it arming accidentally. And make sure you throw it more than ten feet away from you.” He turned a baleful eye on me. “Don’t be sticking it in something’s mouth if it has you in a bear hug.”

  “I didn’t really have a choice, and it turned out okay,” I said.

  “Yeah. You were out of the hospital and back to work in only a week.”

  “That was mostly for the broken ribs.”

  “You’re lucky it shut its mouth instead of spitting it out in your face.”

  Novak collected all his new toys, and I drove us over to the shooting range. Once we were there, I borrowed a mini-grenade from the guys at the range.

  “Here,” I said, handing the grenade to Novak. “Push the button, then throw it at that target down there.”

  He took it and pushed down on the button with his thumb. It didn’t go the first time. I knew it wouldn’t, it never did. He put some muscle in it, and the button clicked.

  “You now have ten seconds to get rid of it. Or, if you throw it, it will blow up on contact.”

  The boy had a pretty good arm. He hit the target dead center. When the smoke cleared, the target was gone.

  “Okay. Be careful with those things, but if you need to use them, don’t hesitate. Blowing a hole in something is fixable, mostly. And you can’t explain why you didn’t use it if you’re dead. Now, let’s see if you can hit anything with that pistol.”

  “I fired one of these at the academy,” he said, his face screwed up like a petulant child.

  “And that was last week, or ten years ago?”

  He scowled, turned away from me, took a stance, and fired. I could tell by the look on his face that the kick surprised him. That sort of memory usually wasn’t very clear after ten years. He gripped the gun a little more firmly, finished emptying the bullets in the gun, and proved he was a good shot.

  “Okay,” I said when he finished. “Let’s go catch some bad guys.”

  When we got back to the office, Whittaker called us in.

  “We got a tip that Fredo received a shipment early this morning. I’ll have you a search warrant this afternoon, and Northwest DC will provide backup. The raid is scheduled for eight o’clock this evening.”

  “Fantastic,” I said. Novak looked a little puzzled, but Whittaker dismissed us, expecting me to fill my partner in.

  “So, what’s going on?” Novak asked as we walked back to our desks.

  “Fredo’s Fantasies is a brothel and escort service in northwest Washington,” I said. “We are positive that he’s involved in human trafficking, but we’ve never been able to nail him. He tends to move his inventory out fairly quickly.”

  “So, how does Arcane Division figure into this?”

  “We’ve had a lot of dead girls, and a couple of boys, that we can’t identify show up in the metro area. Often they’ve been brutalized and sexually abused. A lot of them appear to be from other places—Asia, Africa, South America. No one ever reports them missing. We think they’re victims of trafficking.”

  “That still doesn’t explain Arcane’s interest.”

  “We’re pretty sure that Fredo is selling humans to Rifters, maybe some species of Rifters to other species of Rifters, or even Rifters to humans. Who the hell knows, but we need to find out. We think he’s either spelling them or drugging them. Turning them into zombies. Rumors are that his clients include those who enjoy humans as a meal, or other uses we mostly don’t want to think about. Some of the dead kids show evidence they were killed by monsters.”

  “Ah.”

  “So, we have the rest of the day off, unless we’re tagged, but I’ll pick you up here at six.”

  Chapter 6

  With some daylight hours to play with, I headed up to Roland Park to talk to Diana Benning about her daughter. I called ahead, and she was at her country club. She suggested that I meet her there for lunch.

  Even though Diana had left word at the front desk that I was coming, I had to flash my badge to get through their security. They had some silly appropriate-dress rule that excluded assault weapons.

  I was escorted to the dining room, where I found Diana sitting on the terrace. She looked even better in person than in the pictures I’d seen when I looked her up online. Mages age slower than normal humans, and dressed in skimpy tennis whites, she looked great for a woman with a seventeen-year-old daughter.

  “Mrs. Benning?”

  “Yes. Danica is it? Have a seat. I waited to order until you arrived.”

  I was right on time, and made a note that Mrs. Benning believed in punctuality. The brownie waiter gave me precisely two minutes to browse the menu, then appeared to take our orders. Once we were alone again, I pulled out a small notebook and a pen.

  “Your husband said that Sarah was at a concert rehearsal and left in her own car to drive home around nine p.m. Is that correct?”

  “Yes. It’s only a couple of miles, and it usually takes her five or ten minutes at most, but she had told me earlier that she needed to stop by a store on her way home. When she wasn’t home by ten o’clock, I called and got h
er voice mail. Then I called Cassie, her best friend, and she was at home. She said Sarah left the school the same time she did.”

  Justus Benning had identified Cassie Oliver, also from a Hundreds family, as one of Sarah’s friends.

  “Mr. Benning said that Sarah didn’t have a boyfriend. Just between us, I find that hard to believe.”

  Diana turned and gazed out the window for a moment, then said, “No, she didn’t have any trouble attracting boys—or girls.” She turned back to me. “Danica, may I assume that anything I tell you is in confidence?”

  “Absolutely. My boss, Deputy Commissioner Whittaker, tagged me for this because he values my discretion.”

  “Tom is an old friend.” She nodded and took a deep breath. “My husband and I are not religious, and we haven’t preached rigid conventional morality to our children. We believe in being open minded. Conventional ethics, yes. I think you’ll find that Justus has a reputation in business for ethical dealing. Now, that said, we don’t police our daughter as strictly as some parents do. As to relationships, shall we say that Sarah is eclectic, and not at all monogamous.”

  “But your husband is not aware of this?”

  “Sarah doesn’t bother her father with things that would make him uncomfortable. You know how fathers are about their daughters.”

  I didn’t from my own experience, but I had heard about it.

  “So, there is a possibility that one of her friends might have taken things a little more seriously than she intended.”

  “Yes, I’m afraid so. And…she takes risks sometimes that I don’t think are wise. I’ve cautioned her, but I don’t want to come down on her so hard that she stops confiding in me.”

  “Anyone you know who might have wanted to harm her, or who she might have wanted to spend more time with?”

  “Not that I can think of. You should talk to Cassie, and also Jerilyn Novak and Bill—William—Moncrieff. They are probably more up-to-date on her activities.”

  “Are you worried about her?”

  I asked because Diana seemed terribly composed. I watched as her eyes misted, and her composure seemed to crack for a moment.

  She bit her lip, then said, “Ms. James, I love my daughter. Right now, she’s finding her own way, but I guess I hope that someday, after she’s found it, we might be best friends. I had that with my mother before she died. Yes, I’m worried. Bring her home, and I’ll personally make it worth your while on top of whatever arrangement you have with my husband.”

  While we ate, she gave me some additional details on Sarah’s friends and activities. She also knew the names of a few of Sarah’s past flings, male and female. To her knowledge, none had lasted more than two or three weeks.

  At the end, when I got ready to leave, she said, “Ms. James, maybe I’m off base, and I’m hesitant to mention this, but you might check out Martin Johansson. He’s a business associate of my husband. He’s always sort of given me the creeps, the way he watches me, and he seems to be a little too attentive to my daughter. A man his age shouldn’t constantly stare at a teenager. Do you know what I mean?”

  “Yes, I do. Thank you for your time, Mrs. Benning, and for being so open with me. One last thing, has anyone contacted you or your husband about paying a ransom?”

  She shook her head. “No, although that’s what I expected at first. But nothing. Justus would have paid, of course. I mean, we’re not hurting for money.”

  Diana could have used her talent of empathic projection on me to convince me of her sincerity, but she didn’t. Perhaps her composure was something learned, a front for the world, because she was so aware of emotions and her ability to manipulate them. I wondered how much of that she had taught her daughter.

  Sarah didn’t go to a public school, of course, but rather to the top private all-girls school in the metro area. I had gone there briefly before they shipped me out to a boarding school. The evening she disappeared, she had been at a concert rehearsal and left in her own car. She hadn’t made the two miles home. Considering what kind of car she drove, I needed to think about carjacking. A hundred-grand car would be tempting for a thief.

  I drove by Sarah’s school and parked in one of the visitors’ spaces near the student parking lot to wait for classes to end. The cars there were a lot fancier than the ones in the faculty-staff parking lot. When Cassie Oliver came out, I followed her. She drove to an area with bars and restaurants popular with students from Johns Hopkins and Loyola universities and parked on the street. I parked in a loading zone and put my Metro PD card on the dash, then hurried to catch up with her.

  “Ms. Oliver?” Before getting out of the car, Cassie had taken off her school jacket, unbuttoned the top three buttons of her shirt, put on some makeup, and brushed out her braids. Compared to the girl who left school, she looked at least three years older. Her thick chestnut hair framed a very pretty face, and I didn’t think it was an accident that her shirt was at least one size too small. The jacket probably hid that when she was at school.

  She stopped and gave me a cautious, “Yes?”

  “I’m Danica James. Sarah Benning’s parents asked me to help them find her. Sarah’s mother suggested I speak with you.”

  “Oh. Yeah, well, I’m supposed to meet someone.”

  “Right. I’m sure that’s important. Perhaps you can spare me some time after we find her body.”

  A little bit aggressive, but time wasn’t on my side. Cassie reacted as though I had slapped her. Her face reddened, and she stared down at her feet.

  When she looked up, she said, “I’m sorry. Look, can I tell my friend that I’m going to be late?”

  “Sure, go ahead.” I moved off a little distance to give her space, and she pulled out her phone. I was sure she thought I was out of earshot, but thanks to my mother’s father, my hearing was a little better than normal.

  “Hey, something’s come up, and I’m going to be a little late,” Cassie said into her phone. “Wait for me? Yeah, sure. Yeah, I still want to. I just have to take care of something first.”

  She hung up, and I walked with her to a diner across the street, where I got a cup of coffee and bought her a lemonade.

  “You were with Sarah the night she disappeared?”

  “Yes, at practice.”

  “You play an instrument?”

  “Flute. She plays clarinet. We have orchestral practice once a week, and we play in the jazz band.”

  “Her parents told me that she usually comes home ten or fifteen minutes after that practice is over.”

  Cassie nodded. “We have calculus at eight o’clock the next morning, and Mr. Jarred is a…” she hesitated, “well, he’s strict. If you don’t have your homework, he’ll call you out in front of the whole class. And you have to be ready for practice, so Sarah always did her calc homework afterward.”

  “Her mom said Sarah planned on stopping at a store on her way home. You wouldn’t happen to know what store?”

  She shook her head.

  “Do you know who she’s currently seeing?”

  Cassie stiffened a little. “She doesn’t have a boyfriend.”

  “So everyone tells me. That’s not what I asked.”

  She blushed. “She’s not a slut.”

  “I didn’t say she was. But I have gotten the impression that she plays the field. No biggie. Seventeen is way too young to get tied down, don’t you think?”

  “Yeah.” For the first time, she seemed to relax a little. “Some people don’t see things that way.”

  I shrugged. “I don’t judge. My parents never married, so I had my fill of self-righteous assholes.”

  Cassie gave me a quick, nervous smile. “You don’t know what it’s like in our social circles. Everyone expects you to be perfect.”

  “I think I do. My grandmother is Olivia Findlay.”

  The Findlay clan was one of the Ten. Of course, my grandmother was roundly ostracized for marrying my grandfather, but after his death, she was accepted back into the family, alt
hough encouraged to keep a low profile. That was long ago, and she had gained status from her business acumen and as the sister of the clan patriarch.

  “James. Magitek?” If I had a nickel for every time I heard that question, phrased exactly the same way, I could have retired.

  “Yeah. Believe me, I know about families, from a number of different angles. So, was Sarah nervous, upset, strange, that night? Anything out of the ordinary?”

  “Not really. I’ve tried to think back since she disappeared, and I can’t think of anything.”

  “Who is she seeing?”

  “She has an on-again, off-again thing with Joel Nunkessor that’s currently sort of off again. It’s sort of a friends-with-benefits thing, you know? But she tends to like older guys.”

  “How old?”

  “You know, college guys.”

  “Any names you can give me?”

  She reeled off five names, three of whom she said were recent, but she knew the surnames only of two.

  We talked a little longer, but she didn’t have much to add. I gave her my card and told her to call me if she remembered or heard anything that might be pertinent.

  Back in my car, I pulled out my laptop and did a few searches. Nunkessor went to the most expensive school in the area, but it was forty miles south of where I sat. The two other guys I had last names for were students at Loyola. I guessed that the friend Cassie was meeting probably went to Loyola, also, though there were a couple of boys’ schools in the area. But if Sarah and Cassie were best friends, they probably shared a dating profile.

  I still had a couple of hours before I was due to meet Novak at the station, so I looked up William Moncrieff’s phone and address. I called and got a servant, who told me young Mr. Moncrieff was at soccer practice. His school wasn’t that far away, so I drove over there.

  Although I had gone to school in the area when I was young, I hadn’t spent much time there since my stint at boarding school. Large houses interspersed with mansions—some three hundred years old—all with manicured lawns and multi-car garages. It was very scenic and quite different than the middle-class neighborhood where Kirsten and I lived, but not as friendly and cozy.