Soul Harvest (The Rift Chronicles Book 3) Page 5

  “I’m hoping one of these guys is Julia’s Freddy,” I said, pushing the stack of photos across the table.

  “What did you do, get a picture of every Fred in town?”

  I grinned and batted my eyes. With a sigh, she took a pull on her beer and started going through the pictures. Two-thirds of the way through, she stopped.

  “That’s him.”

  “You’re sure?”

  She turned the picture around and pushed it toward me so I could see it. “If he hit on you, would you forget his face?”

  I had to admit, she had a point. Wild dark hair, straggly beard, acne, a lazy eye, and what looked like a permanent sneer weren’t what I would consider attractive. But twelve years on the police force had taught me that my personal tastes were my personal tastes.

  “She’s in love with that?”

  Katie’s chuckle was dry as a desert. “Drugs and a big dick. At least, that’s what I figure. He’s smart, manipulative, and a hero of the revolution. What more could a girl want?”

  “He’s political?”

  “Hell, I don’t know. He talks a big game, but I always figured he was playing the dashing revolutionary to get chicks. You know what I mean?”

  “HLA.”

  Her eyes sparkled. “Yeah. You know the type?”

  “Unfortunately. Julia was into that?”

  “Oh, yeah. The Magi versus the downtrodden masses. Easy for her to say—her family is richer than shit. But Julia is smart, ya know? Super smart. She’s scared to death of becoming a trophy wife like her mom.”

  “Your family isn’t exactly poor.”

  She shook her head. “No, we’re not. But have you ever been to Charleston, West Virginia? Would you like to get stuck there for the next two hundred years? If I go into the family business—which is what my parents want—that’s my future. My brother feels the same way.”

  She stopped and seemed to think about something. Maybe a way to make me see her viewpoint. Then she reached into her bag and pulled out a sketch pad. Flipping it open, she shoved it across the table to me. It was a picture of a sunset as seen from the Hopkins campus. It was done with colored pencils, and it was incredibly realistic. I flipped through the sketches. Male and female nudes. Landscapes. Portraits. Still lifes. They were gorgeous.

  “What’s your preferred medium?” I asked.

  “Acrylics and oils. I want to be an artist, Captain James, not build cookie-cutter houses for middle-class norms.”

  “And Julia?”

  “She wants to be a chemist. She wants to do research that combines chemistry and magik. You’re a magitek, aren’t you? So you understand that?”

  “Yeah. I’m also a James. I understand the problems that can occur when magik interacts with the real world.”

  Katie nodded. “Yeah. How well did you understand that when you were seventeen? Or did you dwell on the unfairness of the world and how you were mistreated?”

  “Do you feel mistreated, Katie?”

  She drained her glass and grinned. “Oh, poor me. The weight of the world is on my shoulders, and I suffer for my art. Do I get a second round? I’m not driving.”

  I ordered two more beers.

  Chapter 8

  “Alfred Wallace. Parents’ address listed in Arbutus. Student at the University of Maryland, Catonsville campus,” I said, tossing his picture down in front of Carmelita and Luanne. “Let’s go find him.”

  “Me, too?” Luanne asked.

  “You did the scut work to find him, don’t you want to be in on the takedown?”

  “Yes, ma’am!”

  “We don’t even know if he’s done anything,” Carmelita said as we rode the elevator down to the parking garage.

  “According to our informant, he deals cross-Rift drugs to college kids,” I responded. “Have you ever known a street dealer who didn’t carry his dope around with him?”

  “True.”

  It was a twenty-minute drive to Freddy’s parents’ house. The area was lower-middle class, the homes mostly small and more than a hundred years old.

  “Is this guy a mage?” I bothered to ask, silently cursing myself for not checking.

  “Witch,” Luanne answered. “His mother’s a witch, nothing in the databases about his father.”

  That could be good or bad. A witch as powerful as Kirsten would be bad.

  We left Luanne in the car, not wanting her uniform to make anyone in the house jumpy. A middle-aged woman with salt-and-pepper hair answered the door. Judging from the flour on her apron, we had interrupted her baking.

  “I’m Captain Danica James,” I said, holding up my ID. “We’re looking for Alfred Wallace.”

  The woman took a deep breath, and her shoulders slumped. “Oh, Goddess. I’m not even going to ask what he’s done. But he doesn’t live here.”

  “Do you have an address for him?” I asked.

  She rattled off an address a few blocks away, which was closer to the university campus. I thanked her, and we trooped back to the car. I glanced back and saw his mother watching us through a gap in the curtains.

  “We’d better hurry,” I said, “in case she calls him.”

  We rushed back to the car, jumped in, and I drove as fast as I safely could in a residential neighborhood. The location she gave us had a lot more cars parked on the street, many of the houses needed a coat of paint, and I saw a few ‘For Rent’ signs.

  “Student ghetto,” Carmelita remarked.

  I drove past the house with Freddy’s address. It was one of the largest houses on the block, with at least six cars parked in front, in the driveway, and in the yard. It had two stories, the paint was in terrible shape, quite a few roof shingles were missing, and the front porch sagged.

  “Pretty obvious why Julia would rather live here than at her parents’ mansion,” Carmelita said.

  “You can watch the cockroach races when you’re stoned,” Luanne said. “Hard to find that kind of entertainment in Roland Park.”

  “Ah, I didn’t think of that.”

  I parked down the street and turned off the car. Turning to my companions, I said, “We don’t know if she’s here, or if she ever was. Keep an eye out for her, or any other underage kids, but our main objective is to bag Fast Freddy. Luanne, go through the alley to the back of the house. If the place is full of druggies, they’ll be bailing out the back along with the cockroaches. Carmelita, you take the point. Knock on the door and ask for Freddy. I’ll hang close to back you up.”

  Carmelita didn’t look much older than Julia, even though ten years separated them. Both she and Luanne were aeromancers, able to shield themselves if bullets or magik started flying, while I didn’t have that talent.

  We gave Luanne time to get into position, then Carmelita left the car, walked up the street to Freddy’s, and knocked on the door. A minute or so later, the door opened. I listened through a magitek device she carried as she asked someone inside for Freddy.

  “Hey, Freddy! Some chick looking for you!”

  A pause, then another man’s voice. “Yeah?”

  “Are you Fast Freddy?” Carmelita asked.

  “Who wants to know?”

  “I’m Dolores,” she said, putting a sexy purr into her voice. “Katie said you might be able to help me.”

  “You’re a friend of Katie’s? Sure, come on in.”

  I rolled my eyes. The idiocy of drug dealers never ceased to amaze me. Send a hot girl in, and they opened the door.

  “Is Julia here?” I heard Carmelita say as the door closed.

  “Yeah. Come on up to my room. She’s up there. What are you looking for?”

  “Do you have any quararg?”

  “Yeah, some good stuff,” Freddy replied, practically panting. “You can try a taste before you buy.”

  I chuckled as I got out of the car and strolled toward the house. Carmelita was on the ball. Quararg was a drug from the vampire world with some aphrodisiac properties. A drug for those who wanted to live fast and leave a waste
d-looking corpse. Addicts usually didn’t live more than a year or two.

  “Luanne, get ready,” I told her, using my implant to communicate with her phone. “Both Freddy and Julia are in there, plus at least one other male.”

  “There’s no fence on the alley,” she replied, “so I threw an airshield across the back door. No one’s leaving.”

  I reflected on how enjoyable it was to work with competent people. Stepping onto the front porch, I drew my weapon and palmed the magitek electrical box my father had made for me, then knocked on the door.

  The guy who answered the door was as tall as I was, and half-again as broad. Half his head was shaved, the other half was plaited into a braid that fell across his shoulder. He wasn’t old enough to grow a beard.

  Shoving the muzzle of my Raider in his face, I grinned and said, “Shhh. Loud noises make my finger twitchy.”

  He backed away, and I followed him inside.

  “How many people in the house?” I asked in a quasi-whisper.

  “Uh, five.” His eyes flicked toward the stairs. “Six.”

  “Where?”

  “Two in the kitchen, three upstairs.”

  A voice from the back of the house called, “Who is it, Jase?”

  “Let’s go meet them,” I said, gesturing in the direction of the voice. He turned, and I prodded him forward with the gun against his back.

  Two other men, a little older than the doorman, sat at the kitchen table. They were stuffing weed from a pile in the center of the table into small bags and weighing them. Since the weed was pink instead of green, I knew immediately that it wasn’t legal. Nesforl.

  There was a pink haze in the air over the table. The men weren’t wearing masks, so I knew they wouldn’t move very quickly. And the last thing I wanted to do was get too close to the drug.

  “Everyone put your hands in the air,” I ordered, pushing Jase toward his buddies and stepping to the side so I could cover all three of them. Through my implant, I said, “Luanne, come on in. I need someone to help cuff some drug dealers. And either shield or put on a mask.”

  The three guys stared at me, or maybe at the Raider, then slowly raised their hands. Then the back door exploded inward, causing me to jump as startled as the three men. Luanne strode through the door with her Raider in her hand. She took stock of the situation, then pulled a pair of handcuffs from a pouch on her belt.

  “Nice entrance,” I said. “Not a chance now that I’ll catch the people upstairs by surprise.”

  I could tell she blushed, even with her dark skin. “Sorry.”

  The guy farthest from me decided we might be distracted. Flame shot from his hand toward Luanne. It splashed harmlessly against her shield. I countered by directing a miniature lightning bolt from the box in my left hand toward him. It knocked him from his chair and left him senseless on the floor.

  “Anyone else want to fight?” Luanne asked. She pulled the arms of the man still sitting in a chair behind his back and cuffed him, threading the cuffs through the opening in the back of the chair. Pulling out another pair of handcuffs, she cuffed Jase and forced him to sit on the floor.

  “Keep an eye on these guys,” I said, handing her another set of cuffs. “Carmelita is upstairs with Freddy and Julia.”

  Whirling around, I raced through the house and took the stairs three at a time. From the upstairs landing, I was presented with five closed doors.

  “Dolores?” I shouted.

  “Here!” Carmelita’s voice came from the end of the hall.

  I used the magitek box to blow the door open. That was accompanied by the sound of breaking glass. I rushed into the room to see an open window with shards of glass still hanging from the frame. Carmelita approached the window with her Raider in her hand. Julia—half dressed—sat on the bed on the opposite side of the room.

  Carmelita looked out the window and started laughing. I joined her and looked down. Freddy lay there—bleeding from cuts on his arms, face, and head—holding one of his legs that was unnaturally twisted, and whimpering in pain.

  “As far as dramatic escapes go, I would call that an epic fail,” Carmelita said.

  Chapter 9

  My heart sank when I took a quick look around Freddy’s bedroom. HLA posters on the walls—along with a couple of nude models—and HLA propaganda on the desk. Carmelita noticed it, too.

  I waved my hand in Julia’s direction. “Encase her in an airshield. I don’t want her going anywhere. She has air and water.”

  Then I called the local station and went downstairs to discuss things with Freddy.

  “Landed wrong, huh?” I said standing over him. “I hate when that happens.”

  “I think I broke my leg,” he said through gritted teeth.

  “Yeah, I think so, too.”

  “Aren’t you going to do something?”

  I squatted down beside him. “Like what?” Grabbing his foot, I shook it. He screamed. “I called an ambulance, but I’m not quite sure what else you want me to do. Maybe we could chat while we wait. Tell me about the HLA.”

  “I don’t know nothin.”

  “I hear that a lot lately. Terrible grammar they teach kids nowadays.” I shook his foot again, and he screamed again. “Or maybe you’d rather tell me where you’re getting Rifter drugs.”

  He glared at me but didn’t say anything.

  “You probably think that it’s smart to be more scared of your local demon dealer than of me. That’s a lousy bet. At the moment, I have you pegged for a lifetime of misery in Antarctica. And the only way you’re going to avoid it is by cooperating.”

  I heard sirens out in front of the house. Soon we were joined by two drug detectives, three uniforms, and an ambulance.

  The drug cops, the uniformed sergeant, and I had a chat. “The guy with the broken leg,” I said. “I need a guard on him twenty-four seven. He’s a suspect in the mass murder of a Magi family.” I turned slightly so I was facing the drug cops squarely. “I also suspect that all of these guys are either HLA or sympathizers, so keep that in mind when you interrogate them. Any information on that front I want reported to me immediately.”

  They all nodded. After bombing a cop bar in Baltimore, the HLA didn’t have any friends on the police force.

  “What about the girl?” one cop asked.

  “She’s coming with me. She’s from a Hundred Family.”

  The uniformed sergeant snorted. “So she gets a slap on the wrist.”

  I batted my eyes at him. “It was her family that Mr. Broken Leg is suspected of slaughtering. I’m not sure if she’s a victim or an accomplice, but I’m going to find out.”

  The cynical grin disappeared from his face.

  The EMTs were getting ready to load Freddy in the ambulance. I called them over and said, “I don’t have any idea what kind of drugs that guy is on, but it’s probably a bad idea to give him any painkillers. Tell the doctors at the hospital, okay?”

  “Got it, Captain.”

  Freddy watched me as I approached him, and stiffened when I laid my hand on his foot.

  “I’ll be around to talk with you later, Freddy. Think about what I want to hear. Your choices will have a direct bearing on your future.”

  “I want a lawyer.”

  “Freddy, Freddy. Don’t you know that too many drugs and watching too much screen will rot your brain? I’m Arcane Division, Freddy. I work for the Magi Council. Your chances of seeing a lawyer this side of heaven are pretty slim.”

  “I didn’t know there were any lawyers in heaven,” one of the drug cops said.

  I grinned at him. “Yeah. Freddy’s chances of seeing heaven are pretty slim, too.”

  When I went back inside, Luanne approached me.

  “You need to see the basement.”

  As I started down the stairs, she put a hand on my shoulder.

  “Captain, I’m not sure it’s safe down there. Stay in contact with me, and I can wrap you in my airshield.”

  I nodded and took the stairs m
ore cautiously. When I reached the bottom, I understood. I’d seen plenty of illicit chemistry labs when I worked in the drug division. What was scary about the one in Freddy’s basement was that we hadn’t found any meth or other home-concocted drugs. But we were investigating poisons.

  “Oh, crap.” I turned back and took the stairs going up two at a time, pushing Luanne before me. When I got to the top, I went looking for the drug cops.

  “There’s a lab in the basement,” I told them. “And I think they were making poison, not drugs.”

  One cop stared at me, his eyes almost popping out of his head. The older one rolled his eyes and reached for his phone.

  “I’ll call the meth lab guys,” he said. “They’ll treat it like a toxic-substance spill.”

  We found Julia’s clothes, most of which were in a small designer suitcase, and got her dressed. Carmelita walked her downstairs and put her in the back of my car, then sat with her until I was ready to leave.

  When we arrived at Police Headquarters, we placed her in a cell in the Arcane Division jail in the sub-basement. Leaving Carmelita and Luanne to write up our report, I took the elevator up to the top floor to report to Commissioner Whittaker.

  “So, you found her,” he said as I dropped into the chair in front of his desk, holding the cup of coffee he handed me. “What does she have to say?”

  “Not much. I’m waiting for the drugs to flush out of her system before I talk to her. She’s pretty out of it. But her boyfriend had HLA posters and literature scattered about. That’s been my concern about these poisonings.”

  “And not the sniper attacks?”

  “Judging by the HLA members we’ve busted so far, hiring a professional assassin doesn’t seem to be their modus operandi. They’re amateurs, and they think like penniless college students.”

  “How about the boyfriend? Is he going to talk?”

  “He’s even higher than his girlfriend. I’m hoping that after they set his broken leg and the drugs wear off, he’ll think about what kind of trouble he’s in.”

  I finished my coffee and went back downstairs. Carmelita was sorting through the boxes of paper and personal belongings we’d taken from Freddy’s house, and Luanne was writing up our collective report.