Hard Spell (3 page)

  
"For powder. For powder, need money much. Want powder. Need money."

  Just as I'd figured. Meth-head goblins, Jesus.

  "If I give powder, let humans go free?"

  
"You get powder? Shit talk. Cop got no powder."

  "Cops find lotsa drugs. Take during arrest, for evidence. You want powder, or no?"

  I heard some whispering going on behind the counter. Behind me, Paul muttered, "I hope you know that the fuck you're doin'."

  "We get powder, let one human go. Then give car. Need car."

  "I give powder, you let both humans go."

  "One
human
. One!"

  Hysteria was rising in the voice, making it even uglier than before. "Okay, one human," I said. "I go get powder now. Back soon."

  
"Get quick, or we cut."

  As we hurried back to the police lines, Paul said, "I ain't gonna ask if you're fucking nuts, cause I already know the answer to that one. You're gonna try something tricky, right?"

  "I hope so," I told him. "Whether it'll work depends on if she's on duty tonight, or Dispatch can find her."

  "Her who?"

  "Rachel Proctor."

  Big Paul stopped walking and looked at me. "The department witch," he said.

  "That's the one."

The black-and-white unit pulled up to the command post thirty-six long minutes later. A uniform I didn't know got out of the passenger side. Looking in Matthews' direction he said, "Sir, I got a package for Sergeant Markowski."

  "That's me." I went over, and he handed me a thick white envelope. "Thanks," I said, and before he had even turned away, I was slitting it open. Inside was a sealed, sandwich-size baggie containing three or four ounces of crystalline white powder. There was also a note from Rachel Proctor, the department's consulting white witch. "
No guarantees, but it ought to work. Good luck.
" She hadn't added "
You'll need it.
" She didn't have to.

Two minutes later, Big Paul and I were back inside the liquor store. I was about twenty feet away from the counter when one of the screechy voices yelled, "
Stop! No more close! We cut!
"

  "I have powder," I said, as calmly as I could. "Have meth. Here. See?" I held up the baggie and let it dangle. One of the goblins stuck his head up for an instant, then disappeared again.

  A few seconds later I heard, "
Throw powder. Throw here!
" The need in that voice was almost palpable.

  "One human first," I said. "You made promise. I bring powder, one human let go."

  
"Throw bag here, or cut humans! Cut bad!"

  "You cut humans, no powder. And no car."

  More muttered conferring. Then a man crawled out from behind the counter on his hands and knees. He was in his undershirt. Somebody had used one sleeve of a blue-striped outer shirt to bandage his upper left arm. The fabric was soaked with blood, and ding.

  "It's all right," I told him. "Stand up, and walk toward us. It's gonna be okay."

  The guy stood, but it wasn't easy for him. I guess he was stiff from sitting all that time, or he might've been woozy from blood loss, or both. Early fifties, probably. Tall, skinny, and scared half to death.

  I kept my eye on the counter as Paul led the clerk to the door. The uniforms would get him into an ambulance.

  
"Drug now!"
The goblin voice was a scream.
"Drug now, or cut woman. Cut tits off! Now!"

  "Here!" I said and tossed the baggie underhand. It cleared the counter and disappeared behind it. I felt my guts, already tight, clench a little harder. This was going to be the tricky part.

  More mutterings and stirrings from behind the counter. Then I heard sniffing sounds, the kind you make when sucking in air deliberately. There's different ways to ingest meth. It seemed these gobs were snorters.

  There was a clock on the wall above the counter. I watched it for two long minutes before calling "Goblins! Goblins, hear me?"

  A new sound answered me. It was wordless but had a rising inflection, like somebody asking a question in his sleep.

  "Goblins, you let woman go free. Let human go. Let go
now
."

  Thirty-two more seconds crawled across the face of that clock. Then there was a stir behind the counter. A woman stood up slowly, using the counter as leverage. She was a fortyish brunette who had probably known too many Twinkies in her time. "Don't shoot!" she yelled, and threw her hands in the air. "Don't shoot!"

  "Nobody's going to shoot you, ma'am. You can put your hands down. Just walk over to me. Easiest thing in the world. Take all the time you want. Just walk over here."

  She nervously looked down and to her right. When nobody tried to stop her, she shuffled out from behind the counter and walked unsteadily toward us, her eyes still wide with terror.

  Paul put his big arm around the woman's shoulders and led her toward the door. I still kept my eyes on the counter, although the hard part was over now.

  I heard the door open behind me, and Big Paul's voice saying, "Come on, move it. Get her out of here."

  Then I heard the door close and familiar footsteps coming back.

  "All clear," Paul's voice rumbled.

  We could have killed both of them, the goblins. Fired through the counter until our guns were empty and the little green bastards were dead or dying. No one in authority would've said "boo" about it.

  But we didn't have to do it that way, so we didn't. Killing is never my first choice when taking down a suspect. Well, hardly ever. And if Rachel's spell had worked the way it was supposed to, nobody should have to die.

  "Goblins!" I called. "Stand up! Stand up now!"

  And it worked. Instead of being told "Blow it out your ass" in Goblin, I saw two furry green heads appear over the counter top. Two sets of black eyes peered at us blearily.

  "Goblins! Drop knives. Drop knives. Now! Do it now!"

  After a long pause, I heard the metallic clang of something hitting the floor. Then again. The knot in my guts loosened a little.

  "Goblins! Come here! Come to me!"

  Without even looking at each other, the two creatures slowly came around the counter. I've seen goblins before, and these two looked typical. Four feet tall, more or less. Green fur over black skin. The misshapen heads were standard, but their confused, vague expressions wereprobably due to Rachel's magic, not goblin genetics.

  As they shuffled toward us, I reached slowly for the handcuffs on my belt. An amalgam of cold iron and silver, with a binding spell added for good measure, they would hold the greenies secure until they could be put into a special cell. The county jail's got accommodations for all creatures great and small, human and inhuman.

  I cuffed one goblin's paws behind his back, while Paul did the other one. As I went through the nearautomatic movements, I thought about the conversation I'd had with Rachel Proctor, once Dispatch had connected me to her phone.

"I need something that looks like meth, smells like it, hell, tastes like it," I told her. "But instead of getting buzzed, I want them made compliant and cooperative."

  "So you can tell them what to do."

  "Exactly. It's my best chance of getting the hostages out unharmed. The gobs, too, for that matter."

  "Why not a simple knockout potion? Aren't you being a little too clever, Sergeant?"

  "Can you guarantee instant unconsciousness for both of them, at exactly the same time?"

  "Of course I can't," Rachel said impatiently. "No potion works instantaneously, and there's no guarantee they'd both use it at the same – oh, I see."

  "Right. If they felt themselves being drugged unconscious, they might have enough time to knife the hostages. They would, too."

  "Quite possibly. They're mean little buggers, most of them," she confirmed.

  "I don't want them realizing they've been drugged until I start telling them what to do – not even then, if possible."

  "And you need this immediately, of course."

  "I need it before two strung-out goblins lose patience and start cutting up a couple of innocent humans. How long you figure I ought to wait?"

  "Bastard," she said, but without heat.

  "That's between Mom and Pop, and they're not here."

  A sigh came over the line. "All right, send a police car over to my place, but tell them to wait outside. I'll bring it out as soon as it's ready, assuming I can make it work. Maybe twenty minutes, start to finish."

  "When can you start?"

  "As soon as I stop talking to you," Rachel said, and hung up.

As Big Paul and I led the unresisting goblins toward the door, I thought about what I could do to show my appreciation for Rachel's efforts. I was wondering if witches liked flowers when I heard the insane screech behind me, followed instantly by Paul's voice shouting, "Fuck!"

  I whirled to see a goblin – the undrugged, uncompliant third goblin that nobody had known about – rushing at Paul. It held a knife with a foot-long blade in one green, furry paw.

  I'd seen Paul's scores on the yearly firearms qualification, including "Draw and Fire." He was slower than me, by three-tenths of a second. But he still had plenty of time to draw down on the meth-crazed goblin.

  I had my own weapon out now, but Paul's bulk blocked my shot. No problem. I knew he could double-tap that little green fucker without my help, and I'm sure Big Paul knew it, too. Right up until the instant that his weapon jammed.

  I heard the click from Paul's Colt Commander, and knew instantly what had happened. And Paul froze. He should have dropped to the floor and given me a clear shot. That's standard procedure. Christ, they even teach it at the police academy. Instead, he just stood there, pulling the trigger on his useless weapon over and over, as if hoping that i would finally fire.

  Paul's goblin prisoner was between us, and I wasted a precious couple of seconds shoving him out of the way. I reached for Paul's shoulder with my free hand, intending to push him aside so I could get a clear shot of my own. But by then it was far too late.

  I felt the impact as the goblin's blade slammed into Paul's chest, unprotected by the body armor I'd said we didn't need. I heard his grunt of pain and surprise, saw the spray of blood from the wound – the bright red arterial blood that continued to spurt as Paul fell to his knees, giving me at last a clear view of the goblin that had knifed him, its face made even uglier by the rage and drug-induced madness stamped on it, then made uglier still by the impact of my bullet between its crazed black eyes.

  The head shot was an instant kill, I knew that. There was no reason for me to empty the other seven rounds of cold-iron-tipped 9 mm into the green, misshapen body as it lay sprawled on the floor. No reason at all.

  I tried to stop Paul's bleeding with pressure, and pretty soon I had a lot of uniformed help. But Paul still died before they could get him into an ambulance. They said later that the goblin's blade had severed one of the arteries leading to his heart. He'd bled to death internally in under a minute.

  Nobody could have known there was a third goblin hiding in back, they said. Big Paul should've remembered to keep his weapon clean, they said. It was nobody's fault, they said. Everybody, from the chief on down, seemed to accept that.

  Everybody but me.

 Skip ahead about seven weeks.

  I arrived for my shift a few minutes before 9pm, nodded to my partner, and sat down at my desk to check the messages and email that had come in during the day.

  The Supernatural Crimes squad room is a cramped rectangle, with the detectives' desks set flush against the walls at the long sides. The shorter end at the front has McGuire's office and a door leading to the small reception area. The other end's got a door that leads to interrogation cells, a tiny lounge with coffee and vending machines, and the locker room.

  Two of the other detective teams were already there. Pearce and McLane had the pair of desks opposite mine. McLane had bad acne as a kid, and has the pockmarks on his face to prove it. He had one of those four-dollar lattes in front of him as he paged through today's
Scranton Times-Tribune
. I noticed that the front page was all about some corrupt politician; the
real
news story will be if they find one in the Wyoming Valley who
isn't
corrupt.

  Pearce, who's built like a fireplug, had a pair of earphones in, his big, square head bobbing to whatever the iPod was cranking out, although I'd bet it was the Dixie Chicks. Pearce used to fight in Golden Gloves, and his nose has been broken so many times he's become a mouth breather.

  Further down on my side of the room, Sefchik and Aquilina sat at their abutting desks, arguing quietly about something. That didn't mean much – they always argued. But they've stayed partners for going on three years. Sefchik had the blond-and-blue looks of a choirboy, offset by the mouth of a Marine DI. As usual, he had a bottle of Diet Pepsi on his desk, and his partner drank from it as often as he did. You gotta like somebody pretty well to swap spit with them like that. Maybe Sefchik would have felt differently if Aquilina was a guy.

  Carmela Aquilina was one of the unit's two female detectives. Cops being cops, she had to put up with a fair amount of shit when she first joined the squad. There's only one locker room for everybody, and guys were always trying to catch a glimpse of Carmela in the shower. She go so sick of it that she started walking around the locker room naked all the time, locking eyes with anybody she caught staring. We're so used to it now, nobody really looks anymore. Maybe that's what she had in mind to begin with.

  I was barely halfway through my email when the lieutenant appeared at the door of his office and called out a couple of names, one of them mine. There was a report of something weird going down, and my partner and I had caught it.