G.H.O.S.T. Teams: Book 1 - Magic (3 page)

“I’m afraid the situation is a little more complex than that, Detective Shaw,” Freddy tried.

“Oh, I get it. Us simple cops could never understand the complexity of your job. A crime of this caliber is too big for us dumb detectives. Is that it?” Shaw said, anger building in his voice.

“I think you misunderstand. I was just stating that there is a certain level of training required for this type of work,” Freddy said tentatively.

I almost wanted to step in, but I was so amazed at how fast Freddy was digging himself into a hole, that I couldn’t move. It was like watching a train wreck. I knew that jurisdiction or not, our lives would be easier if the other cops wanted to work with us. But before I said anything, I figured it was only fair to give Freddy a few more chances to make it right. After all, how else was he going to learn?

“Oh, so we don’t have any training. I have been a detective for fifteen years. But please come on in and show us how its done,” Shaw mocked.

Freddy was starting to sweat as the detective made it clear that he didn’t want to cooperate with him. He ran his finger inside of his collar, as if his bowtie was becoming more restrictive. It was obvious that Freddy was unaccustomed to such anger being directed his way. This did not bode well for his first monster encounter. He took a deep breath before continuing.

“I assure you that my intention was not to insult you, detective. I was just trying to inform you that for this particular situation…” Freddy was cut off again.

“Let me tell you about your situation…” Shaw started.

“Detective Shaw, perhaps I could have a moment of your time,” I interjected.

He glared at Freddy, holding his gaze long enough to make our fearless leader squirm in his own skin. Then after it was clear that Shaw had established dominance, he waved me over to the side. We wandered a few steps away from Freddy before he started speaking to me.

“Let me guess, you’re about to tell me this case is above my pay grade and I am on a need to know basis and all that other such nonsense right?” Shaw asked angrily.

“Absolutely not, I just thought it was important that the two of us had a moment to make fun of his bowtie. Seriously, who wears a bowtie anymore?” I said straight-faced.

The anger softened just a bit and I almost caught the beginnings of a smile. But he quickly regained his composure as he remembered that we were here to steal his case. I guess I could understand his point of view. If someone was trying to steal my case, I wouldn’t be very happy about it either. Add to that the fact that Freddy was annoying as all hell, and it was easy to see why Shaw was upset.

“You are a rag tag looking bunch,” he replied.

“Would it make you feel better or worse to know that this is us dressed up?”

He gave me a small smirk. His guard was still up, but at least I had calmed the situation down enough to have a normal conversation with him.

“Look Shaw, I know you don’t need our help and you know you don’t need our help. But just like you, we have to answer to a higher power. And unfortunately for our budding new friendship, my boss is forcing us upon you and pulling the jurisdiction card. We are happy to share as much as we can, but I can’t promise anything. I wish I could offer more.”

I extended my hand in an attempt to salvage a little bit of a working relationship. He seemed to appreciate my honestly and shook my hand.

“I appreciate that. Any chance you can tell me why the SIA is interested in this guy?” Shaw asked.

“All I know is that his name came up in some database. We won’t know more until we examine the body,” I replied.

“I look forward to hearing what you learn,” Shaw smiled.

I smiled and gave him a nod. Shaw handed me his card before turning and starting down the hill. I nodded towards my team to follow and headed down after him. Once we were standing over the body, Shaw pulled out a little notepad, and flipped through a few pages before he found the one he wanted. He then started telling us what they had found.

 
“He was discovered by a local fisherman at around five forty five this morning. The body is lying exactly as we found it. I figured you all might want to take a look before we carted it off,” Shaw smiled, “He had a wallet on him with a few bucks, a couple of credit cards, and a UK drivers license. Nothing appeared to be missing which makes us think this isn’t a mugging gone wrong.”

“Thank you detective, please clear your men out…” Freddy started before I cut him short.

“Detective Shaw, we would appreciate it if your men could give us the area for a few minutes,” I said.

Shaw shot Freddy a dirty look before waving his men back up the hill.

“Come on guys, they don’t want us to see them whip out the Ouija board,” he hollered.

There were a handful of uniformed cops and a few members of the forensics team in the area. They all started laughing at Shaw’s comment as they made their way up the hill. I glanced out over the water, noting the small police boat and it’s two uniformed occupants. They were talking to a scuba diver, whose head was bobbing up and down in the water. I assumed they were searching for murder weapons or clues to the crime. Their attention seemed to be fully involved in whatever they were doing, so I looked over at Freddy.

“I think that’s about as much privacy as we’re going to get,” I said.

Freddy glanced around the area, nodding his head as if he agreed with my assessment. Then he turned towards the team, gave them a broad smile, and started dishing out orders.

“All right, this is what we trained for people, let’s hop to it,” Freddy stated enthusiastically, before dropping his voice to a whisper, “Kara, if you would check the local manna levels. We shall need to know if there was anything else magical in the vicinity. Erika, sweep the area, and see if you can find any unusual tracks or other signs of recent paranormal passage. Timothy, log into the local networks, figure out if there are any cameras looking in this direction, and what, if anything, they observed in this vicinity. Also, secure this area from any external surveillance while we are working here. Danny, if he was killed in this locale, then there is a chance that a psychic residue was left behind. Let me know if you pick up anything. Bruce…”Freddy hesitated a moment.

I’ll admit that I was in shock. Freddy had been so weak and timid when dealing with Shaw, that to see him now, with all of this confidence, was a pleasant surprise. Perhaps that was his gift, the ability to delegate responsibilities. Then again, this was our first mission. Maybe he had been planning that speech for months. I was about to ask him about it, when he continued his instructions towards me.

“Bruce… good job with Shaw,” he said before patting me awkwardly on the shoulder and turning to watch Kara’s progress.

Freddy kept a straight face when he thanked me, which actually made the situation even more comical. But to my credit, I managed to contain my own laughter. I debated on whether or not I should be insulted that he didn’t have anything for me to do. But in the grand scheme of things, I guess it was to be expected. After all, I was the team muscle. My position on the team, referred to as the Knight, has the simple task of neutralizing threats. Their job was to locate the threat and mine was to deal with it. On the plus side, it meant that I hardly ever had to do paperwork.

Having nothing else to do, I figured that this was as good a time as any to observe my teammates while they worked. I was hoping that it would give me a better idea of their talents and abilities. Unfortunately, it quickly turned into me staring at Erika as she walked away. I forced myself to stop thinking about her form fitting jeans and focus on what exactly she was up to.

Erika started by the river, walking slowly along the bank, her eyes scanning the ground. She was very methodical in her search, almost as if she had mentally sectioned the area off in grids and was working her way through each one. As she moved, I noticed two other very interesting things about her. The first was in the way she walked. The weight of each foot was perfectly balanced, leaving hardly any track upon the ground and making almost no sound. I wondered if that was part of tracker training, walking without leaving a trace. When I was a kid, we were forced to walk on rice paper to achieve a similar effect. Maybe the two of us could have quiet walking contests.

The second thing I discovered about Erika was the fact that she utilized her other senses a great deal. She would stop, stoop down and sniff the ground, or pick up a lump of dirt to test its texture between her fingers. And I am very sorry to say that several times she even brought the sense of taste into play. No matter how beautiful Erika was, watching her lick dirt definitely made me think twice about kissing her.

That was when I noticed little Timmy scurrying around the area. He walked towards me and placed a small, golf ball sized, black metal ball on the ground just in front of my feet. A quick scan of the area revealed a few other similar devices around the crime scene. He pressed a button on the little remote in his hands, and a tiny red light on top of each of the balls started to glow. The lights appeared to indicate the devices were powering on as they accompanied an odd static sound. It was like a wall of white noise. I was standing just inside of the perimeter and Timothy was just outside of it. He waved his hands in air and appeared to be mouthing, “can you hear me”. I assumed he was trying to be funny, so I answered appropriately.

“Are you practicing to be a mime?” I asked.

Timothy started nodding and a huge smile crossed his face. He gave me an overly enthusiastic thumb up before turning away and heading uphill towards the van. I realized then that the static was blocking out the sounds of our surroundings. While I had never seen something like this outside, I did recognize the concept of a noise sound barrier. I have encountered similar things in high-end office buildings. They claim it’s the ultimate in high tech privacy. It does make it harder for a ninja to overhear industrial secrets, that’s for sure. Feeling as though I should do something, I walked over to let Freddy know that the static machine was up and running.

“Just so you know, Timmy turned on some kind of a static wall thingy.”

Freddy gave me a slight frown, “Are you referring to the sound barrier?”

“Sound barrier, sure, let’s call it that,” I replied.

“By erecting the barrier, we prevent others from eavesdropping on our conversations. We will now be able to speak freely within its borders. The technology was initially invented by the military…” Freddy tried before I cut him off.

“Yeah, good to know. I gotta check on Kara. I’ll let you get back to your stuff,” I said as I walked off.

Kara was crouched down next to the body, waving her hand over its chest in a clockwise motion as she mumbled. She had her eyes closed and the wrinkling of her brow let me know that she was concentrating. Thanks to the weird vocabulary and her adorable Irish accent, I couldn’t quite make out what she was saying, but the last few words sounded a lot like “skarat kazz kazoo”. Personally, I thought it lacked the subtle charm of Hocus Pocus, but who was I to judge. After a few moments, I noticed a slight green hue around her hand. It was so faint as to almost be imperceptible. She then circled her hand counter clockwise over the body, causing small motes of light, almost like flakes of dust, to jump from her hand to the body. After a few more moments the motes jumped back from the body to her hand and she stopped moving. She looked up at Freddy, who was now standing next to me, before she spoke.

“I’m not sensing anything,” she frowned.

Freddy cocked an eyebrow at her before he replied, “Are you saying that there is insufficient residual energy left over for any type of identification?”

“I’m saying that there isn’t any magical energy here at all. Not even trace amounts. Whatever happened to this guy, it striped him bare,” she said.

“That is very odd. Perhaps once we get the body out of public view, you will be able to use some more invasive magical probes. There is always the chance that a masking spell of some sort was placed on the body in order to interfere with our investigation,” Freddy said, scratching his chin in contemplation.

“I’ll check again once we get him into the van,” Kara nodded.

I knew I was going to regret asking, but I figured someone should.

“So Kara can’t detect any magic on the body and obviously he’s dead. So why do we think he was immortal?” I asked.

Freddy looked at me shocked, forcing Kara to cup her hand over her mouth in order to contain her giggle. She obviously knew what he was about to say.

“I thought I made that perfectly clear in our pre-mission briefing, Mr. Chang. The Keepers of Lore have records of Dirk Camalon dating back over five hundred years. In fact, as part of my undergraduate work, I had to study seven different types of supernatural beings with the capacity to live indefinitely. Mr. Camalon…”Freddy was saying.

 
“Okay, okay, no need for another college flashback. I just wanted to make sure that this was a case for us. According to my car, there is something big blowing in the wind. I just want to make sure that we aren’t wasting our time on small potatoes if there are bigger things afoot,” I stated.

“Yes Mr. Chang, you also mentioned that at my briefing. And as I said then, we have received no intelligence regarding a mysterious end of the world event in the DC metro area. The only major threat currently reported is in Chicago, and as you know, Team Five is dealing with that. While I appreciate your enthusiasm, I think it is best if we just focus on the case that we have in front of us,” Freddy said.

I nodded at Freddy, mainly to placate him, and then he wandered off to talk to Danny. Kara was still kneeling by the body, or Dirk Camalon if you prefer to give the stiff a name. She looked up at me, showed her pearly whites, and waved me down. I could never resist the smile of a beautiful woman. I crouched down next to the body, across from her.

“Yes ma’am?”

“Are you just a pretty face or are there actually skills behind that façade,” Kara smirked.