A Life for a Life

Charlie was quiet on the way to lunch while Jess jabbered on. Now that she had exhausted the topic of her background, Charlie didn’t seem to have much to say so Jess filled the silence for both of them, mostly telling Charlie about Seattle.

The diner was popular and business was hopping at lunchtime, but they managed to snag a booth in the back. Jess perused the menu and settled on a burger with fries. Matt ordered the same and Charlie chose a salad. The waitress brought them cold drinks and left them to chat.

“So, you guys get much experience with murders?” Matt asked after she left. His expression was skeptical and Jess felt her irritation rising.

“Yeah, do you?” she retorted.

“I’ve been a cop in this city for sixteen years. Yeah, I’ve seen a few.” His tone was cold. “There’s none of your hocus pocus stuff with most crimes like these and you don’t look old enough to have seen much.”

“So you think. Magical crimes come in all types and I’ve had to deal with a few murders. I’ve been with WISP for over ten years.” Jess’s arms were crossed as she glared across the table at him. Murder rates weren’t really all that high in Seattle compared to other big cities, but there was still enough crime to go around, magical or otherwise.

“Well I guess we’ll just have to see how it goes then, won’t we?” Matt’s voice was sugary sweet, but his face said he still didn’t believe they would be much help to him.

“We’re on the same side, people. I’m sure we all have useful experience to bring to the case,” Charlie said. She appeared unconcerned by the growing animosity between them and was busy browsing the file on Lady Red. Charlie seemed much more comfortable now that they were discussing work again.

“Yeah, fine, whatever,” Matt said. He and Jess continued to glare at each other for a second until Charlie brought them back to the task at hand.

“Matt, how were you able to get identification, such as it is, on Lady Red? The faces are almost unrecognizable with no fat on them.”

“Computers. The nerds generated an approximate likeness and got me a picture that I could show around. I also removed the general height and weight estimate Riley gave me initially once we figured out the bodies had shrunk so as not to confuse people when I was asking. That finally helped me get a positive ID.”

“Okay, what else have you learned?” Jess asked, all business now.

“Not a lot,” Matt admitted. “According to the two women who ID’d her, Lady Red had a spot in an abandoned warehouse where she stayed, but by the time I got that far, it had already been claimed by someone else. Two grumpy old men, in fact. They, of course, say they don’t know anything and I’m inclined to believe them. All that was left of hers was a couple of old blankets that didn’t get me anywhere in the lab. There was nothing that could help me identify her on her body either. Whatever personal possessions she may have had, such as they were, have already been swallowed up by the city, by other homeless people, or in the trash or whatever.”

“And the other two?” Charlie asked.

“Well, like I said, I still don’t know who my first victim was. These people fall through the cracks and no one really cares. The others I’ve talked to though, they know something is up and they’re scared. I’ve told them to buddy up and look out for each other, but I’m not sure that’s going to be enough.”

“It’ll be enough when we stop this killer,” Jess assured him. He was biased against witches and derisive of computer guys or “nerds” as he put it, but his heart was in the right place. Jess figured she should try to cut him some slack.

“Yeah. And now there’s this journalist. His wife—her name is Janet—said he was working on a piece about homeless people. I guess he wanted to check out the shelters and self-help programs as well as talk to people on the street, see if there was enough help to go around. One of those do-gooders that was going to shed light on the real state of homelessness in the city. Obviously Janet doesn’t know what he found out, if anything.”

“Are we thinking the killer didn’t know Joseph Park was a journalist and just took another homeless man off the street?” Charlie asked.

Matt spread his hands, the universal gesture for who knows. “It’s hard saying at this point. We’ve barely begun canvassing the neighborhood to ask about him specifically. We don’t know who he talked to or what he talked about.” At that moment the waitress brought their food and they were silent as they dug in, contemplating the case.

“There is one thing,” Matt said, waving a French fry at them. “Park was supposed to check in with his wife every night when he was out. He managed to do that the first night, around 10 pm. His body was found the next afternoon at 1:30 pm and time of death was estimated around an hour or two before the body was found. So we have a window of time in which he was taken.

“Also, he told his wife that he managed to connect with some guy named Bob, who was supposed to show him the ropes in the city. Park’s backstory was that he hitchhiked his way up from Portland. Anyway, Janet said that Joseph told her not to worry if he didn’t call her because it might be hard for him to use his phone if he was still hanging out with Bob. She didn’t know exactly where Bob spends time but said it was somewhere below Pike Place Market.”

“Well, that’s a place to start anyway,” Charlie noted.

“You want to find Bob?” Jess guessed.

“Well yes, but also if Joseph Park was abducted anywhere in that area, there might be some magic residue I can pick up. Maybe even a trail to follow.”

“You can do that? Cool,” Jess said. Catching Matt’s confused look, she continued, “You might as well know, Charlie and I are new partners. We’re still learning each other’s skills.”

“Great, babysitting two witches,” Matt mumbled, his jaw clenching. They had managed to be professional over lunch when discussing the case, but as his antagonism showed up again, Jess could feel her ire rising.

“I already told you we’re not rookies. I’ve been doing this for a decade and Charlie came up from New York, where I’m sure they have more crime than here. We just don’t know each other very well. What the hell is the matter with you anyway? You got something against WISP?” Jess burst out.

Matt had the grace to blush, but he kept his head up. “I just haven’t found you guys to be very helpful in the past.”

“Well we’re in the present, not the past. Pull your head out of your ass.”

“Perhaps you could wait to judge us,” Charlie told him. Her voice was calm and quiet. Jess got the feeling she was more an observer than a talker, which was okay with her. Jess talked enough for both of them, usually running her mouth before she thought about it.

Matt glanced between them before holding up his hands in surrender. “Okay, okay. I’ll try to cut down on the snark and we’ll get this done.”

“Good because I’ll also want to see the body dump sites. There might be something useful I can pick up there. I’m good with places and objects,” Charlie added, not giving Jess another chance to respond.

“Alright, let’s start with Pike’s then, sound good?” Jess asked, grudgingly letting the matter drop for the time being. Working with Matt was going to be a pain, though, Jess thought.

After they agreed, Jess waved down the waitress to get the check and gave her a card to pay. They were getting ready to leave when Charlie paused.

“Did you hear that?” Charlie asked, looking around. Jess, who was busy putting her credit card back in her wallet, looked up.

“What?” Jess didn’t have to wait for Charlie’s answer. Several people ran past the diner window and they could hear screaming.

The three of them jumped up and ran outside. They dodged the oncoming crowd as quickly as they could before coming to a halt halfway down the block. There they could see an old woman shooting bolts of lightning into the air. The bolts were erratic, and she didn’t appear to be targeting anyone, but the bolts were hitting nearby buildings and street lights, causing sparks to fly.

With a loud crash, one bolt hit a power pole and it snapped in half, taking down the power lines attached to it. One disconnected, but was live, slithering around like a snake as arcs of electricity shot out of the end.

Anyone who wasn’t screaming and running before was now. Jess, Charlie, and Matt wove through the crowd, fighting to get to the woman against the crush of fleeing people.

“I’ll handle the wire, you two take care of the woman!” Charlie shouted. Jess waved an affirmative and they split up. As they got closer to the woman, they saw her dirty face and baggy clothes, clearly from living on the streets for a while. Her gray hair was sticking straight out from all the electricity in the air and her eyes were wild-looking.

Jess grabbed Matt’s arm and leaned in to be heard over the noise.

“Go around behind her while I try to talk to her. You have a magic resistance cloak?” He nodded and pulled a small metal device with a red button out of his pocket. A few years after the coming out, it became obvious that Norms in law enforcement were going to have encounters with supernaturals and have little protection against them in a confrontation. If they could, the cops were supposed to back off and call in WISP, but that wasn’t always an option. So, somebody came up with the idea of creating magical resistance cloaks. It mixed technology and magic and created a small force field that acted as a shield from magic. Within that shield, most low-grade magic was nullified.

It wasn’t always enough, especially when the magic or magic doer was strong, but it helped protect officers in smaller scuffles. If Jess could distract the woman long enough to get her to stop with the lightning bolts, Matt could grab her and suppress her magic with the shield.

As he pressed the red button and slipped the device back in his pocket, Jess felt the magic surround him and kept her distance so it wouldn’t affect her own magic. He inclined his head at her and inched his way to the left while Jess went right, trying to make eye contact with the woman. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw Charlie with her hands up, chanting over the live wire. Jess hoped she’d be able to get the electrical current contained.

Jess pulled down her shields so she’d have complete access to her magic and her senses zeroed in on the woman. She was almost too bright to look at, glowing white like the lightning she was shooting out of her fingers. Jess threw a ball of calming energy at the back of her head to get her attention, but it fizzled and went out when it touched the bright white light. Jess retracted her shields enough to be able to see the woman again.

“Hey lady! What’s the deal?” Jess shouted. The woman turned and focused her wild eyes on Jess.

“Do you feel it? It’s in the air! Everything is out of balance. We’re being hunted!”

“Okay, but this isn’t the way to make things right again. Just come with me and we can talk about it,” Jess said, keeping one eye on Matt to see when he would be in position.

“No! No one cares about the homeless. He’s taking us out, one by one!” The woman was frantic and purple sparks shot out of her fingers. These weren’t as big as the lightning bolts she was throwing before, though. It was like the magic was spilling out of her, uncontrolled but likely to hurt.

“We care! My partners and I are trying to figure this out right now!” Matt still wasn’t close enough to grab the woman and Jess wasn’t getting through to her. Indeed, the woman chose that moment to hurl some of the sparks at Jess, but she dove out of the way so that they hit the metal trash can behind her, igniting the contents inside it.

The woman screamed in frustration and Matt took advantage of her distraction to sprint to her and wrap his arms around her from behind. The sparks on her fingertips went out immediately, but that didn’t stop her from struggling. She was surprisingly strong for someone her age, but Matt was a big man who held her tight.

Jess pulled out her cuffs and rushed to put them on the flailing woman. A quick whispered spell and the woman stilled; Jess having put the equivalent of a calming blanket on her. Carefully releasing the woman, Matt stepped back and looked at Jess with appreciation.

“Well, that was fun,” he said. Jess chuckled before going to check on her partner. Charlie was no longer chanting but was staring intently at the wire, which was now still.

“I’m keeping it contained, but the power is still on so I can’t release it until it’s shut off,” she explained. Jess gave her shoulder a light squeeze and flagged down a passing patrolman to get him to call somebody to shut down the power. He hurried to do her bidding and Jess turned to observe the street.

She was focused on calming and containing the homeless witch before, but now that she could breathe for a minute, she saw the block was crawling with cops and first-responders working to contain the scene. Matt was talking to another officer in uniform and passed the docile witch to him for processing. He spotted Jess standing near Charlie and walked towards them. The patrolmen Jess had talked to reached them first.

“Ma’am, the power company says the power is now off.”

“Thank you,” Jess told him. Charlie closed her eyes for a moment, then released a relieved breath. The wire on the ground twitched, then was still.

“You two okay?” Matt asked.

“Yeah, I think so,” Jess answered.

“Yes, I’m fine. You two did well, getting her down like that,” Charlie said.

“Hey good job with the power line. I know how much current those things have, that was kind of bad-ass,” Mass said.

Charlie blushed. “Thank you.”

“We’ll need to talk to that woman,” Jess noted, not paying attention to their byplay as her mind spun.

“Why?” Matt asked.

“She said that the homeless are being hunted and that there’s an imbalance in the air. That sounds like it might have something to do with our homicides.”

“She’s obviously crazy,” Matt pointed out.

“Maybe, but even crazy people can know things.”

“Well I suppose it wouldn’t hurt,” Matt said, rubbing the back of his neck. “It’ll take a couple of hours for her to be processed and everything before you can talk to her. I think we should still go track down that Bob lead in the meantime.”

“I agree, I can help,” Charlie offered.

“You two go. I’m going to check in with a contact of mine and see if she’s noticed any ‘imbalance’ in the universe. She’s good at that kind of thing.” They agreed to meet back at WISP headquarters in two hours.

Jess needed to see Adair.