Chapter 6 Darby
DARBY
Iwaited until Colson’s flashlight faded into the woods before resuming my search around the Voodoo Tree. I assumed he was headed to find Jagg, and I hoped he’d let him know I was still working the scene.
Flashlight raised, head on a swivel, I moved carefully. Growing up in Berry Springs, I knew better than to take witchcraft lightly.
The town was made up of three groups. First, the traditional cowboys—old-school, southern, and proud.
Second, a smaller group of nature enthusiasts who’d settled here for the hiking trails, rivers, and caves.
And third, the smallest and most controversial group: the self-proclaimed Wiccans.
For decades, they'd claimed ties to the area, saying their ancestors fled the Salem Witch Trials and settled in the Berry Springs caves. Over the years, stories of curses and strange rituals circulated, earning them the town’s suspicion and resentment.
Many dismissed it all as folklore. Others weren’t so sure.
I wasn’t taking any chances.
As I stared up at the Voodoo Tree, a sick feeling settled in my gut. The age-old feud in Berry Springs wasn’t just simmering—it was about to erupt again.
And it was going to start with Detective Max Jagger of the state police.
It took me a minute to piece it all together.
The sudden urgency about fire hazards. The fact he’d been prowling the woods alone with a bottle of whiskey in his back pocket—though, for Jagg, that wasn’t exactly out of character.
The man could drink a fifth and still walk a straight line better than most sober.
A local legend, really. And as everything clicked into place, it became clear: Jagg didn’t care about the candles.
He cared about the connection. He believed this shrine had something to do with the murder of Police Lieutenant Jack Seagrave, three days ago.
I’d seen him at the funeral—stood just behind him, in fact.
He positioned himself at the edge of the crowd like he always did.
Close enough to see everything, far enough to keep everyone away.
Jagg didn’t mingle. Didn’t pretend. He moved through life with a kind of quiet brutality—unapologetic, sharp, and completely untouchable.
He wore dark Ray-Bans and a sun-bleached gray suit, standing motionless in the center of the cemetery’s midday heat. While the rest of us huddled under the shade trees, he stood tall in the blistering sun, like he welcomed the punishment. Not a flinch. Not a word. No tears. No prayers.
And when the casket dropped and people began comforting one another, Jagg stayed rooted in place. Silent. Staring. Men gave him a wide berth, glancing warily as they passed. Women, on the other hand, lingered. Even grief couldn’t dull that instinctual pull.
I didn’t get a single glance—by anyone. Not that I expected one. I’d long accepted my place as wallpaper in this town.
Unlike me, Jagg had the bad-boy edge: six-foot-four, all muscle, covered in ink, with a stare sharp enough to cut steel.
He rarely smiled, never sugarcoated, and didn’t bother with small talk.
Cynical, relentless, and driven by a kind of internal compass no one could quite understand.
Most assumed he didn’t trust anyone—and they’d be right.
He didn’t believe in giving people the benefit of the doubt.
In his eyes, everyone was guilty until proven otherwise. That was what made him so effective.
I’ll never forget the first time I saw him in action.
My first week on the job, he walked into the precinct dragging a man twice his size.
Bloodied, bruised, and handcuffed, the man was Pistol Pete—one of the most dangerous gang members in the region.
Rumor had it Jagg spent a month tracking him, including thirty hours in a hickory tree behind Pete’s house, waiting for the moment he could catch him dirty.
And he did. Photos led to a search warrant.
That led to an arrest. Which led to a confession. Six homicides, closed.
He didn’t celebrate. He didn’t gloat. He just grabbed a cup of coffee and moved on to the next case.
They said Jagg never slept, barely ate, and lived for the job.
When he joined the Berry Springs PD, crime dropped by nearly 30% in under a year.
After that, he was recruited by the state police, and wherever he went, crime stats followed suit.
His past as a Navy SEAL was surrounded by rumors—some claimed he’d walked away from the military, others said he’d been forced out.
No one knew for sure. All that mattered was this: when Jagg took a case, it got solved.
His methods weren’t always by the book, and the consequences rarely made it to the report. There were whispers of “unofficial” justice—broken noses, shattered ribs—but no one ever talked, and more than once, someone else stepped up to take the blame.
People treated him like a force of nature—part myth, part man.
And while everyone feared crossing him, I knew something no one else did.
Jagg had a secret.
And it was a big one.
I was there. He didn’t know it, of course.
It was my third night on the job, during Berry Springs’ annual bluegrass festival.
Main Street was shut down, lined with food carts and tents, music echoing from a makeshift stage in the town square.
The kind of night that blurred the line between the town’s cowboys and its artists.
But not for Jagg. He wasn’t drinking or talking.
He moved through the crowd silently, eyes scanning hip to hip, reading every concealed weapon, watching.
Then he slipped into the shadows. And I followed.
I lost sight of him—until I heard a scream. I sprinted across the footbridge behind the park’s maintenance shed and came to a hard stop. Two silhouettes. Jagg was on one of them.
I ducked behind a tree, breath caught. He wasn’t just fighting—he was dismantling.
Precise, fast, brutal. A younger man, at least twenty years Jagg’s junior, was on the ground within seconds, both arms twisted behind his back.
Jagg leaned in, whispered something, then released him. The guy bolted like he’d seen a ghost.
That’s when I saw why.
Jagg turned to help a second boy off the ground. Smaller. Bloody. Shaken. He tore a strip of fabric from the kid’s shirt and wiped his face, then led him quietly into the dark.
The next day, I learned the kid was an autistic junior high student—beaten for playing the violin.
Rumor had it Jagg took him to Steele Shadows Security and enrolled him in self-defense training.
Two weeks later, the same kid pulled up to school in a restored vintage Mustang. He was never bullied again.
The other kid? The one Jagg roughed up? That was the governor’s son.
Most assumed Jagg would lose his badge. But he walked into the Capitol with a video—proof of the assault, proof of what led to it—and walked out untouched. The footage has never been made public. Whether it even exists is still debated.
But the damage was done. Jagg was on thin ice. The CID Commander, the Chief, the Governor—they were all waiting for him to slip. Everyone knew it.
When dispatch had summoned me to the Voodoo Tree, I’ll admit, I sped to the park. It wasn’t often that anyone got to work with Jagg. The guy was a loner and rarely pulled anyone into his cases. And when he’d asked me to help? I hadn’t been that excited since I discovered I had Cinemax for free.
I had a chance to learn from the man himself.
Dammit, I wanted to be him. I wanted to have that kind of innate authority that came so easily to the man. I wanted to have that kind of presence.
I wanted people to fear me the way everyone feared him. Hell, the way I feared him.
I decided right then and there, I would not let him down.
I would soak in everything I could so that when Jagg was fired, as he inevitably was going to be, I would have a chance at becoming the next Detective Max Jagger.
I just had to prove myself first, and it was going to start with that case.
If Jagg really believed the Wiccan shrine in the woods had something to do with Seagrave’s death, I was going to find out.
...Evil witches and hexes, or not.