Chapter 33
MAGGIE
‘And don’t fuck it up,’ Remy snaps. ‘I was supposed to get off early today, and Adam had to cancel his CrossFit to pick up our kids. You,’ he stabs a finger at Theodorou, who visibly cringes, ‘do not go detaining my officers again without asking me in advance. Not a couple of hours after. Not while the key’s turning in the lock. Before.’
‘Yes sir,’ Theo stammers. I secretly hope he’ll wet his pants, but he holds it together. Just.
‘About your assignment, Maggie. I’ve arranged support for you. They’re waiting outside.’
Then Remy turns on his leather-soled Oxfords and stalks out.
‘Say. Nothing,’ I hiss at Theo, before going to greet whichever poor schmuck has been assigned this wild goose chase with me. Specialist search teams have been looking for Luka Ortiz. How does Remy imagine I’ll possibly find him?
Magic, I realise, when I see Chester waiting in his car with Sarah Fenn beside him. That’s how.
‘You can track people, right?’ I say to Fenn as we drive. ‘That’s how you discovered Luka and Bea were in Bittershore wood?’
‘There are as many ways of finding people as there are traditions of magic,’ she says. ‘There are some really interesting theories that along with fire-starting and love-magic, it’s one of the oldest forms of our craft.’
‘That’s not Yes Maggie, I can track people.’
‘No it’s not.’ Fenn bites her lip. ‘There are two constants in such spellwork. One is intimacy with the person to be found, whether that’s a blood relationship, long friendship, or physical intimacy.
The other, much more unreliable, is to seek them through an object dear to them.
Not something they’ve only touched once, but a thing they will have handled often, or possessed for years. ’
‘But you must get asked this all the time,’ Chester says. ‘Missing People is half of routine policework. The half that isn’t shoplifting or yard boundary disputes.’
‘The problem is as I explained during our very first interview about Dan Whitman. Consent. Consent is a foundation stone of successful magic and by law we’re not permitted to work without it. Missing people, by definition, cannot give it.’
‘By law you’re not permitted,’ I say. ‘But you’ve done it without permission at least once, Sarah. You just told us. Beatriz Garcia.’
‘Who would have been murdered! Exceptional circumstances.’
‘And these aren’t? Look, don’t we agree Luka needs to face justice for what he did?
Isn’t it obvious that him absconding is casting magicals into an even darker light than they stand in already?
Or are you happy to see this trial deferred because of what might come out – about Lachlan Frey, for example? ’
Fenn stiffens. The hesitation before she replies is telling. ‘No,’ she says. ‘It’s important Luka faces justice. I believe that whatever else he claims, fundamentally he knew what he was doing. But that doesn’t get round the problem that I have no ties to Luka, and nothing of his to enchant.’
‘Cops know a bit about breaking and entering,’ I tell her. ‘I’ll have a go at Sandra’s house. You might be able to disable a security system?’
‘I’ll come,’ Chester says. ‘I can keep a look out.’
‘You will not! How would that look, you robbing a congresswoman’s house?’
‘I know who’ll help,’ Fenn says. ‘The pair of us were peeping somewhere we shouldn’t have the other day. And I’ve information she’ll want, too. If you’re happy to trust another witch, Maggie?’
There’s surely only one person she can mean.
I picture Naomi Yamakawa’s unnerving little poppet doll.
I remember how much I liked her, by the end of the farcical Bittershore investigation.
Her wry observation that a problem shared is a problem halved.
My suggestion that we do justice together sometime.
Well, no time like the present.
Which is why, that night, the three of us are a few blocks over from the Pennsylvania State Capitol in the historic midtown of Harrisburg, staring at a smart corner-lot grey clapboard house that looks more than a century old on the outside and from the future on the inside, with angular white furniture moodily lit through its many tall windows, and cursing our luck that Sandra Ortiz is at home.
‘Sarah, keep well clear,’ I instruct the witch. ‘Naomi and I both know what we’re doing in situations like this.’
Naomi didn’t take much persuading to join us.
Then Sarah dropped another bombshell, that the Moot President had some secret supper meeting with Sandra Ortiz, and Naomi is understandably seething.
She clips her transmitter to her chest and pops in the earpiece.
I get the feeling she wishes we could kidnap Ortiz rather than one of Luka’s childhood plush toys.
‘We won’t be quick,’ she tells Fenn. ‘We have to scope out the house, make sure she doesn’t have an on-site security team, or if she does, see how we can avoid them. I need you safe.’
Which is a peculiar thing to say, but I guess Naomi’s job is protecting witches.
Fenn retreats to the car to wait, promising not to nap, In case I’m needed for a quick getaway, she says.
I tell her she’s watched too many cop shows.
Then Naomi and I settle down for some surveillance.
It might be easier to wait for night-time, when Ortiz is asleep, but that’s also when most folks switch on their alarm systems. So we’re aiming to get in as soon as we safely can.
There’s a smart doorbell with a camera, which rules out the front, but does tend to mean there won’t be a more extensive professional CCTV setup.
Naomi is as close as she can get to the house, beyond the camera’s wide angle, and is using her poppet to eavesdrop within its walls.
‘I’m only hearing two of them,’ she confirms over our two-way. ‘Sandra and Michael. She’s in her office; he’s in the kitchen cooking supper.’
A realtor’s listing from the last time this property sold – six years ago, not long after Ortiz was elected to Congress – included a floor plan which showed bedrooms on the second, third, and fourth floor.
The top one is the master, and presumably Sandra’s, which puts Luka on one of the middle floors.
All the bedrooms save the master are rear-facing, so I tell Naomi I’m going round the back and make it over the yard fence with a little more effort than I’d like.
Naomi is more of the cat-burglar build than me, but she can’t be doing everything.
The only light visible in the middle floors is what’s filtered from the central stairwell.
Not bright, but enough to see by. The room doors must be ajar onto the landing.
I’ll have to be quiet, but I can work with that.
My main challenge is going to be the sash windows, and I briefly regret not bringing Fenn for an Open Sesame!
click of her fingers. But it’s nothing I don’t know how to do.
‘Whitman’s told her it’ll be on the table in five,’ Naomi crackles into my ear. ‘There might be a bit of pan bashing and plating. Good opportunity to force a window?’
Fuck it. Up I go. At least on these period houses there’s plenty of guttering and the windows have wide sills and overhangs. I’m wearing grippy, DIY gloves. Yeah, as a cop you learn all the tricks.
‘He dropped something,’ Naomi hisses in my ear. ‘Lots of swearing. Now would be fantastic.’
First, I have to slice open the window screen.
A box-cutter takes care of that, and the mesh rolls up like a sardine-tin lid.
Next, a muffled rubber hammer breaks enough glass that I can get my hand in and around the locks, and I ease the sash up gently so the rest of the pane doesn’t tumble out.
The movement is smooth, telling me this window is opened often.
Please let me have the correct room, first try.
‘Ortiz has started another call,’ Naomi tells me, wryly. ‘Whitman’s gonna be so pissed after all his hard work. Sounds like he’s cut himself, too. Shit! She’s talking with Okoye!’
I tune her out as I check the room. Bullseye!
It’s Luka’s and his desk is right under the window.
I wish I could grab the first thing I see, but doubt even a 4.
0 GPA student has an emotional attachment to political-theory textbooks and a laptop charging cable.
As my eyes adjust, I see a bed, a nightstand, and the door to a spacious en suite bathroom.
The nightstand holds a photo frame. And there, right down the end of the bed, slumps a half-bald beanie bear.
I grab the bear. Pause to check the photo – it’d be good to give Sarah a couple of items to work with – and see a round-cheeked baby Luka on his mom’s knee, when everything goes suddenly too bright.
‘First aid kits should be where they’re needed, like in the kitchen,’ I hear a man’s voice grumble as the door swings wide.
I picture Whitman standing there dripping blood from his cut hand onto the carpet, but have more sense than to turn and look. I stuff the photoframe into my pocket and scramble for the window.
‘What the hell!’ Whitman bellows, lunging at me.
The window is only one floor up. Speed rather than elegance, Mags.
And anonymity, too. My heart is thumping right outta my chest. Whitman reaches for my ankle as I slide head first, aiming to grab the top of the window frame below to slow my fall.
His hand snatches at my pantleg and as I wriggle and kick he bellows in pain – must have used his injured hand – and I slither bruisingly to a heap on the ground.
He peers out into the night as I pull up my black hoodie and run for the fence.
‘Fucking crackhead!’ he yells after me. ‘Thieving, no-good—’ And then I hear it. A word I still occasionally get called when making an arrest but have never heard screamed from a congresswoman’s window by an Ivy League professor.
Bastard, I think, hatred burning its way up my throat. Entitled, bigoted, hateful bastard. I want to call Charles Okoye right now and tell him what the guy he dined with last night really thinks of people like us.
At the far end of the side street I collide with Naomi. She wraps me in a swift, fierce hug.
‘I heard,’ she whispers in my ear. ‘That fucker. He’ll be seen for what he is one day. Now c’mon.’
We hare down the side street and I fall panting and aching into the back of the car. Fenn slides across to the passenger side as Naomi steps on the gas.
‘Hope the street CCTV won’t pick up the car,’ I gasp.
Fenn turns and gives me a sharp smile. ‘Charmed the license plates before we even crossed the state border. You’re riding with witches now, Maggie.’
We rest up at Fenn’s that night. I’d feel weird sleeping in Harper’s room, so Naomi takes that while Fenn fetches me blankets for the couch.
She comes down, arms heaped with colourful crochet, to find me staring at a photograph of Pierre and Harper.
The girl’s about four or five, riding on his shoulders, reaching up to the sky.
Pierre’s big hands wrap right around her shins.
The sun is on them both but the joy in their faces is brighter.
‘Harper blames herself,’ Fenn says. ‘I blame myself.’
I turn the photo toward her, holding the frame high. Tears sting my eyes, prickling for release. ‘You know what he’d say to that,’ I tell her, and drop my voice as low as it can go. ‘Don’t you both be fools, Sarah Fenn.’
‘That sounds nothing like him,’ Fenn says, but she’s smiling. ‘And mostly he called me his Magic Girl.’ She drops her voice, too. ‘Don’t you both be fools, Magic Girl. Nope, really nothing like him.’
She’s laughing. We both laugh. And that gives our tears permission to fall.
Early the next morning I make coffee, while Sarah runs Naomi through possible techniques for tracking Luka. I’ve been doing some thinking overnight, and my conviction settles as I plunge the fancy French press and carry it over to the witches.
‘Sarah, I don’t want you to come today. And Naomi, only get me close enough that we can be sure Luka’s not going to move in the time it’ll take to scoop him up.
If Ortiz kicks off about how Luka’s been handled, like she did with the initial arrest, I don’t want you two anywhere near it.
No more pretexts for her to slander your community. ’
Fenn looks like she’s about to protest, but Naomi tells her I’m right.
‘This is your contribution, right here,’ she says, gesturing to the balding teddy bear and the photo of little Luka and young Sandra. ‘Crafting a lead from this that we can follow.’
‘It’ll take me longer if I’m not going to be with you to read it,’ Fenn says.
‘We’ll wait.’
Just as I’ve poured coffee, my phone lights up.
Theodorou. I feel like letting it go to voicemail.
Or dropping the phone in the steaming pot.
But I’m still enough of a cop that I accept, stepping into Fenn’s garden to give the witches some peace.
I’m careful not to let any of the pretty but presumably highly witchy plants brush against me.
‘How can I help you, Theo? Assuming I’d even want to.’
‘Maggie! Yeah!’ he squawks, like one of the birds he loves watching through binoculars on a weekend. ‘Look, I’m really sorry about what happened. Wasn’t entirely my choice. And now I’m getting heat because you’re gone. Please tell me you have a plan for recovering Luka?’
‘Depending on how far he’s absconded, you’ll have him back tonight,’ I say. ‘Could have had him a few days ago if you’d let me do the job instead of locking me up.’
‘Ahh.’ I can hear his tension releasing like steam. ‘That’s great. Yeah. I’ll sit tight then.’
‘You do that.’
When I glance back inside, it’s to see Fenn frowning with concentration and Naomi looking politely appalled. Then I notice Luka’s teddy bear, floating in mid-air and pointing forward with one arm like it’s got a bad case of demonic possession.
‘Here’s your wayfinder, Maggie,’ Naomi says.
You have got to be kidding me.