You see, Jagg had his own Wild West way of doling out punishment beyond what the courts offered. The stories were always spun, either by Lieutenant Colson, or “witnesses,” to Jagg’s outbursts—more often than not, blondes with a pair of double D’s and a dazed, satisfied look behind their eyes. There were even a couple times where the infamous Steele brothers, of Steele Shadows Security, took the rap for one of his “disciplinary actions.” Everyone would simply look the other way… until he cracked the wrong man’s jaw.
Max Jagger might have been like an immortal God around town but everyone has their secrets, and thanks to my ability to flutter from room to room without being noticed, I knew his.
And it was a big one.
I was there. He didn’t know that, though, of course. It was a typical, small-town Saturday night, my third night on the job. Berry Springs was having their annual bluegrass festival to kick off tourist season. Main Street was closed, cars and trucks replaced by tents and food carts. A band played on a makeshift stage in the center of the square. It was one of those rare times that the town’s cowboys and hippies came together in a blur of spiked coffee and glaucoma medicine. Jagg slinked through the crowd, not speaking, not drinking, not laughing, certainly not dancing. Working a case, I knew, so I followed him. I watched him, his gaze skittering from belt buckle to belt buckle, taking inventory on each person with a gun hidden on their hip. Then, he slipped out of the crowd and into the shadows where I followed. I lost him for a moment, until I heard a scream. I took off on the direction of the single shout and that’s when I saw a pair of silhouettes behind the maintenance building of the city park. Drawing my gun, I sprinted across the footbridge but came to a halt when the faces came into view. Why? Shock, really. I jumped behind a tree and watched Detective Max Jagger beat the living snot out of a kid at least two decades younger than his rumored-to-be forty years. Jagg didn’t fight like a normal, rough and tumble redneck. The man was like a feral cat, with lightning quick speed and accuracy that involved some sort of martial arts. MMA, more like. The kid didn’t stand a chance and was on his stomach with both arms twisted behind his back in seconds flat. Jagg said something in the guy’s ear, then pushed off him, and I remember grinning when the kid took off like he’d seen a ghost, stumbling and tumbling down a hill.
Then, I realized why.
I watched Jagg help a younger boy off the ground, using a piece of ripped fabric from the kid’s T-shirt to dab the blood from his face. The kid was skinnier than me, and based on the confused, sluggish movements, had been beaten pretty badly. I watched Jagg guide the battered boy across the park and fade into the darkness. The next day, I learned that boy was an autistic junior high kid who played the violin, only when his flute hadn’t been busted in half. Rumor was, after the fight, Jagg had taken the kid to Steele Shadows Security to be taught self-defense. It was also rumored that he’d been gifted a priceless, vintage car for all his troubles. Two weeks later, the kid rolled up to high school in a gleaming, six-figure mustang and was never bullied again.
Sounds like everyone won, right?
Wrong.
The bully? Received a new set of front teeth, courtesy of his father, the governor. That’s right, Max Jagger had beaten the living shit out of the governor’s son. Normally, this would’ve been enough to remove the detective’s badge and gun, but good ‘ol Jagger marched himself into the state capitol building and bribed the governor with a video of the beating, proving his spoiled rich-ass son was a guilty asshole. Very bad press. The validity of video is still heavily debated today. Anyway, Jagger walked out of there with his badge and gun still on his hip because he’d exploited the governor’s weakness—his need for a smooth reelection.
But it wasn’t over. It never was.
Jagg was on his last leg with the state police, with the CID Commander, Governor, and Chief of Police watching him like a hawk, just waiting for a reason to fire him.
The legendary Max Jagger had fallen from grace.
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 wanted to leave ol’ Dingleberry Darby in the dust, or dung, I should say.
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.
6
Jagg
Colson grabbed the cell phone from my hand.
“Where the hell did you get this video?” He demanded.
“Lady across the street.”
His gaze shot to mine. “Cora Hofmann?”
I dipped my chin.
“What the?… We already interviewed her. Hell, I personally interviewed her. She said she didn’t see or hear a thing that night. Until we showed up, anyway, which, by the way, I was informed kept her cats up all night. Woman hates the police, that much was obvious.”
I shrugged.
“No way. Tell me now. How did you get this?”
“Doesn’t matter.”
“Oh yes it does. I’ve got a half a mind to drive over there right now and charge the old lady with obstruction of justice.” His eyes narrowed. “What did you have to do to get this?”
“I’ve got an actual video of the Black Bandit and this is what you want to talk about? Who cares how I got it?”
“You agreed to go on a date with her daughter, didn’t you?”
I lifted my cup to my lips.
“You sly son a of a bitch. Just remember how that worked out for you last time with… what’s her name again? Oh yeah, Susan. I remember because I was the one who booked her into jail for breaking into your house and stealing your underwear. Susan Stalker. People still call her that, you know.”
“Her last name is Smith and that was my priciest pair of Hanes, by the way.”
“Yeah, they really upped the ante when they went tagless. God, you’re cheap.”
I snatched the phone from his hands. “Listen, if you’re not—”
Colson grabbed the phone back and hit play. We watched the green-tinted feed from a night-cam that Ms. Hofmann had set up in her back yard to capture activity around her bird house. A widow of twenty years, the woman was a nature fanatic, with multiple cameras set up to record deer, raccoons, and a feral cat that kept getting into her, quote, damn trash.
I’d watched the video so many times I could recite the exact second the oak tree swayed in the breeze, the moment three leaves tumbled down two seconds later, and the reflective eyes of a raccoon in the corner of the frame a second past that. And in the distance, through a break in the trees, a blurred silhouette emerging from the shadows, slipping through the back door of Mystic Maven’s Art Shop, after taking only three seconds to pop the lock. Exactly one minute and six seconds passed before the Black Bandit emerged through the back door again, holding a black bag, and slipped into the woods. Ninety seconds after that, lights from Lieutenant Seagrave’s patrol car bounced off the trees. And the grand finale, one minute and fourteen seconds later, his foot flops onto the ground in the bottom of the frame.
Colson watched it two more times before speaking.
“This leaves a lot of questions. Timing, for one.”
He didn’t need to say it. It
was the one thing that didn’t add up for me either. If the Black Bandit had already gotten what it came for—the fourth Cedonia Scroll—and exited the building in a clean getaway, why had the bandit circled back and killed Seagrave?
Had the Bandit gone back for something? Then ran into Seagrave, where an altercation took place? If so, why wasn’t that caught on camera?
“It’s impossible to make out the height or weight of the Bandit, too. Other than ‘not obese,’ and ‘relatively normal height.’” Colson hit replay for the third time. “It does, however, confirm three things. One, the images from the street cam, two, the fact that Ms. De Ville needs to get better locks, and three, the timing that the heist occurred.”
“Not just that, Colson. Look closer. Investigate.”
The lieutenant rolled his eyes, then focused back at the phone. A minute ticked by. My patience cashed out as the video played for the fourth time. I yanked the phone from his hand. “Jesus dude, stay with your day job.”
I fast-forwarded to the spot I’d replayed more than a hundred times. “Our Black Bandit has a limp.”
Colson’s brows pulled together. “What?”
“He has a limp. Watch as the Bandit jumps off the back steps as he’s leaving the building. He favors his left hip.”
Colson leaned inches from the screen as I replayed it again. “Holy shit. I’ll be damned. You’re right. You can see it right there—” he pointed to the screen. “After he jumps, he drags his left hip and there’s even a limp as he disappears into the woods.” Colson shook his head and leaned back. “I’d ask how you noticed that, but based on the bags under your eyes, I’m assuming you haven’t slept more than ten hours in the last three days.”
Two, but he didn’t need to know that.
“Nice work, Detective. Alright, what’s your profile so far? Because I know you’ve already built one.”
I tossed my phone on the bar and leaned back. “I think the Black Bandit has a strong interest in art, or appreciates it at least. I think he practices witchcraft, is a Wiccan, or at the very least, drawn to it. I think it’s someone smart, crafty, who enjoys beating the system. As for age, I’m torn. Coupling the fact that most thieves range from teens to mid-twenties and the speed of the Bandit, I’m leaning toward young. No older than thirty for sure.”
“But the limp? Old people limp.”
“My gut tells me it’s an injury, not from age.”
“It’s a good lead. Motive?”
“Could be greed—they want the scrolls for either money or bragging rights. Or, it’s something to do with Seagrave.”
“Personal, then? You think the Bandit lured him there? It was a setup?”
I shrugged. I had no reason to assume it was personal other than the nagging feeling in my gut.
Colson sipped his beer. “I’ll have Tanya see what she can dig up from Buckley at the hospital. See if anyone has come in recently with a left hip injury.”
Our attention was pulled to shouting from the pool tables in the back.
“You hit my fucking stick.”
“Kinda like I hit your mom last—”
I grabbed Colson’s beer bottle and sent it shattering inches from the drunk cowboys’ heads. The bar went silent. Gaping, the rednecks turned toward me and Colson. Colson’s hand rested on the hilt of his gun.
I turned back to the bar. “Another coffee and another beer, Frank.”
Frank winked, a subtle ‘thank you,’ for not having to spend his next hour dealing with a bar fight.
“It’s on the house,” he said.
The bar remained hushed, eyes boring into my back. Fuck, I was ready to go. Where, I wasn’t sure, but I wanted to get the hell out. Be alone. Figure out who the hell was the Black Bandit.
Our drinks were delivered, three chocolate chip cookies with mine.
I eyed Frank.
“The wife made them.”
Colson snatched one up.
“Don’t forget to eat,” Frank said, eyeing me back. “That’s what she’d always tell me when I was working a case. A drop in blood sugar can make anyone crazy.” He nodded toward the cowboys, now busy picking up shards of broken bottle, then he tapped the cookie plate. “Eat. Don’t insult my wife now, son.”
I took a damn cookie and set it on my napkin. Frank nodded in approval, then pushed the plate to Colson who devoured the third cookie faster than the first.
“Not bad, Frank, but I know a chocolate chip cookie when I try one and this ain't it.”
Frank grinned. “They’re gluten free. And they got carrot and flax-something in them.”
Colson’s eyes widened as if the man had just announced they were mixed with arsenic. “What’s flax-something?”
“Some sort of seed. I think.”
“What the hell is so wrong with gluten?” I asked, a question that plagued me ever since the gluten-free section had replaced my beef jerky section in the grocery store.
“What the fuck even is gluten?” Frank answered back with a question of his own.
We all shrugged simultaneously.
Colson studied the cookie on my napkin, shaking his head. “Seeds in gluten-less chocolate chip cookies, Seagrave shot to death. What the hell is the world coming to?”
“Stick around here a few more hours and they’ll be plenty of theories.”
“Don’t doubt that.”
“On that note.” Frank tapped the bar. “Better get back to work stocking the shelves for the crazy weekend coming up. Damn hippies. Enjoy the flax.”
Colson groaned as Frank walked away. “The damn Moon Magic Festival. Hotels are already booked solid. Supposed to have double the attendance as last year. And with the freaking burn ban right now…” he shook his head. “Chief McCord is rounding up extra volunteers to monitor the grounds.”
“It’s being held at Devil’s Cove, right?”
He nodded.
Devil’s Cove was a secluded cove off Otter Lake. Beyond the steep cliff that encircled the cove was a clearing where local concerts and festivals were occasionally held. Miles and miles of forest surrounded the clearing, making it ideal for avoiding noise complaints and for setting up road blocks to catch drunk drivers. That year, though, it made it an ideal place for a wildfire. But a wildfire wasn’t my concern.
“You ever heard of Lammas?” I asked.
“Yeah, a South American camelid. Stinky as fuck.” A crumble of cookie fell out of Colson’s mouth. He flicked it on the floor and grabbed mine.
“Not a llama; Lammas.”
“No then. What’s Lammas?”
“It’s a Wiccan holiday. One of the four Greater Sabbats, or some shit. Happens once a year. It’s a festival honoring the end of the summer.”
His brow cocked. “And when exactly does llama take place?”
“Lammas, you idiot, and, August first.”
“This Saturday?” He eyes rounded. “The day of the Moon Magic festival? You’ve got to be kidding me.”
“And the day of the next full moon. By the way, guess what else is called Moon Magic?”
“I don’t think I want to know. But I get the feeling you’re about to tell me.”
“Wiccan covens meet under full moons to perform rituals that supposedly bring psychological and physical transformations. They pull energy from the moon, which they think increases their powers for whatever spell they’re doing that evening. This tradition is called Moon Magic.”
“Christ. It’s like the stars are aligning for trouble.”
“Yeah. Too many coincidences here. This could also be linked to the Voodoo Tree. I don’t know.”
“Listen, Jagg, unless you find a viable link to the Black Bandit and the Voodoo Tree, let it go. Witchcraft, Wiccans, whatever, have been around these parts for decades, and let’s just say those who have barked up the witches’ trees have stumbled onto their own bad luck.”
I turned fully to him. “You’re fucking kidding me. You seriously believe in curses, Colson?”
He shook his
head. “I just know what I know.”
“Which is what, exactly?”
“A few years ago, an officer took a witch into custody to question her about a kidnapping case. After he had nothing to hold her on, he let her go. The woman was bullied out of town, and a week later, the guy dropped dead of a heart attack. Never had a single health issue in his life. And remember ol’ Sanchez? Went after another rumored-witch about a bunch of cows being poisoned. Dude’s side-business went under a month later and he had to file bankruptcy. And, you remember that guy—”
“You’re unbelievable.”
“Just sayin,’ don’t spend all your time on the Voodoo Tree, bro. Hell, give most of that part to Darby. Focus on Seagrave.”
A moment slid by as I actually considered working alongside the kid.
Colson downed his beer, then leaned back, deep in thought. “What the hell? So we’ve got a bunch of witches all riled up about cursed scrolls and the llama’s holiday, going around constructing shrines and shooting police officers? You’ve got to be kidding—”
His phone went off. He pulled it from his pocket and clicked it on.
“Shit.” Colson shoved out of his seat and dropped a few tens on the bar. “Are you sure there’re only four scrolls?”
I pushed my empty coffee cup to the edge of the bar and stood. “Yeah, why?”
“Because there’s been another shooting.”
7
Jagg
I pulled my gun as Colson’s truck skidded to a stop at the wooded edge of City Park. The treetops were washed in moonlight, the ground, shaded in shadows. Two lampposts, around fifteen feet apart, barely illuminated the trail and the two silhouettes standing just past it.
Jagger (Steele Shadows Investigations) Page 5
