The Left-Hand Path: Runaway

by Barnett,T. S.

  The barrier around them dissipated as Elton stepped briskly through it, and as he called out, the man jumped so suddenly that he almost dropped the woman down the front steps.

  “Something wrong?” Elton asked, keeping a bit of distance between them. The stranger looked young and well-groomed; he almost seemed out of place in something as casual as a hooded sweatshirt.

  “Nope,” the man answered in a terse voice, “just putting my friend here to bed, drank too much, you know.”

  “Hey genius,” Cora snapped as she trotted up beside Elton, “we were standing right there. We saw what you did.”

  Chris moved to stand opposite them, blocking any attempt at escape down the street, and Elton took a step closer to the man.

  “Why don’t you put her down and let us ask you a couple of questions?” Elton held out his hands to show they were empty and saw the man’s eyes move to the ring on his finger.

  “You Chasers?” he asked with a defensive tone.

  “That’s right.”

  The man hesitated for just a moment, but then he snorted as though the whole thing was an inconvenience and set the woman down on the steps. Chris immediately moved up behind him and bound him with a word, dropping the man to his knees with his hands behind him. While Chris patted him down, dropping bits of wood and stone onto the pavement as he found them in various pockets, Elton knelt in front of the woman and gently passed a hand over her eyes. She was only sleeping, at least. He waited until Chris had hauled the man away and tossed him unceremoniously into the backseat of the car, and then he muttered the word that he hoped would wake her while Cora stood anxiously at his shoulder.

  The woman stirred with a drowsy groan, and Elton reached out a hand to steady her when she swayed against the glass door. “Miss,” he said softly, “are you all right?”

  She put a hand to her head and stared back at him with a worried brow, her dark hair half pulled loose from its ponytail. “What’s going on?”

  “You were mugged,” Elton explained without hesitation. Cora caught on and promptly jogged down the street to grab the dropped purse. “The guy got scared and ran off when he saw us,” Elton went on, “but you fainted. Do you feel all right?”

  “Yeah, I—how weird, I don’t remember that at all,” the woman said with a small, empty chuckle. “Adrenaline, I guess.” She looked up as Cora held out her purse and key, and she smiled as she took them. “Thank you, both of you,” she said. She accepted Elton’s hand up and dusted off her rear end. “Thank you so much. Really. Let me give you something, please.”

  “Not at all,” Elton said, withdrawing to the bottom of the steps. “Just glad we were here. Have a good night, miss.” He turned with Cora and headed back to the car before the woman could insist. Chris stood down the block beside the car with his arms folded, and he tilted his chin toward the apartments as Elton and Cora approached.

  “She see anything?”

  “Not an issue,” Elton answered. “Let’s get him to the station.” This was the kind of delay that Elton didn’t mind. Whatever Nathan’s motive had been, they had kept a woman safe tonight, and they would get a predator off the street. It almost felt like actual police work. He’d forgotten how satisfying that could be.

  At the Magistrate’s office, the young man at the front desk perked up immediately as they entered. The station was always open, but this late at night, most of the offices were empty, and the building was quiet. Skeleton crew only.

  “It’s you!” the young man said. The same boy who had handed Elton Nathan’s very first clue. “I was going to call you in the morning. A note addressed to you arrived by courier a few minutes ago. What are you doing here so late?”

  “Bringing you some work to do,” Chris grumped, and he pushed their captive forward. His hands had been bound with magic-dampening rope from the trunk of the car and his mouth stuffed with a spare rag to keep him from speaking. “Caught this creep trying to abduct a mundane woman.”

  The man at the desk hesitated a moment, looking the man up and down with a wary frown, but then he nodded and picked up the receiver on his desk. In a moment, another man appeared from the depths of the station and took the bound man from Chris’s grip to lead him back to the holding cells.

  “And I need to report an exposure from earlier today,” Chris said with a pointed look in his charge’s direction, but Elton only sighed through his nose and ignored him. A reprimand in his file was the least of his concerns at the moment.

  Elton took the clipboard the boy offered him and filled out the familiar paperwork while Cora leaned her elbows on the tall desk to watch him.

  “So Chasers do actually do useful things sometimes, huh?” she said, and Elton hummed a distracted agreement as he wrote. “That’s nice,” she smiled. “We helped tonight, you know? Nathan helped too, kind of. Who knows what would have happened to that woman if he hadn’t told us to be there.”

  Elton replaced the cap on the pen he’d been given and handed the clipboard back to the boy behind the desk. “He can occasionally be accidentally helpful,” Elton admitted. He nodded his thanks to the boy as he passed Elton the folded note.

  Elton,

  Doesn’t that feel nice? You’ve been working so hard; you ought to take a break. I’ve heard that the Royal Museum here has a lovely exhibit on Chinese architecture. I’m sure you’ll enjoy it.

  Yours,

  Nathan

  Elton tucked the note into his coat pocket. “Another pointless errand,” he said in response to Chris’s questioning look. He wasn’t even surprised anymore. “Let’s just go back to the hotel.”

  For once, Chris didn’t argue. He looked as tired as Elton felt. They made the drive back to their hotel, and Elton endured Chris’s suspicious glaring while they settled in.

  “Don’t worry; I haven’t forgotten,” Elton sighed. “Your virtue is safe from me, Hao.” Chris shut himself in the bathroom to change with one last skeptical peek through the doorway, and Cora shook her head.

  “He’s so gross.”

  “He wouldn’t have been my first choice for a partner,” Elton admitted.

  “At least we stopped that guy. He was even more of a creep than Chris.”

  “A bit.”

  Cora smiled at him and dropped down onto the bed. “I’m so freaking tired,” she sighed. “I’ll do my best not to drool on you tonight. No promises, though.”

  “I appreciate the thought.” He moved to the vanity sink to brush his teeth, keeping his back to her to allow her to change.

  Elton had to extricate himself from Cora’s slimy grip just as he had the previous morning, but she had at least made it another night without kicking him. He pulled himself out of bed to nudge Chris’s shoulder, but before he left the bed, he spotted a neatly folded slip of off-white paper half-tucked under his pillow. His brow knit as he lifted the pillow and found his name written on the note in thick black ink. With a quick glance over his shoulder toward the window, he picked up the note like it might explode and carefully unfolded it, all the while expecting Nathan to appear just behind him.

  Darling,

  You do look so sweet while you sleep. Make sure you check on your suspect this morning; he has a tendency to slip through the cracks. Then meet me at the Berwick Condos by Eglinton Station. Alone. Tell your irascible companion whatever you please, but this is a private affair.

  Your devoted servant,

  Nathan

  Elton turned away as Chris shifted on the bed, instinctively hiding the note from his view. He pressed his lips together in a thin frown and crushed the letter in his fist, then hastily tucked it into the garbage underneath last night’s napkins. The last thing he needed was Chris knowing that Nathan had been in the room while they slept—Elton wasn’t particularly glad for knowing it, himself. The museum had been a false lead, then. Nathan was trying to separate him from his handler. Elton didn’t mind the idea in theory, but he didn’t trust whatever secret rendezvous Nathan had in mind. In any case, how was
he supposed to lose the person responsible for keeping him from doing exactly what Nathan was asking him to do? He glanced over at the locked wooden chest on the nightstand and hesitated.

  When Chris did wake up, he glared at Elton suspiciously all morning, obviously trying to get a look at Cora to check her for marks while she leaned over the sink to brush her teeth. Elton wondered how long he had stayed awake the night before, clutching his blanket and listening intently for any telling sounds. He wasn’t sure what he had done to make Chris think of him as a deviant, but he wasn’t particularly bothered. They were partners, not friends.

  Elton idled with his phone in his hand, watching the glowing screen. Nathan had said the man had slipped through the cracks before. A frown tugged at his lips, and he scrolled through his contacts and touched the button for the local Magistrate.

  “Yes?” the voice at the other end answered after only a couple of rings. It wasn’t an uncommon greeting when calling a Magistrate office. They couldn’t exactly announce their business to anyone who called.

  “Elton Willis, out of Vancouver,” he replied. “I brought someone in last night, and I just wanted to check on his status.”

  “One second,” the man said, and Elton heard a few clicks of a keyboard. “Oh, right. He was released first thing this morning.”

  Elton’s brow furrowed. “What? Released? Why?”

  “Fast-tracked. Got charged a fine, it was paid, so he was free to go.”

  “A fine?” Elton scoffed. “There must be some mistake. Let me speak to Stark.”

  After a reluctant pause, the man answered, “Just a second,” and then the line clicked as he was transferred.

  “They let that dude go?” Cora asked incredulously, but Elton only shook his head and turned toward the window to wait.

  “This is Stark,” the woman’s voice answered after a long delay. “What can I do for you, Willis?”

  “Hao and I brought a man in last night for attempting to abduct a mundane woman, and I’ve been told he was released. I personally witnessed him knock the woman out and try to carry her off. Why was he only fined?”

  “Right,” Stark sighed. “Willis, you aren’t from around here. That man you brought in? His name is Johnathan Hubbard. You want to know who else is named Hubbard? Gregory Hubbard, the Magister of Ontario. It’s not the first time his son has been in here, but what are we supposed to do? The minute anything goes up the pipe, word comes right back down again. He always gets off light. It’s just the way things are. And when it comes down to it, it’s your word against his that anything happened at all last night.”

  “My word—” Elton took the phone away from his ear to swear, and he sighed before returning to the call. “Hao saw it. Cora, the girl with us, she saw it.”

  “It’s not me you have to convince, Willis.” Her voice dropped. “To be honest, I would love to nail the little bastard. I can’t prove it, but I just know he’s behind some other disappearances in the area. The woman from your report last night matches his M.O. Always native women. But the Magister doesn’t take kindly to these kinds of accusations.”

  “Doesn’t take kindly? Are you joking? I know what I saw. Since when does a suspect’s word matter more than a Chaser’s?”

  Stark sighed into the receiver. “You really want to push this? With your record?”

  “Do I want to push actually arresting someone for kidnapping, maybe murder? Yes, I do.”

  “Well, let’s get it over with, then. Hold on.” There were a few clicks from the other end of the line, and then the phone rang. When a woman’s cheerful voice answered, Stark said, “It’s me. I need to talk to Magister Hubbard.”

  “One moment, please,” the woman answered blithely, and then the line clicked again.

  “Magister Hubbard,” Stark said as soon as a man picked up the phone, “I’m on the line with Elton Willis, the loaner from Vancouver who’s here after Nathaniel Moore.”

  “Hello, sir,” Elton offered.

  “Ah, right; is there a problem, Stark?” the man on the speaker said. He sounded calm and composed, with a voice that seemed incapable of growing harsh. Even without ever having seen him, Elton could tell he was vastly different from the Magister of B.C., who was a short, gruff old woman with cat-eye glasses and a permanent scowl.

  “Well, sir,” Stark began uncertainly, “we have a bit of a…problem. With Johnathan.”

  “Is that so?”

  “It seems Willis discovered him last night attempting to abduct a young native woman. …Again,” she added.

  “This is a troubling development,” Hubbard murmured, which Elton thought was a slightly understated response to being told your son was probably a murderer. It clearly wasn’t the first time he’d heard it. He must have already paid the fine from last night. “I’ll have Johnathan brought to Ottawa at once; we’ll get everything sorted out here.”

  “Sorted out?” Elton cut in before he could stop himself. “You mean you’re going to have him brought in by Chasers here and transported until the investigation is over, right?”

  “Everything is well in hand,” the Magister assured him. “He is a troubled boy, I admit. I’m sure that once Johnathan is out of the city and away from whatever influence he’s under, things will work out just fine.”

  “Influence?” Elton answered incredulously. “Sir, if this is a case of someone targeting native women for violence, relocating him isn’t going to help, and that’s no justice for the families he’s hurt.”

  “Now, Willis—it is Willis, isn’t it?” Hubbard asked in a frustratingly placating tone. “These are very serious accusations you’re making, and without any evidence. There are any number of possible explanations for what you saw, and who’s to say that my son has any connection at all to any other open cases?”

  “Sir, I have two other witnesses—”

  “Native women go missing in Ontario every day, Willis,” the Magister said gravely. “I don’t know how much free reign you people are given in Vancouver, so I’ll forgive some insubordination, but this is an internal matter that will be handled internally. You may find that personally distasteful, but the fact of the matter is that the Magistrate functions based on discretion above all else. Now before you say another word, I want you to think very carefully about whether or not this is a hill you’re prepared to die on. Am I being perfectly clear?”

  Elton’s hands fisted so tightly on his phone that his knuckles went white. He really shouldn’t have been surprised. He knew it wasn’t the first time things had been swept under the rug because of a criminal’s connections. But this wasn’t a fling with a mundane, or a drunken magic exhibition. Stark thought this man was a killer, and he would kill again because the Magister refused to do anything that might smear his family name. Worst of all, Elton thought with a grim frown, he would have to see the smug look on Nathan’s face when he told him what had happened.

  “Very clear, sir,” Elton said, hoping he was hiding the disgust in his voice.

  “Excellent. Then, Stark, I trust you’ll be able to do what needs to be done. Let me know if any issues arise. And Willis, I wish you the best of luck on your assignment; I shudder to imagine a menace like Nathaniel Moore on the loose. Good evening.”

  The line clicked as Hubbard hung up, and Elton bit the inside of his cheek to keep from snapping at the woman still on the line. That Magister’s son had a reputation for making women go missing, and Nathan was the menace. Elton snorted out a quick sigh. Something was seriously wrong when Nathaniel Moore was starting to look like a lesser of two evils.

  “It’s the nature of the beast, Willis,” Stark said in what she clearly imagined was a reassuring tone. “Call me if there’s any way I can help with your assignment, but best for you to put this matter behind you.”

  Elton sat down on the bed and gripped the phone tightly in his hand for a moment before dropping it to the mattress with a frustrated grunt.

  “He’s the Magister’s son,” he said when Cora leaned over
to catch his eye.

  “Oh, you’re kidding. Really?”

  “No wonder they let him off,” Chris snorted from across the room. “I once had a guy dead to rights for multiple rapes back in Vancouver, and he got ‘relocated’ because he was the Magister’s second nephew’s cousin or something. It happens all over.”

  “So for all we know, that guy is going to go right back to that woman tonight and finish what he started?” Cora looked between the two somber men. “We can’t let that happen!”

  “They have the report,” Chris countered. “They’ll keep an eye on her for a while, probably. Maybe we even spooked him. Anyway, he’s not our assignment.”

  “That’s right,” Elton agreed, though he fought to contain the fury bubbling in his gut. The Magistrate was like any other government bureaucracy—flawed and corrupt. Mostly, it worked anyway. But this wasn’t some Magister hand-waving a minor indiscretion. This man was hurting people. Who knew how many people had been hurt already?

  “So we go to this museum, and then what?” Chris asked as he sipped at the hotel-provided instant coffee. Elton shook his head. Nathan had known what would happen. He needed to see him and find out what was really going on.

  “I’m through playing games with him,” he said. “I think we need to see what’s in that box.”

  12

  Cora stared at Elton from behind Chris’s back, her eyebrows lifted in surprise, but he didn’t acknowledge her. One of two things had to be true about the chest—either they wouldn’t be able to affect it at all, or something gruesome was in store for them as punishment for disobeying Nathan’s command. Elton was willing to bet it would be the latter.