Harvest Of Evil

by William Lehman

  Lars sat me down in the living room, and told me to relax, he would make dinner and then we would get started. Dinner was venison steak, with all the trimmings, and was wonderful. Then he sat me down and asked how long it was going to be before I would need these new skills. I told him I didn't know but that it could be as little as a couple weeks, or as long as never. I had no idea how hard this mutt was going to be to track down. He said that he could put a short term fix in for right now, but that I would need to work at it for a couple months before I would be able to do this on my own, without his help. He then hypnotized me and planted some post hypnotic suggestions on me. These would allow me to control the rage as if I was a full fledged Goti instead of just an entered apprentice. Each suggestion was keyed to a word, and all I had to do was speak the word, and I would go into a controlled rage. A different word would take me out of it, and an additional suggestion kept me from going into a rage accidentally. Then he woke me up, and formally consecrated me to Tyr. After that we worked on going into a trance on my own, and meditation techniques until I figured that I should go to bed so I could be functional in the morning.

  *****

  The next morning I woke up and did the normal morning routine with the addition of some mental exercises that Lars assigned. Then I got into my go to work clothes, and put all of the gear on, and went down to breakfast. Lars was already up and making breakfast and coffee. I threw some food in my face, and headed for work. When I got in, everyone was quiet around me, it was obvious that the word had gotten out about Gramps. I checked in with the L.T. and started to work. The formal report from Olympia had come in, and confirmed that in Russell Spencer's (Master of Sciences in Forensic Magic, MIT Salem School of Magic) professional opinion the deaths at the Gold Bar grow operation were Murder by Magic, and that the specific type of magic was a clerical curse from an unknown Native American or Central American pantheon, delivered by an expert cleric, probably female. He went on at great length about the type of curse and the etymology of the magic involved, but those were the basics. I then looked back over the rest of the case to date, because I had been away for a couple days. The classics for solving a murder are weapon, motive and opportunity. We knew the weapon; based on the weapon, the opportunity was limited only by the strength of the cleric. That left motive. I was betting on revenge. It had to be that or profit, nothing else made sense, and Russ had been sure that it was a revenge killing. OK, revenge for what? Let's see, we got a dead migrant buried in a shallow grave, that sounds like a good start. The only things that jumped out at me were the items found on the dead picker. No one on the forensic team that found him could identify the gold thing on the chain around his neck, or the origin of the two rings he was wearing. It seemed like a good time to go talk to a friend of mine at the U.W.

  *****

  I logged out of the office and headed for the University District of Seattle. A buddy of mine is a professor of art over there, and her expertise is jewelry, especially ancient jewelry. I know her through the SCA, where she has a Laurel (the highest award given for arts and sciences) in jewelry making. She can make an enameled reliquary that most museums would buy as an original cloisonné work from the reign of Philip the Fair. Hopefully she would have a clue as to what the hell this stuff was. While I was out, I could drop in on the Alberts, and the Snedker's, not that I expected to find anything there, but who knows.

  *****

  The drive down to the campus was fairly easy, I was between morning rush hour and lunch rush hour. When I got down to the campus, I pulled in to the campus police station and checked in. It's a courtesy thing, you don't show up on another guy's turf without letting him know you're there. Besides I wasn't sure where Kurshta's office was.

  *****

  Kurshta Slomenstov, Ph.D. U.W. School of Art, with specialty in historic art and jewelry, wasn't a very big girl. Everyone called her 'Bird' for a reason. 5 foot even, 90 lb sopping wet with sand in her pockets, long brown hair, brown eyes, about twenty-eight years old. She looks more like a student than the prof. When I got to her office, her assistant was in, a mousy, slightly dumpy looking woman about 5 foot 5 inches 200 lb, with birth control glasses. She told me that 'Doctor Slomenstov' was in class but that her office hours were from 3 to 5 Tuesday and Thursday, and 8 to 10 on Monday, Wednesday, and Friday. That if I wanted to leave my portfolio she would see that the professor got it. So I explained that I wasn't a student, that I knew Doctor Slomenstov from an organization that we both belonged to, and that I needed to see her on business. She, of course, informed me that this was most irregular, and that business hours were the same as office hours, and that I could come back then. About that time I started to get real tired of this officious, self important, intelligencia wantabe's crap, and pulled out my wallet. Before I could open it, she started to pick up the phone and dial. I saw her hit 9-1, and reached over and hit the hang up button. It dawned on me as I did it, that I must have flashed my gun when I reached for the wallet.

  "Sir, I do not know what is wrong with you, but I do not accept bribes. Now please get your hand off my phone! This campus is a no-weapons zone, and you are in violation of that law. Now get out of my office and let me call the police." She was furious. I wish I could have said she was pretty when she was mad, but that would be a lie, she was dumpy normally. Mad, she was even uglier.

  I opened up my wallet, showing my badge and ID, and said "No need to call the police ma'am, they're already here. That's what I was pulling out my wallet for. As to carrying a gun on this campus, the Department of Homeland Security says I get to carry one any damn where I please, except into the Oval Office in D.C., and I could probably get permission to carry one there if I pushed it. Now, how about knocking off the 'your office' bullshit, and telling me where I can find Bird, before I have someone examine your tax records for the last seven years, just for fun." I had tried to be nice, I had tried not to go all badge heavy on her, but NO…

  "Sir Johann, is there a problem here?" I heard from behind me.

  "Mistress Gwenneth, how could there be a problem, with you in the world? Nay, dear lass, I was just trying to find you to offer you sup, on the emperor's chit, when yon officious pimple did offer to sic the local constabulary on me," I said with a smile. "Hi Bird, I have some jewelry photos I need you to look at. It's worth lunch anywhere you want, on the government's tab, and I can probably get you a small consult fee too."

  "Oh, a knight with a shining expense account! What more can this poor humble academic hope for?" she said with a smile. Bird and I go way back, we're part of the same household in the Society.

  "Where would you deign to dine, Mistress?"

  "I find I have a sudden yen for a good Irish stew and Guinness. Ryan's?"

  About this time 'yon officious pimple' figured out that we really did know each other. "But Doctor Slomenstov, do you actually know this rude individual? And what about your schedule? But... How…sputter sputter" came from behind the desk.

  I turned to Bird and asked "She does, I assume, have some redeeming qualities?"

  "Oh yes, she's quite the administrative assistant, overly anal, but very organized. I'm afraid you caught her on a bad day, she doesn't take unusual events very well, I'm afraid," Bird said to me with a grin. "She will make an excellent curator for some museum some day, once I knock the prickly edges off. Delores, this is a very dear friend of mine for many years, Officer John Fisher, Federal Park Service Police. Known in the Society for Creative Anachronism as Sir Johann Beornson, and one of the most genteel mannered men I know…until you make him really angry, or he determines that you are a fool…I fear Sir Johann doesn't suffer fools gladly. Sir Johann, Ms. Delores Greenly, my assistant and doctorial candidate."

  I smiled at Bird, and said, "Thank you Doctor, we had not been formally introduced. Oh, and it's Detective Fisher now." I grinned. "Because of the case I'm here on, in fact. Shall we go?"

  On the drive down to Ryan's, we talked of SCA things, where was Twelfth Night, who was
on consideration for Knighthood, and for Laurel, what the new King was going to be like (we had a new Crown Prince that had never won crown before), who was doing what in the household, just old friends that don't see each other often enough catching up. When I got down to Pike Place Market, finding parking was special, but I finally parked in a thirty minute loading zone, put the mike for my radio on the dash (this is cop code for, I'm working, leave me be), and scampered around to open the door for Bird. I'm never sure why I've never made a move on Bird, she's cute as hell, in an "I'm afraid I might break you" sort of way, but she's just a buddy, not someone I could ever see myself spending forever with, and far too good of a friend to ruin it by a one knight (sic) stand.

  We went into the restaurant part of Ryan's and were given a table almost immediately. Ryan's is one of those places that "either you like it, and get it, or you don't", sort of like Harley Davidsons. It's small, and a bit dark, and the chairs are some of the most uncomfortable things I think I've ever sat in. If you like Irish food, Irish music, and good hooch (which damn it I couldn't have, being on duty and all) the place rocks, if not, it's just a small dirty-looking hole in the wall. Fortunately, we liked Irish food and music, and good hooch, and no pretensions.

  After the waitress had come by and taken our orders, I broke out the pictures of the items found on the victim buried in the pot field, and handed them to Bird. She looked at them for a while, set them aside to eat some of the food that arrived, looked at them some more, ate some more, then looked up at me. "OK, when do I get to see the actual items? The pictures are nice, and you have my interest piqued, but you know I can't say anything definitive without seeing the actual items."

  "Well, I can probably get you in to see them this afternoon if you really want to, but why don't you give me what you have now, just as a working theory, and you can do the paper on it after you see the real thing."

  "OK, just as long as you understand that the information I am giving is tentative, and subject to change upon examination of the artifacts."

  "Yeah, yeah, come on Bird, quit yanking my chain, damn it, give."

  "Well, this thing on the chain looks like an Aztec nose ring, and the carvings on the rings are also Aztec style. I don't know much about Aztec jewelry, mostly stuff I've read from the Smithsonian, and a few other places, and stuff from when the Conquistadors sent goodies back to Europe. However, I know a gal that might be able to help us if this is real, and could surely let us know if it's not." She looked up at me. "How fast can we get to see these things again? And can we take them with us?"

  "Well, are you free this afternoon? And yes, we can take them, if I sign them out."

  "OK, let me call Delores and have her cover the rest of my classes for the day, and let's do this thing." Bird pulled out a cell phone, and talked to her assistant for a few minutes. From what I could hear, it didn't sound like Delores was very happy about the whole thing. Oh well. After a little bit, Bird said, "Yes, OK, I owe you one, now just teach the class, my notes are on my desk, you're covering the start of the Impressionist school, thanks, bye," and hung up.

  She grimaced at me, and said, "As I mentioned, she doesn't adapt well to sudden change. OK, let's finish eating and go get the gold. I really want to see this stuff."

  The rest of the meal was mostly eating. When we were done, I put the bill on the Government credit card, and we were off. We drove down to the Federal building, and went down to the basement where the evidence rooms were located. These aren't on the normal directory, for obvious reasons: there's usually several million bucks in dope there at any given time, as well as automatic weapons, money, and just about any sort of illegal crap you care to name. I signed out the gold from the clerk and brought it out to the rig, where Bird was waiting, handed it to her, with the chain of custody forms still attached, and said, "OK, now what?"

  "Now, we go back to my offices for a few minutes so I can run a few tests on this, and look at it under a microscope, film it in three dimensions, laser scan it etc…, and then we go find Mary Two Elks. But I can tell you now what I think I will find."

  "Bird, you're teasing me."

  "Yeah, and you know you love it."

  I cleared my throat and gave her one of 'those looks', and said, "Bird!"

  "OK, OK, it's real, it's authentic, and it's old. Aztec for sure, that or Mayan though I really doubt it. No, this is the real shit, and worth a whole lot more than your house. Maybe more than that building back there," she said, pointing at the Federal building over her shoulder.

  I stole a glance at her while driving through traffic, "You're shitting me, how much?"

  "Well, to a collector, or a museum with the money, probably in excess of fifty, maybe as much as a hundred."

  "Thousand?"

  "Million."

  I almost crashed the rig. "Bird, this shit was found on the body of what looked for all the world like a migrant worker. The victim didn't look like he had fifty or a hundred dollars for God's sake, much less the sort of money you're talking about. What the hell is a migrant worker doing with enough money to buy a Goddamn Mexican State?"

  "Hey, you're the detective, Detective. Me, I'm just the little old jewelry expert."

  Well, that pretty much squashed conversation on the way back to the U District. When we got back, Bird went into her lab, and took scrapings, and did chemical tests, then spectrographic tests, then matched carvings against pictures in her computer, on the Internet, and in various books. This took up a couple of hours. When she had finished, she looked at me and grinned. "So, John, my beloved, why don't we buy two tickets to nice little old extradition free Brazil, and live happily ever after on the proceeds from the auction of this stuff?"

  "I take it that it's real?"

  "Oh, yeah. And about six hundred years old, give or take a couple centuries. Most likely give." She looked at me with another grin, and said "I don't know enough about this type of thing to determine exactly when, or where in the Central American tribes this came from, but the carving and casting of the gold was not done by a modern tool. It's similar to some of the few surviving relics, and most important, the gold alloy is the right type. See, the Aztecs didn't use pure gold, they used a rather odd alloy that looks like pure gold but is about twenty times stronger and more wear resistant, this alloy is unique to the Aztec and Mayan civilizations. And almost as important, the wear on this is real. In an alloy like this, it takes a long time to produce the sort of wear patterns this thing has. Now a clever forger that knew exactly what to do could have forged this piece, but it would cost about a half million bucks to produce, counting labor, so the only reason to do it would be as a relic scam. What's the odds that something like that would turn up on a dead migrant? No, this is real. Let's go find Mary."

  8

  Mary Two Elks taught Native American history, and applied magic courses at the U.W. As we walked down the hall towards her office, I was hit by so many different smells, I can't catalog them. It was sort of overwhelming, like the perfume counter at the mall when all of the test samples are in use. (If you think perfume sample sprayers are obnoxious, you should try it with my nose.) It's about enough to make a cat gag. Her office is in the applied magic building instead of the history building unfortunately. If I had any doubt that I could smell magic, that cured it.

  When we walked in to her office, I saw a really sharp looking woman about thirty-five, five foot four, one sixty, and apparently pure blood Amerindian sitting at a large desk. When we broke the threshold of her door, she jerked her head up as if she had been shocked. Her eyes looked at me as if she was trying to figure out whether to shoot me or run like hell. That look stayed for about two seconds, then she obviously noticed Bird standing next to me, and decided I was not a threat, at least for now. I also noticed a feeling like I had walked through a cobweb as I crossed the threshold, and the smells went away. Now, all I smelled was sage and sweet grass.

  "Hi Kurshta, who's the suit?" said the woman at the desk as her hand went out of sigh
t beneath the desk top.

  "Now Mary, play nice. 'The suit' just treated me to a very nice lunch, and has a government grant in his back pocket, figuratively speaking. He has some artifacts that may be worth a paper or two for you to look at, and he's a very old friend of mine. John, Mary Two Elks, Mary, John Fisher."

  I looked at Mary, and said "Wow, how do you go through that hall every day without gagging?"

  Mary looked at me with a puzzled look for a couple of moments, then the light dawned. "Oh, you sense magic as a scent, don't you? I see it as colors of light, sort of like an aura. I have to wear sunglasses in the hall, but it's not too bad." She continued, "Now, what's this about some artifacts?"

  "I have some items that I would like you to look at, and identify the exact origin of. You can take as many photos and other recordings of them as you want, and you can conduct any tests on them that you want, you can write any papers on them that you want. But you can't keep them, nor can you handle them without me being present, and yes, I may be able to get you a consultant fee. Are you interested?"

  "Well, that's an attractive offer, but I really like to know who I'm working for. Kurshta said government grant I believe? What government, and what branch?"