by R. L. King
“Okay,” Jason said after they all greeted Marta and their appetizers and drinks had arrived. “You first. Did you go to Texas?”
“I did. I talked to the portal keeper at a small motel a few miles outside Dallas.”
“Did he see anything suspicious?” Amber asked.
“He didn’t, but one of the housekeepers did.” He told them the story Rosa Pérez had given him.
Jason frowned. “So it sounds like our guy definitely used the portals to move the kid around. That’s not a surprise, but it’s nice to have better confirmation.” He shook his head. “It’s good info, but what are you going to do with it? You can’t do any tracing, right?”
“No, not after this long. It’s impossible to trace anyone through a portal anyway, and the magical energy that hovers around them in general makes it difficult to even pick up any local traces. So I hope you’ve got something worthwhile.”
“I don’t know if it’s worthwhile or not, but it might be interesting. Remember I told you I was going to ask Gina to see if she could identify any other similar kidnappings? You know, where the kid disappeared and turned up somewhere else?”
“Yes. Did she?” Stone leaned forward in anticipation. If they could locate other similar cases, it might help them pin down where the kidnapper operated.
“Sort of.” He retrieved a backpack from the floor and pulled out a folder. “She spent most of last night hunting down cases. She didn’t find any where the kid turned up in a different location, but she did find several where they disappeared without a trace, then showed up later on in the same area.”
“Why is that interesting, though?”
“Because it’s rare. Kids don’t usually get kidnapped and just…turn up places. Not alive, at least. Either the police find who took them and get them back, they’re never seen again, or else they end up dead somewhere. Occasionally they escape, but that didn’t happen this time.”
“Also,” Amber added, “these kids don’t remember what happened to them.”
Stone had been settling back, disappointed, but that new bit of information perked him up again. “Like Ty?”
“Not quite like Ty,” Jason said. “It’s not as blatantly obvious that magic was involved. More like they passed out and then woke up somewhere.”
“Did the authorities find any trace of sedatives or other drugs in their systems?”
“I don’t have that much yet. Gina’s good, but she’s not that good. I’ve already called Blum and asked him to look into it for us. He says he’ll try to have something for us in the next day or so.”
That was good, at least. Once more, Stone thanked the Universe that he’d stumbled into Leo Blum’s orbit. He wondered if there were any other cops in the area who were familiar with the magical world. As helpful as Blum could be, he couldn’t be everywhere at once, and sometimes it was difficult for him to justify getting involved if a case didn’t directly affect his area of jurisdiction.
“There’s one other thing that’s kind of weird.” Jason shuffled through the papers in his folder and pulled out another one. “Gina found two clusters of these cases.”
“Clusters? You mean geographically?”
“I mean chronologically. There’ve been four of them within the last year, and then another five…but all those were around five years ago.”
“That’s…odd. So you’re saying there was nothing in between?”
“Not that she could find. A few where the kid turned up after being snatched, but the rest of them had legit explanations—like the kidnappers got spooked and left the vic off somewhere. She’ll look some more when she gets back to work, but she can’t spend all her time on this. I cleared out one of our three cases this morning, but I’ve still got two more.”
“Maybe she can,” Stone mused.
“What do you mean?”
“Suppose I hire the agency to investigate this? If it’s an official case, you can justify putting more effort into it, right?”
Jason narrowed his eyes. “I’m not sure about that, Al. You’re a part-owner. It could be a little sketchy to do it that way, especially since you have no legitimate reason to care about this. It could end up being a problem if anybody ever wants to look at our books.”
Stone sighed. Mundanes had so many regulations. “All right, well, do what you can. This is important, Jason—a lot more important than some bloke with a little something on the side. Especially with this new information you’ve come up with, I’m not at all convinced our man won’t strike again.”
“Yeah.” Their lunches arrived. Jason paused to sample his tandoori chicken, then his expression hardened. “You’re right. This is somebody messing with kids, and if I can do anything to prevent that, I will. Don’t worry, Al—I’ll make time for it, even if it means not taking any new cases until we run it down.”
“And don’t forget,” Amber said, “I’m not an employee and I’m not an official PI, so I can spend even more time on it. We’ll find this guy.”
Stone had heard the expression “mother bear” in relation to a woman protecting her children, but Amber took it a step further. Even though she didn’t have kids of her own, her eyes blazed with a fierce protectiveness.
“I know we will,” he said. “I’m certain of it. Did you find anything else that might be useful? Any commonality around where the cases occurred?”
“Maybe,” Jason said. He searched for another folder. “Forgot about that. It’s hard to tell—it wasn’t as definitive as the chronological thing, but of the nine we found, two were around here—including Ty Ellerman. Three were in the Chicago area. Two were in Florida, around Miami.”
Stone went still. “What about the other two?”
“Uh…one was in Wisconsin, and the other one in Pennsylvania. Why? Does that suggest something?”
“I’m not sure.” Suddenly, Stone had lost all interest in his lunch. “But the Chicago and Miami areas, not to mention here, obviously, are where three of the small number of public portals in this country are located.”
“Holy shit.” Jason stared at him, and so did Amber. “So you really think maybe this guy is grabbing kids in areas near where portals are?”
“It makes sense, doesn’t it? What better way not to be caught than to end up a thousand or more miles away? Even if they were accidentally seen by someone, their alibi would be solid. If the kidnapping occurred on Friday afternoon and the kidnapper was on the other side of the country two hours later, how could anyone possibly suspect him?”
“Yeah…” Jason clenched his fists. “You know, I’m starting to think V is on to something with her idea of some organization to crack down on mages. Especially when they’re messing with mundanes.”
“To be honest, I am too—at least to that limited extent. I still don’t believe it will be possible to police mages’ interactions with each other, nor would I want it to be, frankly. But…” He shook his head. “No point in dwelling on that now, though.” He pulled out a small notebook and scrawled a series of lines in it. “Here’s a list of all the public portal locations in the United States. Please ask Gina to look for any more unusual cases like these, focusing on the areas around these cities.”
“What about outside the U.S.?” Amber asked. “Portals make the world pretty small, and there are a lot of places where it would be a lot easier to hide a kid.”
“That’s true—and it’s definitely something to consider. But there are a quite a number of public portals around the world, and we have to start somewhere. If we don’t find anything in the U.S., we’ll range out to other locations. Does that seem reasonable?”
“Yeah,” Jason said. “I don’t like it—seems like we’re leaving a lot on the table—but you’re right.” He looked troubled. “Do you think we should get Blum involved? I almost feel like this is too big for just us to be dealing with. If kids are getting grabbed…”
“There’s no point in involving the police yet,” Stone said gently. “I know how passionate you are about
this, but until we have more information, there’s nothing for them to do. As far as they’re concerned, Tyler Ellerman is safely home with his parents, none the worse for wear. They’re still going to try to find who took him, of course, but they’ve got no reason to suspect anyone else is in danger. I’m not even sure we do, to be honest. At this point, it’s only speculation. Those other cases could be completely unrelated.”
“But you don’t think they are.”
“No…I don’t. The fact that almost all of them are clustered that closely around areas with portals troubles me. The other two—where did you say they were?”
“Pennsylvania and Wisconsin.”
“And how close are those to any of the cities on my list there?” Stone made a mental note to spend a bit of quality time with a United States map. It was a little embarrassing that he’d lived here more than ten years and still didn’t have a clear idea of where half the states were.
“Not too far. Philadelphia’s less than two hours from New York City, and Milwaukee’s about the same distance from Chicago.”
“Hmm…” Stone said. “Okay. That’s not unreasonable, though it doesn’t completely make sense. If he’s snatching kids in areas near portals, why range out in those two cases?”
“Maybe they’re unrelated,” Amber said. “They look the same, but there’s something else going on.”
“Possibly. Probably.” He stabbed up a decisive finger. “Here’s something else—if these cases, or most of them anyway, are related, I’m still trying to come up with why. The most logical connection, as I mentioned before, is that our kidnapper suspects the children are all potentially magically talented.”
“But why would he suspect that?” Jason asked. “I thought you said there was no way to tell until they got to puberty, and usually not even then unless somebody suspects it and checks.”
“Bloody hell, you might be on to something,” Stone snapped. “How old are the children in these cases? More specifically, how old were they when they were taken? Are they all around the same age?”
Jason consulted his papers, then looked up in astonishment. “Close, I guess. The youngest one was eleven, and the oldest was almost fifteen.”
“Even the two away from the portals?”
“Yeah. All of them.”
“All boys?”
“Yeah—all nine were boys.”
“Okay.” Stone held up a hand as his thoughts spun. “Okay. I think that’s significant. Can you ask Gina to check something else for me? Have her look into the kids’ histories. Get a family tree as far back as possible, and see if they have anything else in common. Did any of their parents know each other? Did any of them attend the same school? Do they have friends in common? Anything like that.”
“That’s not gonna be easy.”
“I don’t imagine it will be. But you keep telling me what a dab hand she is at this—let’s see it in action. Tell her there’s a bonus in it if she can find anything definitive.”
Jason narrowed his eyes. “Al, I don’t want to start—”
“Totally off the record, I promise. But this is important, Jason. I think it’s worth taking a few risks, don’t you?”
“Yeah.” He didn’t sound happy about it, but he nodded. “Yeah, I do.”
“Might be a good time to mobilize your little Scooby gang, too. Ask them if they know any mages or magical families in those areas, and if they do, see if you can find out if the kids’ families have any connection to them.”
“That will take longer—and what am I going to tell them when they ask why?”
“Just…tell them we’re trying to locate someone, but you can’t give details because it could put people at risk.”
Jason and Amber exchanged glances. “I guess. I don’t know if they’ll go for that, but I’ll try. What are you going to be doing in the meantime?”
“Trying to trace any magical heritage in these families from my side. I’ll check with Eddie and Ward to see if they know anybody over here who tracks that sort of thing.”
“A magical genealogist?” Amber asked, tilting her head. “Is that a thing?”
“Yes, but—” Stone shrugged. “This is going to sound frightfully pompous, but I think it’s largely confined to the older, wealthier magical families. I can trace my ancestry back for at least seven generations, for example. But I doubt we’re going to find that level of detail in a family where the Talent died out years ago. I’ll give it a go, though. Between that and your and Gina’s efforts, maybe we can find something.”
“Yeah. Okay.” Jason finished his chicken and tossed his napkin on his plate. “We’ll get right on it—and I’ll call Blum and see if maybe he can come up with an excuse to put some resources on it too.”
“Good. Good.” He waved Jason off when his friend pulled out his wallet. “I’ve got this. Go. The faster we can find anything in common, if there is anything, the sooner we can get to the next step.”
13
Eddie and Ward were, unfortunately, not much help. Stone took the portal to England and met with his two friends over drinks at the Dancing Dragon.
“Sorry, mate,” Eddie said. “I wish I could ’elp you more, but I don’t know of anybody in the States who keeps records like that. You might try askin’ Blodgett—he seems like the type who might know that sort o’ thing—but the best I can do is get you what I have on lines over here. Mostly in Britain and France.”
“Bugger. I was afraid of that. Can you look into it, though? There’s got to be a you in America, right?”
“Nobody like me, Stone. I thought you knew that by now.”
Ward chuckled. “I can do a bit of investigation as well. I have some academic contacts on the East Coast, and they might have access to some records. But Eddie’s right—unless this man you’re looking for is a descendant of one of the old families, it’s highly unlikely anyone’s keeping records. Not magical ones, anyway.”
“That’s a fair point,” Eddie said. “If we turn anything promising up, we can always check the mundane genealogy records too. Just because nobody’s keepin’ track of mages over there doesn’t mean we can’t come at this from a mundane angle.”
Stone nodded. “I appreciate anything you can do. I don’t know why I’m convinced this man is going to strike again, but I am.” He paused for a long pull from his pint, and sighed. “The thing that’s confounding me is trying to work out why he’s snatching kids. Of course we have no proof that any of these other cases Jason found are related, so I’m probably chasing something that’s not even relevant. But it does strike me as significant that out of nine cases, all but two of them are clustered around portal sites—and the other two are within driving distance of them. Do you agree, or am I mad?”
“Maybe,” Eddie said. “The logical reason is that ’e suspects them of ’avin’ the Talent.”
“Yes, that’s my working hypothesis too. But the question is, how would he know?”
“What about that wild talent you were searching for not too long ago?” Ward asked. “The one who could identify latent talents just by looking at them?”
“Ben Halstrom. Yes, he was my first thought, but it didn’t feel right. Especially considering the clusters of similar kidnappings Jason found, including several that occurred five years ago. Assuming they’re all related—and I know that’s a big assumption right now—there’s no way it could have been Halstrom.”
“Why not?” Eddie frowned. “Just because you didn’t know about ’im didn’t mean ’e didn’t have the ability.”
Stone hated keeping information from two of his most trusted friends, but the oath he’d sworn to Kolinsky meant he couldn’t reveal anything he hadn’t already told them about the rogue rifts and their purpose. “Can’t say a lot about it, unfortunately. But trust me—I know Halstrom is a recent development. So he’s probably not our man.”
“No reason to believe there might not be more like ’im, though, right? Maybe the bloke you’re tryin’ to find is another wi
ld talent.”
“That’s entirely possible—although considering how easily he’s evading us and covering his tracks, I’m inclined to suspect he’s a full mage. And a damned good one.”
Ward nodded thoughtfully. “So let’s assume for the moment that you’re correct—this man, either acting alone or with others, is seeking out children. I find it interesting that in every case you mention, he’s always let them go.”
“Jason says it’s unusual,” Stone agreed. “He says most kidnappings are either by family members or someone else the victim knows, and in the cases that aren’t, it’s usually either for ransom or human-trafficking related. I forgot to ask Jason if there were ransom demands in any of the cases he found, but I imagine he’d have said something about it if there were.”
“Doesn’t that suggest anything to you?”
Stone was about to ask him what he meant, but then the answer struck him. He jerked his head up. “He’s looking for something. And he’s not finding it.”
“Spot on.”
“Bloody hell…” His pint forgotten, he banged a fist on the scarred table. “It makes sense. Somehow he’s tracing these kids because he thinks they’ve got some trait—either magical talent or something else—so he grabs them to test for it and then lets them go when he doesn’t find it. Why, though? Why not just kill them? Nobody would know the difference. Even if he’s not a black mage, we’ve still got ways to make people disappear that mundanes would never find. Or—hell, he’s proven he’s good at removing trace evidence from clothes and bodies, so why not just kill them and drop them near some other portal a thousand miles from where he grabbed them?”
“Maybe ’e doesn’t want to kill ’em,” Eddie said. “Maybe there’s no reason to. Not everybody has the stomach for it, and if ’e can make it so they don’t remember anything about what ’appened to ’em, why bother?”
Stone had a hard time reconciling someone brutal enough to snatch children to perform experiments on them, but not brutal enough to kill them when they didn’t display whatever result he was looking for. Still, once again it made sense. “Thanks, both of you. If nothing else, you’ve given me more to think about.”
