by Guy Antibes
“Look at the map through these,” Sam said.
The Chief Constable examined the map more closely. “Oh,” Bentwick said. “Someone has tampered with this map.”
Sam took out his wand and rubbed the patch with the gold tip. The delicate pollen patch flaked off, showing the waterway that someone had tried to hide.
“For this Ralt might have been killed?” Sam said.
“If that is the case, we are dealing with some ruthless criminals.”
“I’ll agree with the ruthless part. We nearly didn’t leave Worrier’s Flat because the shepherds run the town. They’ve killed lots of miners and perhaps a few healers and healer spouses along the way.”
“For control of a mine?” Bentwick asked. “Does Harrison seriously think that is the only reason?”
“If it is a gold mine?”
Bentwick rubbed his chin. “Or a means to some other end,” he said.
“I guess. I know my opinion doesn’t count for much, but I think it has even higher stakes. There is something related to the sheep’s neural pollen that we don’t know about. Maybe that is part of the puzzle, but it’s obvious someone wants to take over the mountains and establish Shovel Vale as the capital.”
“What about Mount Vannon, boy?”
“Too big, too established. There is a town lord to overcome. Wouldn’t it be easier to start from scratch? Build a defensible wall, staff your own army from the disgruntled gold-seekers, and take over. Oak Basin’s wall is close to being a pile of stones, so it isn’t as defensible and Riverville is too far from the rest of the villages and is too well defended. They can just ignore it.”
“Where does the money come from?” Bentwick said.
“I don’t know,” Sam said. “From a new mine? From drug sales, although the concoction they have used is common enough for Harrison to figure it out. Maybe the difference is the sheep’s neural pollen.” He had to shrug his shoulders. Sam didn’t have all the answers, but he did have his suspicions. “I’m just a helper,” he added.
“You are doing just fine for a helper,” Bentwick said. “So how would you proceed from here?”
“We could start with Chief Constable Ralt. Who killed him, and why? Had he discovered much the same thing we have? What was he doing when someone killed him? Did he leave any notes, or did he talk to the other constables?”
“That is as good a start as any, I suppose. Someone had to have come in and tampered with the map, but we don’t know when that happened.”
“Then we can talk to your constables, right?” Sam said. “I have to do something while I wait for Harrison.”
“Would you like me to help you?” Bentwick asked.
Sam felt his face heat up. “I’m sorry. Was I too forward?”
The chief constable smiled. “Probably, but I can live with it. I’ll see who is available to talk. Stay here.”
Sam went to the map cabinet with his spectacles on and found two more maps showing the same part of the river missing. The work was very good, again indicating that someone with excellent magic skills applied the patch.
He put one of the maps over the one that he and Bentwick had first discovered with the patch. Perhaps they could use it as a test when the constables came in.
The first man wasn’t on duty when Ralt was killed. Bentwick led the interrogation, but he gave Sam an opportunity to ask a few questions.
“Was Constable Ralt working on an investigation by himself before he was killed?” Sam asked.
“What investigation?” the man said.
“Any kind of investigation. Was someone buying up property in Mount Vannon? Was someone dealing drugs? Did he ask questions about the theft of sheep?”
“Sheep,” the man said. “But that is no secret. We’ve all had our ears trained to hear anything about people stealing flocks. It has become an epidemic. Someone is eating well, right now, I’ll tell you.”
“Have you seen these maps before? Can you point out some pastures where flocks have been stolen?” Sam said. He looked at Bentwick, who nodded encouragingly.
The constable pointed to a few spots on the map. “That is some of them, but I know there have been more.”
“Who keeps track of such things here?” Bentwick asked.
“Tom Elbow. He’ll be on right before I go home.”
“Is there anything about the map that is wrong? The Chief Constable spotted it. Can you?” Sam said.
The constable eyed Bentwick and then looked back down at the map with the pollen patch. He pursed his lips and squinted, but then his eyes brightened. “The river from Shovel Vale is gone.” He pointed to the map and ran his finger along the missing waterway. “How did that happen?”
“When did you last look at that map, constable?” Bentwick said.
“The week before Ralt died, I guess. We all got together with the stolen flock incidents that had come in. Someone switched out the map after, I guess.”
“Thugs rode through the pastures and stole the flocks?” Sam asked.
“That’s it, brazen and in the light of day. They didn’t care if they were seen or not. There were so many of them that the shepherds couldn’t do a thing about it.”
“Were any shepherds killed?” Sam said.
The constable shook his head. “None that I know of. They were all daylight thefts. They took off and had the sheep crossing busier roads and lanes. We couldn’t track them very far.”
“And Ralt was interested in all this?” Bentwick asked.
“We all are. It isn’t very pleasant to have thugs running amok among the citizens. The chief was threatening to call in the king’s troops, but then he died.”
“Thank you, constable,” Bentwick said. “I’m sending a bird to Baskin right now.”
The man left. Sam hadn’t thought they would get so much information from their first interview. He gazed at the map while Bentwick took four long thin strips of paper and wrote messages on them.
“I’m not going to be killed for threatening to do something like Ralt did,” Bentwick said. “I’m sending for troops right now. You did much better than I expected, Sam Smith. Good work with the map. That shows some creativity. Are you sure Harrison hasn’t been teaching you how to snoop?”
“I guess he has me learning while doing.”
“So what did we learn?”
“Ralt was investigating sheep stealing, but all the constables were on the case, so I’m not sure he was killed to keep him from getting the information to Baskin. A messenger would have already arrived in the capital by now, wouldn’t he or she?”
“You can’t rule that out, boy. The maps might have been altered up to a week before Ralt died.”
“Can you really trust a man’s memory that well?” Sam said. “It would be easy for the constable to be wrong about the map or the dates. Don’t we need to have another constable give us the same story?”
Bentwick nodded. “ Yes, we do, but if we can get a closer idea as to when the maps were modified, that will help with your supposition about Shovel Vale’s intentions.”
“Bit by bit,” Sam said.
“That is the idea. I’ll bring in someone else. I’m eager to talk to Tom Elbow. I wonder if he sees a pattern.”
“Is a pattern important?” Sam asked.
“It is if we find one. What if all the flocks haven’t been stolen yet? The world didn’t stop the day Harrison, the dog, and you showed up at the villages.”
Sam had to smile because, in his mind, that was exactly what he was thinking. “So, bit by bit,” Sam said.
“That’s right.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
~
B Y THE TIME TOM ELBOW SHOWED UP AT THE CONSTABULARY, Harrison still hadn’t arrived. Sam had already gone to the inn and found food for Emmy, still tied to the wagon. He took her into a nearby park and had her walk around for a while before returning to the wagon and the food.
“This is Tom Elbow,” Bentwick said.
The man was short and
wore spectacles, but Tom’s weren’t tinted.
Sam shook the man’s hand. Bentwick asked him for the logs of the stolen flocks.
“We have a general log, and I keep logs of other crimes separately. It helps when we try to make sense of things,” Elbow said.
“And what did the flock stealing log tell you?”
“I don’t know,” the man said. “It disappeared the same night that the Chief was killed.”
“Where was Ralt killed?” Sam asked.
“On the other side of Mount Vannon, close to his home,” Elbow said.
“Would Ralt take the sheep stealing logs home with him?”
Tom shook his head. “He never took any work home. If he had to work, he sat behind that desk and worked until he was done.” Tom pointed to the desk that Bentwick sat behind.
“Do you keep a log on those who die of drug or alcohol?” Sam asked.
“I do. That log was stolen, as well.”
Bentwick chewed on his lower lip. “What special logs were stolen?”
Sam realized that should have been the first follow-up question.
“Three. The flocks, drug and alcohol deaths, and a curious one. The chief asked me to keep track of ex-miners who died or came into money all of a sudden.”
“Did he share the reason why he was tracking those things?”
“No. The chief wasn’t one to share, but Ralt did say that he was on to something. That was all he said.”
Sam took a breath. “Did you plot where the flocks were stolen?”
“I did.”
“Could you point to where they occurred on the map?”
“Sure.”
He looked over the map table in Bentwick’s borrowed office and whistled.
“This map has been changed,” Tom said.
“What changed?” Bentwick asked.
“The river from Shovel Vale is gone. That’s plain to see.”
Sam smiled. “Do you remember when you last looked at this map?”
“We had a meeting on the stolen sheep during the week before the chief died. I remember it distinctly.”
“You said that you pulled the logs from the master log, is that right?”
Elbow nodded.
“Then you can recreate the logs that were stolen?”
The little man nodded and grinned. “I can, and that has already been done. I was going to tell you that next. Do you want to see them?”
“I do,” Bentwick said. “But don’t tell anyone that you’ve done such a thing, or that you can do so.”
“I’ve already told one or two of the guys,” Tom said.
“Tell them to keep their mouths shut. Something in those logs might have caused Chief Inspector Ralt to be killed. I don’t want the same thing to happen to you.”
Elbow paled a bit. “I understand, Chief Constable Bentwick.”
“Are the logs in the constabulary?”
“I’ll have them in your hands in minutes.”
The man left. Sam looked at Bentwick and said, “Is it always like this?”
“Sometimes you get a lot of evidence and clues at the beginning, but that doesn’t lead to a conclusion, and it hasn’t this time. We don’t know who yet, and we don’t know why. We know when.”
“Can I look around the office? According to Tom, Ralt would have to have been killed here. The logs were stolen the night he was killed, and the maps could have been modified at the same time.”
“Feel free. The same thought crossed my mind.”
Sam walked carefully through the office. He pulled Bentwick’s office chair back and got down on his hands and knees. He noticed dark stains on the carpet, so he put on his spectacles and the stains disappeared. The chair showed a similar pollen patch.
“He was killed here. There is a bloodstain on the carpet and the chair. Here and here. You don’t see it, right?”
“I don’t.”
Sam withdrew his wand and rubbed the golden tip on the pollen patches that he saw.
“Oh, just like the maps,” Bentwick said
“Did he work in the constabulary by himself at night?”
“There is one man who works nights. It is generally Tom Elbow, but even I quickly found out that Tom is prone to napping at the front desk.”
“What do we do about the blood stains?”
“Chief Constable Ralt died of a wound from a long, thin knife. There wasn’t much blood.”
“And I’ll bet there was a thin pollen patch covering the wound that was peeled away when the killer dumped the constable’s body closer to his home,” Sam said.
“How do you come up with these ideas?” Bentwick asked.
“I couldn’t see pollen for most of my life. It has made me sensitive to what pollen can do and what I can’t see pollen do. Maybe that’s where some of it comes from,” Sam said.
Tom Elbow poked his head in the room after knocking. “Here are the logs.”
“Come back in,” Bentwick asked. “The night that Ralt died, he worked here in his office?”
Tom nodded. “I was on the night shift. I fell asleep, I'm loathe to admit, and when I woke, the chief was gone. Next thing I knew, someone came running into the constabulary saying they had found his body. It was a hard day for me.”
“Harder for Ralt,” Sam said to himself. He could see the day was getting long. “Shouldn’t Harrison be back by now?”
“He should if he was checking in and arranging his schedule,” Bentwick said. “Tom, do you know where the healers live in Mount Vannon? Could you write down the names and address, and maybe sketch out a little map so Sam can see where the healer is?”
The man left. “Do you want me to accompany you?”
Sam nodded. “I’ll fetch Emmy and bring her back here. Then we can see where Harrison is.”
“Does he know more than you do?” Bentwick asked.
Sam shook his head. “I don’t know. He doesn’t know as much as we do about Ralt’s death, that is certain.”
When he appeared at the constabulary with Emmy by his side, Bentwick walked down the steps to the stone-paved sidewalk with two papers in his hand.
“Let’s go. I feel a bit safer with that beast walking with us.” Bentwick said.
They headed to the first healer on the list.
“Has Harrison Dimple come by?” Sam asked the woman healer. Her clinic wasn’t in the best part of Mount Vannon.
“He did earlier today. Why do you ask?”
“I’m his helper. He was going to join us at the constabulary, but he hasn’t arrived yet, so I’m chasing him down,” Sam said.
“Do you have a list of healers?”
Bentwick raised the papers, so he could show her. “Do you know who he was off to visit next?”
“Hollie Heartly,” she said.
The Chief Constable looked at his list and nodded.
“Thank you.”
“You’ve got quite a dog there, boy,” the woman said. “Can I pet her?”
Sam smiled and let her scratch Emmy behind the ears. They were soon on Hollie’s doorstep and received much the same response, except Harrison had committed to helping her the day after tomorrow.
The next healer was a duplicate of the first three, but the last healer on the list had never seen Harrison.
“I didn’t even know he was in Mount Vannon. I was expecting him in a week or two,” he said.
“So, less than two hours ago,” Bentwick said, pointing to the map. “Somewhere between here and here.”
“Let’s retrace our steps to the previous healer.”
They walked slowly through the city streets, looking for signs of Harrison. They came to a fork in the road.
“Is this an alternate route that Harrison could have taken?”
Bentwick looked at the map. “I think so. Let’s go down the street we haven’t taken.”
They continued on until Emmy pulled on her leash.
“She smells something,” Bentwick said.
“I hope it isn�
��t a meaty bone.” Sam struggled with Emmy but gave her the lead. She pulled Sam this way and that, through an alley, down another street, definitely heading away from the third healer’s home. She barked at a house. The windows were dark, and the place looked deserted, but Sam remembered to take off his spectacles. The dark windows brightened and the trim that was made to look old and disheveled vanished.
“Pollen decorations to make the house look derelict,” Sam said, still struggling with Emmy.
Sam loosened the sword in his sheath and drew his wand. Bentwick pulled his own sword and used the pommel to pound on the door. Sam peered into a window and saw movement inside the house. He tried to kick the door open but didn’t meet with any success.
“Stand aside,” Bentwick said, as he forced the door open.
Sam ran past him into the dark house. The darkened pollen made the inside of the house dim from the front, but the back windows weren’t darkened.
“Get out of my house,” yelled a man with a sword in his hand.
Emmy barked and ran past him and leaped up the stairway.
“I’ll take care of him. See if Harrison is kept upstairs,” Bentwick said.
Sam didn’t want to leave Bentwick alone, but he followed Emmy. He heard her deep growl, so he took two steps at a time and found a thug threatening Emmy. However, Emmy wasn’t the person backing up. Sam ran forward as much to protect Emmy as to attack the man.
“Is that your dog? Get her off me.”
“Where is the healer?”
The man tried to look perplexed. “What healer?”
“You know. Tell me now or we both attack.” Sam looked at his dog. “Emmy?”
She barked and then growled lower.
“She's going to attack,” the man said. Sam could hear the fear in his voice.
“And so am I!” Sam heard the clash of swords in the room below. He needed to get back to Bentwick, but there might be another person guarding Harrison.
The man decided to strike first. Sam protected Emmy from the wild swings and let his dog knock the man down. Sam slammed his wand down on the thug’s head. He ran into the first room and didn’t find anyone, but Harrison was bound and gagged in the second.
“Protect him, Emmy,”
Sam ran back down the stairs and found two men attacking Bentwick. He slipped beside the constable. Bentwick was a very good swordsman, but he was older than the other two, and Sam sensed that he was beginning to slow. Sam ran in under Bentwick's blows and brought down one of the thugs when he was distracted by the chief constable. With the other man down, Bentwick quickly dispatched the second.
