The Devil's Eye

by J. R. Rain

  THE DEVIL’S EYE

  by

  J.R. RAIN &

  MATTHEW S. COX

  A Maddy Wimsey Novel

  Book #1

  The Devil’s Eye

  Published by Rain Press

  Copyright © 2017 by J.R. Rain & Matthew S. Cox

  All rights reserved.

  Ebook Edition, License Notes

  This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

  J.R. Rain:

  To Hunter and Xander. Welcome to planet Earth.

  Matthew S. Cox:

  Thank you for reading The Devil’s Eye! I'm thrilled to have had the chance to work with J.R. bringing Maddy to life in this new series.

  TABLE OF CONTENTS

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  Chapter Thirty

  Chapter Thirty-One

  Chapter Thirty-Two

  Chapter Thirty-Three

  Reading Sample: Heir Ascendant

  Reading Sample: Chiaroscuro

  Other Books by J.R. Rain

  Other Books by Matthew S. Cox

  About the Author: J.R. Rain

  About the Author: Matthew S. Cox

  The Devil’s Eye

  Chapter One

  Entirely Different

  Unorthodox methods work for me―such as jumping off a bridge after finding a dead man on the side of the road. Not the first thing that comes to most people’s minds, but I tend to regard ‘normal’ as an insult.

  Lucky for me, it’s not a big bridge, and it’s not over water. Or at least, it’s not a sixty-foot drop to a freezing bay. The little creek at the bottom of the gulch in front of me is barely shin-deep, and impossible to see from the road past all the vines and bushes. Oh, and by the way, the hill is steeper than it looked from the road. Naturally, before I’m halfway down, my hair loses its tolerance for being held back, and tosses its clip with the sharp snap of broken plastic. By the time I reach the streambed, my head’s an explosion of bright-red frizz. Sometimes, it’s as if my hair has a mind of its own. Given how often I flirt with magic, it wouldn’t surprise me if it soaked some up and developed free will.

  With both hands, I pull aside the thick, curly theater curtain draped over my face and search the greenery, which comes up to my thighs. A small garter snake lifts its nose off the ground to give me the eye.

  “Good morning, little guy,” I whisper. “Sorry to tromp into your house. I won’t be long.”

  Rick, my partner, yells from overhead, “What are you doing? There’s all kinds of poison ivy and snakes down there… and maybe a bear.”

  The nearly two-foot-long snake lowers itself back to the ground and crawls out of sight among the greenery. I twist around to peer up at my partner leaning on the guardrail thirty or so feet above and behind me. A pair of patrol officers next to him stare down at me as if I’ve lost my mind. Honestly, I’m not sure what made me jump the barrier and go down here. It felt like what I needed to do.

  He laughs when my hair flops down over my face again. I puff at it, but yeah, right. It falls right back over my eyes.

  “Oh, come on,” I mutter to my hair. “I’m trying to work here.” This time, when I tuck it behind my ears, it stays.

  “Maddy?” yells Rick.

  “I’m fine,” I shout back. “Only some garter snakes and they’re no danger. They’re rather charming, unlike your in-laws. They know I’m not going to hurt them… unlike your in-laws.”

  He laughs, then yells, “You should put on a Tyvek… the poison ivy.”

  “Pff.” I wave him off. The plants won’t bother me. It’s a matter of mutual respect.”

  “Suit yourself. So, what… you get some kinda immunity to poison ivy in trade for that two-second sunburn thing?”

  “Something like that.” I’d try to explain my relationship with nature, but it would only waste both of our time. Rick knows I’m a witch, and he plays cool, but I’m sure he doesn’t believe in it.

  He walks out of sight, probably to start taking pictures of the body. That likely means he’s trusting my opinion that we’re at a crime scene and not an accident.

  So, yeah. A trucker finds a dead guy lying on the side of the road at two-something in the morning next to a paper bag containing an empty bottle of Night Train… bum wine. Specifically, the body is on a little bridge spanning the ravine I’m presently exploring. The patrol officers who arrived first figure the guy had been stumbling around drunk when he got clipped in the face by a passing vehicle that mashed open his head like a hardboiled egg. Even if that were true, there’s still a crime―hit and run, since the driver didn’t stop.

  Captain Greer sent us out to have a look, due diligence and all. Within seconds of me staring past the dead guy, over the guardrail and down at the thick greenery, I knew something waited there wanting to be found. I’m also pretty sure we’re not investigating an accident; the energy in the air is completely wrong for that. My arms out for balance, I make my way farther down the slope toward the creek gurgling below.

  Rick returns to lean on the guardrail and shakes his head. Normally, he’s pretty sharp. I think he’s daydreaming about an easy afternoon―nothing to see here, just a car accident―and us getting to go home on time. Between watching me ‘do my thing,’ and facing the idea that I may be correct about this not being an accident, he’s no doubt lamenting the death of his afternoon surfing the web. I mean, don’t get me wrong. We love working cases, but we also love being idle―because that means no one’s been murdered. Alas, we’re never idle.

  Once the creek edge is a few inches from my boots, I set my hands on my hips and look around at the area, every so often shooting a glance up at the road in an effort to get a feel for where an object might have landed. It feels like someone threw something off the bridge, and I think my hair agrees with me since it’s staying out of my eyes. That means the Goddess wants me to find something―or I’m potentially in danger. And given the most ferocious critters around here appear to be garter snakes, I’m guessing it’s the former.

  Nothing looks obvious. Might be time to ask for help.

  Focusing on my desire to find what I’m sure a killer hurled down here, I bow my head and whisper, “By Ceridwen’s wisdom and Ma’at’s truth, let Gaia reveal that which is hidden in her verdant swath.”

  A soft breeze stirs among the trees and shrubs, strengthening the scent of the woodlands. Sometimes, I find myself pretending that we’re not a few minutes’ drive away from Olympia, and the whole world is still a vast, natural paradise. I am quite fond of modern amenities―especially hair conditioner… and having coffee shops on every corner―but I’d give those up in a heartbeat if the whole world could be this… simple and alive. Then again, vanilla lattes aren’t really that complex, are they?

  “Anything?�
�� yells Rick.

  Based on the genuine interest in his voice, he’s moved out of denial and into his ‘let’s get this done’ phase. I don’t give him a hard time about his lazy act. One, I’m sure it’s an act. And two, he’s the only one in our department who doesn’t tease me about my witchcraft. While I’m sure he’ll never advance to the point of believing in it, he has been supportive. Rick will usually even chime in on my behalf when Linda gets going. Detective Linda Gonzalez is our department’s resident insecure Catholic. You know that joke about how can you tell if someone is vegan? (Answer: Don’t worry, they’ll tell you.) Well, that’s her, only with church. I don’t have a problem with anyone’s particular beliefs, just the people who can’t accept that some of us don’t want to follow the same path as them.

  I smile at the plant life around me, grateful for the attention of the Earth Goddess. My focus settles on where a dense mass of poison ivy seems to be leaning aside to reveal the ground beneath it―and an old, wooden baseball bat. A wavering branch on a little sapling tree next points at something farther down the creek from the road that’s too small to see from where I stand.

  “Working on it,” I call up to Rick before whispering, “Thank you for hearing me.”

  Good thing I brought the camera. I snap evidence photos of the bat from a few angles and drop a yellow tag to mark where I found it.

  With that done, I tug a pair of blue latex gloves out of my pocket, pull them on, and step over the stream to recover the bat, which is quite obviously spattered with blood at the end. Soon after I move off toward the second object, the poison ivy settles back as it had been. Eight steps later, I find a wallet among the foliage, splayed open with a number of plastic cards scattered around, likely thrown free from the force of impact. That, too, I snap multiple pictures of, as well as a few shots back up toward the bridge from where I’m standing. Again, I drop a yellow tag by the wallet.

  When I crouch to pick it up, Ceridwen’s wisdom clicks in my brain. Some detectives call them hunches, but the universe hates an imbalance of forces. Energy we send out comes back to us three times as strong, but the universe and random chance isn’t always the agent of karmic return―sometimes it has mortal hands. I know the cosmos is nudging me in a particular direction. The cosmos, I think, wants me to solve this case. Or, in the least, to balance the energy.

  I collect the wallet and cards.

  When I stand and face Rick to show off my discoveries, my hair falls over my eyes again. That’s a good sign. Nothing else to find down here. After puffing it aside to see, I make my way back up the hill toward the road. I suppose I could try to rummage around for my hair clip, but some battles are pointless, not to mention I’m fairly certain it broke. It wouldn’t be the first time. Anyway, my time is worth more than a little bit of spring-loaded plastic.

  Rick takes the bat from me when I reach the guardrail, freeing my hands for the climb up and over back onto the road. Once my boots are on pavement again, I set the wallet/cards on the sedan’s roof while Rick goes for evidence bags from the trunk. We might get prints off the outside of the wallet, so I use a pen to lift the leather flap, exposing a Washington State driver’s license. The deceased is evidently Mr. Brian Lewis. His photo looks much like the guy sprawled on the road would look had half his skull not been mashed in. He’s also local to Olympia. Seeing his registration for a 2014 Saab agrees with the whispers of the Goddess.

  I point to the paper bag of booze. “That wine didn’t belong to Mr. Lewis.” I glance over at the patrol officers, then to Rick. “It belonged to whoever killed him and stole his car. This guy didn’t die from smooching the side mirror of a passing truck.”

  Rick seals the bag holding the bat and gestures for the wallet, which I pass to him. “Kinda figured that part out when you handed me a bloody baseball bat, Maddy.”

  “Where’d you get the stolen car from?” asks the senior of the two cops, scratching at his hairline. A little grey creeps into the brown of his hair over his ears. He’s probably got me by a more than a few years. Hey, some guys like patrol. Nothing wrong with that.

  The other cop, a younger man with short, black hair, keeps eyeing the body, like he’s worried it’s going to run off. I miss being in my twenties, but I don’t miss being a patrol officer. It’s clear from his expression that he doesn’t have much experience with dead people. This could be the first corpse he’s seen up close, or maybe it’s his third or fourth and he’s the type who’ll never get used to it.

  I point at the dead man. “Mr. Lewis is wearing a sweater, khakis, and boat shoes. Not a good choice for a long walk through the woods, and people who go hiking don’t tend to follow roads. Also, a guy who owns a Saab and dresses like that isn’t likely to get blind drunk on Night Train.”

  Both cops cringe.

  Rick winks at me and says, “I’ll stick with Wild Irish Rose, thanks.”

  The two cops chuckle.

  “Wow.” I whistle and shake my head. “That was bad.”

  “Ugh,” says the younger cop. “That stuff’s even nastier than Night Train.”

  I cringe. “You’ve tried it?”

  “No, ma’am. But I smelled it.” He shivers. “Had a guy throw up on me last month. He’d been drinking the stuff.”

  Rick stifles a chuckle since it’s bad form to laugh within ten feet of a dead guy, especially when they might still be watching.

  “Given there’s no Saab here”—I gesture around—“someone, more than likely the killer, took it. The murder weapon and the victim’s wallet, cleared out of cash and major credit cards, were chucked straight off the road. Whoever did this wasn’t thinking much about covering their tracks… probably due to their having three-quarters of a bottle of Night Train in them.”

  Rick bags the wallet before holding it up. “Damn, Maddy. Good eyes. I’m not gonna ask how you found this down there so fast.”

  “I had help.” I smile and brush a finger over my pentacle necklace.

  “Right.” He grins while tossing the bag in the trunk and grabbing a measuring ribbon.

  “You into that voodoo stuff?” asks the younger cop.

  “Witchcraft, not voodoo.” I smile and reach for my phone to call in a crime scene team. Might as well do that before I climb back down to record the official distance the objects landed. “They’re entirely different.”

  Chapter Two

  All Three

  While sitting in the car waiting for the crime scene unit to show up, I get a hit on Mr. Lewis’ Visa card. Yes, modern technology has changed the face of law enforcement in ways people even twenty years ago could never imagine―like wireless internet or laptops in our unmarked car, both of which I’m using now. The two cops have moved off down the road a ways to stand with the other unit keeping traffic away from the crime scene.

  “Got something,” I say.

  Rick’s using the steering wheel as a desk to fill out an incident report. He finishes writing a line and looks up. “Talk to me.”

  “Our guy’s missing Visa card visited a liquor store at Capital Mall a little after eleven this morning, for $88.14.” I point at the screen. “It’s like this guy’s asking us to find him.”

  Rick shrugs. “Maybe… or he has no concept. Good chance our suspect isn’t firing on all cylinders.”

  “You’re probably right.” I note the address for the store and shut the laptop. “The digital age is handy sometimes. Can’t imagine what cops did thirty years ago.”

  “A lot of walking around. And we would’ve”―he feigns a gasp―“had to go to the station to use the computers there. If we even had them.”

  I grin at him. A second later, my hair falls over half my face. I push it aside and click on the screen in front of me to the next page. “No one’s reported him missing, so he either lives alone or he’s not on great terms with his significant other.”

  “Aren’t you going to tie that back again?” asks Rick.

  “Maybe. She doesn’t really like being contained.”
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br />   He gives me his usual ‘I’m not sure if she’s serious or kidding’ stare.

  Before I can elaborate, a white van with medical examiner’s office markings pulls up. Two of Dr. Ferrante’s underlings (they hate being called that) hop out. Rick and I get out of our car and wander over to meet them by Mr. Lewis’ body.

  “Afternoon.” I shake hands with a dark-haired, bookish man who looks like he belongs reciting poetry somewhere in a Starbucks, and an Asian woman who’s already got her game face on. She probably enjoys the sight of dead people as much as I do, which is to say, not much. They both appear around my age. “I’m Detective Madeline Wimsey,” I say. “And this is my partner, Detective Rick Santiago.”

  Rick shakes their hands as well.

  “Oh, so you’re the witch,” says the guy, smiling. “I’m Neal Parker.”

  “Amanda Sway,” says the woman. The ID badge hanging on her chest spells it ‘Sui.’ “What can you tell us so far?”

  “The deceased’s name is Brian Lewis. He’s thirty-four. Trucker found him a little after two this morning. We recovered a wooden bat down in the gully that I’m reasonably confident is the murder weapon.”

  Neal and Amanda both nod.

  “All right,” says Neal while lifting a bag of camera gear out of the van. “We’re on it.”

  Amanda crouches by Mr. Lewis’ remains to examine the wound.

  Rick and I wind up half-sitting on the hood of our sedan watching the coroner’s team photograph the body and conduct an exhaustive process of documenting his position and orientation. Amanda finds bone and brain bits we missed, some on the guardrail, some on the edge of the bridge. Fair bet there’s also spatter down in the ravine, but I doubt they’re going to find that.

  “You doing that thing at Seattle Children’s Olympia Clinic again this year?” asks Rick.

  Wow, random much? I chuckle to myself, then say, “Of course. Why wouldn’t I?”