“Anyway, what I figure has happened here is that the wizard who made the portal to our world has made a lucrative deal with the Hillstomper family. They’re the ones who supplied the elf apples and the moonrat and whatever other creatures have been brought through to our world,” Tallow explained.
“But why?” said Douglas. “What’s the point?”
“For the Hillstompers it would be another way to make a profit. They’ve been here for at least a year establishing a foothold in Atlanta. They sell magic items in exchange for, oh, precious metals probably. And slaves.”
“But why bother with that?” Douglas asked. “Why not just trade in firearms? Surely something like a machine gun would be worth a lot over in that world.”
Tallow shook his head. “It wouldn’t work. All technology just falls apart over there. I noticed that when I went over there and I saw evidence of it the whole time I was there. Not even basic technology like gunpowder or lightbulbs. I tried to ‘invent’ them myself. There’s some kind of magic in place that keeps Gaiana from advancing. They have been stuck in the middle ages for thousands of years.”
“That kind of sucks,” said Ross. “Then again they do have magic. Maybe it’s some kind of cosmic tradeoff.”
Tallow shrugged.
“I still don’t get it,” said Douglas. “Putting people into slavery nowadays is risky. It’s universally despised over here. And when people go missing, questions are asked.”
Tallow scoffed. “Really? How big is your missing persons database?”
“Enormous,” said Ross. “But that’s a normal problem in a city our size.”
“So normal that a girl like Polly goes missing and the cops give up after a half-hearted search? So normal that the son of one of Atlanta’s own officers goes missing and they stop looking after a month?” the wizard snorted. “That’s the perfect place for criminals like the Hillstompers to operate. Especially since all they have to do is send the people they abduct through the portal. They’re gone. No evidence left behind. And in Gaiana they’re able to bring in a flood of clean slaves. People that don’t belong there so there’s nobody looking for them.”
Douglas’ heart sank as a possibility he had been doing his best to ignore overwhelmed him. His hands trembled on the steering wheel and there was a quaver in his voice. “So what you’re saying is . . . Asher’s not here anymore.”
The interior of the car was quiet for several agonizing moments before Tallow responded. He placed his hand back on his nephew’s shoulder. “That’s not what I was saying, Douglas. I don’t have any evidence to prove it, but my gut says it’s not too late for Asher. Polly too. I think they’re still here in Atlanta somewhere.”
“Damn right,” Ross agreed, “And if not, we’ll go over there after ’em. Right?”
Tallow hesitated briefly, but said, “That’s right. Whatever it takes. We’ll get your son back.”
Douglas nodded. “Thanks.”
Suddenly, Ross’ phone went off. Douglas raised an eyebrow. The ringtone had the sound of a country tune, upbeat twang and tight harmonies. He had never imagined Ross listening to a song with banjo accompaniment.
Ross noticed Douglas’ look and grinned. “It’s Brenda calling. I changed her ringtone this morning. You recognize the song?”
“It’s vaguely familiar,” Douglas said. Tallow shrugged.
Ross picked up the call and gave Douglas an amused shake of the head. “It’s ‘Eastbound and Down’ by Jerry Reed.” When there was no recognition in their faces, he added, “The ‘Smokey and the Bandit’ theme song.”
Both Tallow and Douglas laughed.
“Hey, Brenda. What do you got?” Ross asked. “You heard that? Yes that was a slam at you.” He chuckled. “All right. I’ll do that.” He looked over at the two of them. “She says that if I’m going to give her a Burt Reynolds related song as a ringtone she’d rather have the theme song to Navajo Joe.”
Douglas had never heard of that one. He looked back at Tallow and the both of them shrugged.
Ross nodded, listening to what Brenda was saying. “All right. Right. We’re actually on our way back now.” He ended the call. “She says that she thinks she’s found a couple options that could be your rural property, Tallow. She wants us to come in to her office and take a look.”
“You see, Douglas?” said Tallow. “There’s hope yet. I’ve got a feeling we’re about to find the place they took Asher.”
Douglas smiled, thankful for the encouragement, but there was something odd about the way Tallow had been acting all day. He was less calculating and much more impulsive. He knew something that he wasn’t saying. Douglas was sure of it.
“Hey, Tallow,” said Ross. “You told us your theory about what the dwarf’s up to. You never did explain the ‘dark wizard’.”
“Magic in Gaiana is governed by a strict set of laws,” Tallow said. “There is a thick book full of them, but they can all be distilled down into three major rules. Magic can’t be used to gain political power or enslave others or commit murder. Any magic user that breaks those laws is declared a dark wizard and is hunted down by the Mage Schools. The fact that there is a wizard here in Atlanta and he’s tied to dwarf smugglers tells me that he’s on the run. He’s found a way to make a permanent portal and he’s somewhere here in Atlanta, living free from his hunters.”
“I bet that’s another reason you were so loud in the dwarf’s office today,” Ross said. “You want him to know he’s not safe from the rules here.”
“Exactly,” said Tallow
“What happens to these ‘dark wizards’ when they’re caught?” Douglas asked.
“Their ability to use magic is taken away. We call it quelling,” Tallow said. “Then once they’re no longer a magical threat, they’re brought to trial.”
“Executed?” said Douglas.
“Depends on the depths of their crimes,” said Tallow. “I take it you don’t approve?”
Ross grunted. “Doug and I disagree on that subject. He’s not at all for capital punishment. I say there are some people you can’t rehabilitate.”
Douglas didn’t feel like debating the issue. He glanced in the rearview mirror and caught his uncle’s eye. “When we were in there with Erl, you called yourself, ‘Master Tallow, Wizard of Mysteries’. Does that mean you were a dark wizard hunter?”
“I hunted my fair share,” Tallow said matter-of-factly. “But no. That wasn’t my main job. The Wizard of Mysteries is the Mage School’s equivalent of a chief detective. I looked into any and all mysteries, magical or otherwise. Whatever caught my attention really.”
“Ha!” said Ross. “You were like the Sherlock Holmes of Hogwarts.”
Tallow smiled at the comparison. “Something like that.”
They arrived back at headquarters and headed straight for the elevator. Just as they were about to get in, Ross received a text message. He stopped in his tracks, staring down at the phone in his hand.
Douglas held the door. “You coming?”
Ross looked up at them. “Uh, you go ahead. I’ve got to head down to forensics real quick.”
“Something important?” asked Tallow.
“I’m not sure yet,” Ross said and opened the stairwell.
Douglas let the door close. “Ross never takes the stairs.”
The elevator lurched and Tallow let out a slow breath. “Forensics is only one floor down from here.”
“True,” Douglas said. He brushed it off. If it was important Ross would tell him.
He and Tallow arrived at Brenda’s office to find her in a good mood. Her hair was down and there was a youthful energy about her. She met them at the door with a wide smile.
“I don’t know what was in that apple, Tallow, but last night I had the best sleep I’ve had in months!”
“That’s life magic for you,” Tallow said.
“And I just ate a quarter of an apple,” she said. “What would happen if I ate a whole meal of elf food?”
“
You’d feel great. Your mind would be sharper. You’d heal faster.” Tallow shrugged. “You’d get used to it after awhile. We ate it a lot at the Mage School.”
Her mouth hung open and she shook her head at him. “Why would you leave such a place?”
“No Wi-Fi,” Tallow replied.
Brenda’s nose wrinkled. “Good point.”
She moved around her desk and bent over her keyboard. “So, I looked into the properties owned by ERL Investments for you.”
“It’s just Erl,” Douglas said. “That’s one of the things we learned today.”
Brenda looked at him funny for a second, then nodded. “Oh, right. Because of the name of the company president. I didn’t think about that. I don’t like it. It makes the company name sound dumb.”
“True,” said Tallow.
“Anyway, digging up all the property was more difficult than I thought it would be. ERL Investments officially only owns land in downtown Atlanta. However I was able to link them to several dummy corporations that they were using to purchase real estate outside the perimeter. Once I figured that out, I found two likely candidates for the property you were looking for.”
Brenda pulled up a map and turned one of her monitors to face them. There was one property to the south in Pleasant Hill and another east of Atlanta near Stone Mountain. Both were places that could be driven to in the time range Tallow had allotted.
“Can you pull up photos of the properties?” Tallow asked.
Brenda clacked away on her keyboard and dragged some satellite images over to the screen they were looking at.
Tallow looked closely at the first image. “No. This one’s rural enough but the property’s too developed.” He pointed to the second image. “That has to be it.”
“But it just looks like farmland,” Douglas said. The image showed some fields of crops and a small forested area. “The only buildings I see are what looks like a large farmhouse and a barn.”
“I know,” Tallow said, his gaze intense as he stared at the photo. “Still, I think it’s the place.”
“That’s the one in Pleasant Hill,” Brenda said. “I’ll forward you the address.”
“Good,” Tallow said. “Let’s grab Ross and go.”
“It’s technically out of our jurisdiction,” Douglas pointed out. “We can’t just head down there without making arrangements with the local department.”
“It’ll just be a drive by. We can call in if we see anything,” Tallow replied. He saw the look on Douglas’ face and added, “I want to make sure I’m right and after what happened earlier today I think we should go there before Erl has the chance to move anyone.”
“Ooh. What happened over there?” Brenda asked, smiling excitedly. “Did you guys ruffle some feathers? Bust some heads?”
“We definitely ruffled some feathers,” Douglas said.
“What happened is that we confirmed that Erl Hill and his company are guilty,” Tallow said.
“Now we have to prove it,” Douglas added.
The door to the office opened behind them and they turned to see Ross standing in the door. The detective looked shaken. He was holding an envelope in his hand.
“You okay, Detective?” Tallow asked.
Ross stared at Tallow for a moment before blinking and forcing a smile. “I’m fine.”
“You don’t look fine,” said Douglas. “What did you find out in forensics?”
“Nothing important, I . . . Tallow I want to apologize to you,” Ross said.
Tallow’s eyebrows rose. “To me?”
“Yeah. It was, uh-. You know when I punched you in the nose?”
Brenda gasped. “You punched him?
Tallow smiled. “How could I forget? My makeup barely covers the shiner you gave me,” he joked. “Don’t worry. I forgave you.”
“Yeah, well, I kind of saved some of your blood and had a DNA test run,” Ross said embarrassedly. “I wanted to make sure you were really Douglas’ uncle.”
Douglas groaned. “Seriously, Bob? That’s what these trips to forensics have been about? Trying to get them to put a rush on it?”
Tallow was no longer smiling. “How sneaky of you. Couldn’t you have just taken my fingerprints off of a coffee mug or something?”
“It crossed my mind, but you didn’t give me the opportunity and since I had the blood I figured why not?” Bob admitted.
“So,” Tallow said, watching Ross carefully. “I take it I’m in the clear?”
Ross nodded. “Yeah. Again, I’m sorry.” He stuck out his hand. “We cool?”
Tallow shook it and his smile reappeared. “Yeah.”
“Good,” Ross said. He swallowed and tucked the envelope into the inside pocket of his suitcoat. “So what did we find?”
The ride to Pleasant Hill was quiet. Ross seemed unusually withdrawn, talking only if Douglas asked him a question. Tallow sat in the backseat with his hands gripping his cane and his eyes closed. He didn’t seem to be napping, though. It was more like meditation.
Douglas spent the drive going over the case in his mind, trying to think of any clue they might have missed or any avenue of investigation they hadn’t explored. So much was tied up in forensics. All the hair and blood samples from the travel agency could take weeks to be processed. He pushed his frustration about that aside, telling himself that it was unlikely that they would learn anything from it that they didn’t already know.
Ross’ phone beeped, notifying him of an email. He took a deep breath, startled from whatever deep thoughts he was thinking and checked to see what it was. “It’s from the chief,” he said.
“And?” said Douglas.
Ross scowled. “And she says Judge Loren’s not going to change her mind. She says that we need to do our jobs and find more evidence so that we can resubmit our request.”
“Wonderful,” Douglas said. “And now Erl knows we’ve been looking into Peachtree Warehousing. They’re probably destroying evidence as we speak. By the time we find something else, those vans might be cleaned out.”
“Don’t worry,” said Tallow, without opening his eyes. “If there’s one thing we’ve learned from all this it’s that Erl and the wizard have a weakness. They don’t take modern police technology seriously. That, or they don’t understand it.”
“What do you mean?” Douglas said.
“They’re messy. They leave trace evidence everywhere and depend on magic or muscle to cover their tracks,” Tallow replied.
“He’s got a point,” Ross said. “A modern criminal organization would have cleaned up after their selves better. They definitely wouldn’t have put the travel agency up for sale until it was clean.”
“And they wouldn’t have sent a bunch of thugs to attack the cops,” Tallow said. “No, their minds are still stuck in the way things work in Gaiana. Right now Erl and his boss are worried about me. Not the police. Believe me, cleaning those vans isn’t something high on their priority list.”
“But moving anyone they’ve abducted might be,” Douglas said. He took the Pleasant Hill exit “Do you really think Asher is at this farm, Tallow?”
Ross turned in his seat and looked back to gauge Tallow’s response.
Tallow’s eyes were still closed. “I’m not willing to promise that, but they could be holding some people there.”
Ross’ eyes narrowed. “What do you know?”
“Like I said yesterday,” Tallow replied, his voice measured. “Cicadas buzzing, the smell of freshly tilled earth and grass, and Mexican music. Trust me. Did we just take an exit?”
“Yeah,” said Douglas.
“Okay,” he said and his eyes clenched tighter. “Be quiet until we’re almost there.”
Douglas and Ross looked at each other and shrugged. Douglas followed the turns as directed by his GPS, heading off of busy streets and onto winding country roads. Then they turned onto the street of their destination. “It’s coming up in a quarter mile.”
“I think this is it,” Tallow said. He op
ened his eyes and looked out the window. “Slow down.”
Douglas did so. The houses in this area were spaced far apart, acres of farm or fenced-in pasture land between them. Finally, he came to the location designated on the map. A mailbox sat on a wooden post in front of a long dirt driveway. He could see the farmhouse and barn in the distance. The grass on either side of the driveway looked like it hadn’t been mown in weeks. “It looks deserted.”
“No white vans,” Ross verified.
“That we can see from this angle,” Tallow said. “Pull in.”
“You said this would just be a drive by,” Douglas reminded him. “If we go in there and someone comes out of that place and asks what we’re doing, we have no authority here.”
Tallow gave him a patient smile. “You two may be detectives for the Atlanta PD, but I’m just a P.I. You two are here as my . . . associates.”
“Go on. Pull in,” said Ross. “I wanna see where this takes us.”
Grimacing, Douglas pulled down the dirt driveway. It was not well maintained. The car was bumped and jostled and Douglas was glad that it hadn’t rained recently or they could have found themselves stuck.
He drove up to the farmhouse and parked. The sound of cicadas was audible before he opened the car door. They got out and were hit by a stiff breeze.
Tallow took a deep breath, the wind whipping his hair. His eyes were wide, “This is it.”
Ross took a deep breath of his own. “You know, sometimes I forget what fresh air smells like.”
Tallow walked along a pathway towards the front porch, keeping his eyes focused on the ground in front of him. When he reached the front steps he bent closer and peered at the wood.
“Tallow, what are you doing?” said Douglas.
“Finding evidence,” he replied and straightened up. He reached into his jacket’s inner pocket and pulled out an envelope. Then, as he had done in the travel agency building, he twisted the handle of his cane to reveal a small round opening.
Douglas didn’t understand why he thought he’d find blood here. “Isn’t it a bit windy for your smoke technique?”
Tallow Jones: Wizard Detective (The Tallow Novels Book 1) Page 27
