by Logan Byrne
“Good job, guys,” a woman passing by said.
“Lexa here apprehended him all by herself. He even had a gun,” Xelia said.
“Holy crap, are you guys hearing this?” the guy yelled.
“It was a team effort, not just me. If they hadn’t funneled him into that alley, I never would’ve caught up with him,” I said, deflecting the glory. I really did feel that way, though. It was a team effort, even if I got the final blow. I didn’t want to discount what either Charlie or Xelia did, because I knew I couldn’t have done it on my own.
“She was awesome,” Charlie said, patting me on the back.
“Now you guys get to learn the art of booking. I was going to save this for another day, but since this craziness happened, we might as well finish the entire process and show you two how it goes,” Xelia said.
“Be my guest. Now I get a break,” the man said, laughing, before walking off.
“Targ is always a comedian,” Xelia said, laughing too. “We won’t be doing everything that happens in the booking process. Some of it’s placed upon officers who do just booking, but we always do the first bits.”
We escorted the prisoner over towards a desk, where Xelia sat him down and handcuffed him to a metallic bar bolted into the top of the desk. “The first step is to record their name, the crime, and anything else that can be put on this form,” she said, handing me the form. “Go ahead.”
“Name?” I asked, standing up straight and trying to sound and act as professional as I could.
“Bite me,” he said, looking away.
“Sometimes that happens,” Xelia said when I looked at her. “Officer Blackmoon asked you a question, and you will answer it.” Xelia put her hands on the desk, bending over, and the suspect glared back at her.
“Or what?” he asked defiantly.
Xelia morphed, her eyes a dark garnet, her fangs coming out, a hiss escaping her throat that could turn even Medusa to stone. “Okay, okay!” he yelled, terrified. “My name is Terrence Jacobs,” he said, defeated.
I wrote down his name, also taking down a basic description of his appearance as Charlie looked over my shoulder and watched. “Magical race or ethnicity?” I asked, getting to the next part of the report.
“Pilt,” he said grumpily. I paused. It felt weird hearing it aloud. I’d only heard it before as an insult, as a derogatory statement that people used to try to break me. Not only that, but he was doing the same thing I did, although I never stole purses or wallets. Was there a correlation, or just a coincidence?
“Something wrong?” Xelia asked as I hesitated.
“No, nothing wrong, sorry,” I said, writing “pilt” down on the paper, as well as his crime, petty theft and evading arrest. Xelia made me write down attempted violence against an officer, which I did, more so because I didn’t want to see her eyes or fangs again.
“Okay, you can leave that here for now. We have to go take his mug shots,” Xelia said, releasing Terrence from his bar. Charlie held onto him, pushing him along as I walked behind. This could’ve been me, getting arrested for theft, likely evading police, and seeing the inside of a jail cell. I was lucky I’d never gotten caught, not even close, but I was a little more careful than Terrence was. Taking a purse in broad daylight with three cops on the other side of the street was about as dumb as you could get.
“Another one?” a man behind the camera asked as we approached.
“Yes, Kel, another one,” she said, smiling. “Always another one.”
Xelia filled out his board, including his name and intake number, before forcing him out in front of a height board background. Kel took the pictures, guiding him along. “Done,” Kel said, taking the pictures out of a printer and handing them to Xelia. “Try not to be so good, I’m getting sick of taking pictures.”
“What’s next?” Charlie asked with an uncharacteristic level of enthusiasm. I thought he just liked the thrill of the hunt and chase, and I had feeling he wouldn’t be as thrilled about all this once he had to do it dozens and dozens of times over.
“Next we put the picture with his report, take fingerprints, and hand him off to be stripped down, changed, and taken to the cells. From there, he can post bail, if there is one, and have his call, and if those don’t help him get released, he’ll go to general population,” Xelia said before putting his picture in his report, grabbing the folder, and taking him to fingerprinting.
The fingerprinting was straightforward, with a pad of ink and spots on the police report for the prints to go, at least for humanoid creatures. She said there were other papers for different creatures, considering some of them, like giants and ogres, had huge fingers and hands. I couldn’t wait until I had to force one of them to do this. What a fun time that would be.
“And that’s it, we’re done, at least with this. We’ll have to work on some paperwork, formality stuff, but he’s booked and will now be taken off,” Xelia said. An officer came over and took Terrence from our custody. “It didn’t take that long.”
“You do this every time somebody is arrested?” Charlie asked.
“Yeah, but sometimes it gets even more difficult, like if you have to interrogate or question a suspect. That can also be fun, though, depending on how much evidence you have against them,” she said.
“So what do we do now?” Charlie asked.
“Go get something to eat or drink, take a break, and then go back out there. The crime never stops, and we always have to be ready and out there for when it happens again,” she said, shrugging. It was obviously an annoying part of the job.
As I looked around the booking room, watching the dozens of other cops talking to suspects and writing reports, I wondered how many of them were on our side. Were any others in the resistance, or worse, on Kiren’s side? How could we know who to trust and who to be wary of? I had an underlying feeling that all five of us were going to have to be on our toes going forward.
14
Four days had passed and now I was finally getting the chance to delve into the fun stuff. Work had been hard, harder than I’d thought it would be, and I’d gained a newfound respect for the people of this precinct, no matter what job they had. We were all in a symbiotic relationship, a partnership where everybody was just as important as everybody else. I’d maybe glorified the detectives and cops before, but the people behind the scenes made just as much of an impact, if not more sometimes.
Charlie and I spent a lot of time together, which was fun and a breath of fresh air. He was a nice person, super funny, like the brother I’d never had. Our rapport was platonic, the way I think we both wanted, and I knew I could count on him. I had his back, and he definitely had mine. Xelia instilled that facet into us, the whole partnership thing. I’d worked alone for so long that having another person there to help me was invaluable.
“We finally got one,” Xelia said, coming over to us as we did the grunt work, a.k.a. paperwork. She slammed a manila folder on the table, and I opened it to see what she was talking about. “We’ve got a case, everybody did. Now we can get out there with the real fun.”
“It’s about time,” Charlie said with a drawn-out exhalation, slapping his palms on the edge of the table. “I can’t wait to catch some people.”
“Usually three people aren’t on cases, so it should be a bit easier than usual,” Xelia said.
“What are we investigating?” I asked.
“An underground casino ring that’s operating in the gulch,” she said.
“Eh, not as fun as a murder, but I’ll take it,” Charlie said.
“So what are we investigating, exactly?” I asked.
“Who operates it, mainly. Operating a non-licensed casino is strictly forbidden and against the law. We need to disband it. Besides, they’re usually also a front for other illegal activity, like rare creature poaching and trafficking,” Xelia said.
“When do we begin?” I asked.
“Now. We need to start with the leads here, a forest elf dealer named Pokeshi
, and see what we can get out of him,” Xelia said.
•••
Pokeshi was known to hang out around the bad parts of town, dealing in drugs and other illegal paraphernalia. Forest elves were notorious for those sorts of activity. Their sticky fingers were always looking to make a quick buck no matter the cost. They were generally pretty harmless and non-violent, which was going to make things easier on the three of us. The last thing I wanted was another gun incident, or somebody I’d have to fight.
“Any sight of him?” Xelia asked over the radio, as Charlie and I sat dressed in plain clothes across the street. Xelia was across the street in a run-down diner.
“Nothing,” I said.
“Wait, is that something?” Charlie asked, nudging me in the direction of a shady character across and down the street. There was a figure dressed in a beige trench coat and hat. I couldn’t tell what type of creature it was, at first. It looked around, like it was going to meet somebody, before its signature pointed ears poked out of the raised coat collar. “It’s an elf,” Charlie said softly.
“You have eyes on him?” Xelia asked.
“It might be him, we don’t know, but it’s the only forest elf we’ve seen all day, and we do know that Pokeshi frequents these parts,” I said.
“I’m going to engage the subject. Walk slowly, like you’re just out for a stroll, on the other side of the street, the one you’re on now. If he runs, and he likely will, you can cut him off,” Xelia said.
“Copy that,” I said. Xelia walked out of the diner as Charlie and I stood up.
Charlie and I walked along our side of the street, not even looking over at Pokeshi, at least not directly. I could see him off in the distance, sticking to the shadows of a store’s awning. Charlie and I took Xelia’s orders and acted like we were two friends out for a stroll. There was nothing on us that indicated we were officers of the law. We were ghosts.
Gaining distance, Xelia radioed that it was definitely him; the tip of his left ear was missing just like it should be. As we looked over, he noticed her, and his feet started sliding around like he was going to bolt. “Stop! Police!” she yelled, just before he darted.
If there was one thing forest elves were, it was quick. Hopping through the dense canopy of the trees, they were agile and had an athletic endurance that put most to shame. That made it extremely difficult to apprehend them unless you had the element of surprise on your side.
“He’s crossing the street,” Xelia said.
Charlie shifted, gaining speed exponentially, until he cut Pokeshi off and tackled him to the ground. While Charlie used his four paws to hold Pokeshi down, Xelia and I caught up seconds later. Pokeshi screamed, hissing, before accepting the fact that he wasn’t getting up.
“Come on, elf, you’re under arrest,” Xelia said, grabbing his hands and putting a special pair of handcuffs on him. “Elves are known to be expert lock-pickers, so we have to use special cuffs on them,” she said.
“Back to the precinct?” I asked.
“Not exactly,” she said, smiling. Xelia pushed Pokeshi into the alleyway we were in front of before slamming him up against the wall. “If you tell me what I want to know, I can look the other way and release you without arresting you,” she said firmly.
“I’m no snitch,” Pokeshi said, looking the other way.
“Look me in my eyes,” Xelia said, her fangs coming out and her eyes darkening. Pokeshi looked straight into them.
“Your tricks won’t work on me, vampire. I’m not afraid of you,” he said defiantly. It was obvious that he was going to be more of a pain in the butt than Terrence, who gave up once Xelia transformed. This was when it was great to have somebody like Xelia here, teaching us, because I wasn’t sure Charlie and I would know what to do if a suspect was this defiant.
“You know we have a troll in lockup back at the precinct. With one call, I could get this guy placed with him,” Xelia said, looking at us.
“Well, wait a second,” Pokeshi said. Xelia smiled a little.
“No, there’s no waiting. You don’t want to talk to us, so we’re just going to have to book you. What happens with you and the troll is your business,” she said, pulling him off the wall and starting to walk away with him. He resisted, putting his feet down, trying not to move.
“We can talk about this, we don’t have to do this,” he said frantically. The relations between trolls and forest elves was horrendous and usually ended up with the elves being slaughtered and eaten. I was guessing he knew his fate if he went into that cell.
“I’ll give you one chance, one chance, and you better tell me what I need to know,” Xelia said, slamming him against the wall again.
“Anything, I’ll tell you anything,” he said, frightened.
“I hear the gulch has an underground, illegal casino operated by somebody who’s trying to take over,” she said. His face turned sour, like he wanted her to ask him anything but that. “Tell me where to find it.”
“Listen, I don’t want any problems with them. I can’t tell you who’s operating it,” he said.
“I don’t need to know that right now, just where it’s located. And I swear, if you alert them to us coming, I’ll eviscerate you,” she said, her eyes glowing red.
“It’s located underneath a bakery on Charm Street, but that’s all I know. It has a red awning out front. Please don’t hurt me,” he said, cowering as best as he could with his hands behind his back.
“My promise to eviscerate you still stands, don’t forget. As long as you don’t alert them or mess this up, they’ll never know your name. Got it?” she asked.
“One-hundred percent, deal,” he said.
“Now get out of here and don’t let me see you in this neighborhood again,” she said, unlocking his cuffs. He thanked us before running down the alleyway and out of sight.
“Should you have just let him go like that?” I asked. “He’s a criminal.”
“He’ll get picked up again sometime when he slips up. A creature like him can’t help himself when it comes to procuring and selling illegal goods. It’s just a matter of time,” she said.
“We could’ve gotten more out of him,” Charlie said.
“We got enough for now. He wasn’t going to give up their names, so we need to find that out ourselves. Come on, we’ve got some digging to do,” she said.
•••
Digging was Xelia’s term for rummaging through hundreds, if not thousands, of files to find out what was so special about this bakery and why they chose to run their operation out of it. We went through lease records, sales, tenants, and anything else we could find. It wasn’t hard to find the bakery, since the description fit what Pokeshi gave us, but there was no correlation.
“I can’t find anything that links this bakery to anybody or anything illegal,” I said. The hours had flown by and it was now nighttime.
“There has to be something, it isn’t just random. Maybe the person has never been caught and isn’t in our files anywhere,” Xelia said.
“So then how do we know it’s real and whether or not to go forward if we don’t have a single shred of evidence to go by?” Charlie asked.
“We just have to go with our guts and go undercover. Once we get enough evidence, we can move forward with the arrest,” she said.
“So we go in, see the gambling, and bring in a team to arrest?” Charlie asked.
“No, it’s not that simple. We need to mount evidence against them. The casino bit is just a small sample of what they do, and it won’t help us prosecute them for their trafficking, poaching, or potential drug trade. We need to find those things happening, or find records of it happening there, before we can mount the arrest,” Xelia said.
“I’m starting to feel like my brain is being rattled with all the paperwork. Can we call it a night and start fresh in the morning?” I asked.
“Yeah, we probably should. Welcome to the joy that is late nights,” she said, smiling.
“If anythi
ng pops up, though, let us know,” Charlie said, standing up.
Britta and Faus waved at us as we walked into the cafeteria for dinner. “You guys look beat,” she said. A wave of tiredness quickly washed over me as the bright lights intensified above.
“We are, we definitely are,” Charlie said.
“We got a case, and it’s been proving to be more work than I think either Charlie or I anticipated,” I said.
“Really? Our case has been going pretty well. We’re solving a string of home invasions,” Britta said, alluding to her and Blake.
“I think we’re already close to cracking it. Turns out, a lot of criminals don’t really cover their tracks, which makes it easy for us,” Blake said.
“We have an underground casino that may or may not also deal in rare creature trafficking and also a little drug trade on the side,” I said.
“Wow, they really went in on that. It sounds like something a veteran should be tasked with, not two recruits brand new to the force,” Britta said.
“I’m going to snag some food before I fall asleep,” I said, and Charlie agreed.
“Are you ready to infiltrate this place?” he asked as we walked up and got in line.
“I don’t think you could ever be ready. I’m still racking my brain over the facts, though,” I said. “How is there no trace back to this place? It shows up on paper as just a normal bakery.”
“Maybe because it is, you never know,” he said, grabbing a sandwich from the belt.
“I think it’s something else, someone else,” I said. I had my suspicions about Kiren and what he was doing. We hadn’t really heard anything about him, and nobody here ever mentioned his name unless he was in the news. All signs were pointing to nobody here was working with or for him. What if he was behind this casino?
“Who do you think it is?” he asked.
“Kiren Nightstorm,” I whispered as softly as I could.
“Really? Why would he bother with something like this?” he asked, confused.
“It’s a good way to earn money off the books that can’t be traced back to him. Besides, it’s also a power trip, you know that. He thrives on power,” I said.
