Charms and Death and Explosions

by Honor Raconteur

  I watched several men hop out of the fire wagon, heading for the hoses and tank attached to the wagon, and then I beelined for them. Catching one of their eyes, I gestured him toward me.

  “Sir,” he greeted civilly enough, his weight shifting as he fought the urge to ignore me and leap into the fray. “If you could step back—”

  Overriding him, I introduced myself, “Dr. Davenforth, Magical Examiner with Fourth Precinct. That is a magical charms shop in flames behind me.”

  The man likely had ten years of seasoning in his career, as he looked nearly thirty to me, and his eyes widened as he took on my meaning. Firemen especially understood the problems of magical fires, and this man knew his trade well, as he instantly turned and bellowed, “GOT A MAGICAL FIRE HERE! SUPPRESSIVE WATER ON ALL BUILDINGS AND GET THESE PEOPLE CLEAR!”

  As he turned back to me, I further clarified, “RM Seaton and Kingsman Gibson are also on hand, he’s handling the other side of the building. RM Seaton is the man in the red coat over there on our right. I’ll handle this front side until further aid comes.”

  “Yes sir, thank you, sir,” he rattled out smartly before pivoting sharply about and lending a hand with the hoses.

  I do adore the professionally competent. With a grim smile, I recast my magical suppressing spell, forcing the fire and magic back into a quarantined space. It would take a miracle to not lose this block altogether.

  Somewhere around midnight, the last of the fires finally died out to smoldering wisps of smoke. I sat on the floor of the car, my arm hooked over the edge of the seat, looking wearily at the building. They’d pulled the remains of Harmum Lees from the building not five minutes ago, and that was a gruesome sight that wouldn’t leave my dreams for many nights to come.

  I felt weary to my core. Not just physically, although my muscles ached under the exertion of today’s events, but emotionally as well. If a heart could bleed, mine did so, aching with all of the loss scattered about me. So much of this could have been prevented if two men had been stopped from making and selling bad charms. If only the police had taken the complaints seriously. If only we’d had proper inspections of the charms to begin with. If only, if only…I stopped myself before I could go any further down that road. I’d warned Jamie against doing this very thing, hadn’t I? It would do no good and only serve to depress the spirits.

  Seaton approached and turned to slouch against the side of the engine, appearing as fully soot-covered and weary as the rest of us. In fact, the soot seemed to find every line in his face, aging him a good decade. I fancied I fared no better.

  “Jamie’s still fine,” he informed me with no segue. “I looked her over again. She doesn’t have a mark on her, although her core is still fluctuating. I’ll pop in tomorrow, reset the spells once more. I think that will hold her for another month.”

  “She’s angry with herself,” I responded softly. “She thinks she should have been able to catch him with her reflexes.”

  “On flat, open ground with no obstacles, she likely would have,” he sighed. “I understand her frustration, but this wasn’t of her making. I’m just glad she was able to pull herself back out again, although I do wish her self-preservation instincts were stronger.”

  “Have we an answer on what caused the conflagration?”

  “Yes, the fire inspector just reported to me. Dynamite, he said.” Seaton grimaced as he gestured to the charred remains of the building. “Some of this is supposition, and Jamie’s trying to track down witnesses, but I think Lees decided to take matters into his own hands. He used approximately three sticks of dynamite to blow up the shop with. I assume this is where he bought the bad charm that caused his father’s death. But he didn’t take into consideration how much magical power was in the store or the effect that would have on the explosion. When the store blew, he was as horrified as everyone else how fast the fire spread to the surrounding buildings. It was guilt as much as anything that motivated his suicide. That’s my take on it, at least.”

  “I cannot fault it,” I agreed, passing a weary hand over my eyes. Dynamite again? Perhaps he’d had some leftover from Parkins? And since he’d collaborated with the powder monkey, thought he understood enough to use it here. It all made a neat sort of sense. Even if it wasn’t entirely accurate, I believed part of our guesswork would prove correct.

  My partner chose to join us, re-doing her hair into a messy ponytail as she moved. “Well, boys, we’ve been politely asked to go home. The fire department claims they have it from here. They did ask we write up a report tomorrow of events for their records, but we’re done for the night.”

  “Sounds blissful,” I admitted, gaining my feet with a groan. A hot bath would do wonders to relax me and get the soot off, and I was determined to do that before attaining my bed, no matter how lethargic I felt. “And tomorrow? I must admit, I intensely dislike the idea that Parkins might have left other people access to dynamite.”

  Grimacing, Jamie agreed, “You ain’t the only one. I’ll lean on Parkins tomorrow to give up anyone else involved in this scheme. I’ve got the leverage and I’m going to use it. I’m not going to repeat tonight.”

  Once again I sat in the interrogation room with Parkins, Henri sitting beside me, Penny standing in the corner and observing. I’d played nice last time, as sometimes it took several interviews with a person before they played ball. This time, I didn’t have the patience for it. I’d gone to bed at one in the morning, woken up five hours later by nightmares I didn’t care to remember, and spent the next hour cuddling Clint before heading to work.

  Parkins seemed to sense I was not to be trifled with this morning. He had a hard time meeting my eyes. I deliberately kept my hands under the table so that I wouldn’t reach over and smack sense into him. I chose my words carefully, pitched my tone into something approaching flat neutrality. “Harmum Lees is dead.”

  Startled, Parkin’s eyes flew up to mine, his skin going white in horror. “Wh-what?” he croaked out, barely audible.

  “He took three sticks of dynamite last night to the charms store in his neighborhood. Blew it sky high, set six other buildings on fire, and released more of the influenza virus in the air,” I related in that same flat pitch. “It killed four other people, injured sixteen others. Then he dove into the burning building, committing suicide. We’re still cleansing the area and the air about it to prevent another epidemic from occurring.”

  Parkins’ expression crumbled and he slumped in on himself. I felt almost bad relating his friend’s death in such a brutal fashion, but I had to shake this man out of his commitment to keep their secrets. I knew of no other way than this.

  “Mr. Parkins,” Henri inserted in the taut silence of the room, his manner soothing and quiet, “I don’t know if the others have access to any other dynamite. I don’t know if they’re as sane as you are regarding this matter, if they’re content to only kill the two men responsible. Or if they’re like Mr. Lees, who was clearly not in his right mind, and caused horrific collateral damage as he pursued his path of revenge. I do know that I don’t want to take the chance of last night being repeated, in any fashion.”

  Henri made a very good cop. I let my inner bad cop out. “Parkins, I want to know who else was with you. I can’t trust these people to leave matters alone. Names. Now.”

  Parkins visibly hesitated, the names hovering on the edge of his tongue. He did not, however, speak.

  “Spill, Parkins,” I growled, slamming a hand on the table and leaning toward him. He flinched from me, ducking down into his chair. “So help me, if you make me live through another scene like that, I’ll take it out on your hide. We had to haul the burned body of Lees out of that building. Do you really want other people to die like that? In agony?”

  Whatever color remained in his cheeks fled, leaving him grey as a corpse. Swallowing hard, he shook his head no. It took a moment for him to find his voice, and my tension ramped up with every second he hesitated. If he didn’t give me something in three se
conds, I’d choke the answers out of his cryptic throat, I really would.

  Head lowered to nearly his chest, he rasped out, “Rice. Mrs. Eliza Rice. She was the third person.”

  An exultant shout of victory nearly burst out of my throat. I had to throttle it back. “No fourth person?”

  “No.” Parkins hesitated, his attention drawn up to Henri. If it was easier to face my partner than me, I didn’t care, as long as he kept talking. “Mrs. Rice is my neighbor. She lost her youngest grandchild. She’s a gunsmith’s daughter, knows more about weapons than we did. She’s the one who shot Timms.”

  I sat back in the chair, scrutinizing him. I didn’t think he lied. In fact, I felt pretty sure he didn’t. “Thank you, Mr. Parkins.”

  “Just be careful with her,” he pleaded to me, eyes imploring. “Her health is…not good.”

  Henri promised for both of us, “We will.”

  It took no time at all to get a warrant for the arrest of one Mrs. Eliza Rice. Parkins even gave us the address. I didn’t really expect trouble, but the woman knew how to use a firearm and had one, so I didn’t expect it to be easy, either. I just hoped she didn’t open fire, as she lived in a crowded apartment off a very busy street, and lots of innocents could be hurt if she didn’t come easy.

  We approached the apartment up creaking wood steps, and I felt the claustrophobic space of the hallway keenly. How did people even get furniture up here? Seriously, the hallway was probably three feet wide, if that. Of course her place was at the end of the hall, and I knocked on the door firmly before stepping back, one hand on my gun just in case. I kept the grip discreet, camouflaged under my jacket. Henri had his wand in hand, also tense and at the ready.

  Slow moving footsteps came near, then the door opened gradually, revealing a stooped old woman who couldn’t be younger than seventy. She regarded us behind half-moon spectacles perched on the edge of her nose.

  “I’m Detective Edwards, Fourth Precinct,” I introduced myself, still not sure which way this would go. I didn’t detect a gun on her person, though, that was a plus. “This is Dr. Henri Davenforth. Are you Eliza Rice?”

  “Yes, dear,” she answered in a sweet, grandmotherly way. “I’ve been expecting you. Let me get my purse and lock up, then we can go.”

  I blinked at her. Say what?

  “Mrs. Rice,” Henri pitched in, as confused as I felt, “we have a warrant for your arrest. Would you like to see it?”

  She waved this off, stepping back enough to snag a purse resting on a small side table near the door. “As I said, young man, I’ve been expecting you. Poor Mr. Parkins couldn’t take the guilt. I knew that he’d fold eventually. Ever since he went to turn himself in, I thought you’d come for me. It took longer than I thought.”

  For some reason, that last line felt like an accusation. I defended myself before I could question why. “He didn’t want to name anyone until he learned about Harmum Lees.”

  She paused halfway out of the door, regarding me sadly. “Yes. I heard about that this morning. Such a sad thing. I thought killing Garner and Timms would help him, move him past his grief. It apparently didn’t.”

  “Did you really think that it would?” I couldn’t help but ask. Motivation wasn’t necessary in order to close a case, not really, but it sure made it easier on me. Knowing why these people made the decisions they had helped me put the case to bed.

  “Hoped,” she corrected with a sad smile. “We started this because we had no hope that the police would do anything to stop them. And someone had to stop them. My poor Lizzie is gone because of those two fools. Many others lost a loved one because of them. You saw yourself how much damage they did.”

  I did. I’d experienced the aftermath first hand and had to clean it up. It was why I sympathized with her so strongly. It didn’t make her actions right, she wasn’t Batman, but…I felt that, in her shoes, I might have made a similar choice. “Yes. Yes, I did.”

  “You’re the ones who reported it to the queen,” she said in a simple statement of fact. How she knew that, I didn’t know, except perhaps if our story had made it into a newspaper. I never paid attention to the things and Henri hadn’t touched one in days, as we’d not had the time.

  “Not quite,” Henri corrected with a genial smile at her. “We reported it to RM Seaton and he reported it to the queen.”

  Mrs. Rice waved this distinction away as unimportant. “Regardless, it’s been reported to the queen, and she’s taking steps to prevent this nonsense from happening again. That’s what we really wanted, you know. For someone to see the problem, to understand why we were forced to kill them. To prevent history from repeating itself. That’s all we really wanted.”

  “I think we can safely promise you that; if nothing else, we’ll all actively try to prevent a repeat of such sad circumstances,” Henri promised her.

  That sad smile lingered on her face. “Thank you, young man. It’s worlds too late for my Lizzie, of course, but still. It’s a leading light. I won’t look at it askance.” Shaking her head, she moved into the hallway, and while she was a tiny wisp of a thing, I had to give ground a good two feet to make room for her.

  I didn’t know what ‘leading light’ meant—assumed it to be something like a silver lining—but didn’t ask. I had a more burning question in mind. “Ma’am? What’s in your purse?”

  “Nothing dangerous, I assure you.” She latched the door properly, put the key into her purse, then handed it over to me.

  I promptly took it. It didn’t have the right weight to hold a handgun, but I wasn’t above her packing dynamite. Dangerous little old lady, this one. Henri decorously offered her an arm, which she took with a smile of thanks, and as soon as her back was turned I opened the bag and took a look inside. Handkerchief, key, some sort of medicine bottle, a different pair of glasses, and four spare hair pins. Okay, safe enough. Relieved, I followed after them.

  A few heads popped out of different apartments as we made our way down the stairs. I got a few evil looks, because of course this woman wasn’t a known murderer, and they assumed we were here for some stupid reason. If they only knew…. I shrugged it off, helped Henri settle her into the front seat of the car, and carefully pulled out. I didn’t think her balance was up to the task of me ‘going at a rate of knots,’ as Henri would put it, so I kept it down to a demure fifteen miles per hour.

  I really missed going eighty some days. Okay, most days.

  We reached the station and I parked out back. I normally wouldn’t have, I’d have stopped in the front and taken the criminal in immediately, but she was just so amiable…I felt like I was taking Betty Crocker in for questioning.

  Henri gave her another hand to help her down from the car, then escorted her in, for all the world like going to the Mad Hatter’s Tea Party. We got many a bemused look from our fellow colleagues, Gerring actually stopping dead and watching for a moment before shooting me a confused look. Poor kid was a little out of touch, as he’d been running around gathering all the complaints and investigating the deaths touched by charms. I mouthed a promise to catch him up later but stayed on my partner’s heels until I heard Captain Gregson call out to me.

  “Edwards!”

  Henri caught my eye, motioned for me to go ahead with a jerk of the chin, and I split off from him. I didn’t think she’d cause him any trouble, and even if she did, she was surrounded by cops, for heaven’s sakes. They’d be fine.

  Our captain hovered in the doorway of his office, watching Henri and Mrs. Rice head for the holding cells with a growing frown. “Edwards, who’s the grandmother?”

  “Mrs. Rice, the shooter in our case,” I answered, starting to see the humor in this macabre situation. When he blinked at me, perturbed, I lifted both shoulders in a helpless shrug. “Parkins named her. She confessed. In fact, she informed us when we arrived at her door that she had been waiting for us. Don’t be fooled, sir. That sweet little old lady popped a man in the back of the head, execution style.”

  He r
ubbed a hand over his eyes in a tired manner. “Can this case get any stranger?”

  “Yes, yes as a matter of fact it can, and I’d appreciate it if you didn’t call on Fate like that. She’s a very fickle mistress.”

  Groaning, he conceded the point. “Alright. Give me a full report after you’ve got her booked. And please tell me that’s the last person? There’s no other suspects running about, correct?”

  A true smile on my face, I answered in relief, “Yes. We’ve finally caught them all.”

  Ellie Warner was in her element, running around teaching people about her new product, including its variety of uses and the proper means of storing it. Jamie was right there alongside her, repeating the same information over and over, somehow managing to keep a smile on her face. I’d never understood how she managed that. I found repetition tedious in the extreme.

  We were overseeing the last of the cordon rope’s removal, as the epidemic was over, the area safe once more. Due to the many professionals who had donated their time and efforts, we hadn’t lost a single person more, and I considered that a miracle of epic proportions. I’d like to think my charms had some small part to play in that, but I could hardly claim more.

  The area was cleaner than the city had seen it since the day the apartments were first built, I believe. The recent rainfall we’d had last night had something to do with it, the seasonal downfall washing the area clean, leaving patches of the road still damp and shining. It smelled fresh, the air not humid due to the recent storm, and I drew in a breath just for the pleasure of doing so.

  The queen was due in at any moment to survey the area and see for herself that things had been taken care of. No one doubted she’d come, as Queen Regina had a very personal touch, and she always chose to see for herself how matters stood. Her common sense and accessibility as a ruler were part of the reason why her subjects adored her. More than one eager face looked anxiously toward the road, hovering on the sidewalks in anticipation.