Capital Murder (Arcane Casebook Book 7)

by Dan Willis

  Stepping carefully, he and MacReady approached the prone figure. As they moved, it struggled to raise its head.

  “Keep your hands where I can see them,” MacReady growled, pointing his weapon directly into the wolf man’s face.

  “S-should have killed you before,” it growled at the lieutenant, eyes glittering with hate. “When you k-k-killed her.” The sentence devolved into a growl of pain, and the man-animal’s teeth clenched together.

  “Her?” Zelda said, peeking out from behind Alex. “What’s he talking about?”

  “Katherine Cohan,” Alex said to the wolf man.

  “Katie?” Zelda gasped. “What do you mean she’s dead, what’s going on?”

  “She came with this one to plunder Mr. Gundersen’s safe tonight,” Alex explained. “They were smarter than I gave them credit for, recognizing the trap I’d laid. They used some kind of bomb on the room before coming in.”

  The wolf man huffed a laugh, then winced in pain.

  “Almost got you, too,” he said.

  Alex just shook his head sadly.

  “Instead it was Katherine.”

  “Katie wouldn’t go anywhere with this…this…thing,” Zelda insisted.

  “She would,” Alex said with a sigh. “She was his sister, after all.”

  Zelda’s hand on Alex’s arm suddenly clenched.

  “Hector?” she said.

  “Yes,” the beast said. “Take a good look, you bitch. This is what you did to us.”

  Zelda just stood, looking down at the dying wolf man with her mouth open.

  “Miss Pritchard didn’t give you whatever potion you took that made you a monster,” Alex said.

  “No,” Hector sneered as best he could around his dog muzzle. “She just opened the door for the monster and let him in.”

  “Hector,” she gasped. “What are you saying?”

  “When Katie was sick,” he groaned. “That doctor in Copenhagen. He’s the one that…that gave her the p-potion. Got her hooked.” His snout turned up in a growl of pain and he shuddered.

  “What are you talking about?” Zelda demanded. “I got Katie a doctor, but he didn’t give her anything strange.”

  “That you know about,” Lieutenant MacReady said.

  “Sh-she needed more,” Hector moaned through clenched teeth. “Had to do what he wanted to get it. He gave us the transformation potions. T-told us what to take.”

  “This doctor,” Alex said. “What’s his name?”

  “D-doesn’t matter. He works for the Alchemist.”

  “His name was Dr. Fisker, and he came highly recommended,” Zelda said, her voice wavering between shock and offense.

  “M-made us his stooges,” Hector said, his voice becoming clearer. “Your fault.”

  Alex could see his wolf snout shrinking and the ruddy fur on his body beginning to thin.

  “He doesn’t have much time,” Alex said.

  “Hector,” Zelda implored as her valet began to resemble his old self. “I didn’t know. Why didn’t you tell me? My father could have done—”

  “Nothing,” Hector growled. “Take a good look, princess. You d-did this to us.” He laughed and blood oozed from his mouth. “I’ll see you in H-Hell,” he groaned, his breaths coming quick and shallow.

  “Hector,” Zelda implored him, but he was beyond caring.

  He was beyond anything.

  Alex knelt down and closed the man’s eyes. He had returned to the short, red-haired man Alex remembered from the airship.

  Zelda buried her head in Alex’s shoulder and sobbed.

  “I didn’t know,” she kept insisting.

  Right then the sound of running erupted in the hall and a moment later a dozen heavily-armed cops burst into the room.

  Alex put an arm around Zelda and led her to a chair where she couldn’t see the naked, ruined body of Hector Cohan. The box she had been clutching in her nerveless fingers turned out to have the Smithsonian’s missing cards in it. Zelda had been laying out her clothes for the following day and wanted a particular hat. Since it was her maid’s night off, she went looking herself, and found them in a hatbox.

  They sat on the couch for almost an hour as the police went over every inch of Hector’s room and Zelda’s suite. Eventually a female officer came to take Zelda’s statement, and Alex was able to slip away.

  “How’s she holding up?” the lieutenant asked as Alex approached.

  Alex looked back to the couch where Zelda sat talking with the officer. She had her arms wrapped around her body as if she were cold, and even across the room, Alex could see that she was trembling.

  “About how you’d be if you found out two of your top cops were thieves and killers,” he said. “I suspect she’ll be okay eventually, but not for a while. You need to have someone call her father.”

  MacReady nodded and scribbled in his notebook, then he flipped to an earlier page with a confused look on his face.

  “Didn’t you say that when Hector attacked you and Miss Pritchard at the art gallery, that he wanted to know where the remaining cards were?”

  Alex nodded.

  “But you said that Miss Pritchard didn’t know about the cards until you told her at the gallery,” MacReady went on. “How did Hector know about them?”

  “Katherine,” Alex said. “I’m guessing she used her invisibility trick to keep an eye on Gundersen.”

  “Then why didn’t she just follow him when he went out?” the lieutenant countered. “She would have known the card story was a fake.”

  “She couldn’t get too far away from the hotel where her mistress was staying,” he said. “How could she explain her absence if Zelda came back unexpectedly?”

  MacReady nodded and scribbled more notes in his book.

  “So they believed there were still missing cards, but not what happened to them. Why go after Miss Pritchard when Gundersen knew where the cards were?”

  “They weren’t after her,” Alex said. “They were after me and, thanks to my date to look at impressionists, they knew right were to find me. I suspect they had no idea where Gundersen lived.”

  “I guess that does make sense,” MacReady said.

  “Did you find anything in either of their rooms?” Alex said, changing the subject.

  MacReady glanced at Zelda, then jerked his head to the side, indicating for Alex to follow. They went out into the hall, then down to the next room. Unlike Zelda’s suite, this room was small and not as richly furnished.

  “These are for rich folk’s servants,” MacReady explained.

  The single chest of drawers had been opened and emptied, along with the wardrobe on the wall. Clothing and personal effects were strewn around, but the only thing on the bed was a wooden case with brass fittings and a heavy latch in the front.

  “This was in his bottom drawer,” MacReady said, opening the lid.

  Inside were three rows of glass vials, each resting in its own padded pocket. The two upper rows held small vials, barely more than an inch long, but the ones in the bottom row were twice that length and thicker. Each of the bigger vials had a colored stopper that was either blue or red in equal numbers.

  “This mean anything to you?” the Lieutenant asked.

  “These are the doses,” Alex said, pointing to the rows of small vials. “Whatever this Dr. Fisker hooked them on is in there. The ones on the bottom are the transformation serums.”

  “Okay,” MacReady said, “but what do I do with them?”

  “Pour them down the sink,” Alex said. “They’re too dangerous to leave lying around.”

  “They’re evidence, Lockerby,” he said with a roll of his eyes.

  “My point stands,” Alex replied. “But I think I know how to make them someone else’s problem.”

  “You do that, I’ll buy you a beer,” MacReady said, looking at the case full of alchemy. He shook his head, then turned to Alex. “Who would do something like this?”

  “Someone who wanted to rob museums and neede
d people who could travel in those circles to do the job.”

  “I get that, but this,” the Lieutenant indicated the vials. “This is sick.”

  Alex nodded agreement, but didn’t respond. He could think of several people who would happily engineer and carry out such a scheme. It was a bit ham-fisted for the Legion, but not outside the realm of possibilities. The glyph rune practitioners weren’t above such tactics either. Then there was his brother in magic, Paschal Randolph, assuming he was still alive.

  Shuddering at the thought, Alex changed the subject.

  “Let me make a call and I’ll take care of this,” he indicated the box.

  “I’ll be in the main room,” MacReady said, then he withdrew.

  Alex picked up the receiver of the phone mounted on the wall near the door and dialed the number of the Fairfax Hotel.

  “Room two-eleven,” he said when the hotel operator picked up.

  A moment later, he heard Sorsha’s voice on the line. Since it was after midnight, he’d been worried about waking her, but from the level of pent-up frustration in her voice, he knew she’d been awake.

  “Bad day?” he asked.

  “Yes,” she growled back. “There’s simply no motive for Duke Harris to have killed Senator Young. In fact, the Senator’s death could have ruined his plans altogether.”

  “I know,” Alex said. “And now you’ve got no suspect.” He could relate to that frustration. Even though he’d found the Smithsonian’s missing property, he now had another mystery on his hands. One with no hard suspects, just two names, Dr. Fisker and ‘The Alchemist.’

  “At least you can get Duke on fraud,” Alex pointed out.

  Sorsha gave out an exasperated grunt.

  “You’d think that, but you’d be wrong,” she said, her voice artificially sweet. “Apparently confessing to planning a crime isn’t actually the same as committing one,” she added.

  “What about conspiracy?” Alex offered. “That’s literally planning to commit a crime.”

  “It only counts if the crime was actually committed,” she explained. “Detective Norton and I tried to push it, but no one wants to hear about any corruption here. Not the Capital Police, not the D.C. Police, not Sherman Blake, the wonder boy of the FBI field office.”

  Alex sighed and nodded to himself.

  “Too many skeletons in their own closets.”

  “What a depressing thought,” she conceded. “So what’s on your mind at this hour, Alex? More good news?”

  “Not exactly,” he said. Taking a breath, he launched into an explanation of how Hector and Kate Cohan had been blackmailed into committing robberies for some shadowy person known only as ‘The Alchemist.’

  “Do you know why they were instructed to steal the things they took?” Sorsha asked when he finished.

  “No,” he said. “I’ll have to track all the robberies they committed, then find out what was actually taken, before I could even begin to guess at the reason.”

  “If you can figure out what your Alchemist wants, you might be able to figure out who he is,” she said. “But since I wouldn’t know in any case, I’m assuming you didn’t call to hear me speculate about the identity of this criminal mastermind.”

  “No,” Alex said. “I think I’ve got a way you can score some points with the FBI I’ve got a case full of glass vials here and, unless I’m very much mistaken, it’s the stuff this Alchemist fellow used to control the Cohens and to change them into monsters. The D.C. Police don’t want it and it isn’t the kind of stuff to leave lying around.”

  “How does this get me back in the Bureau’s good graces?”

  “Won’t they want to examine it?”

  Sorsha sighed.

  “I doubt it,” she said. “The government does have research facilities for magical things, but that’s not the FBI’s jurisdiction.”

  Alex knew about the government labs, because he’d first met Sorsha when someone stole copies of Archimedean Monograph runes from the lab dedicated to rune research.

  “Like as not, the Bureau won’t want the stuff either,” Sorsha went on.

  Alex ground his teeth. No wonder magic was getting out of control; no one wanted to know about it.

  “Okay, but I need you to come get it, anyway,” Alex pressed. “Just tell them you’ll turn it over to the FBI.”

  “Why?”

  “Because if this stuff sits in an evidence room for long enough, someone is going to learn about it. The way I see it, the fewer people who know about this, the better.”

  “I see your point,” Sorsha said wearily. “I’ll come over and take charge of the case with the vials, but you understand you owe me a nice dinner for going out of my way.”

  “Of course,” he replied with a smile.

  30

  Armored

  Someone was knocking on Alex’s door in an annoyingly chipper manner.

  “Come on, Lockerby,” a familiar voice called, much too loud and too close to be at his front door. “It’s after ten.”

  Alex pried an eyelid open wide enough to glare at the bedroom door, barely visible with the blackout curtains closed. After far too short a time, the door opened and brilliant daylight spilled inside, burning his open eye and forcing him to roll away from the assault.

  “Why are you still in bed?” Andrew Barton wondered, entering the room.

  Alex groaned in response as the sorcerer waved his hand in the direction of the curtains. As he did, they slid open, filling the entire room with light.

  “Go away,” Alex mumbled, covering his face with the pillow.

  Barton laughed at that.

  “That must have been some party you went to last night,” he said. “I’m a little bit insulted that you didn’t invite me.”

  “You didn’t want to go to this party,” Alex grumbled as he forced himself to sit up. “Three cops dead, two bad guys dead, and a young woman traumatized.”

  A surprised Andrew hesitated.

  “How do you manage to find murder and mayhem when you’re out of town?” he asked.

  “It’s a gift,” Alex said. He stood up wearing only his boxers and undershirt and searched for his pants. “Can I ask why you’re here?”

  “I wrapped up my business yesterday,” the sorcerer said, obviously pleased with himself. “I’m planning on taking an airship home this evening, and when I went to check out and settle up downstairs, Julian told me you were still here.”

  “What did I ever do to him?”

  “Oh, don’t be like that,” Andrew said. “I’ve got to go sign some papers in a few minutes, but then we can have lunch, and I’m supposed to meet the President after that. I thought you’d like to tag along.”

  Alex groaned. He’d just about had his fill of politics, but how could he say no to meeting the President?

  “I need to talk to Sorsha,” he managed, buttoning up his shirt.

  “Is that blood?”

  Alex looked down to see the dark stain across the bottom of his white shirt. To his credit, he resisted the urge to swear as he searched for his suit jacket. It took him almost a full minute to remember that he’d left it draped over Katherine Cohan’s body.

  This time he did swear.

  “What’s the matter?” Andrew asked.

  Alex explained about his jacket as he found his rune book on the nightstand under his shotgun.

  “You don’t have a piece of chalk on you by chance?” he asked the sorcerer.

  “No,” Andrew said with a laugh, then he snapped his fingers, and a glowing line ran up the wall. It reached about the height of a door, then turned ninety degrees, ran across and then back down, forming a door of light.

  Alex gave the sorcerer a sour look and tore a vault rune out of his book. He licked one edge, stuck it to the wall inside the door tracing, and ignited it.

  “Show off,” he grumbled as his vault door melted out of the wall. He pulled the door open and stopped short.

  “What happened to your vault?” Barto
n said, looking past Alex.

  Alex had forgotten that he’d put up a vestibule to keep people from seeing inside. He moved through the conference room, explaining about it to Andrew, who followed him in.

  “Not a bad idea,” the sorcerer admitted as Alex used his pocketwatch to open the cover door that separated the vestibule from the rest of his vault. “You really have an amazing space here. I’m actually jealous.”

  “You can teleport to your massive building in Manhattan in less time than it would take me to open the front door to this ‘amazing space’,” Alex said, heading toward the left hall where his vault bedroom was located.

  “True,” Andrew admitted, heading over to Alex’s bookshelf in the reading area. “But there’s something so elegant about having a portable home you can access from wherever you happen to be.”

  Alex rolled his eyes and left the sorcerer in the great room. It was true that his vault was an impressive bit of magic, probably the most impressive in his repertoire, but it was nothing to a sorcerer.

  Comparing his magic to that of Andrew or Sorsha was a losing proposition, so Alex pushed the thought from his mind and concentrated on retrieving one of his spare suits. Three minutes later he emerged, properly dressed, with his hair slicked back.

  “Now you look awake,” Barton said with a chuckle. “Go ahead and call Sorsha, you can invite her to come with us, and we’ll go sightseeing in the afternoon.”

  “I thought you had papers to sign,” Alex pointed out.

  Barton waved his hand dismissively.

  “That will only take a few minutes,” he admitted. “Talk to your girlfriend and tell her we’ll meet her in the hotel restaurant in an hour.”

  “Speaking of papers,” Alex said, taking out his notebook and tearing out a page. “Here are the power reading you asked for.” He handed the paper to the sorcerer. “The readings were pretty constant across the city, but we expected that.”

  “Excellent,’ Andrew beamed. “It’s nice to have that confirmed, well done.”

  “Your power tester is over there,” Alex said, pointing at the box on one of his workbenches.

  Andrew moved to retrieve his tester as Alex headed toward the vestibule to call Sorsha.