Grimstone: A Croft and Wesson Adventure Read online

  The woman watched them for a moment, then lowered the rifle to one hand. She limped up the steps.

  James straightened his hat. “Damn, Marge. Nice timing.”

  “Shut up,” she snapped. She was a head shorter than both of us, her face lean and leathery from what looked like a lifetime in the arid climate. She squinted up at me with salty blue eyes.

  “You him?” she demanded.

  “Um, I’m not sure. My name’s Everson Croft. And you are…?”

  “Didn’t bother telling him I was coming, huh?” the woman asked James. She sighed and lifted one side of her open jacket to reveal a star-shaped badge on the pocket of her shirt. “Sheriff Jackson,” she said. “Now get your asses inside. We’ve got work to do.”

  3

  Ten minutes later the three of us—James, Sheriff Jackson, and I—were sitting around a small dining-room table. Sheriff Jackson, who was easier for me to think of as Marge, had returned to her truck to retrieve a stack of thick manila files. She was one of those people you either immediately liked or disliked. I liked her—not only because she seemed to have James’s number, but when Annie growled menacingly, Marge thumped her nose, sending the dog away, whimpering.

  “Missing persons files,” Marge said, patting the stack. “Eight of them. All young women between the ages of twenty-two and twenty-six. All blond-haired. And all within the last year.”

  I pulled a small spiral notepad from an inside coat pocket and jotted down the information. “And you think the cause is supernatural?”

  “I wouldn’t have contacted Mr. Wesson here if I didn’t. Believe me.” She cut her gaze to my partner in a way that suggested they’d butted heads. Only six months out here and James had already managed to piss off the law.

  “Theories on the disappearances?” I asked James.

  “Theories?” he repeated. “The second Marge came to me, the Order called and told me to hold off, that they were going to send you out to hold my hand. I know about as much as you do. Not that I’m complaining. All my work so far has been in the New Age communes, especially the ones into sprites and fairies. They’ve been calling up all kinds of crap I’ve had to put down.”

  This region of western Colorado featured wild patterns of ley energy. Attempts at magic, especially summonings by novice practitioners, would lead to exactly what James described—the appearance of nether creatures. No doubt why he’d been assigned out here.

  “How about the sheriff’s department, then?” I asked Marge. “Any leads?”

  “Well, young women up and leaving isn’t unheard of in Grimstone County,” she said. “We’re not exactly overflowing with job opportunities. But the pattern of the disappearances tells me the women were targeted. For their age, their looks, their ease of access, maybe. All the women lived alone.”

  “No husbands or significant others?” I asked.

  “A few had boyfriends,” Marge said. “But interviews and searches didn’t turn up anything suspicious. A couple of the boyfriends did think they were being unfaithful, though.”

  “Why?” I asked.

  “Said their girls had received gifts before they disappeared. Gold bracelets.”

  “Anything I can take a look at?”

  The jewelry, with its bonding energy between giver and receiver, would make a potent target for a hunting spell. But when I glanced up from my notepad, Marge was shaking her head.

  “Girls must’ve been wearing the bracelets when they disappeared because we didn’t find anything. And their secret admirers didn’t call or text. There was nothing in their phone records.”

  I rested my chin on a fist. Had the young women been lured by someone or something? A vampire, maybe? I turned back to James.

  “What can you tell me about the supernatural geography of Grimstone County?”

  Not expecting much, I was surprised when he grinned and stood. “I think you’ll be proud of me, Prof.” He disappeared into his bedroom and returned a moment later with a large, rolled-up piece of paper. He pulled off a rubber band and spread the paper across the table displaying a map of Grimstone County onto which he’d made notations using colored pens.

  “The area’s best understood in quadrants,” he said, standing over my right shoulder and indicating the two highways that formed a cross in approximately the center of the map. “The southeast quadrant features the town of Grimstone, surrounded by miles of Hicklandia.”

  “Watch your mouth,” Marge said. “I grew up on a ranch in what you call ‘Hicklandia.’”

  “There are a few wandering currents of ley energy,” James went on, tracing the blue lines he’d drawn. “Most terminate around the New Age communes. We’re over here, in this canyon.”

  I’d wondered why the Order had picked somewhere so remote to stick James. The nexus of ley lines explained it. It gave James a nice wellspring to draw from for spell-casting, though I was going to need to talk to him about his defensive wards. They were sturdy but not solid.

  James moved his finger north. “Up here is reservation land, and there’s some seriously powerful energy flow. Some of it’s natural, but a lot of it’s been cultivated by the tribe that inhabits the land.”

  “Utes,” Marge said.

  “Ever had any problems with them?” I asked.

  Marge shook her head. “They keep themselves to themselves. Don’t want much to do with us.”

  “But there are shifters among them,” James said.

  “Shifters?” I repeated.

  “I saw some of their tribe at the farmer’s market one Saturday,” he said. “About half a dozen of them, selling rugs, herbal remedies. Tried to see what I could pick up. On the surface, the men and women looked normal, but in their ethereal layers I was seeing all kinds of forms: coyote, crow, snake.”

  I had to give James credit. He’d been doing some actual work.

  “And they knew I could see them,” James went on. “Their medicine man, this dude with braided white hair, stared right at me like the crowd between us didn’t exist. And I swear to God, for a second, my power died. I was defenseless. Couldn’t have manifested a flicker of magic if I’d tried. When he broke eye contact, my power came back, but it was like he’d issued a warning. ‘Stay out of my business, and I’ll stay out of yours.’” James removed his hat and ran a hand over his pile of hair. “I hope to hell they’re not involved in this.”

  Outside, the wind banged the screen door, and a den of coyotes yipped in the distance. “Could one of theirs have—excuse the pun—gone off the reservation?” I asked Marge.

  “It happens,” she answered. “But they discipline their own real quick. A few years back, we had a slew of car jackings. Never caught the perp, but at about the time the jackings stopped, one of the teenagers in the tribe was seen walking around in a wooden stockade, portable. Wore it for about a month.”

  “A month?” I said. “Is that even legal?”

  Marge shrugged. “Not my jurisdiction. Belongs to the Bureau of Indian Affairs, which hardly ever comes around anymore. That’s the thing. When the economy went tits up and federal budgets got slashed, the treaty that protects that particular reservation stopped looking so bulletproof. Some potential loopholes in there, apparently, and the Utes don’t want to give anyone an excuse to exploit them. All kinds of interests looking to get their hands on that land.”

  “Such as?”

  “Mining, for one,” she said. “The gold claims in Grimstone County are all dug out. Speculators think the Utes are sitting on a rich vein. Water rights for another. The Dolores River flows right through the middle of Ute land. Then there are the developers. Brunhold Development runs the show in Grimstone County. They’ve talked about building a huge golf-course community up there—something to lure the wealthy from the ski-slope towns in the summer.”

  I nodded, but we were getting off topic. “So if the perp had been one of their own, the tribe would have nipped it in the bud.”

  “A long time ago,” Marge assured me.

&n
bsp; James nodded solemnly, no doubt still dwelling on the power the medicine man had wielded over him.

  “What’s all of this up here?” I asked, indicating the northeast quadrant.

  “Grimstone County is a hub for trucking because of the exchange,” Marge said. “Everything a trucker could want is located within a one-mile radius: filling stations, repair shops, diners, motels.”

  James coughed into a fist. “Special services.”

  “What, like drugs and prostitution?” I asked.

  “Hey, it’s a problem anywhere there’s trucking,” Marge said defensively. “We keep tabs on it.”

  “Attracts some nasty creatures, though,” James said. “Those wolves you met earlier? Santana and his gang are out of Honduras. They run some legit businesses, but their main commerce is drug shipping.”

  “Legit businesses like pool halls?” I asked thinly.

  James looked from me to Marge and back in a way that said, Can we talk about that later?

  I shook my head wearily. “All right, we’ve got the town, ranchland, and communes down here, reservation land up here, trucking services over here. What about this?” I asked, tapping the final quadrant in the southwest. The area was brown, a few dotted lines signifying dirt roads.

  “The old mining land I mentioned,” Marge said. “Nothing much there now.”

  My gaze lingered on the barren quadrant before I took in the whole map again. “Can you show me where the disappearances happened?”

  Marge rotated the map until it was in front of her, drew a pen from a breast pocket, and, consulting her files, began making notations: names, dates, and the order of each disappearance. When she rotated the map back to me, I noticed that the majority of disappearances had happened in town. Two had occurred in the ranches around town and one more in the trucking district. In fact, the trucking-district disappearance had been the first.

  “A lot lizard,” Marge said, following my gaze.

  I felt my brow crease in question. “Lot lizard?”

  “A prostitute who works the trucking lots,” she explained, pulling a photo from one of the files and placing it on the map. It was a headshot of the missing girl from what looked like a prior arrest. She was sallow-faced and tragically young, her blond hair hanging in damp crimps.

  I read her name aloud. “Dawn Michaels.”

  “We’d never have known she’d disappeared if a trucker hadn’t reported her missing,” Marge said. “He was an older man, apparently sweet on her. We figured Dawn had moved on, but when we interviewed friends, we learned she’d never talked about leaving. She just up and disappeared. At first we suspected a long-haul trucker, but when the disappearances shifted to the town, we started thinking it was the work of a local.”

  “And no leads?”

  Marge was placing the photos of the remaining girls on the map, a couple of the photos cheap-looking glamour shots. “Not yet,” she said.

  “So what makes you think the perp is a supernatural?” I asked.

  “I’ve seen enough in my career to know when I’m dealing with a human and when I’m dealing with an Other, as I call them. Humans leave evidence. In these cases, there hasn’t been shit. Whatever’s making off with the blondes comes and goes like a fart in the wind. My gut’s saying Other.”

  I nodded. My gut was saying Other too. “Are the girls all natural blondes?”

  “Does it matter?” Marge asked.

  “It might.”

  “I’ll find out then.”

  I nodded and looked over the map again, studying the headshots of each of the disappeared women. “So, with the first victim, the perp must have been going after the low-hanging fruit. A girl in that occupation would be easy to get alone, I’m guessing. Wouldn’t be missed right away, and wouldn’t necessarily be a priority for law enforcement. No offense.”

  “None taken, but I wouldn’t call the lot lizards low-hanging fruit,” Marge said. “Not with Helga looking after them.”

  “Is she their pimp?” I asked.

  “Their madam,” Marge said. “Or matron, as she prefers to be called.”

  “And she also happens to be a major witch,” James put in.

  “That’s witch with a ‘w,’ right?”

  “With a ‘b’ too,” Marge muttered. “She’s been no help in the investigation. We were only able to talk to a few of the girls before she silenced them. She insisted that all communications go through her. ’Course she wasn’t talking, either. Just said no one knew anything.”

  “Do you think Helga has something to do with this?” I asked, jotting down the name.

  “Maybe not directly, but she knows more than she’s letting on,” Marge said. “I’d start there.”

  “So it’s all right if we talk to her?” I asked carefully. Marge seemed open to James’s and my line of work—a rarity in law enforcement—but there remained the touchy subject of jurisdiction. She hadn’t invited us to look at the case files and was only doling out info piecemeal. As consultants, I wasn’t sure how far she would allow us to venture onto her turf.

  “If it were just Wesson here, I’d mind,” she replied. “But you seem to know your shit.”

  James frowned. “That hurts, Marge.”

  She ignored him, her eyes narrowing in on mine. “But I’m still the law out here. I want you checking in at every step. You don’t so much as glance at a suspect or witness without my say-so. And that goes double for your partner. He might be a crack wizard, and damned handsome, but he’s trouble.”

  “I’ll take the handsome part,” James said. “But trouble?”

  “Understood,” I assured her. “And I’ll keep him in line.”

  Marge searched my eyes another moment—I sensed she was good at reading people—then gave a grudging nod. I’d passed her test, but I was going to have to tread really carefully.

  “Anything I can be doing?” she asked.

  “Actually, there is,” I said. “If you could get me a few items that belonged to the missing girls, I’ll attempt a hunting spell. We may be able to track them down that way.”

  Or their remains, I thought grimly.

  “I’ll see what I can do.” Marge scooted her chair from the table and stood. She gathered up the files and began limping toward the door. When Annie started to rise from her dog bed, Marge narrowed her eyes at her. The dog licked her muzzle with a whimper and lowered herself back down.

  “How much time do we have?” James asked.

  It was actually a good question. I glanced over the dates again, then looked up at Marge, who had stopped at the door. “Disappearances are happening about twenty-nine days apart,” she said. “Sometimes a little less, sometimes a little more.”

  “Wait,” I said, doing the math. “That only gives us…”

  “One day,” Marge finished for me. “Give or take.”

  In the living room, James removed the cushions from a beat-up sofa and pulled out the sleeper. After Marge’s visit, I’d put him to work making some potions we might need while I attuned myself to the patterns of ley energy in the area and calibrated my sword and staff. It was almost midnight now.

  “I’ll be honest,” James said, yawning. “I bitched when the Order told me to wait for you, but it’s good to see you again. I’m glad you’re here. ”

  I eyed the thin, yellow-stained mattress sprinkled with dog hair. “Yeah…”

  “I’ve got some spare sheets somewhere.” James’s upper body disappeared into an overstuffed closet. After digging around, he pulled out a balled-up fitted sheet and ragged orange comforter. A couple moths scattered from the second and beat around the room’s ceiling light.

  “Don’t bother,” I said. “I can use my coat.”

  “What kind of host would that make me?”

  “A merciful one?”

  But James didn’t hear me. He was tossing the sheet and comforter into the air and thrusting his wand toward them. “Limpiare!” he called.

  Silver light flashed from the end of the wand
and infused the bedding, suspending it in midair. When the silver light faded, the sheet and comforter looked pristine, straight out of packaging. With a force invocation and subtle twists of his wand, James tucked the bedding around the mattress and even fluffed a mismatched pair of pillows, which he set at the head.

  “Not bad,” I allowed, sitting on the side of the bed to untie my shoes. “Looks like you’re keeping up your magic when you’re not too busy stiffing werewolf gangsters.”

  “C’mon, man. I told you, it was just that one time.”

  “Tell it to Santana.”

  James sighed. “I screwed up, all right? I’ll handle it.”

  “How?”

  “I’ll pay him the money.”

  I stopped removing my shoes and stared at him.

  “What?” he asked.

  “James, you just challenged the Alpha in front of his pack. Money or not—and I don’t even want to know how you’re planning to get ten thousand—he’s not walking away from this. He can’t walk away from this. It’s in his DNA. You understand that, don’t you?”

  James rubbed the back of his neck. “I considered that.”

  “Before or after you tried to blow him up?”

  “Look, man. What’s done is done. I’m sorry for getting you involved, but it won’t affect our work on the case. I promise.”

  “How can you promise something you have no control over?”

  “You met Marge, man. You saw how she operates.”

  “Yeah?”

  “Well, Santana might be a bad mother, but he’s smart. He knows that if he wants to keep doing business in Grimstone, he needs to stay off Marge’s radar. Her rolling up on him in the middle of a shakedown doesn’t exactly further his cause. He’s got no choice but to lay low. He’ll come at me again, yeah, but you’ll be long gone when that happens. The case will be in the bag.”

  “Not if the case involves the wolves.”

  “The wolves? Based on what?”

  “Did you notice anything about the dates of the disappearances?”