I whirled around and went looking for the leader of the forensics team. He was in the main room where we had found the two demons.
“Kevin,” I said, getting his attention, “I need a magik detector to go through this place, top to bottom, and find any spells.” Some mages could detect magik or the tell-tale residuals of magikal spells. The Arcane Division had several people with that talent working for us.
Kevin Goodman, head of the Arcane forensics lab, and I had known each other for a long time. He was a tall, lanky, gray-haired man with a hooked nose and a mind like a computer. His magikal talent was seeing things that weren’t there.
“Sure. Mind telling me what you’re looking for?”
“Money. We’ve got a major demon dead in the basement, a small fortune in drugs, and a safe that’s been forced. If you were a major demon, would you put your money in that lousy little safe, or would you ward its hiding place with magik?”
Kevin nodded. “Good point. I’ll get someone on it immediately.”
“Have him search the yard as well.”
I went outside to get some fresh air, and a woman with a medical examiner badge approached me. She wasn’t someone I knew.
“Lieutenant James? I’m Kelly Quinn.” She glanced toward the door into the house. “I’m not sure how much the autopsies are going to tell you that you can’t figure out from a cursory examination.”
“Yeah, cause of death is pretty apparent for the most part. Prioritize the demon in the basement and the two young girls. With the girls, I’m interested in evidence of restraints, drugs, prior abuse. With the demon, I’d like to know your thoughts on how he was tortured.” A thought struck me. “You are with Arcane, right?”
“Oh, yes. I’ve autopsied demons before.”
“The demon in the basement,” I said. “I’m pretty sure he was a major demon.”
She raised an eyebrow. “I once did a post-mortem on two of them at the same time. They killed each other.”
“Yeah, I’m wondering what could have killed this one.”
I wandered around the outside of the house, checking out the lawn and some overgrown rose bushes. The place was bordered by a brick wall in the back.
After about half an hour, the uniformed sergeant approached me and handed me a large to-go cup of coffee.
“Thanks,” I said, giving him a smile.
“New partner?” he asked.
“Yeah.”
“Gave him a piece of my mind. It don’t matter what he thinks of you, he has no right to question your authority in front of others.” He took a sip of his own coffee. “Congratulations. About time you got that gold shield.”
“Have we worked together before?” I was a little embarrassed that I didn’t remember him.
“Nope. Just know you by reputation. Watching you today, the rep’s good. You know what you’re doing. Mind sharing your thoughts?”
I checked his name tag. “Well, Sergeant O’Reilly, it looks like a gang hit. Drugs, those girls, and the torture. Not to mention the overkill with the bullets in the back of the head.”
He nodded, took another sip of his coffee, and said, “Sorta what I figured.”
“I sure hope I don’t meet whoever did it in a dark alley some night.”
He crossed himself. “I’ll drink to that.” We bumped our coffee cups together.
I took a deep breath, relishing the clean air outside the house. “What my boss is afraid of is this might be the beginning of a gang war.”
We stood there and drank our coffee in silence, watching cops, forensics experts, and the ME’s staff scurry around. Half an hour later, Novak came out of the house, looked around, and spotted us. He came over, nodding to the sergeant, but not meeting his eyes.
Reading off his notepad, Novak said, “Got the inventory. Two hundred thirty-four vials of what is probably astropene, a kilo of white powder—probably rasheen—a half kilo of what appears to be cocaine, a half kilo of weed. I couldn’t find any bottles like the ones that large quantities of astropene are usually shipped in, so they probably received it already cut. A quarter of the rasheen was broken down into single bags, and the same with some of the coke.”
Astropene and rasheen were imported across the Rift and were highly illegal, as was the cocaine. Rasheen was a soporific with effects similar to heroin or morphine, more lethal but less addictive. The weed was legal.
“Street value, off the top of your head?” I asked.
“Quarter of a million dollars, give or take twenty thousand.”
“Not big time. They were supplying the street dealers.”
Novak nodded.
“So,” I said, looking back and forth between the two sergeants, “either this is about a street-level turf war and we’re looking for their direct competitors, or a major dealer is pissed about new competition, and the torture was aimed at finding out who their supplier was.”
I waited, and both slowly nodded their heads.
“Second one makes more sense,” the uniform said, “because of the torture.”
Novak chimed in, “If it was street-level, they would have taken the drugs. The fact they didn’t makes me think the quantity was too little to bother with.”
I nodded.
“That’s a helluva lotta drugs to walk away from,” O’Reilly said.
Turning to Novak, I said, “Talk to your old buddies and find out if there’s a new face in town at the upper levels.”
“Right.” He moved away, taking his phone from his pocket.
“He’s not a dummy,” the uniform said.
“No, but he’s got a lot to learn,” I replied. I just hoped he learned it before he got himself or me killed.
I waited around another couple of hours until Kevin’s magik sniffer finished scanning the property. Kevin and the woman came looking for me.
“I found a place in the attic that had heavy residuals,” she said. “But the spell was broken, and anything it might have hidden is gone.”
“Thanks. Well, it was worth a chance.”
“If it’s any help,” the woman said, “whatever that ward was guarding was magikal in itself. Cross-Rift magik. And the safe was warded but with a much weaker
