Murder by Magic: An ONSET Universe Novella Read online

  Jamie nodded. His own Second Sight was nothing incredible, but it was certainly enough that he should be able to learn something from examining the drug.

  “Your office is 317,” she told him. “Review those files this afternoon, and be ready to get to work tomorrow. Dismissed!”

  Jamie followed Pattakos to office 317, the middle office of the corridor on the opposite end of the floor from Wilson’s. His new workspace consisted of a plain desk with a black computer and monitor, two corkboards, and a row of filing cabinets that were empty when he checked them.

  He closed the filing cabinets then slid the folders onto his desk and dropped into the chair, gesturing for Adrian to take the single uncomfortable chair across from him.

  “What,” he asked quietly, “was that about?” He didn’t think he’d done anything to upset Wilson, but she’d treated him like a half-dead rat her cat had dragged in, when she wasn’t ignoring him completely.

  “I’d ask what you meant, but I’m guessing you mean the chief’s treatment of you,” Adrian said dryly, dropping into the chair. “Ms. Wilson feels—with some justification, mind you—that supernaturals are given a soft hand through training and arrive in the field underqualified to perform the roles expected of them.”

  “I see,” Jamie answered, flipping open his two files. The first was a series of thefts from museums. A quick glance at the age of the artefacts answered why OSPI had the case—all of them pre-dated the estimated date of the ritual enacted by King Solomon to seal magic from the world. A ritual with some obvious flaws, but artefacts from before that date were far more likely to have magical properties.

  The second was a thaumaturgical murder, first degree—premeditated murder by magic. A man murdered by having his heart crushed, his minor Mage wife the primary suspect.

  He closed the files and slid them into the top drawer of his desk. He’d review them more completely later.

  “Is this going to cause me problems?” he asked his new partner bluntly.

  The older Inspector shrugged eloquently. “When I came to LA two years ago, she’d already been running the branch for three years, and I had six years in OSPI,” Adrian said. “Because I was Empowered, she treated me like an idiot child for six months. I’m your partner and senior, so let me deal with her—it’ll probably be easier for everyone that way.”

  “I’ll need to meet Inspector Lager,” Jamie said, changing the subject. “Are they in the office today?”

  “She’s in the field today,” his partner answered. “Violet Lager was our only Mage prior to you showing up, so she’s been run ragged doing Second Sight sweeps of crime scenes, on top of her normal duties. Some of that will get dumped on you now,” the senior Inspector told him with a grin.

  “Wonderful,” the new agent said dryly. “Anything else I should be aware of?”

  “As one of our two Mages, you have free access to the thaum lab,” Adrian told him. “Wilson is actually the only one other than you and Lager who has access on her card.”

  That sounded like a situation in which Jamie wanted to sort out the split for time and space in the lab with Lager—soon.

  “We don’t have much on the Dream file at the moment,” the older man admitted, “so take the afternoon to review the files Wilson gave you. Do you have somewhere to stay?”

  “All I own is in the duffel bag we left in your car,” Jamie told him with a smile. “I figured I’d grab a hotel room for the next couple of weeks and sort out getting a place as fast as I can.”

  “Laura’s brother is a real estate agent in the area,” his partner told him. “Have her put you in touch with him; he should be able to find you something quickly.”

  “Laura was... the other junior assigned to you?” Jamie asked, straining his memory. He had a good memory for names when he had faces to attach them to, but those dropped in passing were harder for him.

  “That’s right,” Adrian confirmed with a snap of his fingers. “In fact, I should introduce her to you. Let’s go.”

  Feeling overwhelmed by the cascade of new people and names, Jamie followed Pattakos out into the corridors of OSPI’s LA office once more.

  4

  Laura’s office turned out to be four doors down from Jamie’s, though she wasn’t there. The tiny room was identical to his, except hers was clearly in use. The corkboard was covered with news articles, surveillance photos, and clips of biographies. A giant map of the city had been taped over the wall next to the door and covered with small flags of multiple different colours. At least four files were open on the junior agent’s desk.

  “She’ll be on the second floor if she isn’t here,” Adrian told Jamie, leading the way back to the stairs they’d originally climbed.

  The second floor was split into quarters. The northeast quarter that they emerged by was clearly labelled as Thaumaturgical Laboratory, Restricted Access. Adrian led the way to the northwest corner, labelled Forensics.

  The lab was currently mostly empty, except for a single young woman in a black suit and skirt and with red hair hanging down to her waist in a tightly knit braid.

  “Howdy, Laura,” Adrian greeted her, causing her to turn around from whatever she’d been reviewing on the lab’s computer.

  At the sight of Jamie, she smiled brightly and stood. Her eyes, Jamie noted distantly, were a sparkling green set in an adorable button-nosed face with a scattering of freckles. Her conservative suit and blouse did nothing to reduce her attractiveness and he barely managed to avoid freezing like a deer in headlights.

  “Hi, Adrian,” she greeted the senior Inspector, though her gaze didn’t move from Jamie’s. “I take it this is our new Inspector.”

  “Exactly. Laura Sutcliffe, meet Jamie Riley,” Adrian introduced them.

  It wasn’t until they shook hands that Jamie finally managed to disengage his gaze from Laura’s. He wasn’t sure what it was about the woman’s eyes, but the sparkle in them fascinated him.

  “You’re both assigned to assist me with the Black Dream file,” the senior Inspector noted, “so you’ll be working together quite a bit. Do we have anything new?” he asked Laura.

  “Nothing significant,” she answered with a shrug. “I’m reviewing the autopsies on the last few overdoses, trying to get a feel for what concentrations of the drug were in their systems.”

  “Do we get anything useful from a mundane autopsy?” Jamie asked, curious. Most of the drug’s impacts sounded as if they came from its supernatural aspects, which were unlikely to show up in most examinations.

  “Therein lies the problem,” Laura agreed. “There are a few chemical traces we’ve identified as being from the Dream, which lets us identify our ‘Dreamers’ in the general pool of autopsies in the city, but we’re not seeing any other commonalities.”

  “Any common cause of death?” Jamie asked, his mind racing for possibilities.

  “Yeah,” the woman responded with a snort. “Stupidity. You’ve got the rundown on the effects?” Jamie nodded. “Well, between hallucinations and thinking they’re Achilles reborn, Dreamers walk into all sorts of shit they shouldn’t. Broken necks are high on the list—so are gunshot wounds, knife wounds, and about fifteen different kinds of fall-induced trauma. The heart attacks are about the only ones we’re really sure are actual overdoses.”

  “So we’re pulling the files on any death with the chemical traces?” he asked and considered when she nodded. “False positives?”

  “About forty percent is my current estimate,” Laura replied with a deep sigh and a fetching flip of her hair. “Without sending an autopsy-trained Mage to reperform the surgeries, I have no way of being sure.” She eyed Jamie for a moment.

  “No such luck. My pre-OSPI education is in economics,” Jamie told her with a smile. He hadn’t finished the degree, but that was a different story altogether.

  “Laura, Jamie is new in town,” Adrian interjected. “He’s staying at a hotel tonight on the office’s tab, but I suggested he get in touch with Ryan.”
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  Laura nodded brightly. “Of course! Here.” She quickly scribbled a number on a pad of paper by the computer. “I also put together a summary of our current findings on the Dream for the chief last week. I’ll forward it to your email so you can review it.”

  “Thank you,” Jamie told her. “I look forward to working with you.”

  “Likewise, Jamie,” she answered.

  Following Adrian, Jamie returned to his office. He turned the computer on and glanced over at the senior agent as the machine booted up.

  “Anything specific I should be getting up to today?” he asked.

  “Go over the two files Wilson gave you and put together a plan of attack,” Adrian suggested. “Touch base with me before you go charging off, but they’re your cases. Otherwise, look at the Black Dream data and see if you can set up house showings. I’ve got my own cases to get back to working on, so I’m going to have to leave you to it.”

  “If I have questions?” Jamie asked. He was pretty sure he’d have some kind of question. “For that matter, what’s my login?” He looked at the Windows login screen blankly for a moment.

  “JRILEY,” Adrian replied. “Password1, capital P. I’m in office 311, at the end of the corridor. If I’m not there, Laura can probably help you—or you can bounce me an email, and I’ll check in on you when I’m back from wherever.”

  “Thank you, Inspector,” Jamie told him with a grateful smile.

  “Please, Jamie—call me Adrian,” Pattakos told him on his way out the office door.

  With Adrian gone, Jamie opened the first of the two files on his desk. It was a sparse file—an autopsy report, a Supernatural Registration file, and a copy of a travel restriction order on the woman in the file.

  Mrs. Emma Sharp was a low-level Mage, a Class One Initiate with some training but no major Gift. She was properly registered, fully aware of the legal limitations and requirements of her unusual nature, completely cooperative, and an apparently perfect supernatural citizen of the United States.

  As such, when Mr. Robert Sharp passed away unexpectedly, his autopsy was performed by an in-the-know physician. That physician had identified Mr. Sharp’s “heart attack” as his heart being crushed by telekinetic force—a murder by magic.

  The case hadn’t progressed much beyond that as the coroner’s report was dated the previous day. Wilson had arranged the court order restricting Mrs. Sharp to the city as a “person of interest” and then dropped the file on her newest Inspector.

  Contact information for the Omicron Defender appointed as Mrs. Sharp’s lawyer was in the file. Unlike normal cases, in which the state only appointed a lawyer if the accused could not afford one, Omicron always appointed a lawyer for each accused. The lawyers also got involved somewhat earlier than in normal cases—there would be at least two Defenders on duty in the OSPI office Jamie worked in at all times. The rights of someone charged with a supernatural offence were sufficiently different that they needed a specially-trained lawyer—and that lawyer had to be in the know about the supernatural.

  Based on the two pieces of data Jamie had to go on, he agreed with Wilson that Mrs. Sharp seemed to be the most likely suspect, but he’d need more to go on before he made an arrest. The first step was to interview her.

  He called the lawyer.

  “Mr. Steeple,” he greeted the man. “I am Inspector Jamie Riley with the LA OSPI detachment.”

  “Mr. Riley,” the lawyer greeted him, his voice tired. “How can I help you?”

  “I have been assigned the Sharp case,” Jamie told him. “Have you been in touch with Mrs. Sharp and advised her of her rights?”

  “Mrs. Sharp is well aware of her rights,” Steeple told him dryly. “But yes, I have spoken to her since she was declared a person of interest in her husband’s death.”

  “I would like to interview her as soon as reasonably possible,” Jamie said. “I imagine the autopsy report was something of a shock to her, but I’d like to discuss the circumstances of her husband’s death with her before they fade any more.”

  “You’re asking me if you can speak to her?” Steeple asked, sounding surprised.

  “You will of course need to attend yourself,” Jamie reminded him, “plus regulations require me to go through you.”

  The lawyer actually laughed. “Would you believe me, Inspector, if I told you I’d forgotten that regulation?”

  Jamie took a sharp breath, surprised in turn. That was an important rule, to make sure that the rights of the accused were respected.

  “Be that as it may,” he said slowly, “could you arrange the interview?”

  “I can,” the lawyer confirmed. “I have a two-hour slot free tomorrow at one. I’ll confirm with Mrs. Sharp, but I imagine she’ll be available.”

  “I will book an interview room here,” Jamie told the man. “The receptionist will tell you which one when you arrive.”

  “I look forward to meeting you,” Steeple replied, and Jamie could almost hear the lawyer shaking his head as the man hung up.

  Jamie quickly set up the appointment in the calendar on his computer and sent an email to Lily Matter to request an interview room—yet another airless box in the hidden core to the glass-sided office building, he was sure—for one p.m. the next day.

  Taking a breath to ground himself, he turned to the second case file and began to review the list of potentially-linked thefts.

  5

  One o’clock the next day saw Jamie meeting Mrs. Sharp at the reception desk of the building. He was sure that Ms. Matter would have made sure the woman and her Omicron-appointed lawyer got to the interview room without problems, but he wanted to put the woman at least somewhat at ease.

  He’d spent the morning canvassing the condo complex the Sharps had lived in, interviewing the people—mostly stay-at-home spouses—who were there on a Thursday morning. The image he’d put together from those interviews fit neatly with the impression he’d received from Emma Sharp’s file: a well-put-together couple, good citizens. The couple had served on the condo board and helped coordinate social events. Emma’s job at a small thaumaturgical consulting agency could not, under the laws Omicron enforced, be talked about. This had left her often working from home during the day, and she’d happily babysat and helped out around the community.

  To add to the picture, the neighbours described a couple that acted like newlyweds after ten years of marriage, wandering around the local parks hand in hand. The only thing missing from the image was children, and that was hardly rare for a professional couple these days.

  Nothing that Jamie had learned about the couple remotely suggested a reason for Emma to have crushed her husband’s heart. For that matter, Jamie’s review of her file suggested that she wouldn’t have had the magical strength to do it.

  Which left him wondering, as he met the primly dressed Californian woman, whether her husband had done something horrible to trigger one of the bursts of extra magical power any Mage could show—or if there was another Mage in the Sharps’ life.

  “Mr. Riley, this is Mrs. Sharp.” Steeple, the defender, looked almost exactly as Jamie had pictured him from the phone conversation: a tall, skinny, balding man with worry lines worn into a face aged far beyond his years.

  “Mr. Steeple,” Jamie returned the lawyer’s greeting and offered his hand to the only suspect in his case. “Mrs. Sharp, thank you for agreeing to meet with me on such short notice.”

  “Anything I can do to help find the truth behind Robert’s death,” the short blonde woman in the dark-blue skirt-suit told him.

  Jamie swallowed the urge to correct her to “murder” and gestured for the two to follow him. “Please, come with me,” he instructed.

  The pair followed him in silence to the interview room, and it hit Jamie with a bit of a shock to remember that in this building, speaking to someone suspected of a crime and her lawyer, the power lay almost entirely with him. He hoped neither of them saw his shiver, and he was suddenly glad for the laws and regulation
s that restricted that power.

  The interview room was as much what he was expecting as Mr. Steeple had been: a windowless box with a video camera and a table. There were four chairs in the room, and Adrian Pattakos was sitting in the extra one.

  As Jamie’s partner, the senior Inspector was there as much as a double check on Jamie as anything else. Jamie would have preferred to interview Mrs. Sharp alone, but he had to admit that the presence of the more experienced investigator couldn’t hurt. It was, after all, his first live interview.

  “Please, Mrs. Sharp, Mr. Steeple, have a seat,” Jamie instructed as he sat next to his partner, facing his “person of interest” across the table.

  The aged lawyer waited for his client to sit and then carefully folded himself into the plain chair, setting his briefcase down beside him.

  “Mrs. Sharp,” Jamie said quietly, “you are not under arrest, but you understand, I’m sure, that you are under significant suspicion here—hence the presence of Mr. Steeple.

  “You have at all times the right to refuse to answer a question,” he continued. “You have at all times the right to consult in private with Mr. Steeple before you answer a question. Everything said in this room is recorded, so we will provide you with another room for such consultations.

  “Lastly, I do possess the ability to view your aura under Second Sight. I will not use this ability except with your permission,” Jamie told her. The reason for that legal requirement was more due to the Sight’s unreliability as a lie detector than any moral standing. All it really showed was mood, so it was roughly as reliable as a polygraph for that purpose.

  “Do you understand these rights?” he asked.

  The suited blonde nodded carefully.

  “This is my partner, Adrian Pattakos,” Jamie said, gesturing to where Adrian sat quietly beside him. Adrian nodded politely to the lawyer and suspect but remained silent.