Snowflake's Passage
First Story (Scary Things)
Author's note: Some transition stuff as I setup the trip to Egypt. Plus Anita learns more about Childe (or does she?).
Part 11: Needles and haystacks
Time for a little police work digging.
I liked my new spiffy status as a United States Federal Marshal. Before, crime scene access had been a privilege, not a right. Now... Now the local cops could not deny me access if it was supernatural, plus it made that whole little issue of state lines and jurisdiction kind of go away. Federal jurisdiction, not State or local, Federal.
Bonus was that there was now a whole Federal bureaucracy that would cheerfully engage in pissing contests with state and local agencies that did not want to cooperate. Also, orders of execution allowed me to cross state lines as needed without having to worry about different state laws on the subject. Plus, a nice shiny badge I got to wave around and shove in peoples faces if I wanted to. I was now member of the club as it were.
Negative was that Federal bureaucracy thing; meaning Forms. God I hated forms.
The Federal Marshals did not really know what to make of us. We were in a special branch after all. Legal assassins or killers was what most law enforcement personnel thought of us, and frankly they were right. Law enforcement is all about preventing crimes and bringing the bad guys to justice. Me, and those like me? Our job was to legally kill, simple as that; and I had the body count to prove it.
Once I have a legal order of execution from a Federal judge, then that's it. I can shoot your ass any time, anywhere and there is no review, no appeal. I can get dismissed, fired. But not prosecuted so long as I obey the order of execution. Moreover, said orders empower me to take jurisdiction over local law enforcement in the pursuit of the order of execution.
Having that kind of power gives me the willies. The reason for granting that kind of power also gives me the willies. The legal system is just not equipped to deal with vampires, weres, and magic using folks who won't follow the rules. What do you do when the defendant summons demons to eat the jury? Well if you're honest you decided to shoot his ass, and that's were I come in.
One nice benefit was access to law enforcement data bases. Now I didn't have to wait and hope someone would follow up on my suggestions. I could conduct the searches and/or put the request into the system myself.
So I went to the Federal building to conduct some brief research. Brief in that I only had a few hours before my visitors hit town and research takes time.
First there is the guard at the buildings entrance. Then you require special access to get to the thirteenth floor. Then two more guards stations, plus locked doors before you get to an honest to God vault door. Thumb and retina prints are required to open the door and there is a two man rule, meaning that two people must always be present in the room behind the vault door. If you are by yourself the one of the cleared guards escorts you into the room.
In the vault room you find state of the art computers tied into every federal and state law enforcement database. Just brimming with the ability to search and access data.
Right?
Right...
Let's get real. Yea the guard at the front desk is real, and there is a receptionist on the thirteenth floor behind a glass door that does require your badge to open. From there it mostly looks like any other law enforcement bullpen.
That special room? Well I think it was a cleaning supply closet at one time, and the door lock was just a simple four number entry code. Those state of the art computers I was talking about? Well there were two old Windows XP Gateway computers connected to a local printer, and a big white board. The Bat cave it wasn't.
But it sufficed. The big thing to query was the accumulation of all supernatural legal activity that the FBI and the Marshals accumulated and stuck into a database, plus some stuff from the State department and other, more spooky, agencies. Almost all of the data was entered by support staff, no need to waste your shooter's time on such activity.
What to look for? Supernatural crimes and criminal activity was in this database, not supernatural stuff in general. Bleeding statues of Christ would not be in here unless somebody was cut up or killed as well. Aunt Martha seeing a ghost? No. Aunt Martha being killed by a ghost? Yes.
I figured that whatever had allowed something like Childe to come into this world had to have been big. And no guarantee that it was in the good old US of A.
Query. Large number of deaths, say five or more. AND/OR massive destruction, AND/OR demonic blonds. AND/OR satanic activity; I was dealing with a demon after all. AND/OR in the last... oh three weeks. Childe appeared to be operating fast, not likely that she had taken a vacation or something.
A set of hits came up, larger then I'd hoped for. Great, what a wonderful world we live in.
First was in Africa, in the nation of Nigeria. Bleak, an entire village slain by some kind of fire creature that appeared to have been summoned in the heart the village by some local shaman; now dead from said fire creature. Village burnt, people burnt, local cows burnt. Creature apparently look off and or left. Possible, but no additional details.
Next was cheerful little mass killing in New York city. Pentagrams, dead homeless, and lots and lots of blood. No ideas as to who did it or why. But somebody was missing a finger.
I skimmed each query match for ten or so minutes reviewing the details and seeing if anything clicked as I drank coffee. One thing I liked about the Federal building was that had a great coffee kiosk on the main floor lobby. Beats normal cop coffee by a few dozen miles.
So went my next two plus hours. I'd have to leave soon to meet my visitors when a case caught my eye, happened fifteen days ago. I remembered reading about it briefly in the newspaper as I tend to not watch the TV news; I'm on it too much for my comfort.
Oregon, a small out of the way town called Happner. The report detailed the death of five children, four girls and one boy, all blond. The boy had been the brother of one of the girls (finger print match on missing persons). Some cult event had happened in a disused building in one of those aging old downtowns where most of the shops have closed. A disused three story office building with empty buildings on either side as well.
Interestingly, all three buildings were owned by the same group. The Church of the way and the path. Apparently a small cult that supposedly nobody in town was really aware of, even though some of the members had been local business men and woman; one of which had been a real-estate agent.
Key words, had been.
Not only were there five dead children. But there were eleven dead adults as well. The kids all apparently had been slain in some kind of sacrifice. You know the kind, from all the bad horror films you used to watch when you were young. Black draped room with a stone alter, candlesticks, and a bloody pentagram. The kids were all missing from the last two years, but no closer then two hundred miles from Happner. The dungeon, in the basement of the building, rather put paid on the idea that this group had been snatching kids for quite some time.
The kids were all on the alter, throats cut. The adults were scattered about the room, except for one individual who apparently had crawled out of the room and had died by the front door. They had all been sliced up. Limbs hacked off, bodies and heads no longer connected, massive slashing wounds and deep piercing thrusts. Sword work according to forensics, apparently by somebody who knew how to correctly handle a sword.
Blood leaking from underneath the front door had alarmed some morning pedestrian and they had called the cops.
Blood work had also reveled that each adult had been a werewolf (not yet released to the public).
Turns out that there was a Seven/Eleven on the corner. The late night clerk said that the power had gotten funny for a minute or so around 11:20pm. Lights flickering, brown out. Then back to normal. Nothing else noticed.
Apparently a satanic ritual, blonds, and werewolves. Interesting, but not definitive. Unknown if the eleven dead adults had been all the members, local police had evidence that there might have been one or two additional members, now missing. Yet... Something about the brother and sister was scratching me as it were.
It was time to go. I briefly clicked though the set of photos that had been pulled from the store security system. People buying stuff, and a time stamp as to when, got to love security systems. I drained the last of my coffee and got up to go, one last click.
Nope, nothing.
Heck click one more time. Nope. Heck only ten more pages in the photo PDF. Clicked on the rest.
3:32am. Childe.
Bingo! Wearing a tan leather jacket and grey jeans. Buying a big gulp of some soda. Notes indicated that the clerk did not know this individual and had never seen her before or since.
I quickly rescanned more of the case details. There were five sacrifices, but the evidence showed six cells had been recently occupied. The hair samples that forensics had pulled from each cell had shown only one occupant; each occupant being blond. Only one set of hair samples did not match any of the victims and those samples were female long blond hair.
I plugged in my thumb drive and copied the contents of the case folder.
That made it... three massacres that Childe was now part of. First this one. Then Egypt, and then the counsel. Wondered if there were more? I would be willing to bet there was likely more, and that I had also just found her summoning site.
And werewolves had been involved. Childe apparently had a dislike or issues with werewolves. Plus she had spoken of an association with a girl names Rahne who had been a werewolf and they had not gotten along. I didn't buy that a demon had a childhood. But... I could buy that a demon might take over or consume a person and somehow associate that person's memories as their own. I quickly scanned the names of the adults; nope no Rahne.
Great, either Childe is a demon who thinks that she was once a girl, or a girl that now thinks she is a demon. Either way major dysfunctional issues. The little fact that she apparently had enough power to make the vampire counsel run scared made me think delusional demon instead of delusional girl.
Damn her timeline for tonight means I won't have any opportunity to go examine the site. Just too far away. Maybe I could call the Federal Marshal associated with the case after I meet with my visitors.
I hated how this compressed time schedule was constraining me; which was likely her plan.