Conceal Me What I Am Ch. 08

***************

With the magical duels now resolved, the rest of the assault upon the factory was rather more straight forward and conventionally fought, but not much less costly in casualties. We lost a handful, and they lost quite a few more, with nearly everyone that was left fighting quite to the death. There just weren't many prisoners to take, and not many of them were particularly worth the effort involved.

For the creamy frosting on the cake, I found my missing arms dealer, Jesse Hollaway in a corner near one of the storage areas with two randomly fired bullets in him. The one in his shoulder didn't look too bad, but unfortunately the one lodged in his temple was nearly instantly fatal. Of course, he did in fact have his lucky silver dollar on him, which I left to be buried with him. This was not quite what I had planned for our next encounter.

With the mopping up accomplished and the facility secured, Bel, Janice and I started our rather exhaustive search of all of the bodies and anything that resembled files or paperwork that might lead us to the secret location of the Rockport warehouse. Our exuberant teenaged witch was somewhat more subdued and I found her later sitting in chair in a nearby room with her arms quite wrapped around her body, as if to comfort herself, and for now I just let her be. She was getting an unusually rough magical education and this was probably the first time that she had ever seen the negative aspects of our craft. She just wasn't going to easily understand as we say down in Texas, that sometimes 'folks just need killing'. Maybe Bel could think of something comforting to say later, but I knew I'd just say the wrong thing, so I left her alone for the next few hours until she felt herself mentally gathered enough to rejoin us.

***********

It was in the pants pocket of the half-charred figure of one of the Harrison brothers that I found our only real clue. On the face of it, the singed but largely complete folded photocopied document looked just like any other badly duplicated bit of paper, and the heavily smudged information printed on it didn't tell us anything that we didn't already know. Fearing our investigation, the leaders of the smuggling organization had decided to advance the next pick-up of the produced weapons at both facilities the previous Friday night. We'd found a few old leftover cases of guns and ammo, but the large storage rooms were both emptied, and we still had no clue where they'd moved their contents to! Still, this nearly illegible photocopy hinted at something, but I just couldn't put my mental finger on it until I gave it to Bel for her to examine. At once she caught the significance!

"This paper came from my boss's office!" She exclaimed with delight, and I immediately realized why she'd known. That morning a few days ago when we had been waiting in Mason Probert's office, I had fussed a bit with his nearly broken-down copier. In fact I hadn't been able to get a copy even this legible! The smudge marks were telling and quite identifiable, even from just my flaky memory. Bel's was certainly better, and she could positively identify the paper as having come from his copier. The devices were still expensive and scarce in US government service and shoddy or not, he possessed one of the only copiers in the entire federal building. Finally, this was solid evidence that the FBI could use!

Now that our investigation was complete, Janice was ready to call into her office for backup, and for the rest of us it was time to hand over at least this part of the investigation to the FBI. Jerome Standish departed with his troops and took all of the wounded prisoners and of course their own dead, back with them. As far as Janice was concerned, she was going to tell her bosses that she learned of the gang conflict involving illegal weapons manufacturing, and that the vast majority of the carnage had been done before we had arrived, with unfortunately no survivors. As there was no one left there living, other than us, we didn't have to worry much about her story being contradicted.

The notion of two FBMR wizards working for criminals would not at all be an outrageous one to most members of the FBI. They were going to count some serious coup as the result of this raid, and Janice was going to become very much the fair-haired girl back in Washington. Bel was going to corroborate her lover's story, and recite her own account of the suspicions she had about the local FBMR office. Of reports of misconduct that had been repeatedly ignored and how her office might have a few bad apples still left in it.

We still hadn't found our missing link of evidence to lead us to the right place in Rockford, if indeed Rockford was quite the proper place to go, but at least two weapons plants would no longer be supplying Deseret with smuggled arms and ammunition, and that was my real purpose for being up here in the first place. Come Monday morning we'd catch Probert in his office and I'd make the miserable bastard squeal out every secret in his pointy little head! The FBI could then take point in raiding the warehouse and by Friday the paperwork could be finished and I might be on my way back home to civilization!

**************

The FBI kept us busy the rest of Saturday night and well into Sunday afternoon and I was interviewed by at least a dozen different agents and increasingly higher ranking federal officials, even more of which were on their way from Washington. I signed just about everything put in front of me (after reading it of course) but they were buying our story, eating it up and wanting seconds. Some of the more excitable officials were all for conducting an immediate raid against the FBMR office, rounding everyone up including the cleaning staff, and pretty much in general all in favor of throwing out the baby with the bath water, but good old politics as usual soon put an end to that. Bel and I were more than certain that a host of senior Washington FBMR officials and wizards were on their way here, too... probably to make damned certain that the rot that might be found would absolutely end with Mason Probert. Hardly likely, but that was definitely what they'd seek to establish.

*************

When the FBI finally released us for the time being, I made my excuses to everyone and trotted back as quickly as I could to my hardly used hotel bed to catch up on yet more lost sleep. I'd burned up more magical energy in the last few days than I'd used in the last few months, and trust me it takes a toll out of you. I was feeling thin and squeezed out like an orange that been shoved into a press and repeatedly mashed until nothing was left but the pith.

Bel and Janice casually mentioned to me that they were going to spend the night at O'Grady's... but since they weren't inviting me to join in the fun, I didn't have much of a care. Neither of them had quite forgiven me yet for dropping a near maximum category tornado directly on top of their heads, not to mention several of my other slight magical excesses of the last few days. I'd even come to the conclusion that I had quite scared them with my improbably displays of raw, near unrestricted and only minimally regulated power. Now that I'd had a little time to think about it, I'd also done a pretty good job of scaring myself. Very definitely any hints towards a possible flowering romance had quite died on the vine, with the feeble plant dumped under a few tons of concrete for good measure.

On the other hand, there was still one person who looked towards me with unrestrained admiration, the young and far too impressionable Miranda. I found her sitting in front of my hotel room, wanting to hear the latest news from the FBI, so I let her in and poured her a soda and we picked each other's brains for most of the next hour.

Her father's raid of the Harrison Group manufacturing facility up in north Chicago went off nearly flawlessly, in fact it went nearly too well. The place was nearly empty of guards as nearly all of the weapons and ammo had also been transported elsewhere. The final remaining Harrison brother was not present, nor was any of his best trained and elite soldiers, his so-called 'Highland Park Guard'. This still gave Sebestyen Dénes a minor tactical victory, but now he was left with a rather messy street war that would determine the outcome of this war. So far, the guardsmen had not made any appearance in the fighting, and her father feared a rather heavy counterstrike would soon occur.

A note from her father rather clarified things some more. Now that Miranda was with me, he felt certain that he could 'feel assured of her continued safety in this extremely uncertain time'. Unquote. Now granted, this temporary responsibility for her care and security was not just mine, but also encompassed Bel, and perhaps even Janice. There was a bit of the plural insinuated in his royal use of 'you', but for now at least, the kid needed to stay under my watchful eye. Unfortunately, I really needed some shut eye instead.

Mercifully, Sean charged in to the rescue, and with lumps of Miracle Putty in hand the pair of them were soon sprawled out on the small sitting room floor to reenact some old Civil War battles in startling (and noisy) 3-D. As tired as I was, they could have reproduced the entire English and French moon rocket rivalry of 1899-1902 and I'd have never heard it.