Chapter 17 — Career Path

"How's it gonna look that a senator left the country the day after she won re-election?" Jeremy asked as Maddie climbed into the passenger seat.

"Like they care where I am," Maddie shot back. "As long as I'm doin' what they elected me for, my vacation plans aren't their concern."

"Is this a fuckin' vacation?"

"I thought that's how you sold it to your boss."

Jeremy shrugged. "Close enough. Told him I wanted to go see the beautiful B.C. sights."

Maddie glanced pointedly at the apartment complex down the street, with graffiti covering one wall. "Uh huh."

"Someone thought their work was beautiful."

"It's a dick, bro."

"What?" Jeremy looked at it more closely, slowing down Lani's car. "Fuck me, it is."

"Yeah, little bro, that's what that's meant for." She sighed exaggeratedly. "You gotta find yourself a new man. You get blind if you ain't gettin' laid."

"I'm busy workin'," he grumbled. "I'm runnin' solo up here, 'case you forgot."

"And whose fault is that?"

"Some bitch-ass gunman with a cheap rifle?"

"I wasn't talking about Lani, you asshat. I meant why didn't you invite me?"

Jeremy pulled around the corner. The cheap hotel he was staying it was only a couple blocks away from the train station and they were nearly there. "Weren't you busy with election shit?"

"Elections are won and lost way before Tuesday. Especially in our state. Thank you mail-in voting."

"Well how the fuck was I supposed to know that?"

Maddie rolled her eyes. "Because both your sisters are in politics, you fucker. Now let's go get something to eat. The food on the train was shit."

"What are you feelin'?"

"Anything. Pick the first goddamn fast food joint we see if you want. I'm starving."

As they chewed through cheap fast food in hard plastic seats, Jeremy brought her up to speed on everything he'd found so far. He'd woken Maddie up minutes after the mysterious girl vanished from his apartment. It took a few minutes for her to understand what he was trying to say, but neither of them got another wink of sleep that night.

The brief snatches of magic he'd witnessed until that point were one thing, but a girl teleporting in and out of his living room in the middle of the night was something else.

He'd left for Vancouver the next day.

As soon as he'd arrived, he started combing the town. The mysterious visitor hadn't given him an exact location, because nothing was ever allowed to be easy, but he knew what Rachel looked like. They had her on file, and a few photos from Hailey Winscombe's old social media feeds were more than enough to give him a good idea of who to look for.

A six-foot-five white girl in Vancouver? Couldn't be that hard, right?

Wherever Rachel DuValle was hiding though, she was hiding smart. Jeremy pulled out every trick of the trade he knew, and liberally abused some of the discretionary fund he still had on hand. He figured he could just talk his way out of any trouble with Aderholt later, especially if he actually found Rachel. But after three days, he didn't have a single lead.

So he widened his search. And then he widened it again. Soon he was setting up a grid search across the entire town. Finally, on Tuesday, he struck something that sounded just close enough to work.

It wasn't a report of a ridiculously tall girl, because Jeremy wasn't allowed to get that lucky, but it was a report of someone purchasing pain medications on a frequent and regular basis, combined with several reports of strange occurrences in the area. The police had investigated and found nothing, but Jeremy wasn't about to let even the slightest possibility escape.

The pain medication purchases were really the big tip-off, in his mind. He'd suspected that someone had to be taking care of the missing Will Carbonell, who was in no condition to do so himself. There wasn't any particular reason it should be Rachel, but there wasn't any reason it couldn't be.

"Maybe they were dating," said Maddie as they cruised through the Vancouver streets.

"You're just stuck on my dating life."

"I gotta live vicariously through someone, Jere-bear."

"Why don't you try dating someone yourself for once?"

"No time," she said, like she always did. "The people need me."

"The people need someone stable."

"Well, they keep electing me," she cackled, "so apparently not." She reached over and picked up the stone he'd left in the tray below the center console. "So what's up with this fucker again?"

"I think it can feel magic or some shit."

"Feel magic, huh?" She stared at it. "It definitely feels like it's doin' something."

"Feels wrong."

"Huh?"

"That pulling. Feels fuckin' wrong."

"I dunno." Maddie still had her hand on it, and every second was making Jeremy feel a little more uncomfortable.

"You should let go of it."

"Nah, hang on. I think I got this." She closed her eyes. "Yeah. You can make it stop."

"Huh?"

"If you just tell it to stop, it stops. You got control over it."

"The fuck you talkin' bout? You didn't tell it to stop."

"I did. With my mind."

Jeremy shook his head. "Fuckin' magic."

It was a bright and sunny afternoon as they pulled into the neighborhood from the reports. As they got out, Maddie pocketed the stone, "just in case." Jeremy still felt like they should just leave it alone, but he couldn't deny that it might be useful in the short run.

"She didn't happen to tell you where in Vancouver, did she?" Maddie asked, glancing around as they got out. He'd parked the car a block away from the pharmacy in his reports. It was a longshot, but all his other leads hadn't panned out, so here they were.

Jeremy shrugged. "Nothin's allowed to be easy, right? Probably some shitty rule of magic."

"How many rules you gonna make up before you just give up and ask someone?"

"Fuck that. I don't want to know." He shook his head. "I'm here to find Jackie, and that's it. I don't care about fuckin' magic or monsters or any of this crap."

"You're lyin'."

He wandered over to an alleyway next to a bowling alley, where he felt like he looked reasonably inconspicuous, and pulled out a cigarette. Jeremy didn't smoke, but it made for a good excuse and a good opener with suspects, so he usually kept a pack handy.

Maddie took up the wall opposite. "You want to know what happened to that town. I smell it on ya."

"I know what happened. They fucked up and killed each other over this shit. Easy enough."

"Nah, that's too simple for you. You gotta know the whole story."

"I only gotta know enough to finish my report and get the next case."

Maddie grinned. "See, already one step back. Trust me, the sooner you admit you're not just in this for Jackie anymore, the better off you'll be."

An hour passed. Jeremy and Maddie rotated around the building once, just in case, and ended up on the other side of the pharmacy. He still had a good line of sight on the door. A long stakeout was nothing new to him, but his sister wasn't used to staying still for so long.

"I forgot how much I hate this," she muttered.

"You wanted to come."

"Yeah, your job is boring as fuck. How do you put up with this?"

"You learn to entertain yourself."

"How?"

Jeremy nodded toward the pharmacy. "Makin' up stories."

"Huh?"

"Every guy that comes through, I make up a story about him. Stuff like what he's interested in, what he does for a livin', his hopes and dreams. His fears. Who he is."

"What he's like in bed?"

He rolled his eyes — though if he was being honest, it'd crossed his mind a few times. "Sometimes I go ask 'em later when the case is done. Buy 'em a drink, see how close I was. It's good practice."

"For what, profiling?"

"Don't make this political. No P.D. would ever survive a day without some profilin'. It's impossible."

She sighed. "Yeah, I know. But it's my job to make sure you don't go too far." She glanced at the pharmacy, while Jeremy looked away so they didn't seem too suspicious. "Mmkay then. That guy. He's… well, he's mid-forties. Blue collar guy. Probably a family man. Watches the game every night, doesn't get paid enough, not a heavy internet user—"

"—and votes Republican, yeah, we got it." Jeremy shook his head. "You gotta get off demographics and onto real details. Stop playin' politician for a sec."

"Okay, your turn." She turned away, shoving her hands in her pockets, giving Jeremy a good look at the guy. He was walking toward them, though on the opposite side of the street, so Jeremy could easily watch him without being noticed.

His jaw dropped.

"He's a software engineer from Redmond, never married, and he's not supposed to be here."

"Fuck me, how'd you get that?"

"That's Eric fucking Hurwitz. Rachel DuValle's father."