January 16, 2009

It seems that David has proven himself useful after all.

His call came this morning, harried with excitement. “You were right!” he all but shouted into the receiver.

As if I didn’t know.

“I got the whole list of warehouses, storage units, and stuff like that, and who each one is registered to. Then I checked the names against the town records. There were only a handful that didn’t match up with anything. A couple were some old folks who have relatives in town, so those panned out. But there was one that I couldn’t find any matches to, even with checking into the surrounding areas. And when I called the registration phone number, but it was disconnected, so I called my buddy in the ComTech company…”

He paused, took a breath, and resumed his hyper-kinetic pace. “The last registered address for that phone number was hers.”

Perfect.

I stood up, already pulling papers together in front of me. “Have you opened it yet?”

“Yeah, the boss approved it right away when he saw what I had. We just popped the lock a couple hours ago.” He took another breath. “It’s more of those boxes. About two dozen, maybe a little more. The hospital here didn’t have any more space for the box cases—”

“Box cases?” I interrupted, frowning.

“It’s what they’re calling these people. Box cases. Anyway, I guess these people don’t need a lot of care at the hospital because they’re still in fine health, but they take up a lot of beds as they’re sleeping off whatever she used on them. They don’t have any more beds for them here, so we had to send them out to Wikland.”

I frowned. That was almost twenty miles away. “What’s wrong with Afonbeck? The hospital there is enormous.”

“Already full. You gotta remember, Michael, these hospitals have to keep some beds available for other people, like if someone’s bleeding and needs help right away. These box cases are kind of low priority in terms of triage.”

“Low priority? They don’t even know what’s wrong with these people!”

“That’s the thing. Nothing seems to be wrong with them.”

“Yes, being stuffed into a little box for as much as eighteen months is perfectly harmless.” I shook my head. “Tell me you at least found something there that’ll help us track down Willsey.”

“Sorry, no. Just boxes. But the lab’s going over them closely. Maybe they’ll find—”

“Keep me updated,” I interrupted before hanging up. The lab here in Riventon hadn’t found anything helpful on the boxes, and I doubted anyone at my home precinct would, either.

More people. Only a tiny fraction of what had already been found, but more people nonetheless. I sat down, my eyes on the papers in front of me but not really seeing them. More people. What could she possible need so many people for? What was she doing with them?

Trafficking was pretty much a dead end at this point, though the boss here still had a task force checking into that option. But the profile just didn’t fit. Traffickers kept maybe a dozen or two on hand, never spent much on them, and never held onto people for long. It was a business of speedy turnaround, but there were a handful of people we’d found that had been missing for about a year and a half. Others had only vanished a couple of weeks ago. The rest fell anywhere between the two.

No, traffickers wouldn’t hold onto merchandise for that long. The cost of keeping them alive negated the profits after only a couple of months.

Besides, those boxes were pretty high-tech. The lab had only just finished processing the first few boxes yesterday, and though no fingerprints, hairs, or magic residual traces had been left behind by May-A-Toilet-Seat-Fall-From-Space-On-Her-Head-Willsey, the boxes themselves told us quite a bit.

First off, she had to be rich. Or have someone supplying her money—a lot more money than she’d make from her “spiritual guru” game. Either that, or she was gaining something from these people that was incredibly profitable. Ransom money? But most of these people had no families. And if the others had been held for ransom, the families would have told us by now, now that the victims were safe.

Anyway, the lab did a little researching and determined that one of those boxes had to cost about twenty-five thousand dollars. And considering the thousands of boxes she had—and those are just the ones we’ve found—she must be loaded, one way or another.

The alloy used to make the boxes was… some pretentious blowhard’s idea of what sounds “cool” for an alloy to be named. At any rate, whatever it’s called, the lab said that it’s expensive and hard to find. It’s sturdy, but easy to shape. It also conducts electricity and magical energy around itself without harming or revealing anything behind it. Sort of like lead and X-rays.

The interior was infused with waves of residual magic. They weren’t immediately apparent, but a little digging had sorted them out. It was a jumble of drowsiness, contentment, and numbing that appears to be what kept these people in stasis. There are a few more things still being sorted out—most likely what kept them healthy and alive for the months or longer they’d stayed in there.

The air tanks were simple air filters, transforming the carbon dioxide in the box into breathable oxygen. They, too, had been infused with a touch of magic, just a little energy to keep them going indefinitely. There’s no way of knowing how long she intended to keep these people in this state.

Lining the boxes was a special sort of padding, one that was designed to readjust every few hours to change the firmness. Some of the more expensive nursing homes and privatized hospitals used the material in their bedding, saving the nurses from the horrible task of having to actually be responsible and readjust bedridden patients to avoid bedsores.

The boxes alone cost thousands of dollars, and the padding and tanks each cost a few more thousand dollars. Whatever Willsey was doing with these people, she found it worth spending tens of thousands on it.

According to earlier discussions with David, Dum had made a reappearance at the precinct, brought in to take a look at one of the vacated boxes. He’d recognized it immediately as one of the boxes that had been delivered to Willsey’s shop, one of the ones that he and Dee hadn’t been allowed to touch or see. We can only assume that she transferred those boxes into that storage unit or took them with her to the warehouse here. One of the two. Beyond that, he hadn’t been much help at all.

Big surprise there.

I stood from my desk, grabbed my coat, and headed out the door. I could hear Grif calling after me, but I deliberately ignored him. I wouldn’t be back to the precinct that day.

I had a few personal visits to make.