M Sellars - Never Burn A Witch

“I’d give that one some thought,” Ben expressed. “Just between you an’ me she’s not usually this forgivin’. She must think you’re okay lookin’ or somethin’, although I really can’t see why.”

“I want my lawyer,” Roberts grumbled.

“Fine with me,” Constance replied in a stoic voice.

“Not ‘zactly the choice that I woulda made.” Ben shrugged then turned and spoke to me in a clipped tone as he gestured at the rack of equipment, “Go ahead, Chief. What is all this shit?”

He was outwardly showing signs of fatigue, and I’d seen him like this before. His biggest problem, or perhaps asset, depending on your point of view, was that he often cared too much. It wasn’t unusual for him to run on little to no sleep along with inordinate amounts of coffee whenever he was working a case. Considering the previous night’s events, I knew he was running on pure caffeine-we all were. The sharp bite that now permeated my friend’s voice told me he was riding on the edge and that Allen Roberts’ attitude wasn’t helping his overall demeanor.

The simple fact of the matter was that we were all on edge. Constance had, for all intents and purposes, threatened Roberts with the assault charge. Such a tactic coming from her was overtly uncharacteristic of her by-the-book persona we all knew so well. Even Carl Deckert looked like he had aged ten years in the matter of a week.

And then there was me.

I had become so unbalanced by my own rabid fears of the history this killer was re-kindling that I was breaking one of my own cardinal rules. I wasn’t keeping myself properly grounded. While my ethereal senses continued to work in overdrive, there was no proper outlet for the by-products of those supernormal energies. Like a transformer with a short circuit, I was almost literally burning myself out. And as evidenced by the episodes Felicity had experienced, I wasn’t doing her any good either.

At this moment my gut instinct was telling me that this whole avenue was an exercise in futility that would get us no closer to solving these murders. Though I certainly understood that every lead needed to be followed, I couldn’t shake the growing impatience that was even now tickling the base of my brain.

With a sigh I moved in closer to the rack and gave the blinking lights, humming machines, and tangled wires a once over, slowly nodding my head and muttering to myself as I identified the individual components.

“It’s definitely a network,” I acknowledged Mandalay’s assessment. “But it looks like it’s also an internet domain server, which is pretty much what we expected.” I began pointing to various pieces as I named them off, struggling to keep apathy from seeping into my voice. “This is the hub, this is a router, and unless I missed my guess, this box here is the server itself. Is it okay if I touch the keyboard?”

“Hold on a minute,” Ben answered flatly. “I’ll be right back.” He returned in just over a minute and handed me a packet containing a pair of surgical gloves adding the comment, “Just in case.”

I nodded as I pulled the thin latex sheaths over my hands and inspected the black, rack-mounted unit a bit closer. On the small pullout keyboard stowed beneath it, I backspaced the misspelled “killfile” command into non-existence and tapped in my own instructions for a directory listing.

“Yeah…” I muttered and nodded as I scanned the listing that streamed across the monitor. “Yeah, looks like it’s the web server all right. Some kind of proprietary turnkey box running under a network shell program. Not the most sophisticated web host on the block, but they’re popular. A lot of small businesses and Mom ‘n’ Pop ISP’s use them.”

“Is it where the message came from?” Ben pressed.

“Probably. It’s a web server and considering that the domain the mail came from is registered to Mister Roberts here…” I allowed my answer to trail off and punctuated it with a shrug.

“Message?” Roberts blurted and tossed a puzzled glance between us. “What message? What are you talking about?”

“Whaddaya mean ‘prob’ly?’” Ben ignored him and spat back at me with heated annoyance. “Can’t you tell?”

“I mean exactly what I said!” I barked, my own voice an open wound bleeding tension into the room. “Probably! I don’t know for sure, and I’m not experienced with this particular piece of software. It’s highly likely based on the facts we have at our disposal that this is the server that the mail originated from. Beyond that, I can’t say for sure just yet. Contrary to what you’ve seen in the movies, Ben, you can’t just type in ‘give me the secret information’ and have it automatically pop up on the screen!”

My friend caught himself as he began to snarl an angry retort and left the vitriolic words unspoken. Silence rang through the atmosphere filling the room with its thickness. Almost simultaneously we grinned sheepishly at one another and shook our heads.

“Smartass,” Ben replied with a slight chuckle as he reached up to massage the back of his neck. “Sorry, white man. Can ya’ figure it out?”

“Yeah,” I nodded and smiled back. “Give me a few minutes, and I’ll be able to tell you for sure.”

“Are either of you going to answer me?” Roberts spouted once again. “What are you talking about? What message?”

“I thought you wanted your attorney?” Constance posed, her voice tightly wrapped in sarcasm.

Roberts shook his head and tried to look back at the petite federal agent then appealed to Ben once more, “What is this all about? Why are you guys here?”

My friend stared him down for a moment then pinched the bridge of his nose between his thumb and forefinger and huffed out a tired sigh. “A threatening e-mail message was apparently sent from here to a Miz Kendra Miller. Last week, Miz Miller turned up dead. We came here to ask ya’ a few questions about it.”

The three of us shared an incredulous, slack jawed gaze at the man when he opened his mouth and replied with a note of bitter calm, “Dead, huh? Well, I warned her.”

“At first, I really didn’t mind the ‘bi’ thing,” Roberts explained across the small table in the interview room at the MCS command post. “In fact, it was… well… you know, kind of a turn on.”

By the time we had arrived downtown, the earlier fits of bravado had taken hold, and his attitude had morphed from the original sudden panic to a self-righteous cockiness. For the moment however, even with his current disposition, he was at least talking. Unfortunately, what was coming out of his mouth so far was not only less than helpful but instead, appeared to be acting more as a caustic irritant for Agent Mandalay.

Constance was leaning with her back against the wall a few feet away. Upon hearing the comment, she looked at the man with a disgusted smirk and raised an eyebrow but kept silent.

“Do us all a favor, Roberts, and spare us your little sex fantasies.” Ben shook his head then thrust his chin toward the man. “Get back to the e-mail.”

“Well, like I said, at first it was no big deal, but when she started spending all her time with ‘queen lesbo the lawyer and her dyke club’ it was pretty obvious that she had to have a thing for one of them.” He paused and looked at us as if we should feel sorry for him. As though we should view him as an emotionally damaged victim of a soured love affair. “And then, well she started screwing around with all that WitchCraft shit… That was just plain weird, okay? Hell, for all I know they were having some kind of lesbian orgies or something. Of course, that would have been fine if I was invited, you know.”

“What did I just say, Roberts?”