"Madame Witch Belanger," Miranda began, slowly and very formally to Bel, "I have tried to solve an important problem for my father, but I have been quite unable to do so. The matter is either too complicated or beyond the means of my powers, or perhaps both. In short, children have been disappearing lately and no one quite knows why or how."
"Just called me 'Bel'." She replied. "Disappearances in Chicago, or any other city are not uncommon... especially for children. What makes these cases so unusually particular?"
"Yes, children do disappear, but rarely in such singular circumstances where the child will just suddenly vanish right from plain sight in front of several witnesses while out in an open public place. In the most recent disappearance, the five year old daughter of an important family member just blinked completely out of sight while playing with other children in a public park. Her mother and three other parents were within ten yards of her when she disappeared and no one saw or heard a thing. She was there and then she was gone. This happened four days ago."
"There have been other cases like this? Is Chicago PD investigating?" Bel inquired.
"At least a dozen other cases that we've heard about," Sebestyen confirmed, "but this has been the only case involving a family member from my organization. In the earlier cases, the police were called in to investigate but I've been told that the FBI or some other government agency is now in charge of the investigation, and since then all of my usual sources have gone silent on the matter. That alone is extremely unusual and insinuates that they either cannot or will not resolve the problem."
"Do you have any items or articles of clothing that the girl had worn that day, or shortly before?" Bel enquired and Miranda nodded her head. This was very useful indeed, as Bel was quite a talented psychometric who might well be able to follow the trail just like a bloodhound might follow a scent.
"I have the girl's jacket and a knitted cap that she had just taken off before she started to play that morning. We had the thought of using a tracking dog to follow the scent as well but the animal quickly became confused and then frightened and refused to follow the trail even a step outside of the playground. I had hoped that perhaps either of you two wizards might be able to try your talents instead. The family of the missing girl has served my father for many years and in positions of great responsibility and unquestioned loyalty, and it would be most regrettable indeed if that faithfulness could not now be rewarded." She murmured, not entirely optimistic of the chances.
"We will do what we can," I replied, "but you have to know that after a disappearance of four days, the odds become unsettlingly slender that the girl could still be found alive. We certainly both have skills that might allow us to find where she was taken to, and by whom, but we cannot promise you or her parents a happy recovery, but we will both do what we can. If we are already too late but have the chance to discover the culprit, would this be acceptable?" They both agreed, but not with any particular eagerness. Still, they both knew the odds and realized that our late efforts were just a last ditch sort of forlorn hope. Still, as Mr. Dénes had suggested, this was indeed a way of us building some trust with him.
Since we figured that it would be early evening at the soonest before we'd have word of the exact location of the rogue weapons factories, and/or the headquarters of operations for the Clinton Street gang, this gave us a few hours at minimum to examine the peculiarities of the disappearances. Miranda agreed to come along with us to point out the exact location of where the child had vanished, but I wanted to make a quick phone call along the way to our only FBI contact, Janice Simms. She probably didn't want us directly contacting her, but we didn't have time to do any of the other usual sneakiness that Bel and Janice relied upon to leave messages to each other. From what I understood, the FBI had jurisdiction over missing children and possible kidnapping cases, but yet they didn't seem to be involved, and I was curious why.
First, though, I had to get rid of our snoops on the street upstairs. I was feeling good and ready to ride hell bent for leather off of the reservation, but I needed to ensure that we had some privacy for this brand new bit of investigation. We needed to preserve Miranda's anonymity and reduce, if not eliminate, any obvious public association with us and Mr. Dénes and his organization. This problem definitely called for another pair of handfuls of Wonder Putty. Miranda was fascinated by the way Bel and I moulded the two crude putty images of ourselves along with a strand of each of our hairs as we channeled the energies for the illusion spell.
"So that's how it's done!" She cooed with genuine amazement. "I tried to do something like this a few months ago when I thought a government witchfinder was on my trail. I'd had to hoof it the hard way and he almost trapped me with a stun spell before I reached a place where I could access the tunnels underground. The next time, I think I'll be able to do this!" I didn't disbelieve her. Truth-telling, the mentalist ability to detect whether a speaker is lying or not, is a tricky skill to do with even close to 100% accuracy. Like most mentalist powers, this was something I wasn't particularly good at and had hardly even ever tried before. Having a knack for the truth sometimes also means that a magician might also be equally good with illusions. Odd how in magic, opposites tend to work together. More weird magical theory that I'd mostly dozed through when back in school. That was definitely something that you couldn't really learn from a book! I had only recently learned this simple illusion, and only after quite a bit of help from Sean while learning. Miranda was going to need a proper instructor if she was ever going to make the most of her promising but nascent talents!
Sending our images walking down the street and turning the next corner down the block, our watchers dutifully drove on after us, and right away the three of us scampered into Bel's car and headed off in the opposite direction. Out of sight and now more than a block away, I knew that our illusions wouldn't last or fool them for long, giving us a minute of freedom at most before they would realized they'd been duped and would be hot again once more on our trail. Bel tried to give the tracker in the car another good hex to disable it, but this wasn't really her forte. I didn't think I could do much better, and it would have to wait until we reached the park. Hopefully, this would give us at least a half hour or so of privacy before the cavalry started to arrive.
Reaching the park, I let Miranda take Bel over to the last place the girl, little five-year old Anne-Marie had been seen, so that along with the jacket and cap she could best use her psychometric talents to pick up the trail. This was her forte and strongest talent, something that I couldn't do if my life depended upon it. Frankly, if Bel come up stumped, I wasn't too sure at all what else I could contribute that would help. For now, I just wanted more information and calling Janice at the local FBI office seemed to be the best, if not the most discrete, way to get it fast. There was a payphone at the corner of the park and I thought using this reduced at least some of the risk. She was in the office that Friday afternoon, wonder of wonders, and the switchboard connected us in just a few moments. I was pretty sure that government phones were not secure, especially in the local FBI field office, so I had to be a tad creative.
"Agent Simms? This is Officer Zachary with the Chicago PD. We talked last night with my partner, Officer Darling, about a possible arson investigation, do you remember?" She did indeed. She didn't quite laugh or snicker, but I was sure that there was a smile on her face on the other end of the phone.
"Well today I've got a different sort of problem, and we're wondering if the FBI has any formal involvement. There have been some rather odd public disappearances of children -- as if by magic. The last case was of a girl in Lincoln Park. I've just spoken with a concerned family member and they're a bit concerned that some government agency has already taken over the investigation and my superiors don't want us street boys getting any further involved. Can you assure me that it is
