seymoure

Chapter 14
“Courier”

Harriette was very careful, as per instruction, in her duties as a courier. She was a bit miffed that she was doing this, as she was a detective and one with a bit of a reputation.

But, given that several people had died who were supposed to be doing what she was doing, she was not going to complain.

Harriette was 28 and a licensed private investigator.

Her father had been the first P.I. she had ever known and his brand of detective work was all she ever wanted to do. He was in a very “special” branch of the gumshoe world. He had begun as a run of the mill detective in the 1940s and had been moderately successful there.

Then he had some experiences that took him out of that world and showed him that the world was far more than what he had thought it to be.

By the 1970’s Dante was the name you looked up when you had had a “Night Stalker” experience. For most of the kids, the show about the Reporter Carl Kolchak, had been silly Para-psychological adventure. For her it had been more like a docudrama. She had been exposed, on more than one occasion, but without her fathers wish, to things that no one she knew would have accepted as possible.

Her mother Flower had told her, time and time again, “Don’t talk about your father’s work. It’s cool, but some folks are not cool with it.”

It became harder to keep out of her dad’s world when her mother passed away in 1989. She never really understood why her Mom died, but she had promised herself to understand.

The one thing she did know was that her father became obsessed with her safety. He took very few cases, and spent much more time consulting.

When she was old enough she told him she was going to go into the “family business” he got really angry with her. He didn’t say anything, but there were far too many tense silences.

After she “made her bones” in the nationally covered “Murder by Poltergeist” case, he gave her all of his files. For the final years of his life he was her prime consultant, and a dearer friend than any she had ever had.

When he died in 2000 she was amazed by the people who came to his funeral. Heads of state, military leaders and some dark figures who stayed far in the background.

Now she worked on her own. Much of her time was taken fulfilling her retainer with the Sebastian Claus group. He was a good ally to have, and he had sent her a lot of business as well as paying most of her bills with his monthly checks.

Now Claus wanted her to pick up some books, without ever taking “possession” of them.

Some kind of curse or demon involvement, she knew.

She wondered how involved she would get with this case. She had a nice little infestation of angry spirits over at the Music center of the college, and she could go back to that. But Claus was always bringing the bigger, more fun cases to her.

She hoped he needed her abilities, beyond the transporting of demon tagged literature.

The uneasy man at the Police Station proceeded to put the two books in her leather bag with the silver cross on the side.

These made the total 18, and she knew she had three more to get.

She closed the bag and walked out of the building. She noticed that, out of nowhere, a thunderstorm was threatening.

Not like she had never seen that crap before.