rayaso

FTSEC

Woody had loved the white, two-story house as soon as he’d seen it. It was perfect. It was bland, boring, and dull. It was at the end of a cul-de-sac of similar houses, mostly rentals. It had lawns, a few low shrubs, no trees, and a wood fence in decent shape.

More importantly, the sight lines were unobstructed. They could put a sniper on the second floor and see anyone coming for at least a quarter mile.

As Woody pulled up to it now, the only problem with it was the black SUV out front.

“Damnit,” he thought, “how many times have I told them?”

Nothing said law enforcement like a black SUV. Unless it was the watchvan, which was parked down the street. It was meagerly disguised as “Smith Bros. Painters” and bristled with antennas.

Woody was driving a gray Honda Civic. There were at least two more parked out in front of nearby houses. It attracted no one’s attention, unlike the other two vehicles.

“Next time,” thought Woody, “they should just paint ‘safe house’ on it.”

Woody was Marshal John Woodsman of FTSEC, the Fairy Tale Security branch of the Library of Congress. It was the smallest operation in the federal law enforcement empire and he was the only employee. It was funded under “office supplies” for WITSEC, the Witness Security Program in the U.S. Marshals Service.

For this witness, he’d borrowed “real Marshals,” as they called themselves, but he’d hated to do it. He'd had been given the clowns in the SUV for this operation, and WITSEC had thrown in the watchvan as a good faith gesture. Recently, relations had been tense.

“They sure as #@%! had better not have blown my safe house,” thought Woody, as his blood pressure reached perilous heights. “This case is too important.”

Woody was there to check on the security arrangements before the witness was due to arrive later. He found the deputy marshal asleep on the sofa with the TV on, which was inexcusable. After waking him up, Woody decided to go it alone without any more “help” from the real marshals, their SUV, or their watchvan.

He drove back to the office to get his own equipment. FTSEC was located in WITSEC’s former confidential operations center, located under Bannister’s Brew Pub. Bannister’s combined a micro-brewery in back with a sports bar up front. Woody nodded to the bartender as he went in, and continued through to the back.

The brewery had several large fermentation tanks, along with all the other equipment needed to produce its currently fashionable beer. The last fermentation tank was an elevator in disguise, which Woody rode down to FTSEC headquarters.

FTSEC HQ was a large underground room, which WITSEC had stripped bare after relocating to its new, modern OPCENT. Woody had a desk, a lamp, and a filing cabinet nobody wanted. It was a dark, murky space where everything smelled of beer-- even his laptop.

“No one cares about literary crimes,” he'd thought, when he was transferred from WITSEC because he'd asked for protection for Prince Charming, who had agreed to testify against the Evil Queen in exchange for immunity and witness protection.

“WITSEC doesn’t handle lit crimes,” his boss had said. “You don’t really fit in here, but the Library of Congress is looking for someone with your background.”

Woody had built FTSEC from the ground up, which didn’t mean much since he was still its only employee.

Prince Charming was now Chuck Johnson, a store clerk in Omaha. With his help, the Evil Queen had been arrested, but she had escaped on a technicality.

But now all of Woody's energy was on his current case, the biggest one yet. He had flipped the Wicked Witch of the West, who was now prepared to testify against the Fairytale Witch Consortium for violating the Black Magic Protection Act.

The Wicked Witch had come to Woody. She had known him in his days as the woodsman who had rescued Little Red Riding Hood from the wolf, and she knew he could be trusted.

“I’m so tired of it all,” she had said, “especially those flying monkeys. They’re out of control, hunting people down and causing nightmares on their own. They can't get enough of it.”

The Witch wanted immunity and a new identity as far from water as possible, plus a lot of plastic surgery. In return, she would give Woody everything he needed to bring down the Consortium.

He was scheduled to meet with the Wicked Witch that night at the safe house for the first debriefing. She would be flying in at midnight, under cover of darkness.

Woody finished gathering up his supplies, and left. He stopped off at the Beef Barn for their SpudSteak dinner, and then drove to the safehouse to get everything ready.

He parked in the garage and took his video equipment out of the trunk. He double-checked it, then set it up in the family room and waited. At the stroke of midnight, the Witch landed in the backyard, and came inside and parked her broom in the kitchen. They got right to work.

“It all started with Glinda the Good,” the Witch said with a cackle. “She’s not as good as people think. Her first gang was those miserable munchkins, but that wasn’t enough for her. She wanted to get all the evil witches together. ‘Think of everything we could do’ she said to us, and we went along with it.”

The Witch told him bombshell after bombshell, stopping when it began to get light outside.

“I’ll be back,” she said as she retrieved her broom and headed to the backyard to take off and return to her castle. “It’s feeding time for those monkeys . . .”

But before she could finish, the automatic sprinklers popped up. No one had even thought about them, and they hadn't been disabled. It was too late for Woody to rescue her-- she gave a gut-wrenching shriek and melted right before his eyes. It was agonizing to watch, and it seemed to take forever. Finally, nothing was left but a steaming pool of liquid witch. Woody picked up her hat, cloak, and broom to take back to the office. He kept them as a reminder that no detail was too small.

Woody had never lost a witness before, and it hit him hard. He had hours of videotape, but none of it could be used at a trial. Without the Witch, the case was ruined. The drive back to the brewpub was miserable and long.

While he was working on the extra lost-witness paperwork, a large soap bubble appeared, and out stepped Glinda herself, all sparkles and light.

“Too bad about that snitch,” she said with a smile.

“That’s cold,” replied Woody. “But I’m not giving up, now that I know who you really are.”

“Me?” she said sweetly. “I’m Glinda the Good. You’ll never touch me.”

With a wave of her wand, Glinda disappeared.

“No one’s untouchable,” thought Woody. “I’m not giving up until I bring her down.”

With that, he turned back to his paperwork. He knew what they’d think over at WITSEC, but he didn’t care.

“None of them ever flipped a witch,” he thought. “I did it once, and I can do it again. I’m FTSEC, and I can kick their lazy asses any time.”

He started to play the Evil Witch’s video.

“At least she was honest about who she was,” thought Woody. “I owe it to her to see this through.”

The Wicked Witch was right – the Woodsman could be trusted. A year later, he had Glinda doing a perp walk on the courthouse steps. She arrived in her bubble, which burst as soon as she saw the crowd and the reporters with their cameras.

The newspapers ate it up: “The Real Wicked Witch” and “Glinda the Goon!” screamed the headlines. One picture caught her with a particularly ugly snarl on her face. Another paper printed her mugshot, without her crown or wand, both of which had been confiscated.

It had been a difficult case to put together, but Woody finally had the witnesses who could corroborate the Wicked Witch’s information: the captain of the Wicked Witch’s Guard, the Scarecrow, and Dorothy herself.

“You’ve got no case,” Glinda’s attorney had told Woody before the arrest. “The Scarecrow didn’t have a brain, the captain of the Guard got a sweetheart deal to lie about my client, and Dorothy’s in Kansas, living a black and white life. She thinks she dreamed everything up.”

But Woody knew better. He kept the pressure on and after her arrest, Glinda did what all the smart ones do. She flipped.

Woody interrogated her back at the safe house and she gave up her whole operation, including the Wizard himself.

Glinda wound up as a barista at a Starbucks in Portland, where she can still be found, making Iced Caramel Macchiatos with a subtle wave of her hand.

The scent of Glinda’s perfume would linger on in the safe house for a long time, reminding Woody that no one was out of reach of the law.

With his debt to the Wicked Witch paid, Woody moved on to his next case: hate crimes against fairytale canon for leaving out the dark parts..

He was still a one-man operation, still stuck under the brewery. But his case against Glinda made him even more determined to pursue literary crimes and keep exposing the seamy underbelly of the fairytale world.

* * * * * *
If you enjoyed this story, you can vote for it along with many other fine entries https://therealljidol.livejournal.com/1161522.html.
Complete Portfolio
1. Favorite: "The Pirates" https://rayaso.livejournal.com/37750.html
2. Lifeboat: "Bunkers and Blueberry Pie" https://rayaso.livejournal.com/44294.html
3. Fermentation: "FTSEC" https://rayaso.livejournal.com/44034.html
4. Champion (