His Father's Eyes - eARC (8 page)

As soon as I got out of the car, I heard him muttering to himself. I was able to see his outline in the dim light, but not his face. I could tell, though, that he was still flinching.

“Dad?”

No answer.

I walked to where he sat and kissed his forehead. His skin was as cool as the desert night air. He fell silent and looked up at me.

“It’s me. Justis.”

“I told you if you came you’d make it easier for them to find you.”

“Yeah, I remember. You should be inside.” I took hold of his arm, intending to help him up. But he jerked it out of my grasp with a motion that was quicker and more powerful than I would have thought possible.

“I don’t want to go inside. It’s too damn hot in there. It’s cooler out here. The burning doesn’t bother me so much. The rest is as bad. But it’s cool.”

“All right,” I said. I grabbed the other chair, unfolded it, and set it next to his. “Do you want anything?” I asked before sitting. “Are you hungry?”

“Ice cream.”

I laughed. “You had ice cream for lunch. You need some real food.”

A smile crossed his face, and I knew a moment of relief so profound it brought tears to my eyes.

“Did I really?” Recognition glimmered in his eyes. “You were here today.”

“Right. That was when you warned me not to come back.”

He nodded, the smile slipping. “I remember. It’s not Tuesday.”

“No. What can I fix you? Are those steaks still in there? The ones I brought the other day?”

“Steak sounds good.”

The increasingly rare moments when my dad was cogent were to be treasured. These past few weeks had made that much clear to me. I needed to treat each lucid moment as if it might be the last; I was glad I’d made the drive out here this evening.

I went inside and pulled from the refrigerator the New York strips I’d brought him on Tuesday. I rubbed them with salt, pepper, and garlic and poured some Worcestershire over them, then stuck them in the broiler. I also sliced up a tomato and put salt and pepper on that. I brought the tomato out to him, along with a beer, and settled down next to him.

He ate the tomato in about a minute—I managed to salvage one slice for myself. He didn’t argue when I took the plate and went back inside to slice another for him. Whatever was going on with him was making him ravenous. Either that, or he was eating so infrequently that he was starving himself. After a few minutes I flipped the steaks. When I came back out, he was sipping his beer.

“Can you tell me more about what’s been happening to you?” I asked him, sitting once more.

“It’s the damn brands. Burning, burning, burning, burning, burning, burning. So many burns.” He held out his arms again, spilling a little beer, wincing once, twice, a third time. “They won’t stop. And then they do, but they start up again, and I can’t make them go away. They won’t listen when I tell them that I don’t matter.”

I let out a breath through my teeth, taking care to do it silently, so that he wouldn’t hear. Two clear minutes. And now he was gone again.

I got up without a word and went back in to check on the steaks again. Even inside, I could hear him, and I could make out what he was muttering to himself.

“. . . You’re wasting time with me, damnit. I’m nothing. Ow. I’m not a stone or a mirror or clear water for you to see your goddamned portents. I’m nothing. I’m husk.

“You leave her alone, you hear me? Just leave her be. She did nothing to you. And the boy is not for you either, no matter what you might think. So go away. Ow. Go! Go, damn you! You can take me down to the cottonwoods, and you can light every damn one of them on fire, and you can leave me in the middle of it, let me burn until my skin peels away, but it’s not going to do you a damn bit of good. You won’t have her or him, and you won’t kill me. You won’t. Ow! Shit! No, you goddamn will not!” He paused, and after a few seconds I heard the beer bottle clink lightly on his chair. “You don’t like that, do you, you little fuckers? Well, good. I’m not as helpless as you thought, and I’m not here for you to play your little games. I might not matter, but I’m not helpless, not yet.”

He went on and on in the same vein, while I pulled out the steaks, cut into one, and seeing that it was done, shut off the oven. I cut up my dad’s steak for him, something I only did when he was in bad shape, and filled two glasses with ice water, which had seemed to help him earlier in the day.

“They don’t like this,” he had said about the ice cream and the water.

Who didn’t
?

Returning to my Dad, I put the plate with his steak on his lap and handed him the water glass. He took a long drink.

It had been a strange day, and it had seemed endless. Which may be why my mind was making connections it wouldn’t have otherwise.

“Are they dark sorcerers, Dad? Is that who’s doing this to you?”

He considered me, a spark of recognition in his pale eyes.

“I don’t know. Could be.”

Except for the fact that there were no weremystes here. I was sure of that. But to set my mind at ease, I cast a spell similar to the one I’d attempted in the airport. This time, though, I tried to keep it simple. Three elements instead of seven: me, a concealed myste, and my eyes.

Nothing.

“What was that?”

“You felt it?” I asked him.

“You cast a spell.”

“Yeah, I did.”

“What kind?”

“I wanted to see if there was a weremyste here, someone camouflaged, who might be doing these things to you.”

He shook his head. “There isn’t. These are powers that go far beyond you and me and other weres.”

“You’re talking to me again.”

“Did I stop?” He glanced down at the plate and frowned. “You just started those.”

“No,” I said, laying a hand on his shoulder. “You’ve been muttering to yourself for fifteen minutes.”

“Damn.”

“What else can you tell me? Before you slip away again.”

“I don’t know what they are. They’re hurting me, testing me, trying to craft their way past my wardings.”

“I heard you say something about ‘her,’ and you also mentioned a boy.”

He nodded, his face falling. “The boy is you,” he said, voice thick. “They want you for something. And . . . and sometimes they make me see your mother. She looks so fine, so much like . . . like she did. Young and beautiful. Before all the rest, when it went bad. It’s Dara as I like to remember her.” He shook his head. There were tears on his face.

I gripped his arm, not knowing what else to do. “I’m sorry.”

He cleared his throat, swiped at the tears. “I try to stop them. But that’s what they want. That’s the test.”

“You mentioned wardings a minute ago. Have you been warding yourself?”

He frowned again, squeezed his eyes shut. “No. Not the way you mean. But I try to make them go away, and I think they learn from that.”

“I don’t understand.”

“I know. I’m in and out. I’ll be here, and then . . .” He shook his head and drank the rest of his water. “I know what it seems like. I mean, I know.
I know!
But it’s not— There’s something real here. You’ve been good to . . . You take care of me. And you’ve seen . . . I know what you see when you look at me, what you’re afraid of. But this is real. It’s . . .” He winced. “Damnit! They’re hurting me again. I’m slipping, burning.” His eyes closed, and he shuddered. “Listen to me.” His voice had fallen to a whisper. “Justis?”

“I’m here.”

“This is real. Okay? This is real.”

“I believe you.”

“No, you don’t. But when belief is gone, all that’s left is trust. And I need you to trust me.”

“All right. I do.”

He flinched. “Brands. Burning, damnit. I hate you bastards.”

I took the empty glass from him, ran inside to fill it, and brought it back out to him. He drank deeply, and after a while he ate a few pieces of steak. But he was mumbling to himself again—more about burning and not mattering and the rest—and all the while flinching and whimpering in pain. I listened for more mentions of my mother and me, and heard what might have been a few. But there was little coherence to what he said, and I couldn’t make much sense of it.

His doctor had prescribed sleeping pills for those really bad nights when the delusions kept him up. After a while I got him to take one—no small feat—and then sat with him until he fell asleep in his chair. Once he had been out for a few minutes, I lifted him and carried him to his bed.

I sat up with him for a while, watching him as he lay there. He seemed to have aged ten years in the past few days; he looked like an old man, which scared the crap out of me. It shouldn’t have; he
was
old, and the phasings and his drinking had taken a toll on his body, so that he was older than his years. But sitting beside his bed, seeing the way he continued to flinch, even in a deep sleep, I realized that in the greater scheme of things, I didn’t have much time left with him. Who knew how many years he’d stick around? Tears welled, and before I knew it I was crying like a little kid, terrified by the simple truth that my father was mortal, and his mortality was exposed to me now in ways it never had been before.

After a little while, I pulled myself together, but I remained by his bed, thinking about the last thing he had said to me that made any sense.
When belief is gone, all that’s left is trust . . .
There was a time, in the years after my mom died—I was an angry, lonely teenager, and he was a drunk well on his way to losing his job on the force—when I hadn’t trusted him at all, when I would sooner have trusted a stranger than my own father. But those days were long gone. Crazy as he was, I did trust him. He flinched again, confirming my faith. What kind of hallucination would have followed him into a medication-induced sleep? Strange as it seemed, I was forced to consider the possibility that something or someone really was hurting him. Except that I had no idea how it was possible. I sensed no magic in the room, no ripple of power in the air around me. Maybe it was one of those “old powers” Namid mentioned earlier.

Dad cried out, and on instinct I grabbed his hand. At my touch, he appeared to relax, the tension draining from his haggard face.

“I’m here,” I said.

He shifted, began to snore.

After another fifteen minutes or so, satisfied that he was doing a little better, I pulled a spare blanket and pillow from his linen closet and lay on the floor next to his bed. There wasn’t a lot of room, but I didn’t expect that I’d sleep much no matter where I bedded down.

I surprised myself. My head had barely hit the pillow before I woke up to a bright morning and the song of a cactus wren drifting in through the open window. I sat up and peered over the edge of my dad’s bed. He was still asleep, soundly, peacefully. No flinching that I could see.

Relieved, I gathered up the blanket and pillow and padded out of the room, making as little noise as possible. I hated to leave him alone after the night he’d had, but I had work to do, and my dad’s trailer didn’t even have Internet. I hoped that he would remember to eat today, and I wrote him a quick note promising to come back in the next day or two. I had no idea if he would find it or read it or be able to make sense of it. But I put it on the counter in his small kitchen, where it was most likely to catch his eye.

I went out to my car and opened the door to climb in. But then I paused, gazing back at the trailer. I’d learned a long time ago to trust my magical instincts. And they told me that there was a common thread running through all that had happened in recent days: My dad’s pain, the killing of James Howell and the disabling of Flight 595, even the odd burst of magic that had saved my life the night I confronted Mark Darby. I couldn’t make sense of it, not yet. But I was sure it was right there in front of me. All I needed to do was connect the dots.

I got in the car and started back toward the city, a cloud of dust rising behind me, blood red in the early morning sun.

CHAPTER 9

I stopped at home to put on fresh clothes before going to my office and firing up the computer and my seven-hundred-dollar Saeco espresso machine. What can I say? I really, really like coffee, especially Sumatran. I’ll eat cold pizza for breakfast and store-brand ice cream instead of the fancy kinds that come in pint containers costing seven bucks a pop. But try to sneak cheap coffee by me and I’ll know it from the smell.

Once I had a bit of caffeine in me, I searched online for everything I could find on Regina Witcombe. Most of what I read focused on her philanthropic activities; finding detailed information about her business dealings proved frustrating. Apparently, she didn’t like to shine a spotlight on that part of her life. But I kept digging and over the next hour managed to piece together a rough portrait of her rise to corporate power.

Her husband, Michael, had died while yachting—alone—off the Malibu coast about ten years before. She had been in Belize, traveling with friends. The story was he drank a bit too much wine and wasn’t prepared when his vessel encountered high winds and rough seas. The Coast Guard believed that he fell off the boat and drowned; the yacht, the
Regina
, of course, was discovered a day later, drifting near Santa Catalina Island. Regina and her two daughters inherited everything, and after a brief power struggle with the corporate board of Witcombe Financial, she was named its new CEO. She possessed a business degree from the Wharton School, and a degree in law from Georgetown, and she had been active in the company as a vice-president and in-house counsel. It wasn’t like she was unqualified, but she leap-frogged several senior execs to take the position, and a few of them were pretty unhappy about it. In the wake of her elevation to CEO, three of Witcombe’s top executives left the company.

The controversy didn’t last long, however, because the board of directors and the rest of her executive team closed ranks behind her, and because the company continued to do well under her leadership.

Nevertheless, reading about Michael Witcombe’s death and all that followed set off alarm bells in my head. A tragic accident, a perfect alibi, an inheritance worth more than a billion dollars. It all struck me as too convenient, too easy. Add in rumors of dark magic, and I was ready to call Kona and tell her to have the case reopened. Never mind that it was a few hundred miles outside her jurisdiction.

There was no shortage of photographs of her online. She was an attractive woman: auburn hair, blue eyes, brilliant smile, always impeccably dressed. She had been in her early forties when Michael died, and so was in her early fifties now, but you wouldn’t have known it to look at her. I found a video of her as well, speaking to stockholders at Witcombe’s annual meeting. She spoke in a warm alto, her manner easy, charming even. But I couldn’t tell for certain, from either the clip I watched or the photos I found, whether she was really a weremyste. The blurring of features that I experienced when face-to-face with another sorcerer didn’t translate to these media. I had no idea how I might get close enough to this woman to see for myself if she was a myste. And I wasn’t yet ready to take Jacinto Amaya’s word for it.

My perusal of the roster of Witcombe’s corporate officers didn’t produce much, although I jotted down the names of the highest ranking executives to run by Kona and Billie.

I kept digging, collecting tidbits about Regina Witcombe’s life like a mouse hoarding crumbs. It seemed that two years ago she had sold her estate in Scottsdale and bought a place in Paradise Valley for a cool eleven million and change. Must be nice to have options like that.

Something in my mind clicked again. I picked up the phone and called a friend of mine, an ex-girlfriend as it happened, who had helped me find the office in which I was sitting.

“This is Sally Peters.”

“Hey, Sally. It’s Jay Fearsson.”

“Hey there, stranger. How’s the PI biz?”

“It’s keeping me busy, paying some bills.”

“Getting you in the paper, too. I saw that you got shot.”

“Yeah, I’m better now.”

“Well, good. Wanna take me out for dinner? Maybe get lucky?”

“I thought you were engaged.”

“I was,” she said. “Not anymore.”

“I’m sorry to hear that, Sal. But I’m going to have to pass on the getting lucky thing.”

“Jay Fearsson, do you have a girlfriend?”

A big, fat, stupid grin split my face. Billie and I had been together for a couple of months, but the novelty of being in a serious relationship hadn’t worn off yet. “Yep. Pretty crazy, right?”

“Wow, yeah. Pretty crazy. So if you’re not calling me for a night on the town, are you calling for business?”

“Sort of. I need a little information. If a house was sold a couple of years ago, can you still pull up the listing on your system, maybe tell me some of the details?”

“Hmmm,” she said. “A couple of years? I dunno. But I can try. Where was the house?”

“Scottsdale. It belonged to Regina Witcombe.”

She laughed. “The Witcombe estate? I don’t have to do a search. Every agent in the greater Phoenix area was drooling over those commissions—one agency got both the sale of the Scottsdale house and the purchase of the mansion in Paradise Valley. Both were handled by Sonoran Winds Realty.”

Bingo.

“You don’t happen to know who the listing agent was, do you?”

“For which one?”

I wasn’t sure it mattered, but I said, “The Scottsdale sale.” I held my breath, hoping against hope that she would remember that name as well.

“Oh God. I should remember. She was the toast of the town for weeks afterward.”

“It was a woman.”

“Yes. Both agents were; that much I’m sure of. Hold on, Jay.” It sounded like she put her hand over the receiver, though I could still hear her voice as she said, “Hey, do any of you remember the name of the listing agent for Regina Witcombe’s house in Scottsdale?”

Someone answered her, but I couldn’t make out the name.

“No,” Sally said. “She handled the sale in Paradise Valley.”

“Who did, Sal?” I asked. I don’t think she heard me.

She and her colleagues batted around a couple of other names before she removed her hand from the receiver.

“We’re drawing a blank on the Scottsdale agent, Jay. Sorry.”

“Who was the agent on the one in Paradise Valley?”

“What was the first name again?” Sally asked her coworkers. “Right, right.” To me she said, “Patricia Hesslan-Fine.”

“That’s the name I was hoping to hear, Sal. Thank you.”

“Seriously?”

“Seriously, I owe you one.”

“Cool. If this thing with your new girlfriend works out, and you need to find a new place, you’ll come to me, right?”

“I promise. Gotta go.”

We hung up, but for a moment I remained frozen in place, staring at my computer and the image of Regina Witcombe that lingered on the screen.

Patty Hesslan had been Regina Witcombe’s real estate agent, or at least one of them. And yesterday they had been traveling together. Sort of. Patty had been listed as a party of one. Checking the list again, I saw that Regina was listed the same way. Random chance? It was possible. But in the past day and a half I had encountered enough coincidences to last a lifetime, and this last one was a doozy.

I had few leads and no idea where to start digging around for more. This one, as tenuous as it was, seemed like my best bet. And I’ll admit as well that a part of me was curious about Patty Hesslan and what she remembered about the horrible events that had bound our families together for a few months when we were teenagers.

I knew that both Regina Witcombe and Patty were out of town; I needed to know when they would be back, and I chose to start with Patty.

I found the Sonoran Winds Realty website and wrote down the address and phone number. Their main office was located back in North Scottsdale. I’m sure they would offer to give me her cell number, but I didn’t want to speak to her over the phone; for something like this, I needed to be in the room with her, seeing her reactions to my questions about Regina Witcombe.

I called and told the receptionist that I was in Phoenix for a job interview that would last several days. I wanted to meet with an agent and see a few houses.

“A friend recommended that I ask for Patty,” I said.

“Patty?” she repeated. “Might your friend have said Patricia?”

“Yes, my mistake. My sister is also named Patricia, but we call her Patty. I just assumed. I wrote it down . . . Here it is. Patricia Hesslan-Fine.”

“Well, Mister . . . ?”

“Jay,” I said.

“Mister Jay. Patricia is out of town at the moment. But I assure you that all of our agents offer the highest level of service. Any one of them can help you. Would you like to come by this morning?”

I didn’t correct her misinterpretation of my name; for now it would do nicely. “Well,” I said, “this friend felt very strongly that I should speak with Patricia. But she mentioned a few other names as well, so if she’s not available, I’m sure I can contact those other realtors.”

“Well, there’s no need for that. How long did you say you were in town?”

“Through the weekend.”

“Patricia gets back late today, and often does a few showings on Saturday mornings. I’m sure she would be happy to meet with you. Can you meet her here at 10:30 tomorrow?”

I assured her I could, thanked her, and hung up. My stomach felt tight and empty; even with a one-day reprieve, the prospect of speaking with Patty Hesslan filled me with as much dread as curiosity. But she was the sole connection I had to Regina Witcombe, and I hoped that over the next twenty-four hours the idea would grow on me. I wasn’t holding my breath.

The previous night, while talking to Amaya, I’d had a kind of epiphany. I needed to confirm it.

More than eighteen months had passed since I was forced to give up my badge, but the wound remained raw and tender. I could handle talking to Kona about police work, barely. But going to police headquarters in downtown Phoenix was still a bit like running into an old girlfriend who had broken my heart. Every now and then I needed to see the place, and as soon as I did I regretted making the trip. In this case, though, I had questions for Kona, and I was hoping she might be able to show me some evidence.

I drove to the heart of the city, parked in a lot a couple of blocks from the building, and made my way to 620 on foot. With every step that brought me closer, my blood seemed to thicken, until my heart was laboring with each beat. But I kept my head down and my hands in my pockets.

When I stepped inside, I took a long breath. The smell of a police station is almost impossible to describe to someone who hasn’t experienced it day in and day out for years at a time. It’s a blend of sweat and old paint, fear and adrenaline, overlaid with a suggestion of nitrocellulose and the acid pungency of stale coffee. Breathing it in, I felt like an ex-smoker who still craves a cigarette when someone nearby lights up.

Carla Jarosa, who had been the front-desk officer at 620 since before I became a cop, greeted me with a big hello and a visitor’s badge. I put the badge on and took the stairs up to the third floor, where the homicide unit was located.

I had been hoping that the detectives’ room would be empty except for Kona, but it wasn’t. Not by a long shot. Kona was there, talking with Kevin, who sat at the desk next to hers. And there were about seven other guys in the room as well, two of them on the phone, another typing in classic hunt-and-peck style, and a cluster of four standing just inside the door, chatting and laughing. They fell silent when I stepped in. One of them had been here when I was still on the job; the other three I didn’t know. But they stared at me; they all seemed to know who I was.

“Hey, Larry,” I said to the guy I knew.

“Jay.”

That was about all we had to say to each other. I nodded to the others and walked past them to Kona’s desk. She and Kevin had stopped talking as well and were marking my approach.

“Social visit?” she asked, her tone dry.

“We need to talk.” My gaze flicked to Kevin. In the past, I would have expected Kona to make some excuse so that the two of us could speak in private, but I’d confided in Kevin at the airport and I saw no reason to stop now. “The three of us.”

He didn’t quite smile, but his shoulders dropped fractionally, as if he had been on edge, and I’d set his mind at ease. “Stairwell?” he asked.

I shook my head. “Sound travels too much.”

Kona stood and gestured for us to follow. We went back to the lunch room, which was empty for the moment. She closed the door and faced me, leaning against it.

“What’s this about, Justis? You may be a hero now, but that doesn’t mean Hibbard won’t give us all kinds of crap if he finds out you’ve been here.”

“I know. I’m sorry. But yesterday you mentioned to me that you were working on another serial murder case. I need to know whatever you can tell me about it.”

The two of them exchanged looks. After a moment, Kona shrugged. “I see a pattern,” she told Kevin. “I know you’re not convinced, but I am.”

“Am I missing something?” I asked.

They faced me again.

“Kevin doesn’t believe the killings I mentioned to you are related. That’s why I told you that the patterns hadn’t completely emerged yet.”

“But you think they’re pretty clear.”

Another shrug. “Yeah, I suppose I do.”

“There have been three killings,” Kevin said. “One about a month ago, another three weeks later, and the last about five days ago. The bodies were found in different parts of the city; the first guy had his throat slit, the second had been stabbed in the heart, and the third also had a neck wound, though not as clean as the first.”

“The victims?” I asked.

“A homeless man in his fifties, who was found in Maryvale; a nineteen year-old hooker, who died in west Central City, and an elderly woman who lived in a duplex up in Cactus Park.” He held up a fist. “No pattern to the timing or locale,” he said and raised a finger. “Different wounds.” He raised another finger. “Nothing to link the victims.” He put up a third finger. “‘O’ for three. No pattern.”