Spell Blind (11 page)

CHAPTER 8

Robo’s was one of the hottest music and booze joints in Tempe. It was upscale enough to serve all the best beers and trendy drinks, and to provide its bands with a professional stage and quality sound equipment. But it was also seedy enough around the edges to seem cool to the university kids. On nights when there was live music—Thursdays, Fridays, and Saturdays of most weeks—the line to get in could stretch all the way around the block.

When I got there, the doors to the place were closed, including the second set of glass ones past the window where patrons paid the cover charge. As Kona had told Gann, the marquee read “Electric Daiquiri: Featuring Randy Deegan and Tilo Ruiz.” Inside one of the windows was a black and white picture of the band standing in front of some vague photo studio backdrop. Randy stood at the center, wearing jeans and an untucked dress shirt. The guys around him came across as cool and a little unsavory, which I’m sure is what they were going for. But Randy couldn’t help but look like an all-American kid, even with that serious, “I-really-am-a-badass” expression on his face.

It didn’t surprise me at all that a place like this would be interested in having Randy Deegan’s band headlining for it. What did surprise me was that a buttoned-down guy like Randy would stoop to play there. Then again, from all I’d seen in the papers and on television over the past year or so, I had the sense that Randy wanted to follow in Dad’s footsteps, and maybe he figured anything that made him out to be a regular guy would help.

Despite the locked doors, I could hear music coming from inside, so I knew the place wasn’t empty. I knocked several times until at last a large man in a Robo’s t-shirt came to the door and tried to shoo me away. I pulled out my private investigator’s ID, which has a terrible picture of me and looks official enough to impress.

“My name’s Jay Fearsson. I’m doing a little work on behalf of the Deegans.”

He frowned, glanced back over his shoulder, clearly unsure of what to do. But then he shrugged, perhaps figuring that I was Randy’s problem and not his. He let me inside.

The music was cranked to an ear-splitting volume, but I could tell right away that Electric Daiquiri was a decent band. They were in the middle of an up-tempo instrumental piece with a Latin beat and a lot of tonal modulation. Randy played bass but was obviously the group’s front man—not that I would have expected anything different. The band also included a guitarist, a drummer, a keyboardist, and a saxophonist, who was in the middle of a blistering solo. The stage lights were on, but the rest of the place was dark and I doubted that any of them could see me. The sound guy acknowledged me with a quick nod, but then went right back to fiddling with the mixing board. I took a seat in the back of the bar and listened to the rest of the piece, which went through a keyboard solo, a drum break, and a final go-round of what must have been the original melody. All of it was very tight, and when they finished I clapped.

Randy shielded his eyes from the spotlights. “Who’s that?” he asked, squinting against the glare.

“My name’s Jay Fearsson,” I said. “I was at your house the other day.”

“The guy Howard talked to?”

“That’s me.”

He glanced at the guitar player, and then at the other musicians. “Let’s take a quick break, guys.”

Randy and the guitarist took off their instruments, hopped down from the stage, and joined me at my table. The rest of the band wandered backstage.

I shook hands with Randy, and he introduced the guitar player as Tilo Ruiz. He was a tall, good-looking Latino kid, with black curly hair and large dark eyes. He was rail thin and was dressed like a model in his black jeans and white t-shirt.

“You were Claudia’s boyfriend, right?”

“That’s right,” he said with a puzzled frown. “How’d you know that?”

I didn’t think it would be too smart to bring up Robby Sommer, so I shrugged. “Must have read it somewhere. You both have my deepest sympathies.”

“Thank you,” Randy said, sounding anything but grateful. “I have to tell you Mister . . . uh . . .”

“Fearsson.”

“Right. Mister Fearsson. I think it was a mistake for Howard to even talk to you the other day. He shouldn’t have asked you to do any work for us. I’m not comfortable with that at all, and neither is my father.”

“I understand. But first of all, he never gave me any money, so he didn’t hire me in any true sense. And second, even if he had, I’m bound by both ethics and the law to keep any work I do for you completely confidential.”

“That didn’t stop you from talking to Billie Castle.”

My smile was reflexive; I would have preferred to smack the kid in the mouth. “If you read her piece the other day, you would have seen that I told her nothing, and that she was feeling pretty snippy about it.”

“And now you’re here,” Randy went on, as if he hadn’t heard me.

“Yes, I am. You probably know that the police have a man in custody.”

“Mike Gann,” Tilo said.

“Right. I came here to learn what I can about him. The fact that I happened to find you here is a coincidence. You have my word.”

Randy had narrowed his eyes. “You’re doing work for the PPD?”

“You read Billie’s article. I used to be a homicide detective. I worked the Blind Angel case for a year and a half before I left the force.”

The Deegan kid still wasn’t ready to declare me his closest pal, but my explanations seemed to have satisfied him, at least for the moment.

“You think this guy Gann is the Blind Angel Killer?”

An honest answer would have raised questions that could get Kona in trouble. “I don’t know. He certainly had it in for your family.”

“Yeah,” Randy said. “I’m sorry if I came on too strong just now. It’s been . . .” He averted his gaze. “It’s been a rough week.”

“I understand. I won’t trouble you anymore. But can you tell me who I should talk to about Gann? I have a few questions about his work here and how he got along with his coworkers. That sort of thing.”

Randy nodded. “Kenny Moore is the person you really want to talk to. He’s the manager. But he’s not in today, and he won’t be again until Thursday night.” His expression brightened. “You should come then. We’re playing, and I can reserve a table for you up front.”

“I’m not sure I want to be that close to your speakers.”

Tilo laughed.

“In back then,” Randy said, grinning. “But that’s your best bet for finding Kenny.” He furrowed his brow. “The other person who might help you is Doug Bass. He’s the janitor, and he’s been here forever. He’d have known Gann.”

“Is he here now?”

Randy nodded. “In back.”

“All right, thanks.” I shook hands with both of them, and started toward the back of the club.

“I meant what I said,” Randy called to me. “Come Thursday night. There’ll be a table reserved for you.”

“Thanks,” I said. “I’ll try to make it.”

I found Doug Bass in the alley behind the club, sitting on an old, rusted metal folding chair, smoking a cigarette. He was a big African-American man with white hair and a mustache to match. He eyed me suspiciously and didn’t seem at all impressed with my PI license. When I told him Randy had recommended that I talk to him, he stared straight ahead and took a long pull on his cigarette.

“I ain’t never voted for his old man.”

I laughed. “Yeah. Me, neither.”

No response.

“I can’t make you talk to me,” I told him, pulling out my note pad and pencil. “But the police are getting ready to charge Mike Gann with the Blind Angel killings, and while I don’t think I’d want Mike for a friend, I also don’t think he killed all those kids.”

Doug studied me through squinting eyes. Then he took one last puff on his cigarette, dropped it on the street, and crushed it with his sneaker toe. I thought for sure he was going to get up and leave me there. But he didn’t.

“Mike Gann’s a fool,” he said in a deep voice. “Bigoted son of a bitch, too. But he ain’t the Blind Angel Killer.”

“What makes you say that?”

“This Blind Angel fella—he’s smart. He’d have to be, the way he’s been avoiding the police for so long. Like I say, Mike’s a fool. He’d have got himself caught a long time ago.”

“Did you ever notice anything . . . weird about Mike? Stuff he did, or stuff that happened around him, that you couldn’t explain?”

“You mean like magic?”

I opened my mouth, closed it again. After a few seconds I gave a little laugh. “Yeah,” I said. “Like magic.”

“Mike talked about magic all the time. Used to tell me and anyone else who’d listen that he could do stuff. Spells, you know? Now, I believe in all that. I seen folks do it down in Mobile, where I grew up. I saw some shit on full moons that would have scared you half to death. But I never saw Mike do much more than light a match without strikin’ it. Rest was all talk.”

“Could he have been holding back? Maybe he didn’t want to show too much.”

Doug shrugged. “Then why all the talk?”

Good question. “Did you ever see him around the full moon?”

The old man shook his head. “He made himself scarce around then. Didn’t want no one to see him.”

I knew how he felt. “Was there anything else strange about him, anything that made you nervous or made you want to stay away from him?”

“Nah,” Doug said. “He was a typical poor white boy. He said some stupid stuff now and then, stuff that would have made me hit a white boy I didn’t know. But he was all right most of the time. The one thing that set him off was the Deegans. Any mention of them, and he got all quiet and intense, you know? It wouldn’t surprise me at all to find out he killed that girl. But there’s no way he killed all those other kids.”

I nodded, jotted down a few last notes, and put the pad and pencil away. I started to reach for my wallet to give him a few bucks for his time, but Doug shook his head.

“No need for that,” he said. He stood, his body unfolding slowly. He was bigger even than I’d thought. He stood a full head taller than me and he was broad in the shoulders and chest. I would have bet good money that he’d played football in college. Maybe even in the pros, back when athletes had to work for a living after they retired.

“Thanks,” I said, holding out a hand.

He gripped it, his hand appearing to swallow mine. “No problem.”

He limped back into the club and I followed. Electric Daiquiri was working their way through another song, the music so loud it hurt. I let myself out of Robo’s without bothering to say goodbye to Randy and Tilo. Once on the street, I began walking back toward the Z-ster, my ears ringing.

I hadn’t taken three steps, though, when I felt it again. I was being watched, tracked. I imagined myself in the crosshairs of a rifle. Except this time I knew the feeling for what it was: magic. I made no effort to find the sorcerer; I didn’t even alter my gait. But I began to mumble the words to a deflection spell, which was one of the most rudimentary wardings I knew. In essence, it redirected any conjuring aimed at me toward something else, an object of my choosing, in this case an SUV parked along the curb in front of me.

But the attack never came. It almost seemed that someone—the Blind Angel Killer?—was playing with me, trying to make me flinch. Or maybe he wanted to see what I was capable of doing before he tried in earnest to kill me. Whatever the explanation, I was growing tired of it. And, to be honest, I was scared. So scared, that by the time I reached the Z-ster, there was sweat on my forehead and neck.

True, I was pretty good at warding magic. But I figured any weremyste who could make his presence known to me in this way wouldn’t have had too much trouble mastering a deflection spell.

I began to relax once I was in the car. This made no sense whatsoever—it’s not as though my 280Z has some magical property that protects me from assailing spells. But sometimes the illusion of safety is enough to get a person through. I started the Z-ster up, pulled away from the curb, and drove down University toward the campus. As soon as I could, though, I doubled back and cruised the street a second time, hoping that maybe I’d catch my secret admirer unawares. But though I made two more passes down the same block, and though I saw a couple of people who shimmered with magic, none of them possessed enough power to be a threat. Either they were small-time conjurers or weremystes who were using blockers to suppress the phasings, and their abilities with them.

I was about to give up and drive over to Orestes Quinley’s place, when I spotted someone of a different sort, though no less interesting.

Billie Castle.

She was stepping into a coffeehouse, a thermal coffee mug in one hand and a computer case slung over the other shoulder. Alarm bells went off in my head. I knew that I should keep driving, keep as far from the woman as I could. She was a reporter, and all she had wanted from me yesterday was information. But I couldn’t deny that there was something intriguing about her. Maybe that was a fancy way of saying that I found her attractive. Intriguing, attractive, a challenge: pick your reason. I thought about stopping to see if I might wrangle a dinner date out of her.

Then I thought better of it.

Then I parked the car and made my way to the coffeehouse.

By the time I was inside and in line, she had her coffee and was setting up her work space at a table in the back. She didn’t notice me, which was probably a good thing. Given the way our last conversation went, I figured the element of surprise was about all I had going for me.

To my amazement, the place served Sumatran coffee. I took it as a sign.

I got my cup and walked back to her table. She had her computer out and was already engrossed in her work. Her hair was down today; it was longer than I’d remembered. She wore a beige linen sports jacket with the sleeves pushed up, and a black t-shirt underneath. Silver and malachite earrings flashed within her curls, and a matching necklace lay against the t-shirt. Tastefully stylish, as well as pretty. I admit it: I was smitten.

Most of the tables in back were open, and I thought about sitting at a table nearby and trying the whole “what-a-coincidence” thing, but she was too smart for that to work. Instead, I went with the direct approach.