Spell Blind (4 page)
Authors: David B. Coe
Tags: #Fiction, #Fantasy, #Contemporary, #Urban, #Paranormal
“You don’t mind if I have a Scotch, do you?”
“Of course not. I’m sure this has been an awful day.”
“You have no idea,” he said.
“You and the Deegans have my deepest sympathies, sir,” I said. There are only so many ways to tell the family of a murder victim that you’re sorry for them, and over the years I’d used every one. But just because I’d said these words a thousand times that didn’t mean I wasn’t sincere. I’d never been a fan of Randolph Deegan; I’d never voted for him. But I wouldn’t have wished this tragedy on my worst enemy.
“Thank you.” He plunked ice cubes into a pair of tumblers, filled one from the tap, and poured a good deal of scotch into the other. “To answer your question,” he said, handing me my drink, “yes, I let her into the house. Her readership is greater than the combined circulation of every newspaper in the state. And a little goodwill now might smooth things over for us later in the year.”
I sipped my water. “Well, I know how hard a time this must be for the Deegans and for you. If you can just tell me where I’d find Ko— Detective Shaw, I’ll be out of your way.”
Wriker nodded and took a long drink of scotch, draining more than half the glass. “Of course,” he said. “She’s in with the senator and his wife right now, but I’ll tell her you’re here.”
He put down his glass and walked through the front foyer to the other side of the house. Left alone, I crossed to the windows and stared out at the city. For the past year and a half, as I’d followed the Blind Angel case in the papers, poring over every article for details of the sixteen killings—now seventeen—that had occurred since I left the force, I had tried to put myself in Kona’s shoes, to feel what she must have been feeling with every new murder. But I hadn’t been able to. Losing my job had devastated me, but it had also released me from this one burden. The killings continued to haunt me, but that crushing feeling of responsibility I’d felt while still working homicide vanished once I was off the job.
Until now. Standing in Randolph Deegan’s living room, I felt it returning; I could almost feel my shoulders bending with the weight of it. One phone call from Kona and the Blind Angel murders were mine again. It wasn’t anything I wanted, and yet it felt strangely familiar, even comforting. I realize how twisted that sounds. As I said before, once a cop, always a cop.
“What the hell are you doing here?”
I knew that voice almost as well as I knew Kona’s. Cole Hibbard: Commander of the PPD’s Violent Crimes Bureau, and the man most responsible for forcing me out of the department. Before, when I said that I wouldn’t wish the Deegan mess on my worst enemy, I had forgotten about Hibbard. I’d wish a whole load of crap on him.
I turned.
Hibbard stood in the entrance to the living room, looking like he had half a mind to pull out his weapon and shoot me then and there. He was silver-haired, stocky, and pretty fit for a guy in his mid-sixties. There’d been a time when he and my father were close, but then my dad’s mind started to slip and Hibbard turned on him, assuming that he was using drugs or drinking. I suppose it’s understandable. Unless you’re a weremyste, you really can’t understand the intensity of the phasings. It’s not something we like to talk about. Even those of us who are willing to admit that we’re mystes are hesitant to tell the people around us that we’re doomed to go insane. That’s one of the reasons we use the word “myste” to describe ourselves rather than “weremystes.” No sense conjuring images of werewolves howling at the moon; the reality is too close to that for comfort. Hibbard wouldn’t have had any reason to suspect that one of his best friends on the force, a young, seemingly normal guy with a promising career ahead of him, was quietly going nuts right before his eyes.
Hibbard had it in for me from the start, assuming that I was trouble like my old man, and that it was just a matter of time before I screwed up, too. That he was right did nothing to make me hate him less.
“Hi there, Hibbard. Have you missed me?”
“Don’t give me any of your crap, Fearsson. I want to know what you’re doing here.”
“I called him, Commander.” Kona stepped around him into the room, with Wriker on her heels. It was like a big old family reunion; the kind you read about in the tabloids beneath headlines like “Grandmother Goes on Shooting Rampage.”
You couldn’t have found two people who were less alike than Cole Hibbard and Kona Shaw. Apart from the fact that they were both cops, they had next to nothing in common. Kona, whose real name was Deandra, was tall and thin, with skin the color of Kona coffee, which, as it happens, was just about all she drank. Hence the name. She was quite possibly the most beautiful woman I’d ever known, with big dark eyes, the cheekbones of a fashion model, short, tightly curled black hair, and a dazzling smile. She was also gay, in a department that was hard enough on women detectives, much less black, lesbian women detectives. That she had lasted in the department so long was testimony to how good a cop she was. If anyone needed further evidence, she had at least ten commendations to her name.
Kona had been my partner the entire time I was on the force. I can’t say that she taught me everything I know about police work, because my father taught me a good deal before his mind totally quit on him. But if it hadn’t been for Kona, I wouldn’t have been half the cop I was.
“You called him in?” Hibbard said, glowering at her. “Where do you get off making a decision like that without clearing it through me first?”
“Sergeant Arroyo told me to call him,” she said. Hibbard opened his mouth, no doubt to remind her that he outranked Arroyo. But she didn’t give him the chance. “And he was acting on orders from the assistant chief.”
“Latrelle? I don’t believe it.”
If it had been me, I would have demanded to know if the bastard was calling me a liar. But that was one of the reasons Kona still had a job on the force and I didn’t. She flashed that gorgeous smile of hers, and said, “You’re free to call him, Commander. But I promise you it’s true.”
Hibbard turned his glare back on me. For several seconds he said nothing. Then he shook his head and muttered, “Fine. Keep him the hell away from me.”
Before Kona could answer, he stalked out of the room.
“What did you do to piss him off?” Kona asked, turning my way.
“Since when do I have to do anything? You know that Cole doesn’t play well with others.”
She lifted an eyebrow.
I held up my hands. “I swear, Kona. I said hello, and he acted like I’d been saying stuff about his mother.”
Wriker cleared his throat, and both of us looked his way.
“I take it you used to be on the force,” he said to me.
“Yes, sir.”
“And now you’re a private investigator?”
“That’s right.”
“Would you be willing to work for the Deegans?”
I exchanged glances with Kona. The PPD wouldn’t be paying me for whatever work I did to help Kona with the case. They never did. But still, working for two clients at once on the same case was a bit sketchy ethics-wise.
She shrugged. “It doesn’t bother me.”
“What is it you’d want me to do?” I asked, turning back to Wriker.
“The papers are saying that Claudia was a drug addict, that she had drugs in her system and on her person when she died. We don’t believe that.”
I shook my head.
“Hear me out,” Wriker said. “Either the medical examiner will say that she had drugs in her blood or he won’t. But the police say she was carrying. We’d like to know where those drugs came from. If . . . if she was an addict, like the papers and television news say, we’d like to see the dealer who sold her the stuff put in jail.”
I glanced at Kona again. She was staring at the floor, her lips pursed, as they often were when she had something on her mind that she knew she couldn’t say aloud.
“Arresting drug dealers isn’t the job of a PI,” I told Wriker. “As to finding out where she bought her stuff . . .” I shrugged. “I’m afraid I don’t see much point. Chances are the dealer was small time—maybe a college kid. I doubt it would do much good to go after him. Or her.”
Wriker sighed, sounding exhausted. “You’re probably right. Thank you anyway.”
I took a breath. I’d never been fond of politicians, but in that moment I felt bad for the guy. Call it a moment of weakness. “I’ll find out what I can, Mister Wriker,” I said. “No charge. If I find anything of value, you can pay me then.”
“Yes, we will. Of course. Thank you, Mister Fearsson.” He pulled a business card from his shirt pocket, wrote his cell number on the back, and handed it to me. “Call me when you know something. Please.”
“I will.”
Kona and I thanked him for his time and left the house.
“No charge?” she said in a low voice, as we walked down the path toward the cars. “That your idea of a business plan?”
“You heard the guy. He was ready to hire me just so he’d feel like he’d done something.”
She winced at the memory, then nodded. “Yeah, I know.”
“I won’t spend much time on it. But we know that our killer seeks out kids who are using. Maybe knowing where she scored her drugs will tell us something.”
Kona looked impressed. “I hadn’t thought of that. You must have been a pretty good cop, and you must have had one very good teacher.”
“I did,” I said, grinning. I waited a beat, then, “My dad taught me a lot.”
“Shut up.”
We both laughed. It was good to see her. Of all the things I’d loved about being a cop, having Kona as a partner was what I missed the most.
After a minute or two she grew serious again. “You ready to go over to the OME?”
OME. Office of the Medical Examiner. I needed to see Claudia Deegan’s body, to confirm that she’d been killed by magic. It was amazing how quickly we could jump from the best part of my old job to the worst.
“Yeah,” I said. “I’m ready.”
I started toward the Z-ster, but Kona didn’t move.
“You coming?” I said.
She remained where she was, watching me, a sly smile on her lips. “I’ve got something for you. Drop me at 620 before you park. We’ll walk from there.”
“What have you got?”
“It’s a surprise.”
I didn’t answer; I just waited.
“Fine then. Claudia Deegan was arrested a couple of weeks ago at a political protest down at the military base in Florence. She put it together, apparently; they were demonstrating against some new bomber that her father had sponsored. She was trying to embarrass him, I guess.” She shook her head. “Anyway, there was someone else arrested that day. I think you’ll be interested in who it was.”
Before I could ask her more, she climbed into the Z-ster and pulled the door closed. I had no choice but to get in and drive her to Phoenix Police headquarters.
CHAPTER 4
I let Kona out in front of 620, which is what cops call police headquarters, because it’s located at 620 West Washington Street. I parked, and waited outside while she went up into HQ to get the list of arrested protesters. At some point I would get up the nerve to go back inside the building, but I wasn’t there yet. Simply seeing the place was like running into an old girlfriend who I hadn’t quite gotten over. I stood outside on the sidewalk trying to act like I belonged there, and avoiding eye contact with anyone going in or coming out.
As soon as I saw Kona emerge from the building, I started walking west on Washington, knowing that she’d catch up with me, knowing as well that she’d understand.
When she caught up with me, she handed me the list of names, but said nothing.
“Five pages?” I asked folding back the sheets. Names, phone numbers, addresses. This would be helpful, but I had no idea so many people had been arrested.
“It was a big protest,” Kona said. “Deegan’s daughter wasn’t the only one who was ticked off about that bomber, or whatever it was.”
“I guess not.” There had to be two hundred names here. “So are you going to tell me who I’m looking for or make me figure it out myself?”
“I haven’t decided yet.”
The OME was only about a block from 620, on Jefferson. I started to read through the list as we walked, but none of the names jumped out at me, and before I knew it we were at the Medical Examiner’s building, being buzzed into the facility by security.
Kona had on her ID from 620 and the guard waved us past his desk toward the autopsy lab, and the coolers where bodies were kept.
The M.E. was a guy named Pete Forsythe, who had been running forensics in Phoenix since before I joined the force. He was a crusty old goat, and not at all the kind of person who would have tolerated the presence of a PI in his facility. Fortunately, he liked to delegate work to his staff, and was rarely in the labs or cold storage this time of day.
“Have they done the autopsy yet?” I asked as we navigated the corridors, our footsteps echoing.
“I asked them not to,” Kona said. “I thought you’d want to see her as we found her. They only brought her in last night and Pete was willing to wait until this afternoon.”
I nodded.
We found a young woman in the anthrodental lab who was comparing dental records on a computer screen to a set of X-rays. I’d never seen her before, but Kona knew her.
“Hey, Caroline.”
The woman looked over at us and smiled. “Hi, Kona.” She was pretty. Red hair, freckles, blue eyes, a little on the heavy side, great smile. I noticed a big diamond on her left hand. “What can I do ya for?”
“This is my friend Jay Fearsson.”
“Hi, Jay,” the woman said. “Caroline Packer.”
“Nice to meet you, Caroline.”
“You new in Homicide? I haven’t seen you here before.”
“Jay’s an investigator,” Kona said before I could answer. “He’s helping me out with something. I was wondering if we could take a look at the Deegan kid.”
Caroline’s smile vanished, along with most of the color in her cheeks. “Yeah, sure,” she said. But she didn’t move for a few seconds. She seemed to be gathering herself. “She’s in CS,” she said. “I can . . . I can show you.”
“We know where it is,” Kona told her, her tone gentle. “Just tell us which shelf.”
“Fourteen. And you have to sign. The clipboard’s outside the door.”
Kona nodded. “Okay. Thanks.”
“What he did to her . . . It’s . . .” She broke off, swallowing and shaking her head. “I didn’t used to think about this kind of stuff, but I don’t like to be out after dark anymore.”
“I understand,” Kona said.
She turned and left the lab, and I followed her. The receiving cooler, where they kept bodies that had not yet been examined, was beside the autopsy room. We paused outside the door so that Kona could sign the access sheet, and then we stepped inside. It was a cold, stark, depressing place. Stainless steel walls and doors, hard fluorescent lighting, and a series of steel shelves on every wall for the bodies. Most of the shelves were empty, as usual, but there were white body bags on a few of them, including the middle shelf under the number fourteen.
A jar of mentholated Vaseline sat on a gurney near the door. Before opening the body bag we rubbed a small amount under our noses to guard against the smell. Then Kona unzipped the bag and spread it open.
My first thought was that the police had gotten the ID wrong. Sure she was a mess—there were burned out craters in her face where her eyes should have been. But this girl bore almost no resemblance to the Claudia Deegan I’d seen on the news and in countless newspaper photos. That girl had been blonde, athletic, tan: the all-American kid. This girl’s hair was black, though peering more closely I could see that the roots were blonde. Her face was gaunt and she wore dark lipstick that gave her mouth a severe look.
“You’re sure this is the Deegan kid?” I asked Kona, staring down at the girl.
“Yeah, we’re sure. Why?”
I shook my head. “Doesn’t matter.”
Kona had brought me there to tell her if there was any magical residue on the body, and it was all over Claudia’s face, neck and chest. Magic was similar to any other forensic evidence. Just as a gunshot at close range left powder burns on a victim, or strangulation caused bruising, magic left its mark as well. And just as fingerprints were unique, so was the color left by a weremyste’s conjuring. Only another weremyste could see it, but to those of us with magic in our veins it was as obvious as a bloodstain or an open wound. Often, magical residue reminded me of fluorescent paint that had spilled wherever a runecrafter’s spells had touched. It glowed and shimmered, the colors as vivid as summer wildflowers. At least at first.
The glow on Claudia’s body had grown faint, and with the overhead lighting so harsh it was difficult to see. As I’d told Kona earlier, the more powerful the weremyste, the faster any remnant of his magic would fade. This probably seems backwards, but if you think of magic as having a half-life, like uranium, it starts to make more sense. Carbon 14 is a weak radiant with a slow half-life—well over five thousand years. Strontium 90, on the other hand, is powerfully radioactive and has a half-life of less than thirty years. In the same way, the stronger a spell, the faster its residue decays. At least, that’s how I think of it. Then again, I’m not exactly a nuclear physicist.
Of course, there was a flip side to the fast decay thing: the more powerful the sorcerer, the more brilliant the color of his magic would be to begin with. I had seen the Blind Angel Killer’s magic before; I would have recognized that shade of crimson anywhere. Still, even knowing how powerful he was, I couldn’t help but be surprised—and scared—at how dim it had grown in a mere two days. I might not have noticed it as much working the case month to month, but in the time since I’d last seen one of his victims, the Blind Angel Killer had made himself stronger. Much stronger.
“Is it our guy?” Kona asked, watching me.
I nodded. “I think he’s getting more powerful.”
“Well, that’s just what I want to hear.”
“The color is nearly gone. Even at the eyes, where it should be most intense.” I faced Kona. “I think whatever he gets from these kids is building him up. There’s more to this than random killing.”
“You’ve told me that before. But do you know what he’s getting?”
“No.” I turned back to Claudia’s corpse. “If I knew that maybe we could find him.” I stood for a moment, staring at the girl’s ravaged face. “Let me try something,” I said.
Three elements again: my magic, the red magic glowing on Claudia, and the purpose of the killer’s spell. This last I didn’t know, of course; I was hoping the spell would fill in that bit of information with some physical manifestation of the killer’s magic. I had tried this before a couple of years ago, but I was a more accomplished runecrafter now, and I thought maybe I’d get a different result.
I didn’t. I might have been better with magic now than I was when I worked for the PPD, but I wasn’t yet a match for the Blind Angel Killer.
“Did anything happen?” Kona asked, looking back and forth between Claudia’s corpse and me.
“No. We’re going to have to find him the old-fashioned way.”
“Not we, partner,” Kona said in the same gentle tone she’d used with the girl in the lab. “That’s not your job. I appreciate you coming down here with me, but we’ll do the rest.”
I said nothing, and I couldn’t bring myself to meet her gaze. She was right, of course, but it wasn’t like I needed to be reminded that I was no longer on the job. And Kona should have known that.
“I’m sorry, Justis. It’s just—”
“I know,” I said, my voice echoing sharply in the cold room. I turned away from the body and started for the door.
“Justis—”
“I should talk to that girl. Caroline. I should ask her about the whole drug thing. That’s what the Deegans are worried about.”
I left the room before Kona could stop me and went back to the anthrodental lab. Caroline glanced over as I walked in and gave a weak smile, but she was still pale.
I sat on an empty stool near her. “Can I ask you a couple of questions?”
She pulled her lab coat tighter around her shoulders. “I don’t know much. I’m not working on . . . Until Doctor Forsythe does his initial autopsy, there’s not much for the rest of us to do.”
“I understand that. But I need some information; or I will when you start the lab work.”
“I’m not sure—”
“It’s nothing that the M.E. won’t eventually give the press. I just need to know what kind of drugs she’d been taking, and anything you can tell me about their potency.”
Caroline frowned. “Aren’t you with the force? Kona said you’re an investigator. Can’t you get this from her?”
I forced a smile. “I’m asking you for it.” I pulled out my wallet and gave her one of my business cards. “If you can, call me at that number . . .”
She was looking more frightened by the moment. “Um . . .”
“It’s all right. I’ve known Pete Forsyth since you were in high school. He won’t mind. And you can call me from your home, if you think that would be better.”
“Stop it, Justis.”
Kona didn’t raise her voice. She didn’t have to.
Caroline glanced past me, the relief on her face making me ashamed of myself. I turned, feeling my color rise.
Kona crossed to where I sat, wearing an expression that would have wrung an apology from a gangbanger.
“We’re leaving,” she told me. Turning, she said, “Sorry to have bothered you, Caroline. Tell Pete we’re done here. He can go ahead with the autopsy.”
Caroline nodded, seeming unsure of what had happened. Her gaze flicked from me to Kona.
I should have said something to her, but I was too embarrassed. I followed Kona out of the lab, through the hallways back to the main entrance. Once we were out on the street again, Kona turned to me, her hands on her hips.
“What the hell were you thinking, trying to play that poor girl like that?”
I didn’t meet her gaze. “Wriker asked me to find out—”
“Don’t give me that shit. He didn’t tell you to go and bully some kid into getting herself fired.”
I wasn’t sure that Wriker or the Deegans would give a crap about Caroline Packer. But I knew that I didn’t want to be measuring myself against their morals.
“I pissed you off,” Kona said. “And you didn’t want to have to get that information from me. So you went after her.”
“Yes.”
Kona stared down at her feet, her lips pursed. “I shouldn’t have said what I did. You don’t need me telling you what your job is, especially when you’re still working this case and not getting any credit for it. The fact is, Latrelle wanted you here, but strictly on ‘a consulting basis.’ His words. I’m not even sure what he meant, and to be honest, I don’t know how we’re going to make this work. But I shouldn’t have said it that way.”
I shrugged, still not looking at her.
“Pressure’s high on this one, partner,” she said. “This guy’s had our number for three years now, and that’s bad enough. But you add in the Deegans, and suddenly everyone’s on edge, you know?”
I could imagine.
“The damn FBI’s back in town, acting as though they never bailed on us in the first place, asking why we haven’t made more progress while they were gone.” Kona paused, exhaled. “Anyway,” she went on, “I’m sorry.”
“It’s all right.” And it was. I’d never been able to stay mad at Kona for long, or her at me. Our friendship—our partnership—had always been too strong. I raised my chin toward the door we’d come through. “You’ll apologize for me?”
“Yeah, sure,” she said. “And I’ll get that information to you as quickly as I can. I promise.”
I nodded. “I know you will.”
She glanced back toward the door. “Anything more you can tell me about what you saw in there?”
“Not really.” We started walking back toward 620. “It’s the same shade of red, but it’s fading faster than it used to. Otherwise it’s exactly like the other times. Mostly on her head and chest. No particular pattern, though it’s strongest around the eyes.”
“Nothing different at all?” Kona asked.
I shook my head, knowing where she was headed. “I don’t think he had any idea that this was Claudia Deegan. She was just another kid to him.”
“Yeah, well, that might have been true the other night. Not anymore. Things are about to get very hot for everyone involved in this case, including our friend with the red magic.”
We fell silent, and after a few moments I pulled out the list of protest arrests Kona had given me.
“Check on page three,” Kona said. “A bit past the middle.”
I read several names before I saw it. I stopped dead in my tracks and gaped at her. She stopped, too.
“Robby Sommer?” I said.
“Interesting, don’t you think? You’re trying to find the source of Claudia Deegan’s drugs, and look who gets his ass arrested at that protest Claudia put together.”
Robby Sommer was a small-time drug dealer who I’d busted several years back. He catered to high-end, low-volume buyers; rich college students for the most part. Kids like Claudia Deegan, although he wasn’t above selling to anyone he could find.