by Stacia Kane
Well, Blue certainly hadn’t wasted any time, had she? “Can I talk to him?”
Another background murmur. “He wants to know if you’re ready to admit how superior he is. Should I tell him to fuck off, or do you want to say that yourself?”
“I’ll say it myself. Hand me over to him, okay?”
“Hold on.”
Chess did. The car had cooled off enough that she could sit down and close the doors, which was good because she didn’t want to chance being overheard any more than she wanted to par-bake in the driver’s seat.
“Hi, Chess,” Will said. “Calling to beg to join the Squad?”
“You wish. The real question is how hard you’re going to beg for my help, because I’m pretty sure I’ve got this cracked.”
“Really?” He was all business now; she could picture him straightening in his seat. “You know what caused the fires?”
“Leanne Ardennes,” she said.
“Damn, how did you find out about her? Did somebody show you my—”
“I saw the Help Wanted sign outside Lipton Travel. I took a chance. Nothing illegal.” Technically that was true, right?
He let it go. “I don’t think Leanne did anything, though, aside from the illegal tattoos. Wanda—I guess you talked to Wanda?—didn’t mention anything about her using words of power, and we didn’t find any spells around the place—”
“The spell was on Alice. Leanne set it off.”
“They hadn’t met before,” Will said. Smugly. “There’s no way Leanne could have planted a spell on Alice. There were no odd spells or magic at Alice’s house, and—”
“Jewelry.” Chess matched his tone, and added a little extra smug just for the hell of it. “Earrings, specifically. She didn’t get them from Leanne, she got them from a man called Mr. Harvey, who sells secondhand junk up and down the street.”
What followed was a pause so quiet and still Chess thought she could just about hear Will’s thoughts churning and grinding in his brain. Like if he opened his mouth it would sound like a trash compactor had gotten stuck in his throat.
Then he said, “Even if you’re right, Leanne didn’t say anything that might set off a spell. And Leanne wasn’t at the diner yesterday, and you didn’t hear any words of power or anything. You didn’t even feel a spell activate when the fire started, which you—”
“I activated that spell. Ella the waitress, that one was my fault.” As was Harmony, but she couldn’t mention that one.
“What? How is that possible?”
“My energy set it off. It’s my menstrual week, so it’s more powerful than usual. I bet it was Leanne’s, too, but she did it deliberately. She knew her energy would set off that spell. That’s why she went to the travel agency to begin with. When you guys searched her place, what was in her trash cans?”
Pause. Long pause. “Yes. You’re right, she had feminine products in there. Shit, we didn’t even think about that.”
A car pulled into the narrow lot and parked a few spaces down from her. Just an elderly man with a grocery bag, but it reminded her that she wasn’t in the best location to sit there and chat. “Meet me behind the Stop Shop on First, the one two blocks up from Lipton Travel, okay? Mr. Harvey supposedly camps back there or something.”
“That’s the jewelry guy?”
“Yes. I figure he might have some idea how to get in touch with Leanne—he must have been in touch with her somehow, or she wouldn’t have known who bought that jewelry. So maybe we can get something from him, at least.”
Will murmured something to Blue, who answered. Then he said, “Okay. I should be there in about fifteen minutes.”
“Cool.” At least she hoped it would be, and that she wasn’t about to get egg smeared all over her face in front of both Will and Blue.
Only one way to find out. She gave Leanne’s silent closed door one last look, backed out of her parking space, and headed for the road.
5.
MR. HARVEY’S SHELTER WAS VISIBLE as soon as she eased her car around the Stop Shop to the back, just as Mr. Lipton had said it would be: a brittle, crinkled tarp in a painful shade of bright blue made a lean-to against the wooden side of what appeared to be an enclosure for garbage cans. Chunks of cement and brick held the side of the tarp in place on the pavement, and a few old cushions huddled beneath it. Not a place Chess wanted to hang out, but comfortable enough for what it was, she guessed.
Mr. Harvey obviously thought so, too. He appeared from behind the garbage enclosure as soon as she shut off her engine, a chubby little man with thinning hair and gray stubble, wearing patched workpants and a thin polyester button-down. From the way he cradled the box in his arms and the distress on his face she figured either he’d been expecting trouble or he’d just heard about some. Either way, apprehension crawled up her spine. She got out of the car slowly, keeping her hands visible; she figured he may not consciously notice that or pay attention to it, but he’d feel reassured just the same. “Mr. Harvey?”
“I didn’t say nothing,” he blurted. Terror widened his eyes and made his voice shake. “I swear I didn’t.”
Shit. Her tattoos. Or, her tattoos and the fact that Leanne had the same ones. He must have thought Leanne was Church, or that Chess was like Leanne. “Of course you haven’t.”
“I didn’t tell nobody nothing.” Something in the box sparkled as he moved. Jewelry, she bet. It was wrong to feel pleased about that—about the connection he was basically admitting with his distress—but she couldn’t help it.
She kept her voice calm and neutral, though. “I’m sure you haven’t. I just want to talk to you, okay? I wanted to see the jewelry you’ve been selling. And—” Oh, damn. She’d almost forgotten. “I think it’s best if you put the box down, sir. Put it down, and if you’re wearing any of that jewelry you should take it off. Can you do that? Just take it off and set it down.”
His face crumpled; he started stumbling around, weaving in schizophrenic patterns across the expanse of cement. Fuck. Chess couldn’t get too close to him, not if she didn’t want that box of bespelled jewelry to burn and especially not if she didn’t want any jewelry he might be wearing to burn. So she couldn’t just grab the box away, or grab him. She needed him to set the damn thing down and step away from it, and he didn’t seem to be in much of a mind to listen to her instructions, let alone follow them.
“I was talking to Wanda,” she said. “At the travel agency. You know Wanda, right? She said such nice things about you.”
He stopped stumbling around. Thank fuck, maybe she could get through to him. “Wanda?”
She nodded. “Wanda told me to come see you. Okay?”
He looked doubtful.
“I just want to talk to you for a minute, and I can help you. Just put that box down, and take off any jewelry you might be wearing, and let’s talk for a minute. Can we do that? Wanda said you’re fun to talk to.” Not entirely true, of course, but she needed to get through to him. She needed him to trust her. Should she get out the travel brochures as proof she’d met Wanda, or would that be even more suspicious?
For a minute she thought he was going to run away. Shit, please let him not do that. She didn’t want to have to tackle him if he was wearing stones that could burst into flames, and while he looked fairly clean—he was nowhere near the vermin-infested filthbeast Victoria had implied—she wasn’t eager to get all bear-hugged up with him, either.
But he set down the box. He even took a couple of steps away from it. Excellent. Chess moved, too, a few feet from her car but still not getting too close to him. “My name is Chess. And I just want to talk to you for a minute, and then everything will be fine. Okay? You’re not in any trouble.”
“They said I was.”
“Who? Who said that?”
He hesitated, eyeing her bare arms and chest. “Nobody.”
“Was it Leanne? The girl with tattoos like mine? Did she say you were in trouble?”
A faint nod. Oh, sigh-of-relief time. “
Did Leanne give you that jewelry to sell?”
“It ain’t right,” he said, on the verge of tears again. “Somethin’s wrong with it, with them…those nice ladies. Those nice, nice ladies.”
That was solid proof right there, not that she needed more of it. It was nice to have just the same, though. Now she just needed Will. Where was he, anyway? He’d said fifteen minutes. It had to be close to that, and she wanted him to witness whatever statements Mr. Harvey made.
Besides, somebody was going to have to take possession of that jewelry and she sure as fuck couldn’t do it. Somebody needed to take Mr. Harvey to a safe place and that was the Squad’s responsibility.
But if she picked up her phone to call him, or tried walking around to the front of the building to look, Mr. Harvey would run. He looked as jumpy as a speedfreak on comedown. She had to get him calm before she could do anything.
Talking about the dead girls maybe wasn’t the best way to do that, but she might be able reassure him, and thus get him to tell her more. Besides, what else was she supposed to discuss with him, the stock market? “Do you mean Alice, and Ella?”
He nodded, his expression so miserable her own chest ached. Good thing she hadn’t mentioned Harmony, then, since she’d obviously been right in assuming he didn’t know about her.
“That wasn’t your fault. I promise it wasn’t. I want to help you, and I want to get the people whose fault it was, but I need you to talk to me. Okay? Just tell me if Leanne gave you that jewelry to sell, and if you know where she is.”
“I’m not supposed to tell.”
Fuck. Chess looked at him for a second, at his quivering lower lips and innocent eyes. He wasn’t stupid—he wouldn’t have survived so long if he had been—but she didn’t think he was very smart, either, and Wanda had been correct that he just wasn’t quite right in the head.
Which made it both easier and harder to convince him that she was being honest. Easier, because he might not think of ways telling could backfire on him and he might be more willing to accept her reassurances. Harder for other reasons: he’d have to disobey someone who scared him, and he’d have to disbelieve whatever they’d told him would happen. If Leanne had witch ink and Leanne had threatened him, it might be difficult for him to trust anyone with the same tattoos. Most people thought witches were a lot more powerful than they were, too, so who knew what he’d been told could—wait. “Mr. Harvey, do you know much about magic?”
He shook his head. “I never wanted nothing to do with all that. I never wanted to sell witch stuff.”
“That’s okay. I totally understand. But you know magic is real, right? You know it’s Truth?”
Fear in his eyes again, but he nodded, an abrupt little nod while he kept his gaze fixed on the dirty cement at their feet. She’d really like to get off that cement. Heat radiated from it, even through the soles of her boots. She bet the proverbial egg could be fried on that damn parking lot; she felt like she was being fried just standing there.
She kept her voice as cool and soothing as possible, though. “So you know I can do magic, right? And if I do a spell on myself, it will work?”
“I guess so.”
Tricking the innocent homeless man felt shitty, but what choice did she have? She dug in her bag, not sure what she was looking for, until her fingers closed over a black cat bone she’d tied to a piece of galangal with cobwebs. It was just a protective spell, but Mr. Harvey didn’t know that. “Okay. This is an honesty spell, and as long as I hold it I can’t lie, see? I can only speak the Truth. So when I tell you I’m here to help you and to catch the people who hurt those girls, you know that’s Truth, right?”
Long pause. Chess waited. The air around them, hot and heavy with humidity, waited. Shit, if this didn’t work she didn’t know what would.
Finally he nodded. “Okay.”
Not the time to show her relief. “Great. Now I need you to tell me if Leanne is the person who gave you that jewelry, and if you know where I can find her.”
“Her and the man gave it to me. They said they found it and I could make me some money with it. They didn’t tell me something’s wrong with it. They didn’t tell me it’d hurt somebody. I didn’t want to hurt nobody.”
“I know.” Oh so close, so close… “I know you didn’t. Do you know the man’s name? Or where I can find either of them? Did they give you a phone number or anything?”
He shook his head. Damn it. “They come checking on me, they asked me to write down who I sold stuff to. So I did. They come by every day to get it. Only they ain’t come last few days.”
Fuck. Fuck fuck fuck. That was it, then. There were other ways to track Leanne down, but Will had to have tried them and Chess wouldn’t be there if that had given him anything useful. Fingerprints, DNA matches, the Known Offender databases…all of them must have bombed out. Once Will arrived they could try viewing the Stop Shop’s surveillance videos; maybe they could get a license plate from them, and thus the name of Leanne’s boyfriend, but she didn’t have a lot of hope on that one. That would be too easy, and if she had to pick one word to describe her life, “easy” wouldn’t exactly be her first choice.
“Is there anything else you can tell me? Anything at all, about Leanne or the man? Are you sure you didn’t get his name?”
“He done most of the talking. She was just real quiet. And…he was older than her. A lot older, I think. I—” Fear rippled across his face again; Will’s car had just nosed around the side of the building. Damn, she should have warned him that someone else was coming. That was stupid.
She held out her hand. “It’s okay. That’s a man who works with me. His name is Will, and he’s here to help you, too.”
Mr. Harvey’s panicked gaze darted from her to Will emerging from his car and back again, with an extra pause when Blue got out of the passenger’s side. Why hadn’t Will dropped her off, or at least told her to stay in the car?
A question for later. Meanwhile, Will and Blue must have realized what sort of state Mr. Harvey was in, because they both slowed their movements. Will gave Mr. Harvey one of those sympathetic smiles that Chess always found patronizing but most people seemed to like. “We just want to help you.”
Uh-oh. Mr. Harvey didn’t look happy at all. He wrung his hands together so hard it looked like he was trying to rub the skin off them. “I already told everything I know. I don’t know anything more.”
“You were about to tell me something,” Chess said. If she could get his attention back on her, maybe he’d chill out a little. “You said Leanne’s boyfriend was a lot older than her, and then you started to say something else before Will got here.”
Back and forth, back and forth, went Mr. Harvey’s eyes, fast enough that it was amazing he hadn’t fallen down from dizziness. “I don’t remember.”
“Maybe his name?” Chess suggested. “Maybe what she called him? Or what kind of car he drove, do you know what kind of car it was?”
“Blue car. Dark blue. Like a Church car.”
Chess spoke, fast, before the suspicion in his tone could become outright fear. “They’re not from the Church. We are from the Church, and we’re going to help you, but Leanne and her boyfriend are definitely not.”
In Leanne’s case that was Truth. Hopefully it would be the same for Leanne’s boyfriend; Chess had no idea, but of course she wasn’t about to let Mr. Harvey know that. “Go on.”
“He had a ring,” Mr. Harvey said. “He wore a ring on his right hand. On his pointer finger. A big thick ring, with a face on it. And a stone. Black, and shiny—”
Chess was moving before the sound even registered in her head; her body knew what it was, and her body threw itself to the scorching cement in an attempt to hide. Kind of stupid, considering that her car was right there and that jumping into it wouldn’t scrape the skin off her forearms and then sear the abraded skin just for extra fun, but there was no time for either caution or common sense. Not when the noise she’d heard was a gunshot, Will and Blue were no
where to be seen, and Mr. Harvey lay in an unmoving heap a few feet away from her. She didn’t need to see his wide-open, slack mouth or the blood pouring from the hole in his right temple to know he was dead.
She also didn’t need to hear the squeal of tires in the near distance behind her to know who had shot him, or why. Fuck. She scrambled to her feet, her keys in her hand. They had to move fast if they had any hope of catching the bastard. “You guys okay?”
Dumbass, of course they were okay. She’d only heard one shot, and that bullet had found itself a nice cozy home deep in Mr. Harvey’s brains.
Will and Blue didn’t waste any time pointing that out to her, thankfully. Instead Will barked something she couldn’t quite make out and jumped into his car. His voice was barely audible over the surprisingly impressive roar of the engine as he started it up. “Come on, he’s getting away!”
He didn’t need to tell her twice. Didn’t need to tell Blue twice, either, although Chess was pretty sure taking her along on a high-speed pursuit wasn’t an action the Church would pat either of them on the back for.
She was also pretty sure that wouldn’t matter, because the killer—who had to be Leanne’s fucking boyfriend, who else could it be—had a head start on them that few people, and few cars, could hope to make up. Terrible could have done it, of course, in his Chevelle, but Will’s sporty little coupe was, well, a sporty little coupe, whereas the Chevelle was a pile of vehicular muscle on fat tires, barely flexing at ninety miles an hour and which she sometimes imagined ran on a combination of gas, testosterone, and sheer insolence. Will was nowhere near the driver Terrible was, either. Not a surprise.
He gave it a good try, though, racing out of the parking lot and onto the street, where they spotted the back end of a dark blue sedan turning onto Laws Avenue. Uh-huh, just like poor Mr. Harvey had described. Her pulse quickened as she sat awkwardly in the center of the backseat like a nosy child, holding on to Will and Blue’s headrests so she could look out the windshield.