Hard Magic

by Laura Anne Gilman

  “Damn.” From Sharon, that relatively demure curse sounded a lot worse.

  “All right,” Stosser said. “Sharon, Nick, that was well done. The information may be incomplete, but it’s more than we had before. Now we know that there was someone in the car with them, and that person had possession of the car previously.”

  “More than the cops managed to get,” Venec added. “And we’re not entirely without a place to go from here. Pietr? Did you find anything specific to the car?”

  Pietr’s expression was back to his usual deadpan, but I could still see the glimmer of self-satisfaction lingering around him. “The Chicago police had run a search on the VIN, but it was a dead end—the vehicle identification number was obscured so badly they couldn’t be sure of it, and none of their tries turned up the right description. There were no plates on the car, and no registration papers, so the DMV wasn’t able to kick back anything, either. The car itself was brand-new, barely on the dealers’ lots yet, so the theory was it came straight from the factory. That implied an illegal car-trafficking ring, maybe, but without a VIN there was no way to confirm that hypothesis. Either way, it takes a pro to manage all that, not some garden-variety hoobah.

  “If we were able to get another look at the car itself, I might be able to lift the original etching, or make a reproduction, but Ian nixed that idea.”

  “We managed to sneak in once, but I’m not willing to take the chance again, not after what happened the first time,” Venec said, leaning back in his chair and stretching his legs in front of him, as though he were comfortably at home. Maybe he was, maybe to him this was home. Another few hours and I might just move in here myself, rather than trudge back to the hotel. “Someone clearly did not want us—or anyone—in there looking. You guys are too expensive to be used for target practice.”

  “And we appreciate that,” Pietr assured him. “So. Dead end with the car. So I went and mucked around with the physical trace, since Sharon and her Boy Wonder were doing current. And that toenail clipping Bonnie found?”

  I could feel my ears swivel forward, metaphorically, at that. We were coming to whatever had made him so pleased.

  “Definitely human, and, based on the very faint remnants of polish, either female or seriously metrosexual male. Or a cross-dresser, but I don’t think so. No drag queen I know would get a spa pedicure. Way too subtle.” He pushed an envelope across the table. “More to the point, the impression we took off the door handle suggests that the clipping was caught under at least two sets of fingerprints, including one I determined belonged to the missus. So, we have someone, likely female, who is short-tempered enough to rip a toenail off rather than clipping it, and have it catch on her clothing, and then opened the door to the car…before the victims.”

  I’d taken a statistics class in college, and the one thing the professor had told us that stuck in my head even after the actual math fled, was that statistics can’t convey how often impossible stuff actually happens.

  “You’re saying that the toenail belongs to the mystery person whose current-trace we have sort-of-not-really identified?” Nifty had pulled a small spiral-bound notepad out of his pocket and was making notes with a tiny pen that looked even smaller in his hands. The note-taking bug had caught everyone, looked like.

  Pietr half rose from his seat to take a bow. “The very same, whoever she may be. Our Lady X. Lady, not gent. Please take note, and adjust your pronouns accordingly.”

  Oh, nice. Except… “I hate to be the bad guy here, but you realize that chain of connective logic won’t hold up to a stiff breeze, much less a cross-examination?” It sounded good, though, and I was surprised to feel a warm glow of pride in Pietr. He might be the freak of our little group, but he was a smart freak. More, he was our smart freak.

  “We are but ’umble techs in the infancy of our techiness,” he said. “I have faith in our innate amazingness.”

  Geek-freak. But I was starting to think he had something there. Venec was right; in a little over forty-eight hours we’d gone from newbies with nothing, to far more information—and more reasonable theories—than the police or Council snoops had managed in months. We had the advantage, though. We had magic on our side. And we didn’t have an agenda to cloud the facts.

  “All right, so we may be looking for a woman,” Stosser started to say, when Nifty interrupted him.

  “You really think a woman could kill two people like this?”

  Six heads swiveled to look at the far end of the table as if a rock troll had just emerged from a wedding cake.

  “Lawrence, how did you manage to survive this long saying stupid shit like that?”

  For once, I couldn’t find anything to object to in Sharon’s words or her tone. I was wondering the same thing.

  “I just meant…physical strength,” he tried to explain, and then gave up. “Right. Never mind. I’m a sexist pig. And if she’s Talent, physical strength doesn’t mean squat.”

  “Especially if they’re already dead. The cause of death was listed as asphyxiation from car fumes, rather than traumatic asphyxia, but did they have to be in the car when that happened?”

  Nick pulled a sheet of paper—the autopsy report, I guessed—off the table and skimmed through it. “The guy had a skull fracture. It wouldn’t be enough to kill him, and the ME thought that it happened during his death throes not as the cause of them, but if he’d been knocked out first, filling his lungs with carbon monoxide would be relatively easy, right?”

  “Or a touch of gas could have knocked them out, and then the setup, and then the actual murder? You can kill rodents if you run a pipe from the exhaust into their hidey-holes,” Pietr said. “Hypoxia would knock them out, and then the bodies could be dragged into the car. If you did it quickly enough, and set the scene right, the assumption, supported by the autopsy, would be suicide—and that’s exactly what happened.”

  “Except that there was no indication of toxic gas being run anywhere except in the car, and yes, that was tested and listed in the notes,” I said, a touch smugly. “So how did the killer get them to sit still and not struggle?”

  “A Talent wouldn’t even need to run a pipe to get at them,” Nick said. He lifted his hand and made a gesture, as though he was choking someone. “I find your lack of faith…disturbing.”

  “Someone used current to choke both of them?” Sharon picked up the idea and ran with it. “Or one first and then the other, if they were in different rooms…”

  Stosser slapped the table with the flat of his hand, making me jump. “And this, puppies, is why it’s so important to be on the scene immediately. If we’d been able to see the bodies, before they were moved or pawed over, we would be able to determine if current was used offensively on the body, and pick up the aggressor’s signature. But we weren’t, we didn’t, and we couldn’t, and so we don’t have that. So we need secondary support for this theory. We need to run some tests, see how much current is actually required to choke someone to death, and if it would leave physical trace.”

  Even Sharon looked taken aback at that, and Stosser did a double take at the looks. “What? Oh, no! Not on each other, no. We’ll build a model. Do none of you watch Myth-Busters?”

  Venec shook his head, clearly more used to the way his partner’s brain worked than the rest of us. “I’m sure we can get an unemployed dummy that will do the job. No need to put temptation in Sharon’s path.”

  There was a snicker from somewhere, quickly muffled before the source could be identified.

  “Right.” Venec kept us moving along. “What next?”

  Nobody else seemed ready to say anything, so I figured it was my turn, get people away from the potentially pleasing thoughts of choking each other.

  “I met with William Arcazy. Had a public spat with the vics about a month before they died. He’s a lawyer, working in a very hot little boutique firm specializing in interesting problems.”

  “Interesting how?”

  “They try not to talk t
oo much about their clients, but I took a look at some of the papers that were left out on desks.” I wasn’t proud, but then, he should have put them away before letting me in, right? Ditto for his assistant, who walked away from his or her desk and left things out in full view of anyone with good eyesight and inquisitive intent. “Apparently Mr. Arcazy specializes in people who have long conversations with Federal Marshals, and then disappear, among other sidelines. That, by the way, means that they have access to a lot of privy information…and generally, for lawyers, are on the up-and-up. At least, the ones who aren’t crooked, are.” Some of that had been in the original file, complemented by the case they were working on now, via the paperwork I’d scoped. The last bit I’d gotten out of Will during dinner. He’d been pragmatic but disapproving of the level of corruption in his field. At least outwardly.

  “And is Mr. Arcazy, Esquire, on the up-and-up?” Venec asked. It didn’t sound as if he knew I’d gone above and beyond the order of business. Maybe. Maybe I wouldn’t have to write up a report after all. Somehow, I suspected Stosser was still going to want a written report. As a physical reminder of the lesson, if nothing else.

  “He admits to having been in business with the vics, and to having words with them when things started to go sour. But…I don’t know. I got the vibe that he was telling me the truth.”

  Sharon’s truth-scrying gift would have been useful to have, to confirm that vibe, and for the first time I wondered why the Guys hadn’t sent her to interview anyone.

  “You sure about that? That the vibe wasn’t something else?”

  Excuse me? There was an accusation in that question, oh yeah. I guess he did know, after all. I didn’t want to look at Venec, not with those eyes looking my way, but I’d never been ashamed of my actions, and I wasn’t going to start now. I lifted my head and gave as good as I got, glarewise.

  “Yes, I’m sure. Nothing he said or did was the act of a man with any kind of grudge or—” I stopped, struck by something.

  “Or what?”

  I held up a forefinger, to indicate I was still processing. “Will said he did a lot of deals with the victims—their smarts and his money, investing in buildings and then reselling them once they were renovated. He was pleased with the return, but opted out because he wanted the money for something else, so if anything they’d be the ones to want to kill him, not the other way around.”

  “But they did have a loud, public argument?” Venec knew they did, damn him. It was in the dossier I’d read on the way to interview Will; that’s how I had known to follow up on it.

  “About his investing his money without them—I guess they weren’t happy with him cutting them out of any deals, but again, isn’t that more cause for them to do him harm, not the other way around? But what I was wondering was, are there other partners, people who gave them money and weren’t happy with their returns? That car was expensive—maybe someone bought it with money they expected to get, and then didn’t?”

  I was starting to roll on that idea. “I don’t know about the rest of you, but killing someone with the vehicle that symbolized everything that went wrong? That’s the kind of thing that would appeal to anyone who would go to this kind of bother, including destroying all traces, rather than just shoot them. Plus, it would be a way to get rid of the car while they were at it.”

  “They had to have bought it first, though, so a dealer should’ve had records. And not file a police report?” Sharon said. “How would they get insurance money, which they’d probably want, after being out cash already?”

  There’s always a nitpicker. “Maybe they didn’t insure it? If it was used in a murder scheme, I sure as hell wouldn’t have. I don’t know, I’m proposing theories here, not answers.”

  Venec seemed to think it was a reasonable theory. “This kind of deal, the whole setup, wasn’t a spur-of-the-moment thing. There had to be a reason, and probably not a brand-new one. Going on Bonnie’s idea, we should be looking at people with older grudges, not brand-new ones. Ian?”

  Stosser nodded agreement at his partner. “Female, business deals, say two-year to two-month window, to start? I’ll put in a call and see what I can get. The rest of you, it’s late. Lawrence, your report is already on my desk?”

  He nodded, looking a little smug.

  “All right. Everyone go get some sleep, and we’ll start fresh in the morning.”

  We stood, and started to file out. Stosser was right; everyone was dragging something fierce.

  “Torres. A word with you?”

  That? Was not the sound of anything good. Despite his approval of my theory, I had a sudden fear I was about to get canned.

  I waited until the room had cleared out, and it was just me and Venec. The tension between us was well past simmering, but not in the good way.

  “I don’t care what you do on your own time. You’re a smart woman, and I’m not going to read you any lectures about interpersonal relations or STDs because it’s none of my damn business. But I don’t care how badly you need your itch scratched, you do not, and I repeat do not ever screw a suspect, no matter how many vibes you have or how ironclad his alibi appears, or I will can your ass so fast you won’t know what side to sit down on. Are we understanding each other?”

  We were.

  Venec glared at me once for good measure, and walked out of the room.

  It took a few seconds, but my lungs unfroze and I could breathe again. Contrary to recent events with J, I was not used to screwing up, or being called on the carpet. It stung. Worse, it stung because never mind how he found out, and never mind what he might think of me, Venec was totally, completely right. I’d let the itch overpower the brain.

  Never again. As I’d said to J, this job was too important to me, already. I wanted it. I might even need it.

  Still, the fallout wasn’t all bad. Sure, getting reamed by your boss was decidedly un-nice, but I was still employed, my limbs were all still attached, and he hadn’t told me not to see Will again ever, specifically….

  Just not so long as he was still a suspect.

  fifteen

  After pulling an all-nighter to get my report done and on the boss-Guy’s desk as ordered, I still managed to get in at eight-fifty the next morning, and found the pot of coffee already half-gone and a buzz of voices flowing throughout the office. The rest of the day was pretty tense, everyone wound up tight with the waiting, and the coffeepot barely ran dry before another was made. Even so, Venec had to order us out around 8:00 p.m. before anyone would leave, and we were all back by 8:00 a.m. the next morning, looking sheepish but determined.

  Something had to give, and it wasn’t going to be us.

  We needed another go at that car, but according to Venec’s contact in the Chicago P.D., it was scheduled for auction this week, meaning that they were busy cleaning and prepping that sucker. Any evidence we might have missed was now hopelessly compromised. We’d have to find another route.

  Now, if someone could just come up with a brilliant idea what that route might be, we’d be all set. Until then, we were spinning our own wheels and fiddling thumbs, and generally getting on each other’s nerves. We’d had a taste of what action would be like, and we wanted more of it.

  Interestingly enough, other than a few blown fuses, we were all controlling our current pretty well, and the gremlins seemed to have taken a short break from pestering us.

  On the nonwork side, Venec seemed to have dropped the entire question of how I spent my personal time, and I was avoiding the new voice mail on my hotel phone from Will, asking if he could see me again. It was easier to spend time at the office, helping Nick recraft the illumination spell so that it hit only the thing we were looking for, without giving the very retro disco flare. So far, no luck. How difficult could “find and illuminate” be?

  “Careful!” Nick threw up his hands to protect his eyes, and I ducked and turned away a half second too late.

  Apparently, really difficult.

  After the last dose o
f neon-green sparkles left me with blurred vision and an oncoming headache, I left him to it, and went for more coffee.

  “You know, if you’re right—and I’m not saying you are, but if you are and the killer did choose the car for emotional reasons…he or she might want it back. You know, as a trophy.”

  Pietr was kicking on the sofa in the main room, talking out loud, while Sharon read the morning’s Times and Stosser stared at the popcorn-treated ceiling as though he was contemplating putting in a skylight, and never mind the fact that we were only renting the place.

  Interestingly enough, the entry/waiting room seemed to be becoming our main gathering spot, and not just because the coffee was there, or because the sofa was comfortable, although neither of those things hurt.

  I finished doctoring my coffee—whatever beans Venec was buying, they were too bitter to drink black—and sat on the chair opposite Pietr, knocking his feet off the edge. “That’s nasty thinking,” I told him.

  “Doesn’t mean it’s not true,” Sharon said without lifting her head from the paper.

  “No, it actually means it probably is true. Human nature tends toward the nasty when nobody’s looking. Good thought, Pietr.”

  From the gratified look on Pietr’s face, I don’t think he’d thought the boss was actually listening to him. He should have known better, by now. The Guys were always listening. Especially when you wished they weren’t.

  “So, let’s follow up on that. Without any legal paper trail and no current-trail, we can’t backtrack, so we’ll have to go forward. I want you at that auction, to see who bids on it. Bonnie, you go with him. Get the auction details from Ben.”

  I didn’t know why Stosser was sending me, considering my near-monumental screwup, but I wasn’t going to argue. If this was another test, I wasn’t going to fail. And if it wasn’t—it got me out of the office, and away from that message on my answering machine.

  I got up and checked in with Venec.