Spell Blind

by DAVID B. COE

  The wrought-iron gate in front of the senator’s place was guarded by two guys in navy slacks and powder-blue, short-sleeve dress shirts with the insignia of some security company I’d never heard of emblazoned on the sleeves. They were built like linebackers, with necks about as thick as my thigh. I also noticed that they carried .40 caliber Glock 22s in their shoulder harnesses. A good choice; that’s what I carry, too.

  “Can I help you?” one of them growled at me through my driver-side window as the Z-ster idled in front of the gate.

  “Jay Fearsson to see Detective Kona Shaw.”

  “License?”

  I pulled out my wallet, flipped it open to my driver’s license and handed it to him. As an afterthought I took off my sunglasses. Most security guys want to see your eyes.

  He studied the picture, looked at me, and handed back my wallet. “They’re expecting you.” He nodded to his partner and a moment later the gate slid open with a low electrical whir. “Everyone’s in the main house.”

  I nodded and steered the Z-ster to a spot next to about nine other cars. Four of them were worth more than I make in a year, even a good year. Of the other five, two were police cruisers and two of the others were cheaper models with police tags.

  I didn’t like this. Not at all. Aside from Kona, most of these people thought the worst of me. Many of them had nothing but contempt for what they thought I’d become; others pitied me, which might have been worse. A voice in my head screamed at me to leave now, while I had the chance. If not for the way Namid had pinned me with his stare when the phone rang, I would have. I got out of the car.

  The driveway, if you could call it that, was an enormous cobblestone courtyard with a small bronze statue and fountain at the center. On the south side of the courtyard, arrayed in a semicircle, stood three buildings: two smaller ones—guest houses probably—flanking the main house. All the buildings were built in Spanish Mission style, which was popular among homeowners in Paradise Valley and throughout the Phoenix area. A cobblestone path to the front door of the mansion wound past an elaborate desert garden; hummingbirds darted among an array of glass feeders.

  The door opened as I approached the front landing. I expected to see Kona. Instead, two people I didn’t know emerged from the house. One was a short, slender man with thinning hair and tortoise shell glasses. He was wearing charcoal suit pants and a white dress shirt. His sleeves were rolled up, his tie loosened. He had dark rings under his eyes and a deep crease in his forehead, as if his face was stuck in a permanent grimace. He struck me as someone in the midst of a really bad day. Still, he managed a smile as he extended a hand to the woman standing beside him.

  She was taller, and very attractive. She had long, curly brown hair that she wore pulled back from her face, and she wore dark-rimmed glasses with those small rectangular lenses that college professors tend to like. They were cute on her, though they made her look way too intelligent for a guy like me. Call it a cop’s instinct, but I had a feeling that she was every bit as smart as she appeared.

  “Thank you for coming, Billie,” the man said. “I trust you’ll be kinder to the senator than you’ve been recently. At least until we’re through this.”

  “No promises, Mister Wriker,” the woman said, smiling at him. “But I hope that you’ll convey my condolences to Senator and Missus Deegan.”

  “I will. I’m sure they’ll—” The man spotted me and stopped. “Who the hell are you? And how’d you get in here?”

  The woman turned and eyed me with obvious interest.

  “I’m Jay Fearsson. I’m here to see Detective Shaw.”

  The man narrowed his eyes, but then he began to nod. “Right. She said something about that. Forgive me, Mister Fearsson.” He walked down the path to where I stood, the woman following.

  “Howard Wriker,” he said, as I shook his hand. “I’m Senator Deegan’s chief of staff and a close friend of the family.” He indicated the woman. “This is Billie Castle.”

  “Miss Castle,” I said, shaking her hand as well.

  “Are you a police officer, Mister Fearsson?” she asked.

  I started to answer, but out of the corner of my eye caught a warning glance from Wriker.

  “I’m an investigator,” I said. Before she could ask me more, I faced Wriker again. “Where can I find Detective Shaw?”

  “In the house,” he told me. “I’ll join you in just a moment.”

  I nodded once to the woman and hurried to the door. I couldn’t say why, but I felt like I’d come through a shootout without being hit.

  Stepping into the house, I saw that it was as impressive on the inside as it had been from the courtyard. The front foyer opened onto a large living room with oak floors that made the wood in my office seem cheap and dull. Opposite the entry was a bank of windows offering views of the mountain and, in the distance, the buildings of downtown Phoenix. My first thought was that this place had to be spectacular at night, not that it was bad now. The room was decorated tastefully with Native American art: pottery from Acoma and Jemez set on tables and shelves, Navajo blankets hanging on the walls, Kachinas in glass cases—not the cheap dolls made for tourists by the Navajo, but the real things, carved from cottonwood by the Hopi. I knew enough about the Southwestern tribes to understand that the Deegans had one hell of a collection, one that would have been the envy of many museums.

  I was still admiring the Kachinas when I heard a footstep behind me. Turning, I saw Wriker close the door, a weary look on his face.

  “That was well done, Mister Fearsson. If you can avoid talking to Billie Castle you should. For your sake and the senator’s.”

  “Why? Who is she?”

  Wriker frowned. “You don’t know?”

  I shook my head.

  “You’ve never heard of ‘Castle’s Village’?”

  “No. Should I have?”

  “It’s a blog,” Wriker said, making “blog” sound like a dirty word. “A political one—probably the most popular of its kind in the Southwest. She has correspondents and opinion writers from all over Arizona, New Mexico, Colorado, Southern California, West Texas.” He shook his head. “Suffice it to say that few of them are fans of the senator.”

  “And yet you allowed her in the house.”

  Wriker crossed to a wet bar in the near corner of the room. “You want a drink?”

  “Water would be fine, thanks.”

  “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 s
ixteen 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 wa
s 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.