Spell Blind

by DAVID B. COE

  He was out there already today, his chair angled eastward, toward the New River Mountains, which were partially obscured by the brown haze hanging over north Phoenix. He was dressed in jeans and a torn white t-shirt. He’d put on his old tennis shoes, but hadn’t bothered with socks.

  My dad was a little like a scrying stone. There were signs I could watch for, portents of his mood and state on a given day. No socks was never a good sign. Neither was a mess anywhere in the house. He kept things neat when he wanted to, and when he could manage to clean up after himself. If there were dirty dishes in the sink or clothes strewn about in his bedroom I knew that he’d been out of it for a day or two.

  I got out of the Z-ster, grabbed the bags of groceries from the back, and pushed the door shut with my foot.

  “Hey, Dad!” I called.

  He didn’t answer. I could see that he was muttering to himself, his white curls stirring in the wind, his hands gripping the plastic arms of his chair. He sat slouched, long legs stretched out in front of him, his belly, once as flat as mine, gathered in folds beneath the threadbare shirt.

  I let myself into the trailer and started putting things away. The dishes and pans from the previous night’s dinner were still in the sink. I saw no evidence to suggest that he’d had any breakfast.

  “I got you Rocky Road this time. You seemed to like it when I got it for you last month.”

  Nothing.

  When I’d finished with the groceries, I cleaned up his kitchen. Then I joined him out front, unfolding another lawn chair.

  I kissed him on the forehead, then sat. “How you doin’, Pop?”

  “This wind means rain,” he said, not bothering to tear his gaze from the desert hills.

  I glanced up at the sky. There wasn’t a cloud over the entire state of Arizona.

  “I don’t know, Pop. They’re saying clear skies all week.”

  He mumbled something else that I couldn’t hear.

  “How are you feeling today?” I asked, studying him.

  No answer. He was squinting, but his eyes were clear, and his color was good. The doctors told me to check him closely when he was nonresponsive like this. Most times he’d be fine—this state of mind was as normal for him as any other. But they said that if he ever did have any physical problems, his mind would be the first thing to quit.

  My father was the only weremyste I’d met who didn’t appear even the slightest bit blurry to me. No heat-wave effect at all. I’ve thought about this a lot and wondered if maybe people in the same family vibrate on the same frequency or something like that, so that to me he’d look normal. But that’s just a half-baked theory. I could ask Namid about it, I suppose, but I figure I’d get another riddle in response. Whatever the reason, I could see him well enough to know that there was nothing wrong with him physically.

  “Did you have any breakfast?” I asked.

  He nodded, then frowned. “I’m hungry.”

  “I’ll get you some cereal,” I said, standing and going back inside the trailer, grateful for something to do.

  I filled a bowl, added a bit of milk—he didn’t like too much—and brought it out to him with his favorite spoon.

  He took it from me and began to eat, spooning it slowly into his mouth, his eyes still fixed on the mountains.

  A hawk circled in the distance.

  “Swainson’s,” he said, without even lifting his binoculars.

  I had no doubt that he was right.

  “So I was in Randolph Deegan’s house yesterday, Pop. You know, Senator Deegan? There’s . . . there’s a new case and . . . Well, anyway, I got to go to his house. You should see it. It’s huge and it’s got this great view of—”

  “Used to be you’d see Harris’s Hawks up here, too. Not for a while now. That brown air scares ’em off.”

  I exhaled, deflating like an old balloon. “That right?”

  “I remember cottonwood leaves being yellow in the summer before the rains came, and the doves would sit in the trees watching the leaves shrivel and fall. There wasn’t any rain for that long. Birds just died. The wind would blow like it is now, but it didn’t mean a thing. It was just dry, and blue, and yellow leaves, and doves looking like they were shivering. But it was hot. That’s all it was. Nothing else. Just hot.”

  “When was this, Pop?”

  “Dad and Mom drove me to water, to cottonwoods. But there were none to see. None with anything on them. None that weren’t yellow already.”

  “So you were a kid? This was with Gran and Pappy?”

  “’S different now. Wind and rain. That’s what they say. Wind and rain. When it rains, at night, the sky over there is orange.” He pointed with the spoon, dripping milk on his jeans. “The colors are confusing now. Yellow and blue, brown and orange. Used to be I understood better.”

  Something in the way he said this made me sit forward.

  “When was that?”

  He dropped his gaze, but now he knew I was there.

  “Before.”

  “Before what? Before you left the job? Before Mom died? Before I was born?”

  “’S harder now.” He glanced out at the desert once more. “It’s been a long time.”

  “Do you remember Namid, Dad?”

  I’m not certain what moved me to ask the question, but as soon as it crossed my lips he turned his head and looked right at me. Even after all these years, after watching his decline, after feeding him, and helping him take a piss and change into his pajamas on those really tough days, I still found his gaze arresting. Those pale gray eyes were so similar to my own that it was like staring into a mirror and seeing myself thirty years from now. The rough white beard and mustache, the long, lean face—it was me; me as I will be.

  “Namid?” he said.

  “You do remember him, don’t you? The runemyste. He taught you how to do magic. He might have come to you sometimes during—” I stopped. We hadn’t spoken about the phasings and magic in almost fifteen years, since I accused him of being a drunk and stormed out of the house. I’d never told him that I could conjure, or that I understood now what it was like during the full moons. After all these years, I still didn’t know how to start that conversation. “During a case,” I finally said, knowing how lame it probably sounded; knowing that he wouldn’t notice. By then I’d lost him again. He’d turned away and the glimmer I’d seen in his eyes had vanished. They were unfocused again, the way they had been when I arrived.

  “There was lightning. It was gray and cool, and lightning cut the clouds in half. The wind blew then. Colder than it is now, but it blew the same. And birds soared by like leaves. They couldn’t help themselves and they couldn’t fight it. They just flew by, black against the gray. I couldn’t hear them, but I saw them. They went sideways, like they were caught in some current, like white water. . . .”

  I made myself sit through it, like I did every week. There were times when staying with my dad was a pleasure, when the hours passed as easily as an afternoon in the mountains. Most days, though, were like this one. I’d long ago given up trying to decipher all that he said, although I did think it interesting that as soon as I mentioned Namid he started talking about rain and white water, as if he could see the runemyste in front of him, fluid and as changeable in his moods as the sea. But after a time, even this thin thread was lost, and he rambled on about the desert and hawks and the damn wind.

  At midday I went back inside the trailer and made a couple of sandwiches. Dad barely touched his, but I ate mine, happy for any distraction. After cleaning up the dishes and cutting board, I stepped back outside.

  “I should get going, Dad. I’ve got work to do.”

  “They treating you well?” he asked. “They made you a sergeant yet?”

  He forgot sometimes that I’d left the force. I had told him several times, of course, and we’d had plenty of conversations about my work as a PI. But, hell, at least he was speaking to me instead of at me.

  “No,” I said. “Not yet.”
<
br />   “You can trust Namid, you know?”

  I gazed at him, not knowing what to say. He was like this sometimes: incoherent one moment, lucid as can be the next.

  “You hear me?”

  “What do you remember about Namid, Dad?”

  He shrugged. All the while he kept gazing at the mountains, but he was frowning now, wrestling with memories.

  “Not much,” he said at last. “It’s all muddled today. But he was a friend when others weren’t.” He cast a look my way. “Know what I mean?”

  I nodded. “Yeah. I know.”

  “Get going,” he said. “Go work.”

  I kissed his forehead again, and he gave my hand a squeeze.

  “I’ll see you soon,” I said, and left him.

  Funny how even that little bit of a connection can make the whole damn visit worthwhile.

  I drove back to my office to check for mail—it was all bills and junk—take in the paper, and get my phone messages. The Republic led off with another story about Claudia’s death, but there was nothing new in it except a more detailed statement from the M.E. and the announcement that her family was putting up a twenty-five-thousand-dollar reward for the capture of her killer. For the most part, the article repeated details from yesterday’s story and gave a lengthy recap of the facts from previous Blind Angel murders. Still, I read through all of it, scanning the piece for any mention of me, but it seemed that Billie Castle was the only reporter in Phoenix who found me interesting. I wondered if I should be flattered.

  I was on my way out the door to go see Orestes Quinley when the phone rang. I thought about letting the machine get it, then reconsidered. I reached it on the third ring.

  “Fearsson.”

  “Justis.” Kona’s voice.

  “Hey, partner. What’s up?”

  “You can tell just from seeing a guy if he’s a . . . you know, like you, right?”

  “You mean, if someone’s a weremyste?”

  “Right. You can see it, can’t you?”

  “Yeah,” I said. “Why?”

  “I need you to come down to 620 and take a look at someone for me. Right away.” She sounded excited and abruptly my heart was pounding, too.

  “You think you’ve got him?” I asked.

  “Maybe. We’re working blind here, partner. No pun intended. We need your eyes on this one.”

  “Yeah, all right. I’ll be there as soon as I can.”

  I hung up and hurried down to the Z-ster.

  As Phoenix moves through May into June, two things in the city become constant: traffic and heat. Driving downtown in the middle of the day I had to struggle with both.

  It took me the better part of an hour to get from Chandler to 620, even though it was no more than a twenty-five-mile drive. As I walked from the lot to HQ, a hot wind swirled around the street lifting scraps of paper and plastic wrappers into the air. There were cops everywhere, of course. Men and women arriving for work, others leaving, guys on duty bringing in perps. 620 was always a busy place, and even now, a year and half after leaving the force, I hungered to be part of it.

  I recognized some of the faces, though not all. It’s not easy being a cop; the hours suck, it eats up your personal life, and no one with integrity is going to get rich on the job. Not surprisingly in a city as big as this one, there’s a good deal of turnover at any one department. So as I entered the building, a fair number of the cops inside ignored me. A few others eyed me with cool indifference, but said nothing.

  To be honest, I was shaking all over; I would have preferred that no one see me. I wanted to feel like I still belonged, but I didn’t, couldn’t. And so what I really wanted was to be somewhere else—anywhere else.

  “Hey, Jay! What brings you back here?”

  Carla Jaroso had been the front desk officer at 620 for as long as I could remember, as if in defiance of all that turnover. She was short and round, with the friendliest face you ever saw. Her hair was almost pure white now, but her skin was the color of dark rum, and still as smooth as the day I met her.

  I took a deep breath. “Hi, Carla. You look great.”

  She stepped away from the window and emerged from a side door to give me a hug and kiss. “Liar. You behaving yourself?” she asked.

  “When I can.”

  “You here to see Kona?”

  I nodded.

  “Should I phone up?”

  “No,” I said. “It’s all right. She’s expecting me.” I gave her another hug. “It’s good to see you, Carla.”

  She returned to her desk and I started to walk away. Then I stopped, remembering. When I faced Carla again, she already had the visitor’s badge in her hand.

  “Sorry, hon,” she said. “Rules. I’ll need your driver’s license, too.”

  Such a little thing, trivial when it came right down to it. But it felt like a fist to the gut.

  “Yeah, sorry, Carla. I forgot.”

  She smiled, sympathy in her dark eyes. “I know you did, hon.”

  I clipped the badge to my shirt and took the stairs up to the third floor, where the Homicide unit was located. The last thing I wanted was to get stuck in the elevator with one of the detectives I knew from my time on the job.

  The smell of a police station is something a cop never forgets. It’s like the perfume of that old girlfriend I mentioned before: stale coffee and sweat, nitrocellulose and old paint. It doesn’t sound like much, or like anything a normal person would want to smell. But to me it was like the smell of home.

  When I walked into the detectives’ room, Kona was sitting at her desk, talking on the phone. A number of years ago, when I first joined the force, detectives had their own offices. Now they had cubicles, like horse stalls in a big barn. It made no sense; Kona needed to be able to lock up files at night, and in fact, since the changes, many detectives had gone out and bought those fire-safe lock boxes they sell for important documents. It was ridiculous that cops should have to pay for these themselves, but the politicians cutting police budgets didn’t see it that way.

  Kona was playing idly with a long, elaborate earring, which she had taken out so that she could talk on the phone. Kona and her earrings. None of the ones she wore conformed to regulations for proper attire. Our sergeant, Iban Arroyo, had been on her about her jewelry for years now. But Kona did things her own way, and she was too good a cop to get busted for the little stuff.

  Seeing me, she smiled and waved me over. I sat in the chair beside her desk, waiting until she hung up.

  At last she ended her call and beamed at me. “This just gets better and better,” she said.

  “Tell me.”

  “His name’s Mike Gann. We picked him up at Robo’s last night. He wasn’t supposed to be there because Randy Deegan plays there with his band, and our friend Mike isn’t supposed to go anywhere near the Deegans. Not any of them.”

  A vague sense of discomfort crept over me, but I said nothing.

  “Well?” she asked. “Don’t you want to know why?”

  “Yeah, sure.”

  “He used to work for the Deegans. Odd jobs: yard work, small projects around the house. Handyman stuff, you know? But then he was fired because—wait for it—he started hitting on Senator Deegan’s daughter. She told him to get lost about a dozen times, and he kept at her. Over time he started to get angry about all the rejections. He even threatened her. So they fired him, got a restraining order to keep him away from Claudia and from the house. Eventually he got a job as a bouncer at Robo’s. But then he got fired from that job, too, because Randy and his band started booking gigs there. So then he had another reason to hate the Deegans.”

  “When was all this?” I asked her.

  “He was fired by the Deegans three years ago. It’s been about ten months since he lost the job at Robo’s.”

  I nodded, though I wasn’t convinced. “Kona—”

  “Hold on, Justis. There’s more.” She nodded toward the phone. “That was Kevin.” Kevin Glass, Kona’s new part
ner. “He’s at Gann’s place now. Says it’s filled with all sorts of oils and herbs and those little talisman things that your friend Q used to steal.” She smiled. “We think the guy’s a damn sorcerer.”

  “Even if he is, you’re making the Blind Angel murders all about the Deegans, and you and I know better than that. Everyone is so caught up in the fact that Claudia Deegan was killed, that they’re forgetting about the other thirty victims.”

  I regretted that last bit as soon as I said it.

  “You think I’m forgetting the other victims?” she demanded, the words clipped, her voice like ice.

  “No. I shouldn’t have said that.”

  “I’ve been working this case for three years now, Justis. Even you can’t say that. I never—never—forget any of the kids this guy’s killed.”

  “I know you don’t.”

  For some time neither of us said a word. She stared at her phone; I studied at my hands.

  “He lives in West Chandler,” she said, breaking a brittle silence. “Did I mention that? He’s, like, ten minutes from South Mountain Park.”

  “Still—”

  “I hear you. Really, I do. And it’s not like I’m booking this guy’s room on death row. But you have to admit that we’ve got an awful lot of coincidences at work here.”

  I took a breath. “Yeah, you do.”

  She frowned. “Isn’t it possible that when the Deegans fired him—when Claudia got him fired—something snapped and he began this string of killings that culminated in her murder?”

  Put that way, it did make some sense.

  “So you want me to use my magic eyes,” I said. “Tell you if I think he’s our guy.”

  “Would you know if he was?”

  I thought about Sophie at the New Moon, and how subtle the blurring effect had been with her.