by DAVID B. COE
“No need for that,” he said. He stood, his body unfolding slowly. He was bigger even than I’d thought. He stood a full head taller than me and he was broad in the shoulders and chest. I would have bet good money that he’d played football in college. Maybe even in the pros, back when athletes had to work for a living after they retired.
“Thanks,” I said, holding out a hand.
He gripped it, his hand appearing to swallow mine. “No problem.”
He limped back into the club and I followed. Electric Daiquiri was working their way through another song, the music so loud it hurt. I let myself out of Robo’s without bothering to say goodbye to Randy and Tilo. Once on the street, I began walking back toward the Z-ster, my ears ringing.
I hadn’t taken three steps, though, when I felt it again. I was being watched, tracked. I imagined myself in the crosshairs of a rifle. Except this time I knew the feeling for what it was: magic. I made no effort to find the sorcerer; I didn’t even alter my gait. But I began to mumble the words to a deflection spell, which was one of the most rudimentary wardings I knew. In essence, it redirected any conjuring aimed at me toward something else, an object of my choosing, in this case an SUV parked along the curb in front of me.
But the attack never came. It almost seemed that someone—the Blind Angel Killer?—was playing with me, trying to make me flinch. Or maybe he wanted to see what I was capable of doing before he tried in earnest to kill me. Whatever the explanation, I was growing tired of it. And, to be honest, I was scared. So scared, that by the time I reached the Z-ster, there was sweat on my forehead and neck.
True, I was pretty good at warding magic. But I figured any weremyste who could make his presence known to me in this way wouldn’t have had too much trouble mastering a deflection spell.
I began to relax once I was in the car. This made no sense whatsoever—it’s not as though my 280Z has some magical property that protects me from assailing spells. But sometimes the illusion of safety is enough to get a person through. I started the Z-ster up, pulled away from the curb, and drove down University toward the campus. As soon as I could, though, I doubled back and cruised the street a second time, hoping that maybe I’d catch my secret admirer unawares. But though I made two more passes down the same block, and though I saw a couple of people who shimmered with magic, none of them possessed enough power to be a threat. Either they were small-time conjurers or weremystes who were using blockers to suppress the phasings, and their abilities with them.
I was about to give up and drive over to Orestes Quinley’s place, when I spotted someone of a different sort, though no less interesting.
Billie Castle.
She was stepping into a coffeehouse, a thermal coffee mug in one hand and a computer case slung over the other shoulder. Alarm bells went off in my head. I knew that I should keep driving, keep as far from the woman as I could. She was a reporter, and all she had wanted from me yesterday was information. But I couldn’t deny that there was something intriguing about her. Maybe that was a fancy way of saying that I found her attractive. Intriguing, attractive, a challenge: pick your reason. I thought about stopping to see if I might wrangle a dinner date out of her.
Then I thought better of it.
Then I parked the car and made my way to the coffeehouse.
By the time I was inside and in line, she had her coffee and was setting up her work space at a table in the back. She didn’t notice me, which was probably a good thing. Given the way our last conversation went, I figured the element of surprise was about all I had going for me.
To my amazement, the place served Sumatran coffee. I took it as a sign.
I got my cup and walked back to her table. She had her computer out and was already engrossed in her work. Her hair was down today; it was longer than I’d remembered. She wore a beige linen sports jacket with the sleeves pushed up, and a black t-shirt underneath. Silver and malachite earrings flashed within her curls, and a matching necklace lay against the t-shirt. Tastefully stylish, as well as pretty. I admit it: I was smitten.
Most of the tables in back were open, and I thought about sitting at a table nearby and trying the whole “what-a-coincidence” thing, but she was too smart for that to work. Instead, I went with the direct approach.
“May I join you?”
She glanced at me, did a double-take. “Mister Fearsson!” Her expression turned guarded; I think she expected me to yell at her, or maybe throw a punch.
“I read your article.”
“Is that why you’re here?”
“No. I . . . had a meeting nearby and I saw you come in. I thought I’d say hello.”
“What kind of a meeting?”
A reporter to the core.
“The kind that I’m not going to tell you about.” I reached for the chair opposite hers, and raised an eyebrow. “May I?”
She started to say something; I expect she was going to tell me she was working and didn’t want to be disturbed. But then she smiled. “Sure,” she said, setting her computer aside. “Be my guest.”
“Thank you.” I sat and sipped my coffee. It was pretty good, almost as good as my own.
“How’s your investigation going?”
“I don’t think I’m going to tell you about that, either.”
“So you’re going to sit there and drink your coffee and not say a word?”
“No,” I said. “I was thinking that we could talk about something other than Claudia Deegan and the Blind Angel murders.”
She shook her head. “Bull. You’re just like me. You don’t want to make small talk. You don’t want to chat with me about the weather or this coffee or the Diamondbacks—”
“You’re a baseball fan?”
“My dad wanted a boy, remember? My point is, you miss being a cop. You’re back working on a case that I’ll bet you’ve been thinking about constantly for a year and a half. You’re as absorbed in your work as I am in mine.”
“Is that so?”
“Yes,” she said, her green eyes dancing. “You want to talk about Claudia Deegan and the other murders.”
“I do?” I asked, laughing.
“Yup. So why don’t you tell me about your meeting and what you’ve learned, instead of playing these games.”
I leaned forward. She did, too, eager, eyes fixed on mine.
“No,” I whispered, and sat back.
Her expression soured. “What is it you’re hiding?”
“I’m not hiding anything. That’s the problem I have with reporters. You assume that I have to be hiding something simply because I don’t want to share the details of my investigation with your readers. Isn’t it possible that I have other reasons for keeping these things to myself? Did it ever occur to you that I could actually compromise the investigation by revealing too much?”
She shook her head, a smirk on her face. “That’s an old excuse, Mister Fearsson. Politicians and bureaucrats have been hiding behind that one for a long time. ‘We’re keeping the truth from you,’” she said, in a deep mocking voice, “‘but it’s for your own good.’”
“It’s not an excuse.” I leaned in again. “What if the Blind Angel Killer reads newspapers and blogs?” I asked, my voice low. “I don’t know if he does, but it’s possible, right? I don’t want to tip him off. I certainly don’t want to give him any hints about who I’m talking to, for their sake and mine, too.”
“What about the rest of us?” She gestured toward the front window of the shop. “People out there are terrified of this guy. Don’t they have a right to know how this investigation is going, and how soon they can expect you to catch him?”
“I guess you and I have different priorities. I think it’s more important that people be safe than informed.”
She gaped at me, wide-eyed and clearly disgusted. “You truly think that’s the choice?”
“Yes, I do.”
Her laugh was harsh and abrupt. “Well, good for you, Mister Fearsson! You’ve stumbled across the same ex
cuse for suppressing the media that Hitler and Stalin used! Maybe you’d feel safer living in North Korea!”
People were watching us, some craning their necks to get a better view, which was good, because this wouldn’t have been as much fun without an audience. “I didn’t say anything about suppressing the media,” I told her, keeping my voice low. “I was just pointing out that sometimes giving people too much information can do more harm than good.”
“Well,” she said. “I don’t believe that.”
I took a breath. Too late, I realized that coming into the coffeeshop had been a bad idea. Mental note to self: next time your instincts tell you to stay away from a woman, do that.
“Well, I’m sorry to have troubled you, Miss Castle. I guess I should be on my way.”
“Yes, you should,” she said, already turning back to her computer. “I have work to do.”
Right. I stood and picked up my coffee, having every intention of walking away. But I didn’t.
“You know what?” I said. “I don’t want to go.”
She blinked. “You don’t.”
“No, I don’t.” I sat down again. “I’d rather stay and fight with you.”
She considered me for several seconds, wondering, no doubt, if I was nuts. Then she burst out laughing.
“That’s the stupidest thing I’ve ever heard in my life!”
“Yeah,” I said, grinning. “I guess it is.”
Her laughter faded until she was just looking at me, a quizzical smile on her lips. “Justis is a very odd name for a private detective.”
“What would be a normal name for one?”
“I don’t know. Joe. Dave. Bob. Dick.”
I raised an eyebrow.
“As in ‘Tracy,’” she said grinning. “You know what I mean. Justis sounds so . . . formal.” She shook her head. “That’s not the right word. I guess I’m saying that you don’t seem like a ‘Justis’ to me.”
“That’s why I go by Jay.”
She squinted. After a while she shook her head. “I’m not sure Jay works, either.”
“So you’re going to keep calling me Mister Fearsson?”
“Maybe. We’ll see.”
I watched her for a minute, until at last she dropped her gaze, her cheeks coloring. “What?” she said.
“I was thinking that Billie suits you well.”
She had gone shy, but a smile tugged at her lips. “Thank you.”
I glanced around. “This is a pretty upscale coffeeshop. I didn’t think bloggers made any money.”
“Sure we do. I sell ads on my site. For a lot. I probably make more than you do.”
“Everybody makes more money than I do.”
She laughed.
“Did you always want to be a reporter?”
Another laugh escaped her, this one self-conscious and breathless, but her eyes met mine again. “Not always, no. You don’t meet too many kids who want to grow up to be journalists. But once I started college I knew.”
“What did you want to be before then?”
“A ballerina. A movie star. An airplane pilot.” She shrugged. “Little girl stuff.”
“Except the airplane pilot.”
She grinned, nodded. “Right. I wanted to . . . to go places. Travel.”
“Where was home?”
Her smile turned brittle. “Home? Connecticut.”
Two words, but I sensed that there were layers upon layers to her story. I could tell from the tone of her voice and the pain lurking in her eyes. And I found that I wanted to know all of it. Every detail.
“Well you managed to get pretty far away at least.”
“Pretty far,” she repeated. “How about you? Did you always want to be a private eye?”
The way she said “private eye” made it sound far more exciting and exotic than it was.
I grinned and shook my head. “I wanted to be a cop.”
“Of course. Sorry. I forgot.”
“It’s all right. We’re off the record, right?”
She gaze remained locked on mine and her smile warmed once more. She reached up and closed her computer. “We’re off the record.”
“Thank you,” I said.
“Leaving the force must have been hard.”
“Yeah, you could say that.”
“I did. What would you say?”
I hesitated, wondering how much to tell her.
“We agreed that we’re off the record,” she said. “I’d never lie about that. But that doesn’t mean I can’t ask you questions, does it?”
“No,” I said. “Leaving the force almost killed me. I was a cop for six years, eight months.” I tried to keep my smile from turning bitter, but I’m not sure I succeeded. “I can give you the weeks and days if you want them. It’s lousy work most of the time. You keep bad hours, you get paid next to nothing, and you see things that . . .” I shook my head. “That no one should have to see.” I shrugged again. “And I loved every minute of it.”
“Why?” she asked, making no effort to hide her bewilderment.
“Because I was helping people. Because when Kona and I were working a case, it was like we were solving a puzzle, putting each piece where it belonged, watching as a picture emerged. I liked that.”
“Still, the bad stuff: doesn’t it get to you after a while?”
“It’s part of the job. You live with it.” I sipped my coffee. “Besides, every job has it’s share of crap to deal with. Being a reporter—a journalist,” I corrected, using her word. “It can’t be all flowers and sunshine, right?”
“Oh, it’s not. Especially running my own site. It took ages to establish an audience, to get my writers, to get enough advertisers that I could make some money. It was easy to forget that I was a reporter.”
“And now you get to interview guys like Randolph Deegan.”
She smiled. “Deegan was nothing. I’ve interviewed the president.”
I couldn’t help but be impressed. “Really?”
“Really. The president,” she said, counting on her fingers. “The prime minister of Great Britain, the prime minister of Israel, the chancellor of Germany, the Russian president. There are others who I’m forgetting. I know I’ve interviewed at least eight heads of state.”
“So was I your toughest interview?”
“You wish!”
She had a great smile and a better laugh, and I was content to spend the next hour just talking to her, listening as she described her work. I had to admit that it was far more interesting than I’d expected. Partly—mostly—because of the way she lit up as she spoke. It was her passion, and as she explained all of what she did—the interviews and the writing, the management of her site and its reporters—I began to understand how she could be so jazzed about what I’d always dismissed as nothing more than “the news.” She and her reporters were doing investigative work, too; they were detectives like I was. When she’d finished, I said this, and she seemed to like the idea of it. A lot.
“Do you really believe that?” she asked.
“I do. See that?” I said. “I bet you didn’t think we’d have this much in common.”
She eyed me, still smiling. “No, I didn’t.”
Cops don’t tend to be romantics. We see too much crap on the job—too many killings, too much abuse, too many kids whose lives have been ruined by violence or drugs or sex. It doesn’t leave a lot of room for dreams of romance. This isn’t to say that cops don’t fall in love and get married and all the rest. Of course we do. But Hollywood romance? No. I might not have been a cop anymore, but the job had left its mark on me. Add in that I was the son of a crazy old weremyste and was on my way to becoming one myself, that I’d lost my mom way too early, and that I’d been forced to quit the one job I’d ever loved doing, and I was about the least romantic person I knew.
But in that moment, sitting across from Billie Castle, watching her watch me, I would have done it all to win her over: the flowers, the candlelit dinners. Hell, I would have ta
ken her dancing, if that’s what it took. I couldn’t remember the last time I’d been with someone. I don’t mean for a night. That was easy enough to find, if you knew where to look. I’m talking about something serious, something that makes you think about the future.
How weird is that? Twenty-four hours ago I thought she was the most annoying person I’d ever met. An hour ago we were fighting. And here I was getting way ahead of myself. Thinking about it, I realized it wasn’t weird so much as stupid. But that didn’t stop me from opening my mouth again.
I glanced at my watch. Five thirty. “I know it’s a little early,” I said. “But would you like to get some dinner?”
She opened her mouth to reply, her forehead wrinkling a little, and I knew before she said a word that she was going to turn me down.
But at that moment I heard a voice—a man’s voice, of course—call out, “Billie!”
She peered past me, I turned.
He was tall, handsome in a nerdy sort of way. Straight, fine brown hair, parted on the side, dark-rimmed glasses that resembled hers so much it was a little scary. Blue eyes, square chin, blah, blah, blah. He was your basic nightmare in a tweed jacket and jeans. Forced to guess, I would have said that he was a professor at the university. My first thought—after who the hell is this?—was that he had to be every bit as smart as she was, which meant he was way smarter than me. I. Whatever.
I turned back to Billie, and was glad to see that she appeared mortified.
“I’m sorry,” Professor Stud said. “Am I interrupting?” He had stopped a few feet from the table and was eyeing me with a kind of proprietary concern. It’s times like these when I find it dangerous to carry a weapon. The temptation to use it is too strong. But I was good.
I could tell that Billie was gearing up for introductions, and I wanted no part of that. I’m sure her friend was a great guy; intelligent, friendly, articulate. I didn’t want to know about it. I didn’t want to know his name. I didn’t want to find out that he had a solid handshake and a winning smile. In this case, ignorance really was bliss.
When faced with an untenable situation, beat a quick and graceful retreat.