David Coe: Spell Blind

“Have they done the autopsy yet?” I asked as we navigated the corridors, our footsteps echoing.

“I asked them not to,” Kona said. “I thought you’d want to see her as we found her. They only brought her in last night and Pete was willing to wait until this afternoon.”

I nodded.

We found a young woman in the anthrodental lab who was comparing dental records on a computer screen to a set of X-rays. I’d never seen her before, but Kona knew her.

“Hey, Caroline.”

The woman looked over at us and smiled. “Hi, Kona.” She was pretty. Red hair, freckles, blue eyes, a little on the heavy side, great smile. I noticed a big diamond on her left hand. “What can I do ya for?”

“This is my friend Jay Fearsson.”

“Hi, Jay,” the woman said. “Caroline Packer.”

“Nice to meet you, Caroline.”

“You new in Homicide? I haven’t seen you here before.”

“Jay’s an investigator,” Kona said before I could answer. “He’s helping me out with something. I was wondering if we could take a look at the Deegan kid.”

Caroline’s smile vanished, along with most of the color in her cheeks. “Yeah, sure,” she said. But she didn’t move for a few seconds. She seemed to be gathering herself. “She’s in CS,” she said. “I can. . I can show you.”

“We know where it is,” Kona told her, her tone gentle. “Just tell us which shelf.”

“Fourteen. And you have to sign. The clipboard’s outside the door.”

Kona nodded. “Okay. Thanks.”

“What he did to her. . It’s. .” She broke off, swallowing and shaking her head. “I didn’t used to think about this kind of stuff, but I don’t like to be out after dark anymore.”

“I understand,” Kona said.

She turned and left the lab, and I followed her. The receiving cooler, where they kept bodies that had not yet been examined, was beside the autopsy room. We paused outside the door so that Kona could sign the access sheet, and then we stepped inside. It was a cold, stark, depressing place. Stainless steel walls and doors, hard fluorescent lighting, and a series of steel shelves on every wall for the bodies. Most of the shelves were empty, as usual, but there were white body bags on a few of them, including the middle shelf under the number fourteen.

A jar of mentholated Vaseline sat on a gurney near the door. Before opening the body bag we rubbed a small amount under our noses to guard against the smell. Then Kona unzipped the bag and spread it open.

My first thought was that the police had gotten the ID wrong. Sure she was a mess-there were burned out craters in her face where her eyes should have been. But this girl bore almost no resemblance to the Claudia Deegan I’d seen on the news and in countless newspaper photos. That girl had been blonde, athletic, tan: the all-American kid. This girl’s hair was black, though peering more closely I could see that the roots were blonde. Her face was gaunt and she wore dark lipstick that gave her mouth a severe look.

“You’re sure this is the Deegan kid?” I asked Kona, staring down at the girl.

“Yeah, we’re sure. Why?”

I shook my head. “Doesn’t matter.”

Kona had brought me there to tell her if there was any magical residue on the body, and it was all over Claudia’s face, neck and chest. Magic was similar to any other forensic evidence. Just as a gunshot at close range left powder burns on a victim, or strangulation caused bruising, magic left its mark as well. And just as fingerprints were unique, so was the color left by a weremyste’s conjuring. Only another weremyste could see it, but to those of us with magic in our veins it was as obvious as a bloodstain or an open wound. Often, magical residue reminded me of fluorescent paint that had spilled wherever a runecrafter’s spells had touched. It glowed and shimmered, the colors as vivid as summer wildflowers. At least at first.

The glow on Claudia’s body had grown faint, and with the overhead lighting so harsh it was difficult to see. As I’d told Kona earlier, the more powerful the weremyste, the faster any remnant of his magic would fade. This probably seems backwards, but if you think of magic as having a half-life, like uranium, it starts to make more sense. Carbon 14 is a weak radiant with a slow half-life-well over five thousand years. Strontium 90, on the other hand, is powerfully radioactive and has a half-life of less than thirty years. In the same way, the stronger a spell, the faster its residue decays. At least, that’s how I think of it. Then again, I’m not exactly a nuclear physicist.

Of course, there was a flip side to the fast decay thing: the more powerful the sorcerer, the more brilliant the color of his magic would be to begin with. I had seen the Blind Angel Killer’s magic before; I would have recognized that shade of crimson anywhere. Still, even knowing how powerful he was, I couldn’t help but be surprised-and scared-at how dim it had grown in a mere two days. I might not have noticed it as much working the case month to month, but in the time since I’d last seen one of his victims, the Blind Angel Killer had made himself stronger. Much stronger.

“Is it our guy?” Kona asked, watching me.

I nodded. “I think he’s getting more powerful.”

“Well, that’s just what I want to hear.”

“The color is nearly gone. Even at the eyes, where it should be most intense.” I faced Kona. “I think whatever he gets from these kids is building him up. There’s more to this than random killing.”

“You’ve told me that before. But do you know what he’s getting?”

“No.” I turned back to Claudia’s corpse. “If I knew that maybe we could find him.” I stood for a moment, staring at the girl’s ravaged face. “Let me try something,” I said.

Three elements again: my magic, the red magic glowing on Claudia, and the purpose of the killer’s spell. This last I didn’t know, of course; I was hoping the spell would fill in that bit of information with some physical manifestation of the killer’s magic. I had tried this before a couple of years ago, but I was a more accomplished runecrafter now, and I thought maybe I’d get a different result.

I didn’t. I might have been better with magic now than I was when I worked for the PPD, but I wasn’t yet a match for the Blind Angel Killer.

“Did anything happen?” Kona asked, looking back and forth between Claudia’s corpse and me.

“No. We’re going to have to find him the old-fashioned way.”

“Not we, partner,” Kona said in the same gentle tone she’d used with the girl in the lab. “That’s not your job. I appreciate you coming down here with me, but we’ll do the rest.”

I said nothing, and I couldn’t bring myself to meet her gaze. She was right, of course, but it wasn’t like I needed to be reminded that I was no longer on the job. And Kona should have known that.

“I’m sorry, Justis. It’s just-”

“I know,” I said, my voice echoing sharply in the cold room. I turned away from the body and started for the door.

“Justis-”

“I should talk to that girl. Caroline. I should ask her about the whole drug thing. That’s what the Deegans are worried about.”

I left the room before Kona could stop me and went back to the anthrodental lab. Caroline glanced over as I walked in and gave a weak smile, but she was still pale.

I sat on an empty stool near her. “Can I ask you a couple of questions?”

She pulled her lab coat tighter around her shoulders. “I don’t know much. I’m not working on. . Until Doctor Forsythe does his initial autopsy, there’s not much for the rest of us to do.”

“I understand that. But I need some information; or I will when you start the lab work.”