David Coe - Spell Blind

“I’m not sure-”

“It’s nothing that the M.E. won’t eventually give the press. I just need to know what kind of drugs she’d been taking, and anything you can tell me about their potency.”

Caroline frowned. “Aren’t you with the force? Kona said you’re an investigator. Can’t you get this from her?”

I forced a smile. “I’m asking you for it.” I pulled out my wallet and gave her one of my business cards. “If you can, call me at that number. .”

She was looking more frightened by the moment. “Um. .”

“It’s all right. I’ve known Pete Forsyth since you were in high school. He won’t mind. And you can call me from your home, if you think that would be better.”

“Stop it, Justis.”

Kona didn’t raise her voice. She didn’t have to.

Caroline glanced past me, the relief on her face making me ashamed of myself. I turned, feeling my color rise.

Kona crossed to where I sat, wearing an expression that would have wrung an apology from a gangbanger.

“We’re leaving,” she told me. Turning, she said, “Sorry to have bothered you, Caroline. Tell Pete we’re done here. He can go ahead with the autopsy.”

Caroline nodded, seeming unsure of what had happened. Her gaze flicked from me to Kona.

I should have said something to her, but I was too embarrassed. I followed Kona out of the lab, through the hallways back to the main entrance. Once we were out on the street again, Kona turned to me, her hands on her hips.

“What the hell were you thinking, trying to play that poor girl like that?”

I didn’t meet her gaze. “Wriker asked me to find out-”

“Don’t give me that shit. He didn’t tell you to go and bully some kid into getting herself fired.”

I wasn’t sure that Wriker or the Deegans would give a crap about Caroline Packer. But I knew that I didn’t want to be measuring myself against their morals.

“I pissed you off,” Kona said. “And you didn’t want to have to get that information from me. So you went after her.”

“Yes.”

Kona stared down at her feet, her lips pursed. “I shouldn’t have said what I did. You don’t need me telling you what your job is, especially when you’re still working this case and not getting any credit for it. The fact is, Latrelle wanted you here, but strictly on ‘a consulting basis.’ His words. I’m not even sure what he meant, and to be honest, I don’t know how we’re going to make this work. But I shouldn’t have said it that way.”

I shrugged, still not looking at her.

“Pressure’s high on this one, partner,” she said. “This guy’s had our number for three years now, and that’s bad enough. But you add in the Deegans, and suddenly everyone’s on edge, you know?”

I could imagine.

“The damn FBI’s back in town, acting as though they never bailed on us in the first place, asking why we haven’t made more progress while they were gone.” Kona paused, exhaled. “Anyway,” she went on, “I’m sorry.”

“It’s all right.” And it was. I’d never been able to stay mad at Kona for long, or her at me. Our friendship-our partnership-had always been too strong. I raised my chin toward the door we’d come through. “You’ll apologize for me?”

“Yeah, sure,” she said. “And I’ll get that information to you as quickly as I can. I promise.”

I nodded. “I know you will.”

She glanced back toward the door. “Anything more you can tell me about what you saw in there?”

“Not really.” We started walking back toward 620. “It’s the same shade of red, but it’s fading faster than it used to. Otherwise it’s exactly like the other times. Mostly on her head and chest. No particular pattern, though it’s strongest around the eyes.”

“Nothing different at all?” Kona asked.

I shook my head, knowing where she was headed. “I don’t think he had any idea that this was Claudia Deegan. She was just another kid to him.”

“Yeah, well, that might have been true the other night. Not anymore. Things are about to get very hot for everyone involved in this case, including our friend with the red magic.”

We fell silent, and after a few moments I pulled out the list of protest arrests Kona had given me.

“Check on page three,” Kona said. “A bit past the middle.”

I read several names before I saw it. I stopped dead in my tracks and gaped at her. She stopped, too.

“Robby Sommer?” I said.

“Interesting, don’t you think? You’re trying to find the source of Claudia Deegan’s drugs, and look who gets his ass arrested at that protest Claudia put together.”

Robby Sommer was a small-time drug dealer who I’d busted several years back. He catered to high-end, low-volume buyers; rich college students for the most part. Kids like Claudia Deegan, although he wasn’t above selling to anyone he could find.

“You think he was connected to any of the other kids?” I asked.

“It’s possible,” Kona said. “A few of them were at the university; most of them were using.”

“But this is the first time we’ve-” I smiled self-consciously. “That you’ve had any kind of link between Robby and a victim.”

“Yeah. This is the first.”

We started walking again, and I stared at Robby’s name on that list. His address hadn’t changed since I arrested him. “I guess you should go see him.”

“Why don’t you?” Kona said. “Kevin and I have more than enough to keep us busy, and this is the type of thing you’d be doing for Wriker anyway.”

“All right.”

I expected her to remind me that since I wasn’t a cop anymore, I couldn’t push Robby too far, but she didn’t.

“I’ll let you know what I find out,” I said.

She nodded. “I’ll do the same.”

“Thank you, Kona.”

We’d reached Washington again.

“No problem, partner. Talk to you soon.”

She continued back toward 620; I turned toward the City Hall parking lot, my chest aching. I’d never begrudge Kona her badge, but at that moment I wanted mine back more than I wanted anything.

Nobody would be surprised to learn that a drug dealer like Robby Sommer was a screw-up. What always amazed me about the kid, though, was how lucky he’d been. In the years since I’d arrested him, he had been hauled in at least three or four more times. But he’d only been convicted once, and then on a reduced count. Something always seemed to go wrong with Robby’s arrests-evidence was misplaced, procedures got fouled up. One time an assistant district attorney was found to have manufactured evidence in a number of cases-it was a huge scandal at the time-and while the evidence against Robby was completely legit, all of the perps in all of the assistant D.A.’s cases were released as a matter of course. This was the luckiest kid on the face of the earth.

I turned that thought over in my head as I drove to his place, amazed that this had never occurred to me before: What if Robby wasn’t merely lucky? What if the punk had access to magic? What if he had been hiding it from us all these years? Most of the time I could identify a weremyste on sight. They usually appeared to shimmer and waver, as if there were heat waves in front of them. A powerful runecrafter might look like little more than a blur. I’d never noticed anything like this with Robby, but maybe he wasn’t strong enough for me to notice, or at least hadn’t been the last time our paths crossed. I thought of that faint hint of beige glow on the door of the building where I had found Jessie Tyler. Could that have been Robby? Had luck saved him yet again?

Maybe. But with Claudia Deegan dead, with drugs found in her backpack and in her blood, and with some connection established between her and Sommer, it was possible that Robby’s winning streak was about to end.