David Coe - Spell Blind

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 partner. “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.

“Yeah,” I said. “I’d know.”

She smiled and stood. “Then come on.”

We walked to the interview rooms, where suspects were interrogated and stopped first at the observation room. Each interview room had video cameras in the ceiling corners. The signals from the cameras came here. The room was brightly lit and it seemed to vibrate with the hum of fluorescent bulbs. Four television screens lined one of the walls. Three of them were off. The fourth showed a large, muscular man with a military style buzz cut and a square face. He sat on a metal chair in front of an empty table. The TV was black and white, and the signal wasn’t the best, so I couldn’t tell from here whether he was a weremyste, much less one who was powerful enough to have left that vivid crimson wash of magic on Claudia Deegan’s face and body.

Gann was antsy. He was slouched in his chair, one of his legs bouncing, his eyes flicking up toward the camera every few seconds.

Kona watched me, expectant.

I shook my head. “I can’t tell anything from here. I’m going to have to see him in the flesh.”

“Yeah, I was afraid of that.”

“Hibbard?”

“Damn right, Hibbard. I’d rather the Federal boys didn’t see you here either, but I’m more worried about old Cole. Calling you to the Deegan place was one thing. But if he finds out that you were here, meeting with his suspect. .?” She shook her head. “One day you’re going to have to explain to me again why it is he hates you so much.”

“I’ll keep my mouth shut and you can tell Gann I’m visiting from one of the precincts, or something.”

We made our way back to the interview room and went in. Gann sat up as soon as the door opened, his gaze darting back and forth between us. I leaned against the wall near the door, and stared at him. Kona began to pace the perimeter of the room, her lips pursed, her eyes on the floor. This was how we’d always started our interviews. Kona and I hadn’t been in one of these rooms together in a year and half, and yet it felt like no time had passed.