David Coe - Spell Blind

“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 excuse 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.