David Coe: Spell Blind

“I will. I’m sure they’ll-” The man spotted me and stopped. “Who the hell are you? And how’d you get in here?”

The woman turned and eyed me with obvious interest.

“I’m Jay Fearsson. I’m here to see Detective Shaw.”

The man narrowed his eyes, but then he began to nod. “Right. She said something about that. Forgive me, Mister Fearsson.” He walked down the path to where I stood, the woman following.

“Howard Wriker,” he said, as I shook his hand. “I’m Senator Deegan’s chief of staff and a close friend of the family.” He indicated the woman. “This is Billie Castle.”

“Miss Castle,” I said, shaking her hand as well.

“Are you a police officer, Mister Fearsson?” she asked.

I started to answer, but out of the corner of my eye caught a warning glance from Wriker.

“I’m an investigator,” I said. Before she could ask me more, I faced Wriker again. “Where can I find Detective Shaw?”

“In the house,” he told me. “I’ll join you in just a moment.”

I nodded once to the woman and hurried to the door. I couldn’t say why, but I felt like I’d come through a shootout without being hit.

Stepping into the house, I saw that it was as impressive on the inside as it had been from the courtyard. The front foyer opened onto a large living room with oak floors that made the wood in my office seem cheap and dull. Opposite the entry was a bank of windows offering views of the mountain and, in the distance, the buildings of downtown Phoenix. My first thought was that this place had to be spectacular at night, not that it was bad now. The room was decorated tastefully with Native American art: pottery from Acoma and Jemez set on tables and shelves, Navajo blankets hanging on the walls, Kachinas in glass cases-not the cheap dolls made for tourists by the Navajo, but the real things, carved from cottonwood by the Hopi. I knew enough about the Southwestern tribes to understand that the Deegans had one hell of a collection, one that would have been the envy of many museums.

I was still admiring the Kachinas when I heard a footstep behind me. Turning, I saw Wriker close the door, a weary look on his face.

“That was well done, Mister Fearsson. If you can avoid talking to Billie Castle you should. For your sake and the senator’s.”

“Why? Who is she?”

Wriker frowned. “You don’t know?”

I shook my head.

“You’ve never heard of ‘Castle’s Village’?”

“No. Should I have?”

“It’s a blog,” Wriker said, making “blog” sound like a dirty word. “A political one-probably the most popular of its kind in the Southwest. She has correspondents and opinion writers from all over Arizona, New Mexico, Colorado, Southern California, West Texas.” He shook his head. “Suffice it to say that few of them are fans of the senator.”

“And yet you allowed her in the house.”

Wriker crossed to a wet bar in the near corner of the room. “You want a drink?”

“Water would be fine, thanks.”

“You don’t mind if I have a Scotch, do you?”

“Of course not. I’m sure this has been an awful day.”

“You have no idea,” he said.

“You and the Deegans have my deepest sympathies, sir,” I said. There are only so many ways to tell the family of a murder victim that you’re sorry for them, and over the years I’d used every one. But just because I’d said these words a thousand times that didn’t mean I wasn’t sincere. I’d never been a fan of Randolph Deegan; I’d never voted for him. But I wouldn’t have wished this tragedy on my worst enemy.

“Thank you.” He plunked ice cubes into a pair of tumblers, filled one from the tap, and poured a good deal of scotch into the other. “To answer your question,” he said, handing me my drink, “yes, I let her into the house. Her readership is greater than the combined circulation of every newspaper in the state. And a little goodwill now might smooth things over for us later in the year.”

I sipped my water. “Well, I know how hard a time this must be for the Deegans and for you. If you can just tell me where I’d find Ko- Detective Shaw, I’ll be out of your way.”

Wriker nodded and took a long drink of scotch, draining more than half the glass. “Of course,” he said. “She’s in with the senator and his wife right now, but I’ll tell her you’re here.”

He put down his glass and walked through the front foyer to the other side of the house. Left alone, I crossed to the windows and stared out at the city. For the past year and a half, as I’d followed the Blind Angel case in the papers, poring over every article for details of the sixteen killings-now seventeen-that had occurred since I left the force, I had tried to put myself in Kona’s shoes, to feel what she must have been feeling with every new murder. But I hadn’t been able to. Losing my job had devastated me, but it had also released me from this one burden. The killings continued to haunt me, but that crushing feeling of responsibility I’d felt while still working homicide vanished once I was off the job.

Until now. Standing in Randolph Deegan’s living room, I felt it returning; I could almost feel my shoulders bending with the weight of it. One phone call from Kona and the Blind Angel murders were mine again. It wasn’t anything I wanted, and yet it felt strangely familiar, even comforting. I realize how twisted that sounds. As I said before, once a cop, always a cop.

“What the hell are you doing here?”

I knew that voice almost as well as I knew Kona’s. Cole Hibbard: Commander of the PPD’s Violent Crimes Bureau, and the man most responsible for forcing me out of the department. Before, when I said that I wouldn’t wish the Deegan mess on my worst enemy, I had forgotten about Hibbard. I’d wish a whole load of crap on him.

I turned.

Hibbard stood in the entrance to the living room, looking like he had half a mind to pull out his weapon and shoot me then and there. He was silver-haired, stocky, and pretty fit for a guy in his mid-sixties. There’d been a time when he and my father were close, but then my dad’s mind started to slip and Hibbard turned on him, assuming that he was using drugs or drinking. I suppose it’s understandable. Unless you’re a weremyste, you really can’t understand the intensity of the phasings. It’s not something we like to talk about. Even those of us who are willing to admit that we’re mystes are hesitant to tell the people around us that we’re doomed to go insane. That’s one of the reasons we use the word “myste” to describe ourselves rather than “weremystes.” No sense conjuring images of werewolves howling at the moon; the reality is too close to that for comfort. Hibbard wouldn’t have had any reason to suspect that one of his best friends on the force, a young, seemingly normal guy with a promising career ahead of him, was quietly going nuts right before his eyes.

Hibbard had it in for me from the start, assuming that I was trouble like my old man, and that it was just a matter of time before I screwed up, too. That he was right did nothing to make me hate him less.

“Hi there, Hibbard. Have you missed me?”

“Don’t give me any of your crap, Fearsson. I want to know what you’re doing here.”

“I called him, Commander.” Kona stepped around him into the room, with Wriker on her heels. It was like a big old family reunion; the kind you read about in the tabloids beneath headlines like “Grandmother Goes on Shooting Rampage.”

You couldn’t have found two people who were less alike than Cole Hibbard and Kona Shaw. Apart from the fact that they were both cops, they had next to nothing in common. Kona, whose real name was Deandra, was tall and thin, with skin the color of Kona coffee, which, as it happens, was just about all she drank. Hence the name. She was quite possibly the most beautiful woman I’d ever known, with big dark eyes, the cheekbones of a fashion model, short, tightly curled black hair, and a dazzling smile. She was also gay, in a department that was hard enough on women detectives, much less black, lesbian women detectives. That she had lasted in the department so long was testimony to how good a cop she was. If anyone needed further evidence, she had at least ten commendations to her name.