“I wish I knew. He’s been . . . someone’s been hurting him, using magic to . . . to do I-don’t-even-know-what. I don’t understand what’s happening to him, but I’d bet everything I own that it’s tied in some way to the rest of this.”
Her lips pursed again, and I could tell what she was thinking.
“You’re taking a lot on faith. I appreciate that.”
“I was thinking that the full moon’s only a couple of days away, and you get a little funny even before the phasings start.”
“Is that a polite way of suggesting that I might be imagining all of this?”
“No,” she said. “I’m sure that it’s all happening the way you say it is. But this strikes me as a little odd-you’re hearing voices, your father is suffering-”
“You mean, my father the nutcase.”
“And then there’s the plane, and Solana’s. And even that bit about you almost getting shot. What is all this, Justis?”
I shook my head and started to answer, but she held up a hand, stopping me.
“Kevin’s inside. This is just you and me. And I’m asking if there’s more to this than you’re saying.”
I wasn’t sure how to answer. If she thought the rest of it sounded over the top, how would she react when I started talking about a magical war? But I thought again of Jacinto Amaya and how I’d kept from her that he was my source on the role of dark magic in the ritual killings she and Kevin were investigating. The last thing I wanted was to alienate her further with more secrets.
“Yeah, there is,” I told her. “We seem to be on the brink of . . . well, of a kind of magical civil war.”
She blinked. “That doesn’t sound so good.”
“It’s not. When runemystes start dying, you know that things are headed in a bad direction.”
CHAPTER 16
My cell rang before I’d made it back to my car. Kona gave me the address, whispering so quietly I had to ask her to repeat herself twice before I could make out all of it, which probably defeated the purpose of all that whispering.
Not surprisingly, Regina Witcombe lived in one of the most exclusive neighborhoods in the entire Phoenix metropolitan area, in a mansion that was about six times the size of my place in Chandler. It also didn’t come as a surprise to me to find that the house had a sophisticated security system, as well as armed guards, several of whom were accompanied by German shepherds that made Gary Hacker in coyote form look like a chihuahua.
The guards, and even the security sensors, could be fooled by a decent camouflage spell. The dogs were the problem. They could hear almost anything, and what their ears missed, their noses would find. Trying to sneak into the Witcombe estate would be idiotic, the kind of thing you might see in a movie, right before the hero is captured by his nemesis.
I decide to try a more direct approach. I drove up to the front gate and smiled at the guy in the guardhouse, who could have been a walking advertisement for a home gym.
“Can I help you?” he asked as I rolled down my window. He sported a military-style buzz cut and carried a CZ 75 nine millimeter in a shoulder holster. His navy blue uniform had to be a couple of sizes too small, but given how big his biceps were I wasn’t sure they made shirts in his size.
“I’m here to see Missus Witcombe. My name is Jay Fearsson. I’m a private detective doing some work for the Phoenix Police Department. I’d like to talk to her about Flight 595.”
Whatever he’d expected me to say, that wasn’t it. Sometimes, nothing flummoxed a potential adversary like the unvarnished truth.
“Is she expecting you?” he asked.
“No.”
He stepped back into the guardhouse, picked up the phone, and punched in a three-digit number. Seeing that I was watching him, he shut the guardhouse door and turned his back on me. I scanned the courtyard beyond the gate, taking in the Spanish mission-style house and the vast desert garden in front of it, complete with prickly pear and ocotillo, teddy-bear cholla and barrel cacti. A pair of orioles darted past, flashes of orange and black in the afternoon sun.
After a brief conversation, the guard came back out. “She’s unavailable right now. She suggests that you call her office on Monday. Her attorney will be happy to answer any questions you might have.”
“Could you let her know that I’ve already spoken with Patty Hesslan-Fine. The three of us have a good deal in common. You should tell her that, as well, and that she’ll see what I mean as soon as she meets me.”
Buzz-Cut glared at me, and I was sure he’d refuse. I half-expected him to pick up my car and toss it back into the street. But he stalked back into the guardhouse and made a second phone call.
This conversation went on longer than had the first. Several times he glanced back at me and at one point he laid down the receiver on his desk and came out to ask for my PI and driver’s licenses. After a few minutes he hung up, handed my IDs back to me, and waved me through the gate.
I parked beside a silver Mercedes-apparently silver was the car color of choice for weremancers this year-wound my way through the garden, and approached the front door. There, two more security officers, probably the guardhouse guy’s workout partners, asked me if I was carrying a weapon. I handed over my Glock and let them wand me before I stepped through a metal detector. I thought it ironic that I’d been screened more thoroughly here than I had the other day at the airport. But I kept this thought to myself.
Regina Witcombe was waiting for me inside the front door. She was wearing beige slacks and a loose-fitting black tunic that might have been silk. Her auburn hair was tied back in a ponytail. She was taller than I’d expected-almost my height. I couldn’t see much of her face-the blurring of her features was every bit as strong as Patty Hesslan’s had been.
“Mister Fearsson,” she said in that warm alto I’d heard in her online video. She extended a hand, which I gripped. “Welcome to my home.”
“Thank you for agreeing to see me, Missus Witcombe. I’m sorry to have come unannounced.”
“It’s my pleasure. Thank you, Andrew,” she said to the guard who had my glock.
She led me through an enormous living room and then a rec room, complete with pool table, wet bar, and a television that wouldn’t have fit through my front door, to an open patio that offered a breathtaking view of Camelback Mountain. More chollas and ocotillos grew in a pebbled garden that fringed the terrace. Anna’s and black-chinned hummingbirds buzzed around a pair of red glass feeders like winged, iridescent gems.
“Can I offer you something, Mister Fearsson? Wine perhaps?”
“I’m fine, thank you.”
She indicated a chair with an open hand and took a seat in the one beside it.
“Patricia says you and she share some history, though she wouldn’t tell me what kind.”
“Yes, ma’am. Our families are connected by a tragedy. None of us likes to speak of it.”
“She also said that you came to her under false pretenses. Was that why?”
A reflexive smile touched my lips. “I suppose. I used a false name. I worried that she wouldn’t agree to our meeting if she knew it was me.”
She tipped her head to the side; I could see her frown through the blur of magic. “And now you come to me, supposedly with questions about the flight I was on Thursday morning. I’m not entirely sure I believe that.”
“I understand your skepticism. But I assure you it’s true. Kona Shaw, a detective in the homicide unit, asked me to help her with the PPD’s investigation into the murder of James Howell.”
“The man they found in the men’s room.”
“Yes, ma’am. You can call Detective Shaw to verify this.”
“There’s no need for that. I read about you in the paper a couple of months ago. I know you’ve worked with the police before.”
“Yes, I have.” I pulled my notebook and pen from the pocket inside my bomber. “Did you know Mister Howell?”
She quirked an eyebrow, seeming to say, Are you really asking me that? “Yes, Mister Fearsson. He and his white supremacist friends are are on my board of directors.”