“What?” I said.
“You should be concentrating. You might well be in danger. The woman is a distraction.”
“Distractions can be a good thing now and then.”
The runemyste frowned.
Before he could say anything more, the phone rang. I recognized the number on the caller ID. Kona, at 620.
I switched on the phone. “You’re working late,” I said, not bothering with a hello.
“Don’t give me any crap, Justis. I’m not in the mood.”
“Sorry. What’s up?”
“Mike Gann has formally been charged with Claudia Deegan’s murder.”
“Damnit, Kona! He didn’t do it! There’s no way he’s the Blind Angel Killer!”
“I believe you,” she said, lowering her voice. “But it’s not like I can tell Hibbard that my friend the weremyste, the person he hates more than anyone else in the world, told me Gann’s not our guy, so we should let him go.”
I exhaled. “I know that.”
“What did you find out from Orestes?”
I winced, feeling guilty for the time I’d spent with Billie. “I haven’t seen him yet. I went to Robo’s and talked with a guy who’d worked with Gann. This guy knew that Gann was a weremyste, but what he told me confirmed what I saw in the interview room today: Gann’s not powerful or skilled enough to be a threat to anyone. I can’t talk to the manager until Thursday, but I’m not convinced that anything he’ll tell me will change my mind.”
“So you talked to one guy at Robo’s?” Kona said. “What have you been doing with yourself all afternoon?”
I felt my cheeks burning and was glad she wasn’t here to see me.
“Justis?”
“I had a. . well, sort of a. . a date.”
“No shit?”
I grinned. “No shit.”
“Well, give me some details. You know Margarite’s going to ask me, and I have to have something to tell her.”
“What do you want to know?”
“Let’s start with her name.”
“Her name’s Billie. Billie Castle.”
“Huh. You mean like that blogger-lady?”
“Just like her.”
“Are you dating a celebrity?”
“Yeah,” I said. “I guess I am.”
“What’s she like?”
“She’s. . I don’t know. She’s pretty, she’s smart, she’s pushy and opinionated and stubborn. You’d like her.”
“Well, damn. Ain’t that something? You had a date.”
“It’s not that big a deal.”
“No? When was your last date?”
“All right. Point taken.”
We both laughed and then fell silent.
“Randolph Deegan has got some serious pull, Justis,” she said. “I’ll do what I can to slow things down, try to keep Hibbard from executing the dude himself. But you need to give me something to go on. Anything.”
“I’ll find out what I can, partner. I’ll see Q tomorrow. Promise. And maybe I’ll go out to South Mountain, and see if I can find anything there. Is there still tape up where Claudia was found?”
“Yeah. It was that same ravine where we found the Santana kid. Slightly north.”
“Okay, thanks. I’ll be in touch.”
We hung up and I turned to Namid. “The police think the guy they have in custody is the one who killed all those kids with magic.”
He didn’t respond.
“They’re wrong, aren’t they?”
“Do you think they are?”
“I’m sure of it.”
“Then why do you ask me?”
I laughed. “I don’t know. I’m pretty wiped. And I’ve got a lot to do tomorrow.”
“Until next time, then. Watch yourself, Ohanko,” he said, as he began to fade. “You trained well tonight, but the danger remains.”
I nodded, watching him vanish. That much I’d figured out for myself.
CHAPTER 10
The idea came to me in the middle of the night. One moment I was sleeping, deep and dreamless. The next I was awake, my mind racing.
A few months before, when I was working on a corporate espionage case and trying to learn what a suspect employee had been up to the day he disappeared from his office, I tried some new magic that Namid had taught me. I went to the employee’s office, and, using my scrying stone and holding something that belonged to the guy, I was able to see in the agate an image of him stealing the files and then concealing what he had done by altering the user logs on his computer.
So why couldn’t I do the same thing with Claudia Deegan? Why couldn’t I go back to South Mountain Park and scry what she had seen in the last moments of her life?
All I needed was some way to link her to my scrying.
I managed to get back to sleep for a few hours, but was wide awake by six. I went for a run to clear my head, and after a shower, a bite to eat, and two cups of Sumatran, I checked the time again. Eight fifteen. That would have to be late enough. I called Howard Wriker’s cell. He answered on the third ring.
“Wriker.”
“Mister Wriker, this is Jay Fearsson.”
It took him a minute. “Mister Fearsson! The PI, right?”
“Yes, sir.”
“You have some information for me?”
“Nothing yet, I’m afraid.” I still wasn’t ready to share with him what little I knew. I didn’t want the Deegans to crush Robby Sommer and leave me without any way of tying the other Blind Angel victims to a potential drug source. Better to lie to the man, at least for now. “I’m still looking into it and I need a little help from you.”
“From me?”
“It’s nothing difficult and nothing that will link the senator to the investigation. I simply need Claudia’s address. I’d like to. . to search her place for anything that might help me.”
“Yes, all right.” He sounded uncertain, and I wondered if he regretted asking me to learn the truth about Claudia’s drug use. “Ah, here it is,” he said after several moments. “She lived with a girl named Maddie Skiles.” He gave me the address and phone number, both of which I wrote down in my note pad, along with Maddie’s name.
“Thank you, Mister Wriker.”
“You heard that the police made an arrest?”
“Yes, sir, I did.”
“It’s a great relief for all of us. For all of Phoenix, really. At least the madman who did this is off the streets.”
I should have agreed and hung up, but I couldn’t help thinking about what Kona had told me the night before. Someone close to the Deegans needed to hear that the pressure they were putting on the PPD wasn’t helping matters. “We can hope, sir,” I said.
“You don’t think they have the right man?” He sounded defensive. I wondered how much of that pressure had come from Wriker himself.
“No, sir, I don’t. I know that he threatened Claudia, and that he hated the Deegan family. But for three years the Blind Angel murders had nothing to do with the Deegans. To assume that this man is responsible for all those killings, just because he had it in for Claudia, doesn’t make much sense to me.”
“Well, Mister Fearsson, it would seem that the Phoenix Police Department disagrees with you.”
“Yes, sir. It wouldn’t be the first time.”
He didn’t seem to know how to respond to that. “Yes. . well. . good day, Mister Fearsson.”
“Thank you, sir.”
Not the most comfortable phone conversation I’d ever had, but I’d gotten the information I needed. I gathered a few items in a backpack-two water bottles, my knife, my scrying stone, and a couple of granola bars. Then I left the house and drove back to Tempe.
Claudia had lived east of the campus, near Hudson Park, in a neighborhood that most college students couldn’t afford. The small yard needed some work-the flower gardens were overgrown with weeds and the grass was wispy and baked brown-but it was a nice house.
There were a few press people camped out front, but most of them ignored me, even after I parked in front of the house.
“Who are you?” one woman called to me.
I ignored her and strode up the walk to the front door. I got out my wallet and rang the bell. After waiting a bit, I rang it twice more and was ready to give up when at last the door opened a crack.