Geez, yourself! You think that was funny?
Yeah. It was just a joke.
Robby shook his head. You’re unbelievable. That kind of shit might be funny for a Deegan, but for the rest of us, it’s not. In case you didn’t know, this stuff’s illegal. If I’m caught dealing again, I’ll probably get thrown in jail for the rest of my life.
I know it’s illegal, she said, sounding sullen.
Well, you don’t act like it. I guess you think Daddy will pull your ass out of the fire if anything happens, right?
Fuck you, Robby!
He seemed to deflate, and he twisted his mouth. Sorry, he said. That was outta line.
Yeah, it was. She pulled the door open again, though not too widely this time. I gotta go.
Right.
Claudia left, closing the door behind her, and the image faded.
So she had bought her drugs from Robby, and Sommer had been telling the truth about their relationship. He hadn’t mentioned, though, that she’d ticked him off the last time he saw her alive, and it seemed he’d lied to me about knowing the Blind Angel Killer. I didn’t think it had been Robby’s intention to point out Claudia to Red. He cared about her too much. But I’d have bet every dollar in my pocket that the sorcerer had been watching Robby’s house, and had chosen her from a distance, without knowing who she was. That was the only way to explain why Claudia Deegan would have ended up a victim of the same murderer who’d killed Gracia Rosado, Maria Santana, and the others.
I didn’t want to take too much more time here, but I wanted to search all the rooms before I dialed 911 yet again. Maybe Robby had a red stone, too. I started in the living room-a bit of a misnomer with a corpse in the middle of it, but I tried to ignore that. There was drug paraphernalia everywhere. The open bag of Spark next to Robby was one of several lying in plain sight. A couple of the others were pretty big; glancing around the room I could see close to ten thousand dollars worth of the drug. The scale was still there on the table, and beside it a box loaded with empty plastic bags, waiting to be filled. All of it struck me as being a bit heavy-handed. It was almost as if the red sorcerer had left Robby as an offering to the PPD.
Robby wasn’t wearing a pendant, and I didn’t know where he would have kept a stone like Shari’s. Not that it had to be a stone; I would have been satisfied with finding anything-other than Robby himself-that had red magic on it. But after a few minutes of this I stopped in the middle of the room, staring at the body again. I had that same dull feeling in my head-the damn moon. Why would Red care what the police thought about Robby’s death? He’d had a busy night: trying to burn a hole in my chest, destroying Q’s place, killing ’Toine and Robby. But he hadn’t made any effort to hide the rest of what he’d done. He’d tried to kill me in a crowded club. His attacks on the two street sorcerers-Q and ’Toine-had been brutal, spectacular even. He’d left their homes in shambles.
He could have blown the door off of Robby’s house, too. But his touch here had been as gentle as it had been rough in Maryvale and Mountain View.
I surveyed the room, trying to see it as I would if I was still a cop. The drugs scattered all over the room, Robby dead on the couch. And me standing right in the middle of it.
Once again it came to me in a rush. “Damn!”
I crossed to the phone in two quick strides, intending to bypass 911 and call Kona’s direct line.
Before I could pick up the receiver, I heard a light footfall outside the window. I dropped into a crouch and again pulled my weapon free, which seemed at the time like a perfectly reasonable thing to do. Turns out it wasn’t such a great idea.
Every light in the house went out. I heard both the front and back doors being rammed open at the same time, and seconds later there were several bright lights shining in my eyes and a number of guys carrying what appeared in the darkness to be very large weapons ordering me to drop my pistol and lie down on the floor.
They identified themselves as Phoenix Police, and I had no reason to doubt them. This had the feel of a narcotics bust. And here I was, an ex-cop who’d left the force amid rumors of drug and alcohol abuse, with my pistol drawn in the house of a known dealer, who happened to be dead on the couch. I could imagine the big, shit-eating grin on Cole Hibbard’s face when he heard about this.
By the time the lights came on again, I had been cuffed, and a guy was standing over me with his foot resting on my back and his shotgun aimed at the nape of my neck.
Another cop squatted down next to my head. He was a big guy, mid-forties maybe. Sandy hair. I didn’t recognize him. He was in plain clothes, but he had on a dark blue windbreaker. I’d seen jackets like that before-I was pretty sure it had “PPD NARCOTICS” stenciled on the back.
“What’s your name, buddy?”
“Jay Fearsson,” I said. “I’m a PI. My license is in my wallet.”
“Fearsson?”
“Yeah. I used to be on the job.”
I saw him nod, but he didn’t seem in a hurry to take off my cuffs and invite me out for coffee and doughnuts.
“That your car out front?” he asked. “The 280Z?”
“Yeah, that’s mine.”
“How long have you been here?”
“Maybe fifteen minutes. I found the door unlocked.”
“So you just thought you’d let yourself in.”
“At this time of night, I thought something might be wrong, so yeah, I walked in. Listen, can you at least help me up. Carrying on a conversation with my face on the floor isn’t as much fun as you might think.”
The cop glanced up at the guy standing over me and nodded. A moment later, I was hoisted to my feet.
The cop I’d been talking to began to inform me of my Miranda rights.
I cut him off. “I understand my rights,” I said. “I’ll answer any questions you have.”
“You’re waiving your right to have an attorney present at questioning?”
“Yes, I am. Ask your questions.”
The two cops exchanged glances.
“How do you know the kid?” the cop asked me, taking out a pencil and pad.
“I remembered Robby from when I was a cop. I knew he’d been dealing for a while, and when I was hired by the Deegan family to look into Claudia Deegan’s death, I came to him, to find out if he sold Claudia her stuff. They were an item for a while.”
“Sommer and Deegan?” the cop said.
I nodded.
“How’d he die?”
“I have no idea. He was dead when I found him.”
“Can you account for your whereabouts tonight?”
“I was at Robo’s from about eight to ten. I dropped off my date at ten-thirty and drove to the Maryvale eight-thirteen to see a friend. Turned out there’d been an accident at his place and he was hurt. So I called 911 and waited with him until the ambulance arrived. Then I came here.”
“Busy night,” the cop said.
“Busier than I would have liked.”
“What’s your date’s name?”
“Billie Castle. She’s a political blogger. Maybe you’ve heard of her.”
He ignored that. “And the hurt friend?”
“Orestes Quinley.”
That got his attention. “Quinley?”
“Q and I have been friends for a long time. I’m the only cop who’s ever arrested him and gotten the charges to stick.”
The cop grinned. “And that’s the basis of your friendship?”
“When I was still on the job, he helped me out a few times. I still go to him for information.”
“All right, Fearsson. You know we have to take you in, right? I mean, the kid’s dead, you’re in the house, you’re carrying a weapon.”
“I understand.” He nodded to the other cop again and started to walk away.
“Tell me something,” I said, stopping him. “What are you guys doing here?”