I started walking toward Kona, knowing that I owed her, too. When I was about halfway to her, she turned to face me, and I saw that she was talking to Billie. I slowed.
Kona laughed at my expression. What choice did I have? I walked the rest of the way to them.
“Hey, partner,” Kona said, still laughing. “I called Billie for you.”
“I see that.”
“I figured you’d need a ride back to your car, and believe it or not, I have more important things to do with my day.”
“And Ms. Castle doesn’t?”
Billie smiled; she was enjoying this. Who knew that giving me a hard time had become too big a job for one person?
“Sounds like you had a long night,” Kona said a moment later, her expression growing serious.
“Even more than you know.”
“Billie told me about the club. And I heard that you called the ambulance to Q’s place. Plus Robby. That about cover it?”
“Not quite.”
Kona’s eyebrows went up. “Tell me.”
“We off the record? I don’t need any more trouble with the PPD today.”
She hesitated, then nodded.
“You working another homicide from Mountain View? In the 733?”
She narrowed her eyes. “Yeah, now that you mention it. Antoine Mirdoux, right?” She pronounced his last name like “Murduchs”.
“Actually, it’s Mirdoux,” I said, using the French pronunciation. “Antoine was Creole.”
She nodded. “Should have known that.”
“Anyway, I made the 911 call from his place.”
“What were you doin’ there?”
“I talked to Antoine a few days ago, same day I went to see Orestes. Q thought he had some connection to our guy. Turns out he was right. The guy who killed Robby also killed Antoine, and nearly took out Q.”
“Robby died of an overdose.”
I shook my head. “No, he didn’t. There was. .” My eyes flicked toward Billie. “I saw that color on him, too.”
“Damn it,” she said. “So, you’re telling me I now have three murders that I have to explain to Hibbard and Arroyo?”
“Afraid so. What’s happening on your end?”
“Not a whole lot,” she said. “I did learn a bit more about Shari Bettancourt.”
“Let me guess. She did some kind of community or charity work. Something that involved working with troubled kids.”
Kona’s jaw dropped. “How the hell did you know that? She’d been working at the free drug clinic in South Mountain for five years.”
I nodded. “That figures.”
“How?”
“I think that Antoine and Shari, and even Robby Sommer, have been helping our guy pick his targets. Or maybe he’s been watching them for potential victims. But it’s no coincidence that they’re all dead.”
“Damn. You’ve learned more in five days that we did in the last three years.”
“Yeah,” I said. “Well, don’t get all happy just yet. If he’s killing them off, that might mean that he doesn’t need them anymore.”
“You mean he might be done killing?”
I shook my head. “I doubt that. But I think he’s been trying to. .” I broke off, eyeing Billie once more. “I think he’s had a specific purpose in mind all along, and if he doesn’t need them anymore, that might mean he’s succeeded. And that can’t be good.”
“No, I guess not.”
“We have to find this guy, Kona.”
“Sounds like you’re well on your way to doing that.”
“Yeah, if he doesn’t kill me first. He nearly had me last night. I’m lucky I’m not lying in the OME with Robby and Antoine.”
“How’d you fight him off?” Kona asked.
“I had help.”
That took her a minute. Her eyes lit up. “You mean. .? He helped you?”
“First time for everything, right? He’s taking this seriously.”
Kona exhaled through pursed lips. “I guess.”
“Hey!” I said, alarm bells going off in my head. I looked from Billie to Kona. “Did you make sure you were off the record before you started talking to her?”
Before Kona could answer, Billie scowled at me. “That’s not fair, Fearsson!”
“No, it’s not,” Kona added. “She told me we were off the record.”
I winced, then rubbed a hand over my brow. “I’m sorry, Billie. I had a long night.”
Her expression didn’t change, but after a few seconds she nodded.
Kona took my arm and led me a few steps away from Billie. “Listen,” she said. “Along those lines, she was asking me some questions while we were waiting for you.”
“What kind of questions?”
“She wanted to know if you’d ever spoken to me about magic.”
Not surprising. “What did you tell her?”
“Well, I wasn’t sure what to say. So I told her that you had, but that you were subject to occasional psychotic episodes, and you’d probably have forgotten all about it by now.”
I stared at her. After a minute she started to laugh, as did Billie.
“What did you tell her, Kona?”
“She told me that you had,” Billie said, walking over to us. “And she said that as weird as it sounded to her at first, she’d come to believe you.” She shrugged. “So I’m wondering if I shouldn’t do the same thing. I haven’t made up my mind yet, but that’s how I’m leaning.”
“I like this one, Justis. Don’t screw it up.”
I had to laugh. “Thanks for the advice.”
“I gotta go,” Kona said. “You look terrible. Get some sleep, all right?”
“Yeah, I’ll try.”
We held each other’s gazes for a few seconds. “I’ll swing by your place after my shift ends,” she said. An old ritual tied to the phasings.
“Thanks. See you then.”
Kona smiled at Billie. “Nice to meet you.”
“You, too.”
Billie and I faced each other. After a few awkward seconds, Billie said, “She’s great.”
I nodded. “She was a good partner. Listen, I’m sorry about what I said. I was out of line.”
She shrugged. “You had a rough night.”
“Not that rough. I should have known better.”
“Come on,” she said. “Let’s get you out of here. I know you miss being a cop, and hanging out around the city jail probably isn’t the best cure for that.”
Smart woman.
We started walking to Billie’s car, which was parked in a municipal lot nearby.
“You missing work on account of me?” I asked.
“No. I wrote something last night that I scheduled to post this afternoon. I have the day free.”
“Lucky for me, huh?”
“How are you feeling?”
“Tired mostly. A little sore from last night.”
“Well, Kona’s right. You should get some sleep.”
We reached her car, got in, and she drove me to Tempe. My car was still there outside Robby Sommer’s house. The place was deserted, but the police had left a strip of yellow crime-scene tape across his front door. Billie stared at it now; I could tell she was troubled.
“Who was he?” she asked.
“A drug dealer. He was also Claudia Deegan’s boyfriend for a short while.”
She nodded, shuddered. “How do you get used to this?”
“Who says I’m used to it?”
She turned to me. “Sorry. I just thought. . I don’t know. You don’t seem upset.”
“I’m not sure it’s the same thing. I’m not going to mourn the loss of Robby Sommer. I don’t think the world’s that worse off without him. But you never get used to seeing people die, and I have every intention of finding the guy who killed him.”
“You think it’s the same person who killed Claudia? You think the Blind Angel Killer did it?”
I hesitated, but only for a second. “Yes. And I think he nearly killed me.”
“Did he. .?” She pointed at Robby’s house. “Was this person killed. .?”
“With magic?”
She nodded again.
“Yeah, I’m sure he was.”
“This is getting weirder and weirder.”
“Yes, it is. You know, I really need to get out of the city for a little while, to clear my head. You want to come with me.”
“You need to sleep.”
I shook my head. “I can’t. I slept a little in the jail, and. . I’ll sleep tonight.” That was a lie, but the rest was true.
Concern creased her forehead. “You’re tired.”