Guilty by Association (Judah Black Novels)

by E. A. Copen

  “Does this mean we're going to have to bum more rides?” Hunter asked and then chugged from his bottle.

  “Probably.” The thought wasn't comforting, especially when I reviewed everything I'd learned in the last few hours. Whoever had killed Elias had done it with magick, of that I was sure. I was also sure that Elias was at least on friendly terms with his killer. So far, Sal was the only one I'd met that had enough juice to crank out a major spell and that could have been friends with Elias. It made me suspicious how ready and willing he was to give up information that would lead me elsewhere. It just seemed too convenient. Maybe. The only way to be sure was to follow that lead to the end of the road.

  The trick was going to be doing it without endangering both myself and my son, who actually seemed pleased that our car had broken down again. “Are we still going to go to the store? I bet we could get ice cream. It won't melt if we keep it in the cab with the air conditioning.”

  “Have to ask Mr. Silvermoon about that.”

  Sal hopped down out of the truck when we wandered down the walk toward him. When he opened the passenger side door for us, he probably thought he was being chivalrous. All it did was make my blood boil. “So, no part?”

  “Specialty part. It'll be in by Monday.”

  “Bummer.”

  “Tell me about it.” I stood outside of the truck and folded my arms. Trying to look irritated with the air conditioning washing out over me was almost impossible. “We still need to get to the store. Unless you're busy?”

  That mischievous, shit-eating grin spread over his face again. “You know, you can just ask me. I promise, I don't bite. Well, mostly.”

  I grabbed the passenger side door and swung it closed without getting in. “Look,” I said firmly. “I don't know what your game is but I'm not in the mood to play it. I've been trading something for nothing all day and once, just once, I'd like to get something with no strings attached. Is that really so much to ask? I'm the law for Christ's sake. Aren't you people obligated to assist me? What's with the games?”

  “No games,” Sal said with a shrug. “Trust and cooperation are earned around here. You can't blame us for not trusting the government. Since you're an agent of the government...”

  That was it. I could take the petty little exchanges, the doubtful glances and even the outright criticism. What I couldn't take was being told how to do my job by yet another know-it-all male. “I've been here one day. One freaking day and already I'm at my wit's end. I'm trying to help you. What part of that is so hard to understand? Don't you people want this crime solved? What am I doing wrong? I just...”

  My thought, whatever it had been, slipped away. In the course of my conversation, I'd taken a rather aggressive step forward and locked eyes with Sal. In retrospect, that probably wasn't the wisest thing I could have done. But I was mad enough and tired enough that I didn't even think about it. I just did it.

  Flakes of gold spread through Sal's eyes, as if a paintbrush had dripped into a big puddle of gold leaf paint and a windstorm had picked the splashes of color up to toss them around. That same feeling of smallness and helplessness that I'd felt in Chanter's shop started to creep up on me but, no matter how hard I pushed at it, it wouldn't go away. A memory spun in my brain and my eyes ached to look away, though I couldn't. However he'd managed to grab my attention, he held it and wasn't letting go.

  “First of all, you can stop calling us 'you people'.” His voice was steady and smooth, without a trace of the anger that I somehow knew was building beneath the surface. “No matter how well intentioned phrases like that are, they're still unfair generalizations. You can't group me in with the fae and the vampires. We're too different for you to reduce like that and it's offensive. Stop it.” He closed his eyes and took a deep breath. When he opened them again, the coloring of his irises had returned to normal. “Second, I am trying to help you. You want something around here, you can't just hint at what you want and expect someone to give it to you. Ask. Be specific. Otherwise, the first fae you stumble on is going to rob you of everything you got and swindle you into taking out a loan to buy it back. Besides, sometimes, it's just nice to be asked straight up. That's all.”

  I blinked and quickly averted my eyes before he could ensnare me again with whatever magick he was using. “Fine,” I grumbled. “Can you please take us to the store so that we can buy some groceries?”

  “See? Was that so hard?” I hazarded a glance back but only because the tone in his voice told me he was smiling.

  I didn't say anything, though. I just got into the truck and fumed all the way to the grocery store.

  CHAPTER NINE

  During the course of our shopping trip, Sal invited us over for dinner. He dropped heavy hints that he'd be willing to talk about Elias afterward. Otherwise, I wouldn't have accepted. It seemed to me that Sal was interested in doing more than just talking. He had a bit of a flirtatious side and I couldn’t tell whether he was that way with everyone or if it was just me. Either way, the advances weren’t welcome. Having Hunter there, though, would make things less awkward so I was relieved when it became clear that both of us were invited.

  Sal took us straight back to his trailer and let us put Hunter's ice cream and all of my cold stuffs in his fridge. The trailer was actually pretty nice on the inside, despite the fact that the deck was falling off out back. It was a three bedroom, two bath model with a surprising amount of space and upscale décor, though most of that was packed away in boxes. There were a few nice plates in the sink, shattered to pieces. I let Hunter take over putting our groceries, still in their bags, into the fridge.

  “You moving?” I asked Sal, who had busied himself picking up some open containers in the living room.

  “Not if I can help it.”

  I waited for him to elaborate. When he didn't, I decided to push. “What's that mean?”

  Sal made a dismissive gesture. “Divorce. All this crap is hers.”

  “That the woman who was here earlier?” I asked.

  He nodded. “I'd give her the shirt off my back to go the hell away but she insists it's difficult to move all this shit through customs. It's been almost a year. It's fucking Canada. How tough can a border patrol run by Mounties really be?” He took a deep breath and shook his head. “Sorry. It's been a long day.”

  “Sal, if you're going to ask me to help you out, I don't deal with family law.”

  “No.” He dismissed the idea with a wave of his hand and went to the fridge, moving aside our bags to dig out a carton of organic milk. He dumped some into a cup without measuring it and then went about pulling down flour, salt and baking powder. Hunter came over and asked to use the bathroom so Sal gave him some directions before he went back to mixing up his recipe.

  Sal was quiet for a while, until after he had a dough mixture made up and needed to go wash his hands. He stared at the doughy bits as they went down the drain. “What I want has nothing to do with my messed up life. It's about Chanter. I told you he called me. It wasn't just to give me an update on the situation with Elias. He told me to keep an eye on my neighbor's son with the full moon approaching.” He turned around, wiping his hands clean on a towel. “I know you're not one of us. Was his father?”

  I really didn't want to talk about that and certainly not with him, but it didn't seem like these werewolves were just going to let it go. Of course, if they were right, they might have a good reason to be so upset. I'd moved another male werewolf into their territory. Even with what little I knew about werewolves, I knew that was bound to cause tension. “Hunter doesn't know,” I found myself blurting out. “He can't know.”

  Sal pulled out a chair and plopped into it, throwing one arm over the back. “You're on a reservation. No one's going to think less of you if your son is one of us. In fact, I think it could help you. It's certainly not going to hurt him to get the help and guidance he needs. Pretty soon, it's going to be too late. He's going to change. No amount of denial on
your part is going to prevent that.”

  “I know,” I whispered and sank down into the chair across from him. “But he's my son. I can't lose him.” It felt like my heart was about to fall out of my mouth so I clenched my jaw tight and looked up. “Anyway, I don't see how this has any bearing on the info you wanted to give me.”

  “Elias was a lone wolf,” he said. Then, he turned his head and stood quickly as Hunter strode back into the room.

  “That bathroom is huge. I mean, for a trailer bathroom.” Hunter glanced around. “So, is it just you here? This is an awful lot of space for just one guy. It would creep me out to be in here all by myself at night.”

  Sal smiled but, beneath the surface of the smile, I saw an old wound surface. It was there and gone in the blink of an eye and the smile turned genuine. “You play basketball, kid?”

  “Never stayed in one place long enough to join a team or anything, but this one place in Pennsylvania had a big hoop outside. I got pretty good that summer.” Sal went back into a room on the opposite side of the house from where he'd sent Hunter for the bathroom. When he came back, it was with a basketball. He bounced it once on the kitchen floor and then passed it to Hunter. “There's a bit of blacktop and a hoop on the other side of the house. Just mind the motorcycle. You bump it, you buy it and it's one of a kind.”

  Hunter's eyes lit up like a Christmas tree. “You have a motorcycle?”

  “That's right. It was my father's and he's not around anymore so don't bump it or anything.”

  Hunter nodded and then went outside to shoot some hoops. “You know, he's going to touch it just because you told him not to, right?”

  “Eh, he can't do any harm,” Sal said going to the fridge to pull out some vegetables. I didn't bother telling him that Hunter probably wouldn't touch them, no matter how he cooked them. Rule number one about kids: they don't like vegetables, not even if you deep fry them and slather them in cheese.

  “So,” I said after clearing my throat. “Elias.”

  “I'm sure you heard about his troubles. Being homeless, on benzos and such. Everyone knew that. Most people didn't bother to get to know the man behind the trouble. He was a good guy, really. He just...” Sal sighed as he finished chopping the vegetables and dumped them into a stock pot. “Pack dynamics are hard. I don't know what you know about us, but we've all got a place. There's protocols. Rules. For someone like Elias, social stuff like that is hard in a human setting. Oh, he got what it meant to be the wolf, the predator. What he didn't get was why a strong wolf sometimes bows to a weaker one or the benefits of taking on a submissive posture sometimes. He was a beta wolf trying to be an alpha and it didn't work out for him. Alone, in a situation where he was clearly the lesser wolf, he relaxed a little but when he was with others in the pack that were close to him in terms of strength or speed, the predator came out. I was just dominant enough that Elias and I got along. He'd stay here sometimes when him and Valentino had it out.”

  Sal pulled a large hunk of red meat out of the oven and started seasoning it before chopping it into bits and tossing it in with the vegetables.

  “More importantly,” Sal continued, “Elias had trouble shifting. That made things even worse on him.”

  “Trouble shifting? Like what kind of trouble?”

  Sal nodded. “I take it you’ve never seen it before.”

  I shook my head.

  Sal turned and put his back to the stove for a moment, leaning on it. “We believe in two distinct but connected beings, housed in the same shell.”

  “You believe?” I raised an eyebrow. I hadn’t realized this was going to turn into a theological discussion.

  “Sure,” he said shrugging. “Different packs have different ideologies, handle things different ways. Most are more or less the same but there’s some argument over whether or not the wolf is responsible for the man or vice versa. Our position is somewhere in between. One influences the other but, when one side is out of balance, like when someone embraces the wolf more than the man, it leads to problems in both lives.”

  “And Elias was out of balance?”

  “The shift is voluntary to a degree. We don’t need full moons, though some believe there’s a biological cycle that’s roughly equivalent to lunar cycles, telling you when the best days for shifting are. I call bullshit on that one. I never noticed one better day over another personally. But you’ve got to do it every once in a while. It’s…How do I explain it? It’s an itch you got to scratch, some more often than others. If you don’t listen to what your body’s trying to tell you, if you don’t shift enough, you get physical symptoms. Migraines. Muscle spasms. Vomiting. Hallucinations. You can’t not shift, as hard as some of them try. That’s what the barbs are for. Suppresses the urge, deadens that half. It’s like a self-lobotomy. That’s why, even though BSI limits how and when we can shift, they can’t outright forbid it. It would eventually kill us.”

  “Wow,” I said. I’d always assumed…I don’t know what I assumed. I guess I really didn’t think about it. Sal turned back to the stove. I cleared my throat. “So, you knew him pretty well. Any idea who might have wanted him dead?”

  Sal shook his head. “He had enemies but he was more of an annoyance to most people than anyone they'd go out of their way to kill. Elias existed on the fringe of things, trotting in every once in a while to cause trouble or try for attention, depending on what mood suited him. But, these last few weeks, he got pretty distant. Valentino was worried he might be using again and stepped up the drug testing. I tried to talk to him but he wasn't interested. To me, he seemed distant but happy so I didn't push.”

  I thought about that a minute while Sal dumped a few cups of water and broth in the pot and turned it on. “Was Elias in a relationship? Maybe with someone named Maria?”

  Sal shrugged. “I don't think so. I mean, I never saw him hanging out with women. But, like I said, toward the end he wasn't interested in confiding in me. Maybe he found religion.”

  “What makes you say that?”

  “There's a priest here on the rez, Gideon Reed. I saw Elias talking to him a couple of days ago. When he saw me watching them talk, he abruptly ended the conversation and walked away as if it had never happened.” Sal opened a container from the fridge, lard or vegetable oil, and dumped some into a pan to heat. Then, he went back to the dough mixture, spreading it into thin disks.

  I filed the name of the priest away mentally. “I see. Anything else you can tell me about Elias?”

  “Little things. Nothing useful, probably.” He stole a casual glance back at me. “Any idea how he went?”

  “Someone killed him. Someone with access to magick and possibly someone with medical knowledge, given the precision of the cut,” I said. Sal had been a combat medic, which meant he had some handle on medical terminology. I could have repeated what Doc had told me and he probably would have understood what I meant but that description wouldn't answer the question of how he'd died. Besides, I wanted to see how he reacted when I brought that topic up.

  Without missing a beat, Sal said, “Not well, then. Dammit. Does Valentino know?”

  “No. And he isn't being helpful, not letting me search his place.”

  Sal started dropping his dough into the grease to fry it up. “Elias left a few things here if you want to look at them. I'm not sure how helpful that's going to be.”

  “I will,” I said. Then, I added, “Just to clear the air, I know you're some kind of powerful practitioner of magick. You were also an army medic. The more I find out about you, the more you fit the profile of my killer.”

  “That's why I wanted to help. Not that it's making you trust me any. I'm still your number one suspect then?”

  “I haven't crossed you off my suspect list,” I said, trying to sound official. “Exactly what kind of magick do you do?”

  He didn't turn away from his cooking but I knew he was smiling or, at least, smirking by the way he said, “Is that so? I thought
I was doing a pretty good job of not looking like a magick wielding bad guy. I mean, I got rid of the neon sign above my head and everything.”

  He pulled the bread he was frying out of the pan, grabbed a jar from the cupboard and brought both over to me. When he opened the jar and placed it in front of me, I saw that it was honey with the comb still inside. I hadn't realized how hungry I was until he put the food down in front of me. Still, I didn't touch it until he urged me to try it, dipping the bread into the honey. I've tasted a lot of sweets. Most of them are overpowering to the point I can't finish them. This, whatever it was, was that perfectly unhealthy mix of fried and sweet. It was like eating a less processed version of the best doughnut ever.

  “My mom's recipe,” Sal was saying. He'd gone back over to the stove to drop another one in the oil. “Chanter's is okay, but mom's...No one could make fry bread like mom.”

  I almost agreed with him until I remembered that I'd asked him a question. “So what kind of magick do you do?”

  I could tell he was hoping I'd just forget about it by the way his posture changed. “You mean aside from shifting into a big wolf with anger issues? Not anything dark, I promise. I think you're giving me too much credit, honestly. Powerful isn't the word I'd choose to describe what I do.”

  “What is it you do?”

  Sal pulled the next piece of fry bread from the skillet and turned off the oil. “It's easier if I show you.”

  He crossed the room in even, purposeful strides but didn't go to his chair. Instead, he came to stand behind me. I bristled and jerked away when he tried to put his hands on me. “Relax. I'm doing this to prove my innocence, remember?” I sat stiffly back up but refused to relax. He rested a hand on top of my head. “You're one hell of a contradiction, you know that? You put on this tough girl act and then flinch when a big, scary monster comes close. Are you really afraid of me?”