by DAVID B. COE
The one wack-job would have been Cahors. “You’ve got another serial killer?”
“That surprises you?”
“Not really.”
“We’re keeping it quiet,” she said, whispering now. “The patterns aren’t clear yet, and it may not be one guy. But inside 620, the pressure’s pretty high. And Hibbard bears the brunt of it. I’m not saying you should buy the guy a beer, but as much as he might hate you and your dad, he’s also dealing with some shit right now. You know?”
I nodded. “If I see him again, and he doesn’t shoot me on sight, I’ll give him a break.”
“That’s all I’m saying. Come on,” she said, leading me toward a men’s room that had already been cordoned off with yellow police tape. “Our victim’s in here.”
We stepped into the restroom, the noise from the terminal fading to an echoey background buzz. A toilet in one of the far stalls flushed repeatedly, its automatic mechanism obviously malfunctioning, but otherwise no sound came from within the tiled space.
A body, covered with a white cloth, lay by a row of sinks.
I hesitated, but at Kona’s nod of encouragement I squatted beside the corpse and pulled back the sheet, revealing the body of a young man, his head shaved to blond stubble, his face pock-marked as if he’d had bad acne. He was dressed in jeans and a black T-shirt with the words “America for Americans” printed in block letters across the chest.
I didn’t need to search for evidence of what had killed him; it was right there in front of me, a shimmering blur slashed across his chest.
All spells left a residue, a glow tinged with color that no one but another weremyste could see. Each sorcerer’s magic was a different color, a different shade, and each faded at its own pace. The more vibrant the color, the more powerful the sorcerer.
But this residue was unlike any I had seen before. Most of the time, magic in this form reminded me of wet paint. It was brilliant and it gleamed, but it was opaque. Even the glow left behind by the spells of Etienne de Cahors, who was the most powerful conjurer I’d ever encountered, had those same basic qualities.
Not this spell.
Whoever had killed the kid lying in front of me had left behind a flare of power that had more in common with Namid’s sparkling clear waters than with the residue I was used to seeing. It had color—a deep, rich green that reminded me of early spring leaves—but I could see through the glow to the dead man’s shirt. More, the residue seemed to be alive; it shifted and swirled, like a sheen of oil on top of a puddle.
“Talk to me, Justis,” Kona said after I’d stared at the kid for a good minute or two. “Was I right? Was he killed with magic?”
“Yeah,” I said. “But this magic is . . . it’s weird. I’ve never seen anything like it.”
“Well, that’s what I want to hear right now.”
I tore my eyes away from the swirling glow to scan the rest of his body. I saw no blood, no other wounds or bruising. Of course he had a lot of tattoos, including at least half a dozen swastikas on his neck and arms, which made bruising a bit harder to find. But I was sure that the spell to his chest had killed him.
“A spell hit him here,” I said, tracing a line across his heart with my finger, but taking care not to touch him. “Aside from that I don’t see any magic on him. We could turn him over to check for signs of a second conjuring, but I don’t think there’s much point.”
“Do you recognize the color?”
I shook my head. “I don’t even recognize the kind of magic that was used against him. It doesn’t look like any spell I could cast.”
“Is that because of the spell, or the guy who cast it?”
This was one of the things that made Kona such a great cop—the best I’d known. She would have been the first to admit that she was out of her depth; she knew next to nothing about magic. But she had asked the perfect question, one that cut to the very core of the matter. One that I couldn’t yet answer. First Billie, now Kona. It seemed that I was giving my friends a free education in magic: “Runecasting 101.”
“I’m not sure,” I said. “In the past I’ve only used magical residue like this to find the conjurer. Someone who knows more about this stuff than I do might be able to tell us what kind of spell was used against him, but I can’t.”
I scrutinized the glow for another few seconds, trying to commit to memory the color and quality of the residue. I covered the body again, and straightened.
“What do you know so far?” I asked.
Kona pulled out the small spiral notepad she kept in her blazer pocket. “We know more than we usually do this early in an investigation, but so far we haven’t been able to make much sense of it.” Opening the notebook, she went on. “The victim’s name is James Robert Howell.” She glanced up, her eyes meeting mine. “I swear, Justis, I think he went by Jimmy Bob. As you can tell from his hair style and the lovely artwork he’s wearing, he was a skinhead, I’m guessing with ties to a bunch of white supremacist groups. We pulled his luggage and found that it held a bomb with an altitude-sensitive trigger. The bomb-squad guys aren’t sure yet when it was set to detonate, but the way these things work is that you reach that level, the air pressure changes enough to trip the mechanism, and boom, no more plane.”
“How do you even get a bomb onto a plane these days? I would have thought that the TSA could find any explosives in a checked bag.”
“Usually they can. This was a pretty sophisticated device. They’re still trying to figure out exactly where the system broke down.”
“Who else was on board? For that matter, where was the plane going?”
“Both good questions. This was American flight 595, a non-stop to Washington Reagan. And the passenger list included Mando Rafael Vargas and several of his aides.”
I let out a low whistle. “So you think that Mister White Supremacist here had it in mind to assassinate one of the most prominent Latino leaders in the country.”
“That’s what I’m thinking. That’s what the Feds are thinking.”
“Sounds about right. The FBI guys are letting you play in their sandbox?”
“It’s my sandbox,” she said. “I’ve made it clear to them that this is my goddamned sandbox. But yeah, for now at least they’re playing nice and they’re eager for any help we can give them.”
“How soon was the plane supposed to take off?”
Kona nodded, an eyebrow going up. “Well, that’s where all of this starts to get very interesting. Flight 595 was supposed to take off a little before nine o’clock this morning.”
“What?” I bent down again, uncovered Howell’s body a second time. “So how did he end up in here? Why isn’t every person on that plane dead already?”
“The plane had mechanical problems. It pulled back from the gate, a red light came on in the cockpit, and it wound up sitting on the tarmac for about two and half hours while mechanics tried to find the problem. At that point they gave up, rolled it to the gate again, and had everyone deplane, intending to move them to a new aircraft. While they were waiting, someone killed Howell. We found the bomb in his luggage a short time later.”
“That’s some coincidence,” I said.
“Exactly what I’m thinking. I need you to put your magic eyes on a few more things for me, and maybe a few people, too.”
“People?”
“I want to know if our murderer was on the plane, and I know you can tell from looking if someone’s a conjurer.”
“Just because a conjurer is on the plane, that doesn’t mean he or she is the killer.”
She frowned. “I know that. You know I know that. But it would be a place to start, right?”
I couldn’t argue. “I’ll ‘put my magic eyes’ on whoever you want me to.” I shifted my attention back to Jimmy Bob. “What do you suppose Pete Forsythe is going to say was the cause of death?” Forsythe was the Medical Examiner in Phoenix, and had been since way before I joined the police force.
Kona shrugged. “I don’t know.
Why?”
“From what I’m seeing, I’d guess that the magic slashed through him—I don’t know if it simply stopped his heart or caused a heart attack, or a rupture of some sort.”
“Does it matter?”
For some reason I felt that it did, though I couldn’t say why. “It’s not the kind of spell I would cast.”
“Well, I’d hope not.”
I grunted a laugh but then grew serious again. “No, I mean that if I was going to murder someone, and if I intended to attack his heart, I’d seize it with a spell, make sure it would appear to anyone who cared that he’d died of a heart attack. And maybe this sorcerer did that, but a spell like this . . . It seems odd.” I covered him again, stood.
Kona was watching me. “Go ahead and say it.”
“Say what?”
“Whatever it is you’re thinking right now.”
I rubbed the back of my neck. “All right. It’s almost like whoever killed him didn’t care how it would look.”
“Except that they did it with magic, which most of us can’t see.”
“True. But that’s all the more reason to make it seem like a natural death—why would you draw attention to what you’d done by flaunting the spell?”
“I can’t help you there, partner,” she said. “I think all of you weremystes are crazy.”
“Or at least headed that way, right?”
“At least. Come on. Let’s go see the rest of it.”
I followed her out of the men’s room to the nearest of the gates. A TSA official swiped a card and pulled open the gate door, allowing us to walk down the jet bridge. Halfway between the gate and the open end of the bridge, the heat hit us, a fist of stifling air. I pulled off my bomber. We exited onto a stairway that led down to the apron, and climbed into what was essentially a golf cart. Kona released the brake and steered us out of the apron and onto a roadway that ran parallel to the runways and led toward an open area near the western edge of the airport.
“Where are we going?” I asked, raising my voice so that she would hear me over the rush of hot wind and the constant roar of aircraft.
“To check out a bomb.”
I nodded. “You know how to show a guy a good time.”
She grinned. “Don’t tell Margarite. She’ll be jealous.”
CHAPTER 5
I hadn’t seen the PPD’s bomb squad in action since leaving the force, and even as a cop I dealt with them no more than three or four times in six years. They weren’t called upon all that often, but when we needed them, we sure were glad to have them.
Kona pulled up next to several police cruisers and the bomb-squad truck, and we both climbed out of the cart. Kevin Glass, Kona’s new partner, stood near the cars, watching as the bomb-disposal robot picked through the contents of a duffel bag some fifty yards away.
Nearby, a cop was in the process of removing his disposal suit: more than eighty pounds of Kevlar, ballistic plastic, and steel plating. The helmet, which reminded me of something an astronaut would wear, had a fan inside of it, but that was small consolation under a desert sun in this kind of heat. The cop was soaked with sweat, his hair plastered to his head. But he was grinning, which I took to mean that whatever danger there had been was past.
“What’s the story?” Kona asked Kevin. “Was the bomb real?”
“Oh, it was real,” Glass said. “Hey there, Jay.”
“Hi, Kevin.”
I still referred to Kevin as Kona’s “new” partner, but the fact was, she’d been with him for over a year. He was only “new” in that he wasn’t me, a fact that still rankled. Not that it was his fault. Kevin was a good guy and, from all that I had seen, a good cop, too. He’d shaved his head, which made him look older than his years. His eyes were dark, his skin a rich, warm brown. He had an easy smile and the build of an athlete. I wanted to like him, and I wanted him to like me. But we remained wary of each other. For my part, the mistrust was born of foolishness: I was off the force, Kona needed a partner. I had no right to be resentful, but I was.
Kevin was younger than I was and had been a detective in Homicide for maybe three years. He probably felt that I was judging him, and that Kona was constantly measuring his performance against mine. I doubt that she was, but I could understand why he might feel that way.
Basically it was mess, and it would remain that way until I found some way to bridge the gap between us.
“It was designed to work on a plane,” he went on, speaking to both Kona and me. “The guys say it would have gone off at about twenty-five thousand feet, and that there was enough explosive to blow a huge hole in the fuselage. We got lucky.”
Kona and I shared a quick glance, and Kevin’s expression grew guarded. This was the other reason he hadn’t warmed to me yet. Kona and I had a way of communicating that came from years of friendship and professional rapport. She didn’t have that yet with him, and he was as aware of this as I was.
“They haven’t found anything else in the suitcase?” Kona asked.
“Not yet.”
“Can we see the bomb?”
Kevin nodded and started toward a small device that lay on the concrete, also some fifty yards from where the cars were parked, though in a different direction. Kona and I followed.
“They wanted to detonate it,” Kevin said, over his shoulder. “But I held them off until Jay could see it, like you asked.”
Kona nodded once. “Thanks.”
“Is it safe?” I asked, slowing.
“Should be. They clipped the wires, and even if they hadn’t, it’s not like we’re at altitude. The bomb guys said it would be really unusual for it to go off under these conditions.”
“That’s reassuring,” I muttered, falling in step with Kona again.
“You an expert in bombs, Jay?”
I shot another glance Kona’s way. She was staring straight ahead, her lips pursed. She had been telling me for months now that the best way to improve my relationship with Kevin would be to end all the secrecy that surrounded my conversations with her, conversations that almost always revolved around spells and magic. I knew she was right.
“Not really, no.”
“So then what are you looking for?”
“Magic.”
He stopped; so did Kona and I.
“What?”
“I’m looking for signs of magic.”
Kevin turned to Kona, some quip on his lips. But her expression didn’t change, and his smile wilted. “The two of you are jerking me around.”
“I left the force because I’m a weremyste,” I said. “I go through something called the phasing every month on the full moon.”
“I’ve heard of phasings, but I never . . .” He blew out a breath. “This is for real?” he asked Kona.
“Listen to the man,” she said.
“Kona’s known for years, and over time she’s learned to recognize the signs of a magical crime. When she sees something she can’t explain, or when she’s certain that spells were used in a murder, she calls me.”
“The Blind Angel killings,” he said, breathing the words.
“That’s right. I’m sorry I didn’t tell you sooner. Leaving the force was—”
He held up a hand, stopping me. “No apologies necessary. So you think there was some kind of mojo involved in all of this today?”
“The guy in the men’s room was killed with a spell,” Kona said. “I knew it as soon as I saw him.”
“How?” Kevin asked. “There wasn’t a mark . . .” He trailed off, shaking his head slowly. A small laugh escaped him. “Magic. Damn.” He faced me again. “So, what do you look for?”
“Stuff that you can’t see—the residue of spells. A flare of color that’s left after a conjurer casts. Although,” I said to Kona, “coming out here might have been a waste of time. If Howell was a sorcerer and he used magic on anything there’d be no sign of it now. Magic dies with the runecrafter. Besides, a conjurer doesn’t need a bomb to bring down a plane.”
“Check it anyway,” she said. “Just in case.”
I did, and as I expected there was no magic at all on the bomb. A few minutes later, the bomb-squad guys gave us the all clear and we walked to the duffel bag and examined that as well. Again, there was no residue on it. But while we were searching through Howell’s stuff, an idea came to me. I picked a loose sock out of the bag and held it up for Kona to see.
“Can I take this?”
“Oh, sure, Justis. I mean it’s evidence in a murder and terrorism investigation, but we always like to give souvenirs to the tourists who join us for bomb searches, so help yourself.”
I stared back at her.
“You’re serious?”
“I know it could get you in trouble,” I said. “Though it’s not as though the evidence guys will be counting socks. But it might allow me to see what Howell saw in the final moments of his life.”
“You’ll return it?”
“I’ll give it back to you. You’ll return it.”
Kevin was watching us, a small frown on his face. “You two always like this?”
She nodded. “It’s not pretty, is it?” Her attention on me once more, she narrowed her eyes. “Sure, take the sock, but for God’s sake, keep it out of sight and get it back to me before we leave the airport.”
I slipped it into my pocket, and the three of us headed back toward the cart.
Considering what I had seen out here, and what I had found on Howell’s corpse, I was convinced that our skinhead was nothing more than he appeared: a jackass domestic terrorist who had been killed by a conjurer. There had been no sign in the restroom of a magical battle, and the killing spell had hit Howell in the chest, suggesting that the conjurer who killed him hadn’t bothered to sneak up on him. Howell was no weremyste. But then why was he murdered with magic?
Kona drove us back to the apron, where the plane originally designated for flight 595 still sat, sunlight gleaming off of its wings and tail. We got out and started to walk back toward the jet bridge and terminal. As we did my eyes were drawn again and again to the aircraft.
I halted. “Did they ever figure out what was wrong with the plane?”
