Dirty Magic (23 page)

“Everyone circle up!” Gardner yelled.

“My desk, now,” I said. “And wear your headphones.”

Danny’s face morphed from confusion to resentment. He muttered “Bye” to Mez and stalked over to my desk. I watched to make sure he put the headphones on before I turned to the wiz. “Thanks.”

He shrugged. “No sweat. Maybe later you can tell me what that was about?”

“Now, people!” Gardner sounded ready to nail some asses to walls. Instead of replying to Mez, I rushed out of the lab. Gardner stood in the ring with Morales and Shadi. Judging from her look, this wasn’t going to be a fun talk. Maybe that’s why she’d decided to deliver her news in the fighting ring.

“Okay, now that we’re all here,” she began, “we have a lot to cover. Mez, why don’t you start?”

Gone was the jokey wizard I’d been talking to a few minutes earlier. Now he looked like a doctor about to tell someone they had six months to live. “I analyzed the samples Prospero and Morales gathered yesterday. The good news, if you can call it that, is that Marvin definitely had fur under his nails, which supports the theory this was another Gray Wolf murder.”

“You’re sure it was fur and not just hair?” Shadi asked.

Mez shot her a quelling look. She flushed and muttered an apology. “Anyway,” he continued, “the bad news is that the DNA I got from the fur didn’t match anyone’s in the ACD.”

A few years earlier, the Arcane Crimes Database added DNA sampling to the fingerprint and criminal histories they kept on file. Problem was, it took time to collect and process DNA samples from all the Arcane criminals in the country. Mostly it had samples from crooks who were already in jail, which wasn’t so helpful because if they were behind bars, chances were good they weren’t guilty of current crimes.

“Shit,” Morales said.

Mez held up a hand. “Not so fast. As it happens, Prospero’s friend in CSI at BPD is a real peach. This morning, she faxed over her preliminary report from the crime scene.”

My eyebrows popped up. “Does Eldritch know about that?” I asked Gardner.

She shrugged. “Not our business.” Which meant, no.

“Anyway,” Mez continued, “according to her, there wasn’t enough physical evidence to support the theory that Marvin Brown was killed at Volos Towers.”

“His body was moved?” Morales asked, glancing at me.

“Wait,” I said, recalling the gruesome scene, “no way his head was bashed in elsewhere and moved.”

“According to Val, it happened postmortem.”

“Someone didn’t want the cops to have an easy time of identifying Mr. Brown,” Gardner concluded.

Mez nodded. “Unfortunately, the surveillance cameras weren’t much help. They show a black van arriving at 2:08 in front of the building. But soon after there’s a blackout in the footage.”

I sighed. “So whoever did this is organized and resourceful.”

“Not so fast,” Mez said with a smile. “Val sent over a few stills taken from the footage just before the cameras went dark.” He pulled them out of the file to pass around.

I looked at the first one he handed me. The van he mentioned was maybe twenty feet from the camera. There were no identifying marks on the vehicle and no license plate was visible. Likewise, the windows were too tinted to see inside. Next couple of images were the same. By the fourth, I was getting antsy that Mez was just fucking with us. But this one showed a person dressed in black from head to toe exit the driver’s side, which was closest to the camera. The suspect was slim in build, but tall—lanky. The only part of his skin that showed was the mouth and chin as he finished a cigarette. The next still showed him pulling down the mask and tossing the cigarette on the ground. Another figure was coming around the van, but he was wearing a mask, too.

I passed the last image to Morales, wondering what I was missing. Then it hit me. I snatched the picture back from Morales and spun around to Mez. “Tell me you got it.”

“What?” Morales asked, frowning.

Mez smiled at me. “Val had her team get it. She sent it to me because she knew I could rush the DNA.”

“Hello?” Shadi snapped. “Anyone want to fill the rest of us in?”

I turned and held up the picture. “This asshole was smoking a cigarette when he got out of the car.”

Morales’s eyebrows snapped up. “Guess they were right—smoking is bad for your health.”

I rolled my eyes. “Tell me you got a hit,” I said to Mez.

His face fell. “Not exactly. The DNA isn’t in the ACD.”

The mood in the room plummeted. “Oh ye of little faith,” Mez said. “I may not have the asshole’s DNA, but I have his number.” He held up an evidence bag containing the cigarette butt. The filter was gold and the body of the cigarette appeared to be covered in purple paper.

My stomach started doing jumping jacks. “Fuck. Me.”

“This, my friends,” Mez said, “is a Vice Royal cigarette.”

“Never heard of them,” Shadi said.

“They’re a specialty brand. Costly,” Gardner said. “Rare.”

“So we just need to track down people who smoke that brand,” Shadi said.

I knew only two people who smoked Vice Royals. One was locked away in Crowley Penitentiary. The other was—

“Don’t bother,” I said. “I already know who it is.”

“Well?” Gardner said. The other three turned to me with expectant expressions.

“Looks like Volos wasn’t lying.” For some reason that realization made me feel more relieved than it should have. “The only asshole on the streets I know who smokes that brand is Hieronymus Bane.”

Morales frowned at me. “The son of Ramses Bane?” At my nod, he whistled low. “Fuck me.”

“You’re sure?” Gardner asked.

“Sure enough to investigate, anyway.”

“There’s no way State Attorney Stone will give us a warrant based on a cigarette butt,” she said.

“We don’t need one for a routine traffic stop,” Morales said. “Maybe if we put a little pressure on the prick he’ll spill something his daddy doesn’t want us to know.”

“Guy like that has to have something in his car that would allow us to detain him long enough.” I nodded. “It could work. Thing is, Harry’s loyal to Bane, but there’s also bitterness there. He’s been angling to start his own crew for years, but Bane won’t allow it. We could maybe play on that.”

“Right,” Gardner said. “Play that up with him. Tell him we’ve got enough evidence to put him away unless he gives us something solid on Daddy Dearest.”

“We’ll have to be careful, though. If he asks to lawyer up, we’re toast.”

“Do it,” Gardner said. “Shadi, I want you to pull everything you can find on Hieronymus and Ramses Bane. Maybe once word gets to Bane that we’re targeting his kid, it’ll rattle his cage enough to make a mistake.”

“What about me?” Mez asked.

“You call the CSI lady and tell her you couldn’t find DNA on the cigarette. Don’t tell her we’re targeting Bane’s kid. We don’t need Eldritch interfering until we have what we need.”

“Sir,” I said, “are you sure? If we’re right here, this information could make their murder investigation.”

“Fuck ’em,” Morales said. “If the tables were turned Eldritch wouldn’t give us the lead. In fact, he’s probably off giving the mayor a hummer as we speak.”

Gardner sighed but nodded. “He’s right. Keep it tight until we have what we need.”

I clenched my jaw. Part of me wanted to call them out for perpetuating the bullshit politics. On the other hand, the prospect of blowing this case wide open without Eldritch’s interference appealed to my competitive nature. So I kept my mouth shut. I just hoped that when the dust of this case cleared and Eldritch found out what we’d done, I’d have already secured my spot on the task force for good.

“You guys need me to call DMV to find out Harry’s license plate and car model?” Shadi asked.

I shook my head and smiled. “I don’t think that will be a problem.”

A
n hour later, we were in Morales’s SUV, following a neon-green Trans Am through the Cauldron. The license on the pimpmobile read
WIZ-LIFE
. Deep bass thumped from its open windows and T-tops. Occasionally, puffs of smoke would escape, too.

I’d called Baba before we left the gym. She had been home celebrating her twenty-buck victory at bingo and said she was happy to keep an eye on Danny until I could get home. When we’d dropped him off, Baba was very interested to meet Morales. She’d pulled me aside and said, “I see the Sexy Juice is already working.” I didn’t bother correcting her. Mostly because it was funny to see Morales get all uncomfortable when Baba waggled her eyebrows at him and checked out his butt.

As for Danny, he hadn’t said much before we left. Eventually I’d have to figure out how to get him to drop this magic business, but for the time being I was off to arrest the kind of asshole I was terrified Danny would become if he started cooking.

Unlike his dad, Harry didn’t spend all his time down in the Arteries; Bane needed a man aboveground he could trust. For Morales’s and my sake, I just hoped some of that trust was misplaced.

“What an idiot,” Morales complained. “We’ve been following this douchebag for fifteen minutes and he hasn’t gone above twenty.”

“He’s cruising,” I said. “Wants to show off those sweet rims.”

We were five cars back, keeping our distance for the time being. Eventually, he’d take a wide right turn or forget to use his blinker, but with the time crunch over our heads it was hard not to be impatient. Any minute now Val and the detective on the case would make the connection to the cigarette brand. We wanted to be sure we had our shot at Harry before they figured it out.

“Tell me something,” Morales said, scooting his ass around on the seat like it was growing numb.

“Yeah?” I had my eyes on Harry’s taillights, willing one to go out.

“What’s the real reason you don’t use magic?”

My head jerked around at the suspicion in his tone. “Isn’t doing this job for the last five years reason enough?”

“Nope. Every cop I know uses magic in some form.”

I sighed. “Most cops didn’t grow up in a coven. I’ve seen firsthand the damage cooking can do to people and those they love.”

He shot me a look that made me shift in my seat. I felt as though he saw the truth through my skin. “Who died?”

That one simple question had the effect of a small explosion going off in my midsection. Was I that transparent? “I don’t—”

“Cut the shit, Kate. It’s obvious. You wouldn’t be fighting so hard to keep Danny off the burners and avoiding magic if there wasn’t some deep pain associated with it. Who was it?”

I clenched my teeth. “My mother.”

His eyes widened. “I’m sorry.” The shit of it was he sounded sincere so I couldn’t be too mad at him for making me admit it.

I forced a shrug. “It was a long time ago.”

“Some pain only sharpens with time.”

I jerked my head toward him. He was speaking from experience. I raised my brows in challenge. It was his turn.

He sighed. “Don’t pretend you haven’t wondered about my hand.”

I nodded. “What happened?”

“My dad was an Adept. That’s where my sister and I got the gene.” My eyebrows rose in shock. Morales always used his right hand. He lifted his left and clenched it. As he did he grimaced. “Doesn’t work so well anymore. After the accident.” It never occurred to me he didn’t use his left because he simply couldn’t.

“What accident?”

“My dad wasn’t formally trained. He grew up poor and his parents were Catholic. They saw his gifts as a curse from the devil and tried to beat it out of him.”

I cringed in sympathy. Over the years, I’d heard too many tales of Mundane parents who couldn’t handle having Adept kids. They’d tie the kid’s left hand behind his back so he had to use his right—or worse.

“Anyway, I was pretty young when it happened. Eight. My little sister, Blanca, was only three. Dad was in the basement cooking some potion he said was going to make us rich. He was always trying to invent a formula he could sell to one of the Big Magic companies.”

I nodded and swallowed, bracing myself for the punch line.

“When the explosion happened…” He swallowed hard, his throat clicking drily. “My mom was helping me with homework in the back of the house. Blanca was down for a nap. Mom tried to get me out the back door before the fire could reach us, but I ran back in to save Blanca. By that point, the fire was so intense, the front of the house was basically an inferno. Unfortunately, she didn’t get to me before I thrust my hand into the flames.”

I slammed my eyes shut and cursed silently. “Jesus, Drew.”

My eyes opened in time to see him smile tightly. “After we buried Dad and Blanca”—he cleared the catch in his throat—“we moved in with Mom’s Mundane family. I learned how to use my right hand, moved to a new school, and started living as a Mundane kid.”

“So why did you encourage me to let Danny study magic?”

“I made my own choice.” He shrugged. “My mom, as much pain as losing them caused, never said I couldn’t study magic. She said if I wanted to she’d figure out a way to send me to a real school so I could learn to use it safely, but she let me decide. I chose to live as a Mundane. But Danny should be able to choose his own path, too.”