Emerald Blaze

Munoz squinted at me. I radiated all the warmth of an iceberg. I had slipped Victoria Tremaine’s granddaughter on like a comfortable jacket. It fit, and Giacone shifted under my cold stare. His spine straightened; his shoulders tensed.

“I don’t see Leon Baylor.” Munoz looked at me. “Why isn’t he here?”

“He’ll join us if I decide it’s necessary.”

“He’s a person of interest in an ongoing investigation.”

“And if you explain to me why, and if I determine that you have sufficient reason to question him, I will make him available.”

Munoz and I stared at each other.

“I think we may have gotten off on the wrong foot.” Giacone made a conciliatory gesture. “We’re all on the same side.”

I shot him my Tremaine look. His mouth clicked shut.

“It’s my intention to cooperate with your investigation, which is why we are having this conversation without our House counsel. If you would prefer to conduct this discussion with Sabrian present, I will call her in. I trust you remember Sabrian, Sergeant?”

Munoz’s eyes told me he did.

“I’ll start, in the interests of good faith.” I leaned back in my chair. “Ms. Duarte is a former client. She wanted to pursue a romantic relationship with Leon, and he declined. She attempted to send him several expensive gifts, which we returned, and showed some obsessive tendencies.”

“How?” Giacone asked.

“She sent numerous texts and made many phone calls even after being asked to stop.”

“Have you reported this?” Giacone asked.

“No, but we extensively documented it and consulted our attorney. I can make these records available to you upon request. The last contact Leon had with Ms. Duarte took place yesterday at 5:42 p.m. Ms. Duarte called his phone and indicated that she feared there was an intruder in her home. My cousin advised her to call the police and dialed 911 on her behalf.”

“That part we agree on,” Munoz said. “Where was your cousin when he received the text?”

Nice try. “It was a call, not a text. He was on the 17th floor of MII.”

Munoz’s face told me nothing. “Why was he at MII?”

“It was a professional matter not relevant to this investigation. Besides Leon, the meeting involved me, Cornelius Harrison, Augustine Montgomery, and his assistant, Lina Duplichan. All of them can confirm his presence. MII will be able to provide the exact time he left the building.”

“Where did he go after he left MII?” Giacone asked.

“He accompanied Cornelius Harrison to deliver a small tamarin monkey we’d recovered to a child from whom she’d been stolen. Her family and Mr. Harrison will verify this for you. Then he drove home.” I tapped my tablet and placed it in front of them. “Here’s last night’s security footage.”

On the screen, Leon parked in front of the booth, exited his Shelby, walked up to the window, and placed his hand against the holes drilled in the bulletproof glass. A moment passed. Leon returned to his car. The barricade turned, lowering into the ground, and he drove to his parking space. We watched him enter the building. The time stamp on the video said 6:33 p.m.

“He hasn’t left the property since he arrived last night,” Patricia said. “I have hours of boring footage if you would like to go through it.”

Munoz took out a tablet and placed it in front of me. He tapped the screen. A recording of an apartment building popped up, a tall Art Deco rectangle bristling with balconies. Probably the feed from a security camera mounted across the street.

“Where is this?” I asked Munoz.

“Ivy River Oaks apartments.”

Audrey’s residence, an upscale apartment complex.

On the screen, “Leon” walked into the building. The time stamp said 6:27 p.m.

At 6:39 p.m. “Leon” exited the building and walked away. He moved like Leon, he wore the same clothes, but he was not my cousin, because Leon was here, in this building, when it happened.

“Is she dead?” I asked.

“She is,” Munoz answered.

My pulse spiked and for a second I worried they might hear it.

First, they tried to provoke Arabella into exposing her magic. When that failed, they went after Leon. They tried to lure him to her place with the phone call, and when he didn’t show up, they framed him for Audrey’s murder. This went beyond a simple attack. It was subtle and elegant. These people weren’t just another House starting a feud. This was executed with a professional smoothness that spoke of experience.

Arkan’s people wanted me out of the way. If they killed me, Linus would go in guns blazing, but they didn’t need to kill me. They just needed to distract me long enough to accomplish their goals. Going after my family was the surest way to incapacitate me.

This incident was just the opening salvo. Since the frame-up would fail, there would be more, probably nastier and harder to get out of, and we needed Munoz and the Houston PD on our side while we fought them off. I had to obtain Munoz’s trust at any cost. My trump card sat in the chair next to him, and if I played it, there would be a price to pay. I shouldn’t have asked Nevada to sit in on this conversation. Shit.

Munoz slid his finger across the tablet. On it appeared the crumpled body of a girl curled in the fetal position halfway on a white shag carpet, her knees drawn all the way to her chest. Blood pooled around her head, staining the wood floor. Her long blond hair fanned all around her, covering her face like a funeral shroud. A dark red hole gaped in her skull, just above the ear.

The breath lodged in my throat and stayed there, like a rock. They killed her just to get to us. She was collateral damage. A life cut short for nothing.

“Here’s what I have,” Munoz said, his voice hard. “A nineteen-year-old girl has a crush on an older guy.”

“Leon is twenty, Sergeant.”

“She calls him, she sends him gifts, she keeps bothering him. Maybe she has something on him. Maybe she told him she’s pregnant. He wants her to go away. So, he either hires someone, or his friend, an illusion mage, does him a favor. He assumes his form and drives his car back to his house. Meanwhile, your cousin goes over to Ms. Duarte’s residence. Maybe they have an argument, maybe it becomes an altercation. Maybe he goes over there with the idea that things may turn violent and that’s why he takes the time to build his alibi. He kills her, gets a ride home, and his buddy slips out of your house.”

Nevada laughed. It sounded cold, bitter, and frightening.

The two cops looked at her.

“She is laughing because you think that Augustine Montgomery or any of his employees would incriminate themselves for our sake.” I shook my head. “We are talking about the same Augustine Montgomery, aren’t we?”

Munoz didn’t even blink. “Who knows? Perhaps he owed you a favor.”

“Prime Montgomery and House Baylor have a complicated, often adversarial, relationship,” I said. “Oddly enough, he did once come here as one of us.”

“Who?” Giacone asked.

“Me,” I said. “He made it past all of our defenses.”

“Before my time,” Patricia said.

“Which is why we have taken certain measures to ensure it doesn’t happen again.”

Patricia fiddled with a tablet and put it in front of the cops again. This was turning out to be the ballad of dueling tablets.

A brightly lit interior of the security booth appeared on the screen. Two guards manned the console. A large German shepherd lay on a pillow by their feet.

“This is Cassius. This is what happens when one of us approaches the booth,” I said.

On the screen the dog rose and sniffed the holes in the glass. A separate feed in the corner of the screen showed Leon outside of the booth.

“Note the time stamp,” Patricia said.

6:33 p.m., yesterday.

Patricia fiddled with the tablet again and returned it to the table. “This is what happens when an illusion mage attempts to gain entry while impersonating a member of House Baylor.”

On the screen Grandma Frida walked up to the booth. Had I not known that this was a hired mage, I would have sworn that it was my grandmother. She walked with the same bounce in her step. Her clothes were right, her smile was right. Even the engine oil stains on her coveralls were right.

She approached the booth. She was five feet away when Cassius snarled, baring his teeth, and exploded into barks.

“As you’re well aware, an illusion mage can change their appearance but not their biochemistry. We have four canine sentries,” Patricia said. “They work six-hour shifts. We test them every month. They have never given a false positive.”

“I don’t know who that is on your recording,” I said. “But it’s not my cousin. Leon would never kill Audrey. Nor would he have a relationship with her or lead her on. He is a Baylor.”

“Are you implying that he’s too good for her?” Munoz asked, a faint warning in his tone.

“I’m implying that, as a member of an emerging House, Leon understands discipline and obligation to his family. He works fifty hours a week on average. Sometimes, especially in the beginning of a new case, he works more. He still resides with the rest of us here, he logs his every move, and he doesn’t sleep with clients. That would be against our policy. He doesn’t have the time, opportunity, or the energy to commit to a relationship, all of which he explained to Audrey. You can listen to the recording if you wish.”