I nodded, thinking. "You've been around the outfit a long time, Case. You know everyone. How well did you know Jamal and Jimmy Lee?"
"I knew them well enough, I guess. I watched them come up, tried to help out where I could. They were good boys."
"Who trained them, Case?"
He pursed his lips and rubbed his chin. "Jamal got some basics from Rafael Chavez. Jimmy Lee was brought in by Frank Seville…you know him?"
I nodded and waited for the rest of it.
"But both guys were specialists, you know. Most guys in the outfit don't do one thing any better than another. Hell, most of us don't do anything all that well. We've got lots of guys who can lay down tags, but most of them aren't really taggers like Jamal was. You know what I mean? Him and Jimmy Lee didn't have a lot of juice, maybe, but they had one thing they did well. That made them different."
"They needed more training than most," I said. "Advanced training in their specialty. Who gave it to them?"
"Well, Rashan did. He always does that kind of thing himself."
"I was afraid you were going to say that."
I told Case to keep the place locked down until nightfall and then to get rid of the body. Then I got on my cell and called Rashan. He was on his way home from the strip club. He agreed to meet me at his house.
I ran to my car and spun the traffic spell, and I kept the speedometer above ninety most of the way out to the hills. I pulled up in the circle driveway in front of the house just as Rashan was getting out of his Mercedes.
I'd never been invited to Rashan's house before. It was pretty typical for the filthy rich in that part of town. Hillside. Boxy modern architecture. Lots of glass. Wide balcony. Stilts.
"Stilts, boss?" I asked, looking up at the house. "That doesn't seem like a good idea."
Rashan smiled. "The stilts are very strong, Dominica."
"How strong?" They looked pretty spindly to me.
"It would be easier to move the hill than to move the stilts."
"This is L.A., boss. Mudslides, earthquakes. It wouldn't be that surprising if the hill decided to move someday."
Rashan shrugged. "It's L.A."
"Yeah, what are you gonna do?"
The boss smiled. "I'm not afraid of earthquakes. We had some big ones back home. Biblical ones. We took pride in them. We thought even the gods had taken notice of our great works and mighty deeds."
"Alas, Babylon," I said.
"Close enough, Dominica," Rashan said quietly. "Close enough."
We climbed the stairs to the front door and went inside. Rashan led me to his study and closed the door behind us. I sat in one of the leather chairs in front of his desk and he poured us both a Scotch.
"You've been to Rick Macy's house?" he asked, settling in behind the desk.
"Yeah," I said, "I was there. Same story."
"And do you have a theory?"
"I've been chasing a theory, but I think I got it wrong."
"Why don't you tell me."
I nodded and took a deep breath. "I was able to bring Jamal back from the Beyond. He told me who the killer was."
"You neglected to report this development. You must have had a reason for that."
"Yeah. The killer was your son, Adan."
"But Adan is not a sorcerer. He could not have done these murders." He didn't seem terribly surprised by my revelation. I'm not sure why I thought he would be.
"Right. I could see he wasn't a sorcerer, but Jamal pointed to him. Based on what Jamal said about the ritual and something that happened when I was with him, it looked like Adan was being possessed."
"Is that why you've been staying so close to my son?"
I looked down at my glass and took another drink. "Yes and no. At first, I just needed to stay close to him, like you say. But…it got complicated. It is complicated."
"And if you believe he is the victim of possession, what have you done about it?"
I told him about my plan to find the spirit in the Between and destroy it. I told him about the vampire. I gave it all to him.
"But now you are questioning your theory?" Rashan asked.
I nodded. "Mr. Clean speculated that a spirit might be using the rituals to prepare a host, Adan, to move in permanently. He admitted it was just speculation, but I took it and ran with it."
"And now?"
"There's a connection between the victims that doesn't fit with that angle. You trained them all. You don't train many guys, and I don't think it's a coincidence. I don't like that connection, and I don't see what difference it would make to a spirit."
Rashan leaned back in his chair and looked at me for a long time. "Do you have a new theory?" he asked finally.
"Maybe," I said. "It's the Papa Danwe angle. I don't have any proof-I don't think I'll ever have any proof with this thing. But it fits. You've got three sorcerers who all received training from you. One is a tagger, one is a warder and one is a designer."
Rashan nodded. "Go on."
"We know that there's no point in squeezing these guys-unless you need their unique arcane talent. Well, what do they all have in common? They all learned their craft from you."
"And so what would squeezing them accomplish, in this case?"
"It'd be like getting inside your head, wouldn't it? I thought about this all the way over here. Jamal was a tagger. He created arcane symbols that tapped and rerouted juice. Jimmy Lee was a warder, a specialist in defensive magic. And Rick Macy was a theorist, a systems guy.
"When Jimmy Lee first turned up dead, I thought it was someone going after our defenses. At the time, it didn't make any sense because he wasn't doing anything important. But he was working your magic, boss. It didn't matter that he wasn't doing anything important-it wasn't what he was doing, it was how he was doing it. If I could get inside your head and figure out how you did that kind of magic, I'll bet I could reverse-engineer your personal defenses. I'll bet I'd know enough about your wards and protections to take them down."
Rashan arched his eyebrows. "You would, yes. Anyone else would still be missing a piece of the puzzle."
I frowned and shook my head. "I don't get that."
"You would have all the knowledge you needed-the craft, just as you say. But as you've learned, Dominica, magic isn't a science. It isn't engineering, even though sorcerers such as Mr. Macy try to approach it that way. Sorcery is an art. There is a practical aspect, technique, certainly, which the killer could have gotten from the three victims. But there are a thousand different ways a sorcerer can approach any given magical task. That's why magic is fundamentally a creative endeavor."
"So the missing piece is creativity?"
Rashan nodded. "The missing piece is style."
I stared at him and swallowed hard. "That's what I learned from you. I already had the nuts and bolts. You showed me how to bring it all together." I thought back to those days, when Rashan had trained me. It had been…intimate. Not sexually, not exactly, but it had some of the same vibe to it. In a very real sense, Rashan had shared his juice with me.
"I'm afraid so. And more to the point, you're the only one with whom I've shared this most intimate aspect of my art. In other words, I suspect you're next, Dominica."
"I think I would have been next anyway," I said. Maybe I should have been shocked or angry, but I wasn't. Mostly I felt like I should have seen it earlier.
Rashan continued. "So Papa Danwe isn't after territory, at least not directly-he wants to take a shot at me. He knows he has no hope of succeeding with my magical defenses in place. The question is, why bring this spirit into it? Why bring my son into it?"
"Before we get to that, I need to ask you a question." I looked up at him and he nodded. "What's it all about?"
"I'm afraid you'll have to be more specific, Dominica."