Guilty by Association (Judah Black Novels) (6 page)

Chanter pulled a few smaller boxes out of the big box and placed them on the counter. “Issue me a citation and I will pay it when I'm able. Arrest me if you have a warrant to do so. Otherwise...” He looked up. When he did, I was sure I caught a strange, golden halo around the brown of his eyes. “Get the hell out, Tindall.”

Tindall pushed away from the display case angrily. “Tell me what you know about Elias Garcia.”

“I've nothing to say to you,” said Chanter calmly.

“Then say this to your pack, Chanter.” Tindall leaned across the display case, dangerously close to Chanter's face. “You tell them to cooperate with our investigation. It'll make things easier for all of us.”

Chanter let out a growl that shook the glass cases. “I've asked you twice now to leave. I won't ask again.”

“Come on, let's go, Black. This fool's not going to listen to reason.” Tindall started for the door. Quincy opened the door for Tindall and grinned when his partner glared back at him. I started to follow Tindall out but halted when Chanter spoke again. “Not you. You will stay.”

I turned around but only after swallowing the lump in my throat. “Me?”

“Yes, you.”

“Good luck,” Tindall muttered from the door. “You're going to need it.” The electronic bell above the door chimed when the door closed behind him.

At first, Chanter just stood there behind the counter, leafing through whatever was in his box. I wandered the sales floor, the carpet muffling my footfalls and making me uneasy. It was a different feeling of uneasiness from what I'd felt standing in the room with Valentino. There, I'd felt like prey being stalked. Here, I felt more like a child sent to my room to contemplate what I'd done wrong. The silence between Chanter and I filled up with questions I didn't know how to ask.

Really, there wasn't anything much to look at on the shelves. He had all the kinds of things you'd expect to find: guns, jewelry, musical instruments, memorabilia, electronics...Bits and pieces of lives and memories for sale. I wondered how many of those memories were his and how many he had on loan from the other desperate folk of Paint Rock. It made me want to dislike him. Try as I might, I couldn't find one single reason to like him, though part of me liked his candor nonetheless. I mean, it wasn't like I could trust him. Chanter was as shifty as, well, a werewolf.

First of all, there was the name. I wasn't sure if it was a nickname or his real name but one thing was for sure. You don't get a name like Chanter so you can go do great things like run pawn shops on a supernatural reservation. His eyes, too, and the power they held over me was a decent indication of his power. When we'd met gazes earlier, I'd felt as if we were waging a battle, wrestling over which one of us was going to come out of that look on top. If it was a battle, it was one of will and I had clearly lost.

More importantly, Chanter had an amazing presence. Presence is something that most folks today don't put too much stock in, even though it's arguably one of the most important assets everyone has. It has a lot of names, most of them vague because language fails to capture that extra something that is presence. It's simple if you think about it. Presence is a mix between confidence and comfort, power and approachability. It's what makes the difference between getting hired and getting promoted, subtle yet unmistakable. Chanter had it and he had it in droves. When he spoke, I couldn't help but listen and when he moved, even doing simple things like sorting through his stock, I paid attention. Everything he did seemed important in some way. He'd captured my attention and held it against my will.

I didn't like it, not one bit.

At length, I got tired of waiting for him to say something and decided to pose a question of my own. “So, did you want me to stay for a reason or are you just going to yank my chain?”

“I'm deciding,” he offered quietly.

“On what?”

“On you.” He glanced up casually and then back down. “I smell another wolf on you.”

“Well, I spoke with Valentino this morning and I was in the room while Dr. Ramis was examining Elias. I'm also the one that found him.”

“I smell a boy,” he said without looking up. The blood in my chest frosted. “Adolescent. No, prepubescent but close. Eleven, maybe twelve. You must live in very close contact with him. You reek of his lack of discipline. A son, perhaps?”

I took two steps closer to Chanter at a pace faster than he liked, as evidenced by the way he shot me a warning glare. I didn't care. Not even a hungry tiger could get between me and my son's well-being. “Don't you dare speak about my son,” I said, dropping my tone a few octaves. “Who and what he is has no meaning here.”

“It has plenty of meaning. You haven't registered him with BSI or else I would have been notified of his presence through other channels, which can only mean one thing. You're either stupid or you're not as blind as you'd like everyone to think you are.”

“What the hell does that mean?”

Chanter sighed, slid the boxes aside and then leaned on the counter. “Agent Black, I'm old, not stupid. I've been raising wolves since before your kind even knew we existed. After a while, you develop a sixth sense about these things but even I don't need that to smell him all over you. I don't know your story or where you come from. To be blunt, I don't care. By bringing him onto the reservation, you've made him my business. Let's not dance around the pit of vipers pretending they are blades of grass, girl. BSI isn't the utopian society that it claims to be. This reservation is hardly flowing with milk and honey. The government has lied to us, used us and, eventually, they'll seek to eradicate us. Your subversion tells me that some part of you knows this and that you seek to protect your child from what you know is coming.”

I put my hands on the surface of the display case he was working at. “If you breathe a word of this to anyone...”

“If I told your superiors what I know, who would that serve?” He looked up from the box he was going through, his expression unreadable. “I'd like to help you, Agent Black. In fact, I believe we can help each other.”

“What do you want from me?”

“I want you to listen. What you will hear will help you two fold. You're here seeking answers concerning Elias Garcia. I'm not surprised to hear he's dead. I'm only surprised to hear that Valentino will have a body to mourn. Around here, that's a rare thing.”

I relaxed a little, glad that our conversation had veered away from people in my personal life and back to business. “Did Elias have a lot of enemies?”

Chanter shrugged. “Don't we all? Like most of us, Elias was his own worst enemy. Elias and Valentino were very close once. They weren't raised in my pack and I adopted them as a favor to my daughter, Nina.”

“Valentino's wife.”

“My
daughter
,” Chanter corrected in an irritated tone. “Valentino acclimated. Elias...Elias never did. He chose the life of a lone wolf over the life of the pack. Sometime after that, he became troubled. Fell into the drugs. Refused to hunt. During a crucial time in his life, Elias failed to embrace and codify what it means to be a werewolf. He grew to hate what he was. He adopted the belief that he was less than human. In his final days, I believe he would have traded anyone or anything for the chance to escape his life.”

“Are you telling me he was suicidal?” I asked, leaning in closer.

“I'm telling you that there is a state of mind that is worse than that. The source of all of his misery, all of his troubles and, in the end, his death, was his failure to embrace his nature. Denial is a death sentence for us, Agent Black. Do not make that mistake with your son.”

I pushed away from the counter and frowned. “Denial didn't stab Elias Garcia in the neck with a silver knife, Chanter.”

“No it did not,” Chanter agreed.

Well, that line of questioning wasn't getting me any answers I didn't already have. Time for a new approach. “Do you know of anyone named Maria? Latina woman, maybe. She might have been with him just before this happened.”

“Valentino would know better than I would. As I said, Elias was not part of the pack in an official capacity. I rarely had to interact with him. You’d be better off talking to Valentino about that.”

“I would if Valentino would give me a straight answer,” I growled at him without thinking and then sighed. “Look, Chanter. Here's the thing. I need to search Valentino's house since it was Elias' last known residence. Now, I can call a judge and get a warrant but, while I do that, the trail gets colder and the chances that I can actually find Elias' killer get smaller. I'd much rather just get permission to go in and save everyone the legal headache.”

I'd expected him to guess what I was going to suggest or make some kind of quip like he'd been doing this whole time. Instead, he stood there, expectantly waiting for me to ask. “Would you talk to him? See if you can convince him to change his mind?”

There was a long silence as Chanter tapped his fingers on the glass, thinking. “Say you don't find the smoking gun you're looking for. Then what?”

“Then I keep looking. I keep fighting. A man is dead and his killer is out there. I don't care what kind of person Elias was or what he did while he was alive. Somewhere inside of him there was a soul that could have been saved if someone, somewhere had just tried a little harder, listened a little more, if someone had just
cared
.”

The words fell out of my mouth unfiltered through my brain. Once I said them, I immediately felt stupid. I was a professional, an agent of the law. Whatever I felt about Elias, it wasn't right to let my feelings cloud my judgment. I couldn't just go around blaming people, especially when the information I had was limited to what was written on sheets of paper.
But I know more than that
, I thought and hazarded the chance to meet Chanter's eyes one more time.
I can read between the lines. Elias was a kid in a dark place. He needed help from his pack, not whatever it was he got.
Chanter knew that and chose to do nothing. Failure to act did not absolve him of some level of guilt.

That same, inexplicable urge to look away came over me again as our eyes met but I fought it. It took clenching my fists and gritting my teeth but I didn't look away, not that time.

The corner of Chanter's mouth twitched and the feeling eased away. “You're a very different sort of woman, Agent Black.”

“It's my job to be different.”

“No,” he said sharply. “It's your job to keep the peace between them and us, no matter the toll that takes. If you have a child that is like us, then chances are good that the child's father was one of us. It's reasonable to infer that you have intimate knowledge of werewolves and the supernatural based on your position and personal history. If you intend to hold the position you do for any length of time, you must be willing to embrace certain truths, truths that a good man like Detective Tindall will not understand.”

I swallowed and forced my fingers to flex out of the fists they'd formed. “Are you implying that I'm not a good person?”

“Both of us know that to be standing where you are, knowing the things that you know...You have seen dark things, Agent Black. You have taken them into your mind and body and made yourself one with evil in ways that no human can truly understand. Does that make you a bad person?” He shrugged. “It makes you alive. It makes you fierce and it makes you powerful, more powerful than any fool hiding behind a gun and a badge. The people of Paint Rock don't need another gun.”

“What do they need, then?”

“Hope,” he said simply and slid a small box across the counter to me. “Supernaturals and Humans alike. I see the spark of that in you yet, girl. Do not lose it.”

I took the box and opened it. Inside, there was a single, black feather. I lifted it out and gave him a skeptical look. “A crow feather? What's this supposed to mean?”

He smiled warmly. “It's a raven's feather, actually. The raven is an animal of contradictions, a bridge between this world and the next. He carries wisdom, magic, change and trickery over the threshold. At least, that's what old Indians like me are supposed to say to curious white girls.”

I spun the feather between my fingers looking at it. “So, what? This is like a totem or something?”

That made Chanter laugh. “It is what it is, girl, a feather and nothing more.”

“Ravens are carrion eaters,” I said, frowning. Mythologically speaking, most people believed them to be bad omens and heralds of death. I wasn't sure I wanted to be associated with such a bird, even if it did have something to do with wisdom and magick and whatever.

Chanter just nodded solemnly and said, “So they are.”

I didn't get to ask Chanter any more questions after that, though somehow the trip didn't feel wasted. He agreed to talk with Valentino at the very least, which is more than I'd expected out of our exchange. When I went outside to rejoin Tindall and Quincy, I had the oddest feeling in the pit of my stomach, something inexplicable but warm and comforting.

“Well?” asked Tindall. “What'd he say? Anything useful?”

I tucked the box containing the feather under my arm and swallowed the dry feeling in my throat. “Not really.”

“What'd I tell you?” Quincy continued, shaking his head. “That old prairie nigger is stonewalling us.” He popped a hard candy into his mouth and chewed on it.

“Native Americans, Quincy,” said Tindall, fanning himself. “Jesus Christ. He could sue you for that.”

“Well, then, let's hope I hit the jackpot tonight. For his sake.”

“I'd like to go have a look at the crime scene again,” I said and started for my car.

Tindall wrinkled his nose and trudged toward his car. “Yeah, okay. My uniforms still have it secure. CSI came down this morning. Should be finishing up about now.”

“You don't have to come, you know.”

Tindall just laughed bitterly at that. “And miss standing in awe of you while you do your brilliant detective work? Not on your life. Besides, if you keep running around and asking questions like you are, you're likely to turn up dead yourself. I'll meet you at the laundromat in ten.”