Ritual Magic

Li Lei,
that cold, crystalline voice said
. There is no debt. There can never be debt between myself and Li Lei.

SEVEN

    T HE coffee in Lily’s cup was black, burned, and bitter. Suited her just fine. Maybe that was because it fit her mood, or maybe it was the comfort of the familiar. How many cups of bad coffee had she drunk when she was a local cop like the man who’d just handed her this one?
    “If that doesn’t work, you’re gonna need toothpicks,” Officer Perez said.
    “It’ll do. Thanks.” They were in the tiny alcove of a room where visitors to the patients on this floor could get coffee or a soft drink. Scott and Mark—her designated bodyguards, though she preferred to think of them as mobile backup—were just down the hall. Lily had snarled her way into this abbreviated privacy after interviewing the newest vic, needing a moment alone to gather her thoughts.
    A moment was all she’d gotten, too.
    The second victim, Ronnie Winsome, was being moved up here from the emergency room, but hadn’t arrived yet. Lily sipped nasty coffee. “Your sergeant clear you to help me out?”
    “She did,” Perez said. “She cursed, but she cleared it. She wants to be kept informed.”
    “She can know what you know. She won’t be brought into the case further at this point.”
    Officer Ramon Perez wasn’t quite a rookie, but his big brown eyes hadn’t turned cop yet. He was a patrol officer, but he wanted to be more, and probably would be. Called to the scene of an ordinary rear-end collision with no injuries, he’d realized that the at-fault driver was confused. Lots of cops would have noticed that much, but Perez hadn’t thought he seemed intoxicated, and the man had passed the breath test. Winsome hadn’t wanted to go to the hospital, but Perez had persuaded him he needed to be evaluated.
    Meanwhile, unknown to Lily, Ruben had been hit with one of his hunches. He’d instructed the SDPD to put out an alert for all units to watch for “impairment or memory loss of an unusual nature.” They were to report same to FBI Unit Twelve. Perez had heard the alert about an hour after the ambulance carried Winsome away and he’d gone the extra mile, heading for the hospital to reinterview the man.
    That was when he discovered that Ronald Ralph Winsome, known to friends and family as Ronnie, didn’t know what year it was.
    Winsome had only lost three years, not most of a lifetime. Lily didn’t know of any connection between him and her mother, and the accident had taken place more than ten miles from Uncle Chen’s restaurant, so there was no obvious geographical link. But the time fit. Winsome had rear-ended the car in front of him at roughly 8:15. Julia Yu had started screaming at 8:20.
    Lily had just finished interviewing Winsome. He was upset by the memory loss, but otherwise seemed okay. She’d talked to his doctor, too. Amnesia was rare and the MRI didn’t show any head trauma. The ER doctor was mystified, but he would have released Winsome with a recommendation to seek counseling if Perez hadn’t persuaded him to hold off until Lily arrived.
    Lily planned to take advantage of Perez’s competence, his big brown eyes, and his bilingual abilities. “Winsome’s wife is with him—Cara Winsome, fifty-one, brown and black, five-five and one fifty. She’s the second wife. First wife is Anna Caraway. Winsome and Number One have one son, thirty-two, named Brian. Brian lives in Santa Ana and is on his way here. Cara has two daughters, both grown, both living here in San Diego. She says he’s been under a lot of stress because of overwork—he’s in management at a national clothing chain—and he worked late tonight. He was presumably on his way home when he had the accident, though of course he doesn’t remember.”
    Perez nodded.
    “I know that much, and that’s all I know. I need more. Lots more. I want you to talk to the wife. She defaults to Spanish under stress. You said you’re fluent.”
    He straightened unconsciously, looking very young and very serious. “You want me to conduct the interview in Spanish?”
    “I want her comfortable so she’ll open up. I think using Spanish will help with that.”
    “Anything in particular I’m looking for?”
    “Connections. You know I’m a touch sensitive, right? When I interviewed Winsome I got his permission to check for magic. Found something, the same sort of something that was on my other vic. At this point, we’ve got nothing to connect the