Spell Blind Read Free Page A

cop was still scrutinizing the doorway. His partner, though, was watching me.

CHAPTER 2
    I drove out to Pinnacle Peak, battling traffic the entire way. It was midday—nowhere near what used to pass for rush hour. But these days in Phoenix, rush hour started at dawn and lasted until way past dusk. I had called ahead to let the Tylers know that I had good news about their daughter, but I didn’t want to explain the particulars over the phone. Especially because those particulars were not going to make them happy, and I wanted to get paid. It’s a lot easier to ignore a bill than it is a guy standing in front of you.
    By the time I got there, the police had called to say that Jessie was in custody. As I expected, Michael Tyler didn’t take the news well, even if for now being in custody merely meant that Phoenix cops were keeping an eye on her while she was treated at Saint Luke’s Hospital.
    “How could you let this happen?” he demanded of me as he yanked open the front door. “I hired you to find her, not to get her arrested.”
    “I did find her, sir. She was in a spark den—”
    “Oh, God,” Missus Tyler said, voice trembling, a hand raised to her mouth. She sank into a chair in the front foyer.
    “She was in a spark den,” I started again, staring hard at Mister Tyler, “along with about twenty other kids. When I arrived, the guy who was supplying their drugs and taking their money lit the place on fire. I got your daughter out, and everyone else, too. But the fire department showed up, and so did the police. There was really nothing I could do.”
    “I want to see her,” Sissy Tyler said. She stood again. “Right now, Michael.”
    Mister Tyler glanced at his wife and nodded. Facing me once more, he started to speak, stopped himself, then started again. “I suppose I ought to be thanking you. It sounds like you saved her life.”
    “I did,” I said. “And you’re welcome.”
    “What do I owe you?”
    “Two hundred and fifty dollars a day, comes to . . .” I did the math in my head. “Thirty-five hundred, plus expenses. Let’s call it an even four thousand, minus the five hundred you paid me when I started.”
    He nodded, cut me a check on the spot, and led me back to my car.
    Holding out his hand, Tyler said, “I really am grateful, Mister Fearsson. Both of us are.”
    “Yes, sir,” I said, gripping his hand. “I’m glad I was able to find her.”
    I climbed into the Z-ster and started the slow drive back to Chandler, where I have both my house and my business. Along the way I stopped to deposit my check, relieved to know that I wouldn’t have to rely on overdraft protection to keep my rent check from bouncing.
    As soon as I reached the office I tossed the newspaper and mail onto my desk, scrubbed my hands and arms up to my biceps, and washed down a couple of aspirin. Then I fired up the espresso machine.
    My office isn’t much to speak of. It’s a single room on the top floor of one of those new sidewalk shopping developments that have grown up everywhere in recent years. It’s well lit, with a bank of windows overlooking the street. It was originally intended for a local lawyer, who insisted on oak floors. He took a job with a big firm in downtown Phoenix a couple of months after the place was built and I happened to luck into it. I have a desk, a computer and printer, a pair of file cabinets, a small john off the main room, a couple of chairs for clients, one of those mini refrigerators, and my coffee maker, some Italian brand, which I remember costing more than all the other furniture in the place. I like coffee. Sumatran mostly, the stronger the better.
    The computer doesn’t see a whole lot of action. Mostly I use it for billing and writing up reports for the insurance companies. I’m not much for technology. Where most PIs these days rely on computers and cell phones and fax machines, I tend to do things the old-fashioned way, face to face, notepad in hand. It’s not that