Page 160 of The Bones in the Yard

I snorted out a tiny laugh. “Good for Izar,” I said.

“Indeed,” Raj agreed, leaning back against the window sill and crossing one ankle over the other. “But while Vidal was making a bid to get into the Culhua, he hadn’t actually fully earned their trust yet.”

“So hedoesn’tknow about the whole murder bit?”

“Seems not. Or he’s one hell of a good actor.”

“You talked to him?”

Raj nodded. “We went to his campaign office to talk to him about the activities of his business partner.”

“Activities?”

Raj smirked. “We were initially non-specific. As far as we could tell, Vidal was in the dark.” He shrugged. “Time will tell on the election, though. He’s lost a lot of monetary support, and the fact that his partner and several of his major donors are going to be arraigned in the next several weeks probably isn’t going to help his bid.”

That was probably the understatement of the month. “Is it bad that part of me feels bad for him? And the fact that we almost had a chance to have a witch as a mayor to head off all this MFM bullshit?”

Raj huffed. “You remember the part about him wanting to join a murderous cult, right?”

“You just said he didn’t know it was murderous,” I pointed out.

“True.” Raj appeared to think about this. “Fine. But he did know that these guys wanted something, and they were pretty clearly biased against Arcanids, even if not against magic more generally.”

I grunted. “Yeah, okay, fine. But I still hate the other guy more.”

The other guy, a smarmy dyes-his-hair blond white guy with beady eyes, was definitely more firmly in the generalized anti-magic camp than Vidal—he hadn’t publicly offered support for the MFM, but I had the feeling it was only a matter of time and convenience.

Raj snorted. “In other fascinating news, one of Garcia’s maids had all sorts of things to say about her boss and the people who came and went from the house. From what she told us, it seems like Garcia is an equal-opportunity mercenary asshole—he’ll sell to anyone willing to pay, whether they’re a witch, a warlock, or nothing at all. So yeah, he’s making bullets for the Ordo and participating in the Culhua’s rituals and benefitting from working with the Pelayos…”

“And why the fuck didn’t we talk to the maid before?” I demanded.

“No reason to talk to Garcia,” he replied with a shrug. “So thanks for that.”

I snorted. “Next time, how about you just work with me from the start and save us both the trouble of a hospital visit?”

Raj smirked. “Because I needed probable cause, dumbass. You remember what that is, right?”

“Yeah, I remember what that is, Tony. I also remember how to do real police work, which is why I was there in the first place.”

Raj shrugged. “Can’t just have a civilian leading an investigation, can I?”

“You could have fucking listened to me when I wanted to dig into Landa,” I pointed out, still a little irritated about his refusal to just give me the file.

“I listened, Hart. I just had my hands tied.”

“By fuckingwho?” I demanded.

Raj grinned even wider, showing me those teeth that were sharper than they should have been on both the top and bottom rows. “A certain member of the current attorney general’s office,” he replied. “Who for the moment is going to remain nameless until the warrant that’s in process can be executed.” He examined his fingernails, turning his hands over, and I swear to God I’d never seen him so smug. “I imagine you’ll see it on the news.”

* * *

I did,the day after that, in fact, see what Raj was talking about on the news while sitting in my hospital bed and trying to choke down the absolute shit that passed for hospital food. The Assistant DA, Deborah Hatfield, was led out of City Hall in cuffs and flanked by Raj on one side and Drew Shao on the other, along with a handful of Federal Agents I didn’t recognize.

“Sonofabitch, Tony,” I muttered at the TV. “Good for you.” As I watched, a series of text messages from Kurtz informed me that they were executing warrants on the rest of the Culhua and the remaining three Ordo members besides Hatfield—they’d held off until the DA was in custody so that she wouldn’t try to block any of the rest of the warrants.

So they’d finished what I started, and it should have felt good, but even though it looked like the Ordo and the Culhua were done for good—at least in Virginia and for the foreseeable future—I still felt… hollow. We’d failed to save Hector Dimas. Failed a lot of people over the years because of political bullshit and corruption.

Yeah, we’d gotten the bad guys. But there were always more where they came from.

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