“First, I want you to meet my new partner, Evan Keyes.”
“Evan—” Rico extended his hand.
Evan stood and shook it. “Jim speaks very highly of you, sir. It’s an honor to meet you.”
“Likewise.” Rico studied the face for a moment and filed it away for future use. “Bud,” he said turning to Jim. He could feel a lump forming in his throat, another in the pit of his stomach. “I need to talk with you. Can we go outside?”
“And let this good food get cold? Sit down and order something, Rico. We’re all friends here.”
“Bud, listen—” Rico felt his heart pounding. “I … I’m not sure how to tell you this…”
Jim looked perplexed. “What?”
“I have some terrible news.”
Jim cocked his head slightly, and then his eyes flew open wide. He pushed back his chair and stood up. “Valerie? Rico is she okay?”
“Val’s fine. She’s fine. Sit down.”
“Then what? They caught Bobby Canaday, right?”
“Jim, look, this is so hard—”
Jim stared at him slack-jawed. His eyes looked wild with curiosity. His face began to turn red. “Rico, what is it?”
“Please, Jim, sit down.”
“No! Tell me.”
“I don’t know how to … Jim, I—”
The color suddenly drained from Jim’s face. His knees began to wobble. Rico reached out to grab him, but Jim dropped back into the chair as if suddenly losing all strength.
“Doc!” Evan jumped out of his seat.
“Rico,” Jim said, his expression blank with shock. “It’s Melanie, isn’t it?”
“Bud, I—”
“Tell me!”
“Jim, she’s dead.”
“Melanie!” Jim grabbed his face with his hands. “No!”
“I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.”
“No, no, no, not Melanie!”
Jim looked on the edge of insanity. He sat up straight, fists flexed, face crimson with rage. He pounded the table, stood and glanced around as if looking for something to destroy, and then collapsed again and sobbed. He wept for a full minute and then lifted his head and stared at Rico, tears running down his cheeks.
“How?”
“I don’t know all of the details.”
“Tell me!”
Rico hung his head and sighed. “She was shot.”
Jim steadied himself. He stood up and glanced about the restaurant, his eyes darting about the room as if unsure where to stop. He wiped away the tears and took a deep breath, and then his face suddenly hardened. His complexion darkened. His eyes became narrow and hard. “I thought they had him.”
“So did I.”
“Does Valerie know?”
“I came to you first.”
Jim started toward the door. Evan grabbed his arm and tried to stop him, but Jim pulled away and ran out of the restaurant and across the street. Rico approached the hostess, ignoring the stares of the other patrons. “Sandy, I’m so sorry. He just found out his fiancée’s little sister was murdered.”
“Oh, Rico.” Sandy gasped. “Is there anything I can do?”
“Pray for him, Sandy. He’s going to need a lot of prayer.”
CHAPTER
35
SUNDAY—09:11—EVAN’S STREET (MOREHEAD City waterfront) Jim couldn’t believe that Melanie was dead. He had just spent the day with her. She had looked so pretty, so young, so full of energy and life. He ran across the street to the waterfront and slowed to a fast walk. He stopped behind the sportfishing boats and grabbed the railing. He could feel his chest pounding. His eyes were filled with tears. The sky above Carrot Island looked heavy and dark. The waterway, like his heart, was a black rippled channel. He wanted to pray, but he couldn’t do it. Where was God when Melanie needed him? He saw the cloud. The white fog of insanity enveloped him and began to lift him. He tightened his jaws, held his breath, and his hammering heart slowed. He forced his emotions to turn, away from his weak mental state of denial to a force much more strong and useful—anger. Anger was his ally. An emotion he had been forced to push aside—by Valerie, by his Christian friends, by the preacher at his church—because good Christians always turn the other cheek. He had heard that too many times, by too many soft-willed people. Well, to hell with it. Anger was who he was. God had made him that way, and it was time to put it to good use. Just then, he felt a hand on his shoulder.
“No,” he shouted, spinning and swinging. He felt his fist meet bone. He heard a man grunt. He crouched into the classic defensive fighting position and waited as Rico’s bull-sized frame emerged from the cloud. “Rico?”
“Bud, get a hold of yourself. It’s me!”
Jim turned and dashed down the boardwalk. He stopped running in front of Jake’s Waterfront Bar and leaned against the railing. He wanted to explode. He saw the cloud again and roared with anger. Rico ran up to him and stopped.
“Bud, listen. Please don’t run away again.”
“How could this have happened? How can I ever face Val?”
“It’s my fault.”
“You said it was safe, Rico! You said we could all go home, back to our normal lives.” Jim banged the railing with his fist. “You assured me it was safe!”
“I was wrong.”
“Wrong? Rico, Melanie’s dead! She’d be alive right now—” Jim pushed away from the railing and shoved him. “Dead!”
Jim felt the sudden energy of a man injected with phencyclidine. The cloud rushed in. His eyes began to deceive him and the friend standing before him became an animal, a snorting bull with red eyes and sharp teeth. Jim lashed out, striking the bull in the face and grabbing it by the horns. He tried to spin it around and wrap an arm about its neck, but the bull came to life. Jim felt himself lifted and thrown against something hard. In the back of his mind, somewhere in the depths of reason, somewhere on the outside of the terrible cloud where logic still existed, he heard a familiar voice:
“Jim, it’s me. Stop! Have you totally lost your mind?”
Jim felt certain he had. He also felt trapped. He took a swing and caught the bull on the chin with a blow that would have knocked most men unconscious. The bull grunted, shook its beastly head, and charged. Jim threw a second punch, but this time the animal knocked it aside. Jim felt himself lifted and shoved into the wall. The animal pinned his arms by his sides and shouted over and over again in a voice that sounded almost human:
“Stop it, Jim! Stop it!”
Jim had no choice but to stop. He felt the wind squeezed from his lungs. He gasped and tried his best to push away from the wall, but it was like trying to move a boulder.
“Calm down!”
“Nooo!” Jim felt totally helpless, lost in the insanity of the moment and mad with rage. But the more he struggled the harder the bull pushed. Finally, when he thought his body would crumple under the pressure, when his breath gave out and stars began to form in front of his eyes, he went limp. The bull eased off and slowly let him down, and the cloud began to clear. Jim stared into the face of the bull … and the face of his enemy slowly transformed once again into the face of a friend. He grabbed Rico by the shoulders, and then both men dropped to their knees on the sidewalk, panting and snorting and clinging to one another.
“Rico! I thought you were going to kill me!”
“I’m sorry, Jim, but you gave me no choice. Your right jab’s a sledgehammer.”
“I think I was hallucinating.”
“Dude, whatever drugs you’re on, you need to get off.”
Jim tested his arms to see if they still worked. He felt like he’d been pushed through a concrete wall by a bulldozer. He had never witnessed such fierce human strength. He huffed and puffed and cursed a few times and then looked into Rico’s eyes and placed his hands on his big friend’s shoulders. “Rico,” he said, tears forming. “What are we going to do, man? What are we going to do?”
“Find him. Bud, I swear, Bobby Canaday is going to pay.”
“What
happened? I thought you had him.”
“Harker’s Island picked him up last night, but they have limited resources. Some of Bobby’s biker friends broke him loose before we could get there.”
“Biker friends?”
“Gang out close to Newport, but that’s all I’m saying.”
“Where is he now?”
“Nothing doing, sport. I tell you that, first thing I know you’ll be going after him.”
“Rico, I need to know.”
“You’ll just have to trust me.”
“First God, now you?”
“What?”
“I do trust you, Rico.”
“Then you take care of Val. I’ll take care of Bobby Canaday.”
CHAPTER
36
SUNDAY—09:40—EMERGENCY DEPARTMENT (EAST Beach Regional Hospital) Jim had to fight to control his emotions as he pulled the ambulance into the bay at Regional. He pictured Melanie lying on the pavement without a face. He wanted to fight. He wanted to kill. “Wait here Evan,” he said climbing out and running into the emergency department. The tiled hallway was crowded with gurneys occupied by sick people. Scrubbed nurses and doctors occupied both resuscitation rooms. Bloody sheets, cables, and plastic tubing littered the floors. Jim spotted the charge nurse in Trauma Room-1 and hurried in. “Mindy, have you seen Val?”
“Hey,” a blue-scrubbed doctor shouted, setting down a bloody scalpel. “Get him out of here!”
“I need to find Dr. Vick.”
“Hand me a hemostat,” Dr. Rogers ordered. He snapped his fingers and glared at Jim. “Tell your sweetheart she picked a magnificent time to bail on us. I suppose we have you to thank for that. Get him out of here Mindy!”
“What are you doing?” Mindy exclaimed pulling Jim from the room. “This is his ER, Jim. You can’t just—”
“This is Valerie’s ER, Mindy. And I need to find her. Did you see where she went?”
“Her phone rang. She answered it and ran out and that was the last we’ve seen of her.”
“Thanks.” Jim ran down the hallway glancing into the treatment rooms. He checked all of her usual spots—the physician’s lounge, the women’s locker room, X-Ray, her office—and then ran outside to the parking deck. Her reserved space was empty. He tried her cell and was sent to voicemail. Finally, he walked back to the ambulance bay. Evan leaned on the hood of the ambulance with a smoke in his hand. “Find her?”
“No. I’d like to drive by her house. But first, you said you’re from Newport, right? Do you know a guy named Bobby Canaday?”
“That redneck? Yeah, I know Bobby Canaday. Got himself kicked out of the army and thrown into prison for dealing meth. Haven’t seen him for some time.”
“Was he involved with a biker gang in the area?”
“Involved? He’s second in command of a gang called the Screaming Devils. This is a bunch of hardcore white supremacists, doc. Klan. You don’t want to mess with them.”
“Evan, he killed my fiancée’s little sister.”
Evan shook his head. Jim had never seen him look so serious. “Didn’t you say your friend Rico raided their clubhouse last night? If he did kill that girl, he wouldn’t go back there, would he? I’m pretty sure they have a sister club in Durham. In fact, the one I’m thinking about is close by my house.”
“Then that’s got to be where he went. Evan, look, if I went with you to Durham do you think you could take me by their complex?”
“Nothing doing, doc. I’m not getting involved in some covert paramilitary operation. Those guys wouldn’t think twice about slitting your throat and burying you in the woods.”
“I need to find him.”
“And then? What do you plan to do when you find him?”
“I don’t know.”
“And if you get caught snooping around?”
“Then I’ll take down a couple of those bikers with me.”
“I’m not talking about the bikers, I mean the cops. I don’t know, doc. You’re asking a lot. But … well, I’m pretty good friends with my supervisor. I could give him a call and see if he’ll let you ride a shift with me. I suppose we could wait until after midnight or so and ride out there one night. When do you want to go?”
“Tonight.”
“Tonight? Doc, we don’t get off here till seven o’clock.”
“It’s tonight, Evan.”
“You’re just going to leave? You’d risk losing your job, and mine, to find this guy?”
“I’d risk my life.”
“Doc, you may be crazier than I am.” Evan sighed and stepped aside with his cell. Jim got lost in his thoughts. He considered Evan’s question: What then? He had no idea what he would do if he found Bobby Canaday, but the stirring sensation in his gut told him it wouldn’t be pretty. But he was past the point of no return. “All right,” Evan said lowering his phone. “We’re on. They were going to be shorthanded tonight. My supervisor approved it without question. Do you know Durham?”
“No, but I’ve got a GPS.”
“Meet me at Station-2 on Old Fayetteville Street at 1900. It’s just off the Durham freeway. Drive up to the gate and punch in 1-3-4 on the access box. Gate is automatic.”
Thankfully, Evan didn’t talk much on the way back to the station. Jim gave up trying to reach Valerie by phone and typed a quick text:
Looking for you everywhere. Please call. I just heard about Mel.
Evan pulled into the bay. Jim grabbed his gear bag, climbed out of the truck, and walked into his supervisor’s office. Bill Bagwell shouted and cursed and denied their request to leave early—that he was terribly sorry, but for them to leave would put him short of medics, and that, dead girl or not, they had a system to run and they should finish their shift like good team players. Jim could still hear him shouting obscenities as he entered the locker room on the other side of the building. He removed his uniform shirt, stuffed it into his bag, and followed Evan out of the building.
CHAPTER
37
SUNDAY—10:25—KNIGHT SQUAD OFFICE (Police Headquarters) Rico couldn’t remember a good night’s sleep. His body had been running on caffeine and sugar for such a long time he had almost forgotten how to sleep. He rubbed his eyes and yawned, thinking of the encounter with Jim. The absolute defeat he had seen was so unlike the self-assured fighter he had come to know so well. But worrying about Jim would have to wait. Exhaustion was quickly overtaking him, and if he didn’t sleep soon he would surely collapse. He removed his sidearm and set it on his desk. Then he dropped into his squeaky old wooden chair and emitted a long cleansing sigh. He touched his swollen nose, felt his tooth with his tongue, and then closed his eyes and leaned back. He was beginning to drift off when his office door creaked open and Eric Strong stepped into the room.
“Sorry, L-T.”
“It’s okay,” Rico said, briskly rubbing his eyes. “What’s up?”
“I came to check on Jimmy. Any news?”
“They lifted off about ten minutes ago. Should be at Trinity within the hour. I’m heading that way if you’d like to tag along. Got a little job to do while I’m there, and I might need your sharpshooting.”
“Let me guess … Bobby Canaday?”
Rico nodded. “I’ve already spoken with Juan Chavez of the Dagger Unit. He’s offered us assistance.”
“Who else is with us, sir?”
“It’s just us. Clean and Hose are on loan to Jacksonville for a meth-lab raid. Cadarian’s on injured reserve. And with Jimmy out and Keith in the classroom, that leaves you, Ham, and me. Ham’s in court this week.”
“What about Barnes?”
“Barnes is out on psychiatric leave. Went home last night and got drunk. Beat up his wife then went outside and shot the neighbor’s dog. Beast wouldn’t stop barking.”
“Tony shot a dog?”
“Crosshair killing must get to a guy after a while.”
“So we’re going to Durham. Have you ever been there, sir?”
“It’s a lot
like East Beach. Drugs, gangs, and lots of woods.”
“This could turn into a war, sir.”
“Already is a war, Slinger. But we are about to end it.”
CHAPTER
38
SUNDAY—10:59—CRYSTAL COAST CONDOS (Reedy Creek Circle, East Beach) Jim had never seen Valerie so frantic. Her white-knuckled grip on the steering wheel of her beamer was only matched by the mad expression on her face. She seemed on the edge of a breakdown. Her eyes pleaded for an explanation, but his words had no effect. She gazed at him as if he were a threat, the reason for all of her pain. “My little sister is lying on a stainless-steel table in the Medical Examiner’s office, Jim, and she doesn’t have a face! It’s your fault. Your life is a disaster. Everywhere you go people get killed. I’m sorry, but I can’t take this anymore.”
“Where are you going?”
“Where am I going? I’m going to get my little sister! We have a funeral to attend!”
Valerie shifted into drive and stomped on the gas. The BMW coupe 335i tore out of the parking lot and hit the boulevard flying. Jim stood and watched her race away. He sensed his head beginning to fog. The tiny object in his hand magnified his pain. The tiny sparkling facets of the diamond shimmered in the sun. He closed his hand into a tight fist and summoned the image of Bobby Canaday’s ugly masked face. He knew what he had to do.
* * *
Jim pulled off the noon ferry to Core Creek Island and parked under the live oak at the end of his driveway. The sun felt like a blistering torch. His mind cooked. He walked out onto his deck and stood for a few moments sweating, gazing out over the marina. He glanced at Sadie’s boat. The companionway cover was closed. Just as well, he thought. He was in no mood to deal with another woman. He felt his phone vibrate, glanced at the screen, and then pushed the icon to hear the voicemail. “I called the station,” Rico said, his voice a half-octave higher than usual. “Bill Bagwell was pretty hot. Said you left in the middle of the shift. Look, this thing’s getting out of control, fast. I need you in protective custody right away. Whatever you’re doing, stop, go home, and wait there. I’ve got two uniformed police officers on the way out to Cedar Creek right now. I’m keeping you under guard until this thing is over, and that’s an order. Call me ASAP. That’s another order!”
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