Blood and Belonging

by Vicki Delany

  Deng stopped our truck at the bend. Where the road turned sharply to run parallel to the river. He left the vehicle lights on and we got out. I pulled my flashlight out of my belt. Flashlight and a night stick. That’s all I carried. No weapon. This was a training mission, remember. I was here to observe. To offer comments and helpful ideas when needed.

  A year without the Glock, and I still felt like I had a giant hole in my side.

  Deng carried an AK-47. He was former army, SPLA—Sudan People’s Liberation Army. At first a band of guerillas, fighting for independence from Sudan. Now the army of South Sudan. He’d spent his time in the bush during the war, doing things I couldn’t imagine. Things I didn’t want to imagine. The long and brutal civil war had made these people hard. Some of them didn’t handle it too well. Deng did. He had a quick smile and a hearty laugh. He wanted to be a good police officer. I’d asked him once if he had a wife and children. A mask settled over his face. He yelled at the driver of a scooter who hadn’t come at all close to us. I never asked again.

  The woman was lying at the side of the road, up against a concrete wall. Her skin was as black as midnight. Blacker. An earring made of red glass hung from her right ear. A short tight black dress and red stilettos were clues to her occupation. Another dead hooker in the dusty red streets of Juba.

  This was the fourth. If she was a hooker. If the same person had been responsible. The fourth in three weeks.

  Deng snarled at the security guard who’d found her. The man quickly stepped back. He knew his place.

  I used my Maglite to illuminate the scene. A white ribbon was wrapped around her neck. Wrapped very tightly around her neck. As white and pure as the snow on Kokanee Glacier in midwinter. Same as the others.

  “What do you see?” I asked Deng. That’s the training part of my job.

  “A white ribbon.”

  “Yup.”

  “Do we have a serial killer here, Ray?”

  “I’m beginning to think we do.”

  Don’t miss book two in the Ray Robertson series:

  RCMP sergeant Ray Robertson is serving with the United Nations in Haiti, a land of brilliant color and vibrant life, Vodou and vast above-ground cemeteries. Ray’s job is to train the local police and assist investigations. One call comes in from an American man who has come home to find his wife floating face down in the swimming pool. The American embassy and the Haitian police immediately arrest the gardener, and the case is closed. But Ray isn’t so sure, and he keeps digging.

  VICKI DELANY is one of Canada’s most prolific and varied crime writers. The first book in her Sergeant Ray Robertson series for Rapid Reads, Juba Good, was nominated for a Derringer Award, an Arthur Ellis Award, and the Ontario Library Association’s Golden Oak Award. She is the author of more than twenty published crime novels, including standalone Gothic thrillers, the Constable Molly Smith series, the Klondike Gold Rush Mysteries, and the Year Round Christmas Mysteries. Under the pen name of Eva Gates she is the national bestselling author of the Lighthouse Library cozy series.

  Vicki lives in Prince Edward County, Ontario. She is the past president of the Crime Writers of Canada. Please visit Vicki at www.vickidelany.com. Vicki has written three books for the Rapid Reads series. The first, A Winter Kill, features rookie constable Nicole Patterson. The second, Juba Good, and the third, Haitian Graves are the first two books in the Ray Robertson mystery series.