BOOKER Box Set #2 (A Private Investigator Thriller Series of Crime and Suspense): Volumes 4-6

by John W. Mefford

  “You say that like you’re forcing yourself.”

  “I am, kind of.”

  Alisa leaned in closer, pressing her chest against mine. Then she lifted her large, round eyes. “I want you to be careful. He did it once. He might try it again.”

  “Maybe I didn’t see it right. I didn’t get a clear look at his face.”

  Alisa pressed her lips together.

  “What?”

  “You trying to talk yourself out of it?”

  “I don’t know.” My vision drifted to the side.

  “Hello, your girlfriend is leaning against you.”

  “Sorry,” I said with a chortle, shifting my sights to her.

  “Are you seeing this logically?”

  “Actually, I’m wondering something rather obvious, something I should have asked hours ago.”

  “And that is?”

  “If that was Metrick I saw through the rain-covered window, he was sitting on the passenger side. Who was driving the huge Oldsmobile ’98?

  “A friend from prison, if we’re working off your theory.”

  I brought a finger to my chin. “Metrick did seem a little squeamish when I asked him where he was at the time of Officer Miller’s murder Saturday night. Said he had an alibi. Was staying at a woman’s house.”

  “Now you’re wondering if that was a legitimate alibi?” Alisa circled her arms around my waist.

  “Hell, I’m wondering if any of the crap he spilled out was true or not—about that night, about Donley.”

  “Can you talk to the woman? What’s her name?”

  “Crap. I never got it. Didn’t have the chance. One of his baby mamas showed up just as we were winding down our conversation and started beating on him.”

  “He hasn’t made too many friends, from what it sounds like.”

  “Given what I witnessed, I think he’d be on the top-ten list of men most likely to be smacked and clawed to death in South Dallas.”

  “But still, he tried to run you over. And for what? It’s hard to not think he’s connected to these murders.”

  “I know he’s not aware I’m working directly for Ligon on this special investigation, but he could see my interest in those two homicides. I need to find his ass and nail him to the wall to get some straight answers, including the name of the woman he was with on Saturday night.”

  “If he was with her at all.”

  “True.” I rubbed my face. “I need to tell Henry about Metrick and the car incident as well. This is obviously a crucial part of the investigation, and he’s part of the team. Hell, he might know something about Metrick or someone who’s connected to Metrick.”

  “Just make sure you’re careful. Tell me you will be careful.”

  I thought about the added responsibility of Bolt, on top of Samantha . . . and even Alisa, to a degree.

  “I will be careful,” I said in monotone and gave her a mock salute.

  Alisa goosed me.

  “Hey, you have to fight fair.”

  “Just realize that in most battles, two tons will destroy two hundred pounds, even if you’ve been working out like a fiend.” She squeezed my shoulders, then moved to my pecs. “You get in another bullfighting session with the Oldsmobeast and you’ll become roadkill.”

  “I hear you,” I said, turning to look into her eyes. “But I’ve also got a headache. I’m probably not thinking clearly.”

  “I think I need to get you some ice.”

  “I’ll go. You want that cold drink now too?”

  “Surprise me,” she said, moving behind her laptop.

  “Sprite, root beer, or straight-up water. Too exciting,” I said, disappearing down the stairs.

  Justin was wiping down the tables in the back of the bar.

  “Hey, don’t you have hired help?”

  “Right. Your girlfriend is my hired help. But I can tell you guys are working on something important…as always. I know when it’s best not to ask.”

  “So you can teach an old dog new tricks,” I said, moving around the bar, filling up two glasses with ice, and then pressing the hose to pour us both a carbonated beverage.

  “I’m going to need to call in all favors for tomorrow night,” Justin said.

  I gave him a quizzical look as I found a towel and wrapped it around a mound of ice.

  “Halloween. Occurs every year about this time. People get dressed up, living out their childhood fantasies—”

  “Or nightmares.”

  “That too. All I know is, it’s one of my biggest nights of the year. Easily top ten.”

  “So you need Alisa. Is this also when you need me to run security just to keep the dogs at bay?”

  My monthly rent for the office space fourteen stairs above us amounted to me working security a few nights a year. All in all, it was a fair deal. But the timing wasn’t good. The chief was all over my ass to find the killer, if there was indeed a killer. He just wanted the killing to stop, that much I understood. I wanted the same thing, and I would feel a hell of a lot better if I could grab one person by the throat and hand him over to the chief.

  Investigative work, though, took time. Leg work, research, brainstorming, then rinse and repeat about a hundred times. If we were lucky, the scum rose to the top. We scraped them off the surface and let the justice system take over.

  “You got it,” Justin said. “You know how to play that tough-guy role without letting the average patron see you sweat. They think you’re just part of the crowd having fun.”

  “Anything to keep the money flowing.”

  “Amen, brother,” he said, taking in a deep breath.

  “I might need to bring in Paco to help out. You cool with that?”

  “I expected it. Free drinks and food for the security detail,” Justin said.

  “You got a band set up to play?”

  “Even better. I’ve got three psychics coming in. They’ll read your palm, speak to dead people from your past. I think one of them is certified to operate a Ouija board.”

  “Certified?”

  “That’s what their agent said.”

  “Psychics have agents?”

  “The good ones do.”

  I just shook my head, amazed at Justin’s unflappable quest to pull off a marketing coup. It usually worked, so who was I to question a bunch of psychics at The Jewel’s annual Halloween bash?

  “To get everyone in the mood, I’ve got some theatre kids coming in tomorrow from Bolt’s school,” Justin said while he grabbed the mop out of a bucket and swept it from side to side. “They’re going to decorate this place like you’ve never seen.”

  “When did you make that deal?”

  “Bolt and I talk. He’s got friends.”

  “He’s always had friends.”

  “What’s that supposed to mean?” Justin lifted his head, shifting the mop to his opposite hand.

  “Nothing.” I grabbed the drinks and plodded back up the stairs, each step jarring my contusion. By the time I reached the top, I was slurping the remnants off the top of my glass, enjoying the infusion of the carbonation—so much, apparently, that I didn’t hear the conversation taking place in our office.

  “Booker, look who dropped by,” Alisa said, her hands clasped in front of her faded jeans.

  Shifting my eyes to the right, I saw Cindy leaning a foot against the wall.

  “What’s up, Cindy?”

  “Hi, Booker. Sorry if I’m intruding on you and Alisa doing your little PI thing.”

  I walked around the desk and mouthed, Little PI thing, to Alisa as I handed her the glass.

  “I would have grabbed you a drink if I’d known you were here. How’s life for Cindy Valentino?”

  “Cindy just dropped by to…well, for a little girl talk,” Alisa said, her lips tight.

  “You know me, always have drama of some kind going on,” Cindy said, rubbing her forehead.

  Couldn’t dispute that.

  Before she and Henry had hooked up, I was the object of he
r affection. Actually, I was more like her obsession. I was a piece of meat she wanted to skewer and ride like a horse. She lived two doors down from me and always had a knack—or was it a well-formulated plan?—for showing up when I least expected it. Which was every time I saw her…either in the hallway, the condo gym, or even bull-rushing into my apartment. And she usually approached our interactions hormones first.

  She used her overdeveloped body to try to mesmerize me while she tried to impress me with other skills. Like dancing. She was always showing off her latest dance moves, but they wouldn’t work. Nothing did. Her odd conduct only made me wonder if she’d been dropped on her head as a child and then caged up with no human interaction for twenty years. What else could explain her awkward behavior around me?

  The day I saw her and Henry hit it off was the day I decided not to buy life insurance, although my concern shifted to Henry’s mental health. What did he see in her? They were as different as chalk and cheese. And her tacky one-liners seemed contrived. But somehow they had lasted several months, even took a nice vacation to Hawaii together. And still, Henry seemed smitten. He was either punch-drunk in love or just had a blind spot about the size of a 36DD bra.

  “Care to share, or is this for girls’ ears only?” I asked, trying to read through the file on Judge Fischer.

  “Girls only…for now,” Cindy said, squeezing her arms together while giggling.

  I glanced her way, knowing there was a story in there somewhere, if I cared.

  Alisa returned the giggle, almost like a good big sister. She knew Cindy was a bit of an odd duck, had issues interacting with people at a normal level. And despite what she’d heard from me, she still saw the best in Cindy, where very few others could. Starting with me. For Henry’s sake, I’d made it a priority to at least be civil with Cindy. But I was no Alisa; that much was obvious.

  I began reading through one of the recent cases Judge Fischer was hearing. He’d yet to rule on the case, but was in the process of conducting research on other similar cases. The case involved a man accused of running drugs across state lines. He claimed he had no knowledge that drugs were in his eighteen-wheeler, while the prosecutor who’d convicted him the first time reiterated that he’d been caught twice before. Seemed like an open-and-shut case. Not so, said the defense. They claimed the man couldn’t be held responsible for simply doing his job—driving a truck to a destination. And that his colleagues at the truck company had used the man to unknowingly be part of a drug-trafficking operation.

  Suddenly I heard myself thinking, which meant Alisa and Cindy had gone quiet. I looked up to find them staring at me.

  “Do I smell?”

  “No,” they said in tandem.

  They exchanged another glance, followed by a giggle.

  “Am I the butt of a joke I don’t know about?”

  “Oh, Booker. It’s just girls being girls,” Cindy said.

  Lifting my head, I shifted my eyes to my partner then back to the papers and photos scattered across my desk. It was a not-so-subtle hint that we needed to wrap up our information-sharing session, define our next steps, and start making some progress.

  But we couldn’t do anything with Cindy hovering nearby.

  “Do you have plans for this evening?” I asked Cindy, placing both elbows on the desk.

  “Just need to figure out my costume for Justin’s big shindig tomorrow night.”

  “So you’ll be there?”

  “Of course, silly. It’s our first Halloween date.”

  “Our?”

  “Me and Henry, silly. I thought you were supposed to be the PI who could figure anything out.”

  I never figured you out, I thought but didn’t say.

  Alisa stood up. “So we’ll catch up for lunch in a few days?”

  “Sure thing. By then, who knows, I might have some news to share,” Cindy said in a singsong tone, clapping her hands together. Then she grabbed Alisa’s hands and began to jump up and down.

  If anyone ever needed a Valium, it was Cindy, on a daily basis. Maybe twice a day.

  “Any ideas on your costume? Does Henry even have a say in it?” Alisa took Cindy by the elbow and escorted her to the top of the stairs.

  “Henry said it’s all my decision. Can you believe he has that kind of faith in me? I mean, some girls might dress him up in a pumpkin outfit stuffed with newspaper and make him wear green socks up to his knees and a green beanie.” She giggled again, then paused and glanced at her nails.

  “Henry as a pumpkin. That would be funny,” I said.

  “I know, right?” Cindy turned and took a step back into the office.

  Damn. Acting conversational and nice had backfired.

  “Don’t you have some place to be?”

  Alisa gave me the eye. What can I say? It just spilled out, I thought. Cindy never lost a beat.

  “Oh,” she said, holding up a finger, then sifting through her purse. “Hold on, I know it’s in here.” Cindy handed Alisa a pair of sunglasses, two hair scrunches, three pens, a container of lotion, and a handful of loose change. “Dammit, I know it’s here.”

  I looked at Alisa and finally understood what they had in common. But I’d been sworn to secrecy to never bring it up. I just pressed my lips together as I tapped my phone.

  Alisa got the picture.

  “Can I help you, Cindy?”

  “Ah, hell.” Cindy just dumped her entire purse on my desk. Something dusty and purple spilled onto a sheet of paper from the judge’s file.

  I grabbed the page and tried to blow off the substance.

  “Found it,” she said, holding up her phone like we should be proud.

  I rolled my eyes. “What is this stuff?”

  “Eye shadow, silly,” she said, not caring that she had defiled our important document. “Now, I should be…yep, there it is.”

  “What?” Alisa asked.

  “I got the text from Dina. Well, it’s still technically Dino for now.”

  Dino/Dina was Cindy’s cousin. The original son of Vincent Sciafini had been the key witness in the Arts District murders months back. The case had taken me to Boston and to Chicago. But with the help of Dino/Dina, I caught the perp in my home city. Actually, much closer than that.

  “Is he still going through with the operation?” Alisa asked.

  Turns out Dino had been living a secret life. He moved to Dallas to escape the wrath of his father and to morph into Dina. To each his own. Or her own. Whatever. But it wasn’t until he/she came forward that I found out that Sciafini was his father and Cindy’s uncle.

  Better known as “The Shark” when he was under fifty, Sciafini, now in his seventies, had since created one of the largest crime organizations in the Midwest. He was based in Chicago. I knew all of this because we had a past. One that included his involvement in a financial scam targeting recent widowers—including my first client—as well as numerous businesses that would likely never pay a dime of taxes to the IRS. He had saved my ass once, using a connection of his at the FBI—go figure—to swoop in and stop a dirty cop and his gang of drug-running thugs from killing me and Sciafini’s moneymaking machine, David Bradley. Another long story.

  Later, he even asked me to help find his young daughter who’d been kidnapped. I swore I’d never work for the guy—he’d most likely murdered some people in his time, although he’d never been convicted of any felony. I only agreed because I knew what it would feel like to lose my Samantha.

  9

  “Squirrels. What purpose do they serve in this world? Nothing, that’s what. All they do is destroy property. I ought to pay someone to eradicate them off the face of this earth.” Vincent Sciafini crossed his legs and cleared his throat, which sounded more like a wild dog growl.

  I watched two squirrels, each the size of a ferret, break into a rumble, apparently fighting over a collection of walnuts at the base of a tree.

  Sciafini suddenly clapped his hands, and the pair froze in their tracks for a moment before scurrying
up the tree. Perhaps they’d gotten word of Sciafini’s reputation and his surly demeanor.

  I sat about four feet to the right of the old guy—about as far away as I could get and still be on the lone bench at the edge of Edsall Park, just down the street from my condo.

  After two days of intermittent rain, the dark cumulus clouds had been replaced with an endless gray sky. It hulked just above the tips of the tallest buildings in the distance, giving an impression that the sky was about to drop onto the city of Dallas.

  I thought Chief Ligon might have leaped to that conclusion just after we got word that Richard Fischer, a judge for the Court of Criminal Appeals, had been murdered. Not just killed, but savagely beaten to a pulp. On many levels I understood the chief’s frustration and his demand to find the killer. A panic rippling through his own department as well as the populous would make this whole situation uncontrollable. As I’d studied during my time at the academy, the fear of the unknown paralyzed the average citizen, especially if those citizens didn’t feel like they could rely on the police to resolve things, and quickly. While a few cops would rise above it, too many would fall prey to the natural instinct to spread the fear like poison ivy, almost unknowingly. Trust would evaporate, and officers would get an itchy trigger finger.

  Then the whole damn city could implode. Riots, looting, arson, vandalism would become epidemic. The chief couldn’t handle that. And I sure as hell couldn’t watch my city—the people I grew up with—wither away like ashes in a smoldering fire. We’d come too far.

  For whatever reason, my mind flashed an image of the white Olds lurching after my body, the resulting human bumper pool, and then a quick glance of my former high school teammate through the rain-soaked window, speeding away.

  I touched the back of my head, spotting the same two squirrels, apparently best buddies, huddled next to each other on a branch above our heads.

  “Why, look at that.” Sciafini pointed a crooked finger in the air. “The two little shits were once bitter enemies. Now they’re best friends. Guess it depends on the environment, huh, Booker?”