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

by John W. Mefford

  “And what, Darrisha?”

  “And move forward in our own way.”

  “Darrisha, you can’t be weak in the face of adversity. It’s time to—”

  “I can’t. I won’t. The end is near, Steven. I think you should resolve yourself to spending the rest of your life in jail. Or…”

  A pause, then he heard a chain rattle, the water now sounding more like a churning, wild river, whose rapids were prepared to swallow another victim.

  “Or what, Darrisha? We’ve come too far to turn back. And we have much work left to accomplish. Think about the feeling you had inside when you gouged that Mexican pig. Remember that euphoria?”

  Through the enormous roar of water, did he just hear a sniffle?

  “Darrisha. Remember your father and the agony he suffered. Let the memories fuel your actions,” he said, raising a tight fist into the air.

  “Steven…you…I can’t. Goodbye…forever.”

  The line went dead.

  Picking up a jug of water, he sloshed down a mouthful, then slammed it to the counter and wiped his face clean. He paced his living room, as lights flickered on the other side of his balcony. The rhythmic thud from a local dance club could be heard in the distance, and closer, the hum of his refrigerator.

  He tried to ignore all of the thoughts cramming for space in his brain, but it was impossible. It all started with his brother, Dale, who was killed in a gang fight in Compton, just south of Los Angeles. Authorities had caught the fucker who put a bullet in his head, a gangbanger named Frank Lupo. But he was let go once new evidence came out, saying Lupo was only covering for his gang leader.

  It was all bullshit!

  He brought both fists to his face and screamed until his voice cracked.

  But that wasn’t the last of it. Not by far.

  Steven’s chest heaved like an accordion as he tried to contain his emotions. Lupo had ironically shown his face in Dallas a few months later. Not surprisingly, he was caught in another crime, this one for distributing cocaine. When Steven heard the news, he had shed tears, because he felt certain the punk who’d killed his little brother would finally serve hard time.

  But Officer Derrick Miller changed everything. Just days after the charges had been filed by one of Steven’s colleagues in the DA’s office, Miller came forward and admitted his partner had conducted an illegal search. The case was thrown out, Lupo walked out of the jail cell and disappeared into the haze of the city.

  “We let a cold-blooded killer walk out of jail like he was at fucking Walmart,” he said to the mirror in his living room.

  Steven let the memory of his time in the mental hospital resonate for a moment. A bunch of emotional wackos all around him, he didn’t succumb to all of the ritualistic crap so-called doctors were spewing. He’d rededicated himself to building his body into a machine, working out six, seven hours a day. He came out a changed man, refreshed. And with a plan.

  A picture of his brother’s smile, with his scraggily peach fuzz, came to mind. But Steven couldn’t keep the warm feeling. He’d yet to make his mark on this world. Much work was still left to be completed.

  His face grew tight, and his jaw began to tremble from the sheer pressure his muscles were exerting. He took a step back then uncorked his body and hurled his phone into the mirror. The glass exploded, sending tiny shards throughout the apartment, coating his hair. He touched the top of his head, then tasted blood on the end of his finger.

  He heard car doors slamming shut, somewhere below his balcony. Like Darrisha said, the end was near.

  But he couldn’t give in. It wasn’t in his makeup.

  He had to prepare for the fight of his life. He’d kill Henry, Booker, or whichever cop showed up at his door. Then, he’d pull every dime out of the bank, rip up his credit cards, and vanish—at least as Steven Lee. He’d reincarnate himself in another town, at another time with one purpose on his mind. To find and kill every cop or judge who broke their promises to the public.

  Opening the hallway closet, he pulled out his favorite pair of nunchucks, then crunched his way across the glass-filled carpet and glared at himself through the remnants of the shattered mirror. He completed his full routine, never once clipping his forearm or shoulder.

  They won’t know what’s going to hit them.

  Two quick knocks on his door.

  He took in a breath, his mind singularly focused on destruction. He’d soon be free to live his new life.

  They hadn’t bashed in his front door, which meant at this point, they only had questions. That gave Steven the advantage.

  Moving heel to toe, he walked to the wall framing the entry and leaned sideways, exposing his torso. No delayed response to kick in the door.

  He had this in the bag.

  He then took two steps, reached for the door, and pulled the lever down.

  21

  Henry and I both huffed as we reached the landing at the fifth flight of stairs. Henry held up a hand.

  “Go ahead…” he said, as sweat dripped off his temples. “I’ll…I’ll catch up.”

  After having to park over a mile away—the party scene in the Uptown area had created a parking lot on the streets—we ran the entire distance, dodging drunk revelers left and right to reach Steven’s apartment complex. Turned out the elevators were under renovation.

  I paused, looking at the dimly lit staircase above us. “Come on, Henry. Just two more flights.”

  Leaning on the railing, he trudged up the stairs. As we entered the sixth-floor hallway, he turned to me. “You’re barely breaking a sweat.”

  “I work out every day while you put bad guys away in jail. Who’s doing more for the community?” I raised an eyebrow, then pulled my Sig out of the holster and flipped the safety off.

  “Do you think he’s been warned?” Henry asked.

  “Who knows? But they are a tight-knit group, it appears. It’s possible.”

  “So tight that Darrisha committed suicide. Never seen anything like it.” Henry pinched his eyes shut for a brief second.

  I hadn’t either. She’d managed to chain her neck to the drain of her tub that was filled with at least four feet of water. Her hands had been locked behind her back.

  “Think about what she did to Paco, Henry. Anyone who did that has huge problems.”

  He nodded as I held up three fingers, signaling the number of doors between us and Steven’s place.

  Henry had warned me that Steven was a workout fiend, strong as an ox and built like one too. Taking the last few steps on our toes, I angled my head around to ensure we wouldn’t be attacked from behind. All clear. Six feet from the door, I stopped, put my ear to the wall.

  All quiet, other than thumping music coming from someone’s overindulgent bass outside.

  Out of the corner of my eye, I could see Henry reaching for his phone, his eyes narrowing a bit. Returning the phone to his pocket, he laid a hand on my back and gave me the nod. Standing off to the side, I knocked twice on Steven’s door, my Sig horizontal to the floor.

  A few seconds ticked by, and I swiped a glance at Henry.

  “He must have been alerted and took off,” Henry said. “We need to put out an APB on him. Or he could be hovering near the door? What do you think?”

  I inhaled a quiet but deep breath, the images of Paco nudging its way into all the gory crime scenes and Eva’s attack. My partner, my buddy. The little man with a heart as big as Texas.

  I whispered, “I think I hear something.”

  I moved in front of the door as Henry said, “I’m an officer of the court, Booker.”

  “I’m not,” I said as I rammed my Doc Marten boot into the door, slamming it open, ripping it from its hinges. I took two steps, then tripped over a pair of feet.

  I looked down and found Steven on his back.

  “Is he dead?” Henry asked.

  “Two gunshots to the forehead.” Blood seeped down Steven Lee’s face, a small pool of it just inches from my body.

&n
bsp; I spotted a pair of nunchucks a few feet away and pointed to them. “Not sure he had a chance to use them.”

  Henry ran his fingers through his hair. We heard people and things shuffling in the hallway, and our heads turned back to the broken door.

  “Must be the team Bobby was sending over—officers, paramedics,” I said.

  Henry looked at me. “Do you think there’s a fourth killer in their group, and he or she was just tying up loose ends to make a clean getaway?”

  Glancing around, I tried to let the evidence speak to me. “All the other murders were crimes of passion. And we know why. This one…it was professional. Unemotional. Efficient. We’ll never catch the guy who did this. And we may never know why.”

  Just then, the room was overrun with uniforms, and we answered a host of questions while standing in the hallway. I looked up and saw the same two FBI suits from Eva’s house.

  “Henry, I need to go check on Samantha and Eva.”

  “No you’re not.” He gripped my shoulder while eyeing his phone. “I almost forgot. Metrick woke up and wants to speak to you.”

  22

  The air in The Jewel filled with laughter and music. Paco’s favorites, from Shakira to Prince Royce, to J-Lo, to a guy named Iglesias. After sitting through a full Catholic service, a flurry of eulogists—including me—and a separate burial ceremony, I was completely drained. Part of that had to do with not getting a wink of sleep, ending my night of murder and mayhem by having a low-key conversation with Metrick McHenry.

  That was a first, and maybe a last.

  Henry and I stood off in the corner, our shoulders slumped. I was glad to see Reyna and the girls, Lalia and Esperanza, hugging and dancing with their friends and family. Finally, a few smiles, mixed in with tears of love and remembrances. It warmed my heart. But my eyes were glazed over.

  “Do you think he’s mixed up in all of this?” Henry asked while looking straight ahead. I noticed Alisa and Cindy sitting at a table, drawing and coloring with a few of the younger kids, including Samantha. Bolt was behind the bar, doing Justin’s grunt work. I was okay with it. I told him it would help put hair on his chest—at least that was what my Uncle Charlie used to tell me.

  “By ‘he,’ you mean Ligon?”

  “Didn’t want to say the name out loud, dude.”

  “Where there’s smoke…”

  “There’s Metrick smoking marijuana,” Henry said with a chuckle.

  Earlier in the day, Henry had been blown away by what Metrick had revealed to us just as the sun peeked through his Parkland Hospital room. I wasn’t far behind.

  With tears in his eyes, Metrick first apologized for almost running me over. He said he’d been forced to ride shotgun next to one of his exes, LaShunda, the same woman who’d chewed his ass at the car wash. He admitted his role. Under pressure to find money he didn’t have, Metrick said I’d stolen his “nest egg.” She forced Metrick to hunt me down. Just before contact, Metrick admitted what he’d done, and she eased up just a tad, which probably saved my life.

  I told him thanks.

  Metrick then went on to tell us that he couldn’t keep living a lie. He was going to come clean, one hundred percent, and let the chips fall where they may. After Henry and I traded stares, we gave him the cut to start talking. Metrick spilled his guts for the next twenty minutes, some of it enough to turn my stomach into a permanent knot.

  He convinced us Donley was indeed a bad cop. He was behind Metrick’s false arrest and imprisonment. Why? was the key question I had. Metrick said Donley was on the payroll of a new drug-dealing operation being led by a guy named Jay Flacko, who happened to work for a guy out of Chicago.

  Sciafini.

  Metrick never said the name, but Henry and I compared notes in the hall and drew the same logical conclusion.

  We wished Metrick well, and Henry even said he’d help him find a job working for the city if he stayed clean. Turns out, Metrick didn’t have stage 3 cancer either. Fabrication appeared to be woven into his way of life.

  The door to The Jewel swung open, and Henry nudged my ribs.

  “Booker, Henry, you’re part of the reason I wanted to drop by.” Ligon’s neck was squeezed inside a starched shirt and high-priced blue suit. His boyish driver, along with two ladies and another man, flanked him and talked among themselves as they spoke on their phones. He must have seen my eyes look over his shoulder at his small entourage.

  “Pay them no attention. Just campaign staff working the polls. Election day and all.” He stuck out his beefy hand. Henry and I reciprocated, reluctantly.

  “The people of Dallas owe you a huge debt by getting to the bottom of this tragic set of murders. Truly, you’ve done outstanding work. I can’t thank you enough,” he said, bringing his hands together like he was posing for a political ad.

  “Sure,” I said, looking around the room.

  He extended his hand again, and I gave it a curious look. “I’ll be needing that special assistant badge back now, Booker.”

  I gave it to him. “So, who’s going to investigate Steven Lee’s murder?”

  His overgrown eyebrow twitched, but his fake smile remained etched in the same position. “We’ll work that case like we do every other, partnering with our friends over at the DA’s office. Isn’t that right, Henry?”

  “Uh, yeah.”

  Ligon moved along, shaking hands as if this was just another campaign stop. He found Reyna and appeared to look sincere as he spoke to her and the girls. Then I heard his voice booming over the music, and I moved closer.

  “Paco was one of a kind. A true hero. And I’d like to say thank you by contributing this check to the girls’ college funds that we’ve set up down at headquarters.”

  “Ten thousand dollars?” Reyna gasped, then tears streamed down her face and she reached up and hugged the chief. He looked to his left, and one of his minions flashed a quick series of pictures.

  “What the hell?” I could hear Henry say behind me.

  “I need a drink,” I said, turning away toward the bar. “The hard stuff, Justin. Please.” He could see the look in my eyes—disgust, and maybe still some guilt when thinking about Paco.

  “Here you go, Booker,” he said.

  I felt a hand on my back. “I hope you voted today, Booker.”

  I shifted my eyes but didn’t say anything.

  “Exit polls show I’m five points ahead of Henry’s boss. How about that?”

  Ligon acted as if he’d just won the lottery. Maybe he had.

  I chose not to respond.

  “As I move up in my career, I’m going to need loyal, capable people around me. From what my advisors tell me, the next stop could be Austin and the governor’s mansion.”

  He popped my back again.

  I sipped my drink then eyed the whiskey swirling among the ice cubes.

  “Did that money come from you or Sciafini?”

  He paused, his fleshy eyes showing a hint of anger. “Sometimes you have strange bedfellows on your way to the top. But it’s worth it, you know. As long as you mean well.”

  I just shook my head. He’d planned this little coup for a while, I suspected. He’d brought in me and Henry to stop the killings so he could look like the white knight.

  “We caught these killers, Booker. That was good, right?” He slapped my back a little harder.

  “Good luck with your career and who you go to bed with. I wouldn’t turn my back on him, that much I’ll say.”

  He left, and Henry quickly took his place. I replayed the conversation.

  “Booker, what am I going to do? My boss thinks I betrayed him, and the mayor is probably in the back pocket of a crime boss. Do you think I’m overreacting?”

  “I wish I could give you the answer you want. But from what I’ve seen, Sciafini is like the plague. He doesn’t stop until it decimates an entire population. First Chicago, now Dallas.”

  Henry nodded, then sipped his drink. “We may need to talk after things settle down a bi
t. Not sure I’m cut out for crime bosses breeding with political figures.”

  Cindy came up and goosed him, which lightened the mood. I forced myself to get out of my chair and interact with the people I cared about. Alisa gave me a huge bear hug; then Samantha jumped up and squeezed my neck.

  “I love you, Daddy,” she said into my ear.

  “Love you too, Samantha. You okay?” She’d grown up so much in the last year, she’d lost a bit of her effusive love.

  “I want you to promise me that you’ll always be careful and not let any bad guy hurt you.”

  “You have nothing to worry about, Samantha. You’ll be safe. That I promise you.”

  She grabbed both of my cheeks and looked me straight in the eyes. She suddenly looked much older, as if I was talking to Samantha, my teenager. “Daddy, you didn’t hear me.”

  “What?”

  “I want you to be careful. I only have one daddy, and I’m going to need you in the future for a few things.”

  I nodded and gave her a long kiss on her soft cheek.

  My mind drifted away. I tried to imagine what life would be like in a few months, with Ligon in power, and Sciafini pulling his strings.

  “Hey, Booker, join us,” Paco’s wife said, dancing to some salsa music.

  With the music pulling me to swing my daughter around, I grabbed Alisa and joined the celebration of Paco’s life. The future could wait another few hours.

  Excerpt from AT Bay (Alex Troutt Thriller Book 1)

  1

  For a fleeting moment, I could feel my breath stutter against my chest. Then the smell of fear returned, choking every other sense.

  Piss. And not just a passing waft. It seemed like my head had been dunked in it, with a hint of crap lingering in the damp air. But there was more. An underlying scent of stale disinfectant clawed at my nostrils.

  I tried to swallow, but a sticky saliva filled my mouth. I would have hurled had I not been scared to death.

  I called out. No discernible words. I think I pushed air through my voice box, but I couldn’t hear a damn thing.