BOOKER Box Set #1 (Books 1-3: A Private Investigator Thriller Series of Crime and Suspense)

by John W. Mefford

  But her beeline was nothing faster than a worm inching ahead in slow motion. Still, she gave it everything she had. Shuffling, lunging, prodding her legs to take one more step, then cajoling them to pull her body another three feet. Each step took laser-like focus, her arms trying to pull unresponsive legs. She could no longer feel the bottoms of her feet. She looked down and wondered if somehow her blood had been cut off. Maybe the heroin had impacted her blood flow. Who knows what kind of shit was in the batch she’d been given?

  Finally, she reached the grass, and her toes felt a tingle against the moist lawn. Glancing around, she saw no one, heard nothing, her glare centrally focused on the front porch and the four steps to reach it.

  A few feet from the porch, her pulse again started to sprint, as emotion invaded her throat. Part of her just wanted to cry out, hoping anyone alive would hear, come to her rescue, call the cops. Soon, it would be over. Soon, she could relax and try to recapture what it was like to be young again. Maybe not so innocent, even before she’d been plucked off the street.

  Falling to her knees, she pulled an elbow onto the first wooden step, then dragged her legs behind her, grunting with each surge of energy. Up to the second step and the third. Just as she willed her body up to the warped porch, a diesel engine roared to life behind her. Looking over her shoulder, the grill and wide tires of a pickup split the fog, hauling ass, moving right toward her, the engine’s growl feeling like a half-ton demolition ball slamming into her chest. She jerked her elbow forward, and a two-inch splinter gouged her forearm. Blood poured from the wound, but she didn’t care.

  Lunging toward the door, she knocked with spastic fists until her knuckles bled. She glanced back. The truck had just crossed the road, spilling into the perfectly manicured lawn, fishtailing slightly, spitting up dirt, the engine so loud she couldn’t hear herself gasp.

  The doorbell. Leaning up, she jabbed the doorbell repeatedly.

  The truck skidded just next to the Bradford pear, the driver’s side door opening before the vehicle had stopped rocking. Her hands against the front door of the house, she felt a vibration. Someone was unlocking the padlock.

  “Open the door please. Please, quickly!”

  The man emerging from the truck had thick-soled boots, an enormous brass belt buckle.

  Fucking hick.

  A swell of emotion engulfed her senses and she cried out, “Please. Hurry!”

  A chest the size of Montana with the gut of Nebraska pooching out, the pug-nosed beast took five strides toward her. His boot finally clipped the first step.

  The front door opened. A silver-haired woman wearing a flowered robe, her shoulders leaning inward, raised prune-like fingers.

  “What’s all the commotion about?”

  She wore glasses, but the old woman’s eyes had yet to spot her, crumpled on the wooden floor of the front porch.

  “Down here. Help me, please!”

  The two females locked eyes just as the beast picked her up by the scruff of her neck, as if she were nothing more than a lost alley cat.

  “Nothing to worry about, ma’am,” he said with a thick Southern accent.

  “Why is she yelling that she needs help?” The woman crossed her arms, took a single step forward.

  “Call the police. I’ve been held hostage. Please!” she yelled. The man chuckled, holding her neck. “The youth today have no respect for the law.”

  He flashed a piece of crumpled paper toward the old woman. “It’s called failure to appear. She skipped her hearing for the third time—drug possession charge. I’m licensed with the state of Texas, and I’ve been asked to bring her in.”

  Catching a clump of auburn hair in his grasp, his fingers clamped down on the back of her neck like the Jaws of Life…with the opposite effect. She cried out, her entire spine feeling like it was being invaded by a million fire ants. Suddenly, his thumb popped in further—he’d torn through her skin with his vice-like grip. Whatever air was left in her lungs was sucked out. Flailing her arms, choking, gagging, it felt like the bastard’s fingers were tearing through what little flesh she had, to reach bone. His fingernails must have been filed like a box cutter.

  She couldn’t even raise her head to look at the old woman, but the lady must have seen the brutality. Right?

  “At this stage, they’re no different than a wild animal. Fuckin’ shame,” he said.

  The woman shuffled loose house shoes onto the porch. “I’m not a fan of that language, young man.”

  She raised her eyes for a moment and saw the old woman crossing her arms, her lips drawing a straight line.

  “I apologize, ma’am. You spend enough time around untamed animals, it gets to you, is all I can say.”

  “Let me go!”

  “Ooh, she’s a wild one. Heroin. It’s at an epidemic level with this age group.”

  He shuffled backward another couple of steps, her head attached to his bear claw. The agonizing pain was unlike anything she’d felt or even imagined any human could sustain. A dagger or a point-blank shotgun blast couldn’t have felt any more painful. She saw drops of blood staining the grass around her, followed closely by an open faucet of tears.

  “This one here is desperate, going through withdrawal. But we’ve got to be strong and not give in to the temptation. I don’t have any heroin to give to her. Do you?” he asked the old woman.

  “Huh?” The old lady acted surprised. “Of course not.”

  “Please. You must help—” she sputtered.

  “Are you hungry?” The beast stuffed a candy bar down the girl’s throat, jamming her airwaves and her voice.

  “Don’t mean to bother you so late at night, ma’am,” he said, nodding to the woman.

  He backed toward the truck. Just as he tossed her inside, she caught a quick glance of the woman still standing on her porch, void of emotion. She must be blind or too old to know better.

  She finally was able to spit out the chocolate and caramel and began to kick and scream and throw her arms every which way. The man leaned over, grabbed the seatbelt buckle, and locked her in. Growling and bawling, the girl slammed her elbows and fists into his head. He didn’t even flinch, as if he was made of stone. Like a caged animal, her rage grew even more furious, as knuckles cracked against glass, her shoulders and head smashing against hard plastic, hoping to launch the airbag, anything to create a diversion, to give her another opportunity for escape.

  Anything to avoid a return to the basement, the drug-induced delirium, and the invasive, slithering tongue.

  Oh God, the tongue.

  Suddenly, the force of a twenty-pound bat slammed into her torso. The man had swung his sledgehammer fist. She heard a crack just below her left breast. Touching her side, she felt a sharp bump—a broken rib. Spears of pain pierced her chest, evaporating every ounce of fight left in her, as if a giant helium balloon had just been shot out of the sky. Helpless screams clogged her ears, nothing more than the shredded, rubbery flesh of the balloon falling hopelessly to the pitiful earth.

  Her last gasps for air only served to fog up the windows. Within seconds, the old woman’s silver hair and yellow, flowered robe blended into nothingness—just like the girl’s hope.

  The young girl had finally been defeated.

  2

  Hunched over, squinting a single eye through her front blinds, the eighty-nine-year-old great-grandmother watched the silver dually back out of her yard. Through the cover of darkness and fogged-up windows, the images from the truck were nothing more than a hazy blur, reds and whites thrashing all over the cab.

  Damn, that girl was putting up a pretty good fight.

  The woman’s eyesight wasn’t as bad as some people thought, especially her eldest daughter, who insisted that she move into a senior home down in Florida.

  Those places smelled. The only way she’d end up in an old folks’ home was if they strapped her to a gurney and put her in one of those CareFlite helicopters. But they had better bring an army of medics and a va
lium. Helicopter or plane, it mattered very little. She hadn’t been fond of heights since 1973, when she’d been stuck on the ledge of a lighthouse down at the coast just as the leading edge of a hurricane battered the seaside town of Port Isabel.

  The pickup’s diesel engine growled, and she watched red lights disappear into the murky fog.

  Stepping away from the window, the old woman reset her spectacles, then dropped her hands in the front pockets of Martha—her housecoat that had been part of her life for the last twenty-six years. She padded over to Duffy, her overstuffed, brown suede chair. Everything that had meaning in her life had a name.

  Using her arms as anchors on either side, she slowly dropped into the chair, her hundred-pound frame barely putting a dent in old Duffy. She took the remote control in her hand but hesitated before unmuting the Weather Channel.

  The way that man held the girl didn’t seem right. Her eyes were bugging out. Her arms and legs were dancing around like they’d been plugged into an electrical socket.

  Then again, drugs would do that to you, especially heroin.

  Over the years she’d seen everything from the front porch of her simple home. Tapping a finger to her cheek, she counted the time since she’d lived on Shorecrest Drive. It was either forty-one or forty-two years since she’d moved in. She acquired the place for practically nothing because everyone complained about the airport noise. Didn’t matter much to her. It helped her sleep at night usually.

  Maybe that’s why she’d tossed and turned in her bed this evening. Damn fog had grounded the airplanes. She’d never thought much about how reliant her sleep patterns had become on the streaking jets’ white noise.

  She chuckled out loud, recalling all the kids who’d ended up at her house late at night. There was that one girl who simply passed out on the front lawn. The old woman’s three-legged pooch, Gunsmoke, had gone outside for her late-night pee and started barking. Sitting on Duffy in her living room, she heard the commotion and ran outside. She was hit with a rancid smell of booze twenty feet before she got to the girl. The old woman turned on a hose, and the girl came to life and stumbled away.

  Thinking about her recently departed puppy, her eyes became glassy. He’d been her sidekick for the last fourteen years. Always there to protect her.

  A quick memory came to mind—those two boys, or should she call them young studs?

  About ten years back, after a flurry of doorbell rings, she hurried to the front and swung open the door. Two college hunks stood there bare-ass naked trying to cover their junk. For one fella, it was a failed effort. His hands just weren’t big enough.

  God bless him…and his junk, she’d thought to herself. With her eyes burning a hole in his midsection, he said, “Is this the Bachman Lake Whorehouse?”

  If she had been twenty years younger, she could have said or done any number of things. Instead, she just replied with, “Fraternity prank, huh?”

  They nodded, and she shut the door. She’d never forget the images. One in particular.

  Sound came from the flat screen—she’d accidentally clicked the volume button—and a rain slicker squeezed the chubby cheeks of a meteorologist stuck in the middle of a hurricane on the Indian coast. He was actually leaning at a forty-five-degree angle to offset the high winds. Hope that wouldn’t hit Dallas any time in the next couple of days. Wait, he was actually on the other side of the planet. Nothing to worry about for at least a week, she figured.

  The sounds of crashing waves behind the weatherman allowed her mind to drift, and she couldn’t stop thinking about the desperate pleas from that girl. The hysterical tone of her voice, tears draining down her freckled face. Drugs or not, she seemed distraught, afraid for her life even. But who wouldn’t be afraid to go back to jail, especially if she was on the verge of being cut off from her drug supply?

  It was a damn shame that it took a bear-sized man to endanger himself and wrangle these young kids into understanding right from wrong. Rules weren’t made to be broken, her mother would say when she used to cut in line at the ice cream parlor.

  A quick image of the girl’s white-knuckled hand clutching the old woman’s robe flashed across her frontal lobe. Her fingers seemed different. Had she used an ink pen to draw something? Maybe it was the phone number to her drug dealer. Could have been a smiley face to help her survive the daily struggle of living with a drug addiction. Who knew? Her eyes were almost as sharp as her mind, but she wasn’t Wonder Woman. Sheesh!

  With the girth of a California redwood, the man looked like he had the strength of the Man of Steel. But his yes ma’ams and no ma’ams didn’t fool her. He gave off a vibe of someone who’d been in a few scraps. With his extra wide pickup, ropers, and massive brass belt buckle, he was pure Texan. That buckle was almost as big as Captain America’s shield. Made her think about an old program she used to watch, Walker, Texas Ranger. Chuck Norris…now that was a man who could do some damage to the bad guys.

  Come to think of it, she never actually saw the man’s badge. He could have been a cop wearing street clothes, or even a Texas Ranger like her hero, Chuck Norris. Nothing to worry about, though. He had the piece of paper that clearly stated the distraught girl had purposely skipped her court appearance for breaking the law.

  Rules weren’t made to be broken.

  She clicked the remote four times, then found an old rerun. A smile parted her lips as she watched Chuck Norris kick the asses of fourteen would-be assailants in about thirty seconds.

  An American hero.

  3

  “Eat more chicken!” Samantha threw a fist in the air, punctuating an exuberant ending to the “Happy Birthday” song for my assistant-partner at Booker & Associates.

  “Hey, Alisa, are you in some type of catatonic state from the mesmerizing torches of age?” Justin, my best friend since the beginning of time, laughed so hard his slim shoulders popped up and down. He was so out of control his wrinkled forehead turned shades of red.

  “Very funny, One Nut. It just so happens that I was carded buying wine at the grocery the other day.”

  My shapely business partner who also happened to be the best damn researcher any private investigator could ask for, planted a hand on the hip of her Lucky Brand jeans while standing at the head of the table, daring Justin to attempt a comeback of his own.

  Justin opened his mouth, looked into the corner of the restaurant, then pointed a finger toward Alisa at the end of the trapezoid table. “That’s kind of interesting, Alisa. But I heard they felt sorry for you.”

  She twisted her head, her amber eyes not leaving Justin. She, like the rest of us, was obviously weary of where the ponytailed bar owner was taking this.

  “Yeah, they found you staring through glass doors at the frozen cans of orange juice for two straight hours.” Covering his mouth, a snorting chortle escaped his lips. “On the can, it read ‘Concentrate.’”

  “Is that supposed to be some type of blond joke, One Nut?” She arched an eyebrow as I heard a couple of “oohs” behind me.

  “Nope. Just an Alisa joke…who happens to be blond.”

  We all busted out laughing until David, the owner of the five-star restaurant we were holding the party in, popped the cork on a bottle of champagne. A high-pitched shriek came from behind me. Not a fan of screaming women, even if it was in response to the sudden pop, I turned slowly and found Cindy burying her face in the neck of her boyfriend Henry, a Dallas County assistant district attorney and one of my old college buddies. Since the pair been an official couple for a good two months, I was trying to categorize Cindy as a friend as well. But we had a history, the kind where I used to look over my shoulder every time I neared my East Dallas condominium. Let’s just say my acceptance of her in any normal fashion was a work in progress. But I kept my thoughts to myself. A small hand tugged on my Hugo Boss shirt.

  “Daddy, Daddy.”

  I looked down at my five-year-old daughter, Samantha, her thick locks pulled back by a purple headband that her mother—
my ex-fiancée—had given her. Even when she wasn’t smiling, which wasn’t very often, tiny dimples highlighted her cute cheeks.

  “Yes, Mittens.” I’d given her this nickname when she was a mound of baby fat, her fingers undetectable.

  “I counted thirty-nine candles, but everyone keeps saying happy thirty-sevenvph.”

  Samantha butchered the last word, but I knew what she meant.

  “Samantha, darlin’.” Alisa leaned down and ran a gentle hand through Samantha’s thick mane, her double shot of tequila already making her sound like a Southern belle. “With that many candles, it’s easy to get lost in counting.”

  “Okay, Auntie Lisa.”

  Samantha nuzzled her head against my side.

  “Do you know how to subtract numbers?” Alisa asked.

  My little girl shook her head, then brought a finger to her jack-o’-lantern mouth. “Wait, is that when you do minus?”

  We chuckled, and Alisa replied, “Yes, darlin’. Just between us girls, here’s a trick you need to remember. Whenever you’re counting candles on my cake in the future, always do minus five. So, if you take thirty-seven minus five, what do you get?”

  Tapping extended fingers on the opposite hand, I could see her full lips moving—a trait she inherited from her curvaceous mother. Thankfully, I’d yet to see my little girl exhibit her mother’s Latin temper. Damn, Eva was a passionate woman. That’s kind of how we got into this…arrangement.

  “Thirty-two?” Samantha raised her shoulders, her saucer-plate eyes appearing as if she’d just used the Pythagorean theorem to come up with the answer.

  Alisa clapped. “Good girl, Samantha. You’re going to grow up to be a financial wiz.”

  Henry, Cindy, and Justin had shuffled closer, while David and his boyfriend Dax were walking back into the side room of their restaurant—Asian fusion with an ambiance that matched the Spider Man lair, literally. I glanced over at David, who looked more like an investment banker dressed in blue Armani, realizing the only reason we’d been able to hold a party at the swankiest restaurant in Dallas was because he’d used his financial genius to swindle Justin’s sister out of twenty-five thousand dollars. We’d traveled a long path to get where we were, including Justin, who’d recently partnered with the Double Ds to develop a mobile food business. Thus far, Fajita Rita’s was raking it in.