She ain’t Stella.
Jack looked at the little nutcracker of a girl that sat by the door. She was scowling at him like he’d ridden her mama hard, put her up wet and left her screwed and tattooed by the side of the barn.
The angry girl looked too old to be Jeni’s kid. Jack figured that she was most likely her little sister.
“Join the party.” Jack gestured for Enid to join them.
The girl’s scowl deepened. She got up and sat down in a chair next to Jeni.
Jesus, she looks like she’s trying to pass a bag of antique tacks.
“Do we know each other?” Jeni asked, examining Jack curiously.
“No.” Jack answered too fast to sound honest even to him.
Jack opened his mouth to ask the angry kid her name when Jeni shoved a photograph across the desk.
“I need to find my mother,” Jeni said, her voice quivering. “My real mother.”
He picked up the photo, dismissing any thoughts of the girl.
The photograph showed a smiling woman who was cheesecaking for the camera in a black bikini. Her figure was perfect; her face was not. Jack’s attention was arrested by her dark eyes under slanting eyebrows that were like a raven’s wings that cut upward on a pale winter sky.
Venus flytrap eyes.
Jack glanced at Jeni, comparing her to the woman in the photo.
Zero resemblance.
“Who took the picture?” Jack said, curious who the “fly” behind the camera was.
“She hadn’t met my stepfather yet so I don’t think it was him,” Jeni’s voice faltered. “I thought she was my mother, but that photo was taken one month before I was born.”
“You were adopted?” Jack asked.
“She says I’m hers.”
Jack turned over the photo, noting the time stamp: July 4, 1988. “She wasn’t pregnant with you and you’re not adopted. Was there a surrogate mother?”
“She keeps saying I’m hers. She’s lying!” Jeni shot Enid an embarrassed look and Enid gave her an encouraging smile. Jeni grabbed a business card from Jack’s desk and started tearing off bits of it, dropping the pieces onto his desk.
Jack leaned back, studying Jeni’s eyes.
Stella…
Jeni continued tearing at the card. Jack glanced at Enid, who was giving him a look like she caught him raping the family dog.
“Everything okay?” he asked Enid.
She answered with a scowl.
A noise came from behind a door leading into Jack’s private office. They were currently sitting in his “client” office that he only used for business clients. A fleeting shadow darkened the cloudy glass that separated his private office from the client office. A frown bit across Jack’s face. Just as fleetingly, the frown disappeared. He turned politely to Jeni. “Your goal is to find out the identity of your biological mother. Anything else?”
“I want the truth!” Jeni said, grabbing a new business card and tearing off bits. Her cheeks blotched an unattractive red.
Jack waited with a silence calculated to invite more information.
“I’d rather be crazy on the truth than sane on lies,” Jeni said, her voice breaking.
“What do you think the truth is?” Jack’s eyes gleamed.
Jeni stared at him, confused. She reached for a card but Jack moved the cardholder out of her reach. He smiled apologetically, “Almost out.”
“Cheap bastard,” Enid hissed under her breath.
“What?” Jack shot her a look of surprise.
Enid glared at him.
Jack frowned and turned his attention to Jeni.
Jeni took a deep breath and said, “I don’t know what the truth is. That’s why I’m here.”
“Fair enough,” Jack said. He pulled a contract out of a drawer, set it on the desk. He decided to run some angles on her, see how she reacted. Jack looked pointedly at her outfit, “What do you do for a living, Jeni?”
Jeni raised her chin defiantly. “I’m in nursing school. Full scholarship.”
Jack raised his eyebrows.
Jeni shifted uncomfortably.
Here it comes…
Jeni blurted out, “I’ve had some troubles but I got my life together. I want to know who my real mother is – why she gave me up.”
Artsy. Not a direct hit but winding up to make the pitch…
Jeni shifted forward, turning on the sex appeal like she was flipping a well-worn switch. “I was told you could help me. I was told you’re the best.”
Money shot. Just like Stella…
Jack felt his stomach twist with disgust.
Whatever school they learn it at – they must have his mug shot up ‘cause they know me when they see me.
He took his revenge on Stella by leaving Jeni blinking at dead air. He got up, dug through a file cabinet. He turned, held out a different contract, “We updated our contract.” He hit a buzzer. “Rachel will go over my contract and fees with you.”
Jeni’s mouth fell open in astonishment. “I –I don’t have a lot of money. I am a student...”
Rachel entered. Jack handed her the contract, nodding at Jeni. “Standard contract, Rachel.”
“Oh, I was hoping…” Jeni said weakly.
Jack smiled coldly, gesturing for Rachel to escort them out.
“She said she’s broke!” Enid jumped up angrily.
Everyone looked at Enid in surprise.
Jack said, “Red Cross is two blocks over, kid. I’m not running a charity.”
“She’s a student!” Enid exploded with vehemence that caught Jack off guard. “Give her the student discount!”
“Standard fees,” Jack said stubbornly.
Enid looked pointedly around the room. “Don’t look like you’re rolling in cash to me.”
Why you little…!
Enid said, “If you don’t give her a student discount, we’re walking. We’ll hire some other two-bit jerk who isn’t rude and doesn’t have a bunch of kids out there he doesn’t even know about!”
Jeni’s mouth fell open in astonishment.
Jack turned to Jeni, eyes flashing. “Why don’t you take your little sister home, get her back on her meds.”
Jeni gave Jack a startled look, “I thought she was with you?”
Enid froze, a jackrabbit caught in the crosshairs.
Jack looked from Jeni to Enid, confounded.
In a shot of motion, Enid made a break for the door but Jack sprang from behind the desk and got across the room with surprising speed. He grabbed Enid by the arm, pulled her to a hard stop.
“What the hell…?” Jack growled.
Enid stared up at him in fury and, before Jack realized what was happening, he howled in pain as she sunk her teeth into his forearm. He stumbled back, clutching his arm and staring at her like she was a demon.
Enid jabbed her middle finger in his face, turned and vanished.
Jack looked down at his arm. Blood was seeping through his shirt.
Psycho punk kids!
Rachel rushed to his side. “Are you okay?”
Jack ran into the hallway as the stairwell door was closing. Jack started to go after her but he stopped himself, breathing hard. What was he going to do once he caught her? Spank her?
“Her name was Ivanna Hamm!” Rachel said, “I thought they were together.”
“Don’t these brats have parents? They need to lock up the nut-job parents who don’t know how to control their kids!” Jack exploded. Grimacing, he examined his bloody arm.
“She told me she was with you,” Jeni said, “I thought she was an assistant or something.”
Jack shot her an incredulous look. A teenage brat assistant? Jeni Hargrove had great legs but she wasn’t the sharpest tool in the shed.
I got fooled too…
Jack said, “They should make people pass a test before they have kids!” He gestured for Jeni to return to the office. “Rachel will go over the contract with you.”
“How ‘bout what the kid s
aid – about the student discount?”
Jack gave her a “you gotta be kidding” look but she gave him an angelic smile and he felt himself slipping down into the Venus flytrap power of her eyes.
Maybe that is her real mother…
He mentally shook himself. No way in hell he was going for another Stella! He walked Jeni into the reception room and handed her off to Rachel. He escaped into his office.
On impulse, he stalked to the door and shouted to Rachel, “Make a sign – no kids allowed! Under penalty of I will kick anyone’s ass who brings in anything that can’t vote, drink or cuss out their mama!
I. Hate. Kids.
CHAPTER SIX
A jug fills drop by drop.
–Buddha
I won’t rest until I hunt down the degenerate that did this to you.
The words echoed in his mind as Bud stood in the desert, looking down at a skull that had been bleached dry by the abrasive desert environment. The thought that anyone could think they had the right to kill another person always filled Bud with a steely determination. Bud was the hunter and the killer was now his prey.
The forensic team was methodically digging, labeling and bagging evidence from the shallow desert grave.
The grave wasn’t a grave at all and wouldn’t have been found if Celia McCraw, grandmother of four, hadn’t overturned her ATV and landed nose to nose-socket with the skull. Bruised and bloody, Celia had refused to seek medical attention until long after the police arrived. She and her husband, Thomas, were still sitting on their ATVs, quietly talking as they watched the police work.
Bud walked the perimeter of police tape and markers that staked out the area where the bones had been found. The area was Agua Caliente and consisted of old mines and an extensive network of narrow washes and sandy trails. It wasn’t unusual to stumble onto a landscape of lava or an ancient Native American petroglyph, and the remote setting seemed custom-made for dumping bodies.
Bud observed each individual of the homicide team. It always struck him as an intricate choreographed dance production. Everyone had their part and played their roles to perfection. Photographers were the voyeuristic, anti-social peepers who used their cameras like barbed wire fencing to keep a barrier between themselves and the world. Forensic specialists were the dark-edged academics who solved sinister puzzles in the safety of hidden laboratories. Police were the attention-seeking authority junkies arresting what they secretly desired to be – a rule-flouting member of Joe-Wicked-Public.
Bud smiled to himself at his description of his own profession. Homicide detectives were the curious, unrelenting maggots munching their way through society’s rotting flesh to get to the who and the why and then to surgically excise the offending degenerate.
That’s on a good day.
Bud felt the gathering of a million questions that would cut at his waking hours until he had his prey quarried and slumped behind a defense attorney. Bud imagined himself in the witness box, staring into the eyes of…
Who?
Bud tried to visualize the person but saw only a shadow of a person wearing a cheap suit and tie.
“Any thoughts?” Detective Jenson said as he walked to Bud’s side, smiling like they were at a Sunday ice cream social.
Bud pushed back his Stetson that protected him from the Arizona sun. “How you doin’, Jenson?”
“Never better. How’s Bunnie?”
“Bunnie’s Bunnie.”
Jenson laughed, a pleasant sound.
Bud eyed him curiously. His stylish pairings were a constant fascination. He wore sharply creased khaki slacks, a pink polo shirt and a salmon-colored stitch fedora set at a jaunty angle that only Jenson could pull off without getting his behind kicked up and down a mean Phoenix street.
Jenson was Bud’s partner and a shrewd detective. Underneath the silky exterior lay the heart of an expert marksman, an ex-Marine and a scathing intelligence that reveled in anyone who was blind enough to underestimate him.
Bud had never been one of those people.
A thought hit Bud and, with a sharp intake of breath, he bent to examine the skull.
“What?” Jenson gave him a keen look.
“Daniel Hargrove,” Bud said slowly, testing out the sound of it.
Jenson let out a low whistle as he eyed the skull. “Mister heart-in-a-box finally shows up. They never found the rest of him?”
“Found is an interesting choice of words,” Bud said wryly, thinking about the day the carefully wrapped cardboard box had arrived at the station. They hadn’t found anything. The evidence that Daniel Hargrove had been brutally murdered had been mailed to police headquarters.
Daniel Hargrove had been a prominent Phoenix businessman and owner of a local bank who had gone missing over three years ago. It had graduated from a missing persons case to a homicide case when, three weeks after Daniel Hargrove’s family had reported him missing, someone had taken the liberty of mailing his heart, which had been meticulously cut out of his body, to the police. Bud was convinced the killer was a family member who stood to benefit from an unusually large life insurance policy.
“They found his Masonic ring in the left ventricle of the heart. Is that the top or bottom?” Jenson asked.
“Bottom.”
Jenson said, “The killer mails the victim’s heart to the police, now we have a body, insurance has to pay out, but - I wonder what it means? These things always mean something – even if the killer doesn’t realize it himself.”
“It was a big ring shoved into the biggest hole in the heart. My money is on the fact it was the path of least resistance.”
“After cutting a heart out of a man’s body, I find it hard to believe one would then take the path of least resistance,” Jenson said wryly.
Bud gave a humorless smile.
Jenson continued, “As if that wasn’t enough, we also get the victim’s molar in the right atrium and his index finger in the right ventricle. Overkill, I’d say. Like the killer didn’t trust us to run DNA. Or thought we were idiots.”
“Killers always think the police are idiots. It’s one of our main advantages – being underestimated.”
“And our prime suspect still shacked up sweet as candy in a Scottsdale mansion.”
Bud rubbed his jaw, which throbbed with a sudden dull ache. He reminded himself that he needed to make an appointment with his dentist.
They stood in silence, gazing at the skull. The sun was slipping low. A purple-pink glow was taking up residence in the west.
“I think it’s time to pay a visit to our favorite prime suspect,” Bud said as he turned and headed toward his truck.
“I’d wait till we get a firm I.D. on the body. You really want to stir up that hornet’s nest?” Jenson said, giving him a knowing look.
“That bloodsucker is probably waiting for me,” Bud said, surprised at the emotion in his voice.
Driving towards North Scottsdale, Bud’s thoughts turned to his last meeting with the person that he was convinced had mailed him the package containing Daniel Hargrove’s heart.
At the memory of their last meeting, Bud felt a hot surge of anticipation in his gut. He relished the thought of picking up the scent of the trail that had left off colder than a corpse on ice.
CHAPTER SEVEN
Sometimes I’ve believed as many as six impossible things before breakfast.
–Lewis Carroll
Her heart thudding with fear, Enid slid into a cracked red vinyl booth of a clean but rundown diner that sat across the street from Jack’s office building. She had a perfect view of the entrance and was watching nervously for the police to show up. If Jack Fox had called the police, her plan was to dart out the back of the restaurant and run.
She couldn’t believe that she had actually bit Jack Fox! Until she felt her teeth chomping into his arm, she would never have believed that she was capable of doing such a thing. The rage that she had felt for him had caught her completely off guard. She had imagined their first m
eeting as awkward but civilized. She hadn’t expected that she would completely lose her cool and bite him like some rabid animal!
After she ran out of the building, she’d spent ten hairy minutes hiding in an alley. Curiosity had gotten the better of her and she had decided to go to the diner where she could watch the entrance to his building.
“What can I get for you, young lady?” Mona Ruben was an attractively voluptuous woman in her early thirties. She wore a form- fitting uniform with a red apron that ended in a boisterous bow. Mona was to waitressing what a Flemish Baroque painter was to big chicks: she made it look good.
Enid shook her head, unsure if she had enough money for anything more than an orange juice.
“How ‘bout some H2O to wet the whistle?” Mona plucked the menu off the table and handed it open-faced to Enid. “The huevos rancheros will make you miss your mama.”
Enid gave her a startled look.
Sensing she hit a chord, Mona smiled pleasantly, “Look it over. I’ll be back before you can cut a switch.”
Enid watched Mona disappear into the kitchen and dug into her backpack and pulled out an anemic wad of cash. Frowning, she counted the bills. To her amazement, she had blown through the bulk of her money and didn’t have enough cash to pay for a meal – much less a decent place to stay the night. She bit her lip, wondering why she hadn’t waited the extra two days it would have taken her mother to cash her next paycheck. Her mother’s whiskey kitty would’ve been fat with cash in one of its many hiding places: a plastic baggy duct-taped to the back of the toilet, a mayonnaise jar under the sink, an envelope taped on the dirty blades of the lawn mower…
Or, or, or…
Enid sighed, wondering if her expertise at finding whiskey kitties would ever come in handy in the real world. Luckily, her mother performed her paranoid hiding sprees when she was nine-kites-to-the-dog-faced-wind, which resulted in what Enid dubbed whiskey kitty amnesia, which meant easy pickin’s with no explanations. Enid occasionally felt a twang of guilt but reminded herself that she mostly used the money for food and paying bills that her mother neglected.
Gunning For Angels (Fallen Angels Book 1) Page 3
