Black Beast: A Hard Boiled Murder Mystery (A Detective Bobby Mac Thriller Book 1)

by R. S. Guthrie

  I was so exhausted—there wasn’t even energy left to fuel the anger I had over this attack on my boy. As I drifted off to sleep, the thought playing over and over again in my mind was that Calypso had made a huge miscalculation. In going after Cole, he obviously intended to stand me down. Nothing could have been further from my intentions.

  The dream was vivid and terrifying. I was surrounded by these horrible, wolf-like creatures. They circled me, teasing, pretending that it was possible I might survive the night. Their eyes burned red with the fire of Hades and their claws dangled at their sides—scissor-sharp.

  They would eventually close the circle, and I was unarmed.

  Then, at the last moment, as they got close enough to smell their putrid breath against my nostrils, I remembered the…

  I awoke. The room was mostly dark, but I could just make out the silhouette of Greer, standing over the bed.

  “You were crying out in your sleep,” she said.

  “Nightmares,” I said. “How long have I been asleep?”

  “I thought it was best to let you rest,” she said.

  “Have you heard anything from the hospital?”

  “No, nothing. He’s going to be all right,” she said.

  “I know he is. I’m just worried about him. Whomever did this could come back. I should call the squad and get a uniform down there to watch over him. I can’t believe I didn’t think of it before.”

  “He won’t be attacked again,” Greer said.

  “We can’t know that, baby.”

  “I can know it,” she said.

  “What the hell does that mean?”

  “It means it’s late, Bobby.”

  “What? How late is it?”

  “Too late,” she said, and climbed on top of me.

  At first I thought it was a misplaced romantic gesture.

  “C’mon, Greer. Not now, okay?”

  She pinned both my arms with such strength I couldn’t move against her.

  “I knew you would do it, of course,” she said.

  “Do what?”

  “I knew you would fuck that woman. Me. I knew. Not Greer. She would never have believed it, you scoundrel.”

  “What the fuck are you talking about?” I said. “Get the hell off me before…”

  “Before what? You’re going to overpower me, Detective?”

  I put every bit of strength I had into moving her hands off my wrists. I couldn’t move an inch. It was then I noticed her eyes. Those smiling emerald eyes had gone dark, devoid of life or compassion.

  The eyes of the shark.

  Eb Durning’s eyes.

  “It was difficult, you know.”

  “What was difficult?” I said.

  “Keeping a straight face the night you told me about your indiscretion.”

  “Who the hell are you?”

  “I think you know.”

  “That’s not possible,” I said.

  “Oh, it’s more than possible, Detective. I’m here.”

  “How long?”

  “How long, what, Detective?”

  “Don’t fuck around with me,” I said. “How long have you been here?”

  “When was I not here?” she said.

  “What?”

  “The thing you humans don’t realize, Detective Macaulay, is that eternity is such a very, very long time.”

  “Eternity.”

  “It makes ten thousand years appear as but the flutter of a heart.”

  “How long has Greer been gone?”

  “Your partner, he had a weak heart,” she said.

  “You bitch.”

  Greer leaned in close and bared her teeth. They were perfect, pearly white. As always. The only difference was in the eyes.

  I would never forget the bottomless hatred in them.

  “Best Italian in the city, Detective.”

  And then she kissed me. Deep.

  I struggled against her but I couldn’t move. She pressed her womanhood against me, grinding. She licked my ear, and whispered in it:

  “Maybe I should make you fuck me,” it said.

  The thing inside no longer even sounded like Greer.

  “I’m guessing you look a lot better now than when you murdered those young men in the park,” I said.

  It was hard to look at Greer and know that all we had was a complete lie. It made my actions with Agent Byrne all the more appalling.

  “Me? No, not me. You still don’t understand. Some detective you are, Macaulay.”

  “Why don’t you educate me?”

  “I’d rather screw you first,” the thing said, and reached to unbuckle my pants. “I know how you like…”

  When she freed my left hand, I knew I had but a moment to act. The decision had already been made. The Crucifix of Ardincaple was lying on the second shelf of my nightstand, where I’d left it after Father West’s clandestine visit.

  I wrapped my hand around the grip and while Greer chewed lovingly on my neck, threatening to violate me as I’d never imagined possible, I turned the blade, and quickly pushed the dagger deep into the center of her breasts.

  The thing I knew as Greer reared up, arms flailing in the air. A terrible apparition exploded from my girlfriend’s lithe body, growing to the size of the entire room, and then caved in upon itself until it completely disappeared.

  Greer’s body fell on me, nearly lifeless—nearly except for the final words she breathed into my ear:

  “Bobby Mac.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  I WAS not arrested but rather was suspended with pay pending the completion of an investigation. Internal Affairs Division was handling the investigation into Greer’s death and I was due downtown at the DPD Headquarters building for an interview in the morning. Shackleford had taken my gun and badge. The rest of the detectives looked at me with pity rather than understanding or true sadness. I’d not seen Agent Byrne at all.

  Father West met me as I left the stationhouse and drove me home. I didn’t know what to do or with whom I could share my trepidations. I couldn’t fathom what was coming together in my head after murdering the love of my life.

  I did the only thing I could think of, before calling in the—what had happened with Greer. I knew there was no way to explain the fact that my dead girlfriend had been pierced through the heart by a dagger, in my bedroom, lying on top of me. What was I to tell the investigators? That she was possessed?

  She had not looked possessed lying there. She’d looked like Greer. And though it made me even sicker to do it, I retrieved a knife from the kitchen, wrapped Greer’s hand around the handle, and tossed it to the floor.

  I told IAD about the affair with Byrne, Greer’s leaving me, and that she’d come back—ostensibly to talk things over. And when I was lying on the bed, admiring my new artifact, she came at me hard with the knife.

  I claimed her death was an accident, due to her attacking me and me reacting—turning with the dagger and her impaling herself on it.

  Honestly? My ability to manipulate the scene into a believable scenario shamed me.

  So where did I stand now? The Crucifix of Ardincaple was in an evidence locker and I had murdered my girlfriend.

  Father Rule had mentioned the darkness falling all about my life. Unfortunately I now needed to be worried more about an attorney than a priest.

  Perhaps this was why Eb Durning’s last act on earth had been to smile at me.

  “Thank you for coming to get me,” I said to Father West.

  “You must be wondering who you can trust,” he said.

  “The thought has crossed my mind.”

  “I’ve been mulling all this over,” he said. “This business with the woman, Greer.”

  “Business?”

  “Sorry, Bobby. I don’t mean to be callous. It’s an affliction.”

  “Don’t worry about it. Go on.”

  “Did your girlfriend have any unusual markings?”

  “No.”

  “Nothing at all ou
t of the ordinary.”

  “What, like three sixes on her scalp? No.”

  “There’s something I’ve suspected over the years. Something I researched on my own, apart from Father Rule’s mentoring.”

  “Go on,” I said.

  “The journal mentions the possessed making a physical transformation. Not unlike that of the legendary werewolf.”

  “Yeah…”

  “Which fits the evidence of the murders at the park.”

  “And the attack on my son,” I said.

  “Right. But the journal never mentioned anything like what you saw with your Greer.”

  “I thought you never read the journal,” I said.

  “I lied. Again, not very priest-like.”

  “I never believed you anyway. No. All the Bête Noire possessions involved the appearance of the beast.”

  “Not Ramzi’s,” he said.

  “What do you mean? Ramzi’s beast mauled my grandfather’s leg.”

  “Rule told me your grandfather remembered a beast attacking him. He could never say whether or not it was Ramzi.”

  “Then who else?” I said.

  “I don’t know. But Father Rule also had no memory of that, or of the death of little Ramzi Ben Younes,” West said.

  “He told you that?”

  “Yes. What he didn’t tell me, however, is of another book. A book I discovered years later, when Father Rule was very sick. I had been studying fervently about all manner of possession.

  “I discovered an old reference to a ritual—one in which the victim is killed in a very precise manner. If done correctly, the spirit enters the body through the same opening through which the soul tries to escape.”

  “Tries to escape?” I said.

  “The opening is both a physical and a spiritual one,” he said. “Made with a blade, pierced directly over the heart.”

  “If the demon succeeds in entry, Bête Noire prevents the soul from escape and the victim lives.”

  “So you have a forced possession,” I said.

  “Yes. A very methodical one at that.”

  “What happens in a failed possession, then?” I said.

  “The soul escapes, and without a soul, Bête Noire consumes the physical body.”

  “A demon, on the loose,” I said.

  “Fathers Macaulay and Rule saw several Bête Noire possessions in their extensive time together.”

  “Nine.”

  “Monstrous beasts.”

  “Like the one that killed those men in the park,” I said.

  “Yet what of your Greer?”

  “Until the end, I would never have known. Not ever.”

  “It always struck me as strange that in all the years the Fathers travelled, they only actually ever witnessed nine possessions,” West said.

  “I would consider nine of these monstrosities pretty significant,” I said.

  “Maybe,” said West. “But not very convincing numbers for an overthrow.”

  “An overthrow?”

  “Of the world, that is.”

  “There are more like Greer,” I said.

  “Perhaps more than we can imagine,” said Father West.

  As we pulled into the driveway, I thought of Greer as the little girl I’d never known:

  Greer the equestrian.

  Who survived such an awful injury to her chest.

  It was time for another visit to Sweet Potatoes. It was late afternoon and Calypso himself was behind the bar.

  “Detective,” the fat man said. “And Father.”

  We sat.

  “I have just the drink for you,” Calypso said. He poured two highballs with some liquor over ice cubes, opened a bottle, and topped them off with a generous fizz.

  “Jamaican Nails,” he said. “Drambuie and ginger beer.”

  He set them down in front of us.

  “Now, unless you’re waiting for the band—who don’t come on until, hmm, eight o’clock—I suggest you enjoy a nail, on the house, and leave these premises.”

  I took a sip of the drink.

  “Not bad,” I said.

  Father West ignored his.

  “A strange combination,” Calypso said. “But one I find indescribably delicious.”

  “I have an indescribable number of questions for you, Calypso,” I said.

  “You, my friend, are no longer employed by the police.”

  “I’m on leave,” I said. “But I was going to tell you the same thing. And that you should watch out.”

  “Why is that?”

  “Because I’m not acting as a cop. Not where you’re concerned.”

  “That’s good to know,” Calypso said. “Apparently our messages have not been getting through.”

  “Your messages have gotten through just fine. What you’ve failed to understand is that you have made a miscalculation.”

  “I don’t think so,” Calypso said.

  “What, you’ll just kill me now? Kill my boy? That’s all you’ve left me.”

  “So naïve. So very naïve. Not unlike your grandfather.”

  “What?”

  “It’s never been our way, to be merciful.”

  “Merciful?”

  “The Obeah.”

  “So now you admit…”

  “I admit nothing,” Calypso said. “I speak in generalities.”

  “Go on.”

  “Death is not the worst thing,” he said.

  “I can think of better ways to spend a day.”

  “Do you believe in God, Detective Macaulay?”

  I didn’t answer him.

  “You, Father—your allegiances are clearly drawn.”

  Father West also said nothing.

  “Would it surprise either of you to know that I, too, believe in God? Quite fervently, in fact.” Calypso was obviously spinning his brand of riddle this time.

  “Are we anywhere near a point?” I said.

  “The Roman philosopher Seneca said life is neither a good nor an evil: it is a field for good and evil. Life—and the world in which we live it—is a battlefield. Your family, Detective. And many others. Generations dedicated to the war.”

  “All I’ve ever been is a cop,” I said. “And at this point I’d say not a very good one.”

  “You are, the both of you, MacAulays,” he said, spitting out the last word.

  “And what does that mean exactly? To a dope smuggler, that is?” I said.

  “You know me to be more, Detective. Let’s put the subterfuge to rest, eh?”

  “Whatever you say, mon,” I replied.

  “Have you contemplated the ever after?” Calypso said. “I mean really thought about it? Eternity is such a very long time.”

  “What?” I said.

  “Ten thousand years, Bobby Mac,” Calypso said. “But the fluttering of a heart.”

  I reached for him, but my world went black.

  When I awoke, it was in a darkened room. The cellar. The only light came from a dirty window at the far end of the room.

  “Bobby.”

  A whisper from somewhere nearby.

  Father West.

  “Father,” I said, quietly. “Are you okay?”

  “Indeed,” he said. “But quite incapacitated.”

  “What happened?”

  “Before I could warn you, a very large man beat you over the head with a club.”

  That explained the freight train driving through the center of my skull.

  “And you?” I said.

  “I believe they figured they could take me without a fuss. They were wrong.”

  “But you’re all right?”

  “My right arm is broken—or at least severely fractured. The pain is fairly significant.”

  “Why didn’t they just kill us?”

  It had always been my experience that psychopaths maintain very little likeness to the arch-villains in the movies. They don’t tie James Bond and hang him over a shark tank—they put two in the back of his skull and dig a shallow grave
out amongst the pine trees.

  “I have a theory, actually,” West said.

  “A theory?”

  “I’ve been awake a lot longer than you.”

  “I’d say let’s hear it, but we’re probably better off taking advantage of the fact that we’re alive and try to get the hell out of here before they do make it more permanent.”

  “Agreed,” said West.

  “Are your ropes as tight as mine,” I asked.

  “Unfortunately, yes, I think so.”

  “Shit. I’m tied to a table—you?”

  “A chair,” West said.

  “Can you move it at all?”

  “Some,” he said. “But they’ve bound both my arms and legs.”

  “You’re a pretty good-sized guy,” I said.

  “Thanks a lot,” he said.

  “I imagine if you tipped over, you might do enough damage to the chair to get you loose.”

  “You forgot: in addition to your head—when mine hits the concrete floor, I mean.”

  “Tilt it upwards,” I said.

  “Have you seen my neck,” West said. “Or lack thereof?”

  “My guess is whatever these freaks do have planned, it’s probably not too far off—and it’s going to be a lot more unpleasant than a knot on the skull. In fact, I already have one of those…so it’s your turn, Meyer.”

  “Meyer?”

  “That’s your name, right?”

  “Sorry, what happened to ‘Father’?”

  “We’re cousins. And I’m a long time since my last confession.”

  “Fair enough,” he said.

  I could hear him grunting and the chair sliding on the concrete floor.

  “Use the momentum,” I said. “The back and forth, like getting a car unstuck from the snow.”

  “Thanks,” he said. “I did quite well in Physics, thank you.”

  And then he went over. To say his weight loosened the chair would have been gross understatement. I’m guessing Calypso’s goons didn’t do well in school. Father West’s mass obliterated the old chair.

  My backup gun had been taken, so we were completely unarmed. I turned on a light and rooted around the basement. In the corner I found a box of rags and behind that, some cans of accelerant. It seemed Calypso’s minions might also have need for arson from time to time. A fact I planned to use to our advantage.

  “The key is,” I told West as we covered the basement and then the stairwell leading up to freedom with acetone, “I wait to throw the torch down the stairs until you throw your canisters—you need to toss them to either side of the bar. Do not block the front door—we make our run for that.”