The 9th Hour (The Detective Temeke Crime Series Book 1)

by Claire Stibbe

  And what was that sign back there?

  “Watch your speed, Marl,” Temeke muttered, lifting his head up from his phone. “This isn’t the Circuit of the Americas.”

  She eased her foot off the gas and sighed. Sometimes he made her feel inadequate and yet here she was, a raven-haired beauty. Didn’t he find her just a teeny bit exquisite?

  There was nothing in those black eyes to suggest she was anything at all. That’s what bugged her the most. She almost gasped, panicking under her breath. If she wasn’t anything to him, she had never really been anything to Hollister except a schoolboy’s dare. Maybe she needed to change something. Her hair, clothes, character.

  “Did we pass Paseo Del Canon?” he said.

  “I think we did, sir.”

  “Then hang a right on Kit Carson. We’ll join 64 in a few.”

  Malin was nervous, and sitting next to Temeke didn’t help. He hardly looked at her, hardly spoke. Just gave orders like he was a commander in the marines or something. She needed to think, only she’d done a lot of thinking in the past few days. No more men. No more.

  Instead, she watched the palisade cliffs and the occasional waterfall that trickled down between the crags. Fir trees stood tall on their silvery verges and a full moon shed an eerie light between the branches.

  “We’re at eight thousand feet,” Temeke said. “Want a boiled sweet?”

  “Candy,” Malin corrected, feeling heat in the back of her neck. She was just plain tired. “No thanks.”

  It had to have been the bug under the dashboard that made him quiet. He must have known it was there. Hackett could trace them through the GPS, watch their speed, listen to the conversation. Temeke couldn’t exactly talk to her about anything if they were listening.

  But they wanted her to talk to him, wanted as much information about that weed, or any dirt for that matter.

  “You weren’t always a detective, were you?” she said.

  “I used to be a bell boy at the Sheraton. Multi-tasking, multi-snooping. It got me where I am today.”

  “So when did you start smoking weed?” she said, staring at a blank face that suddenly lit up.

  “I don’t smoke weed.”

  “C’mon, sir, everyone smokes weed.”

  “Ever rolled a few in your time?”

  She grinned at that. “I had a friend once. Never had any money, but she always had a dime bag to sell in the toilets at school. She used to call it her valuables.”

  “As I’m sure they were,” Temeke said, “especially valuable to the people she stole it from.”

  “She used to keep it in her compact and sell it by the lid. It was from Mexico. Burnt your throat, made you wheeze. But she’d sell it to the hard-ups for seventy bucks and pretend it was Thai.”

  “Sounds like she had a roaring business. Which brings me to the subject of college loans. I read somewhere you paid yours off in six months. Mexican or Thai?”

  She ignored the question and changed the subject. “Do you like younger women, sir?”

  She saw his body perk up, saw his eyebrows furrow. “You what?”

  “Younger women,” she repeated for the mic. “Do you like them?”

  He stroked his throat and grimaced. “How young?”

  “Well you know, sixteen, seventeen.”

  “Not like that.”

  “How young would you go?”

  Temeke shrugged. “Thirty-nine.”

  Malin grinned. She knew he was forty-three. “Only a few years, sir?”

  “For me, yeah. For Eriksen, anything goes.”

  Either he was trying to change the subject or he thought she wanted a man’s opinion on the case. She watched the landscape changing from arid prairie to chaparral, and then to forest as the elevation increased. And then she thought of Becky. She often stood too close to Temeke in the lobby, sometimes taking him to the water fountain to whisper. Surely someone had seen?

  “What about Becky Moran? She’s a tight little chick in tight little clothes. Doesn’t it make your blood boil?”

  Temeke pressed a fist against his mouth and puffed out his cheeks. “You gotta be kidding, right?”

  “No,” she said, feeling a burning in her throat. “She likes you, I can tell. Wants you even.”

  “She’s just a kid. Probably too scared to look at a man now.”

  “She’s into older men. That’s why all this happened. She wanted you, not him.”

  “I’m married, Marl.”

  “Even married men, sir. They all look. They all wonder how much they can get away with.”

  “Not this one. Besides, I won’t be kicked out of the department for interfering with a minor. How awful would that be? I’d be homeless, hungry and sleeping down by the lavatories.”

  Malin felt a bubble of laughter in her belly and saw the friendly grin on his face. He was steaming now, especially for that mic.

  “You know, I’ve always admired Hackett,” Temeke said, fingers feeling beneath the dash. “I know he thinks I hate him, that I think he’s an impudent swine. But it’s not the case. About ten years ago, and I say it was ten years ago because you’d never forget a thing like that, there was a photograph going around the department. A girl in thigh length boots, face covered in makeup, breasts covered by nothing at all. It was an old set of buttocks between that young pair of knees. And there was a mole on the left side of those buttocks.”

  Malin could only giggle at the bug in Temeke’s hand, held close to his lips. He was going to lose his badge. There was no other answer.

  “Just a little mole, about this big – just about here,” Temeke said, leaning to one side and jabbing his rear with the bug. “It was Hackett alright. Dirty old git got a teenager pregnant ten years ago.”

  He opened the window and flicked it through the gap. That done, he pulled a packet of cigarettes from the glove compartment and placed one in his mouth.

  “No one knows how he got off, Marl. I can only suspect he gave up a few pay checks. At his own request.”

  Malin sniggered, heard the scratch of a match before she could tell him not to light up. “Tell me what you found in that house, sir.”

  “I found an anchor chain and shackles in the back yard, footprints, broken glass from an upper window. Lucky she escaped. He kept her tied up like a dog. You really can’t beat a white Christmas.”

  Malin could almost hear the clunk of chains and a dog collar around her neck. “I’d hate to be tied up, sir.”

  “Not into bondage then? No, can’t say I would be. Especially if there weren’t any slop buckets handy.” Temeke tapped a photograph on the steering wheel, cigarette bouncing between his lips. “Do you know where this is?”

  Malin stared briefly at the picture of an old cabin surrounded by trees. She shook her head. She hadn’t a clue.

  “I’m betting it’s one of the hunters’ cabins near the Shelby Ranch,” Temeke said. “Got names like Lucky and Hope. Let’s hope it’s the first. Let’s hope it’s soon.”

  His last words repeated in Malin’s head and she looked at Temeke with a keenness she’d never known before. He was a hunter, skilled at catching the worst of them, unraveling the complexity of an insane mind as easily as a ball of string. But now there was a desperate look on his face, like he was searching for a dark speck against a black sky. She was actually afraid.

  The radio suddenly sparked into life. It was Hackett. “I want to see you both in my office tomorrow morning. Seven o’clock sharp!”

  “Sorry, can’t hear you,” Temeke said, blowing out a salvo of smoke rings. “Bad line.”

  “You’re as clear as a bell,” Hackett contradicted. “Where are you?”

  “Sounds like a crossed line,” Temeke shouted. “I can hear a woman laughing in the background.”

  “I’d appreciate it if you could observe the correct protocols,” Hackett shouted back. “You weren’t at the briefing meeting this afternoon and I’ve been hearing complaints. Quite frankly, I’m ashamed.”

&nb
sp; “Complaints, sir? What complaints?”

  “Bawdy comments in front of the female officers, sexual harassment, that kind of thing. I would ask for your resignation if it wasn’t for―”

  “Did you say sexual harassment, sir?”

  “I have witnesses, Temeke. You should have been here, should have had the balls to face the music.”

  “You forget, sir. You didn’t want me in a meeting room. You wanted me out in the field. Those were your orders. I’ve already gathered you don’t want me around and that’s because you got passed over by the promotional board last year. Wouldn’t want a black foreigner taking over your job now, would you?”

  “That’s racism!”

  “Your words not mine, sir. Bitterness leads to resentment. I’ve seen it so many times. What’s your birth sign?”

  “What’s my birth sign got to do with anything?”

  “December 20th. Sagittarius. Overly expressive, frequent burnouts. That’s it, isn’t it? You’re coming up for retirement.”

  “That’s none of your business, Temeke. Now, where are you? You can’t be riding out on your own like John Wayne!”

  “Did you say hunting game, sir?” Temeke switched off the radio and pinched out his cigarette. He cracked open the car window and flicked it out as far as he could.

  Malin heard the loud sigh, and then a small chuckle. “How cold is it outside?” she said, not daring to look up at the temperature sensor.

  “Eighteen degrees. I don’t want to tell another father that his daughter was found headless in a garbage bag. There’s no way you can tart up stuff like that. Tess won’t survive the snow. She won’t survive wild animals if they’re out there nosing around in the brush.”

  “What about the hunter’s cabins?”

  Temeke fumbled in the compartment under the armrest for a flashlight. He unfolded the map and spread it out on his knee. “They’re west of here and within a few hundred yards of each other, spread out like an isosceles triangle. The first one borders the river, the second and third form the base. My wife used to camp in the woods when she was a child. Said they were mostly ruins, except for the boathouse. They used to swim from the pier.”

  “There must be a track somewhere,” Malin said, eyelids fluttering in the beam of a passing car.

  “Turn off here and douse the lights, Marl,” Temeke said, turning off the flashlight and pointing at a pay lodge. “And before you get out of the car make sure you mute your phone. Don’t want a stampede of elk now, do we?”

  They approached the turn, tires crunching on gravel, a dirt road that went onward and upward. She turned off the headlights seeing the pallid bark of aspens and the reflecting eyes of elk as they passed between the trees.

  There was no sign of the ranger.

  THIRTY-SIX

  Ole’s sense of nothingness had been replaced by something else. An unspoken thing that lay deep down inside. A ghost of a thing he wanted to forget.

  Morgan was a fantasy. Like an alter ego deep inside. Nothing could bring him back. No blood. Not even a vat-load of the very best vintage. He stood there shivering in a gaining breeze, wondering why he felt so close to the edge.

  He ran from the marsh fowl, through giant firs and aspens and back to the tired old lodge by the river. There it was, under a hunter’s moon, bright with star glow.

  The Charger was just where he left it, hidden behind a screen of trees. He pulled off a coating of broken branches and opened the trunk. Inside was a cable knit sweater, thick and gray and stinking of old man’s cologne. He saw the nozzle of the gun peeking beneath a cushion of spare clothes, let his fingers caress the glossy stock and the sling embossed with a stag’s head.

  It was only a few months ago when he’d tracked an elk, but you never forget how. He’d seen a stag yesterday, four feet in the river, nose sniffing the air. It was a big one. Ole liked the meat. And so would Tess. It was too cold to be out there on her own and she would likely smell that thick gamey gravy and want some.

  “I’ll fetch you home, Tess,” he murmured, checking the spring loaded well, checking the telescopic sights. He found a yellow and green box of cartridges. There were only six left.

  He slammed the trunk and slung the rifle over one shoulder. Replacing a generous camouflage of pine branches over the car, he was out in the cold again, running through the trees. If she kept this up all night he’d be running well into the long golden dawn. But he knew where she was.

  He could see the ruins of a small cabin through a break in the trees. The only place where red hot cinders stirred in the wind and dying flames consumed the last of them. Strangely, he felt a stirring of pity. Tess was a storm-driven girl from another land soon to be laid on the sacrificial fire.

  He’d done everything Odin asked, hauled the remains up into the trees in their burlap bags and waited for the god to claim them. But they hung there during the summer months and long into the fall, and Odin was silent, taking only the blood offering from a few heads.

  The rituals were tiresome and the bodies no more than a stinking mess. Blood pattered on the leaves below and Loki howled and howled until he cut them down. It was a week before he saw the animal again, snout crimson with offal.

  A door opened in his mind, a memory of another land when he was a child. He was holding a lantern to his chest, windblown and timid on the threshold. The hunter met him there, rifle out before him. Possessed he was, with the face of a demon and the heart of one too. His lips were drawn back over ivory teeth, black eyes peeking beneath blood-matted hair. He had just killed a deer and the buzz of all that butchery was still in him.

  Ole was afraid then just as he was now. He was afraid the hunter would find him the same way he found Morgan all because they had been peeking. He called them stinking little rich boys. He called them other things, too. Accused them of stealing meat from his fire. It wasn’t true. They never stole anything.

  But on this day, the hunter had no ordinary visitor in his lodge. A woman with long dark hair and a face like an angel. Ole couldn’t work out what they were doing, balanced on that old wooden table, grunting and groaning like two wild hogs. It was hideous to see his mother like that but he had to know. So he watched until it was over, watched until his stomach was all dried out from the vomiting.

  She said she would always love him. But she hadn’t. He thought she was a beauty queen. But she wasn’t.

  He woke up crying for months to come. Years even. Whenever he pushed it aside, it came bouncing back like a lost puppy with a wagging tail. He could still see his mother, the color of her eyes and the tilt of her head. He hated what she had done.

  That’s when he learned to shoot a gun. That’s when he learned to track men.

  Standing at the door of the cabin now in this cold quiet wood, he saw a table turned over on its side and tattered curtains trembling in the breeze. And through the window on the far side of the room he saw something move by the corral fence and the trees.

  Tessie, he thought, lifting the rifle and sighting in on his target.

  There was enough moonlight to see her, a dark shadow about five feet tall. It could have just been an old coat draped over a fence post or an animal locked in fright. He was suddenly overwhelmed by the thought that she might already be dead, stiff and staring against that fence.

  She must have heard him, knew he was there. That’s why she stood rigid like a child in the throes of playing Grandma’s Footsteps.

  He lifted the rifle and fired one round at 100 yards, watched her stagger and reel about. The trees were alive with night creatures, some skittering through the trees, some howling and hooting.

  To his amazement she seemed to lift herself up, body stretched out now like a wild horse. He rubbed his eyes and changed the elevation of the scope. Before he fired again, she fell and all he could see was an open space.

  Calling her name, he ran to the back of the cabin, down the steps and out into the gray night world. There on the ground between an old drinking trough and the hor
se corral was a young elk, ears twitching, nostrils a plume of steam. One leg was caught in a twist of barbed wire, and there was a hole in the side of her face where he’d shot her.

  Hardly trophy-worthy, he thought, looking at the mess he’d made.

  Ole blinked, felt a throbbing in his chest. He could see perfectly in the dark, but he hadn’t seen this. The animal’s head flopped to one side, body rolling after it. He thought he heard whimpering but he knew elk didn’t whimper and he lifted his chin and sniffed.

  Tess was out there watching him, listening for his footsteps in the crunchy earth. He would never see her from the ground, but perched in a tree he could see everything. That’s when he picked a lookout. A white fir with tiers of branches and a belly full of bluish-green needles. It offered enough concealment for a few hours and he could scan the ground from his high tower and pick off anything that moved.

  He slung the gun over one shoulder and began to climb, keeping to the thicker branches against the trunk. He found a sturdy limb reaching out at a 45 degree angle, easy to perch on and with his back pressed against the trunk, he could nurse the gun on his lap, legs dangling on either side.

  All he could see were trees running deeper and deeper into the endless shadows and directly beneath was a dusty floor barely covered with snow. Holding his breath for a moment, he listened for the modulating song of the cicadas, but the snow had silenced them. Only the pulsing hoot of an owl and the whisper of wind as it rushed between the trees. Closing his eyes, he allowed his muscles to relax and the last thing he remembered was how cold it was.

  Snap!

  The crunch of dried leaves. A twig perhaps. How long had he been asleep? He never slept more than twenty minutes at a stretch and he looked up through the canopy above. Darkness.

  When he looked down he saw a gradual slope heading to the left leading to a game trail. To the right was the small cabin and the horse corral, and a few feet in front of the fence was the dead doe. It was the shadow that lay beside the animal that fascinated him, brought a gradual smile to his face. Keeping warm within those soft flanks was a leggy girl in hiking boots, head tilted upwards and staring right at him.