Hunting Delilah

by Anne Baines

  “Paternal, I think, from the markers they have in common. I’m emailing you the results and the information from the hit. Looks like the father of one Unsub is in prison on the West Coast for armed robbery and attempted murder.”

  “Jesus. Okay. That was one of the female donors?” Sam clicked on the email, opening the attachment. Bennie Hill, known aliases Al Noone and Junior Lackey, incarcerated in Salem, Oregon, just as Mike had said. The mug shot showed a thin man with muscular, almost Popeye arms, and short salt and pepper hair. His eyes were bright blue and glared out of the picture on Sam’s computer, lips curled beneath a few days growth of stubble in a Mona Lisa smile.

  He looked nothing like Donna.

  “Female donor number one, yeah. Looks like her DNA matches blood found at that hotel site. Ronnie sure did overdo herself with the samples here. She’s got a real mess. How come you’re involved? And is she calling in the FBI?”

  “I think she’ll have to, since it looks like she has a serial on her hands. I just figured I’d help her out with my connections, you know—” Sam trailed off. This looked like a huge dead-end. Donna hadn’t looked Caucasian, though he supposed she could be half. He sighed and scrolled through the email, looking over what Mike had found so far. Most of the technical jargon was beyond him, the results looking like a lab report with all sorts of weird tables. Something stood out, however, and he leaned in to study the screen.

  “Female Unsub one, she’s the daughter of this Bennie? What does this ‘possible NA descent’ result here mean?”

  “Native American,” Mike said. “There were markers that indicate she might be of Native descent. As I said, we’re still sorting stuff, but I threw my best guys on this with me and we’re going as fast as we can. It’s a slow day right before the weekend, so you got lucky there.”

  Native American. Donna certainly could be that. Sam opened up the picture that Ronnie had sent him. High cheekbones, dark eyes, that hard-to-place and exotic look. Definitely could be.

  “Thanks, Mike. Look, Ronnie is slammed with these cases, so why don’t you hold off on getting her all this stuff until it’s all sorted, okay?” Sam chewed his lip, hating the idea that was coalescing and forming up in his mind like a cancer.

  “You sure?” Sam could almost hear Mike shrug. “Okay. But call your sister. Please.”

  “Nag, nag, nag.” Sam chuckled. “I will. Thanks, man, I do owe you. I’ll tell Ronnie to call you when she can. Try her tomorrow if you don’t hear before her then, yeah?”

  “Sure thing. We’ll keep on this. It’s a fun puzzle, that’s for sure.”

  Sam snapped his cell phone shut and leaned back in his chair. His thought was madness, but he ached to do something, to be active again. To help Donna.

  Bennie Hill. Al Noone. Junior Lackey. Either this guy had a sense of humor about aliases, or whoever made the fake ID seriously did.

  Sam pulled up the crime information. Bennie had been arrested during a payroll steal on a private armored car company in Washington. One guard had been shot, though he lived. It was thought that Bennie had at least two accomplices, but he’d insisted that he’d been alone despite witness testimony to the contrary. He took a plea and got thirty years, with possibility of parole in twenty. After two years of good behavior, his transfer request to the Oregon State Penitentiary was approved on “family” grounds.

  That was promising. Sam wondered if Donna still had relatives living in Oregon or even a home base there. He still wanted to believe she was just a girl in the wrong place at the wrong time, even if the evidence in his own experience didn’t uphold it.

  The cancerous and likely horrible idea continued in Sam’s mind. He pulled up a flight schedule. Damn. He could fly direct to Portland and then rent a car and make the hour and a half drive out to the OSP, but he wouldn’t arrive until pretty late.

  Sam clicked back over to the OSP page and picked up the land line.

  After asking to be transferred to the warden, and waiting on hold while someone on a saxophone butchered Beethoven, Sam got through.

  “I’m Detective Arbichaut with the Jackson CAP unit,” Sam said, which was all true, more or less. “We’ve got a case here which one of your inmates might be able to help out with.”

  “In Florida?” The man sounded skeptical and Sam couldn’t blame him. This would take some quick talk.

  “Bennie Hill. His daughter might be a witness in a serial case, and we need to locate her. I’d appreciate if you’d allow us to send someone out to see him tonight; I can have a detective there by nine or so.”

  “I’d need authorization, and confirmation. I mean, I can see you’re calling from Jacksonville, but I’d need some forms filled out.”

  “Not a problem, we’re coordinating with Lieutenant Ronda Brown of the Daytona Homicide Unit, I have her numbers right here.” Sam read off Ronnie’s office number, the direct line. She’d forgive him. Especially if he called her immediately and begged for leeway on this. “We’ve got to get a guy on a plane soon, however, if we’re going to move on this information. He can fill out the forms there.”

  “All right.” The warden sounded harassed but resigned, which suited Sam just fine. “I’ll call the LT. She says go, I’ll have the forms ready and a guard standing by.”

  “Thank you, sir.” Sam hung up and then immediately dialed Ronnie’s personal cell. After her late night, he doubted she’d be in the office, though the office phone might route to her work cell, but he wasn’t sure if she’d answer that.

  The personal one, however, she answered.

  “Sam, what do you want?”

  “Hello to you, too,” Sam said. Now the fun part. Hopefully she was still on his side. She’d always looked out for him before. It was time to call on that goodwill and spend it like it was his last day on Earth.

  “Seriously, do you have something for me? I’m running on not enough sleep here.”

  “I might,” Sam said, “but don’t get too excited. I need to follow it up, just in case. You gotta trust me on this one, Ronnie. If it is something, I’ll toss it to you, I promise. I’m not a grandstander, you know me.”

  “So you do need something. What did you get?” Ronnie’s voice was thin, weaker than the night before, like she’d been using it to scream non-stop for hours.

  “I have to go to Oregon and talk to an inmate. I need your back-up word on this with the warden up there, he should be calling you soon.”

  “Good fucking God, Sam,” Ronnie said and Sam wondered if she’d just been swearing all night instead of screaming. The thought almost made him laugh.

  He missed her, and the crew down in homicide and the late nights and despair and the ugliness and joy and shared pain that came from working long hard hours mopping up after the worst humanity could conceive to do to itself. He missed it so much, so suddenly, that it was a physical jab in the gut and for a moment Sam couldn’t say a damn thing.

  “Please,” he finally mumbled. “Give me this. I need to do something, Ronnie.”

  “Sure, Sam, sure,” she said more softly, as though even a hundred miles away she could pick up on what had just sucker punched him. Then, her tone sharper again, she said, “But you better damn hand off anything you get to me if it pans out. Cause I can’t cover your ass for real, not while you’re Jacksonville’s.”

  “I know,” he said. “Thanks.”

  “Don’t thank me, go do something useful.” She hung up and Sam sat, staring at the phone for a moment.

  Then he clicked on flight information and booked a seat on the next flight out to Portland. It was his day off. About time he took a little vacation. He sent off a quick email to his Lieutenant. No one would miss him until Saturday. He booked the flight and then signed out of his computer after printing a couple of pictures: Donna Utley and Theodore Whitechapel.

  His fingers tingled as he turned off his office light and walked out, closing the door behind him. Home to pack an overnight bag, and then he’d be on his way to do some good, or, as
Ronnie said, at least something useful.

  Thirty-two

  Ted rented a car, a newer Mazda Sport, nothing too fancy since he didn’t want to stand out. The car was silver, a nice, neutral color just like hundreds of others. Perfect. It was cooler in Portland, no need for the AC as he drove away from the airport. His first stop was a hardware store marked out on a piece of scrap paper by the helpful rental attendant.

  It amused Ted that he’d managed to put together multiple kits and then had to ditch them in the last twenty-four hours. He hoped this would be the final one. In his mind he could see Delilah’s tired, thin face reeling in horror as she returned home to his messy surprise. He wished he could have stuck around for that, but this little gambit seemed like a lot more fun.

  He laughed aloud as he scanned the radio stations for something worth listening to. Freedom. Complete freedom. No more pretending, no more hiding. Delilah had ruined his façade, but now he could see the mask for the fake little walls, the pretention that it had been. He had money and a plan.

  A plan that involved hurting a whole lot of people. Starting with the ones that his sneaky little Delilah cared about most.

  An hour later, kit assembled and tucked behind the passenger seat, Ted drove toward downtown Portland. He’d slept on the flight, but was hungry and felt rumpled and grimy from all the travel. With the time difference it was barely noon. Hardly the time of day to go to a bar, though Ted contemplated getting something to eat at Jake’s fine establishment.

  He finally decided on a getting a hotel room. There were quite a few offerings as he turned off I-84 into the east side of downtown. He settled on a Double-Tree hotel near a mall. Getting a room was simple; it was the middle of the week, after all. The desk girl tried to quibble over it being early, since check-in was not until three, but Ted talked the pretty brunette into letting him have one of the Presidential suites immediately after he gave her the traveling businessman sob story and one of his blinding grins.

  The room was well-appointed, with a Jacuzzi bathtub big enough to drown a person in. Ted contemplated trying, thinking about the young desk clerk and how late she might work that night, but reigned in the impulse.

  Wouldn’t do to throw out all propriety and caution to the winds. He’d checked in under his new name, so it was best to keep this location free of scandal until he was sure what the next move was. There would be enough death soon. Desire tingled through his body at the thought, riding in his bones like a deep ache.

  Showered, shaved, and with a clean shirt on, he replaced the opal cufflinks in the new shirt. They were quite stylish and Ted liked having something against his skin that Delilah had touched.

  He returned to the desk and got directions to No Man’s Land from the perky little clerk. The hotel had completely unnecessary air-conditioning, which Ted suddenly appreciated as he watched the clerk write out quick directions for him. The chill air and the breeze that wooshed in every time someone came through the big front doors caused her nipples to push against the thin material of her shirt. Her bra was delicately lacey and showed through just enough where the hard nubs forced their way toward Ted’s hungry gaze.

  Another time, he whispered silently to those promising breasts, I’ll see you later.

  Thirty-three

  No Man’s Land was a corner establishment in the south-east part of Portland with big carved wood doors lacquered black and band posters plastered to the front windows. Ted pulled into the tiny parking lot and then drove around the back, parking as far from the front as he could while staying away from obvious tow zones. He climbed out of his car. There was a dumpster in a high fenced surround. A couple of older-model cars were pulled up behind like his was; he assumed they belonged to bar employees.

  There was a back door, but it looked like a fire exit and, when Ted carefully checked, was locked tight. He wandered around the front and stepped inside.

  A fat bottle-blonde leaned against the L-shaped bar, her black apron denoting her as an employee. She was talking quietly to an unhealthily skinny young man with bright green spiked hair who stood behind the bar like he worked here, though he had no apron or anything resembling a uniform. A group of three college-aged men sat at one of the booths against the wall facing the little parking lot, and a couple talked quietly in one of the few tables in the floor space to the left of the entry.

  To his right was a room taken up mostly by a pool table with wrinkled blue felt and stained-glass lamps hanging overhead. There was a cheap dart board with a big piece of plywood behind it on which someone had scrawled names and arrows pointing at various holes in the wood. No one was playing either darts or pool.

  At the back of the seating area, next to a hallway, was a little platform that Ted guessed passed for a stage given the live music schedule written out in neon on the whiteboard hanging on the wall behind it. Two middle-aged black men wearing work boots and jeans sat at the bar, nursing pints of something dark and foamy.

  “Hey honey,” the fat woman said with a wide, wet pink smile. “Seat yourself, I’ll be right over, or you can sit at the bar.”

  The whole place, once Ted stepped more fully inside, stank of beer, fried food, some kind of spicy incense, and peanuts. A shell crunched under his foot as he slid into the furthest booth, taking a seat where he could see the whole place and the front door, as well as the door behind the bar that he guessed led into the kitchen.

  There were more shells under the table, carelessly swept there the night before in all likelihood. A black glass bowl full of peanuts still in their shells decorated the scarred table. He shoved it away, toward the dust-streaked window. It was all very low class, but Ted sighed and resigned himself to slumming. He wanted to see this Jake Leventon, to scout him out. There was no reason to go rushing into anything. A good hunter studies and knows his prey.

  His prey apparently only served the greasiest sort of bar food dressed up with names that Ted supposed were meant to sound cheeky and fun. When the cow waitress finally stopped her incredibly important conversation with the anorexic bartender and came over, Ted ordered a “Bam! Bam! Burger” with a side of fresh melon and a pint of dunkelweizen. He was in the famed Northwest, so he supposed the least he could do was enjoy a decent beer. He idly wondered if the burger title referred to one of those perky, cliché TV chefs. Emily loved those stupid cooking shows. He smiled. Yet another thing he would no longer have to tolerate.

  He waited for his food to arrive and studied the place. Behind him would be the edge of the parking lot outside, which put the back door at the end of the hallway with the bathrooms directly behind his table.

  A woman in her thirties, wearing a leather jacket covered in little metal studs, came in just as his food appeared. She sat on one of the chrome and purple faux-leather bar stools. There was muted rock music thrumming over speakers tucked into the cobwebbed corners of the ceiling, so Ted missed whatever she said to the anorexic.

  He had just taken the first sip of a not-too-shabby beer when he heard a door opening behind him. A moment later, Jake, the man of the hour, or at least, Ted’s intended hour later, appeared.

  Blood rushed into Ted’s ears and for a moment all he could hear was his own heart beating a hungry rhythm inside as the tingling grew in his bones. His prey wore a black tee-shirt with a faded gray No Man’s Land label printed across it and blue jeans that had seen a lot of wear over a pair of hiking boots. Jake’s skin looked darker than in the pictures, especially under the soft bar lighting, and his hair was longer, dark curls forming around his ears and falling over his forehead. He looked almost muscular next to the scrawny bartender. Almost. Ted estimated that he had at least two or three inches and a good thirty pounds on the black bastard.

  The acid anger rose as Jake scooted onto a seat and started chatting casually with the woman in the leather jacket. This puny, dark-skinned asshole had touched Delilah, put his dick inside her, and spawned a brat with her.

  Ted realized he was not only staring, but glaring, and for
ced himself to look down at his burger just as the bovine waitress came over.

  “Need anything else, honey? Water?” She put her hand on the table and leaned over, invading the air around the table with her cheap perfume that stank of some overpaid idiot’s conception of vanilla and flowers.

  Ted hadn’t even noticed that she’d failed to deliver water to the table. In any establishment he dined in regularly, water was offered and provided, usually with or without carbonation, depending on preference.

  “Yes, I’d like the bottled water, and a glass of ice.” He hoped the water would cool his rising murderous desires.

  “We serve tap here. The environment and all. But we got a great filter, so it’s pretty much the same.” Her wet pink smile was back and she leaned in further.

  Ted wondered if her sagging, carbohydrate-inflated breasts would knock over his beer and carefully moved it out of the danger zone.

  “Sure,” he said with no intention of drinking whatever she brought. Filtered was definitely not the same, but he hardly expected this overgrown white trash hag to understand such distinctions. He couldn’t see around her and panicked a little until the cow finally took the hint and heaved herself upright, leaving him a line of sight to his prey once again.

  Ted forced himself to eat the burger, chewing each bite carefully to buy himself time as he watched Jake chat with the woman. The meat was well-cooked, just enough pink in the middle, and he grudgingly admitted to himself that the spicing on the burger was better than he’d expected. Of course, the menu and ambiance had set his expectations quite low already, so the food being above par was more or less like being taller than Mickey Rooney.

  By the time Jake shook the woman’s hand, Ted had finished the burger and sipped his beer, leaving the melon after he realized it really didn’t go well with either burger or beer. Jake walked right past him, close enough that Ted could have reached out and hooked an arm around the other man’s thigh in an instant. Or stabbed him in the femoral artery without even having to do more than shift in his seat.