Rough Justice (The Scarecrow and Lady Kingston Book 1)
Page 10
“So you’re saying Tiffany Blair was a plant?”
“I don’t have anything substantial, but it certainly fits. She’s a veritable ghost. After the hit, all she’d have to do is have big sis help her disappear back across the border and retire in sunny Mexico. Nobody would have been the wiser.”
“Apart from your theory, we still haven’t pinned down anything concrete.”
“Right,” Scarecrow acknowledged. “My hunch is that Jersey Blair couldn’t pin down anything on the Senator Durrell either, so she took matters into her own hands. It’s not that far of a stretch of the imagination. After all, she had family ties to organized crime. What if Tiffany Blair got recruited by big sister to assassinate the senator?
“What if all went according to plan and the unforeseen change in venues gave the Blair sisters the window of opportunity they needed to make an excuse for why the senator’s regulars couldn’t be of service? After that, the rest is easy. The plant is put in place, and the evening carried on as usual. Once alone with the senator, our assassin began strangling him. After all, the senator got off on that sort of thing. But on that fateful night, things suddenly went south.
“The senator must have realized that his life was in serious danger, a violent struggle ensued, and the senator, in a fight for his life, got the upper hand and proceeded to strangle his strangler.”
“Ironic twist of events, if true,” Julie asserted, still chewing on her blueberry bagel. “But then what about our other girls? What about Snow White and the seven whores? They were all poisoned.”
John smiled. “Seven women dead except for the final call girl, who mysteriously vanished.”
“Right,” Julie answered.
John kept smiling.
“Why do I get the feeling you know something I don’t?”
“Because,” John said in a pleased tone, “I think I may have just figured out who our mysterious fourth woman is.”
Julie shot him a surprised look. “Really? Who?”
“Jersey Blair.”
“Dammit,” Julie cursed, pounding her open palm with a clenched fist. “Why didn’t I see that? She must have been the other woman. It makes total sense assuming she’s carrying out a vendetta to avenge the death of her sister. A murder which could never be mentioned due to the sensitive nature of it all.”
“Now we’re talking,” Scarecrow said, pointing at Julie’s eyes and drawing an imaginary line to his. “But then, on the night of our murder, our vigilante of justice shows up only to find the senator with two off the street hookers, which puts a kink in her whole operation. So she slips in the bad batch of cocaine, originally intended for the senator, and gets rid of any potential eyewitnesses.”
“Right, but you’re forgetting the crushed larynx,” Julie reminded, drawing a slit across her throat with her thumb nail.
“It was an act of revenge. Of course our killer wanted the senator to know who she was. She wanted to see the fear in his eyes as she squeezed down until the gasper could gasp no more.”
“But then poor Snow White comes along and stumbles upon a triple homicide in progress. Snow White becomes collateral damage, but this time, there’s no Prince Charming to rescue her.”
“Meanwhile, all we’ve been doing this whole time is chasing our own shadows.” Scarecrow rubbed his chin for a bit then said, “I have only one theory, but I’m afraid it’s not a very good one.”
“I’ll take a bad theory over nothing,” Julie said, brushing her bangs away from her eyes.
“Maybe it’s true what they say; the bad apple doesn’t fall far from the tree.”
“Are you saying Tiffany Blair was a psychotic killer like her brother?”
“It would explain why Jersey enlisted her in the first place. Blake “The Razor” is behind bars, so you go to the next best thing. Little sis gets killed and you devote the rest of your life to trying to take down a snake, ironically enough, by poisoning people with snake’s venom. But like I said, it’s just a bad theory. More of a hunch, really.”
“Okay,” Julie said, stuffing the last morsel of bagel in her mouth, “you get on this and see if you can connect Jersey to the scene of the crime. Find out where that poison was obtained and how. We need something solid or we’re never going to nail this down.”
“I’m already on it,” John said as he picked up his fedora.
“I’m going to call in some favors south of the border and see what kind of dirt I can dig up on this Tiffany Blair chick.”
John turned to head toward his car, a burnt orange Honda Fit hybrid, when Julie called out to him.
“Wait a minute …”
John turned around.
“You did the paper crane thing, didn’t you?”
“How did you know?”
“Because you haven’t talked about how it went with McDoogle. Usually, you’d be spilling your beans, every detail, unless you didn’t want me to know something. Which means you did some of your magic voodoo mumbo-jumbo that I explicitly ordered you not to do.”
“The Magician’s Swan Song is a perfectly well-respected illusion!” Scarecrow said defensively.
“Accept that it’s not an illusion when you do it!” Julie fired back.
“But he tried to cut me with a razor!” Scarecrow added in his defense.
“No excuses,” Julie said. “You know what happens when you use real magic.”
“Natural disasters abound,” Scarecrow grumbled as he looked up at the sky with a frown.
“Right. Somewhere in the world, either in the next few hours or perhaps even the next couple of days, there will be an earthquake, or a flood, or a tsunami somewhere around the world, and thousands of people’s lives may be put into jeopardy.”
“Or an iceberg will break off an ice mantle in Antarctica and float harmlessly out into the Pacific where it’ll melt. No harm, no foul.”
Julie shot him the evil eye. “No more magic. Consider it an order.”
Scarecrow sighed and turned back toward his car. “Yes, boss. No more magic.”
“Oh, and thanks for the bagels!” Julie said just as Scarecrow was climbing into his car. Not hearing her, he drove off. Across the street stood a man wearing a Burning Man t-shirt and sporting a beard which would make a gypsy proud, full of braids and beads woven right into it, staring at Julie in panic-stricken terror. In his hands was an alien conspiracy sign with a big green bobble-head E.T. painted on it that read, “The End is Nigh! They Walk Among Us.”
Julie instantly came up with a hundred and one ways to mess with him, but she decided the most subtle approach would be best. Raising her forefinger to her lips, she hushed him with a long drawn out “Shhh,” and then climbed nonchalantly into her borrowed Aston Martin. Revving the V12 engine, she squealed the tires and raced off at a breakneck pace, leaving him standing there to suffer whatever conspiracy-theory panic attack his delusional mind had inflicted upon him.
17
¿QUÉ NOS TRAE LA SERPIENTE?
Recess let out, and soon enough, the schoolyard was abuzz with the squeals of swarms of children running through their after lunch sugar highs at fifty screams per minute. Across the street from the schoolyard sat a nervous-looking Mexican American in his early fifties.
Plopping down in the seat next to him was a stunning athletic woman wearing a sleeveless, gray, dry-fit running top ripe with sweat stains from her afternoon jog. Her form-hugging jogging tights were a flashy purple, and tucked inside her ears were some Beats tour earbuds.
Dabbing herself off with a towel, the woman looked over at him and said, “Good, I’m glad you got my message.”
“You know, it’s almost as if that joke never gets old for you. Look,” he said, pointing at the primary school across the street then himself, “It’s Julio down by the schoolyard.”
“Well, public places are still the safest place for those who want to blend in and not stick out.”
“Not for people in protective custody, I can assure you. Public places make me
nervous. More chances of someone recognizing me.”
“Really? Do you think one of those children playing over there might recognize you?”
Julio eyed the children suspiciously, then let out a long, drawn-out sigh. “I guess not.” Turning toward the woman, he inquired, “So, Detective Kingston, to what do I owe the pleasure of this visit?”
“Actually, it’s Lieutenant now.”
“Moving up in the world, I see.”
“How’s Camila and the kids?”
“They’re doing as well as expected, especially considering they have to use fake names any time they go to school or the grocery store. But we’ll manage. God willing, we’ll manage.”
Julie sat back on the bench and watched in silence at the children playing.
“You ever think you’ll have kids?” Julio asked.
“God no!” Julie gasped, taken totally off guard. “Hell to the capital no.” Shooting Julio a wide-eyed look of exasperation, she asked, “Don’t you know me at all?”
Julio simply chuckled and turned his head as the chime sounded and swarms of children rushed into the school. It was like watching a reverse flood. “So, seeing as I’m not getting any younger, how may I help you, Lieutenant?”
Julie skipped any further pleasantries and got straight to business. “When you were working as a double agent with the DEA to infiltrate Juan Diego’s drug cartel, you once told me a story about a snake-woman. I’m curious about the specific details of that story.”
Julio raised a dark eyebrow, which looked like a caterpillar trying to climb over his sweaty forehead, and grumbled, “Why in the world do you want to hear that old superstitious bit of folklore?”
“I have my reasons,” Julie replied. Putting her hand on his, she whispered, “Please.”
“Well, I’m not the greatest storyteller, but it goes something like this. They say that one day, out of the blue, a chica blanca appeared in the small ocean town of Reynosa. Nobody knows where she came from or who she was, but they thought she was but a child. As the legend has it, she was no more than fifteen or sixteen, and having been abandoned and made destitute, it wasn’t long before a nasty pandilla came upon her and brutally assaulted her. They beat and ravaged her to within an inch of her life, then dumped her in the street for the dogs. But the girl’s will was strong, and she crawled to a nearby shack,. Little did she know that it was a secret, out of the way safe house for Juan Diego as he was keeping a low profile after hearing that the DEA had infiltrated local chapters of the cartel. Taking pity on the poor girl, he took her in and raised her as his own until the day she was grown.”
“I’ve heard all this before. I know that Diego raised her, trained her to be a deadly assassin, and then let her loose on those who would defy his authority.”
“What you don’t know is that Diego taught the girl self-restraint and discipline. He made her more than just deadly. He made her cold. On her twenty-first birthday, Diego held a seaside beach party. The whole town, including the young men who had raped her all those years ago, showed up for the big event. That night, she seduced the young men, laid with them, and even though it must have been her worst nightmare come true, their nightmare was just beginning. For them. It is said she paralyzed them with the venom of a viper, and as they lay dying, she sawed off their manhood with a piece of broken glass, then skinned them alive and bathed in their blood.”
“Sounds like my kind of woman,” Julie quipped.
Julio’s eyebrow rose even higher, so high in fact that Julie was certain it would leap off his face.
“We do not joke about the Serpiente Femenina.”
“I’m beginning to get that,” Julie replied in all seriousness. “What about the rest of the legend? What about the massacre?”
“Yes, the massacre. As you probably know, our little girl had grown to love killing. That night on the beach, she got her revenge, paid back in full, but still it could not fill the dark emptiness inside of her. Gradually, the townsfolk grew weary of her, and soon, they banded together and, forming a mob, marched to the shack that Diego had given her. They called her out, but she refused. So they burned the shack to the ground. Inside was the charred husk of a young woman.”
“This is where it gets interesting,” Julie said, wide-eyed as she waited to hear the rest.
“But over the next month, people began vanishing from the village. Nobody knew where they were disappearing to or whether they had been kidnapped or met some unfortunate accidente. Day by day, people continued to vanish. Women. Children. Even people’s dogs. Eventually, the state police were called in, but by the time they got there, nothing was left but a ghost town. A day later, the police dogs happened upon a scent and followed it to a mass burial ground, which contained the remains of everyone from the village. Every living thing had been inexplicably poisoned with snake’s venom. Some say it was the Serpiente Femenina, and others believe it was her ghost that got revenge that night for those who burned her alive as well as those that stood by and did nothing to stop it.”
“But that’s not true, is it?”
“Nobody knows what is true and what isn’t anymore. That’s why they call it a legend.”
“I heard rumors, rumors that there was another story.”
“Sí, there is a much stranger story.”
“I’ve not heard this one yet. Please go on.”
“At about the time of the massacre, your own country had the case of the mysterious snake-man. I believe you were the one who caught him, no?”
“I was,” Julie confirmed. “A man by the name of Petros Dillahunty confessed to attacking campers, hikers, and outdoor mountain bikers. As you may know, he also poisoned them with snake’s venom.”
“Down south, the story is a little different. People say that it was the Serpiente Femenina.”
“Impossible. Petros confessed.”
“A confession can be bought, Lieutenant. Especially when you are knee-deep in the corrupt world of drug lords and their unlimited wealth and power.”
“Is there more to the story than that?”
“Not much. But there is a stranger story that you may be interested in.”
Julie couldn’t imagine a story stranger than the last, but her curiosity was piqued. Leaning in, she nodded her head to let Julio know she was very much interested.
Continuing on, Julio informed, “You see, one of your hotshot American super cops, an FBI agent working alongside the DEA, busted Juan Diego about five years ago, around the same time as your Snake-Man incident. Now apparently, Diego’s luck had run out, and he got fatally wounded in the crossfire. When the agents found him, he was already dead. But in his pocket, they found a piece of paper with some coordinates on it. Believing it to be the warehouse where Diego kept his product, they raided it only to find a massive, empty storage facility. But in the basement of that facility, there was a room.”
“What kind of room?” Julie asked with bated breath.
“A room with dark secrets. Plastered on the walls of the small room were photographs of a dozen skinned victims cut out from newspaper clippings of a sinister man’s killing spree. A man named …”
“Blake ‘The Razor’ McDoogle.”
“You know of him?”
“I’m the one who put him behind bars,” Julie said, her mind still spinning as she tried to piece these events together.
“Well then, Lieutenant Kingston, I feel I should warn you, there was one photo among the rest that stood out.”
“Stood out how?”
“It was the only one that didn’t belong.”
“How so?”
“It was a picture of a woman. She wasn’t any ordinary woman either. She was an officer.”
“Who was the picture of?”
“Remember the FBI woman who had tracked down Diego?”
“Yes.”
“The picture was but a mere reflection staring back at her. It was the agent herself.”
“Does this woman have a name?”
“Do you by any chance mean Jersey Blair?”
“Yes, that was it. Jersey Blair.”
“I knew it,” Julie said, pounding her palm with her fist.
“You see, Lieutenant, the FBI agent had come the closest anyone ever has to catching the Serpiente Femenina. But instead, all she found was herself amid a collection of death and chaos. That is how the Serpiente Femenina works. Some say she is the hell spawn of Satan’s unholy union with an earth woman. Some say she is a pure manifestation of evil. Whatever she is, there is one thing I am certain of …”
“What’s that?” Julie inquired before Julio had a chance to finish.
“She is still out there. The Serpiente Femenina still walks among us—disguised as one of us—and when we are least expecting it, like the viper she steals her venom from, she strikes. By the time you realize who she is, it’s already too late.”
“Thanks for the stories,” Julie mumbled, still chewing on the information and trying to piece together something more plausible than urban legends.
With that, Julio slowly got up, put his hand on Julie’s shoulder, and said in a reassuring tone, “That’s all they are, just stories.” Then he walked off without saying another word.
Julie remained in her seat, staring blankly at the side of the road, trying to separate the fact from fiction. Whatever the truth was, she was afraid that whatever the hell was going on, these strange events were taking her down a dark and dangerous path. Once set upon it, there would be no turning back.
18
PROTECTIVE CUSTODY
Kateland Rameses Beckensale demanded she be taken to the safe house before she answered any further questions. With her long, elegant legs stretched out and her feet on the table, Beck leaned back in her chair and made sure to arch her back just enough to cause the swell of her breasts to bulge out of the top of her tank-top so that Detective rookie Jack Wolfe, who stood in the corner of the interrogation room, could better admire the rise and fall of her feminine form.