Clean Slate (Jim Knighthorse Book 4)

by J. R. Rain

  Last week, I’d gotten a call from Detective Christian Grey, all fifty shades of him, and he’d given me the rundown on what he knew.

  Everything had shaken out pretty much as we had guessed, except for one variation: Freddie Calgary had also been murdered by Ruger P. Howard. Yes, Freddie had indeed come to his number one fan for help, and, as it turned out, that had been a poor decision.

  Freddie’s meeting with Dr. Green in Sedona about heart issues had been a front. Secretly, the doctor had been paid a lot of money to sign off on the death certificate, to state that Freddie’s death had been natural. By doing so, no autopsy was performed.

  Of course, the body that had been delivered to the morgue was anything but Freddie Calgary, although the young barista had been a close match.

  Freddie, as it turned out, was a bit of a psychopath himself with, apparently, little regard for others, as evidenced by arranging the murder of the young man and the good doctor.

  About a year into his deception, living secretly in Ruger P. Howard’s apartment, while his number one fan catered to his every whim and need, things took a turn for the worse. One night, while Freddie Calgary slept, Ruger had killed the young actor in his sleep.

  And that’s when Ruger would begin a year-long affair with Freddie’s corpse, an affair that may or may not have included necrophilia. The detective didn’t seem to know, and didn’t seem to want to know, either.

  And with the outside world already convinced the young actor was dead, his real death had gone unnoticed, even as the crazy Ruger had gone to great pains to mask his decaying corpse by performing homemade embalming techniques.

  Now, Ruger and his attorneys were seeking an insanity defense. My guess is they would get it. Either way, I suspected Ruger P. Howard would spend a long, long time in a maximum-security prison for the criminally insane.

  Detective Christian Grey had ended the conversation stating that he wanted to take a long vacation. I suggested that there were exactly one billion women interested in taking one with him. That was about the time he hung up on me.

  Now, as I processed these past few weeks, contemplating what I’d seen and done, a smallish figure came into view through the big McDonald’s window. The figure walked slowly, purposefully, hands behind his back, face lifted to the heavens. That his face seemed to shine with supernatural radiance was probably a figment of my imagination. As I watched, he stopped and smelled some white carnations that grew near the McDonald’s parking lot entrance. He smiled and nodded and caressed the flower before moving on.

  A short while later, Jack stepped into the McDonald’s foyer and waited in line for his turn. Soon, he came over to me with a steaming cup of coffee.

  “Jim,” he said.

  “Jack,” I said.

  As he sat across from me, he reached out and took my hand and squeezed it. I squeezed back. His touch was electrifying, to say the least.

  “You’ve had an eventful few weeks, Jim.”

  “You have no idea.”

  “Oh, I might have an inkling.”

  He continued holding my hand, and I was surprised to discover that doing so didn’t feel weird to me. In fact, it could have been my father’s hand, had he ever bothered to hold mine, or my mother’s, who had held it often. Either way, I drew strength from Jack’s hand. I also drew love from it.

  “Do you mind,” I said, my voice sounding hoarse even to my ears, “if we just sit here quietly?”

  “I wouldn’t have it any other way, Jim.”

  And so, I kept holding his hand, and kept feeling the strength and the love and acceptance for who I was and what I had done. Yes, if God was real, there was a very good chance that he was sitting across from now.

  Smiling at me...and holding my hand.

  The End

  Knighthorse returns in:

  Night Run

  Jim Knighthorse Series #5

  coming soon!

  ~~~~~

  Easy Rider

  A Jim Knighthorse Short Story

  by J.R. Rain

  Available now!

  Amazon Kindle and Amazon UK

  Also available:

  Elvis Has Not Left the Building

  A mystery novel

  by J.R. Rain

  Over three decades ago, Elvis faked his death.

  Now he’s living secretly in Los Angeles....

  And working as a private investigator.

  A missing person case might just be the King’s final bow.

  Available now!

  Amazon Kindle * Amazon UK

  Paperback * Audio Book

  ~~~~~

  Silent Echo

  A mystery novel

  by J.R. Rain

  Not much could drag Jim Booker out of a peaceful, if lonely, retirement and back to late nights, crime scenes, and chases. Jim Booker is done with detective work and would just like to enjoy a cup of coffee on a sunny day. But when an old friend shows up with a case about an old flame, Booker can’t say no.

  What starts as a missing persons case soon delivers more than he bargained for, and when Booker’s own past offers clues, it’s clear that no one else can solve this mystery. But there’s a catch: Booker was given six months to live eight months ago.

  Available now!

  Amazon Kindle * Amazon UK

  Paperback * Audio Book

  Also available:

  The Body Departed

  A supernatural mystery

  by J.R. Rain

  (read on for a sample)

  Chapter One

  I stepped through the wall and into my daughter’s bedroom.

  She was sleeping contentedly on her side. It was before dawn and the building was quiet. The curtains were open and the sky beyond was black. If there were any stars, they were lost to the L.A. smog. The curtains were covered with ponies, as was most of the room. A plastic pony light switch, a pony bed lamp, pony wallpaper and bedspread. Someday she would outgrow her obsession with ponies, although I secretly hoped not.

  A girl and her pony. It’s a beautiful thing.

  I stepped closer to my sleeping daughter, and as I did so she shifted slightly towards me. She mewed like a newborn kitten. Crimson light from her alarm clock splashed over her delicate features, highlighting a slightly upturned nose and impossibly big eyes. Sometimes when she slept her closed eyelids fluttered and danced. But not tonight. Tonight she was sleeping deeply, no doubt dreaming of sugar and spice and everything nice.

  Or of Barbies and boys and everything in-between.

  I wondered if she ever dreamed of me. I’m sure she did at times. Were those dreams good or bad? Did she ever wake up sad and missing her father?

  Do you want her to wake up sad?

  No, I thought. I want her to wake up rested, restored and full of peace.

  I stepped away from the far wall and glided over to the small chair in the corner of her room. We had made the chair together one weekend, a father/daughter project for the Girl Scouts. To her credit, she did most of the work.

  I sat in it now, lowering my weightless body into it, mimicking the act of sitting. Unsurprisingly, the chair didn’t creak.

  As I sat, my daughter rolled over in her sleep, facing me. Her aura, usually blue and streaked with red flames, often reacted to my presence, as it did now. The red flames crackled and gravitated toward me like a pulsating static ball, sensing me like I sensed it.

  As I continued to sit, the lapping red flames grew in intensity, snapping and licking the air like solar flares on the surface of the sun. My daughter’s aura always reacted this way to me. But only in sleep. Somehow her subconscious recognized me, or perhaps it was her soul. Or both. Either way, from this subconscious state, she would sometimes speak to me, as she did now.

  “Hi, Daddy.”

  “Hi, baby,” I said.

  “Mommy said you got hurt real bad.”

  “Yes, I did.”

  “Mommy said that a bad man hurt you and you got killed.”

  “Mom
my’s right, but I don’t want you thinking about that right now, okay?”

  “Okay,” she said sleepily. “Am I dreaming, Daddy?”

  “Yes, baby.”

  We were quiet and she shifted subtly, lifting her face toward me, her eyes still closed in sleep. There was a sound from outside her window, a light tapping. I ignored it, but it came again and again, and then with more consistency. I looked over my shoulder and saw that it was raining. I looked back at my daughter and thought of the rain, remembering how it felt on my skin, on my face. Or, rather, I was trying to remember. Lately, such memories of the flesh were getting harder and harder to recall.

  “It’s raining, Daddy,” she said.

  “Yes.”

  “Do you live in the rain?”

  “No.”

  “Where do you live, Daddy?”

  “I live here, with you.”

  “But you’re dead.”

  I said nothing. I hated to be reminded of this, even by my daughter.

  “Why don’t you go to heaven, Daddy?”

  I thought about that. I think about that a lot, actually. I said, “Daddy still has work to do.”

  “What kind of work?”

  “Good work.”

  “I miss you,” she said. “I miss you so much. I think about you every day. I’m always crying. People at school say I’m a crybaby.”

  “You’re not a crybaby,” I said. “You’re just sad.” My heart broke all over again. “It’s time to go back to sleep, angel.”

  “Okay, Daddy.”

  “I love you, sweetie.”

  “I love you, too, Daddy.”

  I drifted up from the small wooden chair and moved across the room the way I do—silently and easily—and at the far wall I looked back at her. Her aura had subsided, although some of it still flared here and there. For her to relax—to truly relax—I needed to leave her room entirely.

  And so I did. Through the wall.

  To hell with doors.

  Chapter Two

  I was standing behind him, reading the newspaper from over his shoulder, as I did every morning.

  His name was Jerrold and he was close to sixty and close to retirement. He lived alone and seemed mostly happy. He was addicted to internet poker, but, as far as I could tell, that was his only vice.

  Thank God.

  He turned the paper casually, snapping it taught, then reached for his steaming mug of coffee, heavy with sugar and cream, and took a long sip. I could smell the coffee. Or at least a hint of it, just like I could smell a hint of his aftershave and hair gel. My senses were weak at best.

  As he set the mug down, some of the coffee sloshed over the rim and onto the back of his hand. He yelped and shook his hand. I could see that it had immediately reddened.

  Pain.

  I hadn’t known pain in quite a long time. My last memory of it was when I had been working at a friend’s house, cutting carpet, and nearly severed my arm off.

  I looked down at my translucent arm now. Although nearly imperceptible, the scar was still there—or at least the ghostly hint of it.

  Still cursing under his breath, Jerrold turned back to his paper. So did I. He scanned the major headlines, and I scanned them along with him. After all, he was my hands in this situation.

  He read through some local Los Angeles news, mostly political stuff that would have bored me to tears had I tears to be bored with. I glanced over at his coffee while he read, trying to remember what it tasted like. I think I remembered.

  I think.

  Hot, roasted, bitter and sweet. I knew the words, but I was having a hard time recalling the actual flavor. That scared me.

  Jerrold turned the page. As he did so, something immediately caught my eye; luckily, it caught his eye, too.

  A piano teacher had been murdered at St. Luke’s, a converted monastery that was now being used as a Catholic church and school. Lucy Randolph was eighty-six years old and just three days shy from celebrating her sixtieth anniversary with her husband.

  I had known Mrs. Randolph. In fact, she had been my own music teacher back when I was a student at St. Luke’s. She had been kind to a fault, a source of inspiration and joy to her students, and especially to me.

  And now, according to the report, someone had strangled her, leaving her for dead on the very piano she had taught from. Perhaps the very same piano I had been taught from.

  Damn.

  Jerrold clucked his tongue and shook his head and moved on to the next page, but I had seen enough. I stepped away,

  “You’re still young, Jerrold,” I said to him. “Lose fifteen pounds and find someone special—and ditch the gambling.”

  As I spoke, the small hairs on the back of his neck stood up and and his aura shifted towards me. He shivered unconsciously and turned the page.

  Chapter Three

  We were in Pauline’s apartment.

  She was drinking an apple martini and I wasn’t, which was a damn shame. At the moment, I was sitting in an old wing back chair and she was on the couch, one bare foot up on a hand-painted coffee table which could have doubled for a modern piece of abstract art.

  “If you ever need any extra money,” I said, “you could always sell your coffee table on eBay.”

  “It’s not for sale,” she said. “Ever.”

  “What if you were homeless and living on the streets and needed money?”

  “Then I would be homeless and living on the streets with the world’s most bitchen hand-painted coffee table.”

  Her name was Pauline and she was my best—and only—friend. She was also a world-famous medium. She could hear me, see me and sometimes even touch me. Hell, she could even read my thoughts, which was a bit disconcerting for me. She was a full-figured woman, with perhaps the most beautiful face I had ever seen. She often wore her long brown hair haphazardly, a look that would surely have your average California girl running back to the bathroom mirror. Pauline was not your average California girl. She wasn’t your average girl by any definition, spending as much of her time in the world of the dead as in the world of the living. Luckily, she just so happened to live in the very building I was presently haunting.

  “Yeah, lucky me,” said Pauline, picking up on my thoughts.

  She did her readings out of a small office near downtown Los Angeles, usually working with just one or two clients a day. Some of her sessions lasted longer than others and tonight she was home later than usual, hitting the booze hard, as she often did. I wouldn’t call her a drunk, but she was damn close to being one.

  “I’m not a drunk,” Pauline said absently, reading my thoughts again. “I can stop any time I want. The booze just helps me...release.”

  “Release?” I asked.

  “Yeah, to forget. To unwind. To uneverything.”

  “You should probably not drink so much,” I said.

  She regarded me over her martini glass. Her eyes were bloodshot. Her face gleamed with a fine film of sweat. She wasn’t as attractive when she was drunk.

  “Thanks,” she said sarcastically. “And do you even remember what it’s like being drunk?”

  I thought about that. “A little. And that was below the belt.”

  “Do you even have a belt?”

  I looked down at my slightly glowing ethereal body. Hell, even my clothing glowed, which was the same clothing I had been wearing on the night I was murdered two years ago: a white tee shirt and long red basketball shorts, my usual sleeping garb. I was barefoot and I suspected my hair was a mess, since I had been shot to death in my sleep. Dotting my body were the various bloody holes where the bullets had long ago entered my living flesh.

  “No belt,” I said. “Then again, no shoes, either.”

  She laughed, which caused some of her martini to slosh over the rim. She cursed and licked her fingers like a true alcoholic.

  “Oh, shut up,” she said.

  “Waste not, want not,” I said.

  She glared at me some more as she took a long p
ull on her drink. When she set it down, she missed the center of the cork coaster by about three inches. Now part of the glass sat askew on the edge of the coaster, and the whole thing looked like it might tip over. She didn’t notice or care.

  Pauline worked with spirits all day. Early on, she had tried her best to ignore my presence. But I knew she could see me, and so I pursued her relentlessly until she finally acknowledged my existence.

  “And now I can’t get rid of you,” she said.

  “You love me,” I said. “Admit it.”

  “Yeah,” she said. “I do. Call me an idiot, but I do.”

  “Idiot,” I said. “Besides, I’m different than those other ghosts.”

  “Yeah? How so?”

  “I’m a ghost on a mission.”

  “Could that sound more corny?” she said.

  “Maybe after a few more drinks,” I said.

  “So how’s the mission coming along?” she asked. We had been over this before, perhaps dozens of times.

  “I don’t know,” I said. “It’s not like I’m getting a lot of feedback from anyone—or anything.”

  “And when will you be done with your mission?” she asked.

  “I don’t know that either.”

  “And what, exactly, is your mission?” As she spoke, she peered into the empty glass with one eye.

  “To save my soul.”

  “Oh, yeah, that. And you’re sure it’s not too late to save your soul? I mean, you are dead after all.”

  “It’s never too late,” I said.

  “And you know that how?” she asked.

  “Because I’m not in hell yet.”

  “You’re haunting an old apartment building in Los Angeles,” she said. “Sounds a bit like hell to me.”

  “But I can see my wife and daughter whenever I want,” I countered. “Can’t be that bad.”

  “Your wife has already re-married,” said Pauline. “And weren’t you two separated at the time of your death?”