Blood Week

by J. D. Martin

  “My wife and I haven’t had sex in two years. There is only so much a man can take before he starts fishing in other ponds, if you know what I mean. Last night, I told my wife that I was going to go bowling with my brother, but I was actually here with one of my part-time cashiers. For the past three months we’ve been meeting regularly for sex, and last night I tossed the condom from the car window because I didn’t want to walk in the rain to the trashcan.”

  On my notepad I wrote down the information he gave me. “What time were you finished cheating on your wife, Mr. Williams? Were you still here between eleven and one?”

  Shaking his head, “I was back home by 9pm, and my wife can confirm that because she gave me an earful about being out so late. If you have to ask her though, will you be able to leave out the details of where I really was last night?”

  Cheating on his spouse had no bearing on our investigation, so, regardless of my thoughts towards it I decided to keep it out of any questions with Mrs. Williams. I couldn’t say if I agreed with his actions, but two years was a long time to go without sex. He’d waited much longer than I would have, or most men for that matter.

  Once we confirmed his arrival time at home, and heard plenty about her husband being out late at that “damned bowling alley”, we found ourselves back at square one.

  On the ride back to the station, Delgado was the first to speak. “This vigilante seems really good at what he does. I mean, to have never left any tangible clues behind must say something about him, right? Five years running and nobody has identified him.”

  “Not to mention being able to go after hardened criminals without dying himself. That definitely has some skill involved.”

  “That, or a shit ton of luck,” Marcus joked.

  “I’ll tell you what, once we get back I’ll pull up the case files from past years so you can get caught up.”

  “Sounds good.”

  Back at the precinct, while my partner was brought up to speed, I put the final touches about the day’s events in our report. Just as I finished, Captain Hawthorne called me into her office. “How was it out there today?”

  “As usual, there weren’t any clues to tie in a suspect.”

  “And Delgado?”

  “Seems like a decent detective. He was a little short with Greg Orton today, but it was nothing too horrible. He’s got a lot of good instincts, and a familiarity with the area I wasn’t expecting. He’s reading the police history on the Blood Week vigilante now.”

  “Okay, keep me informed on the case and be careful out there. We still have six days to go.” Looking at the clock on the wall behind me, she continued “Looks like shift is over, how about you grab something to eat with that new partner of yours? Get to know him better since you have to trust each other with your lives.” With a smile and a nod, I decided her advice wasn’t a bad idea.

  At Delgado’s desk, I asked, “How’re you doing with all this?”

  “Not bad, I’ve read about half of it, so I’ll have to finish the rest up tomorrow.”

  For the past few weeks, I’d had a craving for a restaurant in the Power & Light District. It was one of my favorite places to eat, and this seemed like the perfect excuse to indulge. “So, Marcus, do you like sushi?”

  Chapter 8

  The Drunken Fish was an upscale sushi bar in the downtown area that I enjoyed on a regular basis. Beyond the phenomenal food and views of the heart of Kansas City, the lack of children flocking in with the goal of getting trashed created a pleasant atmosphere. Although I was only in my thirties, I still looked at the early twenty-somethings as children. And I had no interest in watching them try to go shot-for-shot with each other. Funny, since the first word in this restaurant’s name was drunken.

  However, this sushi bar was more of a business-casual style of restaurant, so you weren’t likely to find the kids Jaeger-bombing. While I hadn’t always been a fan of sushi, my introduction to the world had been life-changing. My first experience with what a place was calling sushi had been a cheap California roll. That atrocity didn’t spend much time in my mouth before being spit into a napkin. But once I was introduced to real sushi, I’d been a huge fan ever since.

  I hadn’t been to the Drunken Fish in a while. I’d been trying to find time to go, but hadn’t been able to make it for a couple weeks. I was lucky that Marcus was willing to give it a try and it also allowed us to share a few drinks and possibly learn a few things about each other that weren’t contained in a personnel file.

  We met outside the restaurant at 7pm, which meant the night air was still a bit sticky, but it was at least starting to cool. Inside, Jeanette was standing behind the hostess table as we entered. She smiled when she saw me and stepped out to greet us.

  “Mr. Saint, we haven’t seen you for a while.”

  “And I’ve hated every moment we’ve been apart.”

  Her eyes sparkled as her smile deepened. “Well I hope we can live up to what you’ve come to expect of us. Could I interest you in your usual table?”

  The bar was sectioned into four parts that were separated by red partitions and multiple floors. Near the main entrance were high-top tables with low lighting for a romantic atmosphere. The back had tables of standard height in front of the main bar. With the bright walls contrasting against the dark wood floors, it was upscale without the inflated costs.

  In addition to the interior, there were two sections for outside dining. On the main floor was what could be called a balcony that overlooked the sidewalk outside. It was a raised patio that sat about four feet above the outside walkway. The best option for seating—and where I usually liked to dine—was the roof terrace. Another bar was surrounded by steel patio furniture, complete with umbrellas. But along the edges of the terrace were dark whickered furniture with red cushions that sat around tables with gas fire pits built in the center.

  “You know, it’s getting nicer outside by the minute. I’d love my usual table, Jeanette.” As her eyes lingered on mine, she grabbed two menus from the hostess booth before asking us to follow. We ascended the stairs to the terrace and she sat us in a corner table where the fire was already lit. I came here so often that they always sat this table last just in case I came in. It was tremendous service to go along with the exquisite cuisine.

  “Let me know if there is anything I can do to make your stay more pleasurable,” she said as she handed me a menu. Her fingers brushed lightly against mine as she smiled. She handed the other menu to Marcus and left with a nod.

  “Am I the only one noticing that?” asked Delgado.

  “No,” I laughed.

  “Does she always flirt with you like that?”

  “Usually, but I’m not going out with her again.”

  “Again?” Delgado set his menu down and leaned forward. “You dated the hostess?”

  “I wouldn’t call sex dating.”

  “Does Amy know about her?”

  I shrugged. “She might,” I said. “There hasn’t been any talk about exclusivity. Besides, that’s not really my style. I like to sample from all the buffet has to offer.”

  “So, you’re saying that you get around a lot, huh?”

  “Define a lot…” We both laughed.

  Opening his menu, Delgado continued to ask about my dating life. “If you’re the scoundrel I’m thinking you may be, are there others at the precinct you’ve sampled?”

  “You should stick to the specialty rolls,” I said, effectively changing the subject. “Just about everything here is fantastic, but you’ll get to see how this place shines if you stick to those.”

  Along with the sushi, I convinced Delgado to get a bottle of sake with me. As he lifted his cup to take another sip, he paused and said, “I’m telling you, it’s a dead-end investigation unless more evidence comes up.” He downed his drink and poured more from the clay bottle between us. I couldn’t help but agree with him about the evidence. Any leads we traced never seemed to turn up anything concrete on the vigilante killings.
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  “So, the whole point of this,” he continued, “is to find out more about each other, right?”

  “Yeah, I think it’s important to know your partner beyond just the job.” Through the course of dinner, many interesting facts had come to light. These were personal things that told me about the man beyond the detective.

  He met his wife Rita on the job when she was a material witness on a robbery seven years ago. Sparks flew back and forth during her initial interview and once the case was closed, Marcus jumped at the chance to ask her out. It didn’t sit well with his captain back in California at first, but it got better with time. Especially when the news of their coming daughter came eight months after they were married. She was named Victoria after Rita’s mother.

  With Rita’s family being from Olathe, he’d spent a lot of time in the city over the years they’d been together. At times, he felt like he lived in two places with how often he’d been coming to Kansas City. I also learned that he liked to paint in his spare time, which was something I hadn’t expected. He even had a few of his pieces shipping to Kansas City with plans to display them in his house.

  “Wow,” he said taking the last bite of his third Strawberry Cheesecake Makimono. It was New York cheesecake that was rolled and tempura fried before being topped with chocolate sauce, mixed nuts, powdered sugar and strawberries with whipped cream. “That just might be the greatest thing I’ve ever tasted.” I’d recommended the desert to him as the finishing touch of the meal, but this was the first time I’d seen someone eat that many of them.

  “I want to order another, but Rita would kill me. She’s been trying to get me off all the sugar.”

  “Women want us to be the best we can be,” I said.

  “Yeah, but it’s hard to give up things that taste that good. I’ll call it a win by not ordering a fourth roll.”

  As the night winded down, I also learned that classical and Jazz music were staples in the Delgado household. Rita played the violin, Marcus the jazz trombone, and Victoria wanted to take up the clarinet when she got a bit older. I had to admit that Marcus had quite the musically cultured family. It was something we connected on since I too played jazz trombone in high school and throughout college. Though I hadn’t played in almost a decade.

  With the added alcohol flowing, Marcus returned to a topic he seemed truly interested in. “I’m sure if the right woman came along you’d be ready to settle down. Perhaps that right woman might be our lovely coroner? You two were quite cozy earlier.”

  Before I could find a way to brush the comment aside, my phone vibrated across the table while the voice of a white haired, time-traveling scientist yelled “1.21 GIGAWATTS!!!”

  Delgado looked at my phone and then back at me before he burst out laughing. He pointed at my phone asking why that is the second time he’d heard reference to that movie coming from my phone. I said the only thing that I could think of to explain it away.

  “I guess you guys aren’t ready for that yet, but your kids are gonna love it.” Laughing I added, “I know that my geek is showing quite a bit right now, but I’m just an avid movie lover. I switch up the sounds on my phone every few months, and right now I’m on a Back to the Future kick.”

  Grabbing my phone, I pulled up the text I’d just received to discover a message from Amy Doyle. “Speak of the devil” I said, showing Marcus who the message was from.

  Tapping the box to open the picture attached to the text as I took another drink, I almost spit out the mouthful of sake over the table fire. Narrowly avoiding singeing my face, I was staring at a self-taken photo of Amy wearing red lingerie that squeezed tightly against her breasts as the fabric struggled to contain them. It came complete with a caption reading, ‘This is what’s waiting for you. Come over now.’

  I didn’t need a more blatant invitation than that. I grabbed the bill and told Marcus that I’d cover it this time around and he could get the next one. Leaving so abruptly wasn’t the politest thing to do, but my reaction was clear enough to him as to where I was heading. I had an important package waiting for me, so I paid for the meal and responded to Amy that I was on the way.

  Driving up to Amy’s house, I pulled in the driveway and hopped out. Rushing past the cars, I continued up the walkway towards her front door while hitting the button on my key fob to lock the SUV. I didn’t even have a chance to rap on it before the door opened.

  Amy stepped into view in all her glory with the same outfit from her text, but now I had to pleasure of seeing the rest of it. Along with the top pressing tightly against her skin, she had a matching garter belt with straps holding up matching satin thigh highs that made her legs scream to be touched. The straps stretched over her naked thighs as the only fabric concealing the skin around her ass as the thong made sure to keep her completely exposed. Inviting me in, she closed the door behind me and wasted no time getting started.

  I pushed her hard into the wall as I moved in, pressing my body against hers. Coming ever closer allowed our lips to meet. With my hand on the back of her neck, I tasted the strawberry of her lip-gloss. Her mouth parted and invited my tongue to dance with hers. Slowly, my focus traveled down past her cheeks and paused just above the collar bone.

  As I bit her neck, her head tilted back as she let out a whispered moan. I released the clasps on her top allowing her chest to fall free. As the top fell to the floor, my hands began to massage her breasts and she began pulling on my hair. My hands caressed her thighs before jerking her legs up around my waist so I could carry her into the bedroom.

  Laying her on the bed, my lips kissed slowly down her neck past her shoulders and continued down her chest while my hands slid back up her thighs. By the time my mouth reached her navel, my thumbs had pushed up under the strands of her thong and began pulling her panties down. I didn’t stop until they had passed her toes and I could drop them to the floor.

  Standing up, she pushed me into a chair and climbed into my lap. Lightly licking my neck with intermittent kisses, Amy unbuttoned my shirt and slid it down my shoulders until she pulled it off my arms and tossed it into the corner of the room. Her hands rubbed down my chest to the belt buckle of my pants where she undid the clasp. With a hard pull, the belt was ripped from the loops. She unfastened my pants before standing both of us up and pulling them off. I kicked away my shoes as she did so to hasten the process.

  Stepping forward and grabbing her ass, I lifted her up and wrapped her legs around me once more. Letting our nude bodies come into contact, I carried her towards the bed and placed myself on top of her warm skin. Our chests rose and fell against each other, breathing deeply in anticipation of a night of hot sweat.

  Chapter 9

  The sun had set on the city sending most of its citizens in for the night. The news had heavily covered the events at the coffee shop on East 12th Street that day. Little coverage was provided for anything else. It was as if there wasn’t anything else news worthy in the entire city.

  The investigation had uncovered a few leads, but they had fizzled out leaving the detectives on the case hitting a brick wall. Normally there was the argument that it had only been about 24 hours since Sullivan’s death, but the city knew better. The first night of Blood Week had come and gone, and the setting of the sun began the countdown to another body.

  The beginning of the second day meant there would be increased police traffic on the streets. Criminals battled with bouts of insomnia knowing there was a higher likelihood of cops in their neighborhoods, not to mention a killer that liked to prey on them as well. It was hard to sleep while looking over your shoulder for a hunter. The stress of it could make a person choose to sleep with the lights on. Shadows had a funny way of playing with your vision.

  That isn’t to say that everyone reacted to Blood Week this way. Some liked to play the odds since it was unlikely to be targeted against the large number of bodies in the city. Unlike the casinos, this time the odds were in your favor. One such gambler was waiting for a delivery pickup.


  On the corner of 18th and Troost, a man sat in his car with the windows down, smelling the KC air. There was a hint of mold on the wind from the surrounding buildings. Many of them were in desperate need of repair, but not a lot of money was flowing into the neighborhood, so buildings began to decay. The street lamps gave the neighborhood an ominous yellow glow making the kid on a bike riding towards the car feel uneasy.

  Over the shoulders of his blue t-shirt was a backpack filled with items that he hoped to stay hidden. As he pedaled past a black car parked near the edge of the intersection, he gave the man inside a nod. The driver watched as the boy working for him sped by with one of the many packages he had in route. He, and others, were like his very own postal service.

  Turning his head towards the sidewalk, he spotted a newspaper in a nearby trashcan that could offer some entertainment to pass the time, so he stepped out of the vehicle to retrieve it. He read the headline Killer Still at Large as he flipped through the pages of the Monday edition of the Kansas City Star. Underneath was a small blurb about the death of Justin Sullivan. He was a convicted rapist and had been strung up with his throat slit.

  As this was an active investigation, there wasn’t much information beyond that. There wasn’t a mention of the vigilante’s calling card of cutting ‘REUS’ into the victim’s flesh or writing ‘Ex malo bonum’ in their blood. This information had never been released to the public, but that didn’t stop news outlets from connecting the dots to show that Kansas City had a vigilante in their midst.

  The man pulled out the funny pages and tossed the rest back in the trash before returning to his car. The reader catching up on the latest antics Garfield and his love of lasagna was Danny King. Originally from Independence, he moved to Kansas City when he got deeper into his start-up business. He was an entrepreneur, of sorts, deep into the local drug trade.

  Danny King—otherwise known as Big King—started out as a drug mule for G-Rule. He carried cocaine, weed, or meth in a backpack to addresses all over Independence. Dropping out of school at fourteen, he started running drugs full-time. In his eyes, there was more money in carrying a backpack of narcotics than having it full of books. King had decided early on that school didn’t make sense when there was paper to be made in the real world.