Black As Night (Quentin Black Mystery #2)

BLACK AS NIGHT

Quentin Black Mystery #2

by

JC Andrijeski

Copyright © 2015 by JC Andrijeski

Published by White Sun Press

Cover Art & Design by Jennifer Munswami at

J.M. Rising Horse Creations

www.facebook.com/RisingHorseCreations

2015

Ebook Edition, License Notes

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Synopsis for
BLACK AS NIGHT

He says he will break anything you try to keep pure, brother...

Forensic psychologist Miri Fox travels across the globe when her now-employer, psychic detective, Quentin Black, calls from a police station in Bangkok and asks for her help.

She arrives to find Black undercover inside a gang of local criminals, determined to discover which of them is killing street children and ritualistically burning their bodies inside Buddhist shrines. But Black isn’t the only one with an interest in the crimes, and soon his investigations get the attention of the local sex traffickers, along with a crime syndicate out of Russia that doesn’t appreciate his meddling one bit.

When Miri shows up to help, she manages to catch the attention of all the wrong people. Events quickly spiral out of control…until Miri soon finds herself the hunted.

The second book in the paranormal mystery romance series starring brilliant but dangerous psychic detective, Quentin Black, and his partner in crime, forensic psychologist, Miri Fox.

Dedicated to the lovely people of Bangkok

who’ve given me such a soft landing place

Prologue

BUDDHA

RUNNING FOOTSTEPS ECHOED hollowly along the stone corridor, loud in the night’s silence.

Two sets.

Not the barefoot running of monks in saffron robes––these were booted feet, the feet of soldiers. Or at least of people who shouldn’t be here, not in the middle of the night, not in one of the holiest places in the Old City, where residents came every holiday to light incense and murmur prayers. The desire to cleanse oneself of the dirt and corruption that surrounded all humans in the day to day remained universal, it seemed.

So was the desire to pretend that however bad it might be, it was worse somewhere else. It was always worse somewhere else––anywhere else.

But it wasn’t really. Worse, that is.

Better hidden maybe. Easier to ignore in the day to day. But the same fundamental rot permeated all. No one was exempt.

No one.

He looked down the length of a
massive golden statue, reclining on a raised platform. Forty-six meters long, it shone in the moonlight through the open wooden shutters of its dedicated chapel, blue light reflecting on gilded gold skin. Mother of pearl and black stone inlays in the soles of its massive feet glinted like stars at the end of its supine posture. Swallowed by shadow, the details of its gilded hair and mouth and the contours of its face hung in silence far above where he stood, out of reach of the moon’s glow near the roof of the steeply peaked building.

The image was iconic...awe inspiring, even now, in the dark.

What many forgot, however, especially Westerners visiting this place, was that this was a master depicted during death.

It was a luminous, golden shrine to death.

The same death that frightened all animals lived here––whether one wished to believe in enlightened death or not. The statue filled all but a tiny walkway around it inside the
viharn
, or chapel which housed it, a gesture of respect to that fear.

The sound of footsteps grew quieter in the dead of night as his pursuers left the sanctity of the area around the main temple. He could still hear them, along with the occasional shout, the excited rattle of words in another language.

A gunshot went off, but it wasn’t aimed at him.

He could smell the smoke too.

The fires burned, glowing at the horizon in the distance.

They would all burn, wherever he went. But they would never catch him.

He was a ghost.

He was already disappeared.

One

PHONE CALL

I HAD TO be at lunch with Angel and Nick, of course, when he called.

I just
had
to be.

Because really, Homicide Detective Naoko “Nick” Tanaka didn’t have enough ammunition when it came to giving me a hard time about my new “employer.”

I stared at the name that flashed on the face of my phone as it buzzed on the table, tempted to ignore it. Just stuff my phone back in my bag and hum a jaunty tune.

Anyway, I could feel fairly justified in ignoring him. Black hadn’t bothered to check in once in the past thirty-three days. Well, not with me.

I knew because I’d counted. Thirty-three days.

I had no idea where he even was. I strongly suspected it wasn’t in San Francisco.

When I didn’t answer the phone after two more long buzzes, Angel laughed, smacking my arm playfully from where she sat next to me on the red vinyl bench.

“Aren’t you going to get it, doc?” she teased.

Unlike Nick, Angel seemed to find the whole thing with me and Black hilarious.

The three of us were crammed into a booth at one of our favorite lunch places, a sushi bar in the indoor mall that took up a chunk of the center of Japantown. Angel and Nick were based full time out of the Northern District again, so that was part of our excuse to go, since that police station wasn’t all that far from Japantown. My offices were located near theirs, so it was a short bus ride for me, too, or even a walk, if I had the time to spare.

I’d known both of them for years, Nick especially, but they’d known one another even longer. I met Nick in the service, when I was eighteen and he was in his early thirties––but Angel and Nick, they’d grown up together, and in a rough neighborhood, too. I’d wondered more than once if that relationship had ever been romantic, just from the way they jabbed at one another on occasion, but if it had, they were both pretty tight-lipped about it. I considered them two of my closest friends. Until recently, I used to do a fair bit of work with the two of them, mostly as a profiler and forensic psychologist.

But I had a new employer now.

Glancing down at my phone, Nick scowled, then finished shoving what looked like a whole baby octopus into his mouth with chopsticks, chewing hard. He grunted after swallowing, motioning with those same chopsticks towards my phone.

“It’s him, isn’t it? Psycho boy.”

Sighing in defeat, I scooped up the phone, even as Angel chuckled.

I didn’t bother with a greeting.

“What?” I barked into the phone. “What is it?”

Silence.

“Black?” I said, my voice still sharp. “Where are you?”

Next to me, Angel laughed harder.

I still heard nothing in the phone.

I couldn’t feel him either, which I usually could with him. It wasn’t something I advertised, but I’m what you could call a “psychic.” Nothing like what my employer was, of course, not even close, but when I talked to him it usually flared that connection between us.

Not this time though. His laser-like mind must be focused elsewhere.

Then again, no one could be a blank wall like Quentin Black when he wanted to be.