Purge (Death Crusaders Motorcycle Club) (9 page)

“Are you Okay Clarkson” She
asks immediately.

“Yeah I’m fine. I wanna look
at Alex’s file. The one that has all the information about the investigation
into her death.”

“I don’t know if that’s such
a good idea. The pictures alone…you’re not going to want to see and once you
do, you’re not going to be able to unsee them; ever.”

“I’m aware of that. They
can’t possibly be worse than what I’ve already imagined. So can you get me the
file or is there some strange reason you don’t want me looking at it?”

“You
know
I’m one of
the good guys right Ms. Clarkson? I’m one of the ones you can trust and I’m
pretty sure right now that list has gotta be damn small. Am I right?”

“Just get me the file.” I
reply.

Truth is I am very nervous
about seeing her in her death. I really don’t know how I’ll react to it but I
have to do this. If I don’t get to see the file it’s like I’m out here blind.
At least now I’ll have a starting point.

“Fine.” She finally says.
“Meet me at Starbucks on Solano Avenue. I’ll be there in one hour. You look at
it there, take as many notes as you like, then I take it back. I can’t just
give you the official file.”

“Can’t you just copy it for
me?”

“One hour. You get one hour
to look over the file, and then I take it back. Remember, this is off the books
so I can’t just check it out and give it to you.”

“Fine. I’ll be there in an
hour.”

I look at my watch. It’s
9:45pm. How is it that she can just procure the file at this time a night?
Unless she’s lying and already has the file in her desk. She probably took the
file herself and made a copy. The lying bitch. What is she up to?

I arrive at the appointed
time. She’s still in her tricked out sedan so I direct the cabbie to just park
next to her. Officer Regan motions me to join her in the car so I pay the taxi
guy and send him on his way. After I sit down Regan hands me a surprisingly
thin file. With trembling hands and a heavy heart I open the jacket. The first
picture that greets me sends me into a deep downward tail spin of grief. It’s
like cold steel fingers just reached out and clamped my heart in an icy grip.
Suddenly I feel like I can’t breathe and the life is getting sucked right out
of me.

“Hey…you okay Clarkson?”

I’m not, not by a long shot
but I nod anyway.

“No you’re not.” She replies.
“I knew this was a bad idea.”

“I’m…I’m okay…just give me a
moment.”

The picture on top of the
pack is of Alex lying on the sidewalk on her back. She has been shot at least
once in the forehead just above her left eye. The hole is small but there’s a
sizeable pool of blood surrounding her head. The really awful part is that to
the side where her hair is spread out, I can see bits of white; maybe bone,
maybe brain matter. I can’t tell which. Suddenly my stomach begins roiling.
Frantically I reach for the door handle and barely get the door open before
vomiting on the sidewalk. I retch over and over again and before my stomach
calms down I am having dry heaves. My stomach aches and my throat is raw. My
nose is clogged with detritus and my mascara is streaming down my face along
with tears. And here I thought I had cried it all out.

To her credit, Officer Regan
waits patiently for me to get my bearings, then hands me back the file. I don’t
want to see the other photos but I force myself to look anyway. I don’t want to
miss a single thing here. There’s not much actually. Just a lot of pictures of
her from various angles, the coroner’s report, and pictures of the bullet
casings; seven of them from two different guns. There’s three from the same 9mm
gun and four from a Glock 40mm. The head shot was from the Glock and so was the
thigh. Apparently the Glock was never found but the suspect was convicted on an
eye witness account alone. But when I look for any information on the eye
witness the pages have been removed.

“What’s up with the witness?”
I ask Officer Regan.

“Witness was a juvenile so
her records were sealed and she disappeared after testifying.”

“Of course she did.” I reply.
“But I may be able to get some information for you.”

“Like what?”

“I’m working on getting the
name but the detective on the case is not convinced he should give up the
information. He’s afraid the case will be reopened and it’ll be found that he
missed something important.”

“You mean important like
getting the wrong guy?” I interrupt.

“He doesn’t want to lose his
pension over this.”

“Seriously…that’s his only
concern? Where do you guys get people like this?”

“You got twenty more minutes.
You wanna use up your time like this?”

I burry my nose back in the
file. Clearly it’s a cover up and they didn’t even try to disguise it. All I
have to do is find the witness and convince her to change her testimony.
There’s one more thing that I almost missed. In the middle of the description
of what happened you can tell that a piece of paper was laid down covering a
middle third of the document. You can see a faint shadow. It’s like when you
lay a paper down and Xerox it it leaves a faint line around the paper if you
don’t have it flat on the paper. I could swear that someone took the original
document and doctored it and slipped the fake document back into the file.
Whoever did this was so brazen they didn’t care enough to thoroughly cover
their tracks. After a few minutes I close the file and hand it back. I’ve seen
enough and I’m not going to tell her what I found either; just in case I can’t
trust her. I call for a taxi and we chit chat while we wait. Fifteen minutes
later my ride pulls up. 

“You’ll call me with that
name and address?” I ask as I get out of her car.

She nods so I get in the
taxi. “Lucky Rabbit’s Foot.” I tell the cabbie as we pull out into traffic.

Chapter Ten

“My Name is Officer Shaw!”

A sudden piercing alarm stabs
into me through the thick veil of sleep. I bolt upright in terror wondering
what the hell the noise is. Looking around the room frantically I spot the
bluish glow from my cell phone. I crawl out of bed and stumble across the cold
floor to the desk and snatch up my phone.

“What happened?” I bark.

For anyone to be calling me
in the middle of the night something has to be wrong.

“I have something for you.”

“Who is this?” I ask, still
half asleep.

“Who do you think? Who else
calls you on this phone?”

“It’s 3:45 in the morning. I
had no idea which phone was ringing when I picked it up.”

“Well it’s me now are you
awake, because I have to be fast.”

“Yes I’m awake.”

“Good. You need to talk to a
Detective Jack Morris. His address is 4555 Lone Pine Road in Whispering Pines.”

“He’s the witness? I thought
you said it was a minor.”

“He’s the detective that
worked the case. He was the lead detective. He’ll know the witnesses name and
maybe even her whereabouts. She was never officially in the witness protection
program so someone will know how to find her and I believe that someone is
Detective Morris. You got all that?”

“Yeah, what’s the hurry?”

“Now take out the sim card
and break it in half and flush it down the toilet and then go somewhere and
drop the phone in the garbage.”

“What? What are you talking
about? Am I in some kind of trouble?”

“Not immediately, but I am.
Just do what I asked.” She says.

“Will I ever talk to you again?”

“Maybe…I’ll tr—”

A sudden explosion fills my
ears and is so loud I have to hold the phone away from my head.

“Regan…Regan!” I shout into
the phone. “Regan what happened? Regan…”

I hear crunching of what
sounds like glass, then wrenching metal. Lots of glass and metal. I actually
sounds like a car accident; from the inside and I wonder if Regan has just
gotten herself in an accident.

“Officer Regan? Were you in
an accident? Officer Re-”

“Who is this?” Says a deep
masculine voice. “Look, whoever you are, you might as well tell me your name
because I’ll find out eventually so why not save me some time and you some
trouble by telling me who you are and what you mean to Officer Regan?”

Then after a long pause.
“Really? You’re just going to stay there and breathe? I wonder if Officer Regan
is still alive. Shall we check?”

He stops talking to me and I
hear two other voices in the background conferring with each other. After
another moment he comes back to my phone.

“Okay whoever you are, I’m
going to ask our friend here to identify you. Officer Regan, why don’t you tell
me who you were talking to just a moment ago?”

There’s a pause, then a
painful groan.

“Yow…that looked painful.
Shall we do it again?” He asks.

I hold my breath like I’m
afraid he’ll be able to identify me by my breathing.

“Okay.” He says.

There’s a pause then Officer
begins to scream.

“Stop!” I shout into the
phone. “Stop hurting her.”

Regan’s scream drops to a low
keening. She is very obviously hurt, and hurt bad.

“Now…are you going to tell me
who you are or do I have to really get mean here?” He asks me.

“Officer Shaw.” I lie.

“What’s your first name and
badge number Officer Shaw?”

“My name is Officer Belinda
Shaw. My badge number is 4812 and I work out of Whispering Pines North.”

“Well Officer Shaw, tell me
something. What is the 10 code for officer needs assistance?”

“10-13” I say with
confidence. In truth I have no idea if I’m right or not.

“Nice try. Too bad Officer
Regan is going to have to pay for that one.”

Almost immediately I hear a
painful groan followed by a sharp cry of pain.

“Stop!” I scream. “I’ll tell
you.”

“Well that’s better.” Says
the voice.

“Nooooo…” Officer Regan
screams. “Don’t say a thing.”

“Tell me y our name or she’s
gonna pay.” The menacing voice threatens.

This is killing me. More like
it’s killing Officer Regan.

“Tell me you’re fucking
name!” Thunders the evil voice. “Tell me or I’m gonna gut her like a fish. You
understand? You’re no cop. You don’t know the ten codes.”

“That’s the code in New
Hampshire for Officer Needs Assistance. I have no idea what California uses for
a 10-13.”

“Okay…explain to me the chain
of custody of evidence.”

Oh shit. “It’s the written
log of everyone who has had physical control of evidence from the crime scene
to the evidence locker in the police station. It establishes proof that the
evidence taken from the crime scene is the same evidence used in court.”

“Nice try.” Says the voice.

“But I’m right!” I shout
angrily. “Don’t you touch her you animal. I was right.”

“If there’s one thing I’ve
learned in my line of business is how to smell out a cop and you’re not a cop.
You obviously know a thing or two so maybe you’ve grown up around cops or even
considered being one and did some studying maybe, but you’re no cop. I’d stake
my life on that.”

I decide to just try to
barrel over him. “I am Officer Shaw of-”

“You are a fucking liar!”
Booms the man’s voice. A minute ago you said you were Officer Shaw out of the
Whispering Pines North office and a second ago you said you knew the New
Hampshire 10 code but not the California one.”

Oh shit! Why the fuck did I
say that?

“Tell me your name now Mother
fucker!” He screams so loudly I have to hold the phone away from my ear and
still they ring.

“My name is-”

“No!” Screams Officer Regan.
“Don’t say a fucki-”

The loud boom from a gun
silences Officer Regan mid-sentence and send my ears vibrating painfully into
my skull. I can’t believe it. Officer Regan is dead because of me. I can’t
believe this.

“So Officer Shaw,” The man
says. “Are you going to tell me your name now?”

“Go to hell mother fucker!” I
shout at the top of my lungs just before slamming my phone down on the floor.

I can’t believe this is
happening to me. The one person helping me solve the murder of my best friend
is now dead because of me. Why didn’t I just tell him my name? What the fuck is
my problem? Who else is going to die because of me? Piper is in the hospital
because of me and when he gets out he’ll surely die trying to protect me the
next time I get into trouble. I need to do this on my own. I need to find that
detective and get him to tell me who and where the witness is. Of course he’s
not going to want to tell me for fear that he gets in trouble for screwing up.
I feel like the lowest of the low. I bet Alex even got killed because of me
somehow.

I’m two hours into my pity
party when the front door opens. It has to be Blade. Quickly I gather up my
cell phone and battery that had popped out and I jam it into my jean pocket. I
wipe the tears off my face and immediately wonder why I feel the need to hide
what’s going on from Blade? Isn’t he one of the people I can trust? If not him
who?

Blade walks into the kitchen
and immediately he senses something is wrong. He walks right up to me and puts
his arms around me.

“What’s wrong babe?”

I just shake my head, not
trusting myself to speak.

“Come on, I know something is
bothering you. This place feels like a funeral home. Did someone die?”

I can’t speak. Instead I just
bury my head in his chest and cry helplessly…..

“Who died Jen? Was it your
mother?”

“I wouldn’t shed a tear over
her dead body,” I spit out. “But it wasn’t her.”

I lay my head on his chest
again hoping he would take the hint that I don’t want to talk. After a few
minutes my mind begins to quiet and the effects of his close proximity begins
to waken my other senses.

Soon my tears dry and my
sniffling turns into nuzzling and my nose inhales his masculine scent. Slowly I
begin to kiss my way up his chest to the base of his neck. A long finger
touches the base of my chin then lifts gently. Our lips meet and passions
collide. That’s all the invitation either of us needs to give the other and it
becomes a frenzy of hands tearing at clothes, desperate to access our naked
flesh.

“Are you sure?” He asks
between a hot streak of kissing.

“Are you crazy?” I ask,
pulling his head down to mine again where I proceed to assault his lips with my
own.

Shortly he swoops me off my
feet and we move our sudden lovemaking session to a more appropriate locale;
his bedroom.

He tosses me on this soft
mattress and meets my bouncing body with his where he mashes my soft frame with
his hardened physique. But he still seems a bit restrained. Perhaps he’s
remembering I was crying just moments ago.

“We don’t have to.” He
advises.

“Oh yes we do Sean.” I say
using his given name for a rare change.

“I like it when you say
that.” He confesses.

“Well it is
your
name.”

“Do old ladies get a club
name?” I ask suddenly pausing amidst our sex play.

“Have you been given another
name?” He asks me with a sly smile.

“Are you telling me I’m your
old lady?” I ask, stunned.

Actually I don’t know why I
should even be surprised. It’s not like he’s sleeping with anyone else and we
have shared a lot more than each other’s bed.

“As old as they come.” He
replies with another smile.

“That’s not the kind of old I
meant.” I snap playfully.

“And that’s not kind of lady
I meant either.” He says between bites on the tip of my nipple.

“Better not be
old
man.” I reply slapping him on the shoulder.

And then because the night’s
events are creeping back into my consciousness I grab Blade’s pride and joy,
massaging it close to eruption before settling my hips down onto his. He reacts
immediately thrusting almost violently and just about unsettling me. Our
sensuous, playful lovemaking has become a contest of wills; pushing, pulling,
giving and taking until both of us collapse back into each other’s arms hot,
sweaty, and sweetly exhausted.

Just before sleep takes me my
mind wanders back to Officer Regan and her last night on earth and how I just
christened her death with a shower of cum.