The 9th Hour (The Detective Temeke Crime Series Book 1) (14 page)

Darryl pulled the blanket up over his youngest daughter, Sharek.
Youngest
now that Kizzy was gone. Another bad dream, another bad night. Beads of sweat had collected on her forehead and he touched her with the back of his hand.

Flu. He’d keep her home tomorrow.

He listened to every breath, wondering how often she woke in the night and used her inhaler. Asthma wasn’t the only thing she had inherited from her mother. Looks, temperament and the kindest heart. How he loved that heart.

There was a small nightlight beside her bed in the shape of a hollowed-out tree. Inside it were three brown bears sitting at a table drinking tea. The glow from a single watt bulb was no brighter than a candle, shedding a rosy glow across the room.

Outside the window was a young pine tree, spiky leaves hanging limp and drizzled with snow. Thousands upon thousands of flakes were illuminated by the headlights of a passing car, incrusted like jewels on a wedding veil.

He recalled a fragment of their conversation earlier at dinner.

If you think someone’s watching, daddy, they usually are. Like ghosts in the shadows. Like a really bad dream.

When he asked her what she meant she merely shrugged and stared at her elder sister, Tess. Sharek talked about a man outside the school, a man who had called her by name. And when he asked her what the man looked like she just turned her face toward her older sister, eyes vacant as if she saw right through her. Tess just looked like she’d swallowed a piece of meat without chewing, forehead creased with a line or two.

Darryl knew there was an elusive truth to that look. It was all there if only he cared to notice. He wondered how he managed to keep living day after day, feeling the way he did.

Sharek’s grades were dropping at school and her teachers put it all down to emotional stress. It had been nearly two months since Kizzy disappeared, two nightmarish months. No closure, no funeral. It was hard for an eleven year old.

Her conversation was often peppered with cryptic nonsense and he wondered if she would ever be the same. He sensed that not every strange statement she made was half as eerie as it seemed. Morbid visions of a man behind a tree, a man sitting on Kizzy’s swing, a man with a crooked smile. He wondered if the child needed a dog, something to take her mind off it all. She had been closest to Kizzy after all.

Tess was asleep in the next room, probably in those hiking boots if she had her way. Clemency Christian School’s best sprinter, 400 meters in fifty seconds. He peered into her room, eyes glancing from her bed to the window and the courtyard beyond. The fountain was still floodlit and the pavers glimmered like diamond chips under a full moon.

It was the sound of a car reversing from the west side of the house that got his attention. The tail lights cast a rosy blush along the street and Darryl walked around the bed to take a closer look.

It was a black Camaro, lazing under a street lamp. It was either dark gray or black, he couldn’t work it out and the windows were gloomier than his cellphone screen. No one had called him in days.

He thought of calling the police. At least it would be someone to talk to. But you didn’t just call 911 for a chat and besides, what if the guy was looking at the empty lot next door.

At eleven forty-five at night?

It was parked on the wrong side of the street in front of the vacant lot and about thirty feet from the courtyard wall. It seemed to shimmer like a black beetle in the sand, brake lights casting a blood-red beam along the ground.

Darryl sensed the driver was watching, sensed he was enjoying the moment as if he hoped Darryl was just a mouthful of jittering teeth.

“I won’t be the rabbit to your hungry fox,” he murmured, padding barefoot to his bedroom at the back of the house.

There was a short-barreled .44 magnum pistol in his bedside drawer, Israeli-made and fed with a detachable magazine. If two rounds could take down an elk, they would certainly poke a few holes in a gas tank.

“That’ll frighten him off,” said Darryl, seeing the sense in it. He’d also put a few holes in those wide tires while he was at it.

Creeping out of the front door into the courtyard, he was careful to dodge the floodlights, bare feet crunching through snow. He felt a spasm of cold shooting up through his calves and he berated himself for not wearing shoes. He could see the back of the car clearly now through a wooden grill in the adobe wall and he could see the Chevy emblem above the rear bumper.

The engine purred to life and the car slowly moved forward, turning sideways onto the dirt lot as if attempting a three point turn. Although Darryl didn’t see anything threatening or out of the ordinary, the car stopped and sat there for a time, headlights shining over the arroyo. He couldn’t make out a driver until he heard the humming of the window motor, revealing a single pale face that seemed to be staring right at him.

Darryl ducked instinctively, wincing from the sting of ice beneath his feet. The saliva seemed to evaporate from his mouth and he wondered what the man was doing beneath the amber lightfall of the street lamp.

The only other sound he could hear was the drift of falling leaves and the hammering of his heart. At least the driver couldn’t see him behind the five foot wall.

Something sped through the riven sky, a zip of light that illuminated the courtyard and filtered through the grill. It was a powerful flashlight, big and fat, and the silvery beam scurried along the top of the wall before going out altogether.

Darryl crouched in the darkness, listening for the car door to open, and when it didn’t he inched back toward the wooden grill in the wall, chin resting on the ledge.

It was then he heard the voice, low and rasping. At first he thought it was the neighbor across the street until he heard the sound of his name.

“I can see you, Darryl Williams. I know you’re there.”

Darryl wanted to run. He didn’t care about the madman with the whispering voice, the shallow puddles of melting snow or the pine needles underfoot. He just wanted to get back into the warmth and safety of his house, until he remembered the gun he was squeezing in his right hand.

“What are you afraid of, Darryl Williams? Are you afraid I’ll cut off your head?”

Darryl knew the man out there wasn’t a man any more. He had been taken over, slaughtered, conquered, devoured. By a demon.

“I take heads, Darryl Williams, because I need the wisdom. Young. Teenage. Girls. So you have nothing to fear.”

God help me
! Darryl’s mind screamed. This man had all the supernatural power he needed to scale the wall and no locked door would keep him out.

“I need more heads, Darryl Williams. More, do you understand? You can spare me another of your little dark-eyed girls, surely.”

Darryl was sickened by talk of death and dark-eyed girls, and here he was hunkered beneath a drain spout where the snow had melted to water, splattering against the pavers and down the small of his back.

He had to move.

He squeezed the rubberized grip of his gun, eyes scanning the ambidextrous safety. He’d stripped and cleaned it last week because a clean gun was a functioning gun. The magazine was nearly the size of an AR magazine, a beast of a gun with a little recoil.

“You have girls, Darryl Williams. Young, dark-eyed girls. Just like Kizzy.”

That was enough for Darryl to remove the safety. He twisted around, wrists resting on the wall. Pulling the trigger was the most satisfying thing he’d done all week, squeezing off three rounds in frantic haste. He heard the thunderous boom and saw the car almost list to one side.

The driver merely turned to look at Darryl as if frozen in anger, eyes wide and luminous, eyes that wouldn’t stop staring.

Was he dead? Surely not. Not one of those slugs was aimed at the driver’s door.

No he wasn’t dead, thought Darryl, not with all that laughing. It was a deep guttural laugh that made him madder by the second.

He squeezed off shot after shot, explosions cracking along the rear fender and the rear door panel until he had emptied the magazine. The car shot backwards then, tires spinning against sand, loose rock ricocheting off the sidewalk.

His stomach twisted with nausea and the muscles in his forearms began to ache as he lowered the gun. What was he doing on this cold December night, standing barefoot in the snow and shooting at strangers? It was then he heard the rain, felt it against his cheeks, pinging and snapping off the roof in a tuneless anthem.

Somehow he was pumped with his own bravado, smelling gasoline and grinning through gritted teeth. He wanted to shout. He wanted to cheer, only he’d wake half the neighborhood. As it was a few lights blinked on and off from nearby houses and that was the time he streaked across the courtyard and out into the street.

He headed west after the car, leaping over a low stone wall and a box hedge that delineated the subdivision from the main road. It wasn’t until he stubbed his foot against a rock that he came to stop, realizing his bare feet were likely torn to shreds. He was in agony and freezing, and he couldn’t help seeing fingers, pale and cold, reaching out of the darkness. They were dead fingers only inches from the nape of his neck.

He turned suddenly. There was no one there.

Why should there be? The man was going ten times his speed in a car that clocked zero to sixty in just over five seconds. He was probably half way to Gallup by now.

Gasping for breath and nearly doubled-over in agony, Darryl hobbled back along the sidewalk toward his house, wincing from needle-sharp shards of rock. House after house, floodlights speared out of the darkness triggered by motion detectors and the deep throated growl of a German Shepherd almost made him jump.

“Quiet boy,” he whispered.

The growl soon turned into a whimper and two ears pricked, snout reaching between the bars of a restraining gate. Darryl brushed his hand against a wet nose, letting the dog remap his scent. He was surprised at how dogs warmed to him, surprised he never had one of his own.

He heard no one, saw no one, and he realized a shot fired in the night might sound like a car backfiring heightened by the squeal of tires. This was several shots from a .44 magnum and he doubted any residents would be eager to scout the streets. The dog was frightened enough.

He still felt a rush of exhilaration as he pushed open the weathered gate and the hinges groaned as he latched it. There were no little faces pressed against the living room window, none peering around the frame of the open door.

His girls were sound sleepers. Even Maisie. But he checked their rooms all the same, pulled back each quilt to study the rise and fall of their precious chests, checked the closets and behind every door.

Then he set his gun on the hall table before squatting and collapsing on the floor. Lying on his back and staring up at the skylight, he could just make out a cluster of stars that seemed to rain down from the night sky. He wasn’t shivering anymore and his fingers began to tingle from the radiant heat beneath the travertine floor.

As he listened to the lulling tick of the hall clock and police sirens in the distance, an idea hatched in his mind. The driver would be back to get revenge.

Only this time, Darryl would be waiting for him.

Malin squinted through a downpour of rain that spattered against the windshield. Just as the call came in about a girl who had turned up in the women’s hospital on Montgomery.

Becky.

Malin saw the look on Temeke’s face. The relief, the misty-eyed stare. Saw him jot down the details of where she’d been held.

“Bastard had her for five days. Gave her one meal a day and shot her up with sedatives. God alone only knows what he did to her while she slept.”

Malin looked at the clock on the console. They arrived at 5024 Timoteo Avenue around eleven forty-five in the evening. Dispatch had responded to a possible shooting near the Williams house sending a couple of units ahead. Temeke and Malin were the second of those units to pull up alongside the vacant lot. It was a busy night.

A few lights blinked on and off, residents awakened by the police activity. Temeke jumped out, opened the passenger door. He grabbed a bullet-proof vest and a flowery pink notepad. He saw the look on her face and nodded. “It’s all they had at Walmart. If I don’t write it down, it didn’t happen.” He zipped up his leather jacket, face puckered and grim. “You stay out here and wait for the field investigator.”

He slammed the car door before Malin had time to argue. He probably wanted to have a smoke and think. He was probably mad at his brother-in-law for being on leave. He had to have lunch with her now.

She took her flashlight and walked to the vacant lot. The police unit was parked on the other side of the street, still idling by the sound of a worn out engine and the sagging front seat.

“There’s a puddle of blood over there and gasoline,” officer Jarvis said, pointing. “I took what I could.” He held up a plastic sample container.

Malin gave a tolerant smile and turned her back. She couldn’t stand the man, pink, pasty and full of―

“I’d be careful if I were you,” he shouted.

Too late. She was facing the lot now, sloshing around in a bloody puddle and watching a pounding rain that threatened to flatten the channels the tires had made. Wide tires, curling back about fifteen feet and then veering off toward Bandelier. The car had clearly idled on the lot for a time, reversing back into the road at high speed.

Jarvis had already marked off several shell casings and a slither of rubber, and there was a smear of blood seeping off the curb into the road. The driver had been hit all right.

She was still staring at the blood spatter when the field investigator arrived. That was her cue. Whether Temeke had told her to wait outside or not, she was going in.

She opened the front gate, a heavy cedar door with a speakeasy grill, and found herself in a courtyard scented with damp mud brick. Metal lanterns with frosted globes―some round, some cylindrical―threw an amber glow on the pavers and a fountain graced the center, three lug-handled urns feeding into a shallow basin filled with pebbles. It would have sounded glorious in the summer months, an endless calming trickle.

Temeke was standing in the foyer with the Williams man, head down, scratching a diagram in that little pink book. There was a pistol on the hall table, a car-buster by the look of it.

Darryl looked up at her and gave a long hard stare. It was difficult to break away from a look like that and she half wondered if he was still in shock. He nodded as she wiped her feet on the doormat and then gave a wistful smile.

“Thought I told you to wait in the car,” Temeke said, head cocked to one side.

“It’s cold out there,” Malin said, rubbing her hands.

Temeke turned back to Darryl. “You said you got a good look at him through the driver’s window. What did he look like?”

“White, very white actually,” Darryl said.

“What were you aiming for?”

“The gas tank mostly.”

“Any chance you hit the driver?” Temeke leaned toward Darryl even though his eyes were locked on some distant object across the hall.

“None.”

Darryl hardly noticed as Temeke drifted into the living room to answer his phone. He sat on the arm of a leather chair and began flipping through a gun magazine. It was Luis he was talking to by the sounds of things.

“Features?” Malin prompted. She noticed Darryl seemed to relax a little more and his demeanor became warmer the closer he moved toward her.

“Blunt nose, you know, the type that looks like it’s been under a knight’s helmet for too long.”

“Age?”

“Late thirties.” Darryl shrugged.

“Hair?”

“Short, blond,” he nodded.

“Anything else unusual?” Malin examined Darryl’s eyes. They were normal now, not wide and lifeless as they had been a moment ago. Although she could smell something tart on his breath.

“He had an accent come to think of it. Foreign. Couldn’t tell you where. I was mad, that’s why I did it. I just couldn’t help myself.”

“Where did you get that gun?” Malin pointed at the hall table.

“The Eagle? I bought it at Conway’s two months ago. Thought I should protect the girls.”

Malin gave Temeke a cursory look. He was looking through a pair of binoculars he’d found on the coffee table.

“Anything missing?” she asked.

Darryl frowned and shook his head. “Maisie lost her cell phone a day or so ago. We think she dropped it in the street. So I got her another. Would you like some tea?”

Malin shook her head, wondering if she should have offered to make him one instead.

“Got anything stronger?” Temeke said as he walked back into the hall. “Just a sip―to keep out the chill.”

They followed Darryl through a stone archway into a spacious kitchen. Malin knew Temeke had smelled the odor from Darryl’s mouth, probably thought he’d had too much to drink.

The cabinets were a rustic style with pendant lights over an island and wooden beams on the ceiling. A large white mantel dominated the back wall and beneath it was an antique range. There was a bottle of red wine on the granite countertop with yellow flowers and blueberries on the label. Home-made it promised.

Malin watched Darryl pour two small glasses with a shaky hand. Either he was nervous or just dog tired. He must have been exhausted working up all that adrenaline to shoot a man.

“Are you sure I can’t get you anything?” he said, looking at her with a wrinkled brow. There was a spark of mischief in his eyes as he stood there, hands clutching two full glasses.

“I’m fine thanks,” Malin said, feeling the heat from those eyes. She instinctively turned toward Temeke, wondering what possessed him to sample the wine.

“You identified the car as a dark colored Camaro,” Temeke said, saluting Darryl with his glass before taking a large gulp.

“Goes down like silk,” Darryl said, holding up a warning hand, “and then comes the punch.”

Malin saw Temeke’s shoulders hunch as he began to sputter, and then the fit of coughing stopped. “Oh, man! That tastes like hot creosote.”

Darryl laughed, showing a perfect set of white teeth. “Too much and it’s a laxative.”

“Now he tells me,” Temeke said, handing the glass to Malin.

“The car,” Darryl began. “I’ve seen it before. No license plate. Just sits outside the bank and watches. He followed me home last week and I could have sworn he was the same man in my back yard. He jumped over the wall and down into the arroyo. But tonight it was different. Like he wanted something.”

“Anything unusual about the car?”

Darryl shook his head.

“You said he spoke to you?”

“He knew I was hiding. Said he took heads, young girl’s heads. Like Kizzy’s. Said he wanted me to give him one of my daughters.”

“So you shot him.”

Darryl stared blankly as if mystified. “I shot at the car. What would you have done?”

Malin could hear the silence over the buzz in her ears. The wine tiptoed down her throat, tasting of bitter fruit until the explosion hit her empty stomach. The room was starting to blur around the edges and it took a great deal of effort to focus on Darryl’s face.

“I would have called the cops,” Temeke said quietly, face puckered. “That’s a high-powered set of binoculars you’ve got in there. Unusual birds in the neighborhood?”

Darryl licked his lips. “I usually use them for hunting. I’ve seen the car a few times, tried to read his license plate. I would have called it in if he had one. You’d have thought the cops would have pulled him over by now.”

You would, thought Malin. She flicked a hand at Jarvis and asked him to check for footprints in the back yard.

“Seems like the Journal has their own slant on things, Darryl,” Temeke said. “Don’t be surprised if they start pointing fingers in your direction. Parents first. Our friendly journalist claims she’s got a new source. With a British accent.”

Darryl knotted his brows and shook his head. “You’re kidding?”

“A pain in the―” Temeke shot Malin a look and seemed to change his mind. “And talking of cops, we’ve got both entrances of Clemency Christian School covered. My brother-in-law called. Just got back from a fishing trip. Said he’ll be covering the afternoon shift. Lt. Luis Alvarez. I’ll make sure he says hello to the girls.”

“Thank you, Detective.”

“We’ll put some security cameras around your house, a telephone-tap, that kind of thing. I’ll leave you my vest.” Temeke pointed at the hall chair where it was draped over the seat. "Until then, if you hear any funny noises, practice barking. Most intruders are scared of dogs. Most detectives are scared of dogs.” Temeke reached into his jacket pocket and pulled out a photograph. “Does this look like the man you saw?”

Darryl frowned and peered at the photograph through half closed eyes. “Yeah, that’s him.”

Malin looked down at the photo in Temeke’s hand. It was Morgan Eriksen. The only photograph he had.