Jones / Rohan B-Side

1. Auflage 2018
ISBN: 978-1-5439-2746-7
Verlag: BookBaby
Format: EPUB
Kopierschutz: Adobe DRM (»Systemvoraussetzungen)

E-Book, Englisch, 200 Seiten

An LAPD detective investigates the brutal assault of her partner, little suspecting that the resolution of the case lies closer to home than she thinks.

Autoren/Hrsg.

Jones, Janis

Rohan, Jason

Leseproben

Chapter 4

These People

Casey opened the door and looked puzzled. She found herself staring at a very tall bouquet of blue-purple agapanthus and giant white China mums interspersed with stalks of papyrus being held by a deliveryman. He wore a dark utility jacket, cap and gardening gloves and didn’t seem too much taller than she was, but his head and shoulders were camouflaged by the armful of flowers. His strained voice came from behind the gigantic arrangement.

“Hi, I got a delivery for Cassandra Ter… Terra… ?”

Casey smiled. She was used to people struggling with her long Italian name.

“It’s Terra-nova.”

She opened the door wider, backing up to let him in. Damn, those must be heavy.

“Ooh, Lilies of the Nile! Those are just gorgeous… killer color!”

Delighted, she turned her head to look across the room, gesturing with her cell phone to indicate a spot on the table near the cake and champagne bucket.

“Wow, they look heavy. You can just put them on the table right near… Okay, something was off here. Her smile disappeared.

He shoved his way in, mule-kicking the door shut behind him and dumping the flowers on the floor. He unzipped his jacket and yanked it off in one fluid move, ripping a short baton out of the jacket lining where it had been duct-taped.

Casey’s mouth hung open in shock, her brow tightening.

“But, wait… What are you doing?”

She went from wondering if the flowers were from her Dad or Mara to a sick desperate feeling. Oh, Mara, I need you. Baby, please get home quick.

He extended the baton to its full-length with a whipping sound. His gloves were duct-taped onto his long-sleeved T-shirt at the wrists. A darker, wet V marked the center of his chest.

On the beach below, a slim figure is silhouetted in the soft light coming from the top floor. Skeezy, a tall, rangy, homeless beach bum, nervously removes his sweatpants, army jacket and shirt and drapes them over a low concrete retaining wall near an outdoor shower.

Inside, Casey’s shock turns to panic. She backs away as the intruder advances on her. The dark rod-shape whistles in a vicious arc and catches the left side of her head as she tries to turn away. Her silky hair lifts and falls back over her face, a wet spray of blood marking her dress. Her hands come up and her cell phone clatters to the floor. She begins to wail and pant with the pain.

Below on the beach, Skeezy turns on the water, furtively looking around as he clutches the waistband of his oversize boxer shorts. He steps up onto the thick cedar planks. I’ll feel better, after I get wetter.

On her way home, Mara drives with one hand, putting Blistex on with the other and smoothing it on her lips with her little finger. The radio is blaring the tail end of a salsa disco hit. She eyes the gifts on the passenger side and smiles.

The utility jacket is thrown over Casey’s head. She is whipped to the floor with a brutal thud. The intruder ties the sleeves around her throat and grips the ends. Casey claws the air as the rod strikes her forearm and shoulder. She yelps in pain, her bare legs flailing, shoes off her feet and flapping loosely from their ankle straps.

Mara driving, leaning her face out the window, hair billowing, feeling the evening breeze. A slow jam bass line buzzes the truck speakers. She sings a couple lines of the lyrics.

Casey’s muffled crying is horrible to hear. The intruder is agitated and hisses curses under his breath. Casey continues to cry and tries to scrabble away from him, no longer having any sense of direction and struggling to find breath through the dense twill fabric. He makes a sound like a low, clenched feral growl. He speaks in a hoarse whisper.

“Shut up, you bitch! You’re gonna die.”

He holds the jacket sleeves tightly around her throat and drags her a few feet, stretching to turn up the volume on the music.

Skeezy looks up as the music swells from the second floor above him.

The intruder raises the baton and pauses, hissing at Casey.

“I told you to shut… the… fuck…up!” He suddenly thought of a line in a movie he liked: “Shut up and no one gets hurt.” The actor guy said it real manly-like. Not really mean, but letting them know who was in charge. Awesome.

Casey can’t stop crying, and he explodes with rage. He sets the club down and drops to one knee.

Skeezy turns in place under the shower spray, rubbing his arms and legs with his hands. He runs his hands through his long hair and stringy beard. He shakes his hair and tries to squeeze the water from his beard. Breezy, breezy, getting’ cold on Skeezy. His singsong rhyme seemed to calm him and make him more relaxed, but it was getting late and the wind coming off the water was making him want to get his clothes back on. Creepy, creep, creep, the ocean is deep. Cold I told ya, getting’ cold, sol-jah. He wasn’t a soldier because they kicked him out, but the rhyme was pretty good he thought and it made him happy. And he did still have the khaki fatigue jacket. If it was less filthy, people would have been able to read the name: BURROUGHS. His regular name was Franklin but nobody ever said that, except Casey. Oh, that’s right… he had ripped it off and put it inside the pocket, which also had Velcro. Pretty funny. The fuzzy strip was still there keeping the place though. Velcro Burroughs, Burroughs Velcro. Rippy, rippy riptide. It’s about an inch wide. See, everything rhymes if you concentrate.

The intruder bangs on Casey’s small, struggling body with a short series of brutal punches, his arm drawing up and driving down hard in short strokes like a piston. Dyke bitch. It somehow pleased him to say this. At the same time, he knew it wasn’t right.

Her crying stops. Casey is limp and compliantly silent. She lies on her side, back to the sliding glass door, which opens onto the second-floor deck.

The sound of the surf rises as the intruder slides the door open, causing Casey’s limp form to shift, her blood-soaked hair painting a messy swath low on the glass. The two candles on the mantel waver as the ocean breeze rushes in.

Skeezy looks up again, hearing the rumbling grate of the heavy sliding glass door over the hush of the surf. He is alarmed. Gotta get out of here. Don’t get mad at me. Please don’t. Please don’t.

The intruder looks down on Casey’s crumpled body, wiping his sweaty face with his forearm. He snatches the champagne bottle from its sweating ice bucket, bashes the top off on the edge of the wrought iron table and splatters it over her body. He tosses the broken, empty bottle near the pool of champagne and splashes of blood. Jesus, even their drinks were faggoty sissy booze. It really made him sick. That’s why he could do this. Because they weren’t normal. What a fucking waste. Because he had to admit that she was… just right. The hair, the body. Damn, she was cute.

Back to business.

Down on the beach, Skeezy flinches and ducks, raising his shoulders as he hears a muffled crash.

The intruder works up a gob of spit and lets it fly, pleased with his work. Not quite satisfied, he unzips and marks his territory by urinating on the jacket over her head. He snorts with laughter. He zips up and retrieves the baton from the floor. He pantomimes a fake martial arts move with it and provides his own sound effect, laughing under his breath.

“Whhhht-CHAAA!”

A sharp crack of the baton as it strikes the hanging lamp over the table holding the pyramid cake with the toy cars. A shower of glass and the light dims. One last flash as the bulbs shattered, and only the big candles on the mantel cast a low glow on Nefertiti, the River Nile hunting scene, the boy King Tut’s golden mask, the three beautiful women playing harps and Anubis. Casey loved Egyptian art, and her wall featured her favorite art pieces and photos.

He noticed the stuff when she was still flailing around and fighting him. Pointless to fight but he guessed she was scared and that’s what made her so strong for her size. He worked out so he appreciated strength. But this junk made him think she was into devil worship or some voodoo shit. He loved movies and he liked the mummy one with that English chick, but this black dog man-thing or whatever it was gave him the creeps. Tall and black with wide shoulders and long, muscular arms and that pointy, dog-face mask… or maybe it was his actual head. And he was weighing something on a scale. It was like human sacrifice, and it made him scared or nervous or something. He was glad he was just a regular Christian, nothing weird or evil.

Skeezy hunches his shoulders at the sound of breaking glass. He looks up. The soft light has gone out. His eyes are wide with fear as...