Killing Hope (Gabe Quinn Thriller) (7 page)

Then turned the car around and headed back into the city.

Full speed.

14

^{___________________________}

Dr Milton Perry works out of the Humanities Department of the UCLA, but Monday through Wednesday he runs a clinic for all matters religion-based, from an office on Hope Street in the heart of the city. Think of it as a multi-faith arbitration service – in conjunction with the Mayor’s Office. I’d never met Perry, but I knew he promoted himself as the Californian equivalent of Nelson Mandela. A little like a lump of coal with dreams of being a diamond.

‘I said absolutely no interruptions.’ Perry boomed as I flung open his office door on the eleventh floor of the glass-and-steel skyscraper and marched inside.

Perry’s office was surprisingly sparse. I say surprising because I’d expected the place to be crammed with religious artifacts. Walls of well-thumbed books spanning the ages. Dusty bibles. That sort of thing. In the very least a signed picture of the Pope. But this was clearly rented space and minimalism ruled.

Perry’s flustered secretary was fluttering on my shoulder like a bird caught in a the wake of a speeding truck. I ignored him. Closed the door between us.

Perry scrambled to his feet.

‘Well, well, well. If it isn’t the Celebrity Cop.’

I caught a fleeting glimpse of a nervous smile swiftly eclipsed by a confident beam. People get edgy around uninvited cops. Not many are so adept at hiding it.

‘What an absolute pleasure.’ He gave me the toothy smile a lion might give as it examined its next meal. ‘Detective Gabriel Quinn. In the flesh no less. What an absolute pleasure.’

Dr Milton Perry is in his late sixties. In the right light you could mistake him for an African village chief in a Hugo Boss three-piece. He spread his hands the way priests do when blessing sinners. I didn’t need Perry’s blessing. But I was getting it all the same.

15

^{___________________________}

I get called
Celebrity Cop
a lot. You’ll see. My own fault, I guess. Call it the culmination of being in the wrong place at the right time. It also comes with high expectations. Like I’m a superhero or something. When in reality it’s a ball and chain.

‘Sit, sit,’ he gestured towards a chair.

I stayed standing.

One thing you’ll soon learn about me is I don’t follow orders easily. Scratch that. I do. Or at least I can do. If they’re the right orders.

My refusal didn’t faze Perry’s apparent glee. That smug, condescending,
I pay your wages
god-awful glee. He settled behind the oversized desk and clasped big hands together. For a moment I thought he was going to ask me to join him in prayer.

‘This is fantastic news.’ He declared, showing shark teeth. ‘Truly fantastic news. Every parishioner in Los Angeles will be relieved to hear LA’s finest is about to apprehend Le Diable.’

It sounded reverent. Much like a prayer.

I made a face. One of those malleable ones I’ve got down pat. Saw the slightest crack in Perry’s Cheshire Cat smile.

‘Am I missing something, Detective?’

‘I think we have our wires crossed.’ I said. I rocked forward on my toes, ever so slightly. ‘Forget Le Diable. I’m not here about Le Diable. In fact, Le Diable isn’t even my case. Never has been.’

Big befuddled furrows sprang up on Perry’s brow. He sat forward a little, as if he’d misheard and needed clarification. Propped big padded elbows on the big desk.

‘Detective, I have four dead clergymen on my watch. Four
decapitated
clergymen. Heads missing. Nowhere in sight. Parishioners cowering in their beds. Pews emptying faster than a triple K meet on a shakedown.’ The leather patches on his elbows squeaked as he leaned closer. ‘If you’re not here about Le Diable, why on earth are you here?’

‘This.’

I held up my phone with the picture of the smudged SUV. Tilted it away from the sunlight streaming through the window.

Perry squinted. Grunted. Pulled open a drawer. Took out a pair of designer reading glasses. Snapped them on. He tried to take the phone. I pulled it out of his reach.

‘Is that supposed to be something?’ He said with a smirk. ‘Furthermore, am I supposed to know what that something is?’

‘It’s your Explorer.’ I said. ‘We ran the plate, Doctor. It’s your vehicle. Fleeing a crime scene.’

Perry stared at me like a man learning for the first time he’d been walking around all day with his zipper down.

All at once he didn’t look so pleased to see me.

16

^{___________________________}

Stacey Kellerman cupped a long-fingered hand over her brow, shading her cobalt-blue eyes from the hardboiled Nevada sun. Even in winter it was as bright as an atom bomb blast out here in the desert. But cold. Cold enough to carpet large expanses of the scrub in drifts of powdery snow. Christmas cacti. When people who had never visited Nevada thought about Nevada they thought about heat. The baking, unrelenting, punishing heat of Hollywood westerns. But that was a misnomer. Out here, in the no-man’s land running west towards Red Rock, in the midst of winter, it was hellish.

She squinted against the glare as she gazed across the talcum powder desert. Focused on the distant saw-tooth city skyline. Vegas had changed beyond recognition in the short twenty-seven years she’d been on the planet. The monstrous mega-resorts were now more synonymous with the city than the reason they existed in the first place. Gambling was something people did to pass the time while they waited for a show or the buffet to open. Another misnomer. Vegas was the capital of misnomers.

She lit a cigarette and blew smoke rings at the sun.

Buzzards see-sawed against the glare.

In many ways Vegas had been good to her. In many ways not. When she was four years of age, her prostitute mother had left her in the hands of her alcoholic father – literally. He’d done his best. He’d done his worst. Sometimes she wondered what her life might have been like had she not killed him.

She wiped a tear from the corner of her eye – a product of the cold, not sentimentality.

She saw the car long before the man driving it saw her. It was a newish Ford Mustang. Burnt orange. A Day-Glo muscle car. Climbing the shiny black desert road like a fire ant on a burnt branch. She saw it slow as it came to the dirt track intersection. Hesitate. Then bump off-road. Watched it churn its way towards her over the compacted earth.

They had history; Stacey and the man driving the muscle car. Not all bad. Not all good. Some of it fantastic. Mainly the sex. Okay,
all
of the sex. But then he’d turned forty and something had changed inside of him. He’d gone soft. There was no other way of putting it. Started pulling grey hairs. Started examining his own mortality like it was some damned definable thing he could assess and calculate and maybe pigeonhole. Decided to settle down. Try for a family. Some up-and-coming attorney with fried egg tits.

Stacey took a long drag on the cigarette as the car rolled up the dirt track and came to a stop. The door creaked open and the man climbed out.

Stacey felt a pang in her belly.

He looked as good as ever. Better in some ways. Worse in others. He was still as tall. Still in shape. Still had the same slick, coffee-colored skin she remembered with such carnal affection. Same mischievous brown eyes. But he’d given into the grey. It peppered his temples. Made him look like one of those newspaper editors in comic books. She didn’t like it.

‘Goddammit, Stacey.’ He called as he slammed the car door. ‘What the hell are you doing out here?’

Both his tight expression and his gruff voice told her he was irritated. Whenever they met lately, he was irritated. She suspected sex with fried egg tits wasn’t all it was cracked up to be. She watched him strut towards her like John Travolta in
Staying Alive
. The sight of him made her wish things had been different.
He
had been different.

Even after all these years he still held the title of being the only black man she’d ever slept with. The only black man she need ever sleep with. The sex had been that good. No, for real. Why spoil the memory with somebody inferior? Before they’d become an item, Stacey had heard all the tales about black men. Never believed them. She did now.

‘You’re looking well,’ she said.

‘Just cut to the chase, Stacey.’

‘Can’t we even be polite anymore?’

‘We passed that a long time ago.’

She watched him unfold a pair of yellow-tinted Dolce and Gabbana sunglasses. Slip them on. He hadn’t been into all the designer stuff when they were together. Used to ridicule her for it. Funny how people changed people.

‘I got a call,’ she answered stiffly, blowing out smoke. ‘Thought you’d be interested. Good to see you, Mike.’

‘Yeah.’ He said. He sounded like the feeling wasn’t mutual. She hated him for it. ‘So what’s the story this time, Stacey? You lost a bobby pin and need help finding it?’

She tossed the cigarette onto the compacted dirt and ground it out with the toe of her boot. ‘Very funny, Mike. I’m doing you a favor.’

‘On the coldest Monday of the week so far?’

‘You interested?’

‘Not for long.’

‘Okay. Do you remember when we were last up here?’ She said. ‘The summer before last. That weekend we camped in the canyon. Slept under the stars.’

‘You got stuck up a rock.’ He acknowledged with smirk.

‘I was halfway up a cliff face.’

‘Yeah, sure. Ten feet off the ground, Stacey. Doesn’t constitute Mount Everest. You suck at rock climbing.’

‘I remember sucking at other things, too, that weekend.’

They shared a smile. For a moment, it felt good. Warm against the chill. But then it was gone. He had remembered his attorney and she had remembered her too.

‘So tell me one more time: why the hell are we here again?’

‘I miss you, Mike.’

‘Seriously.’

‘Seriously,’ she said. She took a step closer. Saw the tightening in his jaw tighten a little bit more. She stopped. Pouted ruby red lips. ‘Mike, we were so good together.’

‘Stacey …’