The 9th Hour (The Detective Temeke Crime Series Book 1) (8 page)

Ole drove around for a few hours, enjoying the afterglow of his latest stakeout. He was wearing a horizontal carry over a crisp white shirt and weapon tucked neatly at his side. He must have looked like Special Ops.

What was it that haunted a man’s soul? He didn’t claim to know the answer. He only knew that men like Darryl Williams needed to be haunted in order to be broken.

Broken and haunted. Haunted and broken.

The car window was open to a gush of icy wind. The cold never bothered him, nor did he need a coat in thirty degree weather. He felt like the wolf in the darkness, his Loki. Sometimes he pretended he had thick skin and fur you could sink your hand in, sometimes he was just flesh like a man.

It was dusk when he’d made up his mind. Time for something different, he’d earned it after all. He liked to make sure the subject was in his sights long enough to create an impression and not enough to know he was there.

And this one was worth something.

The girl had an evening job at the Corrales Café and he waited outside until closing. Twirling a short flouncy skirt, she walked outside, painted nails dancing through black hair. She put her hand up over her eyes to shelter from the headlights of an oncoming car, then looked up at the trees as if searching for something. The moon, a constellation of stars. He had seen it often enough.

This was his fourth time of watching her. Unique, unforgettable. As always the loneliness of his situation pressed in, a strange blackening moment, and then a souring excitement fell deliciously over his soul.

Acting like a shadow was getting boring, especially as he was stoned most of the time.
Fun
in his mind meant a frenzy of blackouts and the whir of faces, and he never remembered much after the fact. Reliving his cruelties was no longer exciting. He needed so much more.

He knew how to stalk anybody, any
thing
, and he parked deep in the shadows under the trees and watched the girl. She unlocked the chain around the back tire and looked up a couple of times. She was probably uneasy, knew she was being watched. That was the part he liked the most, the part that ratcheted up the pace and made his heart pound.

There were eight other cars in the parking lot, his was the ninth, and she wouldn’t have a clue where that feeling came from. Even as she brushed a hand through those blunt bangs of hers, she had no clue what was nagging at her senses, telling her to hurry up.

She flicked a glance in his direction because the Camaro, a dark stud of a machine, had a place in every girl’s dreams. It had a place in her heart. She could only see her own reflection in the windshield, but she must have recognized it.

Even the cops gave him no mind at this strange hour as he waited outside the café watching the girl and the bright red bike. Part of being Ole was not looking at all like what he did.

By now she was unsettled enough to make a mistake, wobbling slightly as she pedaled away from the curb and out into the parking lot. That’s when she noticed the tire. The one he’d slashed with his knife.

Ole was invisible inside that dark shiny shell, wheels hardly turning as the car coasted after the bike. She would be drawn to it like kids to an ice cream truck, only this one was offering more than a snow cone. Just as he was thinking that, her head snapped around and she came to a grinding halt in the middle of the parking lot.

He wouldn’t jump out though. That was the oldest of all tricks. She might run for the trees if he did.

Forehead a frown and mouth working up a shout or two, her skin seemed whiter than he remembered. She was petite and slender, and that’s what mattered. He powered down the window and stuck his head out.

“Becky. It’s me.”

She pressed one hand flat against her collarbone. The tiny smile, the nervous twitch. It was all fake. She knew his car well enough.

“Looks like the back tire,” he said. “Leave it behind the dumpster.”

She gave a tentative wave and pedaled on ahead, looking back twice to see if he was still there. Then she hesitated at the crossing, even though no cars were coming.

“I’ve got a bicycle pump in the trunk,” he shouted. The slash was too far gone for one of those but she wasn’t to know.

She swung her leg over the saddle and leaned the bike against the dumpster. She fumbled with the chain and crouched down to wrap it around the back wheel.

Ole backed the car into an available space and slipped out of the driver’s door. He leaned against the passenger side fender and watched her in the shadows. She seemed to be taking her time.

Something throbbed inside him, a lingering burn of ancient lust. She turned then, eyes skimming down his body, visualizing things a young girl should never know. After the age of fourteen girls were no longer pure. They knew what they wanted. And this girl wanted him.

“It’s slashed,” she said, tucking her lower lip behind her top teeth. “I can’t believe someone would do that.”

Ole shook his head and shrugged. He was fascinated and thoroughly turned off at the same time. It was incredibly stupid to talk to a complete stranger, especially near a densely wooded path that led down into an arroyo. Only he wasn’t a complete stranger. Not to her.

“Do you live around here?” she asked.

“Corrales,” he lied.

She lowered her head, eyes flicking up to his. “I didn’t know you lived so close.”

“There’s a lot of things about me you don’t know.” He couldn’t keep the laughter from his voice and she half smiled in response. “Suppose I take you home and you tell me more about yourself on the way.”

She didn’t read the insult, the fact that her life would hardly fill the three long minutes to her front door. He wasn’t sure he wanted to kiss those lips or touch any part of her. And he wasn’t sure he wanted to slash her throat from ear to ear.

Not yet.

She eyed the gun in his belt and the car, and then nodded. He opened
the passenger door, seeing the curve of her buttocks through that flimsy skirt. He wanted to look away, unable to form the simplest words.

He drove slowly, watching her out of the corner of his eye. She seemed to study the tuxedo shirt he wore, eyes fixed on the flesh at his collarbone. So strangely relaxed for one about to die, unless she was trying not to show any ounce of fear.

“Home,” he murmured, parking in front of her ground floor apartment. He flexed his left hand, the hand that would snake around that tiny little neck in a moment.

She slipped off her seat belt and turned to face him. In utter silence she studied him, lifting her chin to expose her neck. “You remind me of someone. I can’t think who.”

Ole bobbed his head. He could see she was fortified by his smile. It was Morgan’s face on every newspaper, long braid and tattoos etched into his temples. He doubted she would see the similarity. “Perhaps I have an ordinary face.”

“No,” she said, shaking her head. “You look like an actor.”

That made all the difference to him. She would trust him if she thought he looked like someone else. He knuckled his forehead in mock concentration then snapped his fingers, rattling off a famous name. Her red painted lips parted, just wide enough to laugh.

“Trust,” he whispered, “means walking down a dark, empty street without a gun.”

“I’ve never held a gun, never touched one.”

“You can touch mine,” he whispered, knowing she hadn’t missed the innuendo.

She lowered her eyes, shook her head. “They scare me.”

“There’s nothing to be afraid of,” he murmured, trying to decide when to do it, when to lean over and kiss her, when to slide his hands around her neck and hear the frantic gurgle. “I won’t tell your dad.”

She looked at him then, eyes moist, like she suddenly knew what he was thinking. Only she was oblivious to what was going on his mind, even his hesitation. “How well do you know him?”

“Let’s just say… better than he knows me.”

He was getting closer to the edge, as if he would tumble into that ravine at any moment. How could it be so hot sitting next to her? Yet his mind was so cold.

Then he heard her say his name as if he’d been thinking for too long, grounding him, bring him back. She even smiled, brightened, like she was enjoying his company. He wasn’t listening to her voice. Not really. It was just a blur of words, the type you hear in a bar, the type that bores the pants off any regular guy.

But he wasn’t any regular guy. He was as welcome as a foreboding dream, as eloquent as grim poetry on a prison wall. Even when he took a single strand of her hair and wound it round his finger, he was still a killer.

She had got him at his name.
Ole
. It sounded odd and nice at the same time. He didn’t feel vile, not anymore, not by a longshot. “Have you ever kissed a man?” he said.

There was nothing more exciting than a kiss. Doing it well was another matter.

“Yes,” she said, cheeks flushing, hands flat on her thighs.

Ole threw up his head. “Show me.”

When she hung back, he took the lead, kissing her lightly on the lips. And then on the cheeks and neck. She seemed to like it.

He liked it far more than he thought he would, and he stopped for a moment to look at her eyes. It was too dark to see details but there was a light across her face from the apartment office and for the first time in his life, he wasn’t afraid of what he saw.

He’d been expecting the rise of bile in his throat, the screaming ravens in his head, the thick black smoke that threatened to suffocate him; but he felt none of those. It was like a cup of old whiskey in oak, streaming through his veins, fresh and delicate. The opiate of the rich.

He traced the line of her lips with a finger. “Do you know how hard it is for me to look at you?”

“No,” she whispered.

He couldn’t bear to look at those moist lips and not kiss them, and her tender, exquisite features only filled him with an ominous sadness. She wasn’t vulnerable to the same things that he was, the insatiable desires, the raging anger, the repulsive smells each time he killed. It was his secret, a dangerous secret. It would compromise her to share in his world. But then again, she wasn’t exactly Snow White.

Mustn’t forget he was a cop, playing a cleaner role than the monster he was. He held on to that hand for a moment, sensing she wanted things to gallop ahead before he had a chance to show her how it was done.

“I should leave,” he said, watching her face crumple like that of a child about to bawl.

“Don’t,” she murmured.

When he dropped her hand and said nothing she looked puzzled. “Don’t you want my number?”

“I don’t need it,” he murmured in that fluid resonant voice she was clearly falling for. “I already know where you live.” He leaned over and kissed her again. She wasn’t going anywhere.

She had an inkling of what he was, monstrous and magnificent, a chimera. She didn’t care. But it was hardly polite to kill a girl outside her own house.

“Let’s go for a drive,” he said, seeing the inflated cheeks and the smile beneath them.

He threw the car into reverse, felt the shudder of the powerful engine. He also felt an eagerness to get on the road, invigorated by the sudden change as if an invisible wall of darkness had somehow been breached. Instinctively, he tapped the stereo to life, listening for the pounding of the base.

Instead, a preacher’s voice blared out over the sound of the engine.

…
And no wonder, for Satan himself masquerades as an angel of light.
 
It is not surprising, then, if his servants also masquerade as servants of righteousness. Their end will be what their actions deserve.

Ole balled his right hand into a fist and mashed the button.

Malin rubbed her eyes and yawned. It was nine o’clock in the evening now and Corrales Café had been closed for nearly an hour. No good wanting a decent meal at this time of night when all the best places were closed.

She glanced at the buff file on the coffee table. Morgan Eriksen. She had read it from cover
to
cover and she needed fresh air to clear her head.

Heads. Eriksen wanted heads. To tell the future, so he said. She remembered the Norse legend of Mimir, a wise man decapitated in a war between two groups of gods. Odin was said to have found the head and kept it so he could listen to its prophecy.

But the ninth hour? None of the girls had been killed within nine hours. According to the pathology report, time of death ranged between twenty-four and seventy-eight hours, all in the early part of the afternoon.

She cracked the sliding doors to her second floor apartment. It was too cold to sit on the balcony but she liked to listen to the water tumbling over a palisade of rocks at the front entrance. From her bedroom the soft susurration was a comfort at night, far better than one of those sound machines that mimicked waves on a sea shore.

Only tonight there was nothing but silence. The fountain was likely turned off due to the freezing temperatures and there was a fresh coating of snow on the floodlit monument sign which read Puerta de Corrales. Wind sighed through the branches of a cottonwood tree and there was the distinct smell of burning cedar wood in the air.

A young boy in a bright red sweater ran out into the parking lot. He pressed a ball of snow in his gloved hands and began to roll it along the ground. It was sticking. He’d have a snowman shaped in less than twenty minutes if he was lucky.

She wished she knew the Morans better, just enough to snatch a cup of coffee and a chat. Becky was a nice kid, smiley, friendly. It was the clothes that bothered Malin. She had seen how men looked at her, protective at first and then hungry. Old men, young men, men with needs.

Malin swallowed back a lump of shame. She’d messed up her life alright, working in back alley nudie bars and escorting the paunchy elite. How Hollister found out, she would never know. But there he was one night, leering up at her from a table in the front row. Just as she lifted her right leg against the pole, a black diamante stiletto flew from her foot and out into a cheering crowd. It gored Hollister in the groin, a bull’s-eye she could never have managed no matter how hard she aimed. It had been funny then. But it wasn’t funny now.

Minerva – she hadn’t looked at the website for months. Opening the laptop on the coffee table, she keyed in her password and checked the email. A familiar feeling came crashing back and so did the same old men, wondering what had happened to her. And then she saw the email from Hollister. Just one sentence.

Where are you?

She was suddenly immobilized by a feeling of self-loathing. She’d been a stripper for crying out loud, shaking everything she’d got to a crowd of weirdos whose eyes were a ghostly shade of white, some larger than cups. It was as if they had never seen a naked woman before. What was that? Those rheumy eyes. Like dead men’s eyes.

She deleted the message, deleted him. He was gone now at the tap of a button.

In spite of the chill on that dark night, she felt a trickle of perspiration at the small of her back and her hands were damp, too. Moonlight slithered through the blinds tussled by a night breeze and somewhere a coyote howled. She walked toward the patio doors and stared at the street below. The boy had gone, but there was a lump of snow in front of the office about five feet high.

It was then she saw the car, sleek and dark, purring along the road like a contented cat. It pulled in opposite the front office, headlights flaring through a haze of fresh sleet. It lingered under the amber glow of the streetlamps like a precious masterpiece in a museum, an artwork so dark it was beautiful.

She couldn’t see the driver through the tinted window but she knew he was watching. Something.

Corvette? Camaro? One of those.

A plume of steam oozed from her mouth and curled in the breeze. Crouching, she peered through the balusters as the front tire slowly stuttered along the verge, gravel rattling against the exhaust. It was only a few seconds before the engine shuddered into life and the car arced back into the road, brakes squealing and taillights dwindling into the shadows.

Had he seen her crouching there with the light of the living room behind her? Had he even seen her face?

Malin blinked the sweat out of her eyes and retreated to the living room, locking the sliding doors. Her heart was pounding as she entertained the possibility that the car was Hollister’s, that he had come to torment her.

It was impossible, of course. He was in New Jersey and she was in New Mexico. But he could still get her number, her address, anything he wanted. He was a detective after all.

The thought gave her a headache and there was a buzzing in her right ear. Fear began to ebb but in its place was a surge of guilt.

Be careful, poppet. There’s bad men out there.

It was her mother’s voice, strained, sad. Malin had been close to her mom, iron-willed and always armed with a look of disapproval. There was something vulnerable about her at the end, something Malin had never seen before. It made her want to cry, knowing her mother had never told a soul.

“I wish I could just pick up the phone and call you, mom,” she said out loud with a sob in her voice. “I wish there were phones that could reach to heaven. I just wish I could see you one more time.”

She sighed and brushed away a tear. She wasn’t going to cry. No use in crying. Not when it made your nose red and blotchy.

That was before the doorbell rang, heavy and menacing like a ship’s muster. Her mouth went dry and her throat tightened. She wasn’t expecting anyone and the thought of going out there in the freezing cold was anything but tempting.

There were only shadows through the spy hole and, grabbing her gun from a holster hung over the kitchen chair, she opened the door.

Crisp brown leaves whispered along the galleria, whirling through the bannisters and along the corridor like wood fragments from a carpenter’s bench. Even though she moved out of the open doorway looking left and right along the dimly lit walls, the icy wind took her breath away. No one would be out in weather like this. No one sane, that is.

Hollister would no more follow her here than a call-girl to a brothel. He was too pleased with himself for that.

“Malin, it’s me. Alex.”

Malin heard the thudding of footfalls coming back up the stairs and she saw the boy with the bright red sweater. Alex Moran.

“I thought there was no one home,” he said, lips curling. “Mom wants to know if you’d like to come over for dinner. It’s not much, just spaghetti.”

The sound of another human voice was such a relief, Malin almost hugged him. “I’d like that,” she said, nodding.

“Were you crying?”

Malin was surprised at the observation. Her eyes were probably redder than a lobster’s claw and there was no use saying no. “I miss my mom. She died this year.”

“I’m sorry,” Alex stammered. “That must be awful. To lose your mom, I mean.”

“Here,” Malin said, backing into the apartment. She handed Alex a fur coat that was hanging on a hook behind the door. “It was hers. It’ll keep you warm.”

“Cool!” Alex ran a hand up and down the collar, hem dragging on the floor. “Dad’s home and he’s made some apple cobbler. Do you like apple cobbler?”

Malin almost laughed. She enjoyed the refreshing chatter as they walked under a full moon where trees and shrubbery rustled and shadows curled across the front lawn. She pointed at the snowman, gave him a few tips on how to shape the head. Wasn’t going to think of any more headless corpses tonight. She wasn’t afraid any more.

Think of yourself like this
, her mother used to say.
Pretend you’re a master of self-defense. Not the black-belt type, the street type. The type that puts on an imaginary armor. Someone that knows the streets are not filled with human beings, but with demons. You’ll be stronger then. Unbeatable.

Malin had inherited some of those knife-edge debating skills – and tenacity – from her mother. She could pretend armor behind a Kevlar vest but she certainly couldn’t pretend she was better than her opponent.

You better just hope you are
,
she thought.

It surprised her to see that the Moran’s door faced the front drive just as hers did. Only theirs was a first floor apartment close to the main office, the second block near the cottonwood and the road.

Sarge stood in the kitchen wearing a butcher’s apron directing operations with a wooden spoon.

“This is Rae,” Sarge said, hugging his wife.

Malin liked Rae instantly. There was a sparkle in those small green eyes and warmth in two pudgy hands. Her eyes rolled over a steaming apple cobbler on the counter, edges bubbling with brown sugar. “Like cobbler?”

“Love it,” Malin said.

Sarge pulled out a chair and ushered Malin over with a wave. “Anyone heard from Becky?”

“She’s working late,” Rae said. “Her boss called. Sounded foreign.”

They all sat down to eat and Malin was surprised to hear a Christian blessing. She hadn’t heard anything quite like it since leaving New Jersey.

“So Malin, any more news on the case?” Rae asked through a mouthful of noodles.

Malin shot a look at Sarge. “We found a… you know.”

“Found what?” Alex said.

“A head,” Malin said, wincing.

“Whose head?”

“We don’t know yet.” Malin cut into a blood red tomato, oozing with sauce. She knew the head belonged to Patti, and her stomach began to tighten.

“The man in prison couldn’t have done it then,” Alex said, spooning a few asparagus spears onto his plate. “If he didn’t do it, then who did?”

“We’ll find him,” Sarge murmured, smoothing his moustache with two forefingers, eyes flicking to Malin.

“But we’re not safe until he’s inside,” Alex said. “Not really. What if he’s a cop hater? What if he knows where we live?”

“He doesn’t know where we live.” Sarge leaned across the table and gave Alex the eye. “We’re not in the phone book.”

“But dad―”

Sarge held up a finger. “Who’s the best cop in the world?”

“You are.”

“Then stop worrying. We’ll find him in no time.”

Malin’s pulse began to speed. With forensics picking away at every last piece of evidence and Detective Temeke calling all units to pick up a nonexistent Camaro, she was almost angry with Sarge for giving his son a promise he couldn’t possibly keep.

And there had been a dark car outside the apartment complex less than an hour ago. A Camaro, come to think of it. Just a coincidence. Lots of them about.

“I heard your mom passed recently,” Rae said, steering the conversation to even less cheery news. “I’m so sorry for your loss.”

I’m so sorry for your loss
…
Malin hated those words. They were unimaginative, stale. Everyone said it at funerals. There must be something better to say, something more uplifting. “It’s not a loss you see. It’s just a parting. I’ll see her again some day.”

“Yes, you will,” Rae whispered. “And so will I.”

Malin could feel a few pairs of eyes staring at her but she kept her head down, kept chewing on that blood red tomato. Conversation turned to school grades and Malin almost forgot she was a stranger in someone’s house.

“Becky’s got a boyfriend,” Alex blurted. “And he speaks funny.”

Sarge frowned. “Course Becky doesn’t have a boyfriend.”

“She does,” Alex said, nodding. “She met him in the mall. He’s old. Like dad.”

Rae began to laugh. “Anyone’s old when you’re fourteen.”

Malin conjured an image of an older man playing
father
to Becky’s
child
. She knew how that felt. Strange. Exciting.

“How well do you know Temeke?” Sarge said.

The question took Malin by surprise and she felt the ache in the back of her throat. “Not well.”

“Nobody likes him. Doesn’t mince his words. Hurts everyone’s little feelers. Thing is though, there’s not much tweaking to his game. He knows exactly where to look.”

“How do you mean?”

“They call him
the sniper.
It’s like he can dial in his inner rifle and scope, and there’s his quarry right in the crosshairs. Dead nuts on.”

Malin grinned when she heard Alex laugh. “Now you’re making him sound superhuman.”

“That’s the problem. He’s got more up his sleeve than a gun. He’s BRIU. That’s why we’ve got him.”

Malin knew how hard the FBI trained its team of professionals in the Behavioral Research and Instruction Unit in Quantico. How they focused on criminal behavior to better understand the criminal. Not only did they study all aspects of violent crime, they also studied the people they worked with. And half of them were nuttier than the nuts.