BLACK AS NIGHT
Quentin Black Mystery #2
by
JC Andrijeski
Copyright © 2015 by JC Andrijeski
Published by White Sun Press
Cover Art & Design by Damonza
http://damonza.com
2016
Ebook Edition, License Notes
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Synopsis for BLACK AS NIGHT
He says he will break anything you try to keep pure, brother...
Forensic psychologist Miri Fox travels across the globe when her now-employer, psychic detective, Quentin Black, calls from a police station in Bangkok and asks for her help.
She arrives to find Black undercover inside a gang of local criminals, determined to discover which of them is killing street children and ritualistically burning their bodies inside Buddhist shrines. But Black isn’t the only one with an interest in the crimes, and soon his investigations get the attention of the local sex traffickers, along with a crime syndicate out of Russia that doesn’t appreciate his meddling one bit.
When Miri shows up to help, she manages to catch the attention of all the wrong people. Events quickly spiral out of control…until Miri soon finds herself the hunted.
The second book in the paranormal mystery series starring brilliant but dangerous psychic detective, Quentin Black and forensic psychologist, Miri Fox.
Dedicated to the lovely people of Bangkok
who’ve given me such a soft landing place
Prologue
BUDDHA
RUNNING FOOTSTEPS ECHOED hollowly along the stone corridor, loud in the night’s silence.
Two sets.
Not the barefoot running of monks in saffron robes––these were booted feet, the feet of soldiers. Or at least of people who shouldn’t be here, not in the middle of the night, not in one of the holiest places in the Old City, where residents came every holiday to light incense and murmur prayers. The desire to cleanse oneself of the dirt and corruption that surrounded all humans in the day to day remained universal, it seemed.
So was the desire to pretend that however bad it might be, it was worse somewhere else. It was always worse somewhere else––anywhere else.
But it wasn’t really. Worse, that is.
Better hidden maybe. Easier to ignore in the day to day. But the same fundamental rot permeated all. No one was exempt.
No one.
He looked down the length of a massive golden statue, reclining on a raised platform. Forty-six meters long, it shone in the moonlight through the open wooden shutters of its dedicated chapel, blue light reflecting on gilded gold skin. Mother of pearl and black stone inlays in the soles of its massive feet glinted like stars at the end of its supine posture. Swallowed by shadow, the details of its gilded hair and mouth and the contours of its face hung in silence far above where he stood, out of reach of the moon’s glow near the roof of the steeply peaked building.
The image was iconic... awe inspiring, even now, in the dark.
What many forgot, however, especially Westerners visiting this place, was that this was a master depicted during death.
It was a luminous, golden shrine to death.
The same death that frightened all animals lived here––whether one wished to believe in enlightened death or not. The statue filled all but a tiny walkway around it inside the viharn, or chapel which housed it, a gesture of respect to that fear.
The sound of footsteps grew quieter in the dead of night as his pursuers left the sanctity of the area around the main temple. He could still hear them, along with the occasional shout, the excited rattle of words in another language.
A gunshot went off, but it wasn’t aimed at him.
He could smell the smoke too.
The fires burned, glowing at the horizon in the distance.
They would all burn, wherever he went. But they would never catch him.
He was a ghost.
He was already disappeared.
1
PHONE CALL
I HAD TO be at lunch with Angel and Nick, of course, when he called.
I just had to be.
Because really, Homicide Detective Naoko “Nick” Tanaka didn’t have enough ammunition when it came to giving me a hard time about my new “employer.”
I stared at the name that flashed on the face of my phone as it buzzed on the table, tempted to ignore it. Just stuff my phone back in my bag and hum a jaunty tune.
Anyway, I could feel fairly justified in ignoring him. Black hadn’t bothered to check in once in the past thirty-three days. Well, not with me.
I knew because I’d counted. Thirty-three days.
I had no idea where he even was. I strongly suspected it wasn’t in San Francisco.
When I didn’t answer the phone after two more long buzzes, Angel laughed, smacking my arm playfully from where she sat next to me on the red vinyl bench.
“Aren’t you going to get it, doc?” she teased.
Unlike Nick, Angel seemed to find the whole thing with me and Black hilarious.
The three of us were crammed into a booth at one of our favorite lunch places, a sushi bar in the indoor mall that took up a chunk of the center of Japantown. Angel and Nick were based full time out of the Northern District again, so that was part of our excuse to go, since that police station wasn’t all that far from Japantown. My offices were located near theirs, so it was a short bus ride for me, too, or even a walk, if I had the time to spare.
I’d known both of them for years, Nick especially, but they’d known one another even longer. I met Nick in the service, when I was eighteen and he was in his early thirties––but Angel and Nick, they’d grown up together, and in a rough neighborhood, too. I’d wondered more than once if that relationship had ever been romantic, just from the way they jabbed at one another on occasion, but if it had, they were both pretty tight-lipped about it. I considered them two of my closest friends. Until recently, I used to do a fair bit of work with the two of them, mostly as a profiler and forensic psychologist.
But I had a new employer now.
Glancing down at my phone, Nick scowled, then finished shoving what looked like a whole baby octopus into his mouth with chopsticks, chewing hard. He grunted after swallowing, motioning with those same chopsticks towards my phone.
“It’s him, isn’t it? Psycho boy.”
Sighing in defeat, I scooped up the phone, even as Angel chuckled.
I didn’t bother with a greeting.
“What?” I barked into the phone. “What is it?”
Silence.
“Black?” I said, my voice still sharp. “Where are you?”
Next to me, Angel laughed harder.
I still heard nothing in the phone.
I couldn’t feel him either, which I usually could with him. It wasn’t something I advertised, but I’m what you could call a “psychic.” Nothing like what my employer was, of course, not even close, but when I talked to him it usually flared that connection between us.
Not this time though. His laser-like mind must be focused elsewhere.
Then again, no
one could be a blank wall like Quentin Black when he wanted to be.
Which begged the question, why the hell had he called me?
Inwardly I cursed again that he had to call now, of all times. A part of me was paranoid enough to wonder if he’d done it on purpose. I hadn’t seen either of my friends in weeks, which I knew wasn’t wholly accidental, or because they’d been spending more time downtown than usual. I knew Nick especially had been at the Northern District precinct station a lot in the past two weeks, since I’d seen his motorcycle in the parking lot we both used. Since the nearest real coffee shop lived in my building, directly below my offices, I usually ran into either him or Angel accidentally every other day or so, even when we didn’t plan to see one another.
But not the last few weeks. Which told me that Nick at least––who was much more of a dedicated coffee junkie than Angel––had to be avoiding me deliberately.
I knew why, of course.
And yeah, some of it was about my new job.
Nick still hadn’t gotten over the fact that I’d accepted the offer from Black Securities and Investigations, a high-end P.I. firm located on California Street in downtown San Francisco. He claimed it was because I was a sellout. He accused me of going in for money over helping real crime fighters––namely him.
I knew that was mostly an excuse, though.
Nick’s hating on my new job had less to do with money and a lot more to do with the owner of said firm, one Quentin R. Black, who Nick was convinced was a dangerous psychopath.
Well, an extremely annoying one, anyway.
Truthfully, I suspected my new job was only part of why Nick had been avoiding me, though. Hating on Black might be the emotion Nick had the easiest time expressing, but I suspected it wasn’t the deepest one. I’d picked up glimmers a few times that he felt guilty for everything that happened when I first met Black. Not just for introducing me to Black in the first place by having me profile him, or even for arresting me back when he still liked Black for the Wedding Murders. More than any of that, I knew Nick felt guilty about Ian... as in Ian Stone, my former fiancé, who I’d met through Nick.
The same Ian Stone who’d tried to kill me in my own apartment.
I knew Nick wasn’t over all of that.
For that matter, neither was I. Over it, I mean.
But––unlike Nick himself, I suspected––I didn’t blame Nick for any of it.
Either way, it hadn’t been Nick who set up today’s lunch. That was Angel’s doing. I strongly suspected that she’d finally had enough of the silence between the two of us and probably thought both of us were acting like idiots. I couldn’t even disagree with her really.
Either way, this lunch was a peace offering kind of lunch. An ice-breaking one, at least.
Black calling now, after not bothering to call for over a month, was just so... Black... of him.
“I’m hanging up,” I warned him through the phone when the silence continued.
“Miriam?” he said.
“Yes?” I said through gritted teeth. “You called me.”
He barely seemed to hear me.
Then, tangibly, I felt his attention snap back.
Whatever had distracted him moved into the background even as I shifted to his foreground. Focusing his whole attention on me, he spoke rapidly, that odd, hard-to-place accent of his only bringing his words into sharper focus.
“I’ve sent the car,” he said. He sent a snapshot of a limousine directly into my mind, making me flinch and disorienting me in the same micro-second. I still hadn’t gotten used to his psychic abilities, or how intensely and yet functionally he employed them. “...ETA two minutes. Don’t worry about luggage. Kiko filled a carry-on at your apartment when she picked up your passport. If she missed anything, you can expense it here...”
I fought between anger and a sharp desire to laugh. “What?”
He exhaled, as if impatient.
“I need you to come here. They’re being... difficult. I could use you anyway. Come straight here, as soon as you arrive. I’d really prefer if you came right from the airport.”
“Wait... what?” I said, sharper. “Airport? Come get you? Where?”
“Phra Ratchawang police station,” he said at once.
He sent me another snapshot, this time of a building standing at the corner of a very not-American looking intersection, with four white ionic pillars decorating the front doors and covered in unfamiliar-looking writing. Again the sharpness of the image and the way it blotted out my physical vision made me flinch and blink.
“...There’ll be a driver waiting for you. They know where it is, so don’t bother trying to write it down. Most of the drivers here don’t read English. Oh. And you’ll need to pick up the lawyer. Hanu Hotel. Sathorn. Near Naradhiwas.”
“Black!” I snapped. “What the hell are you talking about?”
“Kiko should be there soon. She can explain whatever I missed.”
I practically saw him checking his military-style watch.
“Tell her to drive fast,” he muttered. “I may have cut it overly close with the booking, but I really can’t afford to waste time being locked up in here for much longer.”
“Locked up?” I said, alarmed. “Black, I’m not even in the office––”
“I know,” he cut in, dismissive. “Omui Sushi Island. I had my people trace your phone. It would be better if you waited in front,” he added. “I really need you to catch that flight, if it’s at all possible.”
“Black, I can’t just leave. I have clients this afternoon––”
“Already dealt with,” he said. “I had Lizbeth cancel and reschedule everything of yours this week, including that profiling thing I had you on. This has to take top priority.”
“What does?” I said. “Busting you out of jail?”
Across from me, Nick let out a grunt.
I practically felt the total lack of surprise on him.
“...Again?” I added, focusing back on the phone.
At Black’s silence, I exhaled, combing my fingers through my hair.
“Where am I going?” I said, my voice more subdued. “Can you tell me that, at least?”
That time, I felt genuine surprise waft through our connection.
“Bangkok,” he said, that surprise reflected in his voice. “I thought that was obvious.” Ignoring my disbelieving snort, he added, “I’ve pushed them to get me to use the phone, but I’d really better go, Miriam. I don’t know who’s watching me here.”
“Black––” I began, frustrated.
He’d already hung up.
“HE’S OUT OF his fucking mind,” I grumbled, climbing into the back seat with only a bare wince as I landed a little too hard on my bad leg.
Kiko laughed, shutting the door of the limousine behind me.
I didn’t know her well yet, but I already liked her.
She intimidated me a little, too.
That might be funny to some people, since I’m 5’9” with a background in martial arts whereas Kiko only stood at maybe 5’3” and weighed probably fifteen to twenty pounds less than me. But all of Kiko was solid muscle, and while I didn’t know much about her background, I got a strong military vibe, like I did with a good chunk of the people Black hired.
Even Black’s office help could be intimidating. Lizbeth, his fifty-something admin assistant, looked like she could fight me in the ring and probably win, too.
Kiko definitely wasn’t an office worker, even though she drove for him sometimes, like now. She headed up internal security for Black Securities and Investigations. She also acted as Black’s personal bodyguard at times––a frightening idea in and of itself.
I rubbed my leg where the shrapnel wound had mostly healed, trying not to think about the look that came to Nick’s face after I told him and Angel where I was going. I made a point of never using my psychic abilities on any of my friends––not on purpose, at least––but it was hard when I saw the scowl painted on Nick’s
face.
It did settle one thing in my mind, however.
Nick and I needed to have a real heart-to-heart.
Probably with no one else around, not even Angel as referee.
The limousine’s engine started with a low rumble as I glanced back at the restaurant. It barely caught before Kiko was already pulling away from the curb.
My lips firmed as I tried to decide if I should call Nick now.
Extend an invite to meet at my place when I got back. Offer to get him drunk.
He had zero ability to self-censor when he drank––with me, at least. Of course, that only held true for personal stuff; Nick turned into an impenetrable vault when it came to sensitive information related to work. I’d known that about him since our military time together, even before he recruited me into intelligence.
I glanced up as Kiko lowered the window between the driver’s seat and the back of the limousine. When I saw that dark pane go down, I immediately shifted to the seat across from where I originally sat, so that I’d be closer to her. I rested my arms on the backrest of the leather seat, meeting her gaze in the mirror.
“You know anything about what happened over there?” I said.
She shook her head at me, smiling. “No.”
I exhaled, in frustration as much as anything. “Figures.”
“He tell you I did?”
I grunted, nodding at her eyes in the mirror. “Is he a pathological liar? Or just nuts?”
It only occurred to me after I said it that maybe that wasn’t the most politic thing to say to her about our mutual boss. Kiko had worked for Black a lot longer than I had. I didn’t know how long exactly, but I knew from things Black said that it had to be a few years, at least. More to the point, I knew nothing about their history together.
Black As Night: A Quentin Black Paranormal Mystery (Quentin Black Mystery Book 2) Page 1