Angels
Matthew Storm
Copyright © 2016 Cranberry Lane Press
Follow Matthew on Twitter: @mjstorm
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This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental. The publisher does not have any control over and does not assume responsibility for author or third-party websites or their content.
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No part of this book may be reproduced, scanned, or distributed in any printed or electronic form without permission. Please do not participate in or encourage piracy of copyrighted materials in violation of the author’s rights. Purchase only authorized editions.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Many thanks to Michele, for reading yet another of my painfully bad drafts.
Also thanks to Banks, Lindsey Stirling, Sarah Veenstra, Albert Hammond, and Yoko Kanno.
Chapter 1
They say time slows down during life’s high-intensity moments. It doesn’t. Not really. It’s just chemicals flooding your brain that change your perception of time. Your mind takes a little time-out to go over things. That was exactly what was happening to me right now, between the moment I dove through the art gallery’s second-story window and what would be the moment of my inevitable landing on the sidewalk below me. My brain decided this would be a great time for me to reflect on some of the life choices that had led me here.
It wasn’t a particularly revelatory experience. If I was any good at reflection I probably wouldn’t have been in this situation in the first place. It did occur to me that taking the elevator to street level and then going outside would almost certainly have been a better idea than what I was currently doing, but it was a little late for that now.
Two stories really doesn’t seem all that high up, until you realize it actually is.
I hit the sidewalk and tried my best to roll in order to minimize the impact, but I hadn’t thought this thing through very well and more or less just crumpled. I saw a man in cargo shorts and a Bazinga! t-shirt staring at me with his mouth gaping open. It occurred to me that time had probably just slowed down for him, as well, although for less dramatic reasons. It would be a funny story for him to tell people later. Well, maybe not funny. Interesting, certainly. You could keep a party going with a story like that.
A second later I was on my feet, my Glock out of its shoulder holster and in my hand, sprinting toward my quarry for all I was worth. There was something wrong with my left ankle. It didn’t hurt, but it also didn’t feel like it was still there. I’d done something bad to it, but the fact that I could still run at a pretty good clip was an encouraging sign. It probably wasn’t broken. When the adrenaline wore off I was going to need some Advil, though. And quite possibly a visit to the doctor. I was already not looking forward to that.
My target was standing beside a car across the street about fifteen feet away. He’d been staring curiously at me as I fell, his camera held out in front of him as if he’d forgotten it was still there. As I approached he blinked in surprise and I saw the realization hit him that he was the one I was coming for. He looked like he wanted to ask a question, but in an instant his look of surprise turned to one of terror. Maybe he’d just realized I wasn’t in a rush to ask him for directions to the San Diego Zoo. He turned and ran.
We were in downtown La Jolla, an upscale section of San Diego that fancied itself a competitor to Rodeo Drive in Hollywood. It was home to posh shops and restaurants most people couldn’t afford to eat dinner at. There was very little convenient street parking here, and wherever my target had parked, it wasn’t nearby. Unless he’d taken the bus here, of course, but I doubted that. I wasn’t sure a lot of buses came through La Jolla. That seemed like the kind of thing they’d have regulations against. Buses filled with common folk might spoil the neighborhood’s trendy image. It didn’t matter at this point where he was going, though. He had nowhere to go that he could reach before I got to him. I was much too fast for him. That was, unless my ankle gave out. I had to catch up to him before that happened.
I spotted blood on my right hand. Of course I’d managed to cut myself on the way through the window. I wondered what I looked like right now. The more terrifying the better. Machiavelli said it’s better to be feared than loved. Fear was fine and good, but terror got things done.
From ten feet behind him I already knew the guy I was chasing wasn’t the Laughing Man. He was the right height, but this man was overweight and out of shape. The Laughing Man was lean, almost wiry, and in our only fight nearly four years ago he’d more than proven he was fit. He’d demolished me.
The man ahead of me was also wearing a Hawaiian shirt that looked like it had come from a thrift shop. It was the kind of thing I couldn’t see the Laughing Man ever letting touch his skin, even if he thought it would make a convincing disguise. Some things were just going too far.
La Jolla was crowded with pedestrians but the man ahead of me did a fairly good job of barreling through them, and I kept myself in his wake. An older woman wearing what looked like a green prom dress screamed at the sight of my face. Maybe I looked too terrifying, if that was even possible. I turned my head enough to see my reflection in a store window. In the split second I gave myself to look I could see a great deal of blood, but not much else. I was definitely going to the hospital after this.
After two blocks of running through shocked pedestrians the guy who definitely wasn’t the Laughing Man reached a red Ford Taurus and stopped to fumble with his keys. He cast one look back at me and screamed at what he saw. I screamed, too, but it wasn’t the same kind of scream. He sounded like a guy who’s realized he’s about to be eaten alive. I sounded like an eagle about to snatch up a rabbit.
I hit him with a tackle at full speed, sending both of us to the ground. His body felt squishy, like overly soft cheese. I had an almost overwhelming impulse to sink my teeth into his neck, but I managed to keep enough control over myself not to. Instead I punched him hard in the stomach and then crawled on top of him as he gasped for breath.
He had blood on his face. It took me a moment to realize that it wasn’t his. I was bleeding on him. That annoyed me, for some reason. I put my Glock against his forehead. “Hi there,” I said.
He didn’t bother to introduce himself, which I thought was a touch rude, but his breathing was labored as if he hadn’t run that far in years and his lungs were about to give up on him. I gave him a second to recover. “Who are you?” I asked.
“Please…” he managed to pant.
I slapped him across the face with the barrel of my gun and he cried out. Now he was bleeding. “Who are you?” I repeated. I tapped his camera, which hung from his neck by a strap. Its lens had shattered during his fall. “I’ve seen you twice today, you prick. You’ve been taking pictures of me.”
“No…” he managed to get out. I was close enough to him to smell his breath. He’d been eating something with too much garlic in it.
“Tell me,” I said. “Who hired you?” I could taste blood in my mouth now. Where had that come from? How badly was I hurt? “Who do you work for? Is it the Laughing Man?”
Now he looked confused and my heart sank. I already knew the answer was going to be a no. Now I was disappointed, and I smacked him with the gun again, although not as hard this time. “Start talking.”
“All right,” he said between gasps. “Most of my stuff goes to the Sneaker.”
It took me a
minute to understand what he was talking about, but then I got it. The City Sneaker was San Diego’s finest true crime weekly. Except by finest I actually meant sleaziest. Very little of what they printed was true, and most of their content was lurid photos of crime scenes. The bloodier the better. I’d never read a copy, but you saw their name on television now and again. Usually it was because they were fighting a lawsuit from a victim’s aggrieved family.
“Are you…” I began. “Are you telling me you’re the paparazzi?”
He was breathing slightly easier now. Maybe he’d decided I wasn’t going to kill him. That seemed premature of him, but he was probably right. “It’s paparazzo,” he said. “Paparazzi is the plural.”
I had no idea how to process this information. “You want to debate linguistics with me?” He shook his head. “Why the hell are you following me?”
“Are you kidding?” Now he seemed confused again. Great. We were going to be here all day.
“Indulge me.”
“You’re Nevada James,” he said. “You’re the most famous detective in San Diego history. The one who went up against the Laughing Man. A picture of you is worth a fortune.”
I shook my head. “A picture of me is worth nothing,” I said. Blood leaked out of my mouth and splattered onto his face as I spoke. He flinched. It would have been an interesting bet which one of us was more disgusted right now. “Who the hell would pay to see a picture of me just hanging around?”
“Nobody,” he said. “Not now.” Then his eyes shifted away from my face and he managed to look slightly guilty. He’d given himself away. Of course it wasn’t worth anything. Not yet.
“But it would be worth a lot when I’m dead,” I said. “If the Laughing Man kills me.”
He wouldn’t look me in the eyes. I prodded his cheek with the gun. “Answer me,” I said.
He nodded. “I’m sorry,” he said. “I’m just trying to make a living here.”
I sighed and put my gun back in its holster. My ankle was starting to throb and it seemed like there was a great deal more blood on me than there should have been. My leather jacket had taken a good slice on the arm and I wasn’t sure if the glass that had done that had made it to the skin underneath. There wasn’t much chance I was going to get away with going home and putting some Neosporin on myself. I tried to remember when my last tetanus shot had been. Long enough ago that I was probably going to need another one.
“Can I go?” the paparazzi, or paparazzo, or whatever the hell he was asked.
I looked down at him. “In a minute,” I said. I looked around. We’d drawn quite a crowd. Fantastic. Just what I’d wanted today. I looked back at him. “Look,” I said. “I’m not really one to make moral judgements on people. I mean, I’ve done a lot of terrible shit. I’ve let a lot of other terrible shit happen, and I didn’t do anything about it. I want to be a good person, you know, but at the end of the day, I know I’m damned. If we’re being honest here, I’m a goddamn monster.” I put my hand on his cheek and turned his head so he had to look at me. “So understand me that when I say this, I’m not throwing stones at you from on high. Okay? I’m not saying I’m better than you, because there’s no doubt that I’m worse.”
He looked at me for a moment, eyes wide, and then nodded.
“You really need to think about your life,” I said. “I mean, really, go home, draw the curtains, maybe have a drink if that’s what you do, and think about your life. Because this person you are right now…you don’t want to be this guy. You really don’t.”
Whatever he’d been expecting me to say, that hadn’t been it. He stared at me as if I’d just burst into song. Maybe what I’d said would sink in. Maybe it wouldn’t. With my luck, I’d still wind up on the cover of the Sneaker for this. Then again, given the public nature of my attack on a helpless photographer and the fact that everyone and their brother had a phone with a camera these days, I was probably going to be on tonight’s evening news. I hoped I didn’t look too bad.
“Got me?” I asked.
He nodded. “Okay.” Whether he was lying or not didn’t really matter. I’d said what I’d needed to say.
I looked around. Two police officers were jogging toward me. They started to slow when they saw my face and I could tell that they recognized me. Normally I didn’t like it when that happened, but today it would be useful. I probably wouldn’t get hauled downtown in handcuffs. I’d have to expect some questions about this, though. And I had a pretty good idea who was going to be asking them. This day was far from over.
Shit.
“Can I get up?” the paparazzo asked.
I’d nearly forgotten I was still sitting on him. “One more thing,” I said. I leaned down and put my bloody lips next to his ear so only he could hear me. “Understand this,” I whispered. “If I ever see you again, anywhere, anytime, I will shoot you in the head. I won’t ask you any questions first. I won’t care if it’s just a weird coincidence that I ran into you. I’ll drop you right there. I’ll tell the cops you’d been stalking me and I was afraid for my life. And they’ll believe me.” I pulled back from him. “Look at me and tell me you understand what I just said.”
His eyes said he believed me. His mouth did, too. “You’ll never see me again,” he said.
“Good.” I patted him on the cheek like he was a good puppy, and then looked up at the police officers as they finally reached us. “Hey guys,” I said to them. I wiped my nose and looked at the blood it left behind on my hand. “Do you mind giving me a lift to the hospital?”
Chapter 2
Two hours later I was sitting on an adjustable bed in a small treatment bay at Sharp Memorial Hospital. It smelled like antiseptic and bleach. All around me were a variety of high-tech machines, very few of which I knew the purpose of. It didn’t seem important enough to ask about, since I wasn’t actually hooked up to any of them. A nurse had taken my vitals when I’d arrived and there hadn’t been anything out of order enough to require monitoring. There was just a great deal of blood to be dealt with.
I’d gotten away from my ill-advised superhero impression with six stitches in my cheek, four more in my forehead, and a sprained ankle that was now tightly wrapped in a bandage. I’d bitten the back of my tongue during my landing, but it hadn’t been serious enough to require treatment. Other than that, I only had a few minor scrapes, and I was guaranteed some bruising. I was also going to need a new jacket; I’d been wearing leather and it had held up better than I might have expected it to, but it was definitely on its last legs now.
All in all, things could have been a lot worse. Nothing was broken. I’d probably be sore for a few days, and I wasn’t going to be jogging for a while, but I could live with that. I’d once taken two bullets in the abdomen while trying to bring down a killer-for-hire. Anything else seemed pretty trivial after that.
Between all the time stitching me up and shaking their heads at me, the doctors had also taken a hell of a lot of my blood away to be tested. I hadn’t actually seen a doctor since I’d detoxed almost a year ago. Quitting drinking cold turkey had seemed like a good idea at the time, but it turned out to be exactly the wrong thing to do. I’d always thought delirium tremens was something that happened to people after a lifetime of drinking. I was still fairly young. But I’d made up for my lack of years with a commitment to alcoholism that would have made W.C. Fields blush. Two days after I’d given up the bottle I’d started having seizures. That had been…less than ideal. When they’d released me they’d told me to come back in a month for a follow-up, but I’d never bothered. Now here I was.
The blood work made me nervous, but I hadn’t thought to object when they started sticking syringes in me. The bad news was inevitable, though, and trying to avoid hearing it wasn’t going to make it go away. My liver was probably half dead from what I’d done to myself. If I was lucky I’d have a few good years left. That was good enough for me. I had a couple things I still wanted to do. Finding and killing the Laughing Man was foremost
among them.
A cop was stationed just outside the half-drawn curtain that kept other people’s eyes off me. He stood at attention, facing outward, as if he were guarding the President. I didn’t really need to be here anymore; the doctors were done with me, but I’d been told to wait. I wasn’t under arrest, but I was pretty sure I was going to get yelled at soon. I was getting bored waiting for it, though.
“You sure I can’t go?” I called to the cop outside. He was some uniform I didn’t know. He looked young enough to be in high school to me. I wondered if that meant I was old.
He turned slightly but didn’t look at me. “I’m sorry, Detective.”
“You know I’m not a cop anymore, right?”
“Yes, Detective.”
“So…” I tried to catch his eyes. “You know you don’t have to call me that?”
“Yes, Detective.” He turned back to his original position, perhaps scanning the area outside for scoundrels who might want to attack me. It seemed unlikely that there were any scoundrels nearby, but I guess a person couldn’t be too careful.
I sighed. This was silly. There was no reason I had to get yelled at here. My house was just as good. “I’m still not under arrest, right?”
“No,” the cop said. He didn’t look at me.
“If I leave are you going to try to stop me?”
He didn’t say anything for a moment, but from where I was sitting I could see the side of his mouth twitch nervously. “I won’t put hands on you, Detective,” he finally said, “but if you leave before he gets here I’ll probably lose my job. So could you please just…not?”
“Fine,” I said. “Don’t worry about it.” The next time I had to come to the emergency room I was going to have to remember to bring a magazine with me. Or a book. Anything to kill the boredom. Treatment bays didn’t come with televisions or entertainment centers. They didn’t come with much of anything other than beds and machines I didn’t know how to use. Not that I was probably allowed to use them, anyway.
Angels (Nevada James #3) (Nevada James Mysteries) Page 1