BOOKER Box Set #2 (A Private Investigator Thriller Series of Crime and Suspense): Volumes 4-6

by John W. Mefford

  “It wasn’t a normal hookup. It was a…paid service.”

  Silence fell upon the back patio. Suddenly, the back door swung open, and Mario leaned out.

  “Can I get any refills?”

  Garza lifted a hand, his eyes still locked on Alisa. “We’re good, Mario. Thanks.”

  The screen door banged shut.

  Alisa slurped a mouthful of her drink then pursed her lips. “How do you know for certain?”

  “That’s what our A/V unit does. Monitor audio, parse out the important information.”

  “But what did he say? What did she say? Are you just inferring something out of a few words?”

  Garza pulled his phone out of his back pocket and set it on the table. “I thought you might want to hear it. I can read you the manuscript or play the recording. Your choice.”

  Alisa glanced at me while saying to Garza, “Play it.”

  He tapped the screen three times.

  “Yo, BVD is in the house. Waz up, bitches?”

  Garza paused the recording. “That’s a local rapper named BVD. According to our agent in the club, BVD had just approached Natalie and two other girls. He took her by the hand and twirled her around. She didn’t look surprised.” He eyed Alisa before starting the recording. “Ready?”

  She nodded, and he tapped the screen again.

  “Wo, is Natalie lookin’ fly tonight or what, fellas? BVD is going to be smacking that tonight. I’m tellin’ ya.”

  Garza paused again. “Our agent said Natalie appeared a little embarrassed in front of the other girls from the shoot. She took BVD on the dance floor, and they started dancing. It…”

  “Yeah?”

  “It got pretty…uh. They were bumping and grinding all over each other, he said. Then they walked over to a table near Luna, and this is what we picked up.”

  He hit the play button.

  “You ready for the night of your life?”

  “Tonight, you’re the man. If you think you can bring it, I can take it, and then some.”

  He paused again. “BVD brought her closer and stuffed a small wad of cash in her cleavage.”

  “Oh shit.” Alisa closed her eyes and shook her head.

  “We can stop it right here?”

  “Keep going,” she said.

  He tapped the screen again.

  “That’s just for being so fuckin’ beautiful. You’re a lot more fly in person than—”

  “I am all that, aren’t I?”

  “That’s just a little pre-bang bonus. Rest of the cash already hit the account.”

  “I’m cool.”

  Garza clicked his phone dark.

  Glassy-eyed, Alisa looked out toward the bay, the same one that nearly had us for lunch earlier.

  “We need to find this BVD asshole and question him. He might know where Natalie is. If not, we need to find out how this…arrangement was set up,” I said.

  “Not possible,” Garza said. “He was reportedly involved in a drive-by shooting. Police tried to bring him in for questioning, but he took off. Hasn’t been seen in two weeks. They think he might have hit the open seas in someone’s boat, but they’re not certain.”

  “Fuck!” Alisa’s fist pounded the table.

  I felt the thud in the pit of my stomach. Another dead end.

  16

  The sky was convoluted. The low, western horizon offered a sweeping tapestry of bronze and burnt orange, flanked by streaks of pumpkin and spicy mustard. Due south, a bank of darkness ate up the sky, as agitated bolts of lightning sizzled against the distant atmosphere.

  Killing the engine, I sat motionless in my Saab, both front windows down. Men and women wearing dark clothes scurried across dusty gravel, stirring up gray plumes that hovered about three feet off the parched ground. The Dallas area had gone at least three weeks with no rain, but as day rolled into evening, the damp air was thick and clammy.

  My eyes couldn’t help but gravitate upward, the remarkable swirling lights of blue and red cascading against the multidimensional sky. The light show appeared choreographed, but the dichotomy of the surreal scene created an unsettling split in the universe. At least that was how it felt from my vantage point.

  Lifting out of my bucket seat, I closed the door and stood next to my car, twirling my key chain around my forefinger—anything to keep my mind off what might be on the other side of the yellow tape.

  Every local law enforcement agency was represented at the crime scene in front of me, dressed in shades of blue or brown. They were doing their jobs, each one assigned a unique task to allow the machine to work as a whole. Having lived on the other side of the tape for several years, I knew no one enjoyed their work in these circumstances. But they did it because someone had to seek justice on behalf of the victim.

  That’s why Paco had called me just as our plane touched down at DFW. He knew I had a vested interest in Jade’s death, and not just because her parents had hired me to find out who had robbed them of any future memories with their baby girl. Every life is special, to be cherished by those who have it, to be mourned for those who lose it.

  Jade’s connection to Natalie—their friendship as well as sharing the same employer—only enhanced my motivation to uncover who was behind Jade’s murder.

  And now there was another murder to solve. I just hoped like hell it wasn’t Natalie’s body lying at the bottom of the gulley just beyond a mound of waist-high weeds.

  Swallowing back a dry patch of anxiety, I shuffled my boots in the dust, my mind searching for a place that allowed my brain to function at optimal capacity without me plunging over the emotional edge. I couldn’t. Alisa knew that Paco had called me to the scene of a murder at the Trinity River bottoms, about a half-mile down from where Jade’s body had been located. Without saying a word when I dropped her off earlier, I could see she understood the very real possibility that her sister was dead, and if it came to it, I’d have to convey the horrific message to my partner. At first, I thought it was odd for Alisa not to push to tag along. But I could see that her emotional well was drier than Lake Lavon. She wanted me to deal with this initial roller coaster of emotions. I was glad I had her trust.

  “Yo, Booker.”

  Paco’s boots crunched against buried gravel, as he flipped the yellow tape over his head and approached me.

  “What do we have?”

  “A teenage girl. It’s gruesome, that’s all I’ve been told.” He gazed toward a bank of spotlights that had just flashed to life about eighty feet away.

  I’d never seen Paco so personally impacted by a crime during the years we were partners. This one was different, mostly because his niece was the same age as Jade. I got it. She was also the same age as Natalie, someone we still hoped to save—if she wasn’t lying dead just beyond the cluster of police cars.

  Part of me wanted to know if it was Natalie the second I drove up. The other part wanted the night to last forever. The last thing I wanted to do was look into Alisa’s eyes and tell her that her little sister had died in the most brutal manner possible.

  Taking my eyes from the embankment back to Paco, I noticed perspiration bubbling above his crumpled brow.

  “How can we get more information? I can’t leave here until I know for certain if it’s…” I said.

  He held out a hand. “I know, man. They haven’t been able to ID the vic. I was told we could look at the body.”

  “They knew I’d be with you?”

  “Yeah. Bradford is on the scene.”

  Eva, my ex-fiancée, had started dating Thom Bradford a few months back, just before he took over as the sergeant-in-charge at Northeast Division, my old base. While some could argue Bradford might have a bit of small man’s complex permeating his core—he barely inched over Eva’s five-five frame and appeared insecure at times—he’d been cool with Eva and my daughter Samantha. And that’s what mattered the most in my life.

  Paco flipped his head, and I followed. For a moment, I had a sense of déjà vu—both of us
working a crime scene, the hub of the wheel that turned the investigation, interacting with everyone from the entry-level technician responsible for setting up equipment to the families and friends of those involved in the crime or who had been victimized.

  Reaching the edge of the gravel, Paco held up an arm for us to stop. I peered down the ravine and saw a cluster of activity under the broad cone of lights.

  “Hold on a second,” Paco said, scampering down the small hill.

  Glancing left, I spotted Bradford talking to another officer, who answered with a “yes sir,” then immediately jumped in his squad car, and took off. Bradford looked my way and brought a hand to his police hat. I nodded. It was our way of acknowledging the favor given and the favor received, without doting on it or calling attention to it. I guess I’d have to classify him as one of the good guys.

  Knuckles brushed my shoulder. “Booker, they’re ready for us. They’ll let us take a look and listen to the initial coroner’s thoughts on cause of death.”

  Normally, I would have thought this was a precious opportunity to acquire information not usually shared with a PI, even an ex-DPD cop. Tonight, though, my stomach was launching Molotov cocktails in anticipation of what I was about to witness. I needed my Tums, but not enough to retreat to my car. Pulling out my phone, I tapped my photos icon and took another quick glance at Natalie’s picture. I had one chance to view the victim, and I had to be absolutely certain it was her—or not.

  Wiry weeds with lacy ends popped against our pants as we traipsed down the slope, our path lined with candy wrappers, crushed cans of cheap beer, and a rusted toaster. Back when I wore the blue uniform, either Paco or I would have cracked a joke about the economical alcoholic beverage, saying something like, “I wish they paid us enough to throw out good American piss beer.” It was a running joke at the precinct that some of the homeless folks who worked the streets made more money than a DPD cop.

  No jokes this evening.

  The chatter between detectives and uniformed officers fell into hushed silence as soon as they saw Paco and me step to the bottom, the ground still hard and dry. Most of them peeled back, stepping aside to hop on their phone or tablet or hold a side conversation. Two guys met us about twenty feet in front of the body.

  Paco made the introductions, and I offered quick handshakes to Detective Bobby Sturm and the coroner, Dan O’Malley.

  “Booker, you don’t remember me I know, but I was at that horrific bomb blast over at the Old Red Courthouse building last fall.” The detective flipped his thumb over his shoulder, then shoved his long sleeves up over his elbows, his creased face studying mine.

  My stomach was already doing flip-flops. Drudging up an old, bitter memory only increased the intensity.

  “Dust from those red bricks was still crumbling to the ground, but you were helping the bride up from the turf. That fucking bomb blew her fiancé to smithereens.” Planting his arms at his belt buckle, he spit some chew off to the side, enhancing the feeling that we were standing in the middle of a landfill. “Wait a second, didn’t they find out that bitch was behind the whole thing, working with that lunatic bomb-maker? Yeah, the craziest shit I ever heard.”

  I guessed Bobby didn’t watch the news or listen to all the gossip around the precinct. I didn’t have the urge to fill in the blanks of his story, which was really the story of my life a few months back.

  Paco’s dark eyes shifted my way, and I could tell he sensed my unease. He scratched the side of his neck, then smacked at it. “Damn mosquitoes. Hope we don’t have another summer of people dying from West Nile. Can we take a look?”

  “Not a problem. I understand you might know the vic?” The detective looked at me while twisting around and taking two steps toward the body.

  “Sister of my...uh, partner. She’s been missing for over a week.”

  He took in a breath then spit out more chew. “I don’t have to warn you what a dead body looks like. Take a look, and I’ll have Dan here share what he knows afterward. By the way, if you want a surgical mask, we can get you one. It helps cover the stench.” He raised his hand toward another detective huddled under a nearby tent.

  Suddenly, the sky rumbled so loud we stopped in our tracks, sustaining its intensity like a thunderous herd of timpani. When it finally died back, a sudden crack of thunder split the thick air, a streak of lightening shooting up from the ground on the other side of the levy.

  “Hey, you two quit screwing around and get the large canopy over this crime scene. Quickly.” Bobby waved at a couple of officers standing around, thumbs stuck in their belts.

  “Mask?” he asked again.

  “I’ll be okay.” Just beyond him, I could see the girl’s bare feet, one twisted inward at an odd angle. I wondered if her ankle had been broken. “Was she stuffed in a body bag?”

  “We’ll get to it, but yes, she was.” Bobby extended his arm and shuffled back a few steps.

  Paco turned to me, and our eyes acknowledged the similarity with Jade’s death. I followed my former partner a few more feet, lifting my boots with each step over the mounds of dirt and trash.

  “Dear God,” Paco said, crossing himself, peering over tall weeds that encircled the girl.

  I forced my eyes to start at her feet and make my way up, my pulse already clocking at twice the normal speed.

  She was Caucasian, thin-boned. I still couldn’t tell if her ankle was broken or if she just had flexible joints. At her knees, I spotted a couple of minor abrasions and heavy bruising. Leaning to my right, I could see dry blood snaking down from her thighs.

  “Booker, I’m not sure I can stand here anymore, man.” Paco’s voice cracked, and he turned away.

  “No problem. Give me another minute.”

  Turning back to the body, I rested my hands on my knees and made a quick assessment. Thus far, this girl could be Natalie, if only because of a similar build and frame. It appeared rigor mortis had already set in, which told me she’d been dead at least five or six hours, if not more.

  Midway up her thighs was the end of a purple micro-miniskirt hugging her body. I leaned forward and found caked blood on the side of her leg, even more moving upward. If she didn’t die from some other hideous method, blood loss could have contributed.

  A hand at the side of her waist, palm up. Inching lower to get a better angle, I searched for fingernails. Nothing. Only bloody, ripped skin. Wondering if she’d endured the torture before or after death, I could feel my body tighten. I forced out a breath.

  Then it hit me like a baseball bat to the face. The rank odor was unworldly, some type of bizarre concoction of rotten meat and fish topped off with a sugary odor. A blur of images raced through my mind, all the dead bodies I’d seen and smelled during my career. To think of a living, breathing human turning into this state reminded me how much we all took life for granted, the young and naïve probably more than others.

  My eyes crawled up her forearm, and I spotted puncture wounds, probably needle marks, just like Jade. I pondered the thought of some pervert preying on homeless drug addicts. I could see a gullible youngster being lured by promises of quenching their insatiable urge for the ultimate high.

  Her other arm rested on her chest on top of a matted, crimson stain. The absence of fingernails matched her other hand. I shook my head in disgust. She wore a dingy white T-shirt, oversized, like it might have been her dad’s. But I knew it wasn’t.

  “Might be something to trace there,” I said quietly to myself.

  Closing my eyes for a brief moment, I pinched the bridge of my nose. I could hear shoes traipsing through the lanky weeds around me, a rumble of thunder that seemed closer than the last one, almost on top of us. As much as I’d tried to calm my nerves, I knew the sight of this girl would define my life for the next few weeks, maybe months or years. Alisa was one of the strongest—and headstrong—women I knew. But it was rather obvious that her little sister was her weak point, at least the part of her life she couldn’t solve. Maybe those two w
ent hand in hand.

  Picturing the vivacious smile that I’d seen in the photo a few minutes earlier, I opened my eyes and peered straight at her face.

  My heart nearly vaulted into my throat. It appeared she died with tears flooding down her cheeks, her face twisted into a wretched ball of pain and suffering.

  But it wasn’t Natalie. No way.

  My chest lifted, and I could hear breath plowing through my lungs, as if I’d just hauled a two-hundred-pound tire across a football field in sweltering temperatures—a distant thought from my brief tenure on the Longhorns football team.

  Wiping my face, I glanced at the nameless girl once again. Her hair was dark, shorter than Natalie’s, plastered against her ashen skin that appeared to be turning a shade of green. Her nose was slightly larger. I wondered if she might have Italian blood in her.

  “What the hell?” Narrowing my vision, I almost did a double take.

  “You’ve spotted the marks on her face, I assume?”

  I could hear Bobby’s country inflection as he leaned in from the other side.

  Paco moved in behind me, stuck his hand on my shoulder. I could sense he wanted to hear my feedback on the girl’s ID.

  “No, it’s not Natalie.” I was solemn. I felt of tinge of guilt for wishing death on someone other than Alisa’s sister.

  “Thank God,” Paco said, crossing himself again.

  “I’m glad it’s not your partner’s sister, but it just made our job that much tougher,” Bobby said, eyeballing me then Paco.

  Dan sidled up next to the detective.

  I pointed toward the girl’s face. “The marks?”

  “Dan agrees with our initial assessment that those marks are consistent with cigarette burns.”

  “Pre- or postmortem?” I asked.

  Bobby thumbed the coroner. “We’re dancing outside of my area of expertise. Dan?”

  Dan adjusted his silver, oval glasses, shifting his eyes to me then back to the detective.

  “You can share what you know,” Bobby said.