by J. R. Rain
A lot of weight. Muscular weight.
Down girl.
I continued scanning the headlines until I found the one I wanted. It was on a web page for a local LA TV station. I clicked on a video link. Thank God for high speed internet. A small media window appeared on my screen, and shortly thereafter I watched a clip that had first appeared on local TV news. The clip had gone national, due to its sensationally horrific visuals.
A reporter appeared first in the screen, a young Hispanic woman looking quite grave. Over her shoulder was a picture of the Fullerton Municipal Courthouse. The next shot was a grainy image from the courthouse security camera itself. In the frame were two men and two women, all dressed impeccably, all looking important. They were crossing in front of the courthouse itself. In football terms, they formed a sort of moving huddle, although I rarely think of things in football terms and understand little of the stupid sport.
I immediately recognized the tall one with the wavy black hair as Kingsley Fulcrum, looking rugged and dashing.
Down girl.
As the group approaches the courthouse steps, a smallish man steps out from behind the trunk of a white birch. Three of the four great defenders pay the man little mind. The one who does, a blond-haired woman with glasses and big hips, looks up and frowns. She probably frowns because the little man is reaching rather menacingly inside his coat pocket. His thick mane of black hair is disheveled, and somehow even his thick mustache looks disheveled, too. The woman, still frowning, turns back to the group.
And what happens next still sends shivers down my spine.
From inside his tweed jacket, the little man removes a short pistol. We now know it’s a .22. At the time, no one sees him remove the pistol. The short man, perhaps ten feet away from the group of four, takes careful aim, and fires.
Kingsley’s head snaps back. The bullet enters over his left eye.
I lean forward, staring at my computer screen, rapt, suddenly wishing I had a bowl of popcorn, or at least a bag of peanut M&Ms. That is, until I remembered that I can no longer eat either.
Anyway, Kingsley’s cohorts immediately scatter like chickens before a hawk. The shorter man even ducks and rolls dramatically as if he’s recently seen duty in the Middle East and his military instincts are kicking in.
Kingsley is shot again. This time in the neck, where a small red dot appears above his collar. Blood quickly flows down his shirt. Instead of collapsing, instead of dying after being shot point blank in the head and neck, Kingsley actually turns and looks at the man.
As if the man had simply called his name.
As if the man had not shot him twice.
What transpires next would be comical if it wasn’t so heinous. Kingsley proceeds to duck behind a nearby tree. The shooter, intent on killing Kingsley, bypasses going around a park bench and instead jumps over it. Smoothly. Landing squarely on his feet while squeezing off a few more rounds that appear to hit Kingsley in the neck and face. Meanwhile, the big attorney ducks and weaves behind the tree. This goes on for seemingly an eternity, but in reality just a few seconds. A sick game of tag, except Kingsley’s getting tagged with real bullets.
And still the attorney does not go down.
Doesn’t even collapse.
The shooter seemingly realizes he’s wasting his time and dashes away from the tree, disappearing from the screen. No one has come to Kingsley’s rescue. The other attorneys are long gone. Kingsley is left to fend for himself, his only protection the tree, which has been torn and shredded by the impacting stray bullets.
Witnesses would later report that the shooter left in a Ford pickup. No one tried to stop him, and I really didn’t blame them.
I paused the picture on Kingsley. Blood is frozen on his cheeks and forehead, even on his open, outstretched palms. His face is a picture of confusion and horror and shock. In just twenty-three seconds, his life had been utterly turned upside down. Of course, in those very same twenty-three seconds most people would have died.
But not Kingsley. I wondered why.
5.
I was at the Fullerton police station, sitting across from a homicide detective named Sherbet. It was the late evening, and most of the staff had left for the day.
“You’re keeping me from my kid,” he said. Sherbet was wearing a long sleeved shirt folded up at the elbows, revealing heavily muscled forearms covered in dark hair. The dark hair was mixed with a smattering of gray. I thought it looked sexy as hell. His tie was loosened, and he looked irritable, to say the least.
“I apologize,” I said. “This was the only time I could make it today.”
“I’m glad I can work around your busy schedule, Mrs. Moon. I wouldn’t want to inconvenience you in any way.”
His office was simple and uncluttered. No pictures on the wall. Just a desk, a computer, a filing cabinet and some visitor’s chairs. His desk had a few picture frames, but they were turned toward him. From my angle, I could only see the price tags.
I gave him my most winning smile. “I certainly appreciate your time, detective.” I had on plenty of blush, so that my cheeks appeared human.
The smile worked. He blushed himself. “Yeah, well, let’s make this quick. My kid’s playing a basketball game tonight, and I wouldn’t want to miss him running up and down the court with no clue what the hell is going on around him.”
“Sounds like a natural.”
“A natural dolt. Wife says I should just leave him alone. The trouble is, if I leave him alone, he tends to want to play Barbies with the neighborhood girls.”
“That worries you?” I asked.
“Yeah.”
“You think he could turn out gay?”
He shrugged uncomfortably, and said nothing. It was a touchy subject for him, obviously.
“How old is your son?” I asked.
“Eight.”
“Perhaps he’s a little Casanova. Perhaps he sees the benefits of playing with girls, rather than boys.”
“Perhaps,” said Sherbet. “For now, he plays basketball.”
“Even though he’s clueless.”
“Where there’s a will there’s a way.”
“Even if it’s your will and your way?” I asked.
“For now, it’s the only way.” He paused, then looked a little confused. He shook his head like a man realizing he had been mumbling out loud. “How the hell did we get on the subject of my kid’s sexuality?”
“I forget,” I said, shrugging.
He reached over and straightened the folder in front of him. The folder hadn’t been crooked, now it was less uncrooked. “Yeah, well, let’s get down to business. Here’s the file. I made a copy of it for you. It’s against procedures to give you a copy, but you check out okay. Hell, you worked for the federal government. And why the hell you’ve gone private is your own damn business.”
I reached for the file, but he placed a big hand on it. “This is just between you and me. I don’t normally give police files to private dicks.”
“Luckily I’m not your average private dick.”
“A dick with no dick,” he said.
“Clever, detective,” I said.
“Not really.”
“No, not really,” I admitted. “I just really want the file.”
He nodded and lifted his palm, and I promptly stuffed the file into my handbag. “Is there anything you can tell me that’s perhaps not in the file?”
He shook his head, but it was just a knee-jerk reaction. In the process of shaking his head, he was actually deep in thought. “It should all be in there.” He rubbed the dark stubble at his chin. The dark stubble was also mixed with some gray. “You know I always suspected the guy doing the shooting was a client of his. I dunno, call it a hunch. But this attorney’s been around a while, and he’s pissed off a lot of people. Trouble is: who’s got the time to go through all of his past files?”
“Not a busy homicide detective,” I said, playing along.
“Damn straight,” he said
.
“Any chance it was just a random shooting?” I asked.
“Sure. Of course. Those happen all the time.”
“But you don’t think so.”
“No,” he said.
“Why?” I asked.
The detective was used to this kind of exchange. He worked in a business where if you didn’t ask questions, you didn’t find answers. If my questions bothered him, he didn’t show it, other than he seemed to be impatient to get this show on the road.
“Seemed premeditative. And no robbery attempt. Also seemed to be making a statement, as well.”
“By shooting him in the face?”
“And by shooting him outside the courthouse. His place of work. Makes you think it was business related.”
I nodded. Good point. I decided not to tell the detective he had a good point. Men tend to think all of their points were good, and they sure as hell didn’t need me to boost their already inflated egos.
I’m cynical that way.
He stood from his desk and retrieved a sport jacket from a coat rack. He was a fit man with a cop’s build. He also had a cop’s mustache. He would have looked better without the mustache, but it wasn’t was my place to suggest so. Besides, who better to wear a cop mustache than a cop?
“Now it’s time to go watch my son screw up the game of basketball,” he said.
“Maybe basketball’s not his game.”
“And playing with girls is?”
“It’s not a bad alternative,” I said, then added. “You think there’s a chance you’re reading a little too much into all of this with your son?”
“I’m a cop. I read too much into everything.” He paused and locked his office door, which I found oddly amusing and ironic since his office was located in the heart of a police station. “Take you, for instance.”
I didn’t want to take me for instance. I changed the subject. “I’m sure you’re a very good officer. How long have you been on the force?”
He ignored my question. “I wondered why you insisted on meeting me in the evening.” As he spoke, he placed his hand lightly at the small of my back and steered me through the row of cluttered desks. His hand was unwavering and firm. “When I asked you on the phone the reason behind the late meeting you had mentioned something about being busy with other clients. But when I called your office later that day to tell you that I was going to be delayed, you picked up the phone immediately.” He paused and opened a clear glass door. On the door was etched FPD. “Perhaps you were meeting your clients in the office. Or perhaps you were in-between clients. But when I asked if you had a few minutes you sounded unharried and pleasant. Sure, you said, how can I help you?”
“Well, I pride myself on customer service,” I said.
He was behind me, and I didn’t see him smile. But I sensed that he had done so. In fact, I knew he had smiled. Call it a side effect.
He said, “Now that I see you, I see you have a skin disorder of some type.”
“Why, lieutenant, you certainly know how to make a girl feel warm and fuzzy.”
“And that’s the other thing. When I shook your hand, it felt anything but warm and fuzzy,” he said.
“So what are you getting at?” I asked. We had reached the front offices. We were standing behind the main reception desk. The room was quiet for the time being. Outside the smoky gray doors, I could see Commonwealth Avenue, and across that, Amerige City Park, which sported a nice little league field.
He shrugged and smirked at me. “If I had two guesses, I would say that you were either a vampire, or, like I said, you had a skin condition.”
“What does your heart tell you?” I asked.
He studied me closely. Outside, commuters were working their way through downtown Fullerton. Red taillights burned through the smoky glass. Something passed across his gaze. An understanding of some sort. Or perhaps wonder. Something. But then he grinned and his cop mustache rose like a referee signaling a touchdown.
“A skin disease, of course,” he said. “You need to stay out of the sun.”
“Bingo,” I said. “You’re a hell of a detective.”
And with that I left. Outside, I saw that my hands were shaking. The son-of-a-bitch had me rattled. He was one hell of an intuitive cop.
I hate that.
Also available on Amazon Kindle:
DARK HORSE
Jim Knighthorse #1
by
J.R. Rain
(read on for a sample)
1.
Charles Brown, the defense attorney, was a small man with a round head. He was wearing a brown and orange zigzagged power tie. I secretly wondered if he went by Charlie as a kid and had a dog named Snoopy and a crush on the little red-headed girl.
We were sitting in my office on a warm spring day. Charlie was here to give me a job if I wanted it, and I wanted it. I hadn’t worked in two weeks and was beginning to like it, which made me nervous.
“I think the kid’s innocent,” he was saying.
“Of course you do, Charlie. You’re a defense attorney. You would find cause to think Jack the Ripper was simply a misunderstood artist before his time.”
He looked at me with what was supposed to be a stern face.
“The name’s Charles,” he said.
“If you say so.”
“I do.”
“Glad that’s cleared up.”
“I heard you could be difficult,” he said. “Is this you being difficult? If so, then I’m disappointed.”
I smiled. “Maybe you have me confused with my father.”
Charlie sat back in my client chair and smiled. His domed head was perfectly buffed and polished, cleanly reflecting the halogen lighting above. His skin appeared wet and viscous, as if his sweat glands were ready to spring into action at a moment’s notice.
“Your father has quite a reputation in L.A. I gave his office a call before coming here. Of course, he’s quite busy and could not take on an extra case.”
“So you settled on the next best thing.”
“If you want to call it that,” he said. “I’ve heard that you’ve performed adequately with similar cases, and so I’ve decided to give you a shot, although my expectations are not very high, and I have another P.I. waiting in the wings.”
“How reassuring,” I said.
“Yeah, well, he’s established. You’re not.”
“But can he pick up a blind side blitz?”
Charlie smiled and splayed his stubby fingers flat on my desk and looked around my office, which was adorned with newspaper clippings and photographs of yours truly. Most of the photographs depict me in a Bruin uniform, sporting the number 45. In most I’m carrying the football, and in others I’m blowing open the hole for the tailback. Or at least I like to think I’m blowing open the hole. The newspapers are yellowing now, taped or tacked to the wood paneling. Maybe someday I’ll take them down. But not yet.
“You beat SC a few years back. I can never forgive you for that. Two touchdowns in the fourth quarter alone.”
“Three,” I said. “But who’s counting?”
He rubbed his chin. “Destroyed your leg, if I recall, in the last game of the season. Broken in seven different places.”
“Nine, but who’s counting?”
“Must have been hard to deal with. You were on your way to the pros. Would have made a hell of a fullback.”
That had been hard to deal with, and I didn’t feel like talking about it now to Charlie Brown. “Why do you believe in your client’s innocence?” I asked.
He looked at me. “I see. You don’t want to talk about it. Sorry I brought it up.” He crossed his legs. He didn’t seem sorry at all. He looked smugly down at his shoes, which had polish on the polish. “Because I believe Derrick’s story. I believe he loved his girlfriend and would never kill her.”
“People have been killed for love before. Nothing new.”
On my computer screen before me I had brought up an article from the Ora
nge County Register. The article showed a black teen being led away into a police car. He was looking down, his head partially covered by his jacket. He was being led away from a local high school. A very upscale high school, if I recalled. The story was dated three weeks ago, and I recalled reading it back then.
I tapped the computer monitor. “The police say there’s some indication that his girlfriend was seeing someone else, and that jealousy might have been a factor.”
“Yes,” said the attorney. “And we think this someone else framed our client.”
“I take it you want me to find this man.”
“Or person.”
“Ah, equality,” I said.
“We want you to find evidence of our client’s innocence, whether or not you find the true murderer.”
“Anything else I should know?”
“We feel race might be a factor here. He was the only black student in school, and in the neighborhood.”
“I believe the preferred term is African-American.”
“I’m aware of public sentiment in this regards. I don’t need you to lecture me.”
“Just trying to live up to my difficult name.”
“Yeah, well, cool it,” he said. “Now, no one’s talking at the school. My client says he was working out late in the school gym, yet no one saw him, not even the janitors.”
“Then maybe he wasn’t there.”
“He was there,” said Charlie simply, as if his word was enough. “So do you want the job?”
“Sure.”
We discussed a retainer fee and then he wrote me a check. When he left, waddling out of the office, I could almost hear Schroeder playing on his little piano in the background.
2.
“He was found with the murder weapon,” said Detective Hanson. “It was in the backseat of his car. That’s damning evidence.”
“That,” I said, “and he’s black.”
“And he’s black,” said Hanson.
“In an all white school,” I said.