BOOKER Box Set #1 (Books 1-3: A Private Investigator Thriller Series of Crime and Suspense)

by John W. Mefford

  “Uh, yes. Alisa just reminded me. I appreciate everything you’ve shared with us today.” I extended a hurried hand, and I could feel Maggie’s strained glare on me.

  He paused, trying to read me. Good luck. “Most welcome. By the way, it probably pales in comparison to everything you’re dealing with, but do you have an update on the stolen artifacts from our little museum?”

  “Alisa is meeting right now with a computer expert who we hope will find an online trail of the artifacts. Apparently, there is something called the Dark Web and a lot of illegal activity occurs in that space, including the buying and selling of stolen items. If we can find your missing items, then we’re hoping that will lead us back to the perpetrator.”

  “Excellent. Thank you.”

  “We’ll be in touch.”

  The moment Maggie and I shut the door behind us, she gripped both of my arms, her chest surging from deep breaths. “Booker, I hate to do this, but I think we need to contact the authorities. The frickin’ president is in the city. We can’t ignore the fact my father might be planning another assassination in Dallas…to fulfill his so-called legacy.”

  With a statue-like rigidity to her anxious posture, Maggie dug her fingers into my arms.

  “I’m glad you went there. I realize this is exactly what you wanted to avoid, but I agree with you. I know who to call. He’s FBI. Send me your father’s picture.”

  I dialed Special Agent Bobby Guidry and gave him a quick debriefing on Javier, his background, and our theory that the president might be a possible target.

  “I believe Air Force One just touched down at Love Field,” Guidry said. “Thanks for the lead time.”

  I glanced at the time on my phone: 9:23 a.m. Putting the phone back to my ear, I heard what sounded like a horse chewing on a cud. I grimaced.

  “Send me Javier’s photo and I’ll take it from there. By the way…” Guidry paused, and I thought I heard a belch. “Excuse me. Just a little egg burrito heartburn. Don’t be surprised if I call you on the other side of the president’s visit. I might need to assign an agent to mirror you.”

  I chuckled, then asked, “Why exactly?”

  “You’re a magnet to all the maggots that are attached to this city. Damn, Booker.” The lilt of his voice gave away a Cajun accent.

  “The day you guys assign an FBI agent to mirror me is when I know there’s nothing to worry about across the rest of the country.”

  “Yeah, right.”

  I disconnected just as Maggie and I hit the outdoor steps to the former Texas School Book Depository building.

  “Do you think we should join the party with the president or head back to The Jewel and work it virtually?”

  Clicking the alarm on my silver sedan, I said, “Neither. My brain has been chewing on one angle for quite a while, and I need confirmation one way or the other.”

  We headed to the rich part of town, in a hurry.

  20

  Tall, athletic, and eyes like Brad Pitt.

  Alisa found herself staring across the old metal desk in the official office of Booker & Associates, her leg kicking at about the same rate as her increased pulse—a strange phenomenon for the part-time waitress/part-time researching sleuth. Normally, any task attempted before eleven a.m. was done so either out of guilt or with a gun to her head, figuratively speaking. But watching Josh Parry run his fingers through his thick mane of golden hair, contemplating how to approach this technical issue, was enough to make her heart flutter.

  “Is their security too tough for you to crack?” She brought a mug of coffee to her lips and missed, spilling more than a few drops. Realizing she still had a bar towel draped over her shoulder, she wiped off her chin and dabbed the dark spots on her jeans—her oldest and least flattering—all while keeping a gaze on Mr. Blue Eyes. Maybe he didn’t notice her klutzy move.

  “You still have a little something.” He had noticed and now touched the side of his mouth. She found herself staring at his lips, full and full of life.

  “Uh, right.” She used a quick hand to swipe her face one more time.

  Josh scooted up in the chair that Booker normally sat in, creating its typical ear-splitting squeal, but it didn’t seem to faze him. His face was sculpted almost as perfectly as a model’s. But as she looked closer, she noticed a streak of struggle or conflict in his lagoon-blue sapphires…eyes that seemed enigmatic, as if they held hidden secrets. Or was it a streak of wisdom that she sensed? He was perplexing, yet the more she took in all of his layers, the more she was drawn to him.

  Then again, he was a convicted felon. Alisa inhaled a breath and released it slowly, trying to soothe her urges and to remember what was at stake.

  Within hours from the time Nancy Fitzwater’s body had been found and the crime scene worked by the Richardson Police Department, Underground.com had already broken the story online, sharing pertinent inside information. And ever since Maggie Calero had arrived, intervening in what appeared to be her own father’s murder attempt on an old mob hitman, Booker & Associates had become highly interested in what else Underground.com might have procured—mainly, video footage from the library crime scene.

  While Alisa had initially sought the services of an expert on the workings of the Dark Web to try to track the whereabouts of the stolen artifacts from the Sixth Floor Museum, the urgency to gain more information about who murdered Nancy Fitzwater had quickly vaulted to the top of the priority list. But she was expecting Josh Parry to look like a middle-aged computer geek, with little hair and less personality. The moment Josh walked into the bar and introduced himself downstairs thirty minutes earlier, she literally wondered if someone was playing a joke on her. Someone as in Justin.

  “It appears the cyber security team at Underground.com has previously had to deal with a breach,” Josh said as Alisa’s eyes moved from his mouth to his eyes, occasionally shifting to his long, capable fingers gliding along his portable keyboard. “No worries. I should be able to use another method to access their internal network.”

  “Glad you’re confident.”

  “With experience comes confidence.” He paused, lifted his eyes at Alisa, and held his gaze for a moment. For just a second, she felt conspicuous, as if she needed to find something to occupy her hands and her thoughts. Her face felt flush, a circle of perspiration forming at her hairline, and she immediately had the compulsion to put her mop of hair in a bun and fan herself.

  Just in time, he returned his focus to the screen, his fingers clicking and typing at the speed of light. She forced her sights to the opposite wall, eyeing the cheesy red Ferrari she’d bought for Booker’s office, which allowed her temperature to drop a few degrees.

  The room went quiet for a few seconds, Josh holding a hand to his chin. He was clean-shaven, outside of extra long sideburns, his skin the texture of a velvet leaf. Suddenly, Alisa’s laptop decided to crank its motor, as if it knew to break the hushed silence.

  She swiped a finger across her keyboard mouse, scrolling down her browser, still scouring online sources to try to locate high-profile people that Maggie’s dad might be targeting. Over six million people lived in the DFW Metroplex. Add to that thousands of visitors, taking in everything from the home where the original Dallas TV show was taped out in Parker to a tour of the Death Star—home of the Cowboys—and more shopping and restaurants than existed almost anywhere in the US. Events of the sporting and artistic varieties, including concerts at umpteen venues, both in the city and the suburbs, made this search to find the one location, the one person that Javier had set his sights on seem unattainable, or at least less likely than a snowstorm in the Texas spring.

  Heavy eyelids reminded her that she’d been at this for hours. She and Justin had worked until almost three in the morning. After a few hours of shuteye, she ran back up to The Jewel and put in another hour before Josh arrived and shifted his focus from the Dark Web to hacking into the Underground.com internal network. Was it entirely legal? Not really, but she’d guessed tha
t the reporters at the online publication had not obtained the footage legally either. And she had sent several emails to the site’s editors asking about a possible partnership with no reply. With lives possibly on the line, they didn’t have time to play professional footsy.

  A yawn came over her, and she felt her thirty-six-year-old face stretch, the skin around her eyes in particular. She brought a hand to her cheek while ensuring Jack’s gaze remained on his screen. She’d run out of the apartment this morning without going through her normal skin rejuvenation routine, and already her face felt like a dried-up prune. Was it all in her mind? Possibly, but her eyes didn’t lie, and she’d noticed subtle lines forming—a girl’s worst nightmare. Her birthday was only a month away, just a few days before Mother’s Day. With no kids, it was another reminder of a life she hadn’t planned. Then again, she thought, she couldn’t undo the past. She was wiser because of everything she’d experienced, including that waste of a marriage in her early twenties. And life was all about taking advantage of the opportunities that fell into your lap.

  She nearly released a giggle, connecting the opportunity sitting on the other side of the desk and her lap…or in this case, her thoughts of sitting on his lap.

  Geez, get a grip, Alisa, he must be ten years younger than you, and he’s a convicted felon. Did you hear yourself? He’s a convicted felon!

  “So, what did you do to get convicted of a felony?” she asked without thinking how it might sound.

  “Ha. You get straight to the point, don’t you?” He raised a single eyebrow, but she only saw a sea of blue.

  “That’s fine. You don’t have to share it with me. I was just breaking up the silence a bit.”

  Josh released a breath, licked his lips, and shifted his baby blues toward Alisa. “I’m not ashamed of why I did it. But I’ve had to learn that I need to accomplish my goals in a different way.”

  “I see…I think.” More silence, which made her think. “You’re pretty good at answering a question and not really divulging much.”

  He chuckled. “Damn, you’re not going to cut me a break.”

  “Just want to make sure who Booker & Associates is going to bed…uh, I mean the character of the people we’re conducting business with.”

  She poked a fingernail into the back of her blondish mane and scratched her scalp, twisting her head away, wondering if Josh had caught on to her awkward verbal misstep.

  “Are we really doing business together? I mean this is pro bono work, not that I mind really,” Josh said, his eyes and fingers still working in tandem like synchronized gears.

  “Hmm,” she said out loud. Maybe this silly infatuation was one-sided.

  “I finally made it. I’m inside.”

  “Uh, what are you saying?” A confused buzz rattled in her head, as if she’d downed three shots of tequila.

  “I found a crack in their security. I’ve made it onto their internal network.”

  “Oh, right. Cool.”

  “I need keywords to search every file on their network.” Josh waved his fingers, as if he was motioning for Alisa to move closer.

  “Keywords, right.” She put a hand to her chin, centering her focus, forcing her smitten, distracted self to a side compartment, then rattled off a series of phrases that had anything to do with library, murder, Nancy Fitzwater, or any other combination she could think of.

  After typing the keywords and punching the Enter key, Josh found a random pen on the desk and clicked it in and out, over and over again. Alisa became enthralled by this mindless exercise, and she tried like hell to not make the gigantic leap into the possible symbolism it represented, at least in her own sensual thoughts.

  “Coming up empty,” he said.

  I doubt that, she thought.

  Shutting her eyes from the distraction that was Josh’s mere presence, she forced herself to think about all the information they had learned about Javier, the crime scene, and all of the research she’d uncovered about the JFK assassination, various conspiracy theories, the connections to the mafia, and the connections to…

  She smacked her hand on the table. “Cuba Libre. Try that.”

  Josh snapped his back straight, then rattled away on the keyboard and poked Enter.

  “Dot a-v-i.”

  “What?”

  “The video file name extension. I think I found the video footage.”

  “You’re shittin’ me.”

  He turned the laptop so they both could watch as he double-clicked the file name. “The clip is only fifty-three seconds, so who knows if this is what you’re looking for. By the way, what are you looking for exactly?”

  Ignoring Josh’s question, Alisa leaned closer and noticed the angle of the camera apparently booming down from the ceiling, directed toward a corner of the library. A young couple walking arm in arm appeared, turning right. Each took turns looking over their shoulder, then they disappeared from the view of the camera.

  “There.” Alisa touched the screen. The top of a light-colored hat moved slightly, just on the other side of a bookshelf. Alisa guessed the hat person was sitting, reading a book possibly.

  The picture popped, as if someone flipped the lights, and Josh looked at Alisa. “That’s a jump cut in the video footage. I think your friends at Underground have done some editing.”

  Nodding, Alisa kept her eyes glued to the screen. The same young couple was running in the opposite direction now, dropping out of sight near the top left section of the screen.

  “Stairs,” Alisa said.

  “Yep.”

  Another blip on the screen. “Look, down here. A woman. Is that Nancy?”

  Alisa’s finger followed a female, with shorter hair. Alisa could see the top of her suit jacket. The woman veered right for a couple of seconds.

  “I think she’s holding something.”

  “A book?” Josh asked.

  Suddenly, Nancy turned left and vanished out of the bottom of the screen.

  “Movement up top,” Josh said, his finger now tracing the path of the hat.

  Alisa could feel her chest thump, and for the first time since Josh arrived, it had nothing to do with his eyes or lips or the scent of his distinct cologne.

  The man wearing a white hat turned left, moving down the screen, the same aisle as Nancy. He kept his head down, his face not visible.

  “That’s him. The killer,” Alisa said.

  “The what?” Josh flipped his head up, his baritone suddenly pitching higher.

  The man disappeared off the screen, and the video ended.

  “Back it up about ten seconds,” Alisa said.

  The video replayed, and the man turned left. “Stop right there. Look at his gait. It’s kind of how old people walk. His shirt appears to be blue, with some white mixed in. His hat is white, but I think it has a black ribbon around the top right there.”

  “You’re all about the details,” Josh said.

  “That’s what makes the difference,” Alisa said, her eyes still in study mode. “Wait. Look at his hands. They’re below his waist, but curled into fists.”

  “As if he’s holding something thin, one end in each fist, but I can’t see what it is,” Josh added.

  “I can’t see it either, but I bet it’s a metal wire. He ripped her neck in two.”

  Josh’s eyes met hers, air rushing through his open jaw as his chest rose with each breath.

  “Can you send me just the last ten seconds? I want to forward this to Booker and Maggie.”

  “Give me two minutes, and you’ll see it in your inbox.”

  Alisa was thankful Josh didn’t insist on a deeper discussion. He just did as she asked. Maybe there was hope for a future Alisa/Josh conversation. And that one would be far more personal.

  21

  “You sure it’s okay to just walk into their backyard?”

  Nasal congestion made Maggie’s voice sound a bit like a Latin Rudolph, with his shiny nose muffled by a glob of mud.

  Minutes earlier, we�
�d pulled to a stop on Strait Lane, just two mansions away from turning into the Yates estate, to watch the library video footage Alisa had forwarded. Upon watching the short clip, Maggie simply closed her eyes. But as the images resonated, I could see her lips move. Maybe she was cursing in Spanish, or even saying a prayer for Nancy Fitzwater, the victim.

  Then her head starting swaying left and right, her eyes still closed, a murmur of unrecognizable words coming from her mouth. Slowly, her face contorted, until two blue veins sprouted, one at her temple and one arching above her eyebrow. I put a hand on her shoulder, hoping to calm her, to let her know she wasn’t alone. But I knew it couldn’t change what she’d just realized.

  “My fucking father is a goddamn, cold-blooded killer!” she screamed out. “He fucking murdered an innocent woman, a librarian. For what fucked-up reason, who knows, who cares? He took a life because he was trying to prove a point, to make his life worthy of something. I don’t care anything about his wacky rationalizations. It’s fucked up!”

  Maggie pounded the Saab’s dash with closed fists, as pools of tears fell from her stressed face. Tears of undeniable pain and disgust, having no father for so many years, and then finally having one for a few short months only to see him leaving a legacy of self-justified murder.

  When she finally ran out of energy, she turned and buried her face into the crook of my arm, and I just held her. Her sobs rocked the car and me. Seeing a human being, an adult, shaken to the core, was always unsettling. I’d only known Maggie for twenty-four hours, but it felt like we’d shared a year’s worth of experiences.

  Slowly, the tears stopped flowing, the shaking subsided, and I could only hear clogged breathing. As she raised up, her entire face and neck were dotted with red splotches, her deep brown eyes almost completely bloodshot.

  “I’m sorry,” she said with little effort, her catatonic gaze staring at nothing. “I think everything just hit me all at once. Javier has done bad things in his life. And I guess I knew he’d probably taken a life. But to see it on video, your own flesh and blood. I can’t explain the disgust I feel, how ashamed I am to share the same last name.”