by Osborne, Jon
From the corner of her eye, Angel caught a flash of black streaking forward. There was no time to turn her head against the heavy butt of a hunting rifle that came crashing down hard into her right temple, switching off her lights.
Angel couldn’t be absolutely certain, but she was pretty sure that she also heard the faint scratch of a wooden match striking to life just before her world went completely black.
CHAPTER 2
Dana Whitestone checked her appearance in the full-length mirror hanging from the back of her bathroom door for the forty-second time that morning.
She tugged down the fabric of her blue blazer around her waist. Was it too short? She brushed imaginary lint from her dress pants. Did they look like they’d just been dry-cleaned? She turned and craned around her neck over her right shoulder to get a good look at her butt. Were the pants somehow tighter than the last time she’d worn them?
She fluffed her short blonde hair. She checked her make-up and again hoped she hadn’t overdone it. She adjusted her gold-hoop earrings. She debated changing out her white blouse for a green one.
In other words: she just went crazy.
Certifiably so.
Dana sighed. And why in the hell shouldn’t she go crazy? Who in their right mind wouldn’t go crazy on a day like this? And putting aside for now the subject of whether or not she still resided in her right mind following her bone-chilling run-in with a serial-killer known as “the Censor” just four days earlier, no one with half a functioning brain inside his or her own skull could possibly debate the fact that she had a very important meeting scheduled for today. More important than any meeting she’d ever attended before and more important than any meeting she’d ever attend again. Because not only would today’s meeting determine Dana’s future, it would leave its indelible mark on her past and present, as well. And any way you sliced the bread, that was a lot of pressure for anyone to deal with – even a fourteen-year veteran of the Federal Bureau of Investigation who’d faced down some of the most stone-cold killers this side of Freddy Krueger.
Dana shook her head and glanced down at her watch – a silver Rolex that had once belonged to her mother, Sara. The watch had been a first-anniversary gift from Dana’s father, James – who’d worn a matching gold one, saying that he and Sara matched so perfectly as husband and wife that the least their jewellery could was the same. In exactly one hour Dana would meet with Shelley Margolis, a case manager for Child Protective Services in Parma, regarding Dana’s suitability to adopt a child.
Heavy stuff, to say the least.
Dana took a deep breath through her nostrils and let out the air again in a slow hiss over her teeth, trying her best to control the incessant pounding of her heart. No use. The goddamn thing still wouldn’t slow down. Hadn’t slowed down one little bit ever since she’d received the call from Margolis setting up their meeting three days earlier. Probably wouldn’t slow down anytime soon, either, judging by the bongo drums still playing behind her ribs. From what Margolis had told Dana over the phone, the two women should expect to be in the meeting for no fewer than three hours. The case manager had said that she and Dana had a lot to talk about. God only knew what that meant, but it sure as hell didn’t sound promising. If nothing else, though, Dana knew that it probably wouldn’t be something as simple as a basic “getting-to-know-you” chat. No way in hell she’d get that lucky. Nothing in her life had been that simple since she’d been four years old, so what the hell were the chances of all that changing now?
Not good, to say the least.
Making her way into the living room of her apartment in Lakewood, Ohio just outside of Cleveland, Dana unzipped the leather attaché case that was sitting on top of the oversized coffee table featuring a custom-cut, heavy glass top before extracting a thick pile of documents from inside to triple-check that they were all there.
Birth certificate: check. Social security card: check. Financial statement: check. Tax returns, health records and letters of recommendation from the FBI.
Check, check and check.
Sliding the documents back into the bag and re-zipping the case, Dana headed into the kitchen and poured a bowl of dry food for Oreo, her beloved black-and-white cat. A lot people out there – the same sort of people who might consider a cup of Starbucks coffee an accessory, she supposed – referred to cats such as Oreo as “rescues”, but Dana had always resisted such a lofty characterization of their relationship. Hell, it wasn’t as if the animal shelter had been on fire or anything when she and Oreo had first chosen one another five years earlier.
Filling Oreo’s water bowl at the sink, she leaned down and placed his liquid refreshment next to his food bowl near the refrigerator. Alerted by his favorite sounds in the world, Oreo sauntered into the kitchen a moment later, his flexible shoulders dipping and rising fluidly in that languid feline strut known around the world. He glanced up briefly at Dana and gave her a quick meow to say hello before digging into his food with his customary zeal.
Dana watched Oreo for a little while, envying his obvious peace of mind. She just couldn’t help herself. It might have been ridiculous to feel jealous of a cat, she knew, but nobody could deny that Oreo was one lucky puss. Everybody in the world loved him just as soon as they laid eyes on him. He’d never needed to prove himself to people from the state who’d most likely be looking for things to criticize. He’d never been subjected to a third-degree that would no doubt make the Spanish Inquisition look like a lighthearted parlor game of Twenty Questions by comparison. And he’d never had his personal life examined and re-examined until he thought he’d lose his mind. All he needed to do was look cute. And he was damn good it, too.
Shaking her head and leaning over to scratch Oreo behind his pointy ears, Dana was very careful to avoid getting any of his fur on the sleeve of her blazer. Wasn’t easy. With the way Oreo shed, she probably could’ve constructed seven more cats from all the hair she collected each and every time she swept the apartment.
Dana straightened back up and pivoted on her heel, leaving her feline friend behind to finish off his breakfast in peace while she went back into the living room and picked up the leather case from the coffee table again. Slinging the strap over her right shoulder, she checked her watch once more. 11:15 a.m. Time for her to get the hell out of here. She had exactly forty-five minutes to get all the way across town to Parma and she didn’t want to be late for this. Not today. Not when the stakes were this high. She might never get another chance like this again.
The chance to become a mother.
Her adrenalin kicked up another fifty levels as she stole one last quick peek at her reflection in the decorative mirror hanging on the wall next to the front door. Finally exiting her apartment, she purposely shifted her gaze away from the front door of the apartment located directly across the hall. D13 had been Eric Carlton’s apartment, but Eric was dead now and he was never coming back again. Nathan Stiedowe had made good and goddamn sure of that when he’d bashed in her best friend’s head with a rusty claw hammer while the sadistic asshole had been recreating the crimes of notorious serial killer John Wayne Gacy during the Cleveland Slasher case a few years prior.
A hard chill rattled the entire length of Dana’s spine as she passed by Eric’s front door. She half-expected to see her murdered friend open up his door and invite her in for a quick drink, just like he’d always done, maybe even get in a clever dig or two about the ultra-conservative outfit that she’d chosen for today’s meeting with Margolis. Mercifully, though, Eric’s door stayed closed. Thank God for small favors. Dana missed Eric with every last inch of her heart, mind, body and soul, but she really didn’t think she felt up to having a lighthearted discussion with his ghost out in the deserted hallway today.
Reaching the end of the hall and punching the button for the elevator, Dana’s mind buzzed with a million different questions as she stepped inside and pressed the button for the ground floor, taking another deep breath in an effort to steady her badly jangle
d nerves. Didn’t work, though. Not even a little bit.
Am I really ready for this? she wondered as the elevator’s guts groaned to life and the car slipped down the thick metal pulleys hidden inside the shaft. Really ready to become a mother? What the hell do I know about taking care of someone else? Hell, I can barely take care of myself these fair. So is it really fair of me to introduce the little boy to my thoroughly insane – not to mention incredibly bloodstained – world after everything he’d already been through in his short life?
Only one way to find out.
Dana exited the elevator when the car finally came to a stop with a high-pitched ding! a moment later, crossing the marble-tiled lobby and pushing quickly through the front doors. Crossing the parking lot and reaching her silver Mazda Protégé a moment later, she felt inside her purse for her car keys but her hand came out empty.
She closed her eyes in defeat and slumped her shoulders hard, all the way down to her ribcage.
“Goddamn it,” she cursed sharply under her breath.
Dana shook her head in disbelief as she turned around and headed back to the apartment complex. After all of that time spent double- and triple-checking every last little detail – after all of that time spent making sure she got everything exactly right – she’d forgotten her friggin’ keys upstairs. But if she’d known then that this would turn out to be the highlight of her day, she never would’ve left Lakewood in the first place.
Then again, if her aunt had been born with balls, the poor woman would’ve been her uncle, now wouldn’t she have been?
CHAPTER 3
Two weeks before she was to find herself in her oh-so-charming little predicament down in Creek Run, Mississippi with the sadistic white-power radicals hell-bent upon burning her fine black behind to a crisp, Angel Monroe was minding her own business on a sunny Monday afternoon in downtown Cleveland, Ohio. The only problem with this arrangement was that Angel got paid to mind other people’s business, not her own.
Her office wasn’t grand by any means. Far from it, actually. A small entranceway led into a slightly larger main space, room enough for two desks and a conference table piled high with papers and shoved over into one corner. But you really couldn’t beat the view.
Her rented space in The Caxton Building was situated directly behind Progressive Field – home of the Cleveland Indians baseball team – and since today was a game day, the streets were awash in a sea of humanity.
With nothing else better to do that day, Angel was simply looking out her window and watching the foot traffic move past The Winking Lizard bar four stories below on Prospect Avenue, pretty much just enjoying the low hum of excitement she felt hanging in the air.
Angel smiled to herself. And why not? It had always made her happy to see the city come alive like this. It wasn’t often that Clevelanders got this jazzed up about anything, but with the city’s beloved Tribe taking on the hated New York Yankees in a day-night doubleheader that day, the sidewalks were spilling over with thousands of smiling fans streaming toward the beautiful downtown stadium in order to take in the highly anticipated athletic spectacle for themselves. Maybe drink a few beers while they were at it. Eat a couple of mustard-slathered hot dogs while they watched the Tribe get its collective ass kicked by the despised Yankees again. Because for all the blood sport the games would likely offer, Angel knew that it might as well have been the Cleveland Christians taking on the New York Lions. In an away game. At the Coliseum in Rome. With Julius Caesar himself and his silly little George Clooney haircut serving as umpire.
When Angel had checked the standings earlier that morning – which she tried to do every morning since she lived with the biggest baseball nut this side of the Mississippi River – she’d seen that the Bronx Bombers were a comfortable three games ahead of the Boston Red Sox atop the American League East, just like they always seemed to be. As of July 10th, however, the Indians had already slipped a full seventeen games out in the Central Division, trailing Chicago, Detroit and Minnesota by a bundle.
But at least they were still ahead of Kansas City, right? And if nothing else, Angel knew that you needed to take your victories wherever you could find them – however large or small those particular victories might be.
Especially when you lived in a city like Cleveland.
The Mistake by the Lake. The Armpit of America. The Crown Jewel of the Rust Belt. Angel’s hometown’s had plenty of nicknames, but none of them were particularly flattering. Try as Cleveland might (and the good Lord above knew they tried their damndest) the star-crossed city never could quite seem to get its act together. Sometimes Angel felt like Cleveland had been destined to play the part of the Charlie Brown of the United States forever, with the rest of the country playing the role of Lucy and yanking away the football each and every time Cleveland pulled back its leg and gave it the ol’ college try just one more time.
Angel sighed heavily and leaned her forehead against the reinforced glass of her office window while she surveyed the scene below. Two things about the crowd immediately jumped out at her. The first thing she noticed was that she saw both black and white faces bobbing around down there, but it was mostly the white faces going to the game while it was mostly the black faces scalping the tickets. Angel noticed this each and every time she looked out her window on game day, and it never failed to irritate the living crap out of her.
The second thing she noticed about the crowd was the annoying number of turncoats down there sporting pinstriped jerseys to go along with the intertwined NY logos on their navy-blue baseball caps. Most of these Benedict Arnolds had probably been born and raised right there in Cleveland, but you wouldn’t have known it just by looking at them. Then again, where was the big surprise in that? There’d always been an odd lack of pride that had defined the residents of The Renaissance City, hadn’t there, pervading everything they did – or even tried to do, for that matter?
Damn right, there had been.
For example, the city had been awarded the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame more than twenty-five years earlier, right? So why in the hell did the powers that be always hold the induction ceremonies in New York City? What sort of sense did that make? What good did it do them?
Were strung-out rockers like Vince Neil and Tommy Lee from Motley Crue and Gene Simmons and Ace Frehly from KISS too good to drag their sorry asses into Cleveland? Were Keith Richards and Mick Jagger from The Rolling Stones too busy to be bothered with the plane trip into Hopkins? Did Iggy Pop and Ozzy Osbourne have something better to do that day?
And don’t even get Angel started on Courtney Love and Axl Rose. Hot messes, both of them. Hot messes that obviously hadn’t received a single day of proper home training in their entire lives based on the reprehensible behavior they displayed every time they stepped a bare foot out into public.
In other words: it was all complete and total bullshit
Angel shook her head and sighed again. Much like an ugly middle sister with neither the poise of the eldest nor the precociousness of the youngest, though, Clevelanders had always suffered from a debilitating inferiority complex. You really couldn’t blame them for this, however. When the rest of the country had kicked you around for as long as it had kicked around Cleveland – making the residents of the city the butt of some hilarious national joke the local populace never quite understood – it was bound to eventually take its toll. And once you’d had a river catch fire – as Cleveland had with the horribly polluted Cuyahoga way back in 1969 – you might as well just forget about it. It was almost impossible to recover from that kind of psychological damage.
But at least they were still ahead of Kansas City, right? And Angel knew that you needed to take your victories wherever you could find them – however large or small those particular victories might be.
Especially when you lived in a city like Cleveland.
She was still chewing on these thoughts when a soft knock at her door bumped her out of her depressing socioeconomic reverie and back into
the present.
She turned her head just in time to see an old woman hobble into her office, helped along by a collapsible metal cane.
Angel looked the woman over from head to toe as the elderly gal struggled farther into the space of her modest office suite. The snow-white hair on the top of the old woman’s head and the leathery skin stretched drum-tight across her prominent facial bones let Angel know the woman was around Granny Bernice’s age. Very unlike Granny Bernice, however, this woman looked small, almost slight. As a matter of fact, Angel had very little trouble imagining a stiff breeze blowing in off Lake Erie and lifting the woman into the air like a flimsy paper hot dog wrapper swirling around at Progressive Field. Sort of like an inner-city version of Mary Poppins – only cooler, somehow.
“Are you Angel Monroe?” the old woman asked uncertainly. “The private investigator?”
The old gal’s voice featured the distinctive sandpaper scratch of someone who’d been smoking far too many unfiltered cigarettes for far too many years, so Angel didn’t immediately sense a likely partner for her daily three-mile jog along the Lake Erie shoreline. Lifting herself off her perch on the window ledge and smoothing back her jet-black hair, she leaned down to adjust her knee-length skirt, using her palms to chase away the wrinkles. The time-strapped woman’s equivalent of an iron. “Yes, ma’am,” Angel said. “I’m Angel Monroe. How may I help you?”
The old woman bit down hard into her lower lip for several long seconds before the façade of calm suddenly came crashing down with all the subtlety of the wooden blocks in a drunken, frat-house game of Jenga. Milky-looking tears sprang up into the corners of her yellowing brown eyes. “I need your help,” she croaked. “Please help me.”
Angel hustled around her desk and pulled out a chair for the old woman, taking her lightly by the elbow and steering her gently into the seat. It was a sad sight, to be sure, but one she was all too familiar with. After all, nobody ever came to see her unless they were upset about something.