Sweet Dreams Boxed Set

by Brenda Novak

  Bullshit!

  He thought of his parents again. They had money, beau coups of it, hidden away in various accounts all over the world, squirreled away for a rainy day. Like it wasn’t pouring buckets of crap down on their only son right now. The apartment and its contents had been their parting gift to him before they took off to a comfortable life in sunny Florida.

  But that was long ago. They’d done their duty by him, and now they’d cut him off like a diseased and amputated body part, not their own flesh and blood. No, they wouldn’t understand this mess he’d gotten into.

  Glancing around the room, taking in the fancy furnishings, the antiques and collectibles, he wondered if he could get another loan on the place. Hock the expensive items – rich people’s junk, in his mind, but his parents had loved them. Some of them might even be priceless, passed down from generation to generation from the Mayflower to him, the degenerate descendant.

  Damned bastards, not accepting the first shipment he’d delivered! That’d boiled his blood. After he’d gone through so much trouble, taken so much risk. It hadn’t been easy – he shivered at the reminder of what he’d done – but he’d fulfilled his commitment.

  Surely they’d understand that? But they were getting restless and wouldn’t wait much longer. And now this nonsense about inferior merchandise? What the hell?

  Dread was a heavy anvil weighting his chest. He couldn’t breathe, couldn’t think.

  What they asked of him – demanded of him – was a hazardous proposition, and if he didn’t pull it off, he’d either be in prison for the rest of his life, or dead. Did California still have the death penalty? That was his fate – murdered by the people he owed money to, or executed by the state.

  The thug who’d broken into his home a few days ago – his fucking home! – had been very specific about what they’d do to him if he didn’t come through this time. He’d left a vivid and still painful memento.

  “You can use some of the items, can’t you?” he’d shouted in desperation. “It can’t all be worthless.”

  “Look, you little piss-ant addict,” the man said, sitting in a favorite armchair by the window, slapping one gloved hand with the eighteen-inch metal pipe he held in the other. Was he going to break another finger? Or his thumbs? Surely not. He couldn’t work without his thumbs.

  “You gotta know that the Boss wants all or nothing,” the thug continued. “Now, see, Bernardo is a patient man. He’ll take a little down, but you gotta pay for wasting his time, causing all this trouble. Honest, dude, you’ve been a real pain in the ass.”

  The intruder smiled in anticipation and the man thought of his ass and what the metal pipe could do to delicate flesh. The thug rose and took a menacing step forward.

  “You know, there are dozens of parts of the human body that you can cut off or damage,” he reflected aloud, shaking his head in wonder, “and the damn suckers still work perfectly.”

  He grinned with a kind of salacious glee. “Well, maybe not perfectly, but ... There’s lots a’ stuff I can do to you and leave you able to do the job.” He stared meditatively toward the ceiling as if he were a damn priest giving advice to a mendicant.

  Which he was, he supposed – a beggar pleading for his life. Don’t hurt me, he entreated silently.

  “A leg, an arm, an ear. Whadda ya wanna give for the down payment?” Acting as though he’d just gotten a bright idea, the man answered his own question. “I know, a fingernail. That’s the easiest thing to hide from your ... uh, coworkers.”

  “Please, don’t,” he gasped, despite his determination to remain stoic.

  “Put a little bandage on it. No one will know the difference,” the thug continued as though he hadn’t heard. “Hella easier to heal than a broken leg, ya gotta admit.”

  All the while the man had continued to slap the metal bar against his palm, the sound a sickening reminder of pain, concussion, broken bones, and damaged muscles – all the so-fragile parts of the human body.

  Now his attacker laid the metal bar aside and pulled something from his back pocket.

  “This’ll work just fine, I’m thinking. You won’t deliver inferior merchandise again. Right? Yeah, the fingernails are a good lesson.”

  He saw now that his torturer held a pair of pliers in his hand.

  “What do you prefer – thumb or fingernail?” he asked, advancing with purpose and pleasure.

  Several hours later the pain was a dull, numbing throb in spite of the Dilaudid he’d taken.

  The two ragged ovals where his thumbnails had been still oozed blood through the bandages.

  Chapter 38

  “I dunno what the kite means,” Cole Hansen mumbled as he rubbed at his chaffed wrists. “It’s just a bunch of scrambled writing to me.”

  Cruz had removed Cole’s handcuffs after Frankie made the runaway ex-con swear on his sister’s life that he wouldn’t flee again. Santiago tried very hard not to grimace at her naiveté. Even if he found it kind of cute, she wouldn’t appreciate it.

  “Why’d you pick it up then?” Cruz challenged, sitting in one of the oak kitchen chairs that surrounded Frankie’s kitchen table.

  “A gut feeling.”

  “But why did you pass it to me, Cole?” Frankie asked quietly. “Surely you knew it would put me in danger. Did you want that?”

  “No! No!” Cole exclaimed. “I wouldn’t do anything to hurt you, Doc.”

  Frankie leaned back in a matching chair. The three of them had cups of strong coffee and slices of pound cake. Cruz would’ve preferred a cold beer, but didn’t want to slow down the interrogation.

  The doctor looked much calmer than she should be. After their lunch she’d gone here – her childhood home, she said – waiting for her friend Walt to call her as he’d promised. That the correctional officer hadn’t contacted her yet wasn’t a good sign, in Cruz’s mind.

  “You know, Cole,” Frankie continued. “You probably have information that you don’t even realize you have. Something you overheard after the beat-down in the yard? Gossip or chatter among the inmates?”

  “Think hard,” Cruz added. “Your life might depend on it.” He glanced at Frankie. “The doctor’s life, too.”

  Cole picked at a piece of cake with his long, dirty fingernails. Even though he’d been living on the street for less than a week, a faint odor of unwashed body and unbrushed teeth wafted across the table.

  He took a long swallow of coffee before answering. “Yeah, I guess the LOD’s business ain’t so secret since I dropped out. Might as well tell you what I know.”

  “Tell us what illegal activities the Lords are engaged in outside the prison system,” Cruz prompted. “Tell us why Dr. Jones was threatened.”

  Cole looked sadly at Frankie, and then gazed thoughtfully toward the ceiling. “There’s drugs, of course, street drugs. They do a good business in northern Cal, took the biggest share from the non-white gangs. The Professor runs it all from Pelican Bay.”

  “What else?” Cruz asked.

  “Well, there’s prostitution, money-lending, guns and ‘jackings – cars and stuff easy to move.”

  “You hear about anything unusual – activities other gangs aren’t into?” Cruz asked.

  “Something you didn’t tell the authorities when you debriefed?” Frankie encouraged.

  Cole squirmed in his chair. “Hmm, I dunno. I mighta – uh, overheard – some talk, uh – about stuff that’s not – uh, usual.”

  Frankie and Cruz exchanged a glance, intrigued by Cole’s sudden bout of stuttering. “What?” both said in unison.

  Cole downed the rest of his coffee, shoved his plate and cup aside, and folded his hands on the table top. “I dunno if it means anything, but I heard some chatter ‘fore I went into the SHU, right before that dust up in the yard.”

  “What kind of chatter?” Cruz asked.

  “Jest bullshitting, you know how the guys do.” Cole looked at Frankie.

  “What was the BS about, Cole? How was it different from
the usual talk?” Frankie asked.

  Cole scratched his head, pulled on his ear lobe, and frowned, as if thinking was a complex trigonometry problem he couldn’t quite get his mind around. “Jest, like dealing in illegals, you know?”

  “Drugs?” asked Cruz.

  “Nah, not the usual stuff. Things I never heard of before. Like – okay, this is stupid – but it was about, like, music – a piano or keyboard, somethin’ like that – music.” He looked hopefully at them with sad, worried eyes. “They talkin’ about pirated DVD’s or CD’s, you think?”

  “Music?” Frankie echoed, frustration warming her cheeks. She breathed deeply and tried to calm herself. “Cole, think about this. Do you mean musical instruments?”

  She glanced at Cruz, who closed his eyes and rubbed his temples in frustration. She noticed, irrelevantly, and with some disappointment, that he’d shaved off his five-o’clock shadow.

  “Get serious, Cole,” Cruz said patiently. “They wouldn’t deal in pirated material. There’s not enough profit. Could ‘music’ be a code for weapons? Are they gun trafficking?”

  “Sure, they are.” Cole looked surprised that he’d even ask. “Everyone deals in guns. I told you.”

  “Do you think it’s something more than guns?” Cruz asked, even as Cole bobbed his head, a vague expression on his face.

  Music? What did it mean? And how was it connected to Frankie?

  Patch Wilson finished up the autopsy on Dickey Hinchey around 10 p.m. Howard Casey had gotten off work at five, and the morgue was eerily silent. The body was stitched up and a white sheet drawn up to his neck.

  This autopsy had occurred when Patch was in the Bahamas, and was performed by a local physician called in as a substitute coroner. Dr. Mason Foster was a general practitioner, older than dirt. Patch knew he often rubber-stamped the conclusions of the police department.

  Patch shook his head and vowed never to vacation again.

  The Rosedale Police Department had ruled death by multiple knife wounds. While this was a fact, in spite of the blows to the head and body, the puzzle of how and why Dickey Hinchey had died was a much more complicated conundrum than that. One that Patch enjoyed trying to solve through forensics.

  The first murder, which was actually the second autopsy he completed, appeared to be similar to the first autopsied body – that of the seventeen-year-old young woman. But there was a very important difference.

  Patch rolled the body into the autopsy drawer and reached for his cell phone. He hesitated, considered the late hour, unsure if any of his findings were significant.

  He punched the numbers to Slater’s phone anyway.

  Chapter 39

  In the garage Frankie made a bed on a camping cot covered with a sleeping bag and blankets. Cole washed up in the bathroom off the laundry room and seemed glad to rest and be by himself.

  “I don’t like leaving you alone with him,” Cruz said as he shut the garage door behind him and followed Frankie into the kitchen. “He’s an ex-con and unpredictable.”

  “He’s harmless.” She smiled. “I’ve established a relationship with Cole and he trusts me. I’ll be okay.”

  Cruz took the coffee cup she handed him as they entered the kitchen, stared intently at her. “You’re too soft. That’s going to put you in serious danger one day.” He reached up to wrap a loose curl around her ear. Inappropriate, he knew, and stepped back awkwardly.

  She pretended not to notice. “Maybe, but it’s better than being cynical and untrusting.”

  Was that a poke at him?

  Not ready to go yet, he said, “Before I leave, let’s take another look at the note.”

  Frankie pulled a sheet of paper from a bookcase and laid it on the kitchen table. The original note lay between them like an inexplicable omen of foreboding. Carefully, she copied the letters and numbers one by one, this time writing them vertically instead of the way they were initially written – horizontally.

  1BTO+O-HKDD11-15RP10P

  Cruz laughed. “It’s worse that way.”

  “Maybe not,” Frankie began. “It’s clear the first symbol is a one – ”

  “Or the lower case letter ‘l.’”

  She smacked him playfully on the arm. “Then the ‘O’ could be a zero or the capital letter ‘O.’ If it’s an ‘O’ what could it stand for?”

  “No weapon I know starts with the letter O,” Cruz said.

  Frankie felt giggly and silly, punchy from the two long days of worry. “Didn’t Cole mention something about music? Musical instruments – two oboes, two ocarinas, two octavins – ?”

  “Now you’re just making things up.” Cruz smiled and steadied himself in the laughter in her eyes. It felt good. He found himself lingering over the coffee long after any discussion had yielded any new ideas about the code.

  As he left through the front door, he hesitated, turned back, his hand on the knob. Her safety loomed over both of them, a dark cloud of threat. He reached up to graze her cheek with his fingertips. “Don’t take any chances.”

  She nodded and shut the door behind him. He heard the safety locks and chain click in place.

  Frankie leaned against the door after Chago Cruz had left. She smiled faintly, then sobered. This was no time to develop a crush on a hunky parole officer, she reminded herself.

  She hummed all the way upstairs to her bedroom.

  After leaving Frankie and Cole, Cruz decided, even at this ungodly late hour, to call the Bigler County coroner directly. Patch Wilson was not happy to be awakened after his long night in the morgue.

  “You finish the Hightower autopsy yet?” Cruz asked after identifying himself.

  Patch, grumpy from interrupted sleep, rankled at the parole officer addressing the young victim so casually. “Her name is Valerie, officer. Valerie Hightower.”

  Cruz had the grace to remain silent a moment. “Sorry,” he apologized. “Can you tell me anything about Valerie or Dickey Hinchey?” Dickey was Cruz’s responsibility. He needed to be sure the autopsy was straight forward.

  “You were his parole officer?”

  “Yes,” Cruz said defensively, “and I’d sure like to know how he died.”

  “I finished attending to Mr. Hinchey’s body late last night. Sheriff Slater has the results.” Wilson relaxed his formal manner for a moment before continuing. “I’m very sorry about your friend, Officer Cruz. The internal examination confirmed what Dr. Mason Foster suspected. Multiple knife wounds and blunt force trauma – cause of death.”

  “Nothing unusual?”

  “Not unless you consider violent murder unusual,” Patch answered before disconnecting.

  In for a penny, in for a pound, Cruz thought, and woke up the second angry man in one night. Sitting on the edge of his bed, removing his boots, he waited for the sound of the Sheriff’s gravelly voice.

  He started in without preamble. “What’d you find in Sac County?”

  Slater growled out a loud harrumph. “Lazy, half-assed coroner!”

  “I take it you mean the Sac County medical examiner.”

  “Shit, yes. No examination of internal organs. Just a slipshod outer exam,” Slater explained. “Clarence is putting pressure on the M.E.’s office. We should get something by tomorrow.”

  “I called Dr. Wilson tonight.” Cruz hesitated. “He wasn’t pleased.”

  Slater snorted. “Yeah, I imagine. Breakfast at 8:00 at Denny’s. I’ll bring you up to speed. Nothing that can’t wait – ” A pause while he checked the clock. “Five damn hours. Hell, Chago, you’re a pain in the ass.”

  He clicked off, his low grumbles broadcasting until the connection was severed.

  Angie Hunt had settled down her “boys” for the night. This evening the Methodist Church on Douglass Avenue was feeding and housing the homeless men and women. They always liked M.C. night because the wealthy parishioners fed them generously, often with steak and the kinds of food many of them only smelled walking past a fancy restaurant.

  Angie smiled a
s she locked up the Jesus Saves office, leaving the soft interior lights burning. It’d been a bad few weeks, but she hummed softly as she walked to her car parked on Grape Street, where a row of older homes was a remnant of the once-thriving area when the Pacific Fruit Express transported thousands of pounds of produce around the country.

  Angie didn’t hear the killer step from the shadow of an old oak tree. Didn’t hear his muffled attempt to stifle his arousal of anticipation. She staggered under the hard blow to her temple, felt a fierce pain and rough maneuvering as he pushed her into the passenger seat.

  She didn’t hear the faint jingle of her car keys as he removed them from her lax fingers. By the time he drove away in her car, she welcomed the empty, sweet relief of unconsciousness.

  Most of all, she didn’t register the angry, brooding face behind the wheel of her own car.

  Chapter 40

  The Professor sat straight-backed on his cell floor in the SHU, legs crossed and hands loosely held on his knees in the Sukhasana yoga position. He concentrated on breathing, slowed down his heart rate, and tried to empty his mind.

  But he couldn’t relax, try as he might. His thoughts drifted from calm to agitation, composure to irritation, as he considered the current situation.

  His second-in-command, Eugene Griff, known by his so-called associates as “Bones,” had reported back to him. Bones served Anson Stark’s purpose – for the moment. Anson hadn’t liked the necessity of covering for him in the prison yard murder, but he’d done what had to be done for the safety and health of the organization.

  A second misstep from Griff would be another matter. Anson would replace him without a thought if he screwed up again.

  Griff was a giant hulk of a beast, a white supremacist through and through, born and bred in the hollers of Kentucky. The other Lords respected him, followed him, and paid allegiance to him. That’s why he was useful to Anson. Although Griff wasn’t the most clever of men, he had a cunning wiliness that embraced the basics of leadership organization.