The 9th Hour (The Detective Temeke Crime Series Book 1)

by Claire Stibbe

  Probably be on the news.

  He stretched his legs and sat up against a nest of pillows, grabbed the remote and turned on the TV. A power outage in Belen, a new currency law, and the divorce of a famous boxer.

  Ole’s mind drifted to the detective’s house. He remembered the road all the way to Fourth and half a mile in, a narrow farm track to 9723 Guadalupe Trail. He parked outside a small white house with a sparkling green lawn so neatly clipped it would put any golf course to shame. A fake lawn so the man of the house wouldn’t need to mow it.

  It wasn’t hard to vault over the back wall, keep his footprints to the perimeter and ply the stash of weed from the backyard downspout. Sitting in his car, he tore into the duct tape, crushed the leaves between his fingers and took a long lasting sniff.

  He rolled a joint right there and then. No one could see him in the Camaro, dark tinted windows and shiny black paint. It was like a stealth bomber hovering amongst the trees, headlights at full beam. What a night of surprises. He’d just have to do it again sometime.

  The vision faded as he stared at the TV. There was no news. Not even a postmortem report. He was a celebrity who had struck nine times and not even a ticker-tape announcement at the bottom of the screen.

  Cursing loudly, he swung his legs out the bed, looked at the white phone on the bedside table and smiled. The girl stirred beside him, red lipstick smeared across her face. In the back of his mind there was a twisted morsel of hatred, the surging delight in finishing it just before she woke up. Even his hands itched, those strong hands that could easily twist off the stubborn lid of a pickle jar.

  Killing her wouldn’t be gentlemanly. Not before breakfast. Not before seeing how she looked at him, smiled at him, longed for him. And when she knew what he was, she would lie to him. Offer to call that cop-of-a-pop, reassure him she was OK, tell him she was in love. That she had run away.

  That was the best of plans. The police would never find her, never suspect. And he could enjoy her all the more until he got tired of her. It was a simple noose for easy game. Hell, rabbits were smarter than this.

  Leaving the phone by the bed and just within reach was half the fun. So he showered and went downstairs. Naked. He never felt hot or cold like most people did. Standing in front of a long mirror in the hallway, he studied his thighs, his belly, his chest. Blond hair settled around the nape of his neck, flipped out in a razor cut. Sunlight caught in his dark blue eyes and settled on the cusp of his cheekbones. He almost sobbed when he saw it. The pale skin, the ginger eyebrows, the sideways smile.

  Morgan.

  He found the cell phone in the bread bin and dialed the Penitentiary of New Mexico. The phone would be long gone by the time they traced it, washed down a storm drain like all the others.

  The blood flooded to his brain when he heard Morgan’s voice, felt the tingling in the veins of his face. His conscience should have been killing him.

  “Where’s Patti? What have you done with her?”

  “Done with her?” Ole almost laughed. “Having a picnic, I should say, under the first tower.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Where a car can soar over the crest line, spanning wider than a man’s hand.” Ole stopped to listen to Morgan’s brain as it rattled to understand. “They’ll be letting you out soon.”

  “When?”

  “Trust me. They’ll be letting you out. I have something they want. Something very special.”

  “You don’t know the detective. He’s a tracker. He’ll take you down slowly. Those are the rules of his game.”

  Ole felt a nudge of jealousy. “He doesn’t hunt, not like I do.”

  “You’re a fool if you think you can win this.”

  Ole could hear panic and a trace of hatred. It wouldn’t be long before the detective picked away at Morgan’s flesh until there was nothing left. “Killers belong together,” he crooned. “Like brothers.”

  “We’re not brothers. They know we’re not brothers.”

  “They don’t know anything.”

  “They know I didn’t do it.”

  The tiny red numerals of the digital clock told Ole to ring off. He knew they were listening to him. He knew they were tracing him.

  He snapped the phone back in the bread bin, craned his head round at a sound. A creak on the staircase and the subtle pop of a joint.

  The girl was awake. In a way it excited him.

  He let his head drop to one side, listening for the familiar whisper of carpet underfoot, the unmistakable catch of her breath. The soft rustle of clothes, the rasp of a zipper, all these things he heard as he took an anchor chain and two screw shackles from the hall closet. When he reached the top of the stairs there she was, standing in the shadows.

  “Becky,” he whispered. “Were you listening?”

  She shook her head, eyes glistening, mouth slack.

  He lunged for her then, clasping her around the waist with monstrous arms strong enough to rip her apart. Felt her lean toward him, heard her whisper.

  “Please let me go.”

  He didn’t answer. Didn’t need to. He wanted to delay the killing this time, delighting in the texture of her skin, the beat of her heart. It would soon be the last vibration of consciousness.

  “They know I’m missing,” she said, wrestling with the shackles. There was a frown on her forehead when she said it, pupils large and black. “My dad knows where I am.”

  “No,” he said, brushing a stray strand of hair out of her face, the tear under one eye. “He doesn’t know where you are.”

  It hadn’t occurred to him to dress. After all, killing was always best done naked. No evidence. There was a radiant glow about her face he hadn’t noticed before and a distant stare.

  She was a fragile flame in his cold world and the more he thought about it, the more he longed for that first spurt of blood, sometimes on his cheeks, sometimes on his lips.

  “Please!” she almost yelled.

  He tied her to the bedhead, wrists pinned neatly in the shackles with a screwdriver. It was a good job, he thought as he took one last look.

  “I promise I won’t tell anyone,” she said, tugging at the chain. “I won’t. I hate the police, always have. They’ve never been good to me. I’ve wanted to run away since I was eight.”

  “So you have.”

  “No, you don’t understand. Let me call my dad. I can tell him I ran away with you. That I’m in love.”

  There it was. The unimaginative things they always said. Same old, same old.

  “You be a good girl, now,” he said, holding up a finger. “Not a sound.”

  He knew how she must have felt. A tingling in her chest, a clenching of the stomach. Lightheadedness perhaps.

  All in a good day’s work.

  “Ole, I can help you,” she said. “I can…”

  The girl’s voice was soothing and strange. Sometimes it reminded him of the legends his mother told when he was a child. She had a voice he would never forget. A light that would never go out.

  He dressed slowly in Morgan’s clothes, held them up to his nose sometimes to inhale the scent. His mind began to scan over words, columns, photographs, as if turning the pages of his own headlines. Episodes returned in no particular order, screaming mouths, rasping breaths, clammy skin. He couldn’t recall them all, except one.

  Kizzy… Kizzy Williams. Daughter of Darryl Williams of 5024 Timoteo Avenue on the west side of town. A place of curiosity. Nice house. Shame about the bell tower.

  It was more than a bell tower. There was a motion detector that set off a floodlight, illuminating the courtyard and the sweeping drive. He knew because he had been watching the house for weeks. Watching Kizzy’s older sister, the girl Morgan was supposed to have taken in the first place.

  The arroyo was just sand and scrub, and unless the Williams man had the audacity to raise his block wall, there was virtually nothing to stop anyone climbing in.

  He pulled on a pair of shoes under faded jeans and
slipped his gun in his belt. Grabbing a set of keys, he took one last look at the girl on the bed. She was quite beautiful in the early morning sun, hair burnished copper… just like Patti’s.

  He said nothing as he locked the bedroom door, engaging two deadbolts before hurrying downstairs. The living room was still dark behind closed blinds, kitchen darker still.

  He could see in the dark, prided himself on the fact. Settling at the kitchen table, he watched the wall above the countertop where a sleek white phone hung by the door. Chin resting in one hand, he counted to five. And then came the moment he was hoping for. The blinking light, the static when he lifted the receiver.

  She was on the other line.

  A girl’s voice, shrill and distant as if she kept turning her head to see if someone was coming. “Temeke, it’s me.”

  “Becky… Where are you?”

  “I don’t know.” Sobbing. “I don’t know where I am.”

  “Who are you with?”

  “He’s gone. I don’t know why I did this. I don’t know why―”

  “Give me his name. Becky. His name.”

  “Ole…”

  “Describe where you are? When you look out of the window, what do you see?”

  “A sloping roof, a pool… pine trees.”

  “Houses?”

  “Yes, between the trees.”

  “What type of houses?”

  “Adobe… brick… iron gates.”

  “Can you hear anything?”

  “No.” More sobbing and then, “He’s going to kill me.”

  “Becky, describe the house, describe where you are.”

  “In the bedroom.”

  “Can you get out?”

  “No. I’m chained to the bed.”

  “Stay with me. Stay on the line. How are you tied?”

  “Shackles… on my hands.”

  “The pin in the shackle, can you twist it or does it need a screwdriver?”

  “Screwdriver.”

  “Describe the bedroom.”

  “White walls, blue carpet, blue bedspread, cupboard by the door, bathroom …”

  She was really sobbing now. Ole liked the sound. And then it struck him. Why did she call Temeke first? Why not her father?

  He drew a deep sigh from the pit of his stomach and put down the phone. He made sure they heard the click, made sure the detective knew he was there.

  He walked up the stairs, sensing the thumping of her heart almost as loud as the clock ticking on the landing. It was aching to be set free.

  He unlocked the door, ripped the phone out of the wall and sat down on the bed.

  “You know he’ll never find you,” he said at last.

  She stiffened. She nodded. She knew.

  EIGHTEEN

  Malin looked up through the windshield at a vast gray sky. Clouds hung low and rain rattled on the roof of the car. Highway 14 was a cracked slip of a road that took them to the Penitentiary of New Mexico.

  She listened to Temeke on the phone, listened to the disappointment in his voice. “So they got a trace, sir… northeast heights… can’t be more specific?… No, we’re not at the Pen yet. A curry?… I can’t, sir. If I have another of those I’ll blow.”

  Temeke ended the call, drew a large breath and released it before speaking. “The northeast heights are crawling with cops. They still haven’t found her.”

  “They will, sir.” Malin saw the pinched lips and the tapping fingers. “They always do.”

  “What do you mean they always do? How many murder books do we have in the archives where cases have gone cold? I’ve got several under my desk from the seventies.”

  He went quiet for a few moments, then muttered something about a tour to Old Main, the abandoned Cell Block 4. But a depressing tour in a ghost town was not what Malin had in mind, nor did she want to clutter her head with old scenes of prison riots. There was something in the air that bothered her, a sense of menace from Becky’s kidnapping. Temeke had definitely picked up on it. He was milder to her now.

  “Hackett said we’re to be here by nine-thirty.” she said, glimpsing at her watch. “It’s already ten-fifteen.”

  “Hackett says a lot of foolish things. The kindest thing is to ignore him.”

  She caught sight of herself in the wing mirror, hair neatly tied back, no makeup. Her eyes were wide and the steering wheel felt oddly thin. Maybe she was squeezing it too hard. She began to pray.

  “Are you nervous?” she asked Temeke. “You know, talking to Eriksen.”

  “Oh, I’ve already had the pleasure.” He looked up from the file on his lap and gave her a peevish frown. “He should be scared of me.”

  “But he’s not is he?”

  “No,” Temeke said, staring off into the distance. “He’s not scared of anyone. And you shouldn’t be either.”

  And yet she was scared, almost shivering with terror. Temeke was typical of the detective race, having a fascination for human beings and their behavior. The only difference was he had retained his Englishness even down to the ill-concealed sneer.

  “Remember,” he almost whispered, “most of these men were offered their first hit of dope by a family member and a snort of the hard stuff. They had the choice―”

  “No they didn’t. Not the ones that were offered a can of beer at the age of eight and told to nut up and be a man. Not the ones that were sodomized, bullied and lied to. Where’s the nearest safe house for them?”

  “Right now?” Temeke said, taking a deep breath. “Inside.”

  “It’s already too late then.”

  “It’s never too late. Whether you choose to admit it or not, each one of those correctional officers is a better leader to the inmates than whoever they looked up to on the outside. We are leaders to someone. The question is, who is that someone? Because that someone is counting on you.”

  He was right. She couldn’t help feeling a terrible burden of guilt, as if this was all of her own making and just what she deserved.

  Something caught her attention in the rearview mirror, a car so close it almost nudged her rear bumper. She sped up a little and Temeke intuitively turned his face to look at the wing mirror.

  “Police cruiser,” he said. “It’ll overtake in a few.”

  And it did.

  “Getting really sporty with their undercover cruisers now,” she said, marveling at the shine on that black paint. “I’ve seen over fifteen of those since last week.”

  “Probably saw the same one fifteen times,” Temeke muttered, eyes fixed on the car in that typical way men do. Probably wishing he had something as nice as that at home.

  She turned off the east frontage road onto Veterans Memorial and then left onto the Turquoise Trail. When the highway merged into one lane, her stomach began another rumble, guts twisting and turning in their stressed out juices. It was then she wished she had taken an extra dose of vitamins and antioxidants.

  You’ll get cancer with all that worrying, her mother once said.

  The desert was barren and so was the road. Lucky she wasn’t doing this on her own. The penitentiary was a cold gray place, colder still than the December winds. It housed well over seven hundred inmates and consisted of three facilities. They rolled past a large wooden sign that read Penitentiary of New Mexico Complex where ranks of chain-link fences came into view, almost blurred out of focus by a curtain of sleet.

  She turned off the engine and snatched the keys out of the ignition. They jangled in her hand all the way to the entrance, jarring, condemning.

  Temeke carried a wrapped up newspaper under one arm and an evidence bag in the other. He handed both to a corrections officer. “Have these taken back to forensics on the next shuttle. Got a little warm in the car and I don’t want one of them going walkies.”

  A second correctional officer showed them to Level VI, Supermax they called it, white corridors and gray doors, and rectangular windows that framed a face or two.

  She saw Morgan Eriksen through a sheet of glass, elbows
on the table, chin resting on his knuckles. He leaned back when they entered, legs straight, chain clinking between his ankles. Malin noticed the two chairs opposite and a mirror behind, and she was glad to note the table was at least five foot wide.

  “Oh, I see they’ve dressed you in yellow scrubs,” Temeke said with a snap in his voice. “Pity they’re not green. You’d be leaving then, wouldn’t you?”

  “Always the joker,” Morgan said, jabbing a finger at Malin. “Who’s she?”

  “She’s my partner. Malin’s the name,” Temeke said, sitting. “And yes, she’s dark but a little taller I think you’ll find than the regular dwarf. Looks like you don’t like the short ones.”

  “You know nothing, detective.”

  “Well, you know what they say. Danger and pleasure go together.”

  Morgan’s eyes suddenly snapped to the window, set high up and covered with bars. He had a bruise on his temple and another on his lip.

  “How many times have you picked a fight in the yard?” Temeke asked. “Because quite frankly I’ve lost count.”

  “I do everything I can to block this out. That’s why I fight. So one day someone’s going to crack my skull open and I’ll end up in hospital. On the outside.”

  “Surely there’s better ways to keep busy, son. What about counting how many sheets there are on a toilet roll? While we’re on the subject of fights, I looked up your arrest record. It was Patti who sold you out. She was the one that made the phone call, not Mr. Levinson. You know, the caretaker. We found his body dumped in a ravine. I wonder who could have done such a terrible thing.”

  “You said you’d never spoken to Patti.”

  “So I lied. It’s like a virus in here.”

  Morgan stared out of the window, eyes roaming the sky as if he could see something. “They’ve all flown away.”

  “We found a head in a house on Smith Street. Still waiting for the doctor’s report. But it looked like her. Blue eyes, long brown hair. Bloated. Are you alright, Morgan? Look a little green around the gills.” Temeke gave Morgan a hard smile. “There’s nothing wrong with your feelers, son. Normal people can’t hide stuff like that.”