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

by Claire Stibbe

  Morgan looked up at the window and squinted. “There’s a storm coming.”

  “Is that what’s been bothering you? I heard you had a sleepless night on account of the wall being too close to your bed. Probably got a headache and all.”

  “You’re wrong, I don’t feel anything.”

  “Anger is an emotion, Morgan, and you have plenty of that.” Temeke flicked through his notes, mirroring the lack of empathy in any way he could. “I’ve seen dead men look more cheerful.”

  “Ah, so that’s what you want to talk about. The dead.”

  “Since you brought it up―”

  “I don’t believe in death. I believe in reincarnation. I believe in the mead of vision, of insight. Kvasir had so much of it, yet the dwarves squeezed every last ounce from his body.”

  “Bastards,” whispered Temeke. “All those Norse legends have gone to your head.”

  “Only wine and pride goes to a man’s head, detective.”

  Malin shifted in her seat. “He’s quite the debater,” she murmured.

  “He’s just warming up,” Temeke whispered and then in a louder voice, “He’s taken another girl, Morgan. You wouldn’t know where we could find her?”

  “You’re not looking hard enough are you?”

  “Couldn’t give us a few hints?”

  “Do you like to play golf, detective?”

  “I’ve been known to putt a few balls now and then.”

  Morgan looked at the mirror behind them, cocking his head to one side as if studying the length of his hair. “You like coming here to see me, don’t you? It’s like a day out. Like going to the zoo.”

  “I can think of better things to do.”

  “Nah, you’re smarter than that. There’s only one of you. There’s two of me.”

  “Psychotically speaking I would agree,” Temeke said. “Physically speaking, either your eyes need testing or math isn’t your strongest subject. There’s two of us and one of you.”

  Malin saw the flicker of a smile behind drawn lips and wondered if Temeke saw it too. But there was more. It was like staring at two serpent eyes with slits for pupils. She felt as if she was being sucked inside, groping around in the deep blue. In that far place, she could pretend she was something special, an ambassador’s wife, a famous singer. Only she wasn’t and she felt it more now than ever before. The chill that plagued her wasn’t from the December air or the lack of heating in the interview room. It came from within.

  “Can you tell us where Patti is?” Temeke asked. “The rest of her that is. ’Cos we’re dying to know.”

  “Where a car can soar over the crest line, spanning wider than a man’s hand. Under the first tower, so I’m told.” Morgan shut his eyes for a few seconds and then stared right at Malin. “They do a twelve-step program for problems like yours.”

  “Problems?” she stammered.

  “You know what I mean,” he said, leaning forward as far as he could. “Sunbeam.”

  Malin swallowed back a ball of bile. He might have found her picture on the internet because inmates used computers like everyone else. Lucky they didn’t have access to semi-nude pictures, pictures of her in feathers and the essential lace. She was classier than that. And class meant staying silent.

  Temeke hardly flinched. “How often do you use a computer, Morgan?”

  “Every Tuesday and Friday.”

  “Under supervision?”

  “Not always.”

  Malin hoped Temeke would have a word with the officers about that. Inmates shouldn’t be looking at porn. Porn? No, her stuff wasn’t porn. Just the soft stuff, the stuff that made a man look. The stuff that made rich men pay through the nose.

  “Then you know there are undercover officers posing as escorts,” Temeke said, packing a bigger punch. “Keeps the pervs at bay.”

  “Are you saying I’m a pervert?”

  “You were looking, weren’t you? Isn’t that how you met Patti? Looking.”

  Morgan stared past Temeke’s right ear, a bleak stare that wavered now and then. “Her mother drank too much. Couldn’t keep it together, couldn’t pay the rent, couldn’t keep a job. She slapped Patti a lot. Made her cry.”

  “Lucky you were there.”

  Morgan blew out a series of breaths. “After her mother went to bed one night, Patti begged me to take her away. She had nowhere else to go. She clung to me, tried to kiss me.”

  “Must have been hard for a red-blooded male like you to keep your paws in your pockets. She was underage.”

  “I didn’t touch her, not then. I went straight to bed. In the sitting room that is.”

  “So in that highly charged and unfulfilled state, you wrapped yourself up in a blanket and had a nap on the couch?”

  Morgan nodded.

  “Blimey, you’ve got some serious self-control there, son.”

  Temeke saw Morgan’s chin shoot up, saw the eyes widen. The boy was beginning to cave. “So when Patti and the little kid got shot, how did that make you feel?”

  “Sad.”

  “I thought you said you never felt anything. You’re in serious trouble and you’re only making it worse with all these lies. Fat lot of good it’s done you. That’s why you’re inside and the real killer’s drinking Remy Martin on his patio,” Temeke pointed out. “He used you, made you look like a fool. Just another victory notched on his cupboard door.”

  Morgan’s eyes shot to a clerestory window again as if he was searching for a certain drop of rain. “The ravens know everything.”

  “Ravens?” Temeke turned slightly to look at a silvery veil of rain against the window pane. “If you’re referring to the FBI that’s one of the hazards of crime.”

  Malin resisted the temptation to keep following their gaze. She studied Morgan’s face, pinched with disapproval, lips drawn in a snarl.

  “Thought and Memory,” he murmured. “They fly around the earth and bring back news. Only I have no news. I haven’t seen Memory in weeks.”

  “You’ll tell us when you do see him,” Temeke said, restraining what sounded like a stallion’s snort.

  Morgan turned his ear to the plummeting wind. “Do you hear that?”

  “Hear what?”

  “You know what they say. If a man has ears let him hear.”

  “You know as well as I do it wasn’t just anyone who said that.”

  “It was Christ,” Malin interrupted.

  Morgan flinched and sat back in his chair. There was a tremor in his throat, greater than a swallow. “Endless war,” he whispered, leaning forward again and placing his hands on the table. “With a single stroke the succession could be snatched away. Make no mistake. No one knows how it will end. No one.”

  “You’re wrong,” Malin said, lifting her chin a little higher. “The devil will drown in the lake of fire. Even he knows. That’s why he fights a little harder. That’s why he’s running out of time.”

  “Odin casts the biggest shadows. He knows who lives and who dies. What’s your next deception, Malin? Watch out for mine.”

  Malin sensed a gnawing in her mind and a surge of daring in her veins. “Who’s the raven called Thought?”

  Morgan gave her a cursory glance and then looked down at his hands. They were resting on the table again, picking, cleaning, fingernails torn right down to the quick.

  “If you know about them,” he said, “why do you ask?”

  “Yes, I know about the ravens,” she said in Norwegian. “But which one are you?”

  Morgan pounced. It was so quick, Malin felt Temeke’s body covering hers before she heard the growl and the scraping of a chair. Two officers burst into the room, restraining Morgan against the wall before taking him outside.

  “Nice one, Marl,” Temeke said, wiping a glob of spit from his cheek. “I think we’re getting somewhere.”

  NINETEEN

  The clouds were low and weepy when they left the Penitentiary and that was after a plate of chicken and mushroom pie in the warden’s office.

/>   Temeke curled his toes to get some life into them and rubbed his hands. They would need to drive a few more miles before the heater came on.

  “Still nervous?” he asked, wondering why her lips were constantly working as if she was reciting another of those infernal prayers.

  “Yes,” she said. “What do you say to a family that have just lost their daughter to a psychopath?”

  “Not lost. Not yet. Let’s concentrate on Ole, on how his mind works. What’s the betting he reacts to murder the same way he does about a cup of coffee. He feels nothing toward his victim. So what’s his next move?”

  “An exchange,” Malin said.

  Temeke shot her a look, saw the twitch of a smile. She was touching her hair again, twirling a strand around her finger. If she wasn’t driving she probably would have leaned in for a smooch. “What are you thinking?” he said, trying to interrupt the momentum.

  “I’m thinking your wife’s a lucky woman. I’m thinking you’re a nice guy.”

  “Nice guys never get the girl.”

  She smiled at that.

  “You’re not so nice yourself. Excellent job of riling up the deviant. Keep the car on the road, Marl. You’re swerving about like a jack rabbit.”

  He thought of Luis, called dispatch and asked them to raise K33 on the radio. No answer. Temeke shrugged it off with a yawn.

  “Nothing grows out here,” he said, staring out of the car window. “Mark Twain once described the territory around the sea of Galilee as a blistering, naked, treeless land. He should have come here.”

  “Wild that,” Malin murmured. “Israel blossoms like a rose in the desert.”

  “Must be good irrigation.”

  “Must be a great King.”

  Temeke wasn’t aware Israel had a king, unless she was referring to the current Prime Minister. It was Eriksen’s words that kept drumming around in his head.

  Where a car can soar over the crest line, spanning wider than a man’s hand…

  He glanced toward the west where the sky met the mesa and where rugged piñon trees ornamented the slopes. To the east lay the foothills of the San Pedro mountains and he could imagine the rutted trails that wound through spruce and pine all the way to the top. It would make a good hike if he ever had the time. He was longing to see the dark sprawl of the Sandia Crest, like a sleeping dragon in a bed of sand. Forty more minutes.

  Be quicker to fly, he thought.

  He couldn’t stop his teeth chattering, nor could he get rid of the icy chill down his back. All he could think of was a man rushing at him with bared teeth, screeching louder than a trucker’s brakes.

  “Ravens… he’s sicker than a bloody parrot,” he said.

  “Memory and Thought,” she reminded.

  “Yeah, Hocus and Pocus.”

  She was quiet for a few miles and then, “Thanks, by the way.”

  “Thanks for what?”

  “For covering up the escort thing.”

  “Eriksen needs to know we’re watching. Needs to know there’s a camera in every room.”

  Malin pressed one hand against the vent, fingers flayed against the heat. “When he said there were two ravens, I wondered if he meant two people or one person with a split personality. You’ve known a few splits. What makes them do the things they do?”

  Temeke’s thinking was never cloudy, but today it was like hacking through a shroud of fog. And Malin squinting at the rearview mirror made matters worse. He declined to look back along that desolate stretch of highway for whatever it was she saw and, in spite of the warm air flowing through the heater vents, he was still cold.

  “I interviewed a man thirteen years ago,” he said, “a man so burdened by his other psyche, he wouldn’t eat in order to starve the other out. And when that didn’t work he was found hanging in his cell with a note pinned to the end of his bed. He won’t go away. It said. Not unless I die first.

  “A psychopath in my opinion is not as unique as a fingerprint. It could happen to any of us. Something snaps in the brain and then it grows inside like a worm. They see life as a killing-track, a blur of blood and faces that never go away. For a time they’re untouchable, immortal, in a world of twilight and shadows. But they know something will destroy them and in a strange way they long for it. Eriksen’s different though. I should have had the sod in an arm-lock against the wall. I don’t believe a word.”

  “He doesn’t expect you to. He’s talking in riddles.”

  “He’s talking himself to death row.” Temeke turned briefly to look at Malin, to study her furrowed brow. “He’s a bloody liar is what he is.”

  “He’s waiting for something,” she said, eyes following the windshield wipers. “Why do you think he kept looking out of the window? He’s half scared to death.”

  “I think I would be if I saw two killer ravens with chainsaws for beaks. Calling all units! We have two suspects on the loose, black hair, feathers, last seen perched on a power line, should be easy to spot.”

  Malin was having a fit of giggles, chin almost bouncing off the steering wheel. “You’re determined not to take this seriously.”

  “I’m determined not to let him get to me.”

  “Hackett’s not going to be happy we didn’t get a name.”

  “Hackett’s happiness is not very high on my priority list at the moment. Eriksen was spoiling for a fight and we were told to leave for our own safety.” Temeke turned the heater up.

  “Sir, what was he talking about when he said a car clearing the crest line? NASCAR?”

  Temeke thought of those mountainous trails, some black as night and silent as a spirit. Only this time he saw them from the air.

  “The Peak Tram,” he said. “It has the world’s third longest single span.”

  He could sense her looking at him. No, not looking, it was more than that. She was reading him. Not too close now, he thought as a faint alarm began to tingle in the back of his brain. “So how did you get into the escort business?”

  Malin’s head moved slowly from side to side as if ignoring a bite of irritation. “Who wants to know?”

  “I want to know. There’s nothing to be ashamed of. You say I smoke a little weed now and then. Well, maybe I do. Maybe I do it to take away the filthy images we see now and then. But we’re not talking about me, we’re talking about you.”

  Malin squinted at the rearview mirror before answering. “John Frederick. He was thirty-five. I was barely sixteen.”

  Temeke had already scoured her files, the photos, the dirty old pervert of a high school teacher. He never thought much of men with long straggly hair and goatees. And this one looked like a porn star.

  “He made me dance for money so he could buy drugs. And then he shot himself when I tried to leave him.”

  Temeke felt his mouth go dry. He had seen the pictures, blood spatters on the wall, a crumpled body on the floor. Photographs never lie.

  “Thank you for giving me a chance,” she said, cuffing away a tear.

  “I didn’t.”

  The phone rattled on the console and he frowned at the caller ID. Private it said. He snarled a greeting and listened to a heavy accented voice.

  “I have number nine.”

  TWENTY

  Ole stared at the security monitor. The street was clear and so was the back yard, no black and white cars patrolling the neighborhood. They were likely parked outside the northeast area command building, only a few yards up the street.

  He sat in the kitchen, glancing occasionally at the girl in the living room. She was curled in a ball on the couch, eyes flickering in sleep. It was the noise of the chain he couldn’t stand each time she woke up and tried to yank it from the grate in the fireplace. He wasn’t going to leave her behind and he wasn’t going to kill her either. She was worth her weight, worth watching the detective squirm over.

  “Can I ask you something?” he said, seeing her stirring on that couch, hair cascading down her face. “Are you ashamed of me?”

  She gave hi
m a one-eyed stare, brow wrinkled for a moment. “What do you mean?”

  “What do you think I mean? You don’t touch me, don’t kiss me. Don’t even want to sit with me.”

  She couldn’t sit next to him. The chain wasn’t long enough.

  “You disappoint me,” he continued in a whisper.

  He waited for those lips to move, those dark eyes to brighten. But they didn’t. He rubbed a silver earring in his hand, brushed it against his lips.

  “I’ve got something for you.”

  It would make her happy, like it had the others.

  He poured two ounces of whisky in his coffee and sat down beside her. Blowing into the cup, he drank it down in three short swallows.

  “I’m in no hurry. Are you?”

  “Let me go home.” A pause, then a sob. “Please…”

  “What good would that do? You’re worth too much.” He took the earring and passed it through a hole in her left ear, watched the dog disk shimmer in the evening sun. “It’ll only be one more day, I promise. So, what shall we do… you and me? Shall we go out?”

  She shook her head, scooting away from him and closer to the arm of the couch.

  “Did you know I was following you? Well, I was. Every day. I followed you to school, to the mall. I followed you home. Watched you when you woke up, when you got dressed, when you brushed your hair. I must have sat next to you twenty times. You should have known.”

  Her lips were no longer glossy like they had been that first night. Come to think of it, she wasn’t as loving as she had been on that first night.

  “I’m sure what you think of me is wrong. But big risks come with big rewards. How long will it take you to get ready?”

  He was mesmerized by her dark lustrous hair, her olive skin. Nothing was sweeter than flesh tanned by the sun, and hers sparkled behind a silver earring, set with a number 9 charm.

  “Don’t you want me?” The silence was almost unbearable under the soft murmur of his voice. It was going to be the longest twelve hours of his life. “Spit it out!”

  She shuddered at that, chains rattling with each tremor. It reminded him of his father all those years ago, twitching in the chair by the fire. One hand anchoring the other, eyes darting around the room in the hope that no one was watching. He had Parkinson’s.