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

by Claire Stibbe

  Somewhere to his left he heard the soft gurgle of a stream that had cut away from the main body of water, and to his right the occasional flutter of a night bird lifting high into the sky.

  A night bird lifting into the sky. There was someone out there. Hunting. Tracking. Smelling the scent of the woods, nose twitching with every current of air.

  Temeke was baffled. Why hadn’t Ole run deeper into the woods when he had the chance? He didn’t have any attachment to the dead girls and there was nothing in that burnt out cabin.

  What was he waiting for?

  Ole was an ambusher, not a hunter. He could wait in parking lots hidden in dark colored cars and stalk innocent girls. He was good at waiting, good at watching. And he was probably watching the police fanning out in all directions and making a heck of a racket. A man like Ole enjoyed soaking up the media hype of his latest kill, took pleasure in the excitement and pain.

  That’s when Temeke knew. Ole was smarter than the rest. He wasn’t camouflaged in the underbrush like most hunters were. He was perched in a lofty roost, watching as he always did. In the trees. Morgan’s trees.

  As the path curved off to the right away from the river and the hoary moon, Temeke could see splinters of light shining through the branches, only he could hardly see the path underfoot. He started down the sloping hillside and away from the cabin, moving silently in the darkness, boots tapping on the hard, dry earth.

  He paused often to consult his wrist compass. He was heading west along rugged terrain where tree roots and craters were treacherous, and the sense of isolation was getting worse by the minute.

  His heart pounded as he continued across a slushy stretch of mud, and then up again. At the top of the next ridge there was a break in the trees. To his left was a rim of bluish cliffs bordering the river and to his right, he saw a clearing where intermittent shafts of light pooled onto the ground and there, leaning up against a tree, was a rifle.

  His eyes followed the line of the trunk up into the foliage. There was nothing up there that would indicate a human shape, nothing perched on an upper branch.

  He began to wonder why it was suddenly so quiet.

  Ole was out there, waiting to take out a few cops. And let’s face it, he’d already used three of those eight rounds in his pistol. So it couldn’t be cops he was waiting for.

  Something kept nagging in the back of Temeke’s mind, something important.

  My wife used to camp in the woods when she was a child. Said they were mostly ruins, except for the boathouse.

  The boathouse.

  FORTY-THREE

  Ole felt a shiver down his spine. For a second he couldn’t move, couldn’t swallow. The boat was gone. He didn’t know how long he stood there, absorbing the shock. The musty walls began to throb and there was an air of menace in the place as if he had suddenly stumbled across his own tomb.

  Releasing the tension with long shuddering breaths, his legs burned from all that running. There weren’t enough rounds in his gun to finish off forty men in the dark, let alone the detective he wanted to break. Loki was dead now, and that foul rotten stench coated his tongue.

  Ole leaned against a wooden support, tongue dry with thirst. There had been patches of snow in the woods to suck on but the boathouse offered no such relief. He listened in the darkness, waited for the patter of FBI feet. He was the prey now and none of it made any sense.

  He focused on the only ugly thing that had turned his whole world upside down. His mother.

  She had been little more than a girl herself, too young for his father, too naïve. He hadn’t known that then. But he knew it now. Brown slanted eyes still brimming with tears and olive skin soft against his own. She couldn’t have wanted to leave him behind. He was her favorite.

  He remembered her voice and the hymns she would sing. Take the veil from our faces, the vile from our heart.

  Was it something inside of him or was it outside? Did he have a broken soul?

  “You don’t have a soul,” she said. “Your kind never does.”

  He cast his mind back to an image of candles guttering against an open door, and he saw her standing there against a moonlit forest, gripping a suitcase. A night just like tonight.

  “Do you love me?” she said.

  When he nodded and ran to her, she held him so tight it hurt. She kissed his nose, his blond curls, his neck. It used to make him laugh when he was a boy. He could still smell her perfumed hair on spring nights when the honeysuckle bloomed, and he could smell her now.

  “Mamma,” he wanted to whisper, “I’ve killed you eight times.”

  Snap!

  The sound took him out of his trance and he stood in that boathouse listening to water lapping against the pillars. The walkway was half rotten, timbers creaking under his weight. But if he edged closer to the perimeter where the soil was packed and damp, no one could hear him, and through the gaps in the clinker-built framing, no one could see him.

  Ole raced around the inside like a caged animal, but all he could see was dried leaves and silver-gray branches. Sometimes he could hear the hollow sound of wind through the pine trees and the longer he stood there, the longer he felt the agony of loneliness.

  Silent as light.

  He listened to the sound of the wind, the scuttle of leaves. And then he heard another sound, like the cry of a bird, but sharper.

  Fear shot through him and he had enough sense to stay still. His eyes tried to penetrate through grooves in the tree trunks, tried to imagine a face in the bark like the ones he had carved near the Tolby barn. Just as he was about to take a breath, he saw a shape between two trees. It seemed to drift on a gust of wind, moving sideways and forwards at the same time. He couldn’t remember where he had seen that movement before, but it was similar to the gait of a dressage horse.

  He felt a catch in his throat and for a second he couldn’t move. It was too late to run only he couldn’t afford to wait any longer. The way out was along the pier and he didn’t feel much like swimming. Not tonight. Not in the cold.

  Dry leaves scuttled across the path and there was a keening in the wind. He thought he heard footsteps through the underbrush, coming closer and he knew why he couldn’t see this particular marksman. He was black, eagle-eyed and as determined as a sniper.

  Ole was surrounded on three sides by sturdy wooden walls and he could see only a few yards ahead on two sides, the third gave him a view of approximately fifty yards back up the hill toward the burning lodge. He hoped that was the direction the detective had chosen.

  He was silent, but he knew his eyes were wide. He stayed very still, hardly daring to breathe.

  The shape came out of the shadows, armed with a gun, nozzle tilted downward, back against a tree. He was staring at the boathouse, hesitating, moonlight sheering off one side of his face, skin blacker than pitch.

  Ole recognized the gun. Great striker fire action, great recoil. He gave it a high rating, promising himself the very same one as a side carry. He also recognized the man, enormous and sleek, muscular neck thrust forward and almost as broad as the tree he leaned against.

  Ole couldn’t take his eyes off him, knowing he had never been close enough to study him. He raised his gun and waited until the sniper swung around slowly, chest directly in his line of fire.

  There was something odd about him, standing frozen, staring right ahead, eyes blank. His head lowered and Ole heard him sniff repeatedly, head moving from side to side with each inhalation.

  He had the distinct impression the sniper was sniffing like a Massai tracker and if he didn’t do something soon, his life would be lost. Not knowing whether he was up or down wind, he pushed that gun quietly between two slats of wood and fired.

  For such a buff man, the sniper moved with surprising grace. His reflexes could never have been that fast had the bullet surprised him. Ole knew, with absolute certainty, he had sensed him in the boathouse and hunkered to the ground before the bullet had even been discharged.

  He
stared, felt his mouth drop, gripped his gun in two sweating hands. The foliage shuddered and rustled, and the man was gone.

  There was only one way out. And that was to swim. Ole listened first to the wind and the occasional cry of a bird. He heard the flutter of wings and saw a heron speeding across the surface of the river, feet kicking up a spray. He placed a hand on the side of the boathouse and edged his way forward along the pier.

  He could smell the wind on the water and he knew it was cold. Cold? I don’t feel the cold, he told himself. But he felt it now.

  He felt other things he hadn’t felt in a long time, things he thought he couldn’t feel. Despair, fear, dread. When he came to the edge of the pier, he looked down in the icy water, saw bubbles rising to the surface.

  He realized that despite all his planning, despite all his skill, things had gone terribly wrong. He didn’t see the shape standing like a shadow between two aspens, gun aimed right at him.

  He heard the voice… “Police! Drop the gun. Step away from the water.”

  Ole’s gun arm twitched and he raised it just a little. There was a flash of light before a resounding crack.

  Like mountains, high soaring above.

  He never felt the pain as he fell backwards on the rotting boards.

  Oh help us to see.

  It was so silent in the woods. That’s how he was able to hear the faraway thump of a helicopter.

  FORTY-FOUR

  Temeke stared out of the hospital window. The landscape was lightly dusted in snow and bloated clouds threatened to spill more rain.

  He remembered a time when he hid out in an arroyo armed with a bow. Between the silvery heads of Apache plume, he watched the coyote as it scavenged on the dry river bed, vulnerable, unsuspecting. Pulling the drawstring to his cheek, he watched the arrow as it cambered and fell, striking the animal in the throat. He wasn’t afraid then, and here he was dreading the moment when Ole would open his eyes.

  He looked over at the bed and saw pale blond eyelashes flickering in sleep and a large bandage wound around the left shoulder. It would be so easy to take out his gun out and finish it, only Jarvis was sitting outside, ear pressed to the glass.

  Temeke sat on the couch and flicked open the file turning to a photocopy of the little red notebook. He read the tiny scrawl as a deep and gnawing sadness began to build inside. He saw a vision through the wooden slats of a barn wall, a vision Kizzy had the day she died.

  When I am afraid, I put my trust in you.

  Her writing stopped there because the little pencil ran out of lead. A little pencil tied to the spine of an old milking journal the farmers once used. The field investigators found the room where Kizzy had been held. It was six feet by four, an old henhouse.

  A groan and a clinking of chains brought him back to the present. Ole opened his eyes and gave Temeke a long hard stare.

  “Are you sleeping okay?” Temeke said, hoping it wasn’t as much as Sarge was getting.

  “There’re demons in the Pen. Morgan says he can hear them screaming at night. He’s in Level VI. Death Row.”

  “Supermax,” Temeke said, nodding. Ole was dreaming up all kinds of guff in that comfy hospital bed. Even though Temeke stared right at him he still felt a twinge of fear like a cudgel in his ribs. “It’s to be expected. All those ghosts. You know, the ones after the riots.”

  “You say it like you don’t care, Detective.”

  “I cared enough to find you, didn’t I?”

  “Took you long enough.”

  “And I cared enough to sit in the helicopter all the way to the hospital. Never heard such whining. Anyone would think you’d been shot in the head.”

  Ole half smiled at that. “You missed.”

  “Aimed for your shoulder, son. Could have been lower. You’d have a squeaky voice then, wouldn’t you?”

  Temeke leaned back, hands laced behind his head. It made him feel superior since Ole couldn’t move his hands at all. He was proud of himself after that helicopter ride back to Albuquerque and he’d even climbed a tree, hadn’t he? “You’ll be in Supermax for a week or two over the holidays. Must be nice to have your best friend in the next cell. Because that would never happen in a hotel.”

  “We’re brothers, detective. Always. Stick. Together.”

  “Not for long. Looks like California wants you more than we do. So you’ll be going to San Quentin where every syringe is a cringe.”

  Ole leaned forward, eyes glaring. “Odin wanted nine heads. Nine. What was I supposed to do? Ignore him?”

  “So you kidnapped nine girls. Nine beautiful girls. Jaelyn Gains, Lavonne Jackson, Mikaela May Ortega, Lyana Durgins, Elizabeth Moya, Mandy Guzman, Kizzy Williams, Patti Lucero and Becky Moran. Becky Moran got away so you took Tess Williams instead. And you killed Jack Reynolds.”

  “He was following me. He shouldn’t have done that.”

  Temeke bit his lip to stifle the lump in his throat. “We found most of the girls’ remains by the fire pit but we never found Kizzy Williams.”

  “I didn’t want Loki to have her.”

  “Your wolf?”

  Ole winced and laid his head back down on the pillow. “He made a meal out of the rest.”

  Temeke remembered the bones. When the animal had chewed them down to the gristle they had been set apart and arranged in order of size.

  “It wasn’t quite nine though, was it? Becky is a resourceful young woman. She found a way. And Tess Williams is a mystery. Do you know what I learned today? I learned she ran four hundred meters cross country for her school last year. She clocked the fastest time ever for track and field in New Mexico. She’s going to meet the Governor tomorrow. Next year, the Olympics. And you would have killed my partner had it not been for her tenacity and dedication to find Tess. None of these women are like your mother, Ole. Remember that.”

  Ole gave a curt nod, muscles tight around his jaw. “Morgan thought he and Patti could run off with three million dollars.”

  “That’s a tidy sum.”

  “I sold stocks and shares in the Bergenposten six years ago. A multi-million dollar business. So I challenged him to a game of poker. Put a gun to his head. Made him agree to offer Patti up as a reward. He lost, of course. So I got Patti and the money.”

  “And he got time.” It was all beginning to make sense to Temeke now.

  “I took her with me, gave her a home. She was afraid. I didn’t want her to be afraid.”

  “And that bothered you?”

  “Yes. I look after my friends.”

  Friends? There was nothing friendly in a good kidnapping. “Did you rape her, Ole?”

  “No. Patti wanted me. Loved me. She was the only one who did.”

  Temeke didn’t want to ask about Becky. “What did you talk about?”

  “Her mother. My mother.”

  “That was a scary thing wasn’t it. Your mother. She became a crack addict after the real Morgan died. That’s when her hunter boyfriend was put in jail. But she was found some years later hanging from a roller towel in a truck-stop bathroom. I never understood how she did it, roller towels being so close to the ground and all.”

  Ole seemed to go quiet. Seemed to frown at the memory. “Patti looked more like my mother than the rest. Same eyes, same smile. I loved her. I hated her.”

  “Tell me about Kizzy. Who did she remind you of?”

  Ole shook his head. “No one I’ve ever known. She said there was a voice in the wind, a still, small voice. I don’t believe in that stuff. I believe in other things.”

  “What kind of things?”

  “Wings and voices.” Ole’s voice was smoother than a shrink. “You can hear them if you listen.”

  Temeke shook his head. It was all beginning to sound like a ghostly freak show.

  “The demons of the nine worlds, Detective, half-animal, half-man. Odin’s horde.”

  Temeke wasted no time in researching Odin, a Norse god, hanged from the world tree for nine days and nights. Only this Odin was
beginning to sound like a real person and that was the part that bothered him.

  “Kizzy wanted to go to the river,” Ole murmured with a loud sigh. We went to the beaver ponds to catch fish.”

  “What kind of fish?”

  “Trout. There are loads of them behind the boulders. She told me to close my eyes so I could listen to the trees. God’s music she called it.”

  Pity she hadn’t run away when your eyes were closed. Temeke had a vision of a little girl sitting on a rock like one of those woodland fairies he had seen in a book. She was a little person once. She was a little person still.

  “We caught three and put them on the coals. It was her last supper.”

  Last supper… The words seemed to linger in Temeke’s ears like a sad song.

  “Then it was Wednesday, Odin’s day. That’s when it happened.”

  Wednesday, October 29th… Temeke felt a sliver of terror. He imagined a hunter’s knife slicing through skin and bone and he had to clamp his lips together to stop from heaving.

  “What happened?” Temeke said, clearing his throat.

  “I was carving her face on a tree.”

  Temeke flexed the muscles in his legs. So Ole was the face-carver.

  “They’re like headstones you see,” Ole said. “In memoriam.”

  “But there were no graves there.”

  “No.” Ole looked out of the window for a moment and then back at Temeke. “I saw Patti running for the road. She was dragging the little one by the hand. I wanted to shoot them. But I hesitated.”

  “Why? Why didn’t you shoot them?” Temeke said.

  “Kizzy treated me with respect. She called me sir.” Ole’s gaze drifted to the window again. “I liked her. But I am what I am.”

  “What are you?”

  “Immortal. She wasn’t scared of me until she knew.”

  The drone of Ole’s voice was more than Temeke could stand. He hardly listened to the details and he hoped there were enough drugs in that cocktail to have knocked Kizzy out cold.