“Roger Miller’s mother?”
Her eyes clouded over and a single tear tracked down her cheek. She appeared resigned. “Are you with the press?”
I jumped in before Liz could answer in the affirmative. “Ma’am, we are so sorry for your loss. We heard about Roger’s murder…” Mrs. Miller visibly paled at the word. “…while investigating the murder of my friend, Chad Johnson. You may have seen something about it on the news?”
Mrs. Miller thought for a moment. “I haven’t seen or heard anything. But, then I’ve barely gotten out of bed,” she directed this towards me, almost defiantly.
“I don’t blame you,” I simply said and the dam broke. Mrs. Miller audibly cried as she indicated we should follow her into the home.
Dark with all the blinds drawn and few lights turned on, I could tell even in the gloom that hers was a cared for home. My heart broke for the loss this mother had experienced.
“Please sit down,” she directed us to a sectional couch in a pale blue abstract design. Liz and I sat on the edge of the sofa while Mrs. Miller moved to the loveseat facing us. Her hands lay limply in her lap.
“Mrs. Miller,” I started, and she stopped me.
“Please call me Jacki,” she said by rote.
I hesitated. Liz wisely remained quiet, to see how this played out. “Jacki, my friend and I are trying to gather information related to your son’s death that might help us understand what happened to our friend, Chad, and prevent anyone else from being hurt. But, if this is too painful, we can leave.”
Jacki raised her face and looked at us through watery eyes. “It’s okay. Not talking about it won’t bring him back. If I can help some other mother not go through this, then I will.” She took a long, shuddering breath. “Ask your questions.”
I brought Jacki through our understanding of the events that transpired on the night of the car accident and she confirmed that Roger told her the same story he provided the police, and that she had no reason to doubt what he said.
“Even though he’d been drinking?” I asked gently and Jacki looked away briefly before responding.
“Roger had only recently turned 21. He was still sowing his wild oats when it came to alcohol. He had made a couple of bad choices, but never anything like that. He’d never blacked out or hurt anyone.”
Not that you know of, I thought to myself before refocusing on Jacki.
“I had no reason to doubt that he genuinely believed Juni had been in the car with him,” she concluded.
“How do you explain the lack of evidence of anybody in the passenger seat?” Liz asked this.
“I don’t.”
That stumped us and for a moment nobody said anything. “We spoke to the police about Juni,” I restarted the conversation. “It seems nobody really knew her well.”
“I only met her once,” Jacki stated. “Juni and Roger had only been dating a couple of months, but he was smitten with her.” A genuine smile ghosted across her face then faded. “She never gave my son her last name.”
“You didn’t think that was odd?” Liz asked, doubt tinging her voice.
“At first, but Roger explained Juni said she had escaped an abusive relationship. She told him she didn’t want to endanger him.”
“Is that why there’s only the one picture of her?” This made more sense to me now; although, not if she was a vampire. Hmm. Jacki was still explaining.
“She was worried about being found, so she didn’t want any pictures. I snapped that one. She was very unhappy with me and asked me to delete the picture. I lied and told her I did.” Jacki’s face reddened at the remembrance of the deception. “I just wanted one picture,” she finished defensively.
“I think it’s okay,” I assured her and she smiled gratefully before her mouth turned downward.
“After the accident, Roger spent weeks searching the area near the crash, first with the actual search parties and then on his own. He confided to me that he was having nightmares of her alone and scared in the woods.”
My heart broke again for that grieving young man, trying to process the strange loss of his love.
“Once he finished his probation, he finally seemed ready to rejoin the world. I was so happy to have my son back,” she said wistfully. “Then to have him taken again, forever.” Her voice choked on the last word and she stared at her wringing fingers in her lap.
Liz and I shared a glance. We’d likely gotten all that we could from Roger’s mom. I stood and Liz followed my cue. “Jacki, thank you so much for taking the time to speak with us.”
She scrambled to her feet. “Was anything I said helpful?”
I smiled gently. “Yes. You’ve given us a few new angles to consider.”
“I’m glad,” she said. “You’ll tell me if you find who did this to our boys?”
“Of course.” I nodded and she clasped my hands in hers. On impulse I hugged her. She tensed but then relaxed.
“Thank you for listening.”
Jacki watched us walk back to our car and we considered our next steps while we drove from her home.
“What do you think?” Sadness hung on me from Jacki and I needed to focus on something active.
“Let’s head back to Vegas,” Liz declared. “We can review what we have.”
I concurred, though of course, directed Liz to the nearest coffee dispensing establishment, a Dunkin Donuts this time.
“Let’s do some internet sleuthing and then review the information Selina provided,” I suggested once we were back on the road for our four-and-a-half-hour drive home. Liz agreed and explained the Audi’s awesome wifi hotspot capability.
I googled “Juni Los Angeles” and frowned at the screen.
“What?” Liz glanced over at me.
“Nothing, that’s what. Absolutely nothing of use. The big goose egg. Nada.” I was trying to think of another expression for nothing when Liz laughed.
“No more caffeine for you.”
“Am I a little hyper?”
“Yeah, I’d say so.” Liz paused. “It really is weird how there’s nothing on Juni No-Last-Name. Even if she decided to drop off the grid, you can’t erase your past like that. Unless she really was in the witness protection program.”
Or she was a vampire, I silently added.
“What is it? You’ve got this weird expression on your face. I noticed it last time we talked about her having no history.” Liz narrowed her eyes at me. “Spill it.”
CHAPTER SIX
I widened my eyes in a parody of innocence. “I have no idea what you’re talking about.” I broke eye contact. I was not about to tell Liz I thought Juni was a vampire.
“Fine. Keep your little secret,” Liz said, her tone light, but with an undercurrent of something darker.
“I agree it’s weird that she truly seems to have popped in and out of existence,” I repeated what Selina had said earlier. “An alternative explanation is that her first name is fake too.”
“Hmm. That would make sense. And with no good pictures to run a google image search on, that would be an effective way for her to mask her history,” Liz agreed. “Where does that leave us then?”
“Let’s take a look at Roger Miller’s social media accounts,” I suggested and was already typing away on the laptop. A quick scroll through his Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram accounts confirmed the mother’s reports. “He really was in love – and really depressed and guilty after the accident.”
“Guess he shouldn’t have been driving drunk,” Liz snapped.
“Harsh, Liz. He was a dumb kid who made a mistake. You never made a mistake before?”
Liz lifted a single shoulder dismissively. “This isn’t about me.”
“That’s true,” I responded and closed the open browser tab. “Let’s review what Selina gave us,” I changed the subject.
The miles passed by in a blur (except for a single bathroom break, of course) as we reviewed each of the fi
les. While watching Roger’s Facebook Live video again, I had that same sense of déjà vu hearing the firecracker noise and made a slight grunt of irritation.
“What?”
“I don’t know. There’s something about that popping noise that I can’t place and I know that I should be able to.” Frustration was audible in my voice.
“You had the same reaction with Chad’s video?”
“I did.” I scrunched up my face trying to place the noise. I sighed loudly and slumped in the seat. “This is ridiculous.”
Liz laughed. “Don’t be so hard on yourself. Quit thinking about it and maybe it’ll come to you.”
“What do you think about Selina’s conclusion that Juni’s disappearance and the murder aren’t related?”
“It could be a coincidence,” Liz spoke slowly, thinking. “But. It seems like too big an event NOT to be connected. On the other hand, if it is connected, I’m having a hard time seeing how.”
“Maybe Juni faked her death with the plan to come back and kill Roger when the heat had died down,” I suggested my outlandish explanation with a giggle.
“Oh, I’m sure that’s it,” Liz agreed with a laugh. Soon we were both giggling at the ridiculousness of the idea. Clearly, she was right and I’d had too much caffeine!
After that, we sang along to the radio and made idle chitchat, letting our brains percolate with the information we’d gathered. Liz pulled into the television station parking lot and dropped me next to my car.
“I’ll check in with you after my show.”
“Give me a few more hours to get some sleep,” I requested with a lopsided smile. “When I crash from the caffeine, it ain’t gonna be pretty.”
“Okay, get back to me when you’re awake. We’ll talk more about our next steps.” She glanced at her watch. “I’m off to catch a few winks myself.”
“Sounds good,” I agreed and Liz drove off. I sat in my car for a moment. It wouldn’t be dawn for a few hours, so I took a chance and texted Evie.
You home?
Sure. Isn’t this a bit early for you?
I have some questions, best done in person.
Uh-oh. Everything okay.
With me, yes. I need your help with something.
Come on over.
I drove towards the Arts District and Evie’s condo. A parking spot opened up directly in front of the building as I passed through the final light and I zipped the Miata into the space. The front desk attendant had apparently been alerted that I was coming. When I showed him my ID, he didn’t call Evie to let her know I’d arrived and instead waved me through to the elevators.
The ping of the elevator door sounded loud in the early morning silence when it opened on Evie’s floor. I saw her door was slightly propped open; I knocked as quietly as I could.
“I’m coming in, Evie.”
“Welcome!” was her response from around the corner in the condo.
I closed the door behind me and had taken only a few steps when both my phone and Evie’s dinged with incoming text messages. She was faster than me at checking and laughed. “It’s Catherine. She wants to know if she can come over.”
I confirmed that was the text I received and responded yes. A slight knock on the door followed almost immediately. I opened it to Catherine’s wide smile.
“I heard the elevator and then your voice. I figured it must be something interesting.”
“I know why Evie’s up, but why are you?”
“I was up early for a production starting today. On-call in case of any problems,” Catherine explained, long blond hair pulled up in a ponytail. She closed and locked the door behind her. As the only human in the room, security was more of an issue for her than us.
Soon we were seated on Evie’s couch, me marveling as I always did about her fabulous view of the city. The women turned to me.
“What’s going on?” Evie asked, blue eyes curious.
I brought them up to speed about the two murders and my trip to LA with Liz Addison. Evie was frowning before I could finish.
“I’m almost 100% certain there was no vampire in Vegas named Juni,” she asserted. “Now, if you’re right that she was using an entirely faked name, there’s less certainty. Although I haven’t heard anything about any vampires vanishing either. Of course, we don’t check in and out of the city, so it would be possible for her to come and go if she’s from here. I have no idea about LA. I can check with my people.” She sent a quick text. “Show me her picture.”
Evie and Catherine chatted while I turned on the laptop and brought up the half-profile image of our missing, presumed dead, woman, maybe vampire, Juni.
Evie frowned at the picture. “She doesn’t look familiar at all.” Her phone beeped with an incoming text and she glanced down. “Nobody fitting the description missing in LA, either. Probably not a vampire. Most likely just a drunk guy who is misremembering his evening.”
Disappointment surged through me. I didn’t know why I wanted Juni to be a vampire so badly. Maybe because then there might be some motive for Roger’s murder? Although that wouldn’t explain Chad’s murder.
“Earth to Mia,” Catherine said with a laugh, waving her hand in front of my face. I refocused on my friends.
“Sorry, guys. It just seemed important to me that Juni was a vampire. I really don’t know why.”
“Do you want to go through the rest of your material? Maybe Catherine and I will see something that you and Liz missed.”
I thanked her for the offer and we methodically moved through each of the documents. The autopsy report confirmed suffocation, like we expected with Chad’s forthcoming report, but no evidence on the body of how. No strangulation marks on the neck, for example.
The interviews of family and friends were the typical, I can’t believe this happened to him, type of responses. We found it interesting how few people mentioned Juni.
Then we reached the last piece of evidence we had – the Facebook Live video. Between seeing Chad’s in real time, and the multiple viewings of Roger’s, I no longer wanted to watch. I faced my head away and tilted the screen more toward Catherine and Evie.
“Do you guys hear that popping noise? What is that?” Roger’s words, so eerily similar to Chad’s, pierced my heart. These poor young men, snuffed out before their lives had really even started.
I bolted upright just as Evie shouted.
“I know what that is!”
She and I faced each other and simultaneously exclaimed, “Djinn!”
Catherine looked back and forth between us, clearly not following. But, we’d figured it out. I sat back down and patted Catherine’s knee, smiling at Evie.
“It’s been bothering me since I first watched Chad’s Facebook Live video. That popping noise, so much like firecrackers, sounded familiar. I just couldn’t place it. And each time I watched Roger’s, the same. Now I know.”
“The murderer is a djinn,” Evie added, which increased Catherine’s confusion.
“A djinn is better known as a genie,” I explained.
“How do you know that noise is from a genie?”
“If a djinn is angry enough, and this one must be to want to kill people, they create a popping noise that is a physical manifestation of that anger,” Evie said.
“That means that even though I was wrong about her being a vampire, I was also probably right about Juni,” I added. Catherine looked confused again.
“A djinn is an elemental being. When one dies, it reverts back to its element. If Juni was stabbed by the metal of the guardrail through the heart, that would certainly have killed her.” I felt a moment of sadness at the death of the immortal, but not invincible, being.
“And since she would have reverted back to her elemental nature, there would be no evidence of her in the car.”
The three of us considered the possibilities.
“How do you think that’s connected to the murders?” Evie asked.
“Since the first murder took place in LA, the djinn could be there. I don’t know anyone to ask. We should operate on the assumption that the djinn could be in either city and travelled back and forth,” I finished.
“Do you think this djinn will kill anyone else?” Catherine asked in a small voice.
“Since we don’t know the motive behind the murders, I think we should assume it’s likely,” I answered grimly. “Even if the first murder is related to Juni’s death, that doesn’t explain Chad.”
“He has zero connection to the paranormal as far as I know,” Catherine added.
We pondered this inconsistency.
“There is a possibility,” Evie said as she stood and walked toward the sliding glass doors leading to her balcony. She stopped and stared out into the dark. “I may be misremembering my elemental being knowledge, but aren’t many djinn born as twins?”
I gasped. “Oh, my goodness. You might be on to something!” I stood as well and paced back and forth in front of the couch while I worked through this new angle. “If Juni had a twin, that djinn could be our killer. How do we find her? Or him?”
Evie frowned. “I think the twins are usually same-sex, but honestly, I don’t really know. I think, either way, we’ll have a heck of a time finding a djinn that probably doesn’t want to be found.”
“Why?” Catherine asked.
“Oh, djinn are fun,” Evie answered with a laugh.
I explained further. “They can shape shift, fly, and become invisible.”
“Ah, those would make it difficult,” Catherine agreed and the three of us chuckled. “What do you want to do?”
“I want to talk to Detective Dawson,” I blurted out.
Catherine arched an eyebrow. “Jacob?”
Evie looked confused. “Who?
“Detective Jacob Dawson is investigating Chad’s murder,” Catherine explained to Evie.
“Is he…like us?” Evie asked.
I shook my head no.
“Then why would we want to tell him anything? Would you tell him everything?”
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