by Jude Hardin
The characters and events portrayed in this book are fictitious. Any similarity to real persons, living or dead, is coincidental and not intended by the author.
Text copyright ©2012 by Jude Hardin
All rights reserved.
No part of this book may be reproduced, or stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without express written permission of the publisher.
Published by Thomas & Mercer
P.O. Box 400818
Las Vegas, NV 89140
ISBN-13: 9781612183114
ISBN-10: 1612183115
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty-One
Chapter Twenty-Two
Chapter Twenty-Three
Chapter Twenty-Four
Chapter Twenty-Five
Chapter Twenty-Six
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Chapter Thirty
Chapter Thirty-One
Chapter Thirty-Two
Chapter Thirty-Three
Chapter Thirty-Four
Chapter Thirty-Five
Chapter Thirty-Six
Chapter Thirty-Seven
Chapter Thirty-Eight
Chapter Thirty-Nine
Chapter Forty
Chapter Forty-One
Chapter Forty-Two
Chapter Forty-Three
Chapter Forty-Four
Chapter Forty-Five
Chapter Forty-Six
About the Author
Anyone who says they’re not afraid of death has probably never stared it straight in the eye. They’ve probably never had a knife held to their throat, or the barrel of a revolver pressed against their forehead. They’ve probably never been pinned against the bulkhead of a plummeting airplane.
Those were my thoughts as I headed south on Florida State Road 21, toward a little town called Melrose and a little seafood restaurant called Blue Water Bay.
On the radio, some author I’d never heard of promoted some book she wrote about coping with mortality. She claimed to be completely unafraid of death herself. When the time came, she said, she would embrace it with passion.
I wondered how passionate she would be if a hungry tiger entered the studio and started gnawing on her face.
I switched off the radio. Embrace it with passion, my ass. Rule #10 in Nicholas Colt’s Philosophy of Life: Do not go gentle into that good night.
I stole rule #10 from a poet named Dylan Thomas.
It was Fat Tuesday, Mardi Gras, and I was meeting an old friend named Donna Wahl—Prescott now, I reminded myself—for cocktails and dinner. Donna had something important she wanted to talk to me about.
I still had several miles to go when my cell phone trilled.
I picked up. “This is Nicholas Colt.”
“Hey, Daddy.”
It was Brittney, my adopted daughter. She had been with my wife, Juliet, and me for nearly three years, and my heart still melted every time she called me Daddy.
“Hi, sweetheart,” I said. “How was school?”
“School sucks. I can’t wait to be done with it and start college in the fall.”
You can never convince a seventeen-year-old how great it is to be seventeen. I skipped the lecture and said, “You’re almost done. Hey, I thought you had that thing at the skating rink tonight.”
“That’s why I called. I have a flat tire.”
“Where are you?”
“On Paradise. A guy helped me push the car into Walmart’s parking lot.”
“I’m about thirty miles the other direction. Did you call the auto club?”
“No.”
“They’ll change the tire for you. But listen, I don’t want you driving around on that little emergency spare. Once they change it, go straight home. We’ll get your tire fixed tomorrow.”
Silence.
“Brit?”
“OK,” she said, noticeably irritated at the thought of being without transportation for an entire evening.
“I’ll be home around nine or nine thirty,” I said. “See you then.”
“Bye.”
We disconnected. I made a mental note to call her in an hour to make sure she arrived home safely.
I steered into the parking lot of Blue Water Bay. I parked and walked inside, my hands fisted in the pockets of my leather jacket. Donna was waiting at the bar. She stood and greeted me with a hug.
“Cold as hell out there,” I said.
“Well, let’s see what we can do about getting you warmed up.”
I sat beside her and ordered an Old Fitz on the rocks. I took a sip, felt a trail of fire from the tip of my tongue to the deepest part of my stomach.
“Better?” she asked.
“Yeah. Can I get you another one of those?” I gestured toward her martini glass.
“Actually, I’m ready for dinner if you are.”
“OK.”
We settled up at the bar and walked to the dining room entrance where a hostess led us to our table. Donna was three years younger than me, but at forty-five she still looked great in tight black pants and a cranberry sweater. Her hair was shoulder length and expensively dyed, and she might have gotten a nose job at some point. We sat and opened our menus.
“I heard you got married,” Donna said.
“I did. After I lost Susan, I said never again. But I guess the old saying is true.”
“Who is she?”
“Her name’s Juliet. She’s from the Philippines. She’s a nurse.”
I pulled my wallet out and showed Donna my family portrait. She asked about Brittney and I told her the story.
“How’s the writing going?” I said. Donna wrote true crime books and magazine stories.
“Tough to sell anything right now. I’m thinking about getting a new agent.”
A muscular waiter with a military buzz cut and fake diamond earrings introduced himself as Brian and asked if he could get us anything to drink. We ordered another round and some crab nachos. I remembered they were Donna’s favorite.
She closed her menu and took a sip from her water glass. “I know you’re probably wondering why I wanted you to meet me here. It’s about my brother, Derek. He’s been missing for over fourteen months.”
“Missing from where?”
“He’s a police officer in a little town in Tennessee called Black Creek. He went on a call a year ago Thanksgiving, a domestic disturbance, and then just disappeared. They found his car parked at the curb outside the address he was called to, but no Derek. He just vanished. Without a trace, as they say.”
“Any signs of foul play?”
“Plenty. There were two bodies in the dining room, the elderly woman who lived in the house and her widowed daughter-in-law. The elderly woman’s husband and their twenty-seven-year-old grandson are also missing. They were all recently declared legally dead, but I can’t accept that. I know in my heart Derek is still alive.”
“Any suspects in the murder case?”
“Not
really, although the police found some DNA at the scene that didn’t belong to Derek or any of the family there. The couple didn’t have any money to speak of, no big insurance policies. I was just wondering—”
“If I would go up there and take a look around?”
“Yes. It would mean a lot to me. Derek is my only living relative, and I—”
She broke then. She pulled a miniature package of tissues from her purse, pinched a few from the slit in the plastic wrapper, and used them to dab the tears from her eyes.
Brian arrived with our drinks and appetizer and took our dinner order. By the time he walked away, Donna seemed to have regained her composure.
“I’m sorry,” she said.
“No need to be. Listen, Donna, I would love to help you out, but I’m not doing the private eye thing anymore. I don’t even have a license. I let it go inactive.”
“So what are you doing now?”
“I put a little band together. We have a house gig at a club in Jacksonville.”
She was still clutching her tissue, which was now twisted and resembled a short and skinny length of rope. She pulled the speared olives from her drink and downed the remaining vodka in a single gulp.
“Good for you,” she said.
Brian delivered our food. Donna and I relaxed and ate and drank and talked about some of the good times we’d had together a long time ago. The blackened fish was as delicious as any I’d ever eaten. I was about to take my last bite when the phone in my pocket vibrated.
The caller ID said Juliet. She was calling from her cell phone, but I knew she was still at work. I asked Donna to please excuse me.
“Hey, babe,” I said.
“Nicholas, have you heard from Brittney?”
“I talked to her a while ago. She had a flat tire on Paradise, and I told her to call the auto club. She should be home by now. I was fixing to call and check up on her.”
“A flat? Oh, great. I’ve left voice mail, and I’ve texted, but she’s not getting back to me. I know she was supposed to go skating tonight, but I’m starting to get worried. It’s not like her to not answer her phone.”
“I told her to go straight home after they changed the tire. That Camry has one of those little bicycle tires for a spare, and I didn’t want her out driving around on it. I’m sure she’s all right. Maybe she fell asleep. I’m leaving Melrose in a few minutes and heading home. I’ll give you a call when I get there.”
“Please do. How’s your date going?”
“I’ll tell you later. Love you.”
“Love you too. Bye.”
I tried Brittney’s number, got voice mail. I put the phone back in my pocket.
Brian asked if we wanted dessert, but neither of us did. He brought the check, and Donna insisted on paying. I left some cash on the table for a tip.
I walked Donna to her car. My hair was long enough to cover my ears and I had a full beard, but the February wind still chilled me to the marrow. It wasn’t supposed to be this cold in Florida.
“I know a guy in Nashville who might be able to help you,” I said. “Pete Strong. I met him at a convention a few years ago. Strong Investigations. Google it. You’ll find contact info on his website. Just tell him Nicholas Colt sent you.”
“I’ll do that. Thank you. God, it’s so horrible not knowing. I guess I’m expecting the worst, but I need some sort of closure. And those people who were murdered, just ghastly. Whoever did it mutilated them, you know. Carved crosses on them. I can’t imagine—”
“Wait,” I said. “What was that about crosses?”
“One of Derek’s fellow officers emailed me some pictures of the women who were murdered. From the autopsies. Oh, Nicholas, it was horrible. Both of them had what looked like slanted crucifixes carved into their foreheads…”
Donna kept talking, but my mind had drifted elsewhere.
Slanted crucifixes.
That changed everything.
Soon after we got married, Juliet and I bought a nice three-bedroom ranch in a nice subdivision. All the residents have nice yards and nice automobiles, and all the nice little doggies are kept on leashes studded with rhinestones. Many of the thirtysomethings take nice runs every morning, hoping to extend their nice little lives to a ripe old age. They have ski boats and iPhones and televisions bigger than their dining room tables. Everything is just really nice.
I hate it.
I used to live in a 1964 Airstream Safari travel trailer. I still have it, and it’s still parked on lot 27 at Joe’s Fish Camp. Joe is my best friend. He gives me a good rate. Sometimes I go out there by myself for a day or two, just to get away from all the niceness.
Our house is on the end of a cul-de-sac, and before I reached the driveway I could see Brittney’s car was not there. I drove back out of the subdivision and headed north on Paradise. Fifteen minutes later I steered into Walmart, thinking she might still be there waiting for her tire to be changed. She was not.
I continued north for a few more miles and hung a left into the parking lot of the skating rink. One of Brittney’s friends from school belonged to a roller derby team, and Brittney had planned to go watch her skate and maybe get involved in the sport herself. That was before the flat tire.
I cruised to the back of the building and saw Brittney’s Camry parked off in a corner. The windows were fogged. I parked, killed the engine, walked to the Camry, knocked on the driver’s side window. The radio was playing so I knew someone was in there. I knocked again, tried the handle but it was locked.
“Open the goddamn door,” I said.
Brittney wiped a peephole from the backseat and peered through with one eye. The locks clicked. She opened the door and stepped out. It was probably about thirty degrees outside, and there were beads of sweat on her forehead. The boy in the backseat sat slouched with his arms folded over his chest. He should have been more nervous than he looked, because I was about to yank him out of the car and modify his face in a very uncomplimentary fashion.
“You got about three seconds to disappear, partner,” I said.
“This is Justin,” Brittney said. “I was going to give him a ride home.”
“Justin needs to start walking, while he’s still able.”
“He lives up past a Hundred and Third Street. You can’t make him walk home in this weather. Come on, Dad. Be reasonable.”
“Brittney, do you have any idea how pissed I am right now? Do you?”
“It’s all right, Brit,” Justin said. He exited the other side of the car and started walking toward the supermarket next door. “I’ll call a cab.” He huffed away with his hands buried deep in the pockets of his jeans. He was about six feet tall with bushy brown hair and the beginnings of an immature beard.
I turned my attention back to Brittney. “Why didn’t you go home like I told you to?”
“I wanted to see Marla skate.”
“From the backseat of your car?”
She looked at her shoes. “Daddy, it’s cold. Can we just go home now?”
“Why didn’t you answer your phone?”
“The battery died. Please, I’m freezing out here.”
“All right. You go straight to the house. I’ll be right behind you.”
“You’re not going to yell at me when we get there, are you?”
“Yes. I am.”
“God.” She raked that beautiful long blonde hair of hers back with her fingers, climbed into the Camry, and started the engine.
On the way home, I called Juliet to let her know everything was all right.
I put on a black turtleneck, started a fire in the fireplace, and sat there in my leather recliner with a shot of Grand Marnier in a brandy snifter. I’d told Brittney that I wanted to talk to her when she got out of the shower. She came into the living room twenty minutes later wearing a pink terrycloth robe and a towel on her head. I had refilled my liquor glass by then.
Brittney pressed a wad of tissues against her right nostril. “You look like something ou
t of a movie,” she said. “Like some sort of weird lord of an English manor or something.”
“Is your nose bleeding again?”
“I’m all right.”
“How old was that guy?”
“Justin?”
“Yeah.”
“I don’t know.”
“I think you do know. Tell me.”
“He’s twenty-one, OK? He’s in college. A math major. He’s a very nice guy.”
“Are you having sex with him?”
“O. M. G. I cannot believe you just asked me that.”
“Well, I’m pretty sure he wasn’t tutoring you for a calculus test a while ago.”
“Are we done? Because I’m really tired and I have to get up early.”
“We’re done. I’m going to let your mom talk to you about this. In the meantime, you’re grounded.”
“Grounded? What are you talking about? Dad, I’m almost eighteen.”
“I don’t care if you’re almost eighty. As long as you’re living under this roof, you will follow the rules. One of those rules is to do what I specifically tell you to do, and I specifically told you—”
“So what does grounded mean?”
“It means no car for the next two weeks.”
“Two weeks? How am I supposed to get to school in the morning?”
“The same way you got there before you got your license.”
“I am not riding the bus.”
“That’s a shame, because it’s a really long walk.”
“This is so not fair!” She rose abruptly and stalked away to her bedroom, slamming the door behind her.
I got up and put another log on the fire. I stood there for a few minutes, wondering if the punishment I’d imposed was too harsh. Brittney was a smart girl, but she had been through a lot before Juliet and I adopted her. Hell and back was an understatement.
She had lived on the streets for a while, and a religious cult called the Harvest Angels had abducted her. I saved her minutes before they would have burned her at the stake.
She suffered from post-traumatic stress disorder, and her judgment wasn’t always up to snuff. Even for a seventeen-year-old. She was in counseling, and getting better, but I frequently had to remind myself that her thought processes weren’t always what most people would consider normal. I had to keep an extra-close eye on her.