Bad Moon Rising (12 page)

“When’s the last time you put anything in your stomach?”

He sighed. “I don’t remember.”

“You got food in your pantry or am I gonna have to go
shoppin’ for you again?”

“Somebody just shoot me and put me out of my misery.”

“Tyron is gonna shoot you if you ain’t careful.”

“Not if I shoot him first.”

“And end up in prison? What good is that gonna do you?”

“Enormous good, I assure you.”

“Um hmm. In prison with all them drug dealers and
murderers you put away. Wouldn’t they just smack their lips to see you comin’?
You wouldn’t last a week ‘fore somebody take you out with a shank.”

“You think too much, May.”

“One of us got to think, and lately I ain’t seen you
doin’ much of it.”

She pulled the car over to the curb outside J.D.’s
apartment. “You gonna talk to the judge and try to calm him down or do I need
to?”

“Be my guest. He likes you.”

As J.D. left the car, May looked around at Holly. “Keep
an eye on him. He’s sick. If he starts throwin’ up blood, get him to the
hospital and call me.”

Holly grimaced. “Blood?”

“Got him a bad, bad ulcer. I’d be surprised if he got
any linin’ left in his stomach at all. Put him to bed and feed him some Cream
of Wheat. I bought him some last week. And ice cream. Puts the fire out.”

Holly nodded and exited the car, dragging her suitcase
after her.

May rolled down her window and shouted at J.D. as he
mounted the steps to his apartment. “Go to bed, do you hear me? I’m cancelin’
your appointments for the next two days. Make him go to bed,” she directed
Holly, who nodded and lugged the suitcase onto the sidewalk.

As May merged her car into the traffic. Holly hauled
her suitcase up the steps and into the apartment where she hesitated on the
threshold, watching J.D. pick the Damascus folder up from the coffee table and
stare at it before turning his red-rimmed eyes on her. Again, he said nothing.
Just turned away and entered the bedroom. She heard him slap the folder onto
the desk.

Taking a deep breath, she stepped into the apartment
and closed the door. As she sat the suitcase down, Puddin’ slinked from under a
chair and made a mad dash across the floor and began to weave around her legs.

Every instinct in her warned that she should get the
hell out while the getting was good. Whatever philanthropy Damascus had earlier
shown her had changed into a barely contained disgust. What had changed since
he’d left her at two that morning with a smile of gratitude over her treatment
of his nephew? Granted, hangovers had a way of corrupting personality. But
there was more going on here than that. There was a mammoth-sized difference
between a fuzzy brain and the anger she could feel vibrating the stuffy, hot
air.

Holly cleared her throat, then shouted. “Do you want
Cream of Wheat first or ice cream?”

Nothing.

Cautious, she moved to the bedroom door. Damascus stood at his desk, the file open. His shirt was soaked with sweat.

“I’m sorry about your family.” she offered softly. “It’s
.
..
horrible. You have every right
to be angry.”

Finally, he turned. His eyes were hard and glassy. “I
wonder,” he sneered, “how a woman like you could fuck for a man like Tyron
Johnson.”

Slammed by the viciousness of his words, by the look
in his eyes, she took a step back. Her face burned.

He moved toward her, his hands fisted.

She backed into the living room, her gaze locked on
his. She wanted to run, but she had never been one to back down easily from an
unsettling situation. Only twice in her life had she ever fled—once from a
butcher who always smelled like blood, the next time from New Orleans. She had
run both times in fear for her life.

She was in no danger now. As furious as he was, Damascus wouldn’t hurt her. Not physically. But still, in that moment, she wanted to
escape from the pain in his eyes that unnerved her as much as his insults. The
unsettling hurt squeezed her heart, while his look of disgust invited all her
old self-loathing. Watching the revulsion glittering in his red eyes, Holly was
suddenly a hooker again. All the shame and humiliation she had attempted to
sweat out of her system these last few years boiled up inside her.

She set her heels and stopped retreating. Damascus moved close and ran one finger along the curve of her cheek, his mouth forming a
smile that made her ache to claw his face.

“So tell me, Miss Jones, what do you charge for a blow
job?”

“More than you can afford, Damascus,” she replied,
hating the trembling of her voice and the sting of tears rising to her eyes.

“You owe me three hundred bucks. If you get down on
your knees right now, we’ll call it even.”

She slapped him hard enough to drive him backward.
Enough to make fire explode on her palm. Enough to cause a small red bud of
blood to bloom at the corner of his lips. Shock flashed across his face, then
fury. Still, she didn’t back down. She advanced on him, her hands in shaking
knots, preparing to strike him again with fresh ferocity.

“There isn’t enough money in this world to make me go
down on you. You want the sordid details? Okay. I walked the streets for a
while until Tyron set me up in an apartment for his special clients who had
more money than brains. Clients who demanded a higher class of whore. The irony
was the big shots with their million-dollar bank accounts were just as
pitifully appalling as a crack head derelict who simply needed someone to comfort
him through his shakes.”

Holly turned away, swept the cat off the futon, and
moved to the door. She stopped, looked back into his dark eyes, and drew in a
shallow breath. “I’m sorry for you. Not just for what happened to your family,
but your lack of humanity. For a while, I actually believed you had a spark of
caring for someone other than yourself.”

He
slept for two days, rising
only long enough
to feed his aching stomach Cream of Wheat. It reminded him of the
Pablum Laura had spooned Billy and Lisa when they were babies. Billy had hated
it and mealtime was a fight of wills between him and his mother.

Eventually, J.D. had taken over the morning and evening
chore of feeding their son. Much to Laura’s dismay, he mixed applesauce into
the rice cereal and Billy had gobbled down the mush with great gusto. She had
been convinced that the sweet apples would rot out his nonexistent teeth and
doom the kid to a life of obesity. So they had argued hotly over the issue for
a week, until J.D., fed up with the tension, handed the chore back to Laura. He
watched as the baby spewed the sweet-free concoction back into her face. J.D.
had laughed. Laura had cried. But Billy continued to get his applesauce.

Christ, his brain felt tired. As fried as his body was
sore. In and out of sleep, he
was bombarded with images: the autopsy photos of his wife; the detailed report
of her murderer’s meticulous evisceration; the identically mutilated bodies of
Tyra Smith and Cherry Brown.

When the images of his wife’s autopsy photos weren’t
crashing in upon him, causing him to awake suddenly with his body shaking
uncontrollably. Holly Jones wormed her way into his thoughts, gnawing at his
conscience.

Why the hell should he give a damn that she had worked
for Tyron? Not simply give a damn, but be infuriated enough to verbally
assault her, to smear her past into her face and gloat over her look of
embarrassment and pain?

Why should this particular woman be any different from
the others he came face-to-face with every day? So what that she was beautiful
enough to stop traffic. Sure, he wouldn’t have minded spending a few hours
indulging his more base machismo fantasies between her long legs. It was the
idea that Tyron Johnson had had her that had set something off in him. As if
the son of a bitch had, once again, trespassed into J.D.’s personal and private
life. Stupid. Holly Jones was nothing to him. A stranger with pretty eyes and
an attitude that set his teeth on edge.

There were twenty calls on his message machine. Six
from Beverly and three from a very surly Patrick wanting to know why J.D. had
missed his soccer game the night before. Two from his irate landlord
threatening to evict him from his office space. One call from his mother,
something about a family dinner party she would like him to attend. A few
messages from angry clients he had left high and dry in court. Nothing from
Holly. What did he expect? She had every right to hate his guts.

After another force-feeding of Cream of Wheat, followed
by a generous portion of Rocky Road ice cream and three Tums, Damascus showered,
shaved, and rummaged through the clothes Holly had neatly folded. He dressed
himself in jeans and a chambray shirt, rolling the sleeves up his forearms.
Leaving the apartment, he glanced back at the bowl of water Holly had put down
for the cat.

After a twenty-minute walk in the suffocating
humidity, Damascus found his car where he had parked it in the casino’s remote
lot and headed for the police station. The deejay on the local radio station
warned his listeners of a brewing hurricane that was barreling its way up the
Gulf, straight for New Orleans. Hurricane Holly, the storm had been named. The
irony of it might have made J.D. laugh had it not made his stomach hurt.

Travis Killroy, the chief of police, was a lean,
sinewy man with hard, deep-set eyes the color of slate, and a complexion
riddled by old acne scars. One arm in a sling, he slouched at his desk, which
was crowded with untidy stacks of files, reports, and a scattering of plastic
foam cups partially filled with cold black coffee. A cigarette dangled from the
corner of his mouth, which clamped with irritation as J.D. entered his office
without knocking.

“What the fuck do you want?” he snarled at J.D. behind
a stream of cigarette smoke.

J.D. kicked the door closed. “What do you think I
want?”

Killroy sank back in the chair, his eyes narrowed.
“I
got nothing to say to you, Damascus.”

Bracing both hands on the desk, J.D. leaned toward the
chief, who was once his friend, back when they shared the desire to protect the
city from the scumbags of the world. “Think again, Travis. Unless you want me
to go public with your recent sick forays into perversion, you’ll spill your
guts over what you know about the murders of Tyra Smith and Cherry Brown.”

“You into blackmail now?”

“Why not?”

Killroy thumped cigarette ashes into a coffee cup. “We
got ourselves a copycat.”

“If you really believed that, this department wouldn’t
be burying these cases from the public.”

“I don’t intend on setting off hysteria again in this
city.”

“You and Jerry Costos know your asses are in a crack,
Travis. Gonzalez didn’t kill those hookers or my family, and now you know it.
You’ve always known it, but you cared more for your own fucking job than you
did for taking the time to find out the truth.”

Killroy rose from his chair, planted one hand on the
desk, and thrust his face into J.D.’s. “Then tell me why the killings suddenly
stopped after we arrested Gonzalez.”

“Maybe he hotfooted it out of state. Or maybe he’s
playing a game with you. Don’t you find it a touch ironic that Tyra was murdered
around the same time that Gonzalez was executed? The sick son of a bitch is
thumbing his nose at you.”

Killroy slammed his fist against the desk hard enough
to cause a cup to tip over, spilling coffee to the floor. The dents in his face
turned deep purple. “We had DNA evidence to link Gonzalez to that hooker.”

“One hooker.”

“He was seen with two other victims before they were
killed.”

“Circumstantial.”

“His semen in her wasn’t circumstantial.”

“You tell me why he would have left that kind of evidence
inside her when he was so damn meticulous with the others. It doesn’t fit.
Travis. He didn’t have intercourse with the other victims before he killed
them.”

“Well, maybe this particular piece of ass turned him
on.”

“Christ. You’ve turned into a dick.”

Killroy kicked his desk, then dropped again into his
chair. He took a deep, steadying breath, and averted his eyes. “He had a sheet
of priors as long as my leg. Solicitation. Battery. Shit, the creep was on
probation for child molestation.”

“And he was convenient.”

Raking one hand through his thinning, ginger-colored
hair, Killroy sighed. His gaze, less angry and more sympathetic, swung back to
J.D.’s. “I know what you’re thinking. Hell, we all know what you’re thinking.
But Tyron Johnson had an alibi during the times of the murders. Specifically
your family’s murders.”

“Marcus DiAngelo.” J.D. gave a dry laugh. “As if anyone
with intelligence would believe that bastard.”

“Look. You got every right to hate that scumbag. He’s
trash. Bad news. But for a minute, just for a minute, think with your head and
not with your heart. You once had the best damn instincts of any prosecutor in
this state. Hell, in the entire country. But you’ve allowed your perspective
to become clouded by your grief and hate for Johnson.”

Killroy tapped his temple with one finger. “Think like
the brilliant attorney you once were and less like a man who was forced to bury
his wife and kids. If you can do that, you’ll understand why Costos did what he
did.”

More quietly, he added, “Pull it together, pal. You’re
losing it. This shit is gonna kill you if you don’t.”

Shoving away from the desk, his gaze still locked on
Killroy’s, J.D. shook his head. “I recall a time when our families got together
for Sunday picnics. While Laura and Mary Ann pushed the kids on swings, you and
I would share our ideals of justice and bringing the criminal element in this
city to its knees. So what the hell happened to you? You’re consorting with
hookers and turning a blind eye to the truth.”

J.D. turned for the door.

“As a friend I’m advising you, Damascus. Stay out of
this. And stay the hell away from Johnson.”

J.D. looked back, into the eyes of a man he once would
have trusted with his life. “You’re no friend of mine, Killroy. Not anymore.”

The approaching hurricane has turned the night air
dense, the clouds scuttling over the moon straight above. It peeks out at him
occasionally, a pale, pockmarked face that appears to wink and smile. He likes
the moon. It fills him with power. Someday, if ever NASA allows a civilian to
buy a place on a rocket ship, he is going to go there. He imagines himself
standing on the barren landscape, waving back at Mother Earth. He will feel
like God. More than he already does.

Thanks to the impending storm—three days out, according
to the storm trackers—the tourists have vacated the city in droves.
Bumper-to-bumper, horns blowing as they move north up Interstate 10. Running
like cowards. Unlike him, they can’t appreciate the dynamics of such intense
and incredible power as the storm will provide. Already he can feel it on his
skin, the ozone titillating his nerve endings like an aphrodisiac. He becomes
one with the electricity, floating along, through the shadows, humming to
himself.

He had not planned to kill again for a while. But the
tall blonde intrigues him. He has followed her since midnight, from street to
street, watching her pause only briefly to speak with other whores. They don’t
know her. He can tell by the way they greet her, then watch her as she walks
away. She’s new to the district.

He lets her round a corner, disappearing from the
streetlight, then counts to twenty. Slowly. Holding his breath as he does so,
his eyes closed. He can hold his breath for as long as two minutes. He has
trained himself to do so. Control over a person’s own body is imperative. One
never knows when the body will be called upon to do something miraculous.
Godlike.

Twenty. Releasing his breath, he shifts the pack on
his back and pushes his bike away from the curb. He glides through the shadows
like a hawk, the wind in his face. The whores on the street corner call to him,
but he ignores them. They aren’t the kind of prey that interests him at that
moment. Hunkering low over the handlebars, he streaks around the corner, his
mental wings outstretched, soaring. The tires hum upon the brick pavement.

As he passes beneath a streetlight, his shadow looms
beside him, monstrous. Back into the dark, he slows down until he sees the
blonde ahead. He drifts into an alley and parks behind a Dumpster, watching as
she lights a cigarette.

A car creeps toward her. The window rolls down. She
takes a step back and shakes her head. The driver pushes and she turns away and
continues walking. The car follows and he can hear the man’s voice in an
insulting tone as he waves money at her. She says something back, then tosses
her cigarette through the open window, into his lap. The car tires squeal on
the pavement as the driver takes off, shouting something foul at her. She
shoots him the finger.

His heart pounds. His scalp sweats. This one isn’t easily
intimidated. It might take special measures to frighten her. She might even
fight him. Ah, but the ultimate outcome would be all the sweeter. The
satisfaction of breaking her mentally all the more exhilarating. She might
prove to be more gratifying than Melissa, who is beginning to bore him. At
first, her fear had exhilarated him, but over the past few days she has become
as emotionless as a storefront dummy, staring at him with lifeless—fearless—eyes.
She didn’t so much as flinch when he waved a knife beneath her nose and told
her in detail what he would eventually do to her.

He waits as the blonde disappears through the darkness,
then pushes off on the bike, turning his face into the sudden blast of electric
wind that barrels down the street, kicking up litter so it swirls like dancing
aberrations in the air.

The unexpected current of hot wind tunneling down the
narrow street brought Holly to a stop. She ducked her head against the sting of
driving grit and the swirl of paper scraps. The wind felt hot and smelled rank
with the stink of river mud.

She waited until the gust had passed, then moved on
along the route that she remembered too well. She would never forget it. It had
all come rushing back to her like a bad dream, infusing her with a filth that
would later send her to the shower to attempt to scrub away the sordid
memories. To no avail, of course. She could scour her flesh down to the bone,
but there would never be a way to cleanse the past from her brain. Branson, and
the few places she had settled in those years after she had escaped New Orleans, had only brought her brief emotional respite. A shrink might call it denial.
And he would be right.