Dark Horse (A Jim Knighthorse Novel) (20 page)

My door opened, and in came defense attorney
Charlie Brown and his faithful assistant Mary Cho. Charlie was bald
as ever and Mary Cho’s skirt still hung just above her knees. Nice
knees. I looked up at her; she was frowning.

Caught again.

Charlie walked over and dropped an envelope
on my desktop. The kitten pounced on the envelope. Charlie jumped
back, surprised as hell that something on my desk actually moved.
He straightened his tie and cleared his throat, tried his best to
look venerable. When he spoke, he kept his eye on the feline just
in case it should make an attempt on his jugular.

“A bonus,” he said to me. “For catching the
bad guy.”

I looked at the envelope, which at the moment
was feeling the unholy wrath of the furry critter. “You don’t give
a shit about the bad guy. Your client’s free, and that’s all that
matters to you.”

“I do give a shit, and I resent you saying
that. That’s slander.”

“So sue me. Know any good attorneys?”

“Fuck you, Knighthorse. If you quit being
such a hardass, I might throw you some more cases, seeing as you
performed above expectations on this one.”

“Flattery will get you nowhere, Charlie,” I
said.

He sighed. “Charles.”

I picked up the kitten and thrust it toward
the attorney; he jumped back, stepping on his assistant’s toes, who
stifled a scream.

I said, “Would you like to hold him,
Charlie?”

“No, godammit. And it’s Charlie. I mean
Charles. Fuck.” He turned and left.

“Assistant Cho, how about you: would you like
to pet my kitty?”

“You’re a pig.”

When they were gone, I brought the kitten to
my face and kissed his little wet nose. “What did I say?”

* * *

Cat Peterson left her abusive husband and she
and her daughter moved in with her sister in a modest Spanish-style
home in a city called Temecula, in a neighboring county called
Riverside, a county made popular in many a Perry Mason novel. I
pulled up in front of the house and, kitten in hand, walked up to
the front door and rang the bell. As I waited, the kitten made
every effort to kill my nose.

“It’s been fun having you around,” I said to
him. “But you’re going to grow up with a little girl now. You take
good care of her, okay?”

He gnawed on my thumb, purring.

The door opened and once again I found myself
staring down at little Alyssa.

“Hi,” she said.

“Hi,” I said.

“Tinker Bell ran away.”

“I know.”

“You know?”

I bent down and handed her the kitten. She
gasped, then ripped the little booger from my fingers and hugged it
with everything she had. The kitten, perhaps realizing that it had
met its energetic match, submitted to the unabashed love. She
twirled him around and around and dashed inside the house screaming
for her mother to look at Tinker Bell Jr.

If ever a kitten was destined to be gay, it
was Tinker Bell Jr. Of course, there’s nothing wrong with that.

Footsteps echoed along the tiled entryway,
and Cat Peterson appeared in the doorway. She was smiling, shaking
her head.

“How did you know her cat ran away?” she
asked me, leaning a shoulder against the doorframe. There was a
hint of a smile on her face.

“Might be better if you didn’t know.”

She nodded, suddenly somber. “I see.”

I was motionless; she wasn’t looking at me.
Suddenly, and with surprising speed, she threw herself into my arms
and thanked me over and over again for finding her daughter’s
killer. She didn’t let go and I let her hold me and cry on me, and
we stood like that for a long, long time.

64.

It was a rare spring storm.

Cindy and I were sitting together on my sofa,
my arm around her shoulders, looking out through my open patio
doors. The rain was coming down steadily and hard, drumming on my
glass patio table. In the distance, above the rooftop of the
restaurants, the sky was slate gray, low and ominous.

“You like this kind of weather,” said
Cindy.

“Yes.”

“Why?”

“It’s different. Don’t you ever get tired of
the never-ending sunny days?”

“No.”

“Don’t you ever think that it’s nice for the
land to replenish itself?”

“Only when you bring it up.”

“Wanna walk in the rain?” I asked.

“I thought your leg hurt in this kind of
weather.”

“It does.”

“But it’s nothing like the hurt you’ve been
putting it through these past few weeks,” she said.

“I was blinded to the pain,” I said,
“pursuing an old dream.”

“You’re not blinded now?”

“No,” I said. “The blinders are off. And now
my leg just hurts like hell.”

“What about your dream?”

“The dream was there for the taking. I didn’t
take it.”

“Why?”

“People change. Dreams change. Life goes on.
If I really wanted it, I would pursue it.”

“So you don’t really want it? Is that because
of me? God, I feel horrible.”

“Not because of you. When I was twenty-two, I
wanted to prove I could play in the NFL. I wanted to prove I was
tough enough. I had no other goals in life, no other conceivable
ambition. Then, suddenly, I was forced to rethink and refocus my
life, and I discovered that I could live without playing
football.”

“But you’ve always been...bitter towards
being a detective. Because it was something your father did. It was
something that caused him not to be in your life when you were
growing up.”

“Father runs a big agency. I am determined
never to be that big. But you’re right, I was bitter towards my
job. It was not my first choice. But then something happened.”

“You discovered you were good at detecting,”
she said. “Damn good.”

“Yes.”

“What about proving yourself in the NFL?”

“Maybe some things are better left
unproven.”

“But you think you could have made it?”

“In a heartbeat.” I said. “Wanna go for that
walk?”

“Okay.”

I knew she didn’t want to get wet, but she
did it for me. We got our coats on. I grabbed an umbrella for her.
I didn’t mind getting wet.

Outside, in the rain, we moved slowly along
Main Street. The shops and stores were all open, and a trickle of
tourists, looking confused at this unprecedented Southern
California weather, moved past us. I heard one of them say: “We can
get rain at home.”

“Can’t please everyone,” I said to Cindy.

“No.”

“Want some chocolate?” I asked.

“Mmm, sounds yummy.”

We ducked into The Chocolatiers. A massive
peanut butter cup for me and a sugar-free almond rocca for
Cindy.

“Sugar-free?” I asked, when we stepped
outside again.

“You can’t taste the difference.”

“Sure.”

“Plus it’s half the calories.”

We sat down on a bench under an awning and
ate our chocolate and watched the rain.

“How’s Derrick doing?” asked Cindy.

“His family is moving east. Hard to have a
normal life after being accused of murder. Kid will be looked at
differently, no matter how innocent he is. UCLA is interested in
giving him a scholarship.”

“Did you have anything to do with that?”

“I happen to know a few people there.”

“So your work here is done?”

I looked away, inhaling deeply.

She reached out and placed her hand on top of
mine. It was warm and comforting.

“You’re thinking of your mother,” she
said.

I kept looking away. “Her killer is still out
there.”

The rain continued to fall. She continued
holding my hand. She squeezed it.

“You’re going to find him,” she said. It
wasn’t a question.

“I don’t know what I will do to him when I
find him.”

“Does that worry you?” she asked.

“No,” I said.

“Then it doesn’t worry me.”

65.

Jack was drinking a non-steaming cup of
coffee. I was drinking a bubbling Coke. The dining room was empty.
A very large teenage boy was filling some straw containers behind
the counter. Minutes before closing.

I was toying with the scrap of folded
paper.

“One thing I don’t get,” I said, turning the
paper over in my fingers, “is why you always blow on your coffee. I
mean, couldn’t you just snap your fingers and it would be instantly
cool? Or, a better question: how is it even possible that God could
burn his lips?”

“That’s more than one thing,” said Jack.

“You’re not going to answer, are you?”

He drank more of his coffee. His eyes were
brownish, maybe with a touch of green. Maybe. What the hell did I
know? I was colorblind.

“Could you heal me of my colorblindness?” I
asked.

“Heal yourself.”

“Heal myself?”

“Sure. I gave you a big brain for a
reason.”

“They say we’re only using ninety percent,” I
said.

“If that much.”

We were silent some more. I was thinking
about my big brain...surely mine was bigger than most, since I was
always being told I had a big head. Or were they referring to
something else? I held up the folded piece of paper.

“I’m going to open this now,” I said.

“Go ahead.”

“I’ve wanted to for quite sometime.”

“I’m sure you did, but you didn’t.”

“No,” I said.

“Why?”

“Because I wanted to find the answer
myself.”

“And did you?”

“Yes.”

The kid behind the counter walked over to us
and told us we had five minutes. I said sure. Jack didn’t say
anything. And when the kid was gone, I unfolded the paper and
looked down at the single word: Dana.

“Lucky guess,” I said.

Jack laughed.

“So why did you come to me,” I said. “Why are
you here now?”

“You asked me here.”

“Fine. Now what do I do with you?”

“Whatever you want.”

“I’m thinking about writing a book.”

“Good for you,” said Jack.

“It’s going to be about this case.”

“Would make a good book,” said Jack.

“I want to put you in it,” I said.

“I’m honored.”

“That is why you came to me, right?”

“That is for you to decide.”

We were silent some more. The kid behind the
counter was turning off the lights, banging stuff loudly so we’d
get the hint.

“I feel we’ve only scratched the surface
here,” I said.

“That’s why there’s something called
sequels.”

“You mentioned something earlier about loving
me.”

“I did.”

“So do you really love me?” I asked, a hell
of a strange question for one grown man to ask another grown man.
Especially a man as tough as myself.

He said, “More than you know, my son. More
than you know.” He reached out and put his hand on my hand.
Radiating warmth spread through me instantly. “I am with you
always. Remember that.”

Something caught in my throat. “Then why do I
feel so alone?”

“Do you feel alone now?”

“No,” I said. The lights went out, and we got
up together from the table. “No, I don’t.”

The End

Now available on Smashwords.com:

A Ghost Story

by

J.R. Rain

(read on for a sample)

1.

I stepped through the wall and into my
daughter’s bedroom.

She was sleeping contentedly on her side. It
was before dawn and the building was quiet. The curtains were open
and the sky was black beyond. If there were any stars, they were
lost to the L.A. smog. The curtains were covered with ponies, as
was most of the room. A plastic pony light switch, a pony bed lamp,
pony wallpaper and bedspread. Someday she would outgrow her
obsession with ponies, although I secretly hoped not.

A girl and her pony. It’s a beautiful
thing.

I stepped closer to my sleeping daughter, and
as I did so she shifted slightly towards me. She mewed like a
newborn kitten. Crimson light from her alarm clock splashed over
her delicate features, highlighting a slightly upturned nose and
impossibly big eyes. Sometimes when she slept her closed eyelids
fluttered and danced. But not tonight. Tonight she was sleeping
deeply, no doubt dreaming of sugar and spice and everything
nice.

Or of Barbies and boys and everything
in-between.

I wondered if she ever dreamed of me. I’m
sure she did at times. Were those dreams good or bad? Did she ever
wake up sad and missing her father?

Do you want her to wake up sad? I asked
myself.

No, I thought. I wanted her to wake up
rested, restored and full of peace.

I stepped away from the far wall and glided
over to the small chair in the corner of her room. We had made the
chair together one weekend, a father/daughter project for the
Girl’s Scouts. To her credit, she did most of the work.

I sat in it now, lowering my weightless body
into it, mimicking the act of sitting. Unsurprisingly, the chair
didn’t creak.

As I sat, my daughter rolled over in her
sleep, facing me. Her aura, usually blue and streaked with red
flames, often reacted to my presence, as it did now. The red flames
crackled and gravitated toward me like a pulsating static ball,
sensing me like I sensed it.

As I continued to sit, the lapping red flames
grew in intensity, snapping and licking the air like solar flares
on the surface of the sun. My daughter’s aura always reacted this
way to me. But only in sleep. Somehow her subconscious recognized,
or perhaps it was her soul. Or both. And from this subconscious
state, she would sometimes speak to me, as she did now.