Gunning For Angels (Fallen Angels Book 1) (4 page)

A jug fills drop by drop.

–Buddha

I won’t rest until I hunt down the degenerate that did this to you. 

The words echoed in his mind as Bud stood in the desert, looking down at a skull that had been bleached dry by the abrasive desert environment. The thought that anyone could think they had the right to kill another person always filled Bud with a steely determination. Bud was the hunter and the killer was now his prey.  

The forensic team was methodically digging, labeling and bagging evidence from the shallow desert grave.

The grave wasn’t a grave at all and wouldn’t have been found if Celia McCraw, grandmother of four, hadn’t overturned her ATV and landed nose to nose-socket with the skull. Bruised and bloody, Celia had refused to seek medical attention until long after the police arrived. She and her husband, Thomas, were still sitting on their ATVs, quietly talking as they watched the police work.

Bud walked the perimeter of police tape and markers that staked out the area where the bones had been found. The area was Agua Caliente and consisted of old mines and an extensive network of narrow washes and sandy trails. It wasn’t unusual to stumble onto a landscape of lava or an ancient Native American petroglyph, and the remote setting seemed custom-made for dumping bodies.

Bud observed each individual of the homicide team. It always struck him as an intricate choreographed dance production. Everyone had their part and played their roles to perfection. Photographers were the voyeuristic, anti-social peepers who used their cameras like barbed wire fencing to keep a barrier
between themselves and the world. Forensic specialists were the dark-edged academics who solved sinister puzzles in the safety of hidden laboratories. Police were the attention-seeking authority junkies arresting what they secretly desired to be – a rule-flouting member of Joe-Wicked-Public. 

Bud smiled to himself at his description of his own profession. Homicide detectives were the curious, unrelenting maggots munching their way through society’s rotting flesh to get to the
who
and the
why
and then to surgically excise the offending degenerate.

That’s on a good day.  

Bud felt the gathering of a million questions that would cut at his waking hours until he had his prey quarried and slumped behind a defense attorney. Bud imagined himself in the witness box, staring into the eyes of…

Who?

Bud tried to visualize the person but saw only a shadow of a person wearing a cheap suit and tie.

“Any thoughts?” Detective Jenson said as he walked to Bud’s side, smiling like they were at a Sunday ice cream social.

Bud pushed back his Stetson that protected him from the Arizona sun. “How you doin’, Jenson?”

“Never better. How’s Bunnie?”

“Bunnie’s Bunnie.”

Jenson laughed, a pleasant sound.

Bud eyed him curiously. His stylish pairings were a constant fascination. He wore sharply creased khaki slacks, a pink polo shirt and a salmon-colored stitch fedora set at a jaunty angle that only Jenson could pull off without getting his behind kicked up and down a mean Phoenix street.

Jenson was Bud’s partner and a shrewd detective. Underneath the silky exterior lay the heart of an expert marksman, an ex-Marine and a scathing intelligence that reveled in anyone who was blind enough to underestimate him.

Bud had never been one of those people.

A thought hit Bud and, with a sharp intake of breath, he bent to examine the skull.

“What?” Jenson gave him a keen look.

“Daniel Hargrove,” Bud said slowly, testing out the sound of it.

Jenson let out a low whistle as he eyed the skull. “Mister heart-in-a-box finally shows up. They never found the rest of him?”

“Found
is an interesting choice of words,” Bud said wryly, thinking about the day the carefully wrapped cardboard box had arrived at the station. They hadn’t
found
anything. The evidence that Daniel Hargrove had been brutally murdered had been mailed to police headquarters.

Daniel Hargrove had been a prominent Phoenix businessman and owner of a local bank who had gone missing over three years ago. It had graduated from a missing persons case to a homicide case when, three weeks after Daniel Hargrove’s family had reported him missing, someone had taken the liberty of mailing his heart, which had been meticulously cut out of his body, to the police. Bud was convinced the killer was a family member who stood to benefit from an unusually large life insurance policy.

“They found his Masonic ring in the left ventricle of the heart. Is that the top or bottom?” Jenson asked.

“Bottom.”

Jenson said, “The killer mails the victim’s heart to the police, now we have a body, insurance has to pay out, but - I wonder what it
means
? These things always mean something – even if the killer doesn’t realize it himself.”

“It was a big ring shoved into the biggest hole in the heart. My money is on the fact it was the path of least resistance.”

“After cutting a heart out of a man’s body, I find it hard to believe one would then take the path of least resistance,” Jenson said wryly.

Bud gave a humorless smile.   

Jenson continued, “As if that wasn’t enough, we also get the victim’s molar in the right atrium and his index finger in the right ventricle. Overkill, I’d say. Like the killer didn’t trust us to run DNA. Or thought we were idiots.”

“Killers always think the police are idiots. It’s one of our main advantages – being underestimated.”

“And our prime suspect still shacked up sweet as candy in a Scottsdale mansion.”

Bud rubbed his jaw, which throbbed with a sudden dull ache.  He reminded himself that he needed to make an appointment with his dentist.

They stood in silence, gazing at the skull. The sun was slipping low. A purple-pink glow was taking up residence in the west.

“I think it’s time to pay a visit to our favorite prime suspect,” Bud said as he turned and headed toward his truck.

“I’d wait till we get a firm I.D. on the body. You really want to stir up that hornet’s nest?” Jenson said, giving him a knowing look.  

“That bloodsu
cker is probably waiting for me,” Bud said, surprised at the emotion in his voice.

Driving towards North Scottsdale, Bud’s thoughts turned to his last meeting with the person that he was convinced had mailed him the package containing Daniel Hargrove’s heart.

At the memory of their last meeting, Bud felt a hot surge of anticipation in his gut. He relished the thought of picking up the scent of the trail that had left off colder than a corpse on ice. 

Sometimes I’ve believed as many as six impossible things before breakfast.

–
Lewis Carroll

Her heart thudding with fear, Enid slid into a cracked red vinyl booth of a clean but rundown diner that sat across the street from Jack’s office building. She had a perfect view of the entrance and was watching nervously for the police to show up. If
Jack Fox had called the police, her plan was to dart out the back of the restaurant and run. 

She couldn’t believe that she had actually
bit
Jack Fox! Until she felt her teeth chomping into his arm, she would
never
have believed that she was capable of doing such a thing. The rage that she had felt for him had caught her completely off guard. She had imagined their first meeting as awkward but civilized. She hadn’t expected that she would completely lose her cool and bite him like some rabid animal! 

After she ran out of the building, she’d spent ten hairy minutes hiding in an alley. Curiosity had gotten the better of her and she had decided to go to the diner where she could watch the entrance to his building.

“What can I get for you, young lady?” Mona Ruben was an attractively voluptuous woman in her early thirties. She wore a form- fitting uniform with a red apron that ended in a boisterous bow. Mona was to waitressing what a Flemish Baroque painter was to big chicks: she made it look good.

Enid shook her head, unsure if she had enough money for anything more than an orange juice. 

“How ‘bout some H2O to wet the whistle?” Mona plucked the menu off the table and handed it open-faced to Enid. “The huevos rancheros will make you miss your mama.”

Enid gave her a startled look.

Sensing she hit a chord, Mona smiled pleasantly, “Look it over. I’ll be back before you can cut a switch.”

Enid watched Mona disappear into the kitchen and dug into her backpack and pulled out an anemic wad of cash.  Frowning, she counted the bills. To her amazement, she had blown through the bulk of her money and didn’t have enough cash to pay for a meal – much less a decent place to stay the night. She bit her lip, wondering why she hadn’t waited the extra two days it would have taken her mother to cash her next paycheck. Her mother’s whiskey kitty would’ve been fat with cash in one of its many hiding places: a plastic baggy duct-taped to the back of the toilet, a mayonnaise jar under the sink, an envelope taped on the dirty blades of the lawn mower…

Or, or, or…

Enid sighed, wondering if her expertise at finding whiskey kitties would ever come in handy in the real world. Luckily, her mother performed her paranoid hiding sprees when she was nine-kites-to-the-dog-faced-wind, which resulted in what Enid dubbed whiskey kitty amnesia, which meant easy pickin’s with no explanations. Enid occasionally felt a twang of guilt but reminded herself that she mostly used the money for food and paying bills that her mother neglected.

And bus tickets.

“Ma
de the big decision?” Mona said.

Enid looked up with wide eyes, “I – uh –I’m sort of on a budget.”

Mona leaned in confidentially, “What’s the ceiling?”

“Five dollars and thirty-five cents.”

“You like heuvos rancheros?”

Enid looked sheepish. She didn’t want to admit she didn’t have enough money for whatever the heck a heuvos rancheros was.

Mona leaned in confidentially, “I don’t want to hurt his feelings but Cook whipped up a batch for me special, but all morning I been poppin’ wheelies on a Southern breeze.”

Enid’s forehead wrinkled, unsure.

“You’d be doing me a favor if you ate ‘em for me.”

Enid started to protest but Mona waved away her words and disappeared into the kitchen.

Enid’s embarrassment was overruled by her stomach, which was starting to sound like a NASCAR lineup.

Maybe if I pretend I’m waiting for a bus, I can sleep at the bus station.

If you can’t run with the dogs, don’t get off the porch.

–Southern Saying

After scrubbing his arm with soap and water and hoping that he wouldn’t contract rabies or some other flesh-eating disease from the crazy girl’s bite, Jack had returned to the office where Rachel was still reviewing the contract with Jeni. He had briefly contemplated filing a report with the police, but didn’t feel up to the hassle.

Once in the client office, he stood in front of the door that separated it from his private office. He hesitated, his scowl deepening. During the interview with Jeni, he had heard a noise coming from within his office and knew that there was trouble on the other side of the door, waiting for him. 

He opened the door and stepped in. Past the beat-up desk sat a well-worn leather couch. The couch was usually empty and inviting. Today, Petunia O’Donnell sat on the couch like a curled-up kitten ready to play…

Or claw.

At thirty-three, Petunia exuded an unmistakable, albeit slightly crude, sex appeal. Where Jeni was all tan long legs that reminded one of an impossibly smooth silk road that beckoned to be followed, Petunia was a dangerous combination of compact curves that, as recently as two weeks ago, had left Jack intoxicated with pleasure.

Jack couldn’t help but run his eyes over those oft-explored curves. In retaliation,
her
eyes devoured his body with self-assured ownership.

Petunia’s green eyes were accented with a masterful application of makeup, her shoulder-length red hair was lustrous and shining, and her lips were painted a
rich red that harkened back to a 1950s Hollywood siren. Her dress was black with a red cherry design that was cinched at the waist, and her black heels would, on any other woman, have been thought demure. Petunia, however, had the conjuring power to transform even the most demure dress into something vaguely naughty.

Jack didn’t try to hide his annoyance as he stripped off his jacket and threw it on a chair.

“I don’t like her,” Petunia purred.

“You don’t like anybody,” Jack retorted. He opened the desk drawer and grabbed his wallet. He frowned, hand scrabbling around the drawer, looking for his keys.

Petunia held up his keys. “I like
you
.”

“Keep it in your pants, Petunia,” Jack said curtly, shutting the drawer with a snap.

Undeterred, Petunia uncurled herself, slid off the couch and walked toward him. Even in stilettos, she walked softly, which gave her a stealthy approach that Jack found disconcerting.

“I miss you,” she whispered, leaning into him.

“It’s over,” Jack said brusquely, trying to ignore the sensation of her dimpled white hand on his chest.

“You
promised
you’d make me happy!”

Jack scowled, trying to ignore the memory of the day he
did
promise to make her happy.

Shit.

Petunia’s eyes glowered, “You
did
promise.”

It didn’t count – she knew that, didn’t she?

Jack compressed his lips, shifted uncomfortably.

“Take me to lunch,” Petunia demanded.

“Can’t afford your kind of lunch.”

“It’s on me,” Petunia stood on tiptoes and whispered into his ear. “Or under me, or behind me.”

Shivers ran down Jack’s spine, the purr of her voice echoed softly in his head. 

Jack’s mind flashed back to the first time he had seen Petunia. She had worn a form-fitting cobalt blue dress and looked more brilliant than the perfect Scottsdale sky that hung like a cathedral ceiling above the crowds at the Phoenix Open. Jack had been working a routine surveillance on a husband whose wife suspected him of cheating. The
husband was cheating – with Petunia.

Jack fixed the cheating husband in the crosshairs of
the lens of his camera and caught his breath when he saw Petunia licking sugar off the rim of a specialty drink. He had been instantly drawn to her X-rated eyes that gazed up at the sucker that he was there to bust.

The wife got the photos.  Not to mention the kids, the McMansion, the pool with the waterfall cascading over giant plastic rocks and a truckload of money.

Jack got Petunia.

Things were good – damned good – for over half a year.

Until the promise racket noise hit high decibels.

Uneasy at the feelings that Petunia was a master of invoking within him, Jack frowned and moved away from her. 

Petunia petulantly stamped her foot, “I’m here to hire you!”

Jack shot her a “yeah right” look.

Petunia tossed her hair and feigned a nonchalance that Jack knew she did not feel. “I think my husband’s cheating.”

“Your husband
is not the cheating type,” Jack answered, grateful to be on firmer ground. 

“I’ll pay you,” Petunia stubbornly pushed on. “For your services.”

“Thanks but no thanks.” Jack headed for the door. “You remember how to let yourself out.”

Springing forward, Petunia grabbed him, her arms encircling his neck. Her lips pressed into his and Jack felt a punch of pleasure as their uneven breath tangled. Jack found himself trying to break free of the kiss with all the willpower of a bee in hot butter.

Soiled memories fought their way up and Jack pushed Petunia back, scowling, “It’s no good!”

Petunia looked up at him, lips open, eyes inviting. Waiting.

Jack scowled, turned on his heels and headed out.  He called over his shoulder. “Go home! Try to be a good apple.”

Petunia stepped forward, eyes snapping with anger and voice thick with taunting, “Since when do you like good apples?”