Odd Stuff (37 page)

He laughed and pretended that the intimate connection hadn’t happened. “Mia must have compared your life to a comic book.”

“Superman.” I wanted to fill the car with sound to make the moment pass, but I could barely get out the single word.

“Okay, back to my point. That song…the lyrics. In life, we often forget that all we have to do is have faith. Faith is the basis of life. If the Crusaders had had faith in their Lord, would they have killed the Muslims?”

“What?” See? Already he lost me.

“The Muslims. The Christians killed the Muslims because they were not Christians. If the Christians had truly had faith, they would have realized that the Lord could have converted their enemies without slaughter. Instead, the void of faith resulted in loss of life. Do you have faith?” His cheerful smile lit up his eyes.

“Are you asking me if I am a Christian?” I still wasn’t sure where his lecture was going.

“What?” His brows furrowed, the smiling façade gone like a cloud had traveled in front of the sun.

“Or are you asking me if I have faith?”

“No! I am saying that faith is powerful. Faith in people is powerful. Do you have faith in those around you? Do you have faith in me?” He tapped his chest as he spoke, and I looked again at his long fingers a moment before focusing back on the road.

“Loads—in the guy who claims to be my soul mate.” I tried to lace my tone with sarcasm, but my throat went dry as I imagined those deft fingers on my skin while his mouth covered mine. I was torn on which I wanted to do more, pull over and rip off his clothes or pull over and hit him until my fists hurt. I leaned toward the latter. Chance always gets a reaction out of me, just not the one he seems to hope for.

“Faith is the glue that holds society together.”

Now he knows it all. Pompous ass.
“Okay.” I tried to sound amicable hoping he would drop it and disappear.

“You aren’t getting this.” His tone went flat. A flick of his wrist at my radio and the song start playing again. Now that was cool, since it was live radio, not a CD or XM. Impressed, I nodded to him. He rolled his eyes at me. “Listen to the song.” The order in his tone would have made my hackles rise if I was a dog and had hackles.

Men.
I listened. The lyrics still said the same thing. “So you want me to have a little faith in you?”

“That would be nice, yes, but I would like you to have a little faith, period. You don’t really believe in anyone or anything right now. Not even yourself.”

“How in the hell would you know? You just met me!” I tried not to yell at him but I failed miserably. “Is this some wax on, wax off, crap?”

“You just met me, but you still make a lot of judgment calls about me.” His expression was dark when I darted another glance his way.

“You’re nuts. I am right about that one.” I bit my lip and turned my eyes back to the road, hoping he would take a hint. He threw up his hands and poofed out again. I had a feeling he would pick up the line of conversation again later, making it a temporary reprieve.

He’d timed his exit well, since I’d arrived in the center of town. I waited through a stop light, then proceeded downtown to park near the Jefferson Diner. Hunched beneath my coat, I dodged past two other patrons to enter the small restaurant. A scan of the room showed Shawna toward the back, a laptop opened on the table in front of her. Braided black hair, some dyed bright red, hung around dark mahogany skin. She reached onto the seat next to her as I approached, sifted through files, and handed me one. “The Harbor Hammer was a mugger in the 1930’s in Ashtabula Harbor.”

I opened the file and fought to catch up. She pulled several eight by ten, black and white pictures of the harbor as it must have looked back in the thirties. I’ve seen similar shots, most of us who lived around there had at some point or another. People in fancy clothes, women in bustles, men in suits and spectacles, walking down streets that looked pretty much as they did today. The Harbor teemed with sailors and tall ships, bustling with enterprise—a far cry from the current rustbelt economy.

Tapping the photos, Shawna sipped her coffee with her free hand and she explained. “In the 1930’s, the Harbor District was an important area. Trade came through, primarily by ships coming in from Lake Erie, and unloaded onto railcars making Ashtabula Harbor a major port. New York, Youngstown, Pittsburgh, Cleveland…all of the major cities of the day were easily accessed by rail through Ashtabula Harbor. As a major port of call, the harbor had everything a sailor could want…cat houses, bars, a big city…and a killer. The Harbor Hammer had a good run, too. He took a hammer and hit the drunken sailors in the head then he robbed them. Pretty up front and simple crime. They never caught him. He just stopped hammering after about year, and they assumed he either retired or died.

“Years passed. Then, mysteriously, another Harbor Hammer had a year long run. Once again, never caught. A few years later, another. And then we see the pattern forming. Every
leap
year there is a Hammer who hangs around for twelve months and then disappears. Guess what? Local authorities have found two bodies already.”

She pulled out more photographs and laid them on the table in front of me, this time of crime scenes. Okay, when Sculley looked at this kind of stuff, she didn’t toss her cookies, so neither would I. But I wanted to.
Ick, is that real blood?
Logic suggested yes, but my brain did not want to digest the information.

Wait, I am one of the monsters, and I’m dating a flipping vampire. I was not allowed to be grossed out by a dead body. Who was I kidding? I was so grossed out. I tapped the pictures together neatly and passed them back.

“So, it’s a copycat.” I don’t watch NCIS for nothing.

“No, I don’t think so. It goes back even further than the thirties. I want you to look into it. If I’m right, I might be looking at finding bodies for the next year. So far, I have only two. That means over three hundred more bodies are possible if this continues as it has before. Or you could ask some questions, and I might have a shot at finding a killer. What could it hurt?”

Put that way…”
I’ll ask around.” I stifled my excitement. I could really make a difference and help people! Smiling would probably give the wrong impression, so I bit back the emotion and the expression.

“Here are the files I have on it. I don’t know how much any of it will help, since no one has ever caught any of the Hammers but, here.” Shawna passed the folders to me and her eyes flashed gold for a moment. It must have been a trick of the light. I was on the case.

ABout theAuthor

Virginia Nelson believed them when they said, “Write what you know.” Small town girl writing small town romance, her characters are as full of flaws, misunderstandings, and flat out mistakes as Virginia herself. When she’s is not writing or plotting to take over the world, she likes to hang out with the greatest kids in history, play in the mud, drive far too fast, and scream at inanimate objects. Virginia likes knights in rusted and dinged up armor, heroes that snarl instead of croon, and heroines who can’t remember to say the right thing even with an author writing their dialogue. Her books are full of snark, sex, and random acts of ineptitude—not always in that order.

Virginia loves to hear from her readers. Find her online!

virg-nelson.com

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