The Book With No Name (11 page)

‘Well now, I’d love to, but I’m not allowed to fraternize with the customers inside the hotel.’

‘Then let’s us go out, baby,’ said Marcus, winking a salacious wink at her.

Kacy blushed lightly for a second, but she was obviously enjoying the attention because she quickly ran her left index finger around her lips, licking it a little as if to tease Marcus.

‘You mean, like, out on a date?’

‘Sure. Why not?’

She considered the offer for a few moments. She looked tempted, and she clearly was.

‘Okay. I get off in fifteen minutes. Why don’t you take a quick shower while I clean up in here, then I’ll meet you down in the lobby in half an hour.’

It was now that Marcus realized just how bad he smelt. This was definitely a good time for a shower. ‘Sure thing … Kacy,’ he said, leering at her.

He rushed off to the bathroom, throwing off his white string vest as he went. Kacy giggled some more, and then headed over to the bed to change the sheets and pillowcases.

‘Do you want me to leave the TV on while you’re in the shower, Mister Jefe?’

‘Do what you want, babe. Do what you want,’ he called back as he turned on the shower and continued to undress.
This is turning into a good day already,
Marcus thought to himself. Maybe that blue stone was bringing him luck. Or maybe it was just the wad of cash he had acquired that was bringing him good fortune. After all, there’s nothing like getting your hands on a small fortune for encouraging the opposite sex to find you attractive.

He had thrown off his black leather trousers – the gun had bounced onto the bathmat as he did so and he had pushed it aside with one foot – and was just getting into the shower when he remembered that he had left his wallet (well, it was his wallet now) on the side table by the bed. Alarm bells started ringing in his head. Should he trust this girl, a maid whom he’d only just met? A moment later he got his answer – an emphatic yes – when the bathroom door opened and she stood before him holding the wallet out.

‘You shouldn’t leave your wallet just lying around like this, y’know, mister. Someone might try to steal it, and we
can’t have that because you’re paying for lunch, right?’ she said, looking him up and down. Marcus was naked, and very aware of the fact. But he was a man who enjoyed showing his body off to a woman, especially one who might not be expecting to see it. From the expression on her face it looked to Marcus that Kacy was both shocked and pleasantly surprised at what she saw. He winked at her again, this time a slow, sexy wink.

‘Just put that on the side, baby. I’ll be out ‘fore you know it.’

Kacy smiled at him, put the wallet down by the basin and went back into the bedroom.

‘Hey, wow! Is that
BJ and The Bear
? I love that show!’ she called out excitedly.

It was going to be a great day. A great day indeed for Marcus the Weasel.
As far as he was concerned he was on a lucky winning streak that might never end. Of course, a more intelligent man would have been extremely cautious, untrusting of everyone he met after a night like the one Marcus had just had. In fact, a more intelligent man would already have left town.

And vowed never to return.

When Jensen arrived back at the headquarters building Somers was already sitting at his desk, studying the photographic evidence from the latest murders. Looking up, he asked, ‘Did you get anything useful out of Sanchez?’

Jensen took off his brown leather jacket and threw it over to his desk in the corner. It hit the back of the chair and slid to the floor.

‘Not a damn thing. He’s not a great one for communicating with Santa Mondega’s Finest, is he?’

‘Nah. I warned you he’d be hard work.’

‘How about you?’ Jensen asked, eyeing the Polaroids on Somers’s desk. ‘Anything interesting come up from forensics yet?’

‘No. Nothing. It’ll take them a week even to work out that half the fingerprints they’re looking at are their own.’

Jensen laughed politely as he reached over and picked up one of the photos Somers had already looked at and discarded, placing it to one side of his desk. It was a hideous close-up of one of the two bodies. It showed a mass of red flesh and bone apparently mashed together to form the shape of a blood-drenched body. It looked even worse in the print than when he had seen it for real at the farmhouse.

‘Which one of them is this?’ he asked queasily. Somers glanced up.

‘I think that’s her. Hard to tell though, ain’t it?’

Jensen frowned. Frowning, he found, was a great way of ensuring that he concentrated on what he was doing. He didn’t know why, but he did all his best thinking when he was
frowning. Right now he was thinking that there had to be an obvious link between all the corpses. Sure, the murders all looked the same, but what linked the victims? What did they all have in common? There were seven killings in total now. What could possibly link these two victims to the other five that he had seen in the photos Somers had shown him?

‘I guess it’s kind of a formality that these two were killed by the same person, or
persons,
who killed the other five, right?’ he asked.

‘No fooling you.’ Jensen looked up sharply to see if the other man was trying to put him down, but realized that this was just his partner’s manner.

He went over to his chair and sat down, leaving his jacket on the floor. Then he leaned back and held the photo up in front of his face to study it as closely as possible. There had to be something here. Something ought to jump out at him. But what? Whatever it was, whatever was linking these murders, it didn’t appear to be in the photographs. Surely Somers must have a theory on the matter?

‘Have you found anything that links the victims to one another yet?’ Jensen asked him.

Still poring over the prints, Somers shook his head. ‘Nothing,’ he said. ‘The victims seem to have been selected at random. The only thing they have in common is that all of them had their eyes gouged out and their tongues ripped from their throats.’

‘So that’s the killer’s calling card, I guess. Serial killers often do stuff like that so that the cops – and the medics – know it was them.’ He stood up and began to pace the small area between the two desks.

Again Somers shook his head. He didn’t seem convinced.

‘I don’t think it has any relevance. It’s clear the same guy committed all these murders. He knows that we know it’s him, so why should he bother leaving us any added clues?’ Somers was obviously referring, once again, to the Bourbon Kid.

‘Maybe it’s not him?’ Jensen offered the possibility up for discussion.

‘Oh, it’s
him,
Jensen. It’s him, all right. Sit down a minute. Please.’

Jensen picked his jacket up from the floor and draped it over the back of his chair, which he dragged round so that he could sit opposite Somers, giving his full attention to what his partner had to say.

‘Go on. What?’

Somers put the photos down, leaned his elbows on the desk and clasped his hands together. He looked tired, and the younger man picked up a hint of impatience in his manner.

‘We’ve agreed that I’m not going to mock you for your supernatural, paranormal theories. And we’ve also agreed that you will take on board my theory about the Bourbon Kid, without dismissing it out of hand the same way everyone else does, right?’

‘Yeah. Right.’

‘Well look, Jensen. There’s not going to be any great twist in this investigation. It’s not gonna turn out that the Bourbon Kid’s ex-wife did all the murders and is trying to frame him. It’s not gonna be the butler that did it either, and Kevin Spacey ain’t gonna come waltzing into the station covered in blood yelling
“Detective! … Detective!”
at the top of his voice, and you ain’t gonna find your wife’s head in a box in the desert. The Bourbon Kid committed these murders.’ He paused for breath, but all it brought was a weary sigh. ‘Now, if you really want to help solve this case, see if you can find a motive, or work out who his next victim is going to be. Hey, if you uncover something that tells me the Bourbon Kid is from Mars, or that he’s a ghost and we need to get an exorcist, then fine, that’s what we’ll do. But know this, Jensen: if you’re looking for another killer, you’re wasting your time. Trust me on this. Put all your efforts into finding the Bourbon Kid, or finding out who the hell he is. Then you’ll find our killer.’

Jensen could sense the growing frustration in Somers’s voice. He knew that his partner believed absolutely in what he was saying. And he himself believed that the other detective was
probably
right, but that it would be foolish to rule out the
possibility of another killer. Even so, if he wanted Somers’s help in this investigation he was going to have to humour him.

‘You got it, Somers. Don’t misunderstand me, I believe you’re right, but you gotta remember I’m also a fresh pair of eyes in this investigation. Maybe I can spot something simple that you’ve overlooked. Who knows? But I promise you, I’m taking this investigation every bit as seriously as you.’

‘Okay,’ said Somers. ‘Here’s a list of the names of the victims so far.’ He pulled his notebook from his shirt pocket, opened it, extracted the tiny pencil and started scribbling on a blank page.

‘I’ve found nothing that links them to each other,’ he said, ‘not a damn thing. See what you can come up with using your fresh pair of eyes.’

There was more than a hint of sarcasm and frustration in his voice, and a touch of impatience as he ripped the page out of his notebook and thrust it over the desk at his partner. Jensen took it and looked at the list of victims. It read like this:

Nothing leapt out at him, but that was hardly surprising. What was required was background information about these victims. Something they all did in their spare time, someone they all knew, something they had all seen – the link would lie in these or similar associations. Jensen was a specialist in spotting obscure links. He would crack this one, he felt sure. The – unanswerable – question was, how much time did he have before the killer selected the next victim?

‘So … Cracked it yet?’ The older man joked.

‘Not yet, but leave this with me, Somers. I’ll need access to all the files you have on these people. Trust me, if there’s something that connects all these victims to our killer, I’ll find it.’

‘Okay,’ said Somers. ‘I’ll let you find out what links them all together, but in return I want you to do something for me.’

Jensen stopped staring at the names on the piece of paper and looked up at Somers.

‘Sure, anything. Name it.’

Somers cleared his throat and looked hard at Jensen, seeking some semblance of trust. Finally convinced that his partner was genuinely willing to do anything for him, he asked the one question Jensen had been dreading.

‘Detective, tell me … why in God’s name, after all these years of pretending Santa Mondega doesn’t exist, does the Government suddenly decide to send a Supernatural Investigator here? There have been more murders here in the last hundred years than anywhere else in the world, but until now we’ve always been left to sort things out in-house. So why now? And why send only one man? Is it because the information the Government has is so secret that they don’t trust more than one man with it?’

Jensen shifted uncomfortably in his chair. Somers was clearly a better detective than he had been led to believe, or than he had given him credit for.

‘Come on, Detective Miles Jensen,’ Somers went on. ‘I want to know what it is that you’re not telling me. The Government has privileged you with some special information about the case. The case I’ve spent over five years of my life on. What is it that you know? What the hell has this case got to do with the supernatural?’

Jensen held up his hands.

‘Okay, Somers. I’ll level with you,’ he said. ‘But what I’m about to tell you doesn’t leave this room.
Right?
’