The Book With No Name (5 page)

By early evening Jefe was very drunk, and neither he nor Marcus had noticed that the Tapioca had become quite busy. There were still plenty of tables and chairs going unused, but there were many customers – regulars – lurking in the shadows. Somehow, word had spread that Jefe was carrying something worth a lot of money. He had earned himself a reputation as a man to be feared, but he was not well known in these parts. And he was now very drunk, making him a prime candidate for the many muggers and thieves that frequented the Tapioca.

As it turned out, what happened to Jefe later that night would prove to be the catalyst for everything that followed. Which was mainly murders.

Detective Miles Jensen arrived in Santa Mondega with a reputation. All the other cops disliked him already. To them, he was one of those trendy, new-age detectives. Probably never seen a real day’s action in his life, they thought. They were wrong, of course, but he had better things to do with his time than waste it trying to justify his position to a bunch of inbred scumbags like the cops on the beat in Santa Mondega.

The reason they took him for a phoney was there for all to see in his job title: Chief Detective of Supernatural Investigations. A waste of taxpayers’ money if ever there was one. It hadn’t been a problem when he was on someone else’s beat but now he was on theirs, and he was probably earning a truckload more than most of them. There was nothing they could do about it though, and they knew it. Jensen had been assigned to Santa Mondega by the Government of the United States. Normally the US Government couldn’t give a damn about what went on in Santa Mondega, but recently something had happened that had made it sit up and take notice.

That ‘something’ was a series of five gruesome murders, and although that was nothing new in those parts, the manner in which the victims had been killed was highly significant. All five victims had been killed in the same ritualistic way. Murders like these had not been seen since the week leading up to the legendary Bourbon Kid massacre of five years earlier. Most murder victims in Santa Mondega were killed by gunmen or knife-wielding maniacs, but not these five. They had been killed by something else – something not entirely human. This fact ensured that the case was serious enough for
Miles Jensen to be assigned to it, working on his own, with no help from anyone else.

Like so many of the buildings in the city centre, the Santa Mondega police headquarters was a decaying mess. It looked like an early-twentieth-century building that had probably been the pride of the city in its day. In comparison with most of the other police headquarters that Jensen had visited in his time, it ranked very poorly.

The interior had at least been modernized to some extent. Rather than early twentieth century, like the exterior, it had an early nineteen-eighties feel to it. The layout was much as one would expect to see in an old TV cop show like
Hill Street Blues.
Obviously, this wasn’t ideal, but Jensen had to admit to himself that he had seen plenty worse.

Check-in at reception – often painfully slow, in his experience – was remarkably simple in this new precinct. The young female receptionist merely took a glance at his badge and his letter of authority and advised him to make his way up to Captain Rockwell’s office, to which she breezily gave him directions. It was always good to know he was expected.

As he made his way through the building to the Captain’s office, Jensen felt the eyes of the other officers, each and every one of them, burning into his back. This happened every time he was reassigned. Other cops hated him, and that was that. There was nothing that he could do about it, or at least not in the early days of an assignment. In Santa Mondega, however, his case wasn’t really helped by the fact that he appeared to be the only black man on the force. This was a town full of people from all walks of life and many nationalities or races, yet there seemed to be hardly any black people. Maybe the blacks had more sense than to settle in such a shit-hole, or maybe they just weren’t welcome. Only time would tell, he thought.

Captain Rockwell’s office was on the third floor. Jensen could sense a hundred pairs of eyes following him as he made his way towards the Captain’s glass-walled office in the far corner, a good sixty yards from the elevator he had arrived in.
The entire floor was dotted with desks and cubicles. Nearly every desk had a detective sitting at it. This was typical of today’s police. No one was out on the beat. Everyone was at a desk filling out forms or typing reports.
Modern-day police work,
Jensen said to himself.
Inspiring stuff.

There were numerous pieces of evidence and photos of suspects or victims or missing persons pinned to partitions and dividing screens, or taped to computer monitors. By comparison, Captain Rockwell’s office was spotless. His small room in the far corner of the third floor afforded him a good view out of the windows over the city below. Jensen knocked twice on the glass door. Rockwell – seemingly the only visible black man on the Santa Mondega force – was sitting at his desk chewing on something and reading a newspaper. He had thick grey hair and a paunch, which together suggested he was in his mid-fifties. On hearing the knock at his door, he didn’t bother to look up but simply gestured for his visitor to enter. Jensen turned the doorknob and pushed. The door wouldn’t open cleanly and needed a good shake that unfortunately made the glass walls of the office wobble a little. Eventually a slight kick at the bottom of the door helped it open and Jensen walked in.

‘Detective Miles Jensen reporting for duty, sir.’

‘Siddown, Detective,’ growled Rockwell. Jensen noticed that he was doing a crossword in the newspaper.

‘Need any help with that?’ he asked, in an attempt to break the ice as he seated himself in a chair opposite the Captain.

‘Yeah, try this one,’ said Captain Rockwell, glancing up for a second. ‘Four letters. Don’t – ever – kick it – again.’

‘Door?’

‘Damn right. You’ll do fine. Nice to meet you, Jansen,’ said the Captain, closing his newspaper and taking a good look at his new detective.

‘It’s Jensen, and it’s nice to meet you too, sir,’ said Jensen, leaning over the desk with his right hand outstretched. Rockwell ignored the gesture and carried on talking.

‘How much do you know about why you’re here, Detective?’

‘I was briefed by Division. I probably know more than you do, sir,’ Jensen replied, retracting his hand and sitting back down.

‘I doubt that very much.’ The Captain picked up a mug of coffee from on top of a pile of paperwork to his left and took a sip before spitting it back in the mug in disgust. ‘Now, are we going to be sharing information here, or are you gonna jerk me off the whole time like Internal Affairs?’

‘I won’t be jerking you off, sir. That’s not one of my objectives here.’

‘Give you a piece of advice, Jansen. Nobody around here likes a smartass, you got that?’

‘It’s not Jansen, sir, it’s Jensen.’

‘Whatever. Has anyone shown you where the coffee is yet?’

‘No, sir. I’ve only just got here.’

‘Well, when they do, mine’s black, two sugars.’

‘I don’t drink coffee, sir.’

‘I didn’t ask if you did. Get Somers to show you where the coffee is when you meet him.’

‘Which one is Somers?’ Jensen asked, fully aware that his question might not be answered. This Captain Jessie Rockwell was an odd sort. He spoke very quickly and he appeared not to have a lot of patience. He certainly didn’t seem to need any more caffeine. Every once in a while as he spoke his face would become contorted, as though he was having a very minor stroke. Clearly the man had stress issues, as well as little tolerance for Miles Jensen.

‘Somers has been assigned as your partner – or rather, you’re his. That’s the way he’ll prefer to see it,’ he said. Jensen bristled.

‘I think there’s been some sort of misunderstanding, sir. I’m not supposed to be assigned a partner.’

‘Tough shit. We didn’t ask for you to be sent here, either. But it looks like we’re stuck with you and we’re paying for
your stay here, so I guess we’re both in a position we don’t like.’

This was not something Jensen was happy about. Other cops didn’t take his work seriously. The Captain didn’t seem to, and whoever this Somers character was, Jensen bet he would be no different.

‘With all due respect, sir, if you’ll just call …’

‘With all due respect, Johnson, you can kiss my ass.’

‘It’s Jensen, sir.’

‘Whatever. Now listen, because I’m only gonna tell you this once. Somers, your new partner … he’s an asshole. A real fuckin’ asshole. No one else will work with him.’

‘What? Well then, surely …’

‘Do you wanna hear what I have to say, or not?’

It hadn’t taken Jensen long to realize that arguing with Captain Rockwell was going to be pointless. If he had any problems he’d have to sort them out himself later. The Captain wasn’t going to waste time explaining himself to anyone or showing anyone around. He obviously considered himself far too busy, or far too important, for niceties. For now, it was easier to sit back and listen to what he had to say.

‘Sorry, sir. Please go on.’

‘Thank you. Not that I need your permission. This is for your benefit, not mine,’ said Rockwell. He eyeballed Jensen for a moment to see if there was likely to be any more dissent from this weird detective. Satisfied that there was not, he continued. ‘Detective Archibald Somers has been assigned to this case as your partner. He’s been assigned by the Mayor. Now if I had my way, Somers wouldn’t even set foot in this building, but the Mayor is trying to win re-election, so he’s got his own goddam agenda.’

‘Yes, sir.’ Jensen could see little relevance in the explanation so far, but he decided it would be best to show a little interest with the occasional nod or ‘Yes, sir.’

‘Somers was handed early retirement just over three years ago,’ Rockwell went on. ‘The rest of us held a retirement party for him.’

‘Very good of you, sir.’

‘Not really. We didn’t invite that miserable bastard Somers.’

‘Why not?’ asked Jensen, surprised. Rockwell frowned.

‘Because he’s an asshole. Jeeezus! Pay attention, Johnson, for Chrissakes.’

‘Yes, sir.’

‘So, anyway. You’re here about the Bourbon Kid, right?’

‘Well, not exactly.’

‘It doesn’t matter. Somers is obsessed with the goddam Bourbon Kid case. That’s why he was forced into early retirement. He tried to pin every single murder in Santa Mondega on this Bourbon Kid. He took the whole damn thing so far that people started to think the Police Department were being lazy and we were just using the Kid as a scapegoat to pin all our unsolved crimes on.’

‘Which obviously isn’t true,’ said Jensen. It was one of those comments he immediately wished he hadn’t made, because the way he had said it sounded like he was being sarcastic, which was not what he had intended. Captain Rockwell eyed him again for a second. Satisfied at last that Jensen was actually sincere, he carried on.

‘Right,’ he said, breathing in through his nose so deeply that his nostrils flared to nearly twice their normal size. ‘Well, Somers started fiddling with evidence in his attempts to frame the Bourbon Kid for everything. Fact of the matter is, there’s only two people in town who have ever seen the Kid and lived. And no one has seen him since the night five years ago when he massacred half the town. Most of us believe he’s probably already dead. Probably died that night and was just one of the many unidentified bodies we buried that week. Others say he was killed by a couple of monks as he left town. I guess that’s where your interest lies, right? With the monks and all that crap?’

‘If you mean the Hubal monks and the Eye of the Moon, sir, then yes.’

‘Hmm. Well, I don’t believe any of that crock of shit, and
neither do any of the other guys, but here’s something
you
might not know, Detective Johnson. Yesterday, two monks killed a guy in the Tapioca Bar. Shot him dead in cold blood. Wounded another. Lit out with two stolen pistols. The first thing you and Somers are gonna be doing is questioning Sanchez, the bar manager.’

Jensen looked at Rockwell in surprise. This actually was something he didn’t know about. Hubal monks in town, that was unusual. Damned unusual. As far as he knew the monks never left their island for any reason. Except for that one time, five years ago, when two of them had arrived in Santa Mondega just before the night of the Bourbon Kid massacre.