The Book With No Name (8 page)

Word on the street was that the Hubal monks had caught up with the Bourbon Kid further on down the line and killed him, taking back the blue stone that was rightfully theirs. So when, five years on, Sanchez had seen two more monks arrive, as well as a vicious bounty hunter named Jefe, he feared the worst. And when he reached Thomas and Audrey’s farmhouse just outside of town, he knew he had been right to fear the worst. It had happened.

He parked his worn-out, rusty old white VW Beetle by the front porch. The door to the farmhouse was practically hanging off its hinges. Perhaps that alone wasn’t enough to signify that something bad had happened. The fact that neither Thomas nor Audrey had come out to greet him was the giveaway. The house was never left unattended. One of them would always come out on to the long wooden porch out front if they heard a car approaching. Not today, though.

He found their bodies in the kitchen. It was a large kitchen that doubled as a dining room. There was a large oak dining table in the middle of the chessboard-tiled floor. Normally the room was spotless, because Audrey had no tolerance whatsoever for mess, but today there was blood everywhere. On the floor on either side of the table were the still warm corpses of Thomas and Audrey. Some kind of smoke or steam was rising from their bloodied, disfigured torsos. The stench in the air was truly foul. Sanchez had smelled some pretty bad things in his time, not least the reek of twenty-seven dead men in his bar one night five years ago, all gunned down in front of
his very eyes by the Bourbon Kid. Not even
that
compared to this nauseating stink. This was something different altogether. This smelt of evil. There were no signs of bullet wounds, and yet both Thomas and Audrey were almost unrecognizable. No sign of even so much as a cut from a razor blade on either of them, but they were drenched in blood. It looked almost as though the pair of them had died from sweating blood. Literally sweating blood.

It hadn’t surprised Sanchez too much that his brother and his wife were dead. He had been expecting to walk in and find them like this ever since the day he had brought Jessica to them. And now she had been taken. The secret concealed doorway in the kitchen that had hidden the staircase up to her room had been opened. It had not been smashed, or damaged in any way, which suggested that it had been opened without force. Even though he knew that there was no way the girl was going to be upstairs, Sanchez still felt he had to head up there to see for himself. At the very least, he wanted to take one last look at the bed in which she had spent the last five years.

He took the climb slowly. He had never liked this staircase. Even as a child, when his parents had owned the house, he had been afraid of climbing these stairs. They were cold and hard, and the narrow width between the walls made them quite claustrophobic. And although it had probably always been his mind playing tricks on him, he was convinced to this day that the air became thinner and thinner as he neared the top.

As he stepped cautiously upwards, Sanchez could hear no movement from within the room above. If he were to hear a noise it might mean that Jessica was in there and still alive, even though still in a coma. Then again, it might also mean that his brother’s killer was there. It wasn’t until he reached the bedroom door that he realized how dark it was at the top of the stairs. There were a couple of candles on the wall of the stairwell, he knew, but they were unlit or had gone out. He could just make out the light from the opened door at the bottom, but he was actually unable to see much further in front of him than his outstretched hand. By now almost sick
with anxiety and fear, he used this hand to open the door and then reach into the room to press the light switch on the wall. The light came on, blinding him for a second. He blinked his eyes to accustom them to the brightness, then took a deep breath and stepped into Jessica’s bedroom.

As he expected, it was empty save for an enormous spider rushing along the bare floorboards toward him. Sanchez came close to shitting himself. He hated spiders with a passion, so he was mightily relieved when the creature stopped dead in its tracks a few feet in front of him, then backtracked slowly – as if not to wanting to lose face – and hid itself under the bed in which Jessica had been living for the last five years. It was reassuring to know that there was no killer present (other than the spider), but equally devastating to see there was no Jessica either. The bed was a little unmade, but there were no signs of any struggle, which was hardly surprising. After all, how difficult would it be to kidnap someone who was in a coma?

The sound of an engine starting up outside made him jump slightly. He had not noticed another car outside the house when he arrived, but he had not been paying that much attention at the time. There was definitely a car outside now, though, and it didn’t sound like his decaying old Beetle. This sounded bigger, with a more powerful engine. Within moments there came a loud screeching of tyres – whoever was driving was in a hurry to get away. There being no windows in the bedroom, Sanchez had to rush back down the narrow staircase in the hope that he might catch sight of whoever was driving away from the farmhouse. There was a chance that Jessica was in the car.

Despite a deeply misanthropic view of people in general, a tendency never to involve himself in others’ troubles, and a habit of offering strangers shots of piss as refreshment, Sanchez was not without good qualities. Alas, speed of movement was not among them. In short, he was not the quickest of cats. By the time he had thudded downstairs, hurdled the dead body of his brother and peered out of the front door, all he could
see was the back end of what looked like a yellow Cadillac racing into the distance down the dirt track towards Santa Mondega.

Sanchez was not an aggressive man, but he knew plenty of people in town who were. He knew whom to ask if he wanted vengeance wreaked upon the owner of the yellow Cadillac. In fact, he knew enough people that it wouldn’t take him long at all to find out who had killed Thomas and Audrey, and what had happened to Jessica. Even if there had been no witnesses, he knew he could find out exactly what had happened.

Whoever had been responsible for the killings and Jessica’s abduction, they would pay. Because one thing was for sure: if Sanchez knew people who could find out what had happened, he also knew people who could do something about it. People who would exact revenge on his behalf. He’d have to pay them, of course, but that wasn’t a problem. Pretty much everyone liked his bar. They might not like him, but if they liked a drink, then they liked to drink in the Tapioca. A year’s supply of free booze would be incentive enough for any man in Santa Mondega to help out Sanchez in his hour of need.

As it happened, Sanchez didn’t want just any man. He wanted the King. The best hitman in town. The man they called Elvis.

Archibald Somers looked exactly as Jensen had expected him to look. He was in his late forties, maybe early fifties, and he looked like a game-show host. Slicked-back silver hair, smart pressed grey trousers and a white shirt with thin brown stripes running vertically down it. He had a pistol in a shoulder holster that hung down the left side of his ribcage, and he was in reasonably good shape for a man of his age. No unsightly beer belly, and no ‘nipple-high’ trousers. Jensen would be quite content to be in similar shape when he reached that age. For now though, he was a super-fit thirty-something, and happy with that.

The office they now shared was hidden away off a dark corridor on the third floor of the headquarters building. All the other rooms along the corridor were of similar size. One was a broom cupboard, another a first-aid room, and then there were the toilets. Jensen didn’t know what exactly their room had been before it had been converted into the office they were now sharing, and he didn’t want to. It would not have been glamorous, that was for sure. It did have a certain charm to it, however, the dark, varnished wooden door and antique-style desks lending it more character than the partitioned cubicles in the main office. It was the prison-pale-green walls that let the place down.

Somers had eventually arrived in the office at midday. Jensen had already worked out that the main desk in the centre of their newly converted office belonged to Somers, so he had taken the smaller desk in the corner where the light was bad and begun unpacking his few personal effects.

‘You must be Detective Somers. Pleased to meet you,’ he said, standing up and extending his hand in the other man’s direction as he walked in.

‘Miles Jensen, right?’ said Somers taking his hand and shaking it firmly. ‘You’re my new partner, huh?’

‘That’s right.’ Jensen smiled. So far Somers didn’t seem all that unpleasant.

‘Everyone’s told you I’m an asshole, right?’ said Somers, making his way round to the chair behind his desk.

‘It was mentioned, yeah.’

‘Yeah. No one likes me round here. I’m “old school”, see. Most of these other guys out here, they’re all about their careers and promotion. They don’t give a shit about the old ladies that get robbed by con men. They only want to hear about cases that can be solved quickly and filed away. You know this town’s got the highest missing-persons rate in the civilized world, right?’ Jensen, hoping Somers wasn’t going to finish everything he said with the question ‘Right?’ grinned back at him.

‘Yeah, although I didn’t know Santa Mondega was considered civilized.’

‘You’re not wrong there, my friend.’

Jensen sat himself back down on the wheeled swivel chair at his own desk. As first impressions went he had a feeling he was going to get along fine with Somers. Just first impressions, of course.

‘So – they tell me you’re obsessed with finding the Bourbon Kid. Why would that make them all hate you?’

Somers smiled. ‘That’s not why they hate me. They hate me because I
want
them to hate me. I make a point of pissing them all off every chance I get. None of them ever wanted to help out with a case they couldn’t resolve in less than a week. That’s why the Bourbon Kid case got closed. I was the only one still following up on it. But they managed to get rid of me because the budgets wouldn’t allow us to keep on investigating the case when there was a possibility that the Kid was already dead. Well, they’re sure regretting that now, aren’t they? I
warned the Mayor he would come back, but he listened to all these other idiots.’

‘So the Mayor’s to blame?’

‘Nah,’ Somers shook his head. ‘The Mayor’s basically a good guy, but he had a lot of advisers who wanted the Bourbon Kid story to be nothing but a distant memory. They forgot about all the women who were widowed by that bastard. He’s never gone away. He’s been killing people every day for the last five years, but it’s only now that he’s decided to let us start finding the bodies again. He’s building up to another massacre. You and I, Jensen, are the only people who can prevent that from happening.’

‘You do know I’m not exactly here just for the Bourbon Kid, though?’ Jensen asked, hoping he wasn’t about to offend Somers, who was clearly a passionate man when it came to his work.

‘I know why you’re here,’ Somers said, smiling broadly. ‘You think that there’s supernatural activity going on and that there’s probably some sort of Satanic cult behind these new murders. I won’t lie to you, I think that’s a crock of shit, but as long as you’re on my side, and as long as your investigation only helps me to prove that it’s the Bourbon Kid committing these murders and not Jar Jar Binks, then we don’t have a problem.’

Perhaps Somers was a touch cynical, as well as somewhat overly focused on his one and only theory that the Bourbon Kid was behind pretty much everything, but he wasn’t the absolute asshole that Jensen had been led to believe. With a bit of careful diplomacy this cynical old cop could be won over and made use of. He certainly didn’t seem to be lacking in motivation.

‘Jar Jar, huh? You a movie buff?’

‘I dabble.’

‘Somehow I don’t picture you as a
Star Wars
fan, though.’

Somers ran his long fingers through his shiny silver hair and took a deep breath.

‘Well, I’m not. I prefer something that stimulates my mind as well as my eyes, and I appreciate good acting. Half the top actors these days are picked for their looks, not their acting ability. That’s why most of them are all washed up by the time they’re thirty-five.’

‘Right … so you’re a fan of Pacino and DeNiro, then?’

Somers shook his head and sighed. ‘Nope, they’re both one-dimensional has-beens living off the glory of the seventies and eighties gangster flicks they were typecast in.’

‘You’re kidding me, right?’

‘No, give me Jack Nicholson every time. There’s a guy who can play any part in
any
movie. But if you really want to impress me with your movie knowledge, Jensen, then answer this one,’ he said, raising a Nicholson-esque eyebrow. ‘Directors: the Scott brothers – Ridley or Tony?’

‘No contest. Tony, every time.’ Jensen didn’t hesitate. ‘Sure, Ridley had a strong case with
Blade Runner
and
Alien,
but
Enemy of the State
and
Crimson Tide
aren’t to be lightly dismissed. Good intelligent films.’