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  “It’s not even noon and already he’s jumping all over this thing,” I said.

  Tanner nodded. “He has to make the early news circuit. I have to admit, it’s a pretty good play. If nothing more happens, he gets to take the credit. But if the bodies start to pile up, he’s aligning his pieces to place the blame squarely on you.”

  Preston Masters was as addicted to attention as a heroin junkie to his next fix. In the year and half since his election to Congress he appeared in GQ seven times, Maxim twice, and on TMZ every week. The son of a former governor, he was quickly and diligently working to establish himself as a national figure. His goal was to be in the White House by the time he was forty-five. My nightmare was that he would achieve it.

  I knew that whatever happened tonight, the ambitious little prick would use it to propel himself further into the spotlight.

  Chapter Four

  The killer had left only slightly more of a mess than the cops. My couch was upended. The cushions were tossed aside. Drawers and closets were emptied and left open, their contents strewn about the floor. My mattress was flipped over and lay cockeyed against the wall.

  “Seriously, what the hell were they looking for?” I asked. I rubbed Doomsday’s back and congratulated him on showing enough restraint not to kill any of the cops who tore apart our home. His territorial tendencies and impatience for strangers are not to be underestimated.

  I went to the kitchen and drank a beer at the window overlooking the river. Lights traced the Murray Baker Bridge with commuters on their way home. Fifteen hours removed from the worst murder the town had ever seen and life was already moving on as if nothing had happened. Peoria is no stranger to violent crime, but most of the population has built the “it didn’t happen to me” shell around them. Sean Booker’s death would be talked about at work places and bus stops, but it would quickly become more of a conversation topic than anything to really worry about. The ability for a large city to desensitize itself to violent crime is both a gift and a curse.

  For the first time, the full effect of all that happened began to settle in. I wondered about the killer’s motive. Why go to so much trouble? What was the endgame? When writing a novel, I always tried to find the ending first. What ending did this person have planned?

  While I thought about it, my eye fell upon an open space on the wall that had previously held a painting bought for me by Katrina. The work managed to be both dark and colorful. It featured an array of harsh reds and blacks mixed with vibrant yellows and greens in a juxtaposition of gloomy and uplifting. Hieronymus Bosch meets Hallmark. A few days after our breakup she sent a proxy to retrieve it. Not because she wanted it. She just wanted to make the statement. Kat’s big on statements. She once stopped her show in the middle of a song because somebody was talking on a cell phone. The offending person has not been allowed in the Dungeon since. I looked at the bare space on my wall, a physical manifestation of the empty place she left.

  “I miss her, buddy.” I told him. My dog, my friend and companion, turned and farted at me. Kat is the one person he doesn’t growl at or piss on. Toward the end of our relationship, he even got so far as turning over and letting her rub his belly. I think he liked the way her nails felt. If given the choice, I’m not sure Doomsday wouldn’t go bunk with her.

  No sympathy to be found there.

  Setting the beer aside, I pulled a copy of Black as Night from the bookshelf. I read the scene where Christian beheads victim number 5 with a chainsaw. At the time, I was satisfied that I had created a realistic and effective tableau for the crime. But I had not even come close. The reality of seeing, and smelling, such a horrific act in real life exceeded the realms of imagination.

  Maybe that’s a good thing.

  But the killer had used it as a script. The chair. The bounds. The victim. Number 5 was a petty thief and drug dealer. A lowlife. Very similar to Sean Booker.

  I skipped ahead to the next victim, number 4. With this one, Christian used fire. It was one of his favorite methods. Easy. Effective. Almost poetically simple in its brutality. He doused his victim in gasoline, tossed a match, and watched as they writhed around in a fireball.

  Standing in my living room, I felt a chill. The book featured some truly horrible methods of execution. Decapitation. Fire. Drowning. The last victim had been tortured over the course of five days; Christian tied his victim to the rafters in his home and stabbed him thirty seven times before finally finishing him off. Overkill, to be sure. Honestly, I had thought I had overdone it. But reader response was through the roof. The more crazed Christian became, the faster the books flew off the shelves.

  I went to my markerboard, wiped it clean, and began scribbling. I started with one word, the basic interrogative that begins every investigation.

  Why?

  Why kill somebody in my garage? Why use one of the methods from one of my books? Why use my chainsaw to do it? The obvious answer was to frame me for the murder, but it was a lot of trouble to go through for something that ultimately would not work. Cops are not dumb. Pushing them in my direction would eventually only make them wonder who was doing the pushing.

  There was something about the crime scene that kept bugging me. Something about the footsteps? It was there, hovering just out of reach. But I was too exhausted to see it. I leaned back on the couch. Thirty hours with no sleep. Interrogated by detectives. Under suspicion for beheading a drug dealer.

  It had been a hell of a day.

  But I was too restless to go to bed. I got online and found the address for Sean Booker. It was only five miles away, but not in an area I spent a lot of time. I grabbed my phone, keys, and gun and went downstairs to the garage. I was halfway to my truck when a person in a spacesuit intercepted me. The mask and goggles came off. Black hair fell down to a pierced lower lip. A tattoo on his neck of a hawk. Or eagle.

  “It’s a griffin.” He said, catching my stare. “Like my last name. Lucas Griffin. I’m the lead tech for this site. I would shake your hand, but ...” He held up a yellow neoprene glove covered in things I did not even want to think about.

  “I can’t let you take your truck, man. Sorry.” He nodded toward my Ford, and I gave it a closer look. Blood spatter and pieces of something that looked like cream of wheat freckled the paint. A technician was collecting something that looked like rotten cabbage from the fender and driver side window and was placing it in a plastic cup. I was amazed that the spatter had traveled that far. I was also grateful that I had not left my window down.

  “We should be wrapping up in about an hour,” he said. By the way he was looking at me, I could tell he was debating if I had been the one who left this nice little mess for him. He looked curious, but not overly concerned.

  “So, what’s the verdict, Griffin? Guilty or not guilty?”

  “Honestly, I’m leaning toward not. I got here pretty quick last night and saw you before you were taken downtown. If you were anywhere near this when it happened, no way you could have cleaned up that fast. And if you had, you would have looked like you just cleaned up.”

  “What if I wore a raincoat and hood? I write—”

  “I know. I’ve read all your stuff. It’s really good and I love the characters and the action. But the forensics? Well, hit me up next time you need some tech advice. I’d be happy to answer questions and give some background. I gotta get back to work. Your bike is fine to take, if you need to leave. The truck seemed to have shielded it from everything. We had to remove the cover, though. Just to be safe.”

  My old Triumph was not the best choice since the air was crisp and cold, heavy with the promise of winter. But I didn’t want to walk where I was going either. Sean Booker lived in a part of town that the mayor and tourist bureau kept the tourists far away from. If residents ever did bother to call in gunshots, they had a better chance waiting until everybody ran out of bullets than they did of seeing a cop car. Shootings were mostly between gang members, and the police were content to let them sort it out the
mselves and stay out of the line of fire. It was also an area where many single parents tried to raise their kids on minimum wage jobs, doing their best to make sure that the rent got paid and the fridge had food, all the while hoping that a stray bullet did not zip through the living room. It was a neighborhood low on hope, scraping by, filled with predators. Predators such as Sean Booker. Booker not only sold drugs to the local kids, but recruited them as business partners. I thought about Booker’s final moments tied to that chair, seeing the chainsaw coming for him like judgment day and that black part buried deep inside of me smiled. Even seeing firsthand how horrific his end had been, it was difficult to find any sympathy for him.

  I parked my bike outside the apartment building as far from the street as I could get. Music blared from one of the apartments, angry lyrics that featured a rapper who swore worse than my ex-girlfriend. Although not a fan, I was grateful for the music, since it covered the sound of me smashing one of Sean Booker’s windows. This wasn’t the kind of neighborhood where you left a spare key under the mat.

  I shut the door and waited in the entryway for my eyes to adjust to the dark. It was a simple setup. Living room. Kitchen off to the right. A small area by a window that held a laptop computer. From my pocket, I pulled a pair of surgical gloves and slipped them on. I then navigated around the furniture to the desk, pulling the drapes tightly shut over the window so I wouldn’t be seen from the street. The laptop was a Dell. A screensaver of a blond with breasts busting out of a black negligee disappeared and was replaced by a prompting for a login and password. It took five minutes of low-budget hacking to realize that Booker wasn’t dumb enough to use any combination of his name as a password.

  “Shit,” I muttered. Sleuthing is so much easier when I’m writing it.

  For me, the laptop was a dead end. But I knew the police would have people who would be able to get past the security. I went to the living room and looked around. I saw drugs laid out on the coffee table. There were also guns. A few semi-automatic handguns and a few assault rifles. I remembered Torrez mentioning that Booker was into illegal arm sales. He obviously took his work home with him.

  There was something else. It was a black oblong shape that my mind instantly recognized as a guitar case. Hurrying over, I unzipped the case and found my stolen guitar from the club. It would be hard to explain how I got it back, but I wasn’t about to leave it. I set the guitar case by the front door and continued to look around, not sure what I was hoping to find. And then I found it. A cell phone, black and sleek, sitting on the table beside a semiautomatic Uzi.

  I scrolled through the recent call list. I stopped when I came to a name I recognized.

  Eric Watts. Interesting. But further down the list, I found an even better one.

  Preston Masters.

  Watts was easy enough to explain since Booker was a drug dealer who hung around the club district. It was reasonable to assume that the club owner was one of his clients. But what business did a guy like Booker have with a United States congressman? Before I could come up with a reasonable answer, I heard the familiar sound of a gun being cocked behind me. The lights flicked on and a voice boomed like judgment day.

  “Freeze!”

  My hands reflexively shot over my head.

  “Officer, my name is—”

  “It’s detective. Alyssa Jagger. And I know who you are, Sands.”

  “You’re Detective Torrez’s partner?”

  “That’s right.”

  I risked a glance over my shoulder. She stood off to my right, perfectly positioned with her feet spread at a good distance and her arms in front of her. Her weapon looked like a Glock, probably a 17 and most likely loaded with nine millimeter parabellums. Good stopping power. Overall, a very effective weapon. And it was aimed right at my spine.

  “I’m just having a look around,” I said.

  “You need a .45 for that?”

  “It’s a rough neighborhood.”

  “Put your hands down, slick. And you can also set down the cell phone.”

  “Cell phone?”

  “The one that you tried to hide up the sleeve of your jacket.”

  “Saw that, huh?”

  “Like I said, buddy, I’m a detective. I do this for a living.”

  I did as instructed, turned around and got my first real look at her. She wore faded blue jeans, a black leather jacket and a black T-shirt bearing the screaming feline of the Hell Kat logo. Green eyes gave me a thorough once-over. I wondered what she was thinking, but judging by her scowl, I wasn’t rating very high. From her jacket she pulled my cell phone and tossed it to me.

  “You being here saves me a trip back to your building.” She said. “I wasn’t looking forward to going back and smelling that.”

  “Were you able to trace the call?” I asked. Jagger shook her head.

  “Just to a general area. The call came from a ten-mile radius of your building. If the guy has half a brain he’s already gotten rid of it.”

  “You’re probably right.”

  Jagger looked around. “Did you find anything besides your stolen guitar?”

  “Not really.”

  “Awesome. Hopefully you didn’t contaminate the scene too much and we’ll have something to work with.”

  “I didn’t expect you to come check it out this fast.”

  “Why? Because the cops in your books are all morons who couldn’t find their own dicks without a map and a flashlight?”

  “Well—”

  “Go home, Sands.”

  “Sure.” I walked toward the door and grabbed my guitar. Standing in the doorway, I called over my shoulder, as though just remembering something only mildly important.

  “Have you looked into where Eric Watts was last night?” I asked.

  “Watts? The guy who owns the Dungeon? Why would he be involved in this?”

  “I keep thinking about those footprints. Watts is a big guy. He used to play pro football.”

  “I know. From how he talks about it, you would think he was Howie Long. Played middle linebacker for Illinois State. Drafted in the second round by the Oakland Raiders. Washed out after repeated knee injuries. The Raiders cut him and he moved back here.”

  I nodded, impressed with her efficient rundown of Watt’s’ information. Jagger took a breath. “He is also currently seeing Katrina Masters, your ex-girlfriend. I see them hanging all over each other at the club.”

  I tried to my mask my disgust at the use of Jagger’s phrase, hanging all over each other. She read my discomfort and stabbed at it.

  “So now I’m wondering why you are so quick to point the finger of accusation his way.”

  “You think I only suspect Watts because I’m jealous?”

  The green eyes bore into me. That was obviously exactly what she thought, and my body language was probably confirming it for her. The thought of Kat hanging all over that mindless ape made me want to barf more than the memory of the headless drug dealer in my garage.

  “You tell me,” she said.

  “Did you know that Watts is a renowned steroid freak?”

  “I’m aware of his history. So what?”

  “So what?” I said. “People will never let me forget throwing Preston into a Dumpster, but Eric Watts once threw a guy out a window from a second-floor dorm room. He’s big enough to wear a size eleven and a half and violent enough to cut a guy’s head off.”

  “Watt’s actually wears a twelve and half. And since you brought up those bootprints, there is one critical point you have to consider. If the killer wore overshoes, which we are assuming he did since the tracks abruptly stop right outside your building, then the size of the prints would actually be a bit bigger than his normal size. Not smaller.”

  I nodded. It was a good point.

  “But if it makes you feel any better, I have already looked into Eric Watts and cleared him as a suspect.”

  “In less than a few hours?”

  “Katrina Masters can alibi him all night.
Her band performed until ten o’ clock last night. I was actually there and can alibi both of them. It was a good set. She played your song, of course. They stayed at the bar having drinks, then she said they drove to his place. So that clears him. Unless you think that she’s in it with him?”

  “No.” My heart pounded after hearing Jagger’s cold rundown of Katrina’s night. I especially hated the way she had said “drove to his place.”

  “Good. Go home, and let us do our jobs. And if I catch you sniffing around my crime scenes again, I’ll arrest you for obstruction. Now have a nice night and try not to conjure any more dead bodies.”

  “Sure thing. And it was great meeting you too, Detective. We should do this again some time.”

  I drove home and parked on the street, noting the absence of the black crime scene van. I also made a mental note to drive my truck through the car wash. About a dozen times or so ought to do it. Or maybe I could rent a power washer. The thought of pieces of Sean Booker oozing all over the fenders and windshield made me consider trading it in. I pulled my phone from my jacket and saw that I had a missed call from Gus Tanner.

  “I have some info on that other detective,” he told me when I called back. “Her name is Alyssa Jagger.”

  “Yeah, I just met her. She pointed a Glock at my head.”

  “What the hell happened?”

  “Apparently she didn’t like the fact that I broke into a murder victim’s apartment.”

  “Jesus.”

  I waited outside, knowing that I would lose reception the second I entered the stairwell. The pack of Camels I bought at the club that morning was in the coat pocket along with a book of matches.

  “Do you really keep a damages tab for me?” I asked while lighting up.

  “Absolutely.”

  “How much is it up to?”

  “I’ll let you know the next time you sell the movie rights for one of your books.”

  “Looking forward to it. In the meantime, why don’t you tell me about Alyssa Jagger?”