Blood Crimes: Book One (6 page)

      Hayes unfolded the fax he had received from the Kansas City Sentinel two days earlier to make sure he had the right address, then walked down the side street he had parked near and searched for the alleyway where a local crack and meth dealer, Devon Wilkerson, was found with his throat torn out and most of his blood drained. He stopped for a moment to squint at the sun and then to wipe a handkerchief along the back of his neck. Damn it was muggy here. Hot as hell too, like a steam bath. Ten minutes outside of the air-conditioning of his car and he was already sweating.

      Up ahead a homeless man was picking through a dumpster and loading trash into a shopping cart. Even in the oppressive heat, the man wore several layers of clothing under a winter jacket. Hayes walked up to him and pointed a thumb towards the alley they were standing next to and asked if that was where Wilkerson was murdered.

      The homeless man’s eyes looked foggy. “Whazzot,” he croaked out.

      Hayes didn’t know if this was meant as a question or statement. He tried again, talking slower. “The drug dealer who was murdered around here. Was it in this alley?” Hayes said. He consulted a notepad. “The man who was murdered was big, over six and a half feet. African-American. Had his throat cut open. He was found dead ten days ago in an alley off this street.”

      The homeless man shrugged noncommittally, his eyes clouded and glassy. No question he was on something.

      “Dunno.”

      Hayes pulled a ten-dollar bill from his wallet. The bill was snatched from his hands. Hayes watched as the homeless man folded it carefully and placed it in a pocket inside his jacket lining. He nodded and pointed down the alley. Flecks of dirt or bugs or something flew off his hair as he did this.

      “Vampires,” he said.

      “What do you mean vampires?”

      “Vampires done it. Drank his blood. Kilt him.”

      “Did you see anything?”

      “No no yo. Not me. Saw nothin’. Sayin’ nothin’ more.”

      The homeless man grabbed his shopping cart and pushed it away. He looked back at Hayes a few times until he was satisfied the PI wasn’t following him. Hayes watched as the man turned the corner and disappeared from sight, then glanced at his notes again and walked to the end of the alley. Outside of several trash cans there wasn’t much else there. Any signs of the murder had been cleaned up. Hayes spotted a sewer grate under one of the trash cans. He had done a weather lookup on Yahoo and knew it had rained heavily the morning before the body was discovered—intense thunderstorms was how they put it. That probably had more to do with the alley being cleaned of blood than anything else.

      Hayes stood silently trying to envision what would’ve brought Wilkerson to the alley. He could’ve been chased down it, but more likely was lured to the spot. He closed his eyes and tried to feel any vibes from the murder site and imagine what happened that night. From his photos the victim was a scary looking sonofabitch. Six foot six, two hundred and thirty pounds, with a long string of arrests for drug dealing and violent assaults, but no convictions. Hayes had a rough idea what the police were thinking—that the murder was over territory and that a competing dealer was trying to grab Wilkerson’s slice of the trade. Hayes had a different idea of the murder, but then again, he was looking at it from a different angle. The local police didn’t know what he knew. That this wasn’t an isolated incident. That there was a serial killer crisscrossing the country killing a lot of bad guys like Wilkerson.

      Hayes sighed and headed back to his car. In all good conscience, he should go to the FBI with what he suspected but it wasn’t as if he had anything concrete, just a growing folder of circumstantial evidence.
M
aybe it wasn’t quite ethical, but he was under no legal obligation to report unproven hunches. Also there was the complication that his client was paying him a lot of money—twice his going rate, to work this case fulltime, along with a promise of a hundred-grand bonus if he found the guy she wanted found. When she hired him she insisted that he keep his investigation confidential, that anything he found would be reported only to her. He agreed to her demands. She wasn’t the kind of woman he could say no to. Just thinking of her got his heart pumping. Serena Jones. Jesus, she was something…

      Not that he could say she was beautiful. No, that wouldn’t be the right way to describe her, not with this weird cat-like look about her and with how thin and lean she was with almost no tits. But damn was she sexy. Partly it was those green eyes of hers, partly it was the way she dressed in skintight leather, but mostly it was that she seemed to ooze sexuality. It was as if it came off her like perfume. Just the way she looked at him would make him hard—not that he would ever have a chance to do anything about it; she was well out of his league. But a guy could dream, couldn’t he?

      He returned to his car and retrieved his case folder and also the police blackjack from under the driver’s seat. He slipped the sap into his belt so that it was hidden by his shirt. He still had several hours before he was going to be meeting the police detectives investigating Wilkerson’s murder, and this area seemed as good a place as any to start interviewing witnesses. He kept a wary eye on the street toughs who were hanging around the neighborhood, as they did him, and went from bar to bar showing Wilkerson’s picture along with two sketches that he had. The first sketch was one that Serena had helped him make of the man she wanted found. The physical resemblance between Serena and “
Jim
” was strong enough that Hayes thought they had to be related, maybe even brother and sister. Both were athletic, almost unnaturally lean, with the same cat-like quality to their features and uniquely shaped faces. Serena insisted that they weren’t related, and further that she had no idea what
Jim
’s last name was. She was also tightlipped about her connection to
Jim
and why she wanted him found. Hayes didn’t push it, but he was going by the theory that they were of the same blood.

      At the fourth bar Hayes tried, the bartender recognized Wilkerson’s picture.

      “He’s the dude killed in an alley a few blocks from here, right?” the bartender asked.

      “Yeah. Did you know him?”

      “Nope.”

      “Did he ever come in here?”

      The bartender smiled vaguely showing off some badly nicotine-stained teeth. “Can’t remember.”

      He started to walk away, but made it slow. When Hayes put twenty dollars on the bar, the bartender’s face screwed up into a pained expression as if he were trying to pull an obscure piece of trivia from his brain. When Hayes added another twenty, the bartender collected the money and told him that he remembered seeing Wilkerson around.

      “How about ten or so days ago?”

      A glint showed in the bartender’s eyes. “You mean the night he was killed?”

      “Yeah.”

      He thought about it and shrugged.

      “I don’t know,” he said. “He could’ve been, but I can’t remember when I saw him last. He wasn’t the type of guy I wanted to pay attention to.”

      “This is where he did business?”

      “I couldn’t tell you about that.”

      At that hour there were only a half dozen customers distributed along the bar and tables. The bartender waved over the lone waitress; a very skinny redhead in her early twenties wearing a short miniskirt and sleeveless blouse that was tied off midway up her stomach. The waitress looked like she was single-handedly keeping the local tattoo parlors in business with a couple of dozen tattoos on her neck, arms and ankles, and probably places Hayes wasn’t privileged to see. She also had almost as many visible piercings as ink. The bartender showed her Wilkerson’s picture and asked when she last remembered seeing him.

      “That’s the dead guy?”

      “Yeah.”

      “I don’t know.” She scrunched up her face while she gave the matter some thought. “
M
aybe two weeks ago?” she said.

      Hayes showed them his sketch of
Jim
. Neither of them remembered seeing him. The waitress promised Hayes that if that guy were ever in there she’d remember seeing him. “I’d be all over him,” she said. “Fuck, he’s hot looking.”

      Hayes couldn’t help smiling. A hot-looking serial killer. Great. The same women who wouldn’t give him the time of day find this guy hot-looking. Of course, he was in his late forties while this “hot-looking” serial killer was about fifteen years younger, but it had always been this way. He showed both of them his other sketch. This one was of a women in her early twenties with large brown eyes, high cheekbones and a gauntness to her face. In the picture she was a blonde, but Hayes suspected that wasn’t her true hair color and that she frequently wore different colored wigs. The drawing was of an extraordinarily beautiful woman and, like this waitress, was someone who favored hot-looking serial killers over solid but average-looking PIs.

      The bartender nodded. “I remember her. But she wasn’t a blonde.” He winked at the waitress. “She was a redhead like Chelsea.”

      “In a pig’s eye,” the waitress said. “She was wearing a wig.”

      “You saw her also?”

      “Yeah, I saw her. The way she was dressed I thought she was a hooker, but she was too good-looking for that. I couldn’t understand what someone like her was doing here. Not our typical lady customer. Her hair was a fake. Definitely. I remember her eyebrows being a dark brown. I wanted to tell some of the guys drooling over her that there was only one natural redhead in the place.”

      The bartender leered at her. “Bullshit,” he said. “Chelsea, you’re a dye job if I ever saw one.”

      “Fuck you.”

      “Prove me wrong then. Easy enough for you to do.”

      “How many times do I have to say it, Ossie. Fuck you.”

      The bartender got a laugh out of that.

      Hayes brought them back to the subject at hand. “How close does she look to this sketch?”

      “Damn close,” the bartender said.

      “Outside of the hair, yeah, that’s her,” the waitress agreed.

      “Either of you remember her being here with Devon Wilkerson?”

      They both gave him blank stares.

      “The guy who was murdered,” Hayes said, pointing again at Wilkerson’s picture.

      They both thought about it. The bartender nodded slowly. “Fuck, I think he was talking to her. Yeah, goddamn, I think he bought her a couple of drinks.”

      “Did he leave with her?”

      The bartender’s eyes glazed over as he tried to remember. “I dunno. I don’t think so.”

      One of the patrons sitting at a table had lifted an empty beer glass and was signaling to the waitress. She asked the bartender for another Bud. While he poured her a draft, she put a hand on Hayes’ arm and told him she had to get back to work. “It’s been fun, Hon,” she said. “You come by after my shift ends at one and maybe I’ll be able to think of something else.”

      Both Hayes and the bartender watched the movement of her barely covered ass as she brought the draft to the table.

      “I’ve been trying to get in her pants for a year now,” the bartender complained, mostly talking to himself. He gave Hayes a look that basically said
What the fuck does she see in an ugly sonofabitch like you?
All Hayes could do was shrug. The bartender’s face reddened. He moved over to the beer taps and started to replace an empty keg. Without bothering to look at Hayes, he said, “We’re done here, right? I gotta get back to work, pal.”

      Hayes was done. Besides, he had two Kansas City police detectives he needed to talk to. On his way out, the waitress gave him a look to let him know that she wasn’t kidding him earlier; that if he came by at one she’d be waiting.

      Hayes felt his heart skip a beat.
M
aybe all this time looking for “
Jim
” a bit of the serial killer’s charisma had rubbed off. Goddamn. Hayes’ imagination started working overtime as he pictured where he was going to be uncovering secret tattoos on the waitress, and even better, additional body piercings. It was sobering, though, stepping out of the bar and seeing a half-dozen or so street predators leaning against storefronts turning their eyes towards him. Sighing heavily, he forced his attention away from what the waitress was offering and back to the job at hand.

* * * * *

      Detectives Bobby Brindle and Lou
M
arzon got a kick out of the story Hayes told them about why he was interested in Devon Wilkerson’s murder. It was total bullshit but the same story had played well with detectives in other cities so he kept using it. A lesson he learned while on the force was the more outlandish the lie the more willing people were to buy it. If he tried feeding a perp some bullshit about having a witness they’d just start smirking. If he told them instead that he had CIA satellite photos of them in the act of the crime they’d invariably start bitching about how it was a violation of their privacy.

      “So who’s this famous writer?” Brindle asked while shoveling a chunk of steak into his mouth. Hayes was buying the detectives steak dinners and beers in exchange for what they had on the Devon Wilkerson murder.