God of the Dead (Seasons of Blood #1): A dark paranormal crime thriller novel (10 page)

“Harry left the force after his daughter was taken,” John said. “He had a nose for bullshit like no other though, like a fucking human polygraph. Brutal, too.”

“Brutal huh?” Kurtz asked.

“
Brutal
,” John said and shook his head. “I seen him beat a confession out of a guy once, it was thing of beauty. Guy came in hard as a coffin nail…lifetime in the system, rap sheet you couldn’t fit on this bar, nothing but beat on as a kid, in and out of foster homes, hit Juvie on a murder rap. Fifteen years old, when he stabbed that little boy to death.”

“Why, Detective, those juvenile records are supposed to be sealed,” Kurtz said, smiling.

“Yeah, sealed,” Polaski said.

“And a judge’d never hear me say otherwise,” John said. “Anyway this guy, he walked out a’ Juvie the day he turned adult. Learned to work the system, just the kind a’ perp that ain’t ever gonna crack on his own, you know? The kind that you just gotta crack yourself.”

“Fuckin-a’,” Polaski said, taking a long drink.

“You need a guy broken, you called Harry. Another little boy was missing. This guy, he’d fallen
twice
on pedo charges as an adult, one of them a’ fucking three year old. Getting worse. We knew the guy had him, the little boy. We
knew it
. I knew it, Coe knew it. Just fuckin’.
Knew. It.
We just couldn’t get the place out of him, where the kid was. So we called in Harry and turned off the camera. Harry beat this guy
to death
, understand me? I mean literally. Resuscitated him right there in the fuckin’ grill-room, still cuffed to the table.”

“I heard about that,” Sully said, his voice soft.

“He was like a fuckin’ scientist of hurting people, Harry was. He knew how to beat a guy unconscious without even leaving a mark. This guy, though, he, he was marked. Harry took his time, no rush. Just step by step by step, until the perp cracked. His eyes were swollen so bad we had to cut ’em like they used to in boxing, so he could sign the confession when Harry was done with him.”

Melt, John thought, staring at his drink. Fucking
melt
.

“Was the kid okay?” Polaski asked.

“No,” John said. “He was alive, though.”

Kurtz let out a low whistle.

“What about up here?” Sully asked.

“Eh?” John asked, looking up from his ice cube, which was really more of a sliver now. Almost.

Just one drink, John thought again. Just this one.

“Who’s the best guy you worked with up here?”

“Oh, that’s no contest,” John said. “Jin.”

“Who?” Sully asked.

“I gotta call it a night, boys,” Kurtz said, slamming back the last of his drink and dropping a twenty on the bar.

“Yeah, have a good night, Frank,” John said, then turned back to Sully. “You fuckin’ gone soft on me, Sully?
Jin
.”

Sully pulled a face and just shook his head, looking down at his glass.

“Oh, the
fuck
you don’t know Jin,” John said. “Makoto? Fucking come on, Sully, you
rode
with the guy for like six months!”

“Don’t ring a bell, John, sorry.”

“Worked the Bowden murd—”

“Night, John,” Sully said, setting his empty glass on the bar and dropping a bill for Jimmy the 3
rd
to pick up. “Have a good night, Jimmy! Pole, I’ll see you tomorrow.”

Polaski nodded.

John looked back in his glass. Almost gone now. He held the drink in both hands, willing it to melt.

“I can’t believe fuckin’ Sully,” John said. “How many he put back tonight, make him forget Jin like that? You know who I mean, right, Pole? Worked the Bowden case, got well, fuck it, the brass ain’t here, got pushed out after that, remember? Ended up with the Commissioner involved, a senator or some damn thing.
Christ
that case, though! I ne—”

John looked up and found with a start the chair next to him was empty, the stool slowly spinning. He looked up as the door closed, and Polaski was gone. John looked back to the spot the Pole had recently vacated and stared at the half-full drink still sitting on the bar.

Rick Polaski never left a drink unfinished in his life, John thought.

Jimmy the 3
rd
came by, picking up the cash and stacking the glasses. “You can’t talk about him in here, John,” the 3
rd
said. “Even I know that.”

John opened his mouth to speak and snapped it shut again. He looked down at the drink in his hand and the ice was finally gone.

To Sammy, he thought. Sammy and Jin.

He tilted it up to his mouth and drained the glass in three long swallows, the Turkey burning going down and lighting up like napalm when it hit, but God it was good. Too good, really.

John set his empty glass on the bar, said goodnight, and left.

About twenty minutes later, John walked into his small, one-bedroom apartment and shut the door behind him. He shrugged out of his trench coat and flung it onto the back of his chair and hung his fedora on the doorknob.

He stood staring at the bottle of Wild Turkey on his kitchen counter, telling himself how he’d said
one
drink earlier. Only one. After a moment that was longer than he would have admitted—and even longer than he realized—he turned away and instead just sat down in his favorite chair with his feet up, to think. Not about anything in particular, for something is always overlooked, but the case in general. Right now, it was obvious this kid had a part in something he had no knowledge of. Someone was trying to grab hold of him and pull him into it, kicking and screaming. The alleged Detective Quidman was the only suspect right now, but John had long ago learned to never close his mind to other possibilities.

And where could AJ’s birth name of Munroe fit in? John was sure the kid was

safe now but he had no idea what they were up against. None of them did. He thought again of Jin, and how after looking into it long enough, the pieces of the Bowden case had stopped adding up. It had seemed like an open-and-shut thing: nasty to be sure, a serial murderer of women? Of
course
it was nasty. But Jin had caught the first body that was found and had just run with it. He’d had all the help he could ask for at first, guys putting in hours even when they knew they weren’t getting OT, just doing goddamn
police work
because there was a guy out there, killing women, and they all wanted it to stop.

And it did, finally. When Jin walked Todd Bowden into one of the interview rooms, head hung, hands in cuffs, Jin was looked at like a rockstar, like a kind of
god
, and the relief that had been in the stationhouse had been palpable. It had been thick and real, a physical thing. It was over, people kept saying. It’s over. Finally over.

But for Jin, that was when it really started. Between the shit Bowden started talking in his confession and the thing, later, with his wife’s body, there was just too much that didn’t quite add up. Jin was too good of a cop to let these things go and the more he dug, the worse it got.

John was deeply ashamed of how he’d turned his back and let it go when he’d been ordered to.

Fuckin complicit, he thought now, that old shame burning fresh and hot on the back of his neck and in his guts. In his heart.
You are an accessory. Aiding in the total destruction of one of the finest men he’d ever worked with
.

He didn’t know what all Jin had found, if anything. The way the brass had gotten involved, and not just the brass but worse, the
politicians
, John had always figured it to be some kind of massive conspiracy involving someone very rich and very powerful. Someone connected with those at the top or even someone
at
the top.

Could it have been more, though? Something like this?

Good god, could it have been
something like this
?

Detective John Lubbock sat back down in his chair, surprised to find he’d gotten up while in his reveries and poured himself a glass of Wild Turkey, three-quarters full and with a single ice-cube floating in it.

Fuck it, he decided, seeing Karen Rosenthal’s eyes open again and again, staring up at him from the coroner’s table. If this wasn’t a two-drink night, there never was one.

It was a long time before he was able to sleep.

CHAPTER FIVE

I can’t believe they’re having this asshole guard me, AJ thought. He’d been given some bullshit cover story for being on protection; the higher-ups had wisely chosen to keep this numb fuck out of the loop. Officer Gomez had driven him home last night and that had been fine.
Gomez
was good guy. But when his shift ended, he was replaced by…this.

Upon greeting Gomez, Officer Aaron Burrell remarked on what a shitty section of town they were in. AJ had stared out the window, watching the vultures as they circled above.

Gomez shook AJ’s hand, and AJ thanked him, and Gomez left. AJ gave Burrell the tour, such as it was.

“Man,” Burrell said. “This place is
tiny
! It would drive me nuts living here. How do you do it?”

“Happily, until now.” AJ poured himself a cup of coffee, got another pack of Red Apples out his carton in the freezer, and sat on the couch.

“Jeez, kid. You smoke too?”

“Only when I’m real fucking annoyed.”

Burrell nodded. Not only was he rude, but he was stupid, too. This was somehow worse, that he wouldn’t understand when he was being insulted.

The following six hours had been the longest AJ had spent in recent memory, and this included that endless first night in the police station after James Bradley had first attacked him.

AJ had been in the bathroom when he heard his phone ring. He washed his hands as he heard his answering machine kick on.

“Oh my god, you have an
answering machine
?” Clover’s voice filled the apartment, making AJ smile as he headed for the phone. “That’s so cool! I didn’t know your apartment was in 1995.”

“Ooooh! A ladies’ man, eh?” Burrell said.

AJ tried to ignore him, he really did, and picked up the phone.

“Hey!” he said into the cordless, walking into the other room. “Sorry about that. Little slow to get to the phone.”

“Or to the modern era,” Clover said, laughing. “I think the only person I know that still has a landline is my Gramma. In her nursing home.”

“Yeah yeah, I get it. You’re
hilarious
. Comedy Central call you yet about your own stand-up special?”

“Aww, you know about Comedy Central?” Clover asked. “Okay, I’m done.”

“Get that out of your system, did you?”

“I
did
!” Clover said. “SO we still on for tonight?”

“Of course!” AJ said. He’d talked to Gomez a bit about it and Gomez had assured him it wouldn’t be a problem. He hadn’t yet figured out how to tell her he was on police protection yet, but he supposed he could cross that bridge when she got there.

“Cool! I’m just about to grab something to eat and I’ll be over.”

AJ gave her his address and directions. He was a bit embarrassed by where he lived because Burrell was right: the neighborhood
was
kinda shitty. It didn’t phase her, though.

“Oh I know where this is. There’s a great old theater near there, right? The Esquire?”

“Yeah!” AJ said. “I love that place. They just played
Josey Wales
last month.”

“Shit, I
went
to that!” Clover said. “It was just the weekend, right? When’d you go?”

“High Noon Matinee, on Saturday.”

“I was gonna catch that! I had a flat tire on the way over, though, and had to hit the three o’clock instead.”

There was a long moment where AJ thought about it, how they were very nearly at the same movie at the same time.

“So close,” Clover said, her voice a little far away, as though she were speaking to herself. “Anyway,
weird
right?”

“Yeah, it really is.”

“Well, I’ll see you soon, okay?”

“More than okay,” AJ said. He pressed the END button on the receiver and stood there a moment, wishing she hadn’t gotten that flat tire, or that he had went to the three o’clock show, that maybe they would have met each other in the lobby, or—

“Who’s that? Some sweet little piece you got lined out for later?” Burrell asked.

AJ jumped a little and turned to see the cop standing in his doorway, leaning against the frame. Burrell wiggled his eyebrows lecherously.

And I can’t stands nummore,
AJ thought. “What are you, fourteen?”

Burrell stared at him blankly for a second, a stupefied look permanently attached to his face. “What do you mean?”

“I mean you’re a grown man and you act like I did when I was fourteen. And I was
immature
for a fourteen year old.”

“Calm down, junior,” Burrell said, finally taking offense to something. “I didn’t know you were such a fun guy.”

“Yeah, and you’re a real barrel of fucking monkeys yourself,” AJ muttered.

“Huh?”

AJ hated to stoop to this but he thought there might be only one way to pull it off: he had to drop to Burrell’s level. Antagonizing the guy wasn’t going to get him anywhere and the last thing he wanted was to have this asshole chaperoning them.

“Look, that girl I got off the phone with? She’s coming over around seven-thirty, and it might get a bit...odd...if you were in here.
If
you know what I mean...” AJ tipped him the heavily suggestive conspirator’s wink he hadn’t used since his ninth-grade year.

“Ohhhh. I getcha.” Burrell’s eyebrows hopped up and down again and he favored AJ with a perverted grin he could have done without. “I don’t see what I can do, though, I mean, the chief said--”

AJ cut him off. “For you to guard me. Right. But couldn’t you do it even better from the hall? I have a chair I use at my computer you could take out there.”

“Is it comfortable?” Burrell asked, a note of childlike suspicion in his voice.

AJ showed him the large, padded chair, which happened to be very comfortable indeed. Plus it had wheels, which he figured would be enough for someone of Burrell’s obvious intelligence. A mental picture of the large, dull-eyed man racing up and down the halls in his chair popped into AJ’s head and he barely stifled the laughter. “I’ve got a lot of books too, if you wanted to read,” he offered without much hope.

“Well, the chair is good, but I’m not much of one for reading, you know?”

“Well...I’ve also got this,” AJ hunted around the coffee table for a moment before finding what he was looking for.

“Oh hey! I love these things!” Burrell’s eyes lit up when AJ gave him a little electronic poker game. He sat on the couch and started playing immediately.

“So you’ll help me out here?”

“Huh?” Burrell looked up from the game of five-card draw he’d instantly become immersed in.

“Will you help me out with this?”

“Oh. Sure. No problem.”

AJ breathed a sigh of relief and Burrell cursed as he lost a hand.

* * * * *

The man that wasn’t Detective Quidman opened his eyes; not that he really needed to sleep, but old habits die hard. His name was Logan, or at least it had been for so long that it didn’t really matter one way or the other. There were a lot of things that didn’t matter and even more that he didn’t want to remember.

But right now there were some very serious issues at hand that needed his undivided attention. Things looked bad. It hadn’t seemed this bleak since the first time, all those years ago. Life had been simpler then; there were no TVs or radios, not even a morning newspaper. The world had moved on, becoming an endless barrage of information. Besides, people had been more superstitious back then and they wouldn’t buy this now. It simply wouldn’t be accepted the way it used to be.

Logan just had to hope
He
hadn’t found the book yet. It was unlikely but it was still a possibility that couldn’t be ignored. But he didn’t think The Next had it either and that could be nearly as bad.

Logan knew the police would probably try and stop him from getting to the boy but any efforts they could make to prevent him would be to no avail. He loaded his guns: a Taurus .357 he’d just picked up with a seven-chamber cylinder, an automatic .45 with a laser sight, and a shotgun that he’d made himself. It was double barreled, except the barrels were stacked instead of being side by side, and would fire any standard 12-gauge ammo. It was semi-automatic, pump action, and very mean.

He put the .45 in his side holster, the .357 in the back, and then put on the shoulder sling he had devised for the shotgun. He checked the sheath strapped to his right thigh and the knife with the foot-long blade that was within it. Atop it all went his trench coat, which served as concealment for the weapons.

He took a small, round object about the size of a billiard ball from the pocket of his coat. The brown paper wrapping he’d picked it up in was still crumpled and stuffed in the bathroom trashcan. The object let off a pulsing, blue glow.

It was time to make contact.

* * * * *

The intercom next to the door buzzed. AJ stepped over the coffee table and thumbed the TALK button. “Hello?”

“It’s me,” said the voice on the other end.

“Who?”

“Clover.”

“I’m afraid you have the wrong apartment. There’s no one here by the name of Clover.”

“Let me in, dick,” she said and laughed. AJ pressed the button and checked himself in the bathroom mirror one more time, making sure there was nothing in his teeth. Then he opened the door and leaned out to Burrell to say, “Hey, you need anything, man? Take a piss, drink a water?”

Burrell responded with a negative grunt, never even taking his eyes off the game. At the end of the hall the door opened and Clover walked through it and once again into his heart.

“Come on in,” he said as she neared and held the door open for her. “Welcome to my humble abode.”

“Thank you.” She smiled at him and walked through the door. The cop didn’t give her a second glance as she passed him. She turned to AJ once the door was shut. “Why is there a cop here?”

“Well, after what happened—”

“You mean at the gas station?” That didn’t seem like something one would need police protection for, she thought.

“No, after that. After you left, actually. Someone kept calling the station and threatening me, saying they knew what I did. So they thought it might be best to keep an eye on me for a while.” AJ felt a terrible pang in lying to her but what was the alternative, really? She’d think he was insane if he told her the things John had laid on him.

She was shocked. “Why didn’t you tell me earlier?”

He shrugged. “I dunno...I didn’t want you to get all worried or anything. Besides, it’s probably nothing anyway.”

She couldn’t think of anything to say after that; a short but uncomfortable silence ensued. “So why don’t you give me the tour?”

“Delightful!” AJ did his best Robin Leach impression and held his arm out with a flourish. She giggled and took it, following him into the other room. AJ showed her his ludicrously small apartment, feeling like a jackass as he pointed out the bedroom. They soon came to the kitchen.

“This is my hammer,” AJ said, motioning toward the little table to the left of the window. “I use it to prop my window open because my landlord is a dick and won’t replace anything.”

“
Very
nice,” Clover said.

“This is where I try and keep food,” he said as he opened the fridge. “Want something to drink?”

“Please. What do you have?” She leaned over to take a look in the fridge so she could put her hand on his shoulder.

“Water, beer, and, uh, beer.”

“Wow. Can I have a minute to think this over?”

“Nope,” he said, shutting the fridge. “Time’s up. No beverage for you.”

She smiled and rolled her eyes at him. “A beer would be great. As long as it’s not Coors.”

AJ opened two bottles of Honey Brown and they sat on the couch. She took a bottle and looked him in the eyes. AJ was helpless to do much else but stare back. It was only for a moment, a flicker in time, but those few seconds seemed to go on for eternity, and he would have been just as happy if it had. He stared into her deep, green eyes, eyes the color of clover, and was forever lost in them, drowning in the kindness and hope they held. This visceral instant slowly came to an end as she raised her beer, the almost surreal quality of it all fading as softly as the light dies from the day when the sun drops below the horizon.

“What should we drink to?” she murmured.

Us, he thought, and she nodded like she’d heard him. The bottles clinked and they drank. AJ blinked several times, clearing his head.

“So—” he said, trying to clear his throat. “Wanna start the movie?”

AJ put his copy of
True Romance
in the DVD player and they sat on the couch. As the movie played out, they didn’t talk much...but the silence was comfortable this time, almost necessary.

Clover finished her beer, AJ’s empty bottle sat on the coffee table. She set hers next to it and walked into the kitchen, returning with another bottle for each of them. She sat close enough that their hips touched and leaned against him in a familiar way; he slipped his arm around her and there it rested, as if it had always been there, until the screams began in the hall.