Bad Moon Rising (10 page)

J.D. had hardly spoken during their short drive. He
was pissed for sure. But so was Patrick. The anger made him want to puke.

He pressed his sweating fists to his forehead and
squeezed his eyes closed.

It had happened again. J.D. had called him Billy. In
the short space of minutes, with so few words shared between them, he had
slipped and called him by his dead son’s name.

Dammit! When would J.D. ever look at him and not wish
that he was Billy? Billy was dead, and Patrick Damascus was alive. He could
make J.D. forget the past if he would only give him a chance. J.D. needed him
as much as he needed his uncle. They were both
...
alone. There were soccer games and concerts and movies to
see. J.D. wouldn’t stand him up at father-son picnics. No way. Not like his
dad, who was constantly making his mom cry. God, that’s all she did anymore.
She couldn’t do anything to please his dad. He was always picking, picking,
picking at her, do this and do that and reminding her—all of them—that he had a
reputation to live up to and if they screwed up then his career, his stupid
career, would be ruined. He had a mind to—

Banging his knuckles against his forehead. Bastard.
Fucking hypocrite. He had a mind to—

But his mother needed him to be strong. J.D. had said
so on the drive over. His parents’ marriage was screwed up and his mother was
very unhappy and surely Patrick didn’t want to add to her misery and stress.

Now J.D. was driving home, to be with that woman. He
wouldn’t think about him, Patrick, because he was surrounded by photographs of
his kids who were dead and no longer here to love him and need him. What if he
married her? That would be the end of everything. Of them. They would go on to
have more children and there would be no time at all for Patrick.

Pressing his fists into his eyes, thinking of the magazine,
that catalogue of smut, knowing that J.D. would be doing to that woman what
those women blazed across those glossy pages had been doing. He couldn’t look
at a woman anymore without thinking about it, without feeling those urges
racing through his groin. Disgusting. Sick. Those kinds of women should be
exterminated. Like her. The bitch with her long black hair and her full lips
and big tits. He had actually gotten hard sitting beside her, smelling her. He
couldn’t control it any longer. Sick.

The room flooded with light. He spun around and glared
into his father’s eyes.

“What the hell are you doing up and dressed at this
hour?” Eric demanded. “You’ve got school tomorrow.”

He moved toward the door, his gaze still locked with
his father’s. Soon he would be as big as his father. Bigger. Taller, like J.D.
And stronger, like J.D. Give it another year and the good legislative director
would think twice about bullying him and his mother. He was going to make the
son of a bitch regret he was ever born. Oh, yeah. Soon, his father was going to
suffer.

Exhaustion poured through her, yet she couldn’t
sleep. Too wired. Her mind
kept rehashing every detail of Melissa’s apartment. The fact that she had
simply walked away from Puddin’ was the key.

Perhaps what had transpired had not taken place at Melissa’s
apartment at all. Perhaps something had happened as she was on her way to meet
her john. Yes, that would make sense.

Was it too much to hope that Damascus was right? That
Melissa had, at last, simply walked away from the life, from the fear, from the
threat? Too much to hope for, surely. She would call her answering machine in
Branson again, just to make certain that Melissa hadn’t phoned.

As she paced, Puddin’ lay curled up on the futon, purring
contently now that her stomach had been filled by cold pizza and a bowl of warm
milk. Holly glanced at her watch.

Damascus
had been gone an hour.

Perhaps Beverly had been waiting for him when he took
her son home. Beverly, with her genteel disposition and timid smile, sly
flirtation from beneath the shadows of her long lashes, perhaps a tremulous
word to coax a tender touch out of the man she so obviously desired.

Odd that Holly could find empathy to share with a
woman of such obvious class. They weren’t so unalike, really. Holly might never
have known a childhood of being cherished by parents, as Beverly most
certainly had, and Holly had never known a typical teenage existence of high
school homecoming games and senior proms. But their mutual desire for the
unattainable put them on an equal level. They both yearned for something they
could not have.

Beverly
wanted J.D. Damascus.

And Holly wanted a man who would love her regardless
of her past, and for what she could offer for the future: a home and children,
a wife who would never take for granted the treasures that such gifts could
offer. Someone who would count her blessings every day and worship every
moment of happiness as if it were her last. She didn’t care about money. Didn’t
care about flashy cars or impressive houses or designer clothes. Materialism
could never compare to permanence, to a man who would hold her in his arms at
night and kiss away her nightmares. Or a child’s unconditional love and trust
that shines in his eyes when his mother tucks him into bed.

Holly’s man was out there, somewhere. Waiting. Perhaps
he had suffered, too. Then he would need her all the more. Cherish her. And she
could fill up his emptiness as he filled up hers.

She picked up a framed photograph of J.D.’s kids.
Beautiful children. The boy looked just like his father, gray eyes and a mop of
thick, dark brown hair. The girl was probably more like her mother, blond,
sparkling green eyes, and a scattering of freckles over her pug nose. Ribbons
on pigtails.

Holly smiled and lightly touched the cherubic face
with her fingertip, unfamiliar images of Damascus toying with her imagination.

Her gaze moved to another photograph, then another,
then another. She wandered to the kitchen and studied the snapshots on the
fridge, turned them over and noted they were dated years ago.

Odd. There didn’t seem to be any recent photographs.
No school photos. Could the divorce have been so ugly that the ex wouldn’t so
much as provide current pictures? Doubtful. Even if his wife didn’t supply
them, Damascus would take his own. Unless, possibly, the ex had moved away. How
very sad for him. He obviously loved his kids very much.

She returned the photograph to the lamp table and wandered
into the bedroom. Sleepiness had begun to tug on her eyelids at last. She
regarded the bed somewhat wistfully. No. She wasn’t so callous as to take his
bed. She would fold out the futon, catch a few winks, then decide just how she
was going to go about finding Melissa without blowing her cover.

A small, dim lamp burned on a desk in the corner.
There were papers scattered haphazardly. Law books stacked high. More
photographs. She moved to the desk and allowed her gaze to wander. It caught on
a folder labeled
Damascus
, laura
.

She picked it up. Flipped it open.

The breath left her. Shock punched her in the stomach
as she focused on the grotesque images of a slaughtered woman laid out on the
coroner’s slab.

Throwing the file down, she backed away, her body
shivering and burning at once. She backed into a wall, one hand covering her
mouth, her wide eyes still fixed on the file that shimmered slightly under the
amber light.

DAMASCUS, LAURA.

LAURA DAMASCUS.

MURDERED.

DECAPITATED.

EVISCERATED.

August, 1999.

Oh God, oh God, oh God.

Her gaze flew to the children’s photographs, her shock
equaled by a swelling sense of fear that escalated the pounding of her heart as
her eyes burned into those of Damascus’s son. Her hands curled into fists, the
nails cutting painfully into her palms.

Where were the children? The beautiful, smiling children?

No recent photographs. Oh, no. Surely not.

She approached the desk again, cautious, as if the
file would fly open on its own and reveal Laura’s body in colored detail. Her
hands fumbled for the desk drawers, opening one, rummaging wildly. What was she
looking for? Anything to prove that her instincts were wrong. His children, his
beloved, beautiful children were not dead as well. Not possible. Not his entire
family! Why? No, no, they were, perhaps, living with J.D.’s parents. Laura’s
parents.

Another drawer, digging, searching. A small box of
Matchbox cars—a collection of Indy racers, red and blue and green. An envelope
of fine, blond hair and a pair of pink ribbons. A scrap of yellow newspaper,
neatly folded. Her trembling fingers opened it.

She closed her eyes.

The engine idling, J.D. sat in the Mustang
outside his apartment, Emile
Pandolfi music drifting from the CD player into the hot August night. He
considered turning the car around and returning to Eric’s house, apologizing
to Patrick for his annoyance and preoccupation. He’d slipped and called the kid
Billy again. Stupid.

He looked toward his apartment. Holly Jones had
crawled under his skin and he couldn’t shake it. The fear and shame in her eyes
had obliterated his initial disappointment over her past. Instead, he had been
flooded by fresh fury. Yet another woman destroyed by Tyron Johnson. The
mounting anger gnawed at his belly even as Pandolfi’s piano drifted sweetly
into the humid night air. So did his suspicion that Johnson might have had
something to do with Melissa’s disappearance. Especially if she had indicated
that she intended to get out of the business. “Son of a bitch.”

At three in the morning the Lucky Lady Casino
was shoulder to shoulder with
gamblers who, earlier in the night, had lost their paychecks or their winnings
and were desperate to win them back. As the slot machines pinged and sang,
crowds pressing against the craps tables shouted out their encouragement as a
pair of dice danced across the green cloth.

At the Caribbean Stud table, J.D., a drink at his
elbow and a cigarette in an ashtray, studied his hand. Three kings.

“Make it good, Charlie.”

The dealer, with a sympathetic smile, gave a shrug and
a nod toward the black box on the edge of the table. “It’s up to the machine,
J.D.”

He looked toward the box that dealt out the cards,
five to a hand. An emotionally detached machine that didn’t give a damn if a
man’s entire livelihood rested on the fall of the cards.

J.D. tossed his kings facedown on the table. “Just
qualify, for God’s sake.”

Charlie laughed, then flipped over the dealer’s cards.
Grimaced. “Dealer doesn’t qualify.”

The man sitting beside J.D. threw down his cards. “I’m
outta here.” He drunkenly stumbled off his stool, then wobbled his way toward
the craps table.

As Charlie raked in the bets from the remaining six
men at the table, he gave J.D. a sympathetic look. “Cards suck tonight, buddy.
Blackjack is hot.”

J.D. glanced up at the progressive jackpot total. Five
hundred thousand, the highest in the casino’s history. All he needed was a
royal flush. Hell, a straight flush would do. Ten percent of the progressive
jackpot would be fifty thousand bucks.

He placed a dollar chip in the jackpot slot, followed
by another ten dollar ante.

Charlie shook his head. “You’re a glutton for punishment,
Damascus.”

“Begging for it apparently.”

He looked toward a blond waitress wearing a
form-fitting black dress and winked. Carla flashed him a smile and sidled up
close, her perfume washing over him in a wave.

“We don’t see you around here much these days, J.D.
Don’t break my heart and tell me you’ve got a girlfriend.” He grinned.

She moved closer, lowered her voice. “So why are you
really here, Damascus? Tell me you’re not harassing Tyron again.”

He shrugged. “I’m looking for Melissa Carmichael. Have
you seen her?”

“Not in a couple of weeks.”

“She mention anything to you about leaving New Orleans?”

“Melissa was always talking about getting out of the
life. Then again, they all do.”

“She mention it to Tyron? Maybe one of the other girls
mentioned it to him?”

“Haven’t heard any whispers about it. Why?”

“Can’t find her.”

She raised one eyebrow and smiled. “Honey, if you’re
after a little friendly companionship, you don’t need to look up a hooker. I
gave you my phone number already.”

He grinned and placed his empty glass on her tray. “If
you hear anything about Melissa, give me a call.”

“Sure. On one condition. I dig up anything, you take
me to dinner.”

“You got it.”

Carla smiled. “Another drink?”

“A double, and this time don’t water it down.”

She looked at his mouth, her lips curving. “Would we
do something like that?”

He grinned and watched Carla walk away. The indecently
short skirt nicely showed off her long, slender legs.

He thought about Holly.

As he smoked, his gaze searched the room, his mind
still sifting through the events of the last couple of days. Tyra. Cherry. Now
Melissa. All Tyron Johnson’s girls— just like before.

He won the next eight hands. Nearly three thousand
dollars worth of chips stacked neatly before him as his companion gamblers
shouted him on and the pit boss began to make phone calls and security was
forced to deliver more chips. Gamblers wandered from the nearby craps and
blackjack tables and began to wager among themselves on how much longer J.D.’s
streak of luck would continue. The waitresses swarmed around him like bees near
a hive, plying him with doubles, brushing their bodies against him while their
eyes danced in anticipation of healthy tips.

Just as J.D. had expected, Tyron made his entrance,
followed by his entourage of beautiful women and bodyguards. As usual, he
looked like a Wall Street broker: Armani suit, dark tan that set off his
sun-streaked blond hair, and ice blue eyes that skewered J.D. immediately.

J.D. was well aware that his presence in the Lucky
Lady would eventually reach the sleazebag pimp. No way J.D. would ever have
made it up to Johnson’s penthouse— not with the goons who prowled the hallways
to keep trouble from his door. It had only been a matter of time before J.D.’s
sniffing around the casino asking questions would lure the creep out of his
apartment.

Tyron’s mouth curved even as his jaw muscles worked in
anger as he moved toward J.D.

Charlie glanced toward Tyron, then cleared his throat.
“Place your bet, Damascus.”

“I’ll sit this one out.”

The waitresses scattered, as did the other gamblers,
returning to their games at the craps and blackjack tables.

Tyron smiled, showing capped teeth that had cost him a
small fortune. “I see you’re still blowing your money, J.D.”