Bad Moon Rising (5 page)

Still, there were times when the loneliness, the emptiness
of his life threatened to erode his self-restraint. When the pain boiled up
inside him, ripping at his heart, gnawing at his belly. When he felt as if he
were tumbling back into the madness of grief. When the faces of his children
paraded through his mind’s eye and the memory of their laughter sent a dagger
through his raw, bleeding soul.

The phone rang. He didn’t answer. If it was Beverly again, he might suggest that she come over
...
to talk. About Patrick. But he was feeling too damn needy at the moment. And
she was too damn vulnerable.

The machine kicked on. It wasn’t Beverly.

“Damascus? J.D. Damascus?” A woman’s voice, a little
sultry. Definitely nervous. “My name is Holly.” Pause. “Holly Jones.” A sound,
as if she had dropped the phone. There was loud talk in the background. “Okay,
ah
...
I
found your number on the bathroom wall. I think I need a
lawyer. I’ve been arrested.
...
I
think I might have killed someone.”

The phone went dead and the machine cut off.

J.D. remained on the balcony, the rank, muddy smell of
the river as cloying as the hot, August night. Raising the gun, he pointed it
toward Tyron’s window and looked down the site. “Bang,” he said through his
teeth. “You’re dead.”

After a night spent in hell cell ten listening
to two dozen prisoners howl
about their civil rights, Holly wasn’t in the best frame of mind by the time
Damascus showed up at ten
a.m
. looking like death warmed over. He wasn’t at all
what she expected or remembered from her days of living in New Orleans, and she
wondered, briefly, as she stared at him through the cell bars, if the name and
number she had found on the ladies’ bathroom wall had been another J.D.
Damascus. The unshaven middle-aged man, wearing jeans and a threadbare sports
coat over a T-shirt, shaggy, dark brown hair to his shoulders—not to mention a
small, gold loop in his right ear— could hardly be compared to the
Versace-suited shark who had once made the area’s criminal element shake in
their shoes.

“Holly Jones?” he asked in a slightly husky voice as
he stared at her with bloodshot eyes. He was
that
J.D. Damascus, all right.
While his appearance might have gone to hell, there was no mistaking that voice
and the steely eyes that had the uncanny ability to crawl into a person’s
psyche.

Not good, she thought. Definitely not good. But she
was in no position to be picky. Not by a long shot.

As the cop beside him opened the cell door, Holly
stood up and willed the strength back into her legs. She nodded.

Damascus
waited until the cop had departed, then entered the
cell, his gaze looking her up and down, eyes narrowing as if assessing her
guilt or innocence.

She swallowed and ran her sweating palms up and down
the butt of her jeans. “Look, I shot him, okay?” she blurted. “But it was in
self-defense. The creep was dressed like Darth Vader and came at me with a
knife.”

He nodded and dug into his pocket, withdrew a couple
of white tabs, and popped them into his mouth. “You’re a hooker,” he said as he
chewed and continued to study her.

Her face began to burn. “No.”

One dark eyebrow lifted and his mouth curved. “I guess
you just happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time, huh? Just
cruising that warehouse because you had nothing better to do at two in the
morning.”

“I was ... looking for someone.”

Again with the grin that made her face burn hotter. “Obviously.”

“That’s not what I meant.” She cleared her throat in
an attempt to keep her voice steady. Any other time and she would be tempted to
slap the condescending smirk from his face, but she was in no position to allow
her temperament to get the best of her. J.D. Damascus was the only defense
between her and a possible murder conviction. “I was looking for a friend who
was supposed to meet this ... creep. She’s the hooker. Not me.”

“Right.”

“Hey, I thought an attorney was supposed to believe in
his client’s innocence.”

“Did you or did you not shoot a man?”

“He had a knife.”

“Did he attack you?”

“He had a knife.”

“Did he attack you?”

“When a man who is dressed in a black hood and cape
pulls a knife from said cape, one has reason to suspect that he intends to use
it. I had every right to defend myself.”

“So who’s the friend?”

“Melissa Carmichael.”

He nodded and glanced around the cell. “I know Melissa.
She’s a client of mine. Specializes in kinky.” He shifted his weight to one hip
and crossed his arms over his chest. “So what were you doing there?”

“Looking for Melissa. She was
...
frightened. The girls always look out for one another, so I
was concerned, okay?”

His mouth curved. “So you
are
a hooker.”

She looked away. “No.”

“So what’s a young lady such as yourself doing walking
around with a .38 in her possession?”

“Why does anyone own a gun?”

“To shoot someone?”

“For protection.”

“So where is Melissa?”

“I don’t know. She didn’t show.”

“How did you know where she was to meet this particular
john?”

“She left a message on my cell phone. If you don’t
believe me, listen to it.”

His gray eyes narrowed again. It was that look that
could unnerve the most cold-blooded killer to the root of his black heart—as
could the silence that filled up the space between them. The eyes, the
condescending smirk on his mouth, at another time in her life might have made
her confess to a crime she didn’t commit. It was a look that could convince a
soul they were guilty whether they were or not.

She swallowed and tried to keep the tremor from her
voice. “Look, I shot him. I don’t deny it. But I’m telling you—”

“Self-defense.” Again with the smirk, a tip of the
head, the gaze that slid over her from head to foot, then back to her eyes, his
own narrowing even more. She could almost hear his brain shifting through the
files in his memory. Damascus’s cutthroat courtroom techniques weren’t the
only reason defense attorneys had too often floundered in their
representations. The former assistant district attorney had a photographic memory
that could make a computer blow its circuits.

“Do I know you?” he asked.

There it was.

“We’ve never met.”

“You look familiar.”

“Our paths might have crossed.” She cleared her
throat. “But we never met.”

He slowly nodded, his inspection of her still intense.
“I know you.”

“Hey, what difference does it make? I need a lawyer,
okay? I killed a man—”

“No, you didn’t.” She blinked. “No?”

“No.” He shook his head. “He’ll be sore as hell for a
few days, but he’ll survive to grate on my nerves yet another day.” He stepped
to one side, away from the cell door. “You’re free to go, Miss .
..
Jones.”

She blinked again, disbelief and relief rushing
through her in a hot wave. “Free?”

He nodded, still smirking.

“I don’t understand.”

“No charges are being pressed against you.”

“Just like that.”

“Just like that.”

“But—”

“Don’t look a gift horse in the mouth, Miss Jones.
Just go and don’t look back.”

Her gaze still locked on his lean face, she slowly
moved by him. He was still assessing her, she could tell.

“You can retrieve your personal belongings, including
your weapon. That is if it’s registered and you have a permit.”

“It’s registered and I have a permit.”

He reached into his pocket and withdrew another couple
of tablets, popped them into his mouth, and followed her out of the cell, eyes
still narrowed, gaze moving slowly up and down her body. As she opened her
mouth to again question this somewhat miraculous turn of events, he cut her
off.

“Good-bye, Miss Jones.”

*     
*      *

He had a major bone to pick with the chief of
police regarding the murders
of two prostitutes, but obviously that was going to have to wait considering
Travis Killroy’s shoulder had been laid open with Holly Jones’s .38. The chief’s
recent forays into kinky with the local hookers was a hush-hush point of
controversy on the force, but like many other covered-up scandals, it wasn’t
high on the list of the department’s priorities at the moment. The last thing
they wanted was for such information to become public knowledge, so obviously
they would want Holly Jones cut loose as soon as possible. J.D. would sure as
hell like to be a fly on the wall as the chief tried to explain to his wife how
he was injured. In the line of duty just wasn’t going to cut it. Had the chief
of police been injured in a shoot-out with a suspect, it would be blasted over
the local papers and he would be up for a medal. Alas, there were no medals for
wounded in the line of blow jobs.

As J.D. hit the elevator button for the morgue floor
in the basement, he continued to run Holly Jones through the files in his
brain. The woman was a looker, no doubt about it. And she was lying through her
teeth. He had always had the uncanny ability to sniff out deceit as adeptly as
a bloodhound on a scent. She hadn’t squirmed, exactly, when she’d denied she
was a hooker, but damned close. And while the department had found no priors on
her, not so much as a traffic ticket, she was clearly hiding something.

And he had definitely seen her before. A man simply
didn’t forget her kind—not that sort of exotic beauty. Had his mind not been so
fogged from lack of sleep and cluttered with the recent murders and the
implications thereof, he might have given more thought to her. Might have even
asked her out for a drink, just so he could assuage the niggling in his head
that he had, at some time, done more than simply crossed paths with her.

But she looked too damn good in her jeans, and a simple
cocktail might have led to dinner, and he had always avoided getting involved
with his clients. He had enough personal problems of his own without getting
emotionally tangled up with people whose lives were in a mire. His gut instinct
told him that Holly Jones—babe or not— could be trouble in more ways than one.

Besides, his stomach was hurting like hell.

“Hey, Damascus!”

He looked around as the elevator door opened. Holly
Jones ran down the corridor toward him.

“Wait up,” she shouted, her pretty face set in grim determination.
He didn’t like the looks of it and suspected what was coming.

He stepped into the elevator and punched the Close
Door button.

Too late. She leapt into the elevator just as the door
was sliding closed.

She glared at him, breathing hard. “You’ll never
believe what they told me.”

He punched the basement button. “Try me.”

“They aren’t going to pursue charges on that creep. I
mean, he had a knife—”

“He didn’t attack you, Miss Jones.”

“This is unbelievable. There should be an
investigation at least—”

“If the department investigated every freak out there,
there would be no time to investigate the significant crimes—”

“Murdering hookers is not significant? Is that what
you’re saying, Damascus?” Her blue eyes flashed.

The elevator stopped and the door opened. She followed
him into the hall, her stride lengthening as he walked faster.

“So who’s to say that he wouldn’t have attempted to
kill me?”

“You don’t arrest people on supposition, Miss Jones.”
He stopped so suddenly she nearly plowed into him. Her face red, she stood toe
to toe with him, visibly shaking with anger, her body language confrontational.
Withdrawing a paper from his jeans pocket, he handed it to her. “I almost
forgot.”