Chasing Thunder (19 page)

He had to stop by the bar on his way home, so he sent the kids ahead. His waitress, Lori, was tending bar when he walked through the door. “Hey, boss. Good to see you. Now we can call off the dogs.”

He gave her that breathtaking smile as he greeted her. “How’s it going?”

She poured him a frosty mug of beer. “Same ol’, same ol’. You can tell summer’s coming, though. It’s been pretty busy. Really could use you around,” she added.

He nodded. He had inherited the bar from his folks, who had started it to have a place to drink with their beach-dwelling friends. The walls were covered with 1960s surfer memorabilia, and classic rock filled the antique neon jukebox in the corner. He loved this old bar every bit as much as he loved working on bikes. But when M.J. showed up on his doorstep, the bar was usually the first area of his life that suffered neglect.

And now he had kids to monitor.

“Schedule is pretty packed for the foreseeable future,” he told her. “Maybe we should hire another bartender.”

She held up a stack of applications. “Way ahead of you, boss.”

He grinned and gave her a friendly side hug. Lori was his right hand at the Snake Pit. “As usual,” he said. “I trust you to make the final decision, so go ahead and get someone on staff.”

She nodded. “Can I get you a bowl of chili?”

He shook his head. “Just stopped by to pick up a few things,” he told her as he headed toward his office.

He locked the door behind him before walking over to the wall safe, hidden behind a poster of a pinup girl on a massive motorcycle. He withdrew a small metal box and headed toward his desk. He took the key from his hip and unlocked it, but he didn’t open it right away. He couldn’t. This dusty metal box contained a piece of his past he had fought long and hard to bury.

But it was time for a resurrection.

Finally, with a deep breath, he opened the box to reveal the 1969 Browning Hi-Power 9mm pistol he had received from his father on his eighteenth birthday.

It got a lot of use in that year following Joe Bennett’s untimely death, but Snake had shelved it the minute he took custody of Kid. It was ironic that he’d been raised around guns, and was even taught to shoot and handle guns by his father, but the minute he became a father figure he knew he had to lock that side of himself away. He knew there were men who could balance the love of their families and their passion for guns. His father had been one of those men. But Snake had seriously doubted that he could join those ranks. This gun had made him feel powerful when he’d felt his most powerless, and that had scared him straight. There was too much responsibility involved in properly keeping a gun, especially around kids. And every time he held that wood grip in his hands, he felt rage bubble up in him that threatened to spill out of his control.

Joe Bennett’s murder had impacted every single person who had seen it. M.J. hated guns and refused to use them. Jim had gone out and immediately bought more guns.

And Snake had used his to terrify anyone who got in his way as he tried to singlehandedly solve the case and bring that bastard to justice.

Outlaw justice.

With every punk that cowered in front of him, he felt more and more powerful. With a gun, a little man could become a big man. But every time he used the threat of that gun to terrorize someone, he realized that it didn’t make him any bigger at all. He was using force and intimidation to get his way, which made him a very small man indeed. It took almost a year before he realized that there was no justice in becoming the very thing he hated.

Assuming custody of Kid had been merely an excuse. He was waiting for a reason to put that gun down. And now he had the very same reason to pick it back up again.

With his mouth thinned out in a grim, determined line, he closed the empty case and reached for his holster.

12. RUNNING ON EMPTY

P
olice had been crawling all over the storage unit where Todd Delpy had been discovered early that morning, thanks to an anonymous tip. At least, that was the official report. Landers knew damn well who had reported it, but for the sake of everyone he had played that information close to the vest.

In the end it didn’t even matter. The caretakers of the facility had already discovered the body by the time the police got there. The arduous task of collecting clues began by daybreak. This process was made even more challenging by the press that had gathered to scoop the story.

Agent Llewellyn arrived that afternoon, and he was the one who found the empty can of bug fogger in the corner. He pieced the evidence together: the bomb had been set off while Todd was still alive. Choking on the fumes, he had convulsed, kicking the chair out from under himself. “It’s a statement,” he told them. “Our killer sees kids like this as roaches to be exterminated.”

“Could it be our killer?” Harris asked.

Llewellyn shook his head. “Gut instinct, no. The victim is completely against type, and this crime scene is too carefully constructed to mislead authorities on motive. The person or people who did this want you to think some tweaked-out junkie burned down the motel for fun, and karma caught up with him in the form of a sadistic trick. But most of the things that tie Todd in to the arson at the motel were placed on him after he had already expired, like the gasoline on his hands. Even the welts on his body, which denote BDSM gone wrong, were actually inflicted on dead flesh. The heart had stopped pumping, which is why there is hardly any blood. Clean wounds. This means someone tried really hard to make us think it was some random trick and brutal sexual misadventure, which is clearly a cover for the real motive. Our guy is far too narcissistic. He’d never work that hard to make something look this random. He’d want to claim the deed and collect his trophy.” He paused. “Unless . . .” he trailed off, and Landers was quick to pounce.

“Unless what?”

Llewellyn took a deep breath. “Unless whoever did this wanted information only this kid could provide.”

“Do you think he got that information?” Landers asked with a sinking feeling in his gut.

“I think we’d have to ask whoever called you with the tip.” He looked around the unit. “If this was a message, it was sent to someone in particular.”

It was exactly as Landers feared. He avoided Harris’s pointed stare and headed to his car.

Now that the tweaker had essentially been exterminated, M.J. was forced to take her investigation to the streets. The Hard Candy Killer had yet to produce another victim, but she knew it was only a matter of time. According to the Internet, he had already left a disturbing calling card at the original crime scene, where the phone had been retrieved with some discarded clothing.

Of course, it could have been a copycat. Lord only knew how many sick people were in the world. Sick people like Dominic Isbecky, who had made it clear that he wasn’t going to let Baby go without a fight.

If it was a fight he wanted, M.J. decided, it was a fight he was going to get.

The first thing she had to do was get into those upper rooms at Slick.

Actually, that was the second thing. The first thing was ditching the goon patrol following her around Hollywood. She hopped on her bike and headed south for a twisting, turning joyride that challenged her stalkers to keep up all the way down through Orange County. She finally lost them at rush hour in the Orange Crush interchange, allowing her to double back and head to Los Angeles, with a short pit stop at a supply store to buy rope and grappling hooks.

By the time she got back to her run-down apartment in the city that night, her arms were full and the street was empty. Without having prior knowledge that this was where she holed up, there was no way to trace the apartment back to M.J. Her official residence was in a 1920s bungalow just blocks from the beach in Santa Monica. She had rented the apartment through one of many aliases, authenticated through a fake ID, and only three people knew to find her there.

So she was quite surprised to find someone sitting at her Formica table, his back to the door.

He didn’t stir when she opened the door. He sat with his back to her, his head covered with a hoodie. She was on him in a heartbeat, her arm around his throat. “Who are you?” she demanded.

Effortlessly, he twisted her arm around and stood to face her.

“You,” she breathed, glaring at Detective Kelly Harris. “How the hell did you find me?”

“Harry is my partner, remember?”

She shook her head. “He didn’t tell you.”

“You’re right,” he agreed. “He wouldn’t.” They had a brief staredown, then he smirked. “It’s traditional to offer a visitor a beverage, you know.”

“My apologies,” she said. “Can I offer you a cup of bleach? Perhaps some rat poison? I’m flexible.”

“Water will be fine,” he said, and she hesitated only a slight moment before she decided to comply with his request. As she retrieved a bottle of water from the fridge, he peered into her new bag of goodies. “Planning to knock over a bank?”

“I hope you don’t mind,” she said. She handed him the bottle. “All those ATM fees. You know how it is.”

He uncapped his water and took a swig. “As fun as our banter is, do you think we can possibly have a real conversation here?”

“I have the right to remain silent,” she reminded him with a sweet smile.

“Fine,” he said, sitting back in the chair. “I’ll do all the talking.”

She glared at him and sat.

“I know you’re the one that found Todd,” he said. He picked up the matchbook from Slick that lay on her table, folded open to reveal the one missing matchstick. “And you’re going to tell me about it.”

“I am?”

“Yep,” he said. “Or I’m going to haul your ass to jail for arson.”

She scoffed. “You can’t make those bogus charges stick and you know it.”

Kelly raised an eyebrow. “Oh no? I can prove that you were at the Roses ‘N Palms motel both before and after the fire.”

“Rose Palmer is a friend of mine,” M.J. said.

“Does she know that you removed evidence from the scene? This matchbook distinctly smells like smoke.”

“It’s a
matchbook
,” she pointed out.

“With one missing match, and—just a hunch—your fingerprints all over it.” She didn’t say anything, so he went on. “You know, when I was at Roses ‘N Palms the other day, I happened to see this big clay pot by the door. Being nosey, I looked inside. It was full of all these matchbooks and business cards from all over the world. I didn’t see anything from any local establishments when I was looking through the contents, but it was a cursory glance. I probably wouldn’t have even remembered it at all, had I not seen this. Now I’m really curious what all was in that pot. And wouldn’t you know? From the official report, it’s the only thing that Mrs. Palmer was able to retrieve from the premises. You see where I’m going with this, M.J.?”

“What do you want, Harris?”

“Information,” he answered simply. “I know you think so, but I’m not your enemy. We can help each other. You and I both know a young girl’s life may depend on it.”

Her jaw clenched. She couldn’t argue with that logic.

“So tell me something, anything. Give me a lead. Meet me halfway . . . or sit in jail, wasting precious moments we could all be using to catch this guy.”

Her eyebrow arched. “You talk that strategy over with your boss yet?”

“No,” he said. “But I’m sure he’ll see it my way when I threaten to take everything to the press.”

Her eyes narrowed. “You’d really jeopardize your case for that?”

“No,” he repeated. “Because your dad wouldn’t risk it. Despite what you may think, he’s a damn fine cop. He didn’t just fall ass-backwards into the most powerful position in the department. He worked hard and he made smart choices. So I can tell you that you’ll be cooling your heels in a holding cell by daybreak, and I’ll have a search warrant to find anything you’re hiding anyway.”

“You’re an asshole,” she told him.

“I know,” he replied.

From the look in those steely blue eyes, M.J. knew he meant everything he said. It wasn’t an empty threat. It was the strategy of a cop desperate to catch a killer, and she understood that desperation.