Jules (Golden Streak Series Book 5)

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to actual events, locations, organizations, or person, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

WCP

World Castle Publishing, LLC

Pensacola, Florida

Copyright ©
Kathi S. Barton 2014

Print ISBN:
9781629891484

eBook ISBN:
9781629891491

First Edition World Castle Publishing, LLC
, September 5, 2014

http://www.worldcastlepublishing.com

Licensing Notes

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in articles and reviews.

Cover: Karen Fuller

Editor:
Eric Johnston

Editor: Maxine Bringenberg

Chapter 1

“Bloody hell.” Lenny looked at the rotation and cursed again. “This is not going to work and I fucking know it. Who comes up with this shit anyway?”

“I do.”
She turned to look at her captain, a big burly man called, of all things, Little Joe, although his name was Joseph Mason. “You have a problem with it, Red? If so, I don’t really give a good flying fuck. I want you to shut the fuck up about it and get to work. Rice, your new partner, is waiting on you.”

“
Stop calling me fucking
Red
. It’s Lenny, or if that doesn’t suit, MacFinley. I’m in no mood for your jokes today. And he’s a fucking rookie. I don’t do rookies and you know it. They’re…well hell, they’re still suckling at their mom’s tit, and I don’t have time to wipe milk off their chins. I have a job to do.”

“And today your job is wet nurse to Rice.
Get the fuck out of here and get to that crime scene like you should have been ten minutes ago. What the fuck are you doing, having a fucking tea party? You know how I like punctuality.” He’d stretched the word out to sound much longer than its five syllables. She wanted to punch him in the face.

Lenny
took the keys off her desk and her gun out of her desk drawer and shoved it in her holster. She had no idea who this Rice character was, but he wasn’t going to last the day with her. She’d make his life so miserable that he’d be begging for another partner. She was smiling as she went to pick up her car from the garage.

A man who
she figured was David Rice was standing next to the car she’d been assigned to when she’d totaled the last one three weeks ago. Not that it had been her fault, but she had been in pursuit of a bank robber and he was getting away. It had taken her two weeks to get back out from behind the desk due to her injuries, and she wasn’t going to end up there again because of some kid who was going to get in her way. And the closer she got to her new partner, the less she liked him.

“Wow, you sure are pretty.” She stopped moving and glared at him. “I mean
, I was told you were a looker, but I never thought they were so right.”

He smiled at her and put out his hand.
She ignored it and got in the car. He was still scrambling for his seat belt when she put the car in reverse and pulled out of the space. She glanced over at him when he held on to the “oh shit bar,” the nice little extra her other partner had had put in to hang onto before he’d transferred out of homicide two days ago. Driving to her was like a sport. If she could make it through the day without killing or maiming someone, she gave herself a gold star. She was sure this wasn’t going to be a gold-star day.

“What are we doing first?”
She glanced over at him, wondering if he was serious. “I know we’re going to a death, but what do—?”

“Okay
, first and foremost, I am not pretty. You say that to me again and I will make a necklace out of your tongue and balls and make you wear it. Secondly, we’re going to a homicide, not a death. A death is what you have at funeral homes. We’re going to see who was murdered, figure out why some fuck did it, and arrest him. Thirdly, and this should have been first, the pretty comment pissed me off. But you don’t talk unless I let you. Not a single word, not a grunt, and in no way are you to make any kind of hand signals.” He actually raised his hand and she rolled her eyes. “What the fuck is that?”

“I’m asking for permission to speak.” She looked at the road and counted to ten while he said whatever the fuck he wanted. “Do you want me to observe you
and take notes? I want to learn from the best and I understand you’re the best.”

She didn’t answer him. If she had to spend more than today with him
, he wasn’t going to live to collect his first paycheck and she’d be getting hers in prison. Taking the turn a little too fast, she skidded to a stop in front of the house where five people had allegedly been murdered. She got out and left him to either follow or stay. Right now she didn’t care.

“Family of five, two adults and three kids dead
, plus the dog. Looks like they killed him first…to shut him up, we’re guessing. Neighbor said he was a barker, but last night he’d been quiet. Said he shut his yap around three. Vet is seeing if he can pinpoint a time for us.” She nodded at the officer who’d met her at the door. She was pulling on her booties when Rice came racing up the walk.

“Who we got on site?”

Officer Beckley said, “The coroner and five assistants. I have six men working the streets.”

“Where is the first victim
? And make sure you let me know if the vet finds anything like how the barker was killed.”

They were walking up the steps when Rice
tapped her on the shoulder. “We use vets to give us time of death? Why not use the coroner? He’s here. I saw his van out front.”

She looked at him.
“Are you related to the mayor? Or maybe the chief or someone high on the food chain? Gotta be something like that or you’d have never made it this far.”

“My uncle is the mayor.
How did you know?”

She didn’t answer him but made a me
ntal note to stop by the mayor’s office and congratulate him on his DNA. The fucking prick had to have had sex with his sister to have a moron like this one.

It took her five hours to process the scene.
It might have taken less time, but she was having too much fun with Rice now that she knew he had a weak stomach. Every time he entered a room after throwing up for a good ten minutes, she’d do something else to set him off. And a few of the officers who knew her well were joining in on the game. The last time Rice had taken off it was because Officer Beckley had gagged when he’d lifted the hand up that had been found under the bed. When he gagged loudly the second time Rice had paled so much that she wondered if he would ever recover. It had been the best scene she’d ever worked in terms of lessening the normal tension at a murder site.

Little Joe
entered the last room she was processing just after sunset. He didn’t look happy either. She finished what she was doing and sent the other officers out. If he was going to chew her ass off, she wanted him to do it in private. She wanted that like she did her praise, quiet and no fuss.

“There’s been another killing
. A family again.” She looked around the room she was in and decided that murder and killing were not words she’d use to label what had been done here. This was a massacre. Whoever had done this had torn these people apart without any sort of method to his madness. Or so it seemed to her.

“Like this one?”
He nodded. “How many? And please tell me that you’re not going to make me take Rice with me. It’s been fun and all, but he’s not a homicide detective.”

“No, he called me and said he was going home.
I explained to him nicely that if he did, he wasn’t coming back. Thanks for helping me out with that.” She eyed him sharply. “Yeah, I knew you’d nip this shit in the bud. I don’t need the mayor’s nephew hanging around like it’s halftime at one of his frat parties. Tell me what you have here and we’ll compare notes.”

“Five dead, looks like the woman was first.
He got her in the kitchen. Her throat was ripped out and he gutted her. Then he took time to tie her up with them. Even arranged her hair with her blood. The next two were the kids, around eight and ten. The littler one was killed in the bathroom; same time was taken with her, but she’d had her head torn off, too. The older one was in the middle of the room. He had his throat cut and then was eviscerated as well, but left where he lay. I don’t know why, but I think maybe the killer heard something and didn’t finish. There was an infant in the crib of the parents’ room and her neck was broken. Didn’t do anything else but kill her. The father, however, he took his time with.” They were going up the stairs and she pointed out the rooms where the others had been found. When they got to the master bedroom, he hesitated. “The baby’s been taken out.”

He nodded.
She knew he couldn’t handle the death of a child, and the younger the child, the worse it was for him. She waited until he gave her the okay before she moved in with him. Keeping his back to the crib, he listened attentively as she told him what she had found there.

“The male had been out of the bed when the first blow hit him.
It looks like he had his arm out and when the blade sliced at him, he lost his hand. Then the second time he was hit, it looks like he fell to his knees and then to his belly. Whoever it was flipped him over and worked on him.” The blood had shown that the man had tried to crawl away, but she didn’t point that out. Mason was a good detective, too.

She looked at the sheet
-covered male as she continued. “He didn’t like this man, or maybe men in general. He wanted him last for a reason, and he showed me how much he really hated him. He cut off his dick, and then cut out his eyes while he was still alive. The removal of his tongue was probably all that kept him from waking the neighborhood. I think he would have bled out by the time he got to his balls and cut them off. Then he removed his fingers from his other hand and his toes before he tore out his heart. It’s all right there.”

“What do you mean?”
She picked up a corner of the sheet to show him. “Holy mother of God, he arranged them.”

He had
, too. The parts that had been cut out were laying separate from the body, yet in the positions they might have been in prior to being removed. The fingers and toes were where arms and legs would have been, and his eyes and tongue were lying next to the head, all arranged together, as were his dick and balls at his groin area.

“I think he was trying to make a statement with art
, but I can’t think what it might be. He had hours to do this, too. I mean, just the woman downstairs would have taken time. But this….” She looked at the sheet that was bloodstained. “He would have had to work for several hours. More than the timeframe we have for the dog to stop barking and the call to come in. I don’t think he was working alone.”

“Two monsters like this?” She nodded. “Then we have the one across town.
Christ, Red, this is not going to set well with the papers. And the mayor will have heard by now from the nephew. This is going to go down very badly with a great many people.” They talked a little more about the art of the murders. There were no notes laying around, nothing to indicate that the house had been broken into either. Someone had let them in or they’d had a key. Either way, this wasn’t a friend.

They were going down the hall when Mason turned to her. “You going
over to the other site now? I have an officer there now waiting if you were going. The team is supposed to go after they clean up here.”

“Yeah, no reason to wait.”
He grimaced at her and told her he guessed not. “You coming with me? I don’t have a partner now and I suppose you’ll do. Oh yeah, you pull that shit on me again and I’ll quit.”

“No you won’t.
You love this job too much to do that.”

She rode over in his car
, because, like most people who knew her, he was well aware of her driving habits. She laughed at him when he stopped at a yellow light, and laughed harder when he used his turn signal.

“You’re such a wuss.
You should live a little. Sometime when you’re driving use the opposite signal you need and turn. People just love it when you fuck with them.” He glared and she laughed harder. “What do you know about this place?”

“Nothing. The officer on scene called it in to me when I was on my way over.
He said that he would call the team in and have them get started.” They pulled up in front of the house he’d pointed to. “I wonder where everyone is.”

She felt the hair on the back of her neck dance.
Something was off. The cruiser out front was running and the door open. She pulled her gun before releasing the seat belt. She heard Mason call in to someone, but she slipped out of the car and to the cruiser to see what might have happened. He was two steps behind her when she arrived at the car.

“Nothing here but his pad and his coat.”
She reached in and moved the coat carefully and didn’t see anything. She looked at Mason. “Should we go in or—?”

The scream had them both racing for the house.
Mason tossed a vest at her and she was jerking it on while he was snapping his into place. By the time they got to the front door, a second and then a third scream came from deep inside. She looked at Mason and whispered.

“You or me?”
He nodded that he’d take the lead. When he turned the handle on the door, she felt something rush over her, a feeling that they shouldn’t go in, and turned to tell him that when he was suddenly not there.

Something had snatched him from the open doorway
, and his gun and left shoe lay where he’d been standing. She stared at them both before she reached down and picked up his Glock. Putting it into the back of her pants, she tried not to think about whom or what could have done what she was pretty sure she’d seen. Moving into the house, she saw the blood and leaned down to look. A slight breeze over her neck was the only warning she had.

The…
creature had leapt over her, and she was sure had she not bent when she had he would have taken off her head. Lifting her gun, she fired four times and watched as each bullet entered his chest. When he floated up off the floor, she took off running to the door again.