Moon Shadow (Vampire for Hire Book 11) (29 page)

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Winter Wind

A Mystery Novel

by J.R. Rain

(read on for a sample)

Chapter One

The day is warm.

No surprise there. It’s early fall in Southern California, which means it might as well be summer. I can’t remember the last time rain had fallen. Maybe four months ago. Maybe six. Hell, maybe nine.

I stand on the steps in front of my apartment building and lift my face to the sun, as I do every morning, as I do throughout the day. As I do every chance I get. Surely a strange addiction. The sun does not feel pleasant. It is searing and blistering and if I stand there too long, I will surely burn. But I don’t turn away. No, not yet.

It’s there somewhere, I think. It has to be. I can feel it. So hot. So alive. The sun isn’t quite directly above. But it’s before me, clearly above the apartment buildings that I know are across the street. There are some trees there, too. Old sycamores. I can see them in my mind’s eye, trunks twisting and flowering into massive mushroom clouds of green leaves, heavy with the dust and grime of downtown Los Angeles.

But I can’t see them. And I can’t see the sun. Not even a hint of it. Nothing. There is only blackness. Complete and total blackness.

There shouldn’t be blackness, of course. There should have been the burning orb of the sun, hanging there in the sky. I should have been able to see it and a smattering of clouds that I suspect are up there, too. I should have seen birds flying and cars whipping past. I should have seen the gentle slope of the street that led up to my apartment in one direction, and down into Echo Park in the other.

But I don’t. Because I can’t.

Finally, I turn away, pulling down my baseball cap and, sighing, lightly snap on Betsie’s harness. We continue away from the stairs, walking carefully along a path that I know circumnavigates the busy apartment complex parking lot. Betsie knows the path. She seems to always know the path, wherever we go. She seems to read my mind, too, which is spooky and exciting and sad.

Betsie keeps to a slow gait, never pulling and always alert to my slightest commands. I love that dog more than life itself, and that is not hyperbole.

As we walk, I use my other hand to reach out with my walking stick, swinging it back and forth like a metronome. It grazes the flower planter on my right and a pole to my left. At least, I think it is a pole. It could have been anything, quite frankly. Still, I remember a pole being here, right here, in the parking lot, back when I could see.

There is no wind. The day is searing. Sweat begins to form on my brow, along the bridge of my Dodger ball cap, and between my shoulder blades. I am hyper-aware of my skin—and of anything that touches my skin, including the heat of the sun, a soft breeze and my own sweat.

My probing walking stick hits something solid and I find myself now standing in some shadows. I know this because the temperature has dropped, perhaps five degrees. Betsie stops, letting me know I have reached a roadblock. In this case, I know it’s the wrought iron fence that keeps us all so safe in our apartments. I reach out with my hand, letting my walking stick dangle from a loop on my wrist, and find the doorknob and turn it.

Betsie, without any urging from me, is through first. She pauses just beyond, while I step through and shut the door silently behind me. It is a routine we have done thousands of times.

Once I’m through, Betsie is moving again, down the hill, in the same direction we always go. No mind-reading here. We do this every day. Not quite like clockwork, as we go at different times. But usually, it’s in the morning. In another time, another life, I would have often turned right, and gone up the hill, to the park trails that wander throughout Elysian Park, trails that few Los Angelenos even know about, trails that overlook the brightly lit downtown skyscrapers and wander behind big, beautiful old homes. Hidden homes.

Someday,
I think.
Someday, I will walk those trails again.

With Betsie, of course.

Always with Betsie.

The sidewalk is wide enough, but if I come across anyone coming up, or moving down quickly past me, I will never know. I can neither see them, nor hear or smell them. For all I know, Betsie and I are alone on the cement path; but that can’t be, not truly. Surely we pass people. But I never know it.

We continue down steadily, carefully. My probing stick alerts me to irregularities in the sidewalk, of which there are many: steep angles where driveways cut through, pushed-up sections from tree roots, buckled sections where earthquakes have hit hardest. There’s always the oddity, too: A toy left on the sidewalk, or a bike, or a skateboard. Any of which would have me hitting the ground, fast and hard. Again. Each fall is a painful lesson learned.

Now, I move slowly, carefully,
seeing
the path with my lightweight aluminum four-foot walking stick. A tool that is truly an extension of me. My eyes, my ears, my hands, my everything.

I walk in silence. But that’s not quite true, is it? There is a faint ringing just inside my ear. A ringing that is always there, and may always be there, according to the doctors. The sound isn’t very loud and often I forget it’s there…but it’s enough.

Enough to drive me mad.

In the months following the accident, as my body healed and morphed into something new, something forever challenging, something forever damaged and broken and suffering, I kept waiting for the ringing to go away. As the weeks turned into months, I was faced with another challenge, perhaps the greatest of them all:

To keep my sanity.

The ringing. Just inside my destroyed ears. A soft hum. Never varying, never rising or falling.

And never going away.

Ever.

I had to find a way to get used to this, to accept this. And it wasn’t easy. Sometimes, it’s still not easy.

So, no, I’m not walking in complete silence. There is the ringing. Right there, just inside my ears. I’m not entirely sure the ringing was a result of the blast that nearly killed me, the blast that I often wish
had
killed me. These days, I wish this less and less. Early on, not so much. Early on, I placed a handgun near my bed, inside the bed table drawer in fact—never very far out of reach—a handgun with one single bullet meant for me.

It’s still there by my bed, although I open the drawer less and less these days.

But it’s there.

Just in case.

In case of what, I don’t know.

No,
I thought, as Betsie and I continue down the broken sidewalk, over misaligned cement slabs but mostly over a straight and narrow path. No. I know what it is for.

It’s there in case I grow so mad that I never return to myself, am never the same again. I only hope I’m not so mad that I will forget the gun is there.

I don’t know how many steps I take to Chango Coffee at the bottom of the hill. I don’t even know how long it takes me to get there. I suspect no more than fifteen minutes. Probably ten or less if I was sighted. Now, as I sense that I’m getting closer, I involuntarily tense up. My already careful steps shorten. The intersection is not chaotically busy. Here, Echo Park Avenue is only one lane in each direction. But the coffee shop lies within a three-way stop. Cars are in a hurry here. They often whip through the intersection. Often recklessly. At least, that’s my memory of it.

I continue slowing my pace, and Betsie slows with me. Never pulling, always alert and aware of my needs. She is a saint. My angel. My gift from God.

Of course, a true gift from God would have been to return my sight to me. Or my hearing. Or my speech. Or my sense of smell. Or to return my dead partner to me.

Betsie pauses, and I pause, too.

This is the tricky part. There is no crosswalk here. Nothing to suggest that the intersection gives a damn for pedestrians, let alone blind and deaf pedestrians.

Betsie cost nearly $30,000, a big chunk of my life savings. She has been worth every penny. Her training involved only crossing when there is a gap in traffic. How they trained her, I don’t know. She is so smart, so special, and so I wait for my little girl to see me through, to cross when it’s safe, to use her best judgment.

I sense no one, hear no one, am aware of no one. But I know that can’t be true. This is a fairly busy intersection, the halfway point to the apartments and homes on the hills, and the businesses down below. There are rows of shops here, too. Busy place.

I stand on the corner of Morton and Echo Park, or what I assume is the corner, my guide dog’s harness in one hand, and my aluminum walking stick in the other. Rarely, if ever, does anyone help me across, and they don’t do so now. I might as well be alone in this world. Or, at least, alone at this one intersection.

Now, Betsie is moving and I am moving, too. Trusting her. I have, after all, no other choice.

No, I do have a choice. I could sit at home and do nothing. Except, of course, I do enough of that already. Not to mention, I love Chango’s coffee.

When I’m about halfway across the intersection, in the crosshairs of where the three streets intersect, I know I am fully exposed. So is Betsie. She would never leave my side. Should a car not see us, should a driver be texting now, we would be hit and there would be no way to avoid it.

But today, the drivers are alert and soon, my walking stick touches the far curb. I measure its height quickly with the tip of the stick, and step up into the cool shade under the awning at Chango.

Betsie leads me inside, where, luckily, the staff knows me well.

Chapter Two

I sit outside with Betsie, holding the hot to-go coffee cup with both hands. Betsie is leaning on my ankle, panting in the heat, her heaving body pulsating against my own. Her weight is comforting. Her touch gives me peace of mind and a small amount of happiness.

There is still no wind. I miss the wind. I hunger for the wind. And for the rain. I realize all over again that I am, perhaps, living in the wrong part of the country.

But I can’t move. Not from here. I know this area. A snapshot of it is forever imprinted in my mind. Forever and ever. I live in that snapshot. How could I live where I don’t know what the view is like from my balcony, or from my front door, or up and down my street? I couldn’t, and I am afraid such a change would be the end of me. The end of my sanity, too.

I suspect that eyes are on me, but I do not know. I suspect young ones want to pet Betsie, but her vest clearly says: “Working dog. Please do not touch.” At least, that’s what I’m told it says.

Betsie does not need to be petted or touched and fawned over or played with. She is a working dog. She is always alert, ever watchful, her head constantly swiveling. I can feel it, even know it, that she is watching, watching.

She knows what her job is and she does it well for me.

At least, that’s what I believe, and I am sure I am not far from the mark.

When the coffee begins to cool enough for me to sip, I do so. Perhaps one of the few luxuries that remain is my ability to swallow food and drink, although both must be done very carefully. If either goes down the wrong pipe, I am in trouble. It’s very difficult to cough up through a tracheal tube, which I’m breathing out of now.

And so, I sip slowly, carefully, ingesting just a small dose of the coffee.

Yes, one of my few luxuries is taste. I do have it, albeit in limited form. After all, part of my tongue had been destroyed, too.

The coffee is only really a hint of coffee. I will take a hint. In a life where so much was taken from me, anything at all is a blessing. Early on, I couldn’t recognize my blessings. Early on, I was all too aware of what had been taken from me, stolen from me. It has taken me years to appreciate what I still have. And what I have is a hint of taste buds…taste buds that still worked. God bless them.

I taste the crap out of this coffee now, savoring it, swallowing it oh-so-carefully.

My scarred and destroyed throat is of little use. But it still remembers how to swallow. Thank God I can feed myself.

Another gift
, I think.

I am about halfway through my coffee when Betsie sits up. She moves away from the shade and the pressure on the harness suggests she is standing alert. Then again, what do I know? One thing is certain: there is someone next to me. I can feel them now, sense them in my own way. Betsie does not growl. Betsie is not aggressive. That had been trained out of her as a puppy. But she is alert and letting the stranger know that I am well protected.

Turns out, it isn’t a stranger after all.

Chapter Three

We are in my apartment.

I am sitting in the corner of my couch, my hands in my lap, my knees together. A docile pose. An unassuming pose. I do not know why I sit like this these days. Perhaps I am afraid to spread out. To expand. To touch something unfamiliar. To get hurt. To be embarrassed. So now, I sit in an upright fetal position, so to speak. Touching no one. Touching nothing. As alert as I can be, which isn’t saying much.

With me are two people. My ex-boss at the LAPD, Captain Paul Harris of Robbery-Homicide, and a sign language translator named, I think, Rachel. The translator is sitting next to me. My ex-boss, the gruff-but-fair Captain Harris is sitting opposite me. I know this because I can feel only one person on the couch. And if I am alert enough—and I often am—I can even feel the floorboards beneath me give way ever so slightly, signaling that my plus-sized ex-boss is sitting in the recliner.

If they are speaking, I wouldn’t know it. Sometimes, I can detect speech by the way the cushion around me might bounce as the speaker gesticulates with hands and arms. There’s no gesticulating going on now, probably because we were only now getting settled. I felt Betsie at my feet, where she would be, I knew, for the rest of her life, God bless her canine soul.

I raised my hands and signed: “To what do I owe the pleasure, Captain?”

Small movements next to me. The translator was relaying my signs into speech. A pause. Now, small movements. If I have to guess, the translator is nodding, and if I have to guess further, I suspect that Captain Harris is getting straight to the point, as he is wont to do.

I wait, hands folded once again in my lap. Betsie is asleep on my left foot. Her breath is hot on my bare ankle. I am in shorts.

And now, something happens that doesn’t make sense to most people at first. The translator takes my right hand carefully. I know what’s coming next, and so I open my palm. Below, Betsie looks up, undoubtedly assessing the situation, determines that all is well, and rests her chin once again on the top of my shoe.

I wait with my hand open, aware of the woman sitting close to me, aware that this is the first time in many months that a woman has sat so close to me. I am also aware of a hint of perfume. Just a hint, as my sense of smell is mostly gone, too. But sometimes, the right combination of scents makes its way through my damaged olfactory, and hers does now.

Roses. And jasmine. Something woodsy, too. The smell of rain, somehow.

I know I am smiling, and I can only wonder what the other two are thinking of me, seeing me smiling there, with my shades on and part of my face destroyed. Not all of it, granted—and, I’m told, I had lucked out. The scarring isn’t hideous. I have been told that, in the right light, I still even look somewhat handsome. I’ll gladly take the ‘somewhat handsome’ part. Then again, I would take many things at this point.

So, I am smiling as she places her hand in my hand, and what happens next has become second nature to me, although it has taken many, many tries to get it right.

Rachel—I think her name is Rachel, I am too embarrassed to ask her again—uses American Sign Language now. Pinkie up, she presses her hand into my palm and I immediately recognize the letter “I.”

She pauses, tapping my palm once to indicate a space.

A closed fist with the thumb in is pressed into my palm—then a closed fist with the thumb out.

A—M—

Another tap. More letters pressed into my palm.

S—O—R—R—Y—

Another tap, more letters.

T—O—

Tap.

S—E—E—

Tap.

Y—O—U—

Tap.

L—I—K—E—

Tap.

T—H—I—S—

And two taps to end the dialogue.

All in all, the process takes just a few seconds. I can feel the signed letters being pressed into my palm. It is a cumbersome way to communicate, true, but it is effective for someone like me who can’t see or hear.

The captain’s words sink in. I haven’t seen him in many years. Perhaps even five. I haven’t seen many of my old friends from the station, no pun intended. Few could communicate with me, and sitting with me in awkward silence is, well, awkward. Most of my friends are gone. My parents are passed, and I only have one brother, who visits me weekly. He’d long ago mastered sign language, and we have a good time together. Or as good as we can.

I use both hands to sign back: “What do you mean?” But then, I smile, or think I smile. Half of my face is mostly paralyzed, although I am told my smile is still kinda adorable, with a few new dimples thrown in for good measure. Who told me these things? Who’d blow smoke up a blind and deaf man’s ass? My ex-girlfriend, of course. My ex-girlfriend who’d cared for me for many months after the explosion. My ex-girlfriend who is now long, long gone, although I think about her often. And dream about her even more. In fact, I’ve been meaning to look her up again, crazy as that might sound.

Very, very crazy. After all, my ex had made it known that she wanted nothing to do with me after my rehab.

No,
I think.
Those words are too strong. She was just exhausted, overwhelmed. Maybe we can get coffee someday soon.

The idea of coffee with my ex sends a thrill through me. I have not seen her in, what, four years? Maybe she’s still single? Maybe she misses me, too? Maybe she’s waiting for me to reach out to her?

Maybe.

I suspect I know the answer to most of these questions. Still, the thought of being with her again, touching her, sends a thrill through me.

And the woman sitting next to me, with her small hand once again pressed into my hand, is, I suspect, the source of this thrill.

The explosion mercifully spared the rest of my body. My hands are intact, as are my legs. The blasts had been centered around my facial area. In particular, around my neck region. My voice box had been destroyed. My windpipe had been destroyed, too. The close proximity of the explosion had permanently damaged the inner and outer hair cells of my ears, those all-important sensory receptors that pick up sound. And there is no healing or replacing such receptors.

Shrapnel had destroyed my eyes. So much so, both eyes had been enucleated, or removed, leaving me with empty sockets. Early on I had tried orbital implants—glass eyes—but grew tired of them. Additionally, my scar tissue was such that the implants irritated me more than helped. These days, I prefer to hide behind my wraparound sunglasses…and keep my eyelids closed.

Remarkably, my esophagus had stayed intact, which allows me to still eat and drink with my mouth. However, my larynx—the organ responsible for speech—had been completely destroyed. The damage was so severe that traditional voice aids do not work. Even handheld devices, electric larynxes as they are called, were rendered ineffective due to severe scarring at my throat and my inability to hear the sounds. Such devices sent vibrating sound waves into the mouth and throat area, which, in turn, could be shaped into words with tongue, jaws, lips and teeth just as one would have done with sound from the larynx. It is an ingenious device that has been around longer than I would have guessed. With my hearing loss, I was never fully able to use the electronic larynx. After all, one needs to hear the sounds coming out to learn how to manipulate them, adjust them, correct them. For now, speech is a lost cause for me, although I tried many times to use the device, and each time, I was told I was unintelligible. I haven’t tried again, and doubt I ever will.

For now, I get by using American Sign Language, reading braille, using writing pads, blocks of plastic letters and a new phone app that converts text messages and emails into, of all things, vibrating Morse code, spelling out my texts one letter at a time, much as Rachel the translator was now spelling out words, one letter at a time.

Communication on my end is a little easier and faster, as I can use both hands to sign full words, and so I rapidly ask the captain to what did I owe the pleasure of his company?

There is a pause, and I feel her nodding her head, undoubtedly listening to the captain’s response.

Then I feel gentle hands take my own hand again. I open my fingers and she rests her palm flat against mine—and I feel another thrill that made me think of my ex-girlfriend again, and it also makes me wonder for the first time, just what Rachel looks like. That is, until I realize I would never know what she looks like, and I let the thought go.

Still, her touch is gentle and slightly…seductive, but that could just have been my imagination. Truth is, words like ‘seductive’ had long since departed my vocabulary. ‘Getting through the day’ are common words. ‘Not killing myself’ is another common phrase that runs through my mind.

Still, her touch is…pleasant, and it sends shivers through me. The first shivers, I’m certain, in nearly five years.

And now, she is spelling out the words, which she does a little faster this time around, as our connection is already growing. At least, I’d like to think so. She presses each sign firmly into my palm, then quickly forms the next, pausing and tapping between words, until the sentence is spelled out, a minute or so later.

“I need your help, Lee.”

I absorb this, and then sign: “You need a driver?”

I feel the couch shake slightly, and I think Rachel might have been laughing. A moment later, the captain’s return message arrives: “It’s good to see that you haven’t lost your sense of humor, Lee.”

“My sense of humor is one of the few senses I have left,” I sign back.

There is another pause—and what was meant to be another small joke suddenly turns into not such a small joke. Maybe it sounded more like a cry for help, or pity, neither of which I had intended.

Now, I feel the floorboards beneath me move and Betsie jerk her head off my foot. Someone is coming over, and that someone is the captain. He reaches around and wraps a meaty arm around my shoulder and presses his head against mine and holds me closer than anyone has held me in a long, long time.

When he is done hugging me, I can feel his tears rolling down my neck. Either that, or my trachea valve needs another cleaning.

Now, he sits next to me, his legs pressing against mine. He has Betsie’s full attention, and for now, she continues sitting up, undoubtedly staring at him, undoubtedly assessing him.

I sense he is talking, and now, Rachel lifts my hand and once again, presses hers into mine.

“I’m so fucking sorry this happened to you. You didn’t deserve this, Lee. No one deserves this.”

Except, of course, I did deserve this. I deserved this and so much more. I don’t respond and we all sit in silence again on my couch. Betsie lowers her head once again to my shoe.

After a short reprieve, the captain speaks again; as he does so, he rests his hand on my shoulder, and this, along with the hug, is the most the captain has ever touched me. My old boss has gotten sentimental over the years. Rachel promptly translates his voiced words into my open palm.

“I hate to do this to you, Lee, but we could use your help on a case. Many cases, actually. One, in particular. A case we call the Big Case, with a capital B and C.”

“What do you mean?”

“People are disappearing, Lee,” comes his response a few minutes later. “Many people, in fact. Ten, as far as we are aware.”

“Any bodies?” I ask, signing.

“None yet.”

“Tell me more,” I say, and the captain does. This is a lengthy process, one that challenges the translator and, I suspect, the captain’s patience. But when he is done, I have the full picture.

And what a crazy picture it is.

Winter Wind

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