Blood Crimes Book One

Chapter 3

Don Hayes was glad he was packing some serious firepower. He’d never been to Kansas City before and didn’t know what to expect, but the neighborhood he ended up in was as bad as any back home in Brooklyn. Half the store fronts were boarded up, and the ones still in operation were either bars, tattoo parlors or pawnshops. Scattered along the sidewalks were an equal mix of the homeless, derelicts, drug addicts and street toughs. One of the derelicts he drove past was too busy shooing away imaginary flies to bother looking at him, but the other people he passed made sure to give him a long predatory-type stare-especially the street toughs as they sized him up and tried to decide whether he was worth the risk to carjack. Fortunately, so far none of them decided he was. Also, fortunately, as a licensed PI from the state of New York, he had a permit to carry a concealed weapon, and weighing down the inside of his sports jacket was a Smith amp; Wesson 9mm pistol. He patted the bulge lining his jacket and breathed a little easier. He also had under his seat a police blackjack from his days on the force-an eleven inch piece of weighted spring steel covered in leather. If anyone tried reaching into his car he was prepared, but still, he didn’t want trouble. Around this neighborhood that was all he could smell.

At the next street corner he slowed down enough to read the street sign, then pulled over and parked next to a vacant store front. After getting out of the car, he gave a quick look around. A couple of street toughs were eyeing him from a few storefronts down but stayed where they were. Either they sensed he was armed or simply decided to wait for easier prey.

Hayes unfolded the fax he had received from the Kansas City Sentinel two days earlier to make sure he had the right address, then walked down the side street he had parked near and searched for the alleyway where a local crack and meth dealer, Devon Wilkerson, was found with his throat torn out and most of his blood drained. He stopped for a moment to squint at the sun and then to wipe a handkerchief along the back of his neck. Damn it was muggy here. Hot as hell too, like a steam bath. Ten minutes outside of the air-conditioning of his car and he was already sweating.

Up ahead a homeless man was picking through a dumpster and loading trash into a shopping cart. Even in the oppressive heat, the man wore several layers of clothing under a winter jacket. Hayes walked up to him and pointed a thumb towards the alley they were standing next to and asked if that was where Wilkerson was murdered.

The homeless man’s eyes looked foggy. “Whazzot,” he croaked out.

Hayes didn’t know if this was meant as a question or statement. He tried again, talking slower. “The drug dealer who was murdered around here. Was it in this alley?” Hayes said. He consulted a notepad. “The man who was murdered was big, over six and a half feet. African-American. Had his throat cut open. He was found dead ten days ago in an alley off this street.”

The homeless man shrugged noncommittally, his eyes clouded and glassy. No question he was on something.

“Dunno.”

Hayes pulled a ten-dollar bill from his wallet. The bill was snatched from his hands. Hayes watched as the homeless man folded it carefully and placed it in a pocket inside his jacket lining. He nodded and pointed down the alley. Flecks of dirt or bugs or something flew off his hair as he did this.

“Vampires,” he said.

“What do you mean vampires?”

“Vampires done it. Drank his blood. Kilt him.”

“Did you see anything?”

“No no yo. Not me. Saw nothin’. Sayin’ nothin’ more.”

The homeless man grabbed his shopping cart and pushed it away. He looked back at Hayes a few times until he was satisfied the PI wasn’t following him. Hayes watched as the man turned the corner and disappeared from sight, then glanced at his notes again and walked to the end of the alley. Outside of several trash cans there wasn’t much else there. Any signs of the murder had been cleaned up. Hayes spotted a sewer grate under one of the trash cans. He had done a weather lookup on Yahoo and knew it had rained heavily the morning before the body was discovered-intense thunderstorms was how they put it. That probably had more to do with the alley being cleaned of blood than anything else.

Hayes stood silently trying to envision what would’ve brought Wilkerson to the alley. He could’ve been chased down it, but more likely was lured to the spot. He closed his eyes and tried to feel any vibes from the murder site and imagine what happened that night. From his photos the victim was a scary looking sonofabitch. Six foot six, two hundred and thirty pounds, with a long string of arrests for drug dealing and violent assaults, but no convictions. Hayes had a rough idea what the police were thinking-that the murder was over territory and that a competing dealer was trying to grab Wilkerson’s slice of the trade. Hayes had a different idea of the murder, but then again, he was looking at it from a different angle. The local police didn’t know what he knew. That this wasn’t an isolated incident. That there was a serial killer crisscrossing the country killing a lot of bad guys like Wilkerson.

Hayes sighed and headed back to his car. In all good conscience, he should go to the FBI with what he suspected but it wasn’t as if he had anything concrete, just a growing folder of circumstantial evidence. Maybe it wasn’t quite ethical, but he was under no legal obligation to report unproven hunches. Also there was the complication that his client was paying him a lot of money-twice his going rate, to work this case fulltime, along with a promise of a hundred-grand bonus if he found the guy she wanted found. When she hired him she insisted that he keep his investigation confidential, that anything he found would be reported only to her. He agreed to her demands. She wasn’t the kind of woman he could say no to. Just thinking of her got his heart pumping. Serena Jones. Jesus, she was something…

Not that he could say she was beautiful. No, that wouldn’t be the right way to describe her, not with this weird cat-like look about her and with how thin and lean she was with almost no tits. But damn was she sexy. Partly it was those green eyes of hers, partly it was the way she dressed in skintight leather, but mostly it was that she seemed to ooze sexuality. It was as if it came off her like perfume. Just the way she looked at him would make him hard-not that he would ever have a chance to do anything about it; she was well out of his league. But a guy could dream, couldn’t he?

He returned to his car and retrieved his case folder and also the police blackjack from under the driver’s seat. He slipped the sap into his belt so that it was hidden by his shirt. He still had several hours before he was going to be meeting the police detectives investigating Wilkerson’s murder, and this area seemed as good a place as any to start interviewing witnesses. He kept a wary eye on the street toughs who were hanging around the neighborhood, as they did him, and went from bar to bar showing Wilkerson’s picture along with two sketches that he had. The first sketch was one that Serena had helped him make of the man she wanted found. The physical resemblance between Serena and “Jim” was strong enough that Hayes thought they had to be related, maybe even brother and sister. Both were athletic, almost unnaturally lean, with the same cat-like quality to their features and uniquely shaped faces. Serena insisted that they weren’t related, and further that she had no idea what Jim’s last name was. She was also tightlipped about her connection to Jim and why she wanted him found. Hayes didn’t push it, but he was going by the theory that they were of the same blood.

At the fourth bar Hayes tried, the bartender recognized Wilkerson’s picture.

“He’s the dude killed in an alley a few blocks from here, right?” the bartender asked.

“Yeah. Did you know him?”

“Nope.”

“Did he ever come in here?”

The bartender smiled vaguely showing off some badly nicotine-stained teeth. “Can’t remember.”

He started to walk away, but made it slow. When Hayes put twenty dollars on the bar, the bartender’s face screwed up into a pained expression as if he were trying to pull an obscure piece of trivia from his brain. When Hayes added another twenty, the bartender collected the money and told him that he remembered seeing Wilkerson around.

“How about ten or so days ago?”

A glint showed in the bartender’s eyes. “You mean the night he was killed?”

“Yeah.”

He thought about it and shrugged.

“I don’t know,” he said. “He could’ve been, but I can’t remember when I saw him last. He wasn’t the type of guy I wanted to pay attention to.”

“This is where he did business?”

“I couldn’t tell you about that.”

At that hour there were only a half dozen customers distributed along the bar and tables. The bartender waved over the lone waitress; a very skinny redhead in her early twenties wearing a short miniskirt and sleeveless blouse that was tied off midway up her stomach. The waitress looked like she was single-handedly keeping the local tattoo parlors in business with a couple of dozen tattoos on her neck, arms and ankles, and probably places Hayes wasn’t privileged to see. She also had almost as many visible piercings as ink. The bartender showed her Wilkerson’s picture and asked when she last remembered seeing him.

“That’s the dead guy?”

“Yeah.”

“I don’t know.” She scrunched up her face while she gave the matter some thought. “Maybe two weeks ago?” she said.

Hayes showed them his sketch of Jim. Neither of them remembered seeing him. The waitress promised Hayes that if that guy were ever in there she’d remember seeing him. “I’d be all over him,” she said. “Fuck, he’s hot looking.”

Hayes couldn’t help smiling. A hot-looking serial killer. Great. The same women who wouldn’t give him the time of day find this guy hot-looking. Of course, he was in his late forties while this “hot-looking” serial killer was about fifteen years younger, but it had always been this way. He showed both of them his other sketch. This one was of a women in her early twenties with large brown eyes, high cheekbones and a gauntness to her face. In the picture she was a blonde, but Hayes suspected that wasn’t her true hair color and that she frequently wore different colored wigs. The drawing was of an extraordinarily beautiful woman and, like this waitress, was someone who favored hot-looking serial killers over solid but average-looking PIs.

The bartender nodded. “I remember her. But she wasn’t a blonde.” He winked at the waitress. “She was a redhead like Chelsea.”

“In a pig’s eye,” the waitress said. “She was wearing a wig.”

“You saw her also?”

“Yeah, I saw her. The way she was dressed I thought she was a hooker, but she was too good-looking for that. I couldn’t understand what someone like her was doing here. Not our typical lady customer. Her hair was a fake. Definitely. I remember her eyebrows being a dark brown. I wanted to tell some of the guys drooling over her that there was only one natural redhead in the place.”

The bartender leered at her. “Bullshit,” he said. “Chelsea, you’re a dye job if I ever saw one.”

“Fuck you.”

“Prove me wrong then. Easy enough for you to do.”

“How many times do I have to say it, Ossie. Fuck you.”

The bartender got a laugh out of that.

Hayes brought them back to the subject at hand. “How close does she look to this sketch?”

“Damn close,” the bartender said.

“Outside of the hair, yeah, that’s her,” the waitress agreed.

“Either of you remember her being here with Devon Wilkerson?”

They both gave him blank stares.

“The guy who was murdered,” Hayes said, pointing again at Wilkerson’s picture.

They both thought about it. The bartender nodded slowly. “Fuck, I think he was talking to her. Yeah, goddamn, I think he bought her a couple of drinks.”

“Did he leave with her?”

The bartender’s eyes glazed over as he tried to remember. “I dunno. I don’t think so.”

One of the patrons sitting at a table had lifted an empty beer glass and was signaling to the waitress. She asked the bartender for another Bud. While he poured her a draft, she put a hand on Hayes’ arm and told him she had to get back to work. “It’s been fun, Hon,” she said. “You come by after my shift ends at one and maybe I’ll be able to think of something else.”

Both Hayes and the bartender watched the movement of her barely covered ass as she brought the draft to the table.

“I’ve been trying to get in her pants for a year now,” the bartender complained, mostly talking to himself. He gave Hayes a look that basically said What the fuck does she see in an ugly sonofabitch like you? All Hayes could do was shrug. The bartender’s face reddened. He moved over to the beer taps and started to replace an empty keg. Without bothering to look at Hayes, he said, “We’re done here, right? I gotta get back to work, pal.”

Hayes was done. Besides, he had two Kansas City police detectives he needed to talk to. On his way out, the waitress gave him a look to let him know that she wasn’t kidding him earlier; that if he came by at one she’d be waiting.

Hayes felt his heart skip a beat. Maybe all this time looking for “Jim” a bit of the serial killer’s charisma had rubbed off. Goddamn. Hayes’ imagination started working overtime as he pictured where he was going to be uncovering secret tattoos on the waitress, and even better, additional body piercings. It was sobering, though, stepping out of the bar and seeing a half-dozen or so street predators leaning against storefronts turning their eyes towards him. Sighing heavily, he forced his attention away from what the waitress was offering and back to the job at hand.

Detectives Bobby Brindle and Lou Marzon got a kick out of the story Hayes told them about why he was interested in Devon Wilkerson’s murder. It was total bullshit but the same story had played well with detectives in other cities so he kept using it. A lesson he learned while on the force was the more outlandish the lie the more willing people were to buy it. If he tried feeding a perp some bullshit about having a witness they’d just start smirking. If he told them instead that he had CIA satellite photos of them in the act of the crime they’d invariably start bitching about how it was a violation of their privacy.

“So who’s this famous writer?” Brindle asked while shoveling a chunk of steak into his mouth. Hayes was buying the detectives steak dinners and beers in exchange for what they had on the Devon Wilkerson murder.

“Sorry, I’ve been sworn to secrecy.”

“Come on,” Brindle said, his eyes shining with amusement. “You can confide in us. Who are we going to tell? It’s Stephen King, am I right?”

“Nope.”

“Then that guy who wrote the DaVinci Code, right?”

“Not even close.”

“Well I’m out then,” Brindle said, a look of constipation falling over his round face as he tried to think of other names. “How about you, Lou. You think of any other big shot writers?”

Detective Marzon paused from chewing on a piece of steak to shake his head. He asked incredulously, “This guy really wants to write a book about this scumbag’s murder?”

“That’s what he’s thinking.”

“Unbelievable.” Marzon shook his head again, scowling. “And he sends you to research it for him?”

“Yep.”

“Pays for your airplane ticket and all your expenses?”

“You got it.”

“Fucking unbelievable,” Marzon said. “What a waste of money. Devon’s not worth spending a cent on.”

“You can’t tell us who this big shot is?” Brindle asked.

“Only that he’s a best selling author,” Hayes said with a wink. “Millions are going to be reading this book. A lot more will see the movie.”

Shit, Brindle mouthed silently.

Marzon swallowed a mouthful of food, then took a swig of beer. “I still don’t get why any writer would care about what happened to a shitbag like Devon,” he said.

“Who the fuck knows with these writers? He read about the murder over the Internet and something about it inspired him.”

“Who’d ever think Devon would inspire anything other than a good argument for capital punishment?” Brindle asked, chuckling lightly.

“I don’t know. There were times he came close to inspiring me to unload my service revolver in his mutt-ugly face,” Marzon said.

“You have to admit something’s a little funny here,” Hayes cut in. “Even if he was nothing but a scumbag, you still have him found in an alley with his throat mostly cut out and almost all his blood drained.”

Brindle speared a chunk of meat with his fork. He held his fork out towards Hayes as if making a point with it.

“Nothing so unusual about it, not for a shitbag like Devon. He was dead forty-eight hours before we found him. It rained like hell for those two days. All that happened was he bled out and his blood washed down a sewer grate.”

“Maybe it was vampires,” Hayes said with a smile.

Marzon looked up from his food. “Where’d you get this shit about vampires?” he asked.

Hayes’ smile stretched half an inch. “At the crime scene. A homeless guy pushing a shopping cart told me it was vampires.”

That cracked Brindle up. Marzon shook his head.

“Fucking ding dongs,” Marzon said. “That’s what they’re saying out there, huh? Vampires? Fuck.”

Hayes gave him a questioning look.

“Ding dongs, you know, those cupcakes with the creme filling,” Marzon explained as he tapped his skull with his index and middle fingers. “Nothing but mush for brains.”

Brindle had to spit some food into a napkin to keep from choking. “Jesus,” he said, wiping some tears from his eyes, “Vampires. No kidding? Sorry to disappoint them. It wasn’t vampires. We know the guy who did it. We just don’t have enough yet to pick him up.”

“Who do you have?”

“A scumbag drug supplier Devon worked for. Word on the street, Devon was taking a bigger slice than he was entitled to and this even bigger piece of shit wanted to make him an example.”

“What was used?”

“What do you think?”

“A knife?”

“That’s all it was. An ordinary hunting knife. No teeth, no fangs. It might’ve been pretty brutal, but it was nothing you or I couldn’t do if we wanted to. Nothing spooky about this. Only exactly what it looks like-one scumbag killing another. Sorry if your client’s going to end up disappointed. This is going to make one boring novel if you ask me.”

“Well, it is what it is.” Hayes smiled thinly. “Doesn’t mean, though, that’s how he’s going to write it. You’re sure of the time of death?”

Brindle nodded. “Medical Examiner pegged him dead for forty-eight to sixty hours before the body was found. No witnesses yet. With it raining as hard as it was there was no reason for anyone to wander into that alley.”

“Was there a reason for Wilkerson to be there?”

“Only the obvious one. He was probably waiting to pick up a new supply when someone snuck up behind him and cut his throat. He had no defensive wounds, so that’s probably how it played out.”

“Sounds pretty cut and dried,” Hayes said, forcing a straight face.

“Nothing for anyone to shed any tears over,” Marzon volunteered.

Hayes signaled the waitress for another whiskey and soda for himself and more beers for Marzon and Brindle. The trail was only two weeks old, maybe Jim and his girlfriend hung around after Wilkerson’s murder. He couldn’t help feeling excited about being this close to the killer, he also couldn’t help feeling some guilt over not filling these detectives in on what they were really dealing with. Dinner ended up being a leisurely one with Hayes trading stories with the two detectives about his days on the force in Brooklyn. Cigars were lit and a half dozen more beers were bought for each detective while Hayes milked his last whiskey and soda so he could limit himself to three drinks. It wasn’t just so he’d be ready for that waitress later, he still had more work to do that night. He also didn’t want to sound at all tipsy when he called his client.

After dinner, he hit the low-budget motels around the airport. He knew the type of motel that Jim and his girlfriend usually stayed at. Dirt cheap, no frills, and always at motor lodges where the rooms had their own street level entrances. Hayes guessed that Jim wanted to be able to enter and leave his room without a desk clerk noticing him. These were places that were usually used for hours instead of nights-the type of motels favored by drug addicts and prostitutes.

After Hayes ran out of motels around the airport, he cracked open a Kansas City yellow pages and expanded his search. Two hours later he found the one Jim and his girlfriend had been staying at. It was as seedy as all the others Hayes had tracked them to, and it was less than two miles from the alley in which Wilkerson was killed in. The desk clerk, a thin man in his twenties with a sallow complexion and bad teeth, looked bored, and clearly had little interest in talking to a PI. Stifling a yawn, he examined the sketch Hayes showed him. He nodded, recognizing the girl.

“She wasn’t a blonde, though,” he said. “That babe was definitely a brunette. And it was no dye job.”

“You paid close attention to her then?”

He grinned, showing off bad gums and crooked teeth. “Shit, take a look at her.” He glanced over his shoulder and lowered his voice “Why wouldn’t I pay close attention to a piece of ass like that?”

Hayes showed him Jim’s sketch. The desk clerk gave it a quick look and told the PI he didn’t recognize the guy. “She was the only one I saw from her room, but I’m pretty sure she had company. Whether it was this guy, I couldn’t tell you,” he added. This didn’t come as any surprise to Hayes. So far it had been the same story with every desk clerk Hayes had spoken to; the girl always checked in and out while Jim stayed out of sight.

“Did she give a name? Maybe a car registration?”

The desk clerk made a face at Hayes as if he were nuts. “She paid cash for the room. No name, and I didn’t pay attention to what type of car she had. Probably some junker, but I couldn’t tell you positively.”

Again, that didn’t surprise Hayes. Same old story. He leaned closer to the desk clerk and laid twenty bucks on the counter.

“When was she here?”

“We don’t keep a registry.”

“I’m sure you could figure it out.”

The desk clerk looked at the money, nodded, and slid the twenty dollars into a shirt pocket. Counting it out on his fingers he told Hayes that she was there for ten days. “She left Sunday,” he added.

Hayes felt a buzz of excitement. Sunday was only four days ago. This was the closest he’d been to their trail.

“You’re sure?” he asked.

“Shit, yeah, I’m sure.”

“She didn’t say where she was going next?”

“No.”

“Any clue at all? Did you see any road maps? Did she ask for any directions?”

“Sorry. Nothing.”

“Anything unusual left in the room?”

The desk clerk shrugged. “I don’t know. You’ll have to ask the maid. She’ll be in tomorrow morning at seven.”

“How about a phone number?”

The desk clerk again made a face indicating Hayes was nuts. He started tapping impatiently along the counter. “You think this is the kind of motel where we keep a maid on twenty-four hour call? Or where she’s not an illegal and we actually care about keeping her phone number and address? Buddy, just come back here tomorrow at seven, give her twenty bucks also, and I’m sure she’ll tell you whatever she can, okay? In the meantime I have to get back to work.”

Hayes gave the desk clerk his cell phone number, along with another twenty, and asked him to call him if he thought of anything else that could help. As he left he felt a skip in his step, and had to keep his jaw clenched tight to prevent a broad smile from coming over his face. He had been on this assignment for over a year and this was as warm as he had gotten to Jim. But as excited as he felt, he also had some trepidation. He was going to have to call his client and explain to her how he ended up in Kansas City. Thinking about that dampened his spirits.

Up until this recent trip, she’d been calling him and telling him where to go next to look for Jim. After four or five months of that he started to make the connection about where she was sending him and recent murders of very bad men in the same cities, all of which were missing a good amount of blood. He had no doubt that Serena suspected Jim of these murders and was sending Hayes to these locations after scouring police reports. He also knew she was intentionally withholding this from him, and further, that she didn’t want him to make the connection. He knew she wouldn’t be happy that he figured it out, and knowing that made him nervous. As sexy as she was-as much as he longed to experience her in the sack, there was something about her that creeped the hell out of him. Big surprise, huh genius, he told himself, after all, all she’s doing is hiring you to track down a serial killer. But he knew that wasn’t it, at least not entirely. There was something else about her. Maybe it was the way he caught her a few times looking at him as if he weren’t even an insect. Those looks would be fleeting, nothing more than a shadow passing over her face, and it would leave him wondering whether he really saw what he thought he had or whether it was just his own insecurities acting up-after all, she was so damn sexy, and the best you could say about him was that he was an average-looking guy. Maybe he imagined those looks, maybe it was something else about her that gave him the willies. Whatever it was, he instinctively knew he didn’t want to get on her bad side.

He waited until he was back in his car before calling Serena. She answered her cell phone after the third ring, her voice as always with a soft sing-song lilt to it.

“Donald,” she half-purred, “this is a surprise.”

“Yeah, I’d expect so,” he said. He cleared his throat. “I found that our target was in Kansas City four days ago.”

She didn’t respond to that, instead she let a heavy silence hang between them while she waited for him to explain further. When he didn’t volunteer anything, she asked how he discovered such a thing.

“I had a hunch.”

“That’s not good enough.”

Her tone had shifted from amused to something that sent a chill down Hayes’ spine. There was no longer a lyrical quality to her voice, more like the faint unpleasantness of glass breaking. Hayes found himself sweating.

“Something happened recently in Kansas City that made me want to check it out,” he said.

“Which was?”

Hayes took out his handkerchief and wiped it along his neck and forehead. He felt shaky. Deep inside he knew this was a mistake letting her in on what he knew. As if his voice were coming from outside of himself, he heard himself tell her about the pattern of murders he had recognized, and about the latest murder in Kansas City. There was a cold silence on her end that she eventually broke by asking Hayes if he had mentioned his theory to anyone else.

“You mean the authorities?” he asked.

“I mean anyone.”

“No, of course not,” he said. “You’re paying me for my confidentiality. As long as you’re not asking me to break the law, I’m under no legal obligation to go to the police with any hunches I have.”

“You do realize this hunch of yours is ridiculous?”

“Yes, ma’am.”

“What you’ve so ingeniously discovered has been nothing more than a series of bizarre coincidences.”

“I realize that’s possible.”

“No, Donald,” she said confidently, her sing-songish lilt back, “it is most definitely only a coincidence. But still, it’s been a lucky one since it led you to Jim. And only four days ago he was in Kansas City?”

“Yes, ma’am.”

He could hear a slight purr on her end as she considered that. Then, “Any ideas where Jim might’ve gone next?”

“None yet. But I have a few more leads to check out. From our previous sightings, he seems to be heading to the East Coast.”

“It does seem that way.” Some more soft purring, then, “Donald, keep me informed if you find anything.”

“I will.” He hesitated, and wiped his handkerchief along his face and neck. “Serena, there is something else. Jim is traveling with a young woman, probably in her early twenties. I have a sketch of her that I am confident is of a good likeness.”

A painful silence, then her voice crackling like a whip, she asked, “Why haven’t you mentioned this to me before?”

Her tone took Hayes by surprise. He found himself stammering, telling her he needed to confirm this first, but that he was now convinced of Jim’s traveling companion.

‘Is…Is she pretty?” Serena asked hesitantly, sounding a bit like a little girl.

“A matter of taste,” Hayes said.

“Would you say she’s pretty?”

“Not really my type,” Hayes lied.

“I see…Have you identified her?”

“No, not yet. I’ve sent her drawing to my old police partner in Brooklyn, and no matches to any missing persons reports.”

“Fax me her sketch as soon as you can,” she said; then impatiently, “Anything else?”

“I have an idea on how to flush them out,” he said. “I’d like to have my staff send her sketch to motels around the country. I have a good idea of the type they’ve been staying at, and we could target them offering a reward to anyone who spots her and contacts us. In a month we could have full coverage. It wouldn’t take long after that.”

“That is an excellent idea.” Her voice had softened back to its earlier sing-songish lilt. “I knew there was a reason I hired you other than simply your rugged good looks.”

Hayes found himself blushing. “There is a downside,” he said. “We could end up being flooded with false identifications. It could be expensive tracking them all down.”

“Expense isn’t an issue. It sounds well worth doing. Bravo, Donald, I am quite impressed.”

She must’ve put the phone down. He could hear her clapping on her end. Then the light tinkling of her laughter.

Hayes’ blush deepened. He also felt himself hardening between his legs. It was amazing the effect her voice could have on him-more powerful than a handful of Viagra. He was grateful more than ever that he had that tattooed and pierced freak of a waitress waiting for him.

“We could also get her sketch in newspapers across the country and offer a reward for information. It would be expensive, but we’d probably find her in a week or less-”

“No, Donald, your other idea sounds more than adequate. Newspapers would draw too much attention. But I am very pleased with your progress. Very much so. Please do continue to keep me informed.”

She hung up.

Hayes let loose with a loud exhalation, then shook his head smiling grimly to himself. He wished he had some idea where Jim and his girlfriend had gone off to next. More than ever he wanted to find the sonofabitch and be done with the case. He checked his watch and sighed heavily. It was nine-ten. Almost four hours before that waitress would be off duty. He got back in his car and drove the two miles to the murder site. Before leaving his car he took the safety off his 9 mm and slipped the sap under his belt so he’d have easy access to it. He walked back into the alley hoping to come across someone who might’ve seen something the night Devon Wilkerson was killed. He waited patiently without any luck until quarter to one, then headed off to his date.