Jump The Line (Toein' The Line Book 1) Read online

  I yank my backpack across the seat and scoot toward the door.

  “Not true,”he says, and then when I keep scooting,“will you wait a minute, dammit? It’s police business, not yours. It’s also dangerous. You could be hurt.”

  “Yeah, sure,”I say, opening the door. Like this effing LEO gives a shit about me? How stupid I am. “You have no clue, so keep out of my life and my private friendships and—”

  “Alaina, I’m telling you this only once,”he says, interrupting my rant, the command in his tone drawing me up short. “Do notinsert yourself into this investigation. I’ll charge you with obstruction. If you force my hand, I’ll toss you into jail. Megalo Don’s a killer. He likes exotic dancers, which means you’re at risk. Dancing topless at Omar’s, wearing that skimpy outfit and exposing yourself to every crazy pervert’s—”

  “Megalo Don? So that’s the name of the bastard who killed my friend?”

  “You’re a witness. Got that? Nothing more. So I’m warning you, Alaina—”

  It takes all my willpower not to slam the door when I jump out. I feel ridiculous for thinking he wanted me. I’m just another potential vic to him. Another topless dancer like Ang. One more poor college student dancin’ up there on stage at Omar’s in my trampy harem outfit and making all the perverts want to murder me.

  I should’ve listened to my mom. Colbys don’t mix it up with cops. Not in Mustangs, not in cop cruisers, and damn well not in the front seat of boring freakin’ Buicks. “So I can’t take care of myself? I’m just a dumb helpless vic?”

  “Alaina, I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to make it sound like that, trust me.”

  I snort. “Trust you? Yeah, sure.” The last idiot male that told me that was Robin.

  “I didn’t mean to offend you. I like your harem outfit, dammit. I do. It’s pretty, uh, unique—”

  I will not permit this oversized LEO to toy with my feelings. Shaking with rage, I storm away, but then I change my mind and stomp back to his side of the car. “Down!” I gesture.

  Down comes the driver’s side window. I lean in and stare into his eyes. “Go find Officer Barbie and diddle her plastic boobs! You two are alike! You’re both fake!”

  That shoulda set him back, but with that sexy Elvis sneer I’m finding irresistible, he says,“Just make sure you don’t run off. I might need to ask you more questions.”

  Just like that, the urge hits me, and I lean in and kiss him hard, grinding my lips into his. “Get lost,”I say. “Leave me the fuck alone.”

  Then I stomp back around the front of his car and take the steps up the front porch of Stoke’s crack house. This is seedy? So freakin’ what? It’s my world—Crip’s. It’s raw, but at least it’s real. I bet Detective Hawks goes home to . . . what? A cheesy little two-bedroom apartment? I bet his bed’s empty, too, self-righteous bastard.

  I check my jealous thoughts. No way this hottie sleeps alone! Dammit!

  “I’ll pick you up after your shift’s over at Omar’s and drive you home,”Aidan yells at my retreating back. “You might not like it, but I’m going to keep an eye on you until we find out who’s dumping bodies in the alley.”

  Berta Colby would be proud of me: I flip him the bird over my shoulder and keep climbing steps. For good measure, I wiggle my butt in a lewd suggestive dance step I learned from Ang.

  Get an eye full, Aidan Hawks.

  I want to dislike him, to never see him again, but my heart turns traitor and leaps at his last words. It’s been a crappy day, a crappy week; in fact, it’s been a crappy life, but even if it’s not a date, if it’s just Detective Hawks doing his job, I’ll see him again after I get off work at Omar’s. Didn’t he just promise to keep an eye on me? It’s something to look forward to.

  At the top of the steps, I turn. Two thugs hovering nearby break loose from a cluster of guys and amble toward me. I want to lash out, so I yell at them. “Hey, it’s not a good idea, with Detective Hawks sitting nearby in that unmarked.” I point toward Aidan’s Buick.

  Their gazes glued to the sidewalk, they slide on past Stoke’s building.

  Chapter 22

  I bang my knuckles against the dirty white front storm door, its glass missing and hanging from one hinge. “Hullo? Stoke, you home?”

  This neighborhood hosts some of Cincinnati’s worst gang violence, including a bunch called Quiet Money, Inc.

  “Screw manners.” Keeping my eyes on the thugs slinking closer to the front porch, I step inside the door and land gingerly in the dim front hallway of Stoke’s apartment. Turning, I give Aidan a quick wave, letting him know I’m safe. Seeing my signal, he drives off, but the hoods on the corner making the dope deal have figured out he doesn’t belong here, so they’ve been ignoring him—until now. Watching the Buick disappear, they turn their attention to me.

  “Stoke,”I say, wishing he’d show his face,“you here? I need to talk.”

  This is a crack house in a badass neighborhood. I’m not shocked by the drug paraphernalia. I’m also not afraid of the thugs—Goshen Colbys fear nothing. Yet this place creeps me out. Like Brick’s office, it could use light bulbs. Stoke warned me it was a dump, but I’m desperate to find out if he’s made Omar’s deposit, so I’ve gotta find him. If he’s not already gone back to my place like he promised, then I also need to get my apartment key back from Stoke. And there’s the issue of asking him to help me find Ang’s killer.

  At the bank of grimy metal mailboxes in the foyer, I find Stoke’s apartment. B-1. Basement.

  I hurry to the end of the hallway and, glancing back toward the open front door, in case the thugs have decided to do something stupid like stalk me, I punch the door leading down to the basement with my index finger. It creaks open.

  “Hmmm,”I say. Fighting the willies that take over and give me goosebumps, I give it another punch with my index finger. It’s unlocked, a padlock and thick chain dangling loosely from the grimed door facing. This is odd. Stoke’s fanatical about his stuff. Claims the dopers are always ripping off college students. “I want them all to die from overdoses,”he’s fond of saying, like he’d like to kill them himself. That makes zero sense to me, but I accept him with all his little quirks.

  That doesn’t mean I’m not inclined to snoop. Call it curiosity, but now that I’m here I’d like to learn how Stoke lives. “Curiousity is a good quality for a future lawyer,”Professor Levin used to say. “Or an FBI agent,”I’d argue back.

  Or maybe my snooping’s merely a bad habit, one that’s also illegal, like trespassing. When Robin and I were little, Berta took us into homes during the day. For years, we burglarized our neighbors’ houses while they were at work. It was how we got money. We did it as a way of life. Berta fenced the stolen booty from our burglaries, and then used the money to buy booze and drugs for her and her boyfriends.

  I take a tentative step down the bare wooden steps, the only light coming from the open front door disappearing behind me, making me feel isolated, alone. A few steps down, I stop, sniff the air. What’s that smell? It’s like somebody’s left something burning on a stovetop. It smells like burnt hamburger with—I sniff again. “Ugh!”

  It’s dank smelling, like scorched blood.

  I start backing up the steps, deciding after all that Stoke’s private life’s not all that interesting. This doesn’t feel right. He’s not here. Maybe I shouldn’t be, either.

  I’m backing up the basement steps, wishing I’d asked Aidan to drop me off at my apartment instead of here, when someone grabs my arm and I scream.

  Chapter 23

  Who is the girl on the table? She looks like a fallen angel. Pale, thin. Her alabaster skin sports a bluish sheen. Shock?

  He approaches her carefully. She terrifies him, yet he feeds on his fear of her beauty. I knowhim: he’s enjoying a sexual fantasy of his invention, one so extreme no one could interrupt, or thwart.

  I switch my gaze from her face to his, and then back. She’s more terrified than he is.

  He touches her fa
ce, caresses her. She whimpers, a puppy’s cry. It electrifies my groin. I want to run to her, pull her to me, comfort her.

  But I don’t.

  Don’t whimper. Please don’t whimper.

  I beg silently. “It excites him,”I want to tell her, but don’t.

  His shadow falls across her, taking possession. A macabre specter, he’s growing, empowered by the girl’s increasing fear, whipped into a surreal phantasm by the overhead surgical lamp’s yellow-pink glare—and the table with its gleaming dental pics.

  She whimpers again. Stop fucking whimpering!

  I feel my sympathy for her dip, and then disappear. Why are women so stupid?

  The gurney gleams, a stainless steel mirror reflecting the girl’s frail outline, clenched hands, the plastic ties cutting into her angry red wrists. I squeeze shut my eyes and beg her one last time. Stop, stop, stop!

  No escape. No escape. Slowly I draw open an eyelid, then another, and this time I feel nothing. Eyes widening like a frightened doe’s, she whimpers past the duct tape.

  Stupid bitch! You’ve should’ve listened to me!

  “Shall we show her our love,”he says. “She’s just a dancing whore, but we can forgive her.”

  Did he speak? Or . .. . did I say that?

  I’m unsure who’s speaking. I tremble, embracing the jack-hammering joy building to a heady climax. I stare at the girl again. Nothing. She’s the same as the rest. I’ve stared at them all. It’s not about her. It’s about me. Detective Hawks wants to know who I am. He’s not interested in saving them.

  In a moment, I won’t recognize her, nor she me.

  “No, Hawks,”I say,“you want to know me so damn well, to know who I am?”

  Oh, he’s not here, but I can still talk to him, can’t I?

  I . . . sense his curiosity when I follow him around town, struggling as he does to learn the identity of Megalo Don. Not yet, Detective Hawks. I’m not ready for you yet. It’s too early.

  I’ve known cops like him before. My exquisite fear morphs, a dizzying feeling of power ascends from my groin to my head, so intense my eyeballs feel like they’re popping. Who’s he to frighten me? No one.

  My fear, having transcended its usual route, turns into a healthy anger, a black marble in my mind, on which I focus all my love—and hate. Mother.

  What did she do to deserve her fate? Danced like a naked whore to earn a living.

  “Mother.” I say her name, press my lips together—Mother—like the name’s some kind of prayer. Mom. Who whored for me, danced naked for all those lowlife mother fuckers salivating and panting after her pussy—

  I stop. The anger reaches its crescendo and then boils in a white-hot peak. I savor the explosion, erupting as I think of the man who’s decided it’s his job to stop me.

  Oh, yes. Hawks will find me. I know his fucking MO. It’s okay, though. I want to be caught because every fucking day I’m not—every time Detective Hawks fails to figure out who I am and why I’m tagging along after his ass—the man in front of me is going to make another angel. I lower my gaze, but can’t block the girl’s sad little snuffing sounds.

  “Out, out brief candle,”I whisper, no longer wishing to disturb the play unfolding before my eyes, the pathetic drama taking place on the stainless steel gurney.

  “Life’s but a walking shadow. All the world’s a stage, and we are but players—”

  Who’m I kidding? I’m just the fucking stage hand here. He’s the main act.

  I glance toward the gurney. She’s quiet now. No more puppy whimpers.

  Is this the calm before the storm?

  “Are you ready?”he asks, his gaze begging me silently to say yes.

  “Yes, I’m ready.”

  If all the world’s a stage—and I’m sure it is—then I’ve got one more act to prepare for, one more final performance.

  Yes, yes, yes! Fucking yes!

  I watch him choose a scalpel to tease the corner of the duct tape from her lips. Grasping it with practiced precision, he peels it off slowly to avoid injuring her petulant little mouth.

  Oh! Oh! Here it comes!

  “Nooooooo!”

  She clamps shut her mouth. He smashes it open with the stainless steel speculum and then inserts it, clamping her jaws wide.

  “There, there,”he soothes,“as I once heard him sooth Mother.”

  The girl’s screams shatter the silence and bounce from the room’s walls.

  All I can think is—I told her to stop fucking whimpering.

  I wait. At last comes sweet blessed silence.

  Did he do this to my mother? Did he make her scream this way? And then . . . did he wash himself in her blood and collect his trophies from her mouth? I know this: he cut her teeth from her jaw bone like pearls from an oyster shell.

  Chapter 24

  No case I’ve ever worked has made me hate being here like Megalo Don’s. None has ever made me more anxious to be standing right where I am. Within minutes, I’ll know whether my investigation is moving forward, or stalling.

  I push into the Campbell County, Kentucky morgue, shrugging when I read the sign above the door. Cadavers are people, too.

  The man, who many allege is my father, greets me. “Hello, Detective Hawks,”he says, proudly, and then adds,“son.”

  I can never bump into him, personally or professionally, and not come unglued when he calls me,“son.” Does he use it with everyone younger than he is, or just me?

  “You here to see the latest vic?”he asks.

  I see why people say he’s my daddy. He’s an older version of—me. Carrying himself with a tall man’s sureness, he’s got blonde hair going gray, but it’s his eyes that convince me I’m his son. They’re green like mine, and equally as—I hate to say this—hawkish. And handsome.

  As they say here in Kentucky,“I’m his spittin’ image.”

  Have I also inherited his libido? I’ve more than a little trouble imagining this old dude and my mother rolling around in the sack.

  “Any time you’re ready,”I say, ditching my prurient thoughts. “Let’s have a look.”

  Doctor Ed Smalley’s been Campbell County’s coroner for three decades. He’s run up a liquor tab larger than the national debt at the Newport Country Club for far longer. What’s worse, he’ll say anything that comes to mind in public. But in here, in this world where“cadavers are people, too,”he’s all business. If he is, or even if he’s not my daddy, I respect him for his professionalism.

  “I’ve already set her face, Aidan. Here, son,”he says, handing me an armful of cottony material. “You know the drill. I’ll be right back.”

  When he returns, wheeling in the gurney with Angie Miller’s covered body, I’m gowned up, wearing the cotton face mask and sterile gloves he gave me.

  “Her family will pitch a bitch if they find out what you want,”he says.

  “Who’s going to tell them?” Hell, I’m not waiting for Angie Miller’s family’s permission. What I want, I’m getting now. “Open up her mouth, Doc,”I say. “I need a look.”

  “Hawks, you’re a bossy little bas—”

  He catches his mistake in time, smiles apologetic. “Good thing for you I never married your pretty mama,”he says. “You’d be a humbler boy today, son, I can tell you that.”

  I’ve been hearing that since our first meeting six years ago, when I joined NPD and learned my mother was engaged to young Doctor Smalley in her twenties, and she’d gotten pregnant by him with me. We’ve kept an easy-going working relationship ever since our first meeting, this enigmatic man and I. “You’re just mad because she dumped you for the better man,”I joke, referring to my adopted dad, Judge Hawks.

  “She’s been sorry ever since,”he jokes right back. He and my dad play golf together. I doubt they’re best friends, but they put on a good appearance. “No one services a mare like I do,”he adds, confirming my suspicion he’s a lech—and I’m a chip off the old Smalley block.

  He smiles, but I sense deep remors
e beneath his easy manner. Maybe he likes it that we can joke about my mother, the love of his life and the woman he failed to tame enough to guide her into his stable. I don’t know, but if it keeps his memories alive, if it keeps him happy and helping me with the vics clogging his morgue, I’ll humor him. All I want from him today is a peek inside my vic’s mouth.

  Doc parks the gurney near a ceramic embalming table. “Watch your step,”he warns, side stepping the floor drain, unconcerned about the volume of blood that has flowed into it.

  “This’ll run me into overtime,”he says, checking the clock on the wall.

  “Who gives a rat’s ass what time it is in here, Doc?” I glance at the cadaver. “Not Angie Miller. Not any of your other clients, either, I’m betting.’”

  “The county can’t afford the overtime,”he counters.

  Hell’s fire! I know better. He can’t wait to get out of here and go golfing, boozing, or hunting for the next piece of horseflesh, the next Kentucky Derby winner. I applaud my mother, Barbara“Babbs”Courtland-Hawks, for having the good sense to dump young Doctor Smalley all those years ago.

  “Never mind, Doc. I don’t have much time, either”I say, giving myself a mental shake for even thinking about my paternity right now. Mom didn’t marry him, but Doctor Smalley’s still my dad, despite his lewd claims about servicing Lexington’s best mares.

  “Alright, then,”he says,“I’ll open her up if you’ll spot me for breakfast tomorrow morning at Arnee’s. No more ignoring me like you did this morning.”

  “Sure,”I agree. “Happy to.” I’ll suffer through breakfast with the old drunk. He’s the best damn coroner in Kentucky, and right now I need his help.

  “Here we go, honey,”he says, talking out loud to her, gently consoling Angie Miller’s corpse. She, of course, remains speechless, while he pulls lines of surgical thread from her mouth. The thread crisscrosses her upper canine bone arch, or technically, the“maxilla.” Threaded through the gum lines and the bone arch and then back into her nasal cavity, it holds shut Angie’s mouth. It’s ordinarily the work of the funeral home, but she’s not going there until this investigation is over, so Doc went ahead and wired her mouth shut“as a courtesy.” He’s such a southern gentleman, my dad.