Peppermint Soul (Liza McNairy Mysteries Book 1) Page 12

  Though she'd felt tired before coming upstairs and lying down, sleep didn’t come right away. The room was too bright. She got up and tried to adjust the shades covering the windows but sunlight leaked in around the edges and at the bottom where the sill jutted out. She should've been a carpenter. She'd have known better than to build a window like that.

  Going to the dresser and rummaging through the drawer on top where she kept all her knick knacks and doodads she found a roll of duct tape. It must have been old because when she tried to pull a piece free, it only tore into shreds. Tossing the tape back into the drawer, she saw a tube of superglue. Unopened, thank God for His tender mercies. If only she could darken the room, she might get to sleep. Applying liberal amounts around the edges of the shade she stuck it to the sides of the window hoping to hold out the light. But as soon as she let go, so did the shade. Finally she gave up, threw the glue back in the drawer, and simply opened the bottle and swallowed four more pills. When all else failed,

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  Overdose. The medication no longer worked like it once did. Years ago. Used to knock her out like Mohammed Ali. Dance like a butterfly. Sting like a bee. Were they making it weaker? No, more than likely she was simply building up a tolerance. Dr. Olay warned her that would happen. We'll have to adjust your dosage, Paula. Trust me. We'll get it right. Funny. The room seemed darker now. Had she fallen asleep and didn’t realize it? That seemed to happen with increasing frequency lately.

  She thought about getting up but the bed was feeling so comfortable and there really was no need and besides, it was so warm under the blankets. Maybe she'd just drift off again. Her bottle of pills sat on the nightstand next to the bed, beckoning, so she opened it up, shook a few out into the palm of her hand, and dry swallowed them. Now that she noticed it, she could see a bit of daylight bleeding in through the window shade... funny how she missed that just a moment ago. She'd been thinking she slept the day away again... not an uncommon occurrence. Or maybe she had. Perhaps today was actually tomorrow and an entire night had passed her by. Closing her eyes she summoned Missy and Melinda... imagined them beside her... wishing they'd talk to her this time.

  Johm. She had nearly fallen asleep again when she heard the name. In a haze. Someone must have come by the house. Allen spoke the word and she heard another voice respond, though not anything clear. Johm. Where had she heard that name? Missy. The name made Missy cry. She was the strong one too. If Melinda bawled over a boy, it was to be expected. Not Missy.

  Who was in the house with Allen? Someone. Or perhaps the television was turned up louder than he realized. No... that wasn’t it. They had visitors. She recognized the woman's voice. And then the man's. What were those thieves doing here again? Did they return to the scene of the crime to plunder more of the girls' treasures? Come on, Paula... you heard what Allen said. They're only trying to help. That's how they work. Liars and thieves, both of them. So what if they were on television. That didn’t mean a thing.

  What was that name again? She should start keeping a journal. Write down her dreams. And names she heard. She'd been meaning to but there was always so much going on she never seemed to get around to doing the things she meant to do. John. Was that it? Somehow that didn’t seem right. Something like John but not John.

  Johm. That was it. Johm. Not John. She whispered the name to herself. Three times. So she wouldn’t forget. Johm. Otherwise she'd wake and not remember. Johm. What a strange name. Johm. Did he have something to do with the girls' disappearance? If not him, he probably knew who did. With a name like that he'd be easy enough to find. Easier than a teddy bear cobbler.

  Chapter 18—Mirrors

  (No Fair Looking)

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  It was nice to unwind. To step in the shower, come out feeling clean and fresh, and spiking up with some of the name brand. The sweet stuff. Sometimes she thought about quitting but never too hard. This was her time. Who was she hurting? No one. If she liked to zone out after a long day, to float off on a cloud of forgetfulness, whose business was it?

  Johm bothered her. She saw the look on his face. Staring right through the mask she wore. Some people had the knack. They saw more than others. Maybe being a photographer gave Johm that eye to see. Or maybe something else was going on. She had no doubt the man was perverted. But was he demented enough to commit murder? Maybe. The way he looked at her... yeah, anything was possible.

  Like he wanted to own her. To put her up on a mantelpiece over his fireplace and take her down to play with every now and again when he was feeling bored. She remembered a case they worked in San Diego... a man's wife vanished two days into their honeymoon. Everyone suspected him of foul play. In fact he'd been arrested on some trumped up charge in order to hold him until the cops could develop a case against him.

  Turned out his brother kidnapped the girl, strangled her while having sex, cut her up into bite-sized pieces, cooked her up in an enormous stew pot, and consumed most of her before she and Danners came knocking on his door, led there by her partner's instincts. Danners'd touched the wedding dress. Hell, the man slept with it for two nights. And he knew. It wasn’t something he could put into words—some things are too terrible for that—but he sensed the brother had perpetrated the crime that the husband was suspected of and not only that the man was fully prepared to allow his sibling to go to prison for a crime he never committed. The brother fell in love with his sister in law. Had to have her. Fucked her. Cooked her up. Ate her. Johm reminded her of that man... the brother.

  Did Johm need to have the twins like that? Did he covet them as much? It was possible. But it seemed too easy. Things were never like that. The man might well be a demented sick fuck but something told her he wasn’t intelligent enough to get away with a crime like that for twenty years. He'd have to brag to someone. That's why he took pictures. As a way to show off his skills. People skills.

  But then again, the cops in Los Angeles weren't the brightest lights on the street either. She wondered if instead of passing an IQ test, they were required to fail it. Lord knew she wasn’t capable of outwitting a sack full of pickles yet she managed to lie her way onto the force.

  Christ, this was the shit. She'd picked up the smack on their way through Compton. Danners didn’t like it but acquiesced like he always did. Rarely went there, never alone. Too many spooks. And not the black kind either. Ghosts. Demons from her youth. Belltown reincarnated. They always found her anyhow. But she didn’t have to make it easy for them. Like Johm. She promised herself she'd cut back while working this case. Maybe just bump. Just to keep it together. But hell, what difference did it make? Really?

  Don't worry, Lizzi... I'm here for you. Lissi will never let anything bad happen.

  Lissi... she always came out to play when the ponies were running up her arms and back down her legs and settling into that sweet spot inside her brain. Dear Lissi... gone too soon and way too young. Once in a while Liza might walk past a mirror and accidentally catch a glimpse of her there, still just a girl, fresh, young, and oh so innocent and that's why they were all covered with black cloth, sack cloth... and why she hated looking at herself for too long. Jesus, stop it, Liza... get a grip upon reality. This nostalgia shit is doing no one any good...

  It was a mistake not to go back and talk to Johm. They'd hooked him and then let him wriggle off the line. Like amateurs. What the hell made her think she could be a dick, anyway? Men were private eyes. Not women. There was a reason for that. Women were too soft. They felt too much. The pain of the world. Men were numb to it. Even Danners. He seemed soft on the outside but he was hard inside. Not women though. Not her. Oh, she acted tough as nails. But Johm saw right through the deception. If he managed, how many others did too? Maybe they just went on letting her believe a lie, laughing at her behind her back, waiting until she fucked up again, big time, like that time with

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  Billy Conover.

  Don’t go there, Liza. That wasn’t your fault. But what if it was? She'd been the ve
teran cop that night. Conover, just a kid. She had a duty. Sworn. Even if she didn’t want it, she accepted it when she agreed to take the kid on. Her head was ringing again, like that night when that shotgun went off right beside her and she watched Conover's head disappear like some magician had performed a trick. Viola! Now you see it. Now you don't. Yep. She saw it all again. All in slow motion. The shooter turning to her. Chambering another shell. Raising the gun. Only this time she froze.

  "Fuck you, Billy Conover. What the hell made you think you could be a cop, anyway, you little punk ass motherfucker?"

  Yeah. He was just another shit. The world was full of them. It wasn’t her fault. She felt like she might be sick. It always happened when she got into this nostalgia stuff. Breathe, Liza. Put your head down and breathe. Or maybe it was the horse. Sometimes the really good shit still did that to her. Lay on your side, Lizzi, never on your back... otherwise you might puke in your sleep and choke to death on it.

  3

  "Fuck you, Billy Conover."

  The kid hadn’t even started shaving yet. Mommy probably still dressed him each morning. What the hell made him think he could be a cop? Oh yeah... your daddy was a cop. And your granddaddy. And maybe that special uncle who used to cornhole you when no one else was around. So little Billy thinks he can do it too. Be a big bad police officer. Yes sir, Officer sir. Why didn’t you save us all the grief and become a fucking attorney? Fight crime that way. Use your head for something other than target practice.

  She'd liked the boy. And he liked her too. Maybe too much. Not in a romantic sort of way... like he was trying to get into her pants, but rather they simply liked each other as friends, something she'd rarely experienced in her life. Since Lissi died, she'd locked up any feelings she might've had for other human beings. She knew from experience the risk of becoming too close to anyone again and guarded her heart against it.

  She'd been with the department for three years when she met Billy Conover for the first time. Unlike most of her colleagues, the kid exuded a genuine warmth. She still remembered how widely he grinned the first time he introduced himself to her. That gap between his front teeth.

  "You've got the rookie tonight, McNairy. Show him how it's done."

  "But sergeant..."

  "No buts, McNairy. He's yours."

  Glancing around the room, she saw the smiles crinkling the corners of all the old-timers' mouths. They'd gotten one over on the icy bitch. Most of them had taken runs at her at one time or another and she'd shot them all down in easy succession. Now, she was paying the price.

  "Hello, Ms. McNairy. I'm Billy."

  The kid was a big Norwegian-looking oaf and as dumb as he wanted to be. A shock of blonde hair tumbled out of his cap obscuring his left eye for a moment before he self-consciously tucked it back under, as if he'd been reminded of that by the sergeant and not in endearing terms either. For a moment she suspected they were all playing an elaborate prank on her. Any second now the boy would start ripping off his clothes and dancing around her in a circle, one of those candy-gram strippers that the officers in her department delighted in sending one another on their birthdays.

  "Hello, Billy. Do you have a last name or should I just call you the kid?"

  "Conover, ma'am. Billy Conover is my name."

  "Please don't ma'am me, Billy. And call me Liza."

  "Yes ma'am... I mean, Liza, ma'am."

  "Listen, Billy..."

  "Yes, ma'am?"

  "If we're going to be partners, you need to listen to what I tell you. It's time to grow up, kid. Acting the fool is liable to get us both killed."

  The grin on his face evaporated, replaced by a grimace, the old-timer scowl with which she was way too familiar. Maybe she'd been harder on him than she should've been, or not hard enough. Either way, Billy Conover would be dead before the end of their shift that night and it would be her fault. She was the veteran cop, expected to look after the rook, just like her first night on the job and how she fucked up but the sergeant covered for her. Only it was hard to cover for the kid after a shotgun blast took off his head.

  As he lay there on the ground in front of her feet twitching spasmodically as the gore gushed from that spot where his head used to be and she fumbled for her pistol with one hand while wiping Billy's brains out of her eyes with the other and that shotgun slowly swiveled around in her direction, Liza hadn’t had time to be scared. The heroin was still singing through her veins steadying her nerves just enough that she somehow managed to squeeze off a shot before that shotgun could be brought to bear upon her, yet even to this day, she couldn’t be sure who it was she killed that night... was it the perp? If so, what became of the weapon he carried? And if it wasn’t the perp, where'd he vanish to, and how?

  "She shot the wrong guy... I'm telling ya'll, she shot the wrong man."

  Chapter 19—Dying

  (All Over Again)

  They were right on time. He'd pegged the queer as a punctual little bastard and sure enough. But when he threw open the door ready to invite them inside—into the lair so carefully prepared—it wasn’t the two dicks at all. Instead a woman stood there... maybe his age, no, older... hell... he couldn’t quite tell. Like she'd dolled herself up to look younger. Christ, why did she look vaguely familiar, somehow sinister? And was that a gun in her hand?

  "Mr. Johm?"

  "No... you must have the wrong house, ma'am."

  You need to start being more aware of your surroundings, Jonathan. I'm not always going to be here to watch out for you. Mother used to chide him constantly about his absentmindedness. But he couldn’t help it. He'd get wrapped up in the things at hand and completely forget to look both ways before crossing a street or to peer through the peephole before opening the door. Of course in becoming Johm he had to leave mother behind along with the rest of Jonathan Baker's old life. Was she still alive? Did she grieve overly much when she heard of his death?

  She'd been his rock. No matter what sort of shit he managed to get himself into, mother was there to bail him out. She taught him the meaning of unconditional love. Not that he was capable of reciprocation... something was lacking in his general makeup from the beginning, perhaps. All his life he tried to live up to her expectations of him but in the end, he failed.

  Funny. He hadn’t thought of mother since the day Jonathan Baker died. And now her voice was ringing in his ears again, as if he'd been magically transported back in time to the days of his youth when mother was there to watch out for him, to warn him, and yet he'd ignored her. Had she been right all along?

  "Liar. I recognize you from the photo on your website. May I come in, please?"

  "If I say no?"

  "You don't want to do that, Mr. Johm."

  He stepped aside. He needed to think. He wondered if she might turn her back on him but she was a smart cookie. A mind reader. Like that goddamned queer, what's his name. Danforth? Was that it? Focus, dude... there's a woman with a gun in her hand wanting to get inside your house. She motioned him inside with the barrel of the snub-nosed, staying back far enough that he had no chance of jumping her but close enough she couldn’t miss.

  This woman had that look on her face... the same feral look he sometimes saw in the mirror just before he was gathering himself to commit another in a long string of atrocities against any other living creature that happened to be unlucky enough to find itself alone in his company. She was here to hurt him. To torment him. His whole life had led up to this moment and now that it was here, he realized how sorry he was.

  If he begged for his life, would she spare him? Probably not. Yet he knew he wouldn’t be able to stop himself. Not when the fun started and the blood began to flow and the pain welled up inside of him threatening to overwhelm his senses and the babbling bubbled forth, as he knew it would.

  "You knew the twins."

  "I'm sorry?"

  Her voice had a shattered glass quality to it, slicing into his eardrums like a million tiny razorblades. He could hear her words
well enough yet somehow the meaning conveyed by them was lost somewhere between the hearing and the realization of what she was saying to him. He wanted to turn and flee but he was trapped between that gun in her hand and the freedom he so desperately desired.

  "Missy and Melinda Picany. Don't deny it. I know all about you, Mr. Johm."

  Maybe the pistol wasn’t loaded. Perhaps if he distracted her he could get the upper hand. Something was going on here. This was the second time he heard those names today. Oh, Christ. Could it be the mother? Possible. He couldn’t remember ever meeting her though. And why did she have the barrel pointed at his balls?

  "I came here tonight to get the truth, Mr. Johm."

  "The truth is I don’t know what you're talking about, lady."

  It was a calculated risk, sure. Who the hell was this woman to come into his house and order him around like a servant? She wouldn’t dare use that gun. Women weren’t cut out for murder, at least not this one. He could tell she was used to the finer things in life. Someone'd been coddling her, giving her every little thing she desired. As he began to turn away from her, the woman seemed to anticipate his movement. He didn’t even hear the sound of the gun going off.

  He'd never been shot before. It was quiet too. The gun must've had a silencer attached. Or maybe the shock deadened his ears. The bullet tore through flesh just above where the shaft of his penis attached to his torso and exited out his asshole. The front of his pants caught fire. At first it was like it all happened to someone else, like he might be watching a movie. No pain. But his knees buckled as he used his hands to frantically pat out the flames sprouting from his pants and running up his shirt. Like all the strength ran out of him along with the piss and the shit and the blood. Now she towered over him, gun smoking, aiming at his right knee. He felt sick.