Grimshaw Mysteries, Kyler James [surface ebook reader txt] 📗

In kidnapping cases, the first twenty four hours are vital. Anything beyond that and the trail goes cold, cold as the icy eyes you lay thickly across your own expressionless face before you give them the news. 'I'm sorry.' Easiest way to end it. They'll hate you for it. They'll hate you for anything. Don't get sucked in, don't let the tears, the sobbing, the anger, the bargaining, the hope pull you in. There's nothing you can do and they'll hate you for it.

With homocide it's different. The roaches and vermin scurry bellies to the ground from the scene into the slums shadowy corners. You follow crimson foot prints into the squall, trudging through the shattered pieces the killers leave behind. You can find anyone in the Haven slums if you know where to ask and how to ask hard enough. A ciggerette will help with the shakes, after you asked a few questions too many, and you're pulling pieces of tooth and confession from your knuckles.

He steadies himself against the wall, I asked pretty hard. The ciggerette smoke fills my lungs, burning, cleansing. I exhale and my hands steady, if for a moment. The human body's a work of ignorance and art mixed in one fleshy sack. It can withstand more than most realise, but it has it's sweet spots. I tend to visit the ribs just beneath the underarm, always gets 'em talking, when they catch their breath. I have to pull the crumpled ciggerette filter from between my fingers, not much spare room between them and the knuckle dusters I'm working him with. The dull red of his blood looks black against the white of it, I take another long hard pull, it crackles with delight. Then I flick it in his eyes.

"Ok now we're good and warmed up." Warm? I'm on fire! "Lets start this again." Molten tears trickle thickly down his cheeks, his eyelids clumped with ciggerete ash. He empties his guts on the alley floor, like it wasn't rotten enough already. My sleeves are rolled up, got tired of trying to explain red stains on white sleeves to Wilson, the puncture marks from the nurses medicines still thick and brused on my forearms. He slides down the wall, wipes the rest of his dinner from his lips and reaches out to me.

"Can I bum a smoke?" he asks. It's a strange relationship between a cop and his songbird. I reach into my pocket, pull a smoke free and throw it too him. A strange relationship, not a trusting one.

"Now start singing, and it better be a song I know." I hate the words before they've even left my mouth, I sound like one of the cheesy cop shows Sarah used to make me watch. It works though, he sings. A sweet tune with a beat that carries me exactly where I need to be.

I get out of the car to an all too familiar sight. Neon lights flicker a dancing girl, her breasts bouncing from side to side. The pink and blue lights give out an ominous glow in the mist and vapour from the rain. Two gorilla's stand either side of the alley doors. Men didn't used to get that big, not before chip-roids. Planted at the base of the skull it releases a burst of steroids directly into the spinal cord and nerve system. It's also the cause of their cheery disposition. Better go around. 

Jack's is one of the scant places in the slums you can still get a stiff drink of real alcohol. Not that artificial stuff they use to kill braincells in the shitbox bars in the lowers ends. If you listen, the word is that Jack has connections above. Connections that make a tidy profit from a city of people with plenty for drink to numb, or help wash away. I squeeze my fingers between the shutters covering a basement window and heave. They groan under the strain. So do I! Luckily the slats give before my arms do.

I  pull myself up and through, and my knee's ache as I land hard, knocking the wind from me. The flickering lights around me are disorientating, but I carry on down the hallway, towards a beam of light from a door left adjur. I look through the slight gap between the door and the frame, used to be I could just boot the door in and my guns would do the rest. Not anymore.

Publication Date: 09-19-2013

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