The Blood Dahlia (The Dark Angel Mysteries Book 1) Read online

  The BLOOD DAHLIA

  A Novel of the Dark Angel Mysteries.

  David Clark

  1

  “So, what did you end up doing last night?”, Detective Lucas Watson asked.

  “Stayed in. Watched a movie,” his grizzly ex-partner said while he nursed his second scotch, no rocks.

  “Really? What movie?”, asked the detective, who then slammed his glass down on the bar. “Can’t shoot worth shit.”

  “Haven’t been able to shoot all season, not when it matters.”

  “So, what movie?”, the question marks dripped from his voice.

  “Eh, I don’t know. Some old war flick I found clicking around after I got bored with the game. They couldn’t shoot last night either.”

  The question marks that had dripped from his question now shot forward out of his narrowed eyes. Lynch had seen this look many times in their past. Each time, though, he was on the same side of the table as the detective. This was his first time on the other side. He could see why suspects could feel unsettled. “Why do I feel you aren’t just curious?”

  “Some friendly curiosity, since you blew off coming over to watch the game, and some professional curiosity. We found the three most notorious gang-bangers in town tied to a fire hydrant.”

  “Really? Well, that should make your job easier. You don’t need to chase them,” Lynch said. He held up the glass for the barkeeper to see. He needed another one while he and his old friend sat and caught up. “They can’t hit anything,” he said as the whole bar moaned behind him. The New Metro Barons just missed their ninth shot in a row on the television positioned over the bar.

  “You know I don’t care if that was you.”

  “That’s good. I don’t care whether you care or not. Never did, and still don’t give a shit, but remember, I am fifty-four years old, retired from the game. Way too fucking old to do anything like that anymore. The day is a good day if I can get up and take a crap in the morning.” That may have been a bit of an exaggeration. Lynch wasn’t twenty anymore, but he wasn’t out of shape. To the contrary, he was rather built for a man of his age, but most couldn’t tell it under the tweed suits he wore almost everywhere. The clothing made him look husky, still imposing, but less than an intimidating figure. Where his stature left off, in that regard, his face filled the gaps. The chiseled jaw of his aged and pitted face, littered with battle scars, was enough to make most shudder with a just a simple look from him. Not that he cared what people thought, one way or the other.

  “If it wasn’t you, and I still have my doubts, we still need you out there.”

  “Go find one of those cape wearing freaks or guys in the spandex to help you. I am not the hero type. You should know that better than anyone.”

  Detective Lucas Watson slapped his old friend on the back. “I got work tomorrow, and those losers show no signs of life.” He stopped and pulled on the jacket that hung over the back of the bar stool. “Do me a favor, call an Autoride. You have had a few of those.” The hand holding his hat pointed at the fresh scotch, no rocks, the barkeep just placed down in front of him.

  After two more scotches, and the end of the 111-82 loss by the home team, Lynch grabbed an Autoride. The driver, Ahbdan, talked the whole way home. Luckily, he wasn’t the type that waited for an answer. He just continued on with his point. A few strategic nods and hums kept the one-sided conversation going all the way home.

  Lynch staggered in the door and into his study. The television was already on when he hit the sofa flat. His hand searched the floor for his scotch glass, but then he remembered he hadn’t stopped at his private bar, just inside his study. One leg threw itself to the floor, to start the motion of getting up to remedy the situation, but the other leg protested and stayed right where it was.

  In reach of his hand was the remote, which he grabbed and clicked, pausing just a second on each channel. Not to digest what was on and decide whether to watch it or move on. It was more of a rhythm thing. Like the drumming of fingers on a table or desk, just a natural timing. The world was built on a natural rhythm. Most never slowed down long enough to realize it. Lynch had long enjoyed the melodic drumbeat of rain in the darkness of the night. It was his percussion concerto. Like the clinking of ice cubes in a shot glass, not that he would be all that familiar with that sound, he takes his drinks without. A person’s life and behaviors were rhythmic, too. Most felt more at ease when life followed a certain pattern, a common everyday mundane drone, every day like the next. Upset that pattern, and some will go crazy. The universe likes order. The bad assumption was order meant good. Order just meant order. Good and bad. The yin and the yang.

  Lynch often asked himself, what kind of God would create a world where good and bad had to even out? One with a sick sense of humor, that is what kind. If he let his finger pause more than a second on any of the channels he clicked by on, he would see plenty of examples of that littering the evening news. He didn’t need to see that to know it happened. It was something he could feel in his bones after all the years out working the streets. Every refreshing breeze carried a scream, just like the ones that haunted him every night he closed his eyes. Either it was the six-year-old he’d arrived just a little too late to save as the bastard that was abusing her in the basement of the rundown row-house just north of city center slashed across her throat, or the married mother of three who was held for ransom to sway her senator husband as she took a bullet to the temple just as he entered the door, or any number of other failures that stained Lynch’s life.

  The phenomenon that was this mysterious savior, worked under the cover of darkness, was never stained, or tarnished. They lauded it in the public; he was a hero. Not a soul knew about all the misses, all the times he never found them or was late, or missed. Well one soul did, and it was tortured.

  “Are you in for the night?”

  Lynch coughed to clear his voice, but it didn’t help much. The smoke of the bar and the damp night air left him congested as he answered his robotic butler, “Yes.”

  “Good, I won’t have to clean any blood out of your clothes tonight.”

  Lynch snapped back, “It wasn’t mine, and you need to shut the hell up and get me a scotch before I make you a glorified toaster.”

  “Like I haven’t heard that before, and you have had too much already,” it said as it wheeled out of the study, back into the hall. Its metallic frame had a little sassiness to it as it rounded the corner.

  Lynch sent the remote flying in its direction but missed. It only took a moment for him to regret not throwing something different. The television was now stuck on the news, with the mugshots of the three gang-bangers who were mysteriously found tied to a hydrant last night. After they took the mugshots down, the reporter rolled through the photographs of all of those believed to have been killed by them. People Lynch had missed on again, he had no doubt that a terrifying scream was part of the last sounds they’d made.

  Faced with a choice of retrieving the remote or a scotch, he chose the scotch, a double, and managed to take it up the stairs, where he fell into bed. The screams would take him now, unless the scotch beat exhaustion to the punch.

  2

  Lynch was right and disappointed. The screams took him and not the scotch. Tonight’s scream was one from almost twenty years ago, not a frequent visitor by any account, but one he remembered clearly. Most of the screams that sang him to sleep were those of women and children he was hired to find, or just ones he had seen on the news were missing and took it upon himself to look into. This particular case was one he was hired for, but it was different. The person missing was a man, a thirty-six-year-o
ld real estate investor, that hadn’t been home in three days.

  Mr. Marco Ramirez had a squeaky clean background, but that always meant one thing to Lynch, it was really as dirty as they came. It was either the wealth of experience or his lack of faith in humanity, which was drained based on his wealth of experience, that taught him that no one, not even a damn priest, was perfect. Everyone had something they hid in the closet. That pack of gum they swiped from the corner store when they were six, that spelling test they cheated on in junior high, the girl they stopped by to see just because she did that one thing the little woman waiting on him at home wouldn’t do, or worse. In this case, his hunch said it was the worst.

  When his wife Josefine, a sweet little Latina princess he met in college who had a nice bumper on her that caught Lynch’s eye when she walked into his office, met with him, he suggested the possibility that her husband had another woman on the side. From upon the pedestal she’d placed herself, she’d scoffed at that remark, and then gave him a tongue lashing that wasn’t the worst he had heard, but surprising given her prim and proper appearance. In her opinion, there was nothing any woman could offer him that she couldn’t. Her hands traced down the outline of her body to make her point, but the whole time her mouth kept moving. It was explicative this and explicative that. Lynch knew what another woman could offer her husband, a chance to talk.

  With her both agitated and not buying Lynch’s proposed rationale, he agreed to take on the case. He needed the work, but didn’t like this type of case. If his hunch was right, he would find far worse than just a man that enjoyed a little strange nookie.

  The more he looked, the more one thing never made sense. Numbers. People lie, but numbers never do. How the hell did a thirty-six year old that, according to everything he saw, go from having nothing eight years ago to being worth over a billion dollars. Even if he kept every cent of the value of the projects he was part of, no expenses or building costs, he wouldn’t even be above a couple hundred million dollars. There was only one answer, the money was dirty, make that bloody. If Mr. Ramirez wasn’t already dead, he would be soon.

  As he dug deeper, each hour on the clock at his full rate, he found a who’s who of shadow companies for every crime syndicate that operated in the area. He knew each of them by heart. He also knew the locations that the various parts of his body would be found. They tended to stick to what they knew, and it publicly reinforced a reminder for anyone that might want to screw them over. Some heeded the warning, others, like Marco, didn’t. Lynch filed this case in his head under the “I don’t clean up the mess when I find it” category. At this point he had a few options, bring in the cops, which he never did, at least not until he found the mess. He could call the wife and explain what he’d found and try to end it there, but something told him that mouth on her would ignite again and he wouldn’t be done with her until he found the box that contained her husband’s head. So, he shook a few trees to see what fell out.

  Another week later, something shook loose. Seems his client’s missing husband was playing a dangerous game of borrowing from Peter to pay Paul, and Peter wasn’t happy about it. He was proposing giant real estate deals and getting investments, only to pocket it and never deliver. When they came around asking, he would use some excuse about city zoning laws or something and promised to get them a portion of their money back until the deal finally worked through the red tape. Of course, that money would come from someone else he’d made the same promise to. He would pocket a large portion of that and use the remaining to buy some time with the first investor.

  Lynch waited until late one night to go looking in some of the usual spots. Down in the industrial district, he walked around a warehouse that had been vacated for several decades, which is what made the little flicker of light that shone through the rusted-out rivet holes in its metal-paneled side all the more suspicious. He took care with his steps to not make a sound, not that he was concerned about anyone hearing him. To them he would sound like nothing more than a river rat looking for its evening meal. He wanted to be quiet so he could hear the mumbling of voices inside. At a window missing half its panes, he snuck a look. “Dang, he is still alive,” he thought at seeing Mr. Marco Ramirez suspended in the air by four chains, each attached to an arm or leg, making him the center of a gigantic “X” high above the floor. Below him were two goons Lynch had encountered before. Each of them owed him a debt of pain after what he did to them, but tonight was not the one he would let them collect on. On the other side of the floor, pacing back and forth while giving a lecture, was Robert O’Hare.

  “Damn Irish,” Lynch whispered under his breath. Movies and television gave the Italian mafia all the glory, but the Irish were the most brutal. That was why Marco was still alive. They wanted him to suffer, their specialty. This was a trick Lynch had seen before. At the end of those chains were counter-weights and someone in the room held onto a deadman’s switch. Every once in a while, they let go for just a second, to add a little more tension to the situation. If he called the cops, they would make so much noise they would let go of the switch, letting their captive be ripped apart while they made their escape out the back or down into the sewers. The only way to save him was to guess who had the switch, take them out, and take the switch before the weights and gravity did their job.

  Lynch took another look through the window before ducking down. The hands of the two goons were clearly visible, no switch. That made sense, Robert would have it so he could add to the weight of his words. He took another look to recheck where everyone was and then slunk down the wall to the door. Before he burst through the door, Lynch needed to do something only he could do, he needed to go to that dark place that no one else could reach. He called it the shadows. A place he could go just beneath the world everyone else knew, to the one occupied by the living, the dead, and the supernatural. There, his abilities gave him the advantage over any of the living, and put him on equal footing with the others, which was why he tried to avoid any conflicts with them. Enhanced sight allowed him to see the soul of the person, and in turn, their intentions. Those who were mostly good in intentions were white in hue. Those that were pure evil were black. The rest were varying shades of grey. His reaction, speed, and strength were enhanced, too. To any of the living, his movements would be seen as a blur that jerked from one spot to the other. This appeared to strike fear in those that had the unfortunate opportunity of witnessing him at work. That wasn’t Lynch’s goal, but he knew fear could be a powerful ally, so from time to time he took the opportunity to make a show of it. It helped to create the legend most knew as “The Dark Angel”.

  Nobody, aside from a handful of people, knew who the man was under the dark hat and full length duster seen leaving the scenes where the Dark Angel was in action, and Lynch wanted to keep it that way. He didn’t like attention. Never one that wanted the spotlight or any glamour. Just to be allowed to do his job and left alone. Kind of like this moment now.

  Without another thought, Lynch kicked open the door and rushed Robert O’Hare. Before he grabbed both hands to secure the switch, he whipped out the .45 magnum under his shoulder and squeezed off two life enders at the goons. He had Robert’s hands before either goon hit the ground. The sound he heard behind him wasn’t the thud of two bodies falling to the ground. It was the agonizing and horrifying sound of a man’s body being ripped in half first, before it was ripped into quarters. Behind Robert, in the far corner of the room, was Joseph O’Hare, Robert’s father. It was odd for the old man to get his hands dirty in something like this, but that is what he did. The small control held up high, in his right hand, his thumb extended up off the switch.

  Lynch released Robert’s hands and returned to the realm of the living. Standing face to face with Robert, he glared at him. Inside, he was seething, and the stupid smug look on Robert’s face tickled the last bit of his anger that hadn’t bubbled over. Hearing Robert cackle, “Too late, Dark Angel,” helped him find just a bit more.

&n
bsp; Lynch zipped away after releasing another .45 through the bleached front teeth of Robert’s smile, out the back of his skull, and onto the lard-filled head of his father. The bodies of both men fell to the ground as Lynch walked out. He knew the heroes in the comic books and movies never failed to save anyone, but this was real life, and he was no hero. The man’s scream echoed in his ears, and now in his dreams.

  3

  His body tossed and turned in his bed. Each move, an attempt to escape the scream, but it wrapped around him like his covers. His sleep was not a peaceful one. It never was. The last time he‘d had a good night's sleep was before he knew what the world really was. The only escape he had from the screams was to wake up, but that came with a problem, that put him back in the world.

  Three soft, rather feminine, fingers stroked along his cheek as the sun cracked in through the window. Lynch felt their presence, and with his eyes still closed, he asked, “T, when did you upgrade your hands to those of a woman?”

  The scratchy voice of a woman that had smoked too many cancer sticks said, “They didn’t.”

  He groaned, rolled over, and pulled the cover back over his head. “If he let you in, I got a few wires to yank out.”

  “Relax, I used the code you gave me.”

  Lynch groaned again. He had been meaning to change that door code. More people than he could remember had it, half he didn’t want coming and going when they wanted, the other half probably wanted him dead. “I ain’t paying for this.”

  “Nah, this isn’t that kind of visit, and it’s on the house. Totter called me. Where is it?”

  “Nothing to look at. Go away,” he said. His hands gripped the covers for what he knew came next. This was a familiar dance, and he knew the next step.

  Totter said, “It’s on the small of his back. The lower left quadrant.”

  Damn digital fink, Lynch thought as they yanked the covers from his grasp. It always amazed him, for a gutter slut that was half stoned, or was that stoned half the time, she was pretty strong.