Dave Zeltserman - Blood Crimes Book 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.”