Dave Zeltserman - Blood Crimes Book One

“Was there a reason for Wilkerson to be there?”

“Only the obvious one. He was probably waiting to pick up a new supply when someone snuck up behind him and cut his throat. He had no defensive wounds, so that’s probably how it played out.”

“Sounds pretty cut and dried,” Hayes said, forcing a straight face.

“Nothing for anyone to shed any tears over,” Marzon volunteered.

Hayes signaled the waitress for another whiskey and soda for himself and more beers for Marzon and Brindle. The trail was only two weeks old, maybe Jim and his girlfriend hung around after Wilkerson’s murder. He couldn’t help feeling excited about being this close to the killer, he also couldn’t help feeling some guilt over not filling these detectives in on what they were really dealing with. Dinner ended up being a leisurely one with Hayes trading stories with the two detectives about his days on the force in Brooklyn. Cigars were lit and a half dozen more beers were bought for each detective while Hayes milked his last whiskey and soda so he could limit himself to three drinks. It wasn’t just so he’d be ready for that waitress later, he still had more work to do that night. He also didn’t want to sound at all tipsy when he called his client.

After dinner, he hit the low-budget motels around the airport. He knew the type of motel that Jim and his girlfriend usually stayed at. Dirt cheap, no frills, and always at motor lodges where the rooms had their own street level entrances. Hayes guessed that Jim wanted to be able to enter and leave his room without a desk clerk noticing him. These were places that were usually used for hours instead of nights-the type of motels favored by drug addicts and prostitutes.

After Hayes ran out of motels around the airport, he cracked open a Kansas City yellow pages and expanded his search. Two hours later he found the one Jim and his girlfriend had been staying at. It was as seedy as all the others Hayes had tracked them to, and it was less than two miles from the alley in which Wilkerson was killed in. The desk clerk, a thin man in his twenties with a sallow complexion and bad teeth, looked bored, and clearly had little interest in talking to a PI. Stifling a yawn, he examined the sketch Hayes showed him. He nodded, recognizing the girl.

“She wasn’t a blonde, though,” he said. “That babe was definitely a brunette. And it was no dye job.”

“You paid close attention to her then?”

He grinned, showing off bad gums and crooked teeth. “Shit, take a look at her.” He glanced over his shoulder and lowered his voice “Why wouldn’t I pay close attention to a piece of ass like that?”

Hayes showed him Jim’s sketch. The desk clerk gave it a quick look and told the PI he didn’t recognize the guy. “She was the only one I saw from her room, but I’m pretty sure she had company. Whether it was this guy, I couldn’t tell you,” he added. This didn’t come as any surprise to Hayes. So far it had been the same story with every desk clerk Hayes had spoken to; the girl always checked in and out while Jim stayed out of sight.

“Did she give a name? Maybe a car registration?”

The desk clerk made a face at Hayes as if he were nuts. “She paid cash for the room. No name, and I didn’t pay attention to what type of car she had. Probably some junker, but I couldn’t tell you positively.”

Again, that didn’t surprise Hayes. Same old story. He leaned closer to the desk clerk and laid twenty bucks on the counter.

“When was she here?”

“We don’t keep a registry.”

“I’m sure you could figure it out.”

The desk clerk looked at the money, nodded, and slid the twenty dollars into a shirt pocket. Counting it out on his fingers he told Hayes that she was there for ten days. “She left Sunday,” he added.

Hayes felt a buzz of excitement. Sunday was only four days ago. This was the closest he’d been to their trail.

“You’re sure?” he asked.

“Shit, yeah, I’m sure.”

“She didn’t say where she was going next?”

“No.”

“Any clue at all? Did you see any road maps? Did she ask for any directions?”

“Sorry. Nothing.”

“Anything unusual left in the room?”

The desk clerk shrugged. “I don’t know. You’ll have to ask the maid. She’ll be in tomorrow morning at seven.”

“How about a phone number?”

The desk clerk again made a face indicating Hayes was nuts. He started tapping impatiently along the counter. “You think this is the kind of motel where we keep a maid on twenty-four hour call? Or where she’s not an illegal and we actually care about keeping her phone number and address? Buddy, just come back here tomorrow at seven, give her twenty bucks also, and I’m sure she’ll tell you whatever she can, okay? In the meantime I have to get back to work.”

Hayes gave the desk clerk his cell phone number, along with another twenty, and asked him to call him if he thought of anything else that could help. As he left he felt a skip in his step, and had to keep his jaw clenched tight to prevent a broad smile from coming over his face. He had been on this assignment for over a year and this was as warm as he had gotten to Jim. But as excited as he felt, he also had some trepidation. He was going to have to call his client and explain to her how he ended up in Kansas City. Thinking about that dampened his spirits.

Up until this recent trip, she’d been calling him and telling him where to go next to look for Jim. After four or five months of that he started to make the connection about where she was sending him and recent murders of very bad men in the same cities, all of which were missing a good amount of blood. He had no doubt that Serena suspected Jim of these murders and was sending Hayes to these locations after scouring police reports. He also knew she was intentionally withholding this from him, and further, that she didn’t want him to make the connection. He knew she wouldn’t be happy that he figured it out, and knowing that made him nervous. As sexy as she was-as much as he longed to experience her in the sack, there was something about her that creeped the hell out of him. Big surprise, huh genius, he told himself, after all, all she’s doing is hiring you to track down a serial killer. But he knew that wasn’t it, at least not entirely. There was something else about her. Maybe it was the way he caught her a few times looking at him as if he weren’t even an insect. Those looks would be fleeting, nothing more than a shadow passing over her face, and it would leave him wondering whether he really saw what he thought he had or whether it was just his own insecurities acting up-after all, she was so damn sexy, and the best you could say about him was that he was an average-looking guy. Maybe he imagined those looks, maybe it was something else about her that gave him the willies. Whatever it was, he instinctively knew he didn’t want to get on her bad side.

He waited until he was back in his car before calling Serena. She answered her cell phone after the third ring, her voice as always with a soft sing-song lilt to it.

“Donald,” she half-purred, “this is a surprise.”

“Yeah, I’d expect so,” he said. He cleared his throat. “I found that our target was in Kansas City four days ago.”

She didn’t respond to that, instead she let a heavy silence hang between them while she waited for him to explain further. When he didn’t volunteer anything, she asked how he discovered such a thing.

“I had a hunch.”

“That’s not good enough.”

Her tone had shifted from amused to something that sent a chill down Hayes’ spine. There was no longer a lyrical quality to her voice, more like the faint unpleasantness of glass breaking. Hayes found himself sweating.