Saints and Sinners, page 8
part #1 of Jessie St James Adventures Series
“I might,” Jessie said. “How long were you in the bathroom before you decided to leave?”
“I don’t know. A normal amount of time,” Bill said.
“And did they draw any blood from you at the hospital?” she asked.
“A little. Why?” Bill countered.
“Isn’t it obvious? I think you’ve been drugged,” Jessie said. “When you left for the bathroom, someone must have slipped something in your drink, and judging by the fact that the people you were speaking with just up and left, I’m thinking they might have been the ones to do it.”
“Why?” Bill said. “Why would total strangers drug me?”
“That’s what I’m going to find out,” Jessie said as a knock came on the door. Looking back, she saw her father beckoning for her. “Here, Bill,” she said, pushing a pen and a piece of paper toward him. “Write down everything you can remember about the people you spoke with earlier. No detail is too small. I’ll be back very soon.”
Bill nodded, and Jessie got up and walked out of the room. Closing the door behind her, she addressed her father. “What’s up? I think I’m getting somewhere with him. He spoke to three people earlier tonight.”
“I know. It’s in his statement. It’s a dead end. He doesn’t remember anything,” Clint said.
“He might remember something he doesn’t realize,” Jessie said quickly.
“Then, by all means, check it out, but before that, you need to listen. We got some information about the blood used to write that message on the wall.”
“Oh, yeah?” Jessie asked, curiosity pinging at her. “Do you know who it belongs to?”
“That’s the thing,” Clint said. “It’s not from a person at all. It’s from a goat, and that changes everything.”
17
“A goat?” Jessie asked, narrowing her eyes at her father and wondering what on earth any of this could mean. “The blood is from a goat?”
“Yes,” the man answered. His words were every bit as tense as his body, which was saying something given the fact that the man looked like you could have put a lump of coal in his mouth and pulled out a diamond. It was obvious to Jessie that all of this was getting to her father, and she hated that. Though he was trying to put on a good face and be centered about all of this, she knew the truth. What happened to Nate had shaken him up every bit as much as it had her. It had shaped his life every bit as much as it had shaped hers. So, of course, he could feel the way she did about all of it coming back up. The difference is, as her father, maybe he felt like he couldn’t afford to express those feelings.
“Why would someone smear goat blood all over a wall?” Jessie asked, trying to push those thoughts away. She knew they wouldn't help anything. Her father had a job to do, and he would do it regardless of how concerned about him she might be. The best she could do for him was try to be strong herself.
“For the same reason they left the words in the first place,” Clint said. “This whole thing is a message, obviously. The pictures of you and Nate on the night he died, Bill being tied up and left there in a rabbit mask, and the goat blood, it’s all supposed to tell us something, and as much as I hate to admit it, it certainly centers around you.”
“Of course,” Jessie mused. “But what does all of it mean? I get the pictures. They were a warning shot, a sign that was meant to let me know that I was the focal point of this. I guess that’s what the note in Fallon’s hand was meant to do as well. I used to babysit Bill. So, he obviously fits in that way, and we all know about the ‘rabbit’ thing. But what’s up with the word in blood? Murderer? What does that even mean? I guess whoever did this could be talking about himself. He could be saying that he’s a murderer, the person responsible for Nate’s death. That doesn’t feel right, though. He already got that point across with the pictures, and honestly, I have no idea what connection goat blood could have to me.”
“Maybe it doesn't have any connection at all,” Clint said. “Maybe it’s just what he had around.”
“No,” Jessie said, shaking her head hard. “That can’t be right, either. Goat’s blood can’t be easy to come by. I wouldn’t even know where to get a goat on the island.”
“Me either,” Clint admitted. “Not anymore, anyway.”
“What do you mean?” Jessie asked. “Where could you ever get goats here?”
Though she had been gone for a while before coming back, she prided herself on knowing every inch of the island. It was her home, and there wasn’t much she couldn’t tell someone about it. So, if there had been a place on the island to get goat’s blood, she would know about it. So, what was her father talking about?
“Don’t you remember?” Clint asked. “When you were kids, Russell opened that petting zoo on the other side of the island. He didn’t have many animals besides the standards, ducks, a couple of geese, a deer or two, that kind of thing. He did have a goat, though. You girls loved it. You were all of four, but it had that spot over its eye, so you named it—”
“Patches,” Jessie said as the dusty memory took vague shape in her mind. “I do remember something about that. God, I haven’t thought about that in decades. We even got in for free because Russell is Katie’s uncle. Those were really good—”
The breath caught in Jessie’s throat as the pieces of this puzzle came together. The goat’s blood, the way all of it was connected to her, the word scrawled on the wall—what if they meant something else? What if they meant something much more sinister?
“Murderer,” Jessie repeated in a gasp. “Oh, no. It's not about what he did to Nate. It’s about what he’s going to do.”
Jessie’s hand clasped tightly onto her father’s arm, squeezing it so hard she wouldn’t be surprised if she drew blood.
“Dad,” she said, her voice so frazzled that the word didn’t even make sense ringing in her ears. “Dad, we have to get to Katie. I think she might be in a lot of trouble.”
“Come on. Come on! Pick up the damn phone!” Jessie said as she heard Katie’s phone roll over to voicemail yet again. “Damnit!” she yelled, throwing the phone as hard as she could to the floorboard of the car.
“Calm down, Jessie. That’s not helping anything,” Clint said from behind the wheel of a squad car with sirens blaring. “We’re going to get there. I promise.”
The pair tore down the streets of the island as fast as they could. Their status allowed them to blast past red lights and safely maneuver through traffic using the shoulders. Luckily for them, the streets weren’t crowded today, likely because most locals were at work and most tourists were probably sleeping off what they’d drunk the night before.
“And what if we’re not quick enough?” Jessie asked, blinking back tears that were already pooling in her eyes. “This bastard has already taken one person I love from me, Dad. If he does it again—”
“He’s not going to do it again, Jess,” Clint said, tightening his grip on the steering wheel. In that sentence, Jessie heard just how much Katie meant to her father. She might not have been his daughter by blood, but she was in every other sense of the word. “If I have to run him over with this very car, I promise you, he’s not going to do that.”
Jessie sat as far forward in her seat as the belt would allow, listening to the siren blare and trying not to let her panic overtake her. She took a deep breath as her father took the last left onto the main road where Katie’s apartment-slash-hair salon was located. She had the door open and the belt whipped off before her father had even come to a stop.
“Jessie, calm down!” he shouted from behind her as she ran toward the door.
She knew he was right. Hell, a man like him was usually always right even if you didn’t want to listen to it. Still, Jessie didn’t have the luxury of waiting. She was very likely already too late.
With her heart in her throat, she made her way to the door, slamming into the locked thing in an attempt to push it open.
“Damn,” she muttered, looking at the large cartoon fish on the door. She always hated that you had to walk through the fish shop to get to the staircase leading to Katie’s apartment, but it usually didn’t matter. The shop was always open at five AM sharp, and she never saw her friend before then, even though there were times in their youth when she and Katie almost didn’t come home until after five, but that was beside the point now. As she beat on the door, palm open, she remembered what was happening. Mr. Collins, the owner and usually sole worker of the fish shop, had gone on an Alaskan cruise last Monday. He would be away for the next two weeks, and that meant the shop door would be locked.
Taking a deep breath, she scoured her mind, trying to remember what the code to the door was. Katie had told her a handful of times. The woman had even made a little song for it when she first moved in. She’d had to, given how many times she forgot it.
Jessie started to sing the song to herself as she pressed the corresponding numbers on the pad. “6, 4, 8, the fish doesn’t smell great. 5,7, 3, but the rent’s almost free. 7,1, 3, and I’m as poor as can be. 6,9,1, so I’ll pretend I can’t smell ‘em.”
As she finished, the door’s red light turned green. She pulled it open quickly.
“Move slowly, Detective St. James! That’s an order!” Clint said as he ran toward his daughter. But as the door opened, Jessie heard the unmistakable sound of gunfire coming from above.
Oh, God, She was right. She was already too late. Pulling her gun from her holster, Jessie gave her father one last look. Then she defied him, running as quickly as she could toward the sound of the danger.
18
With feet pounding hard against the floor of the fish shop, Jessie made her way to the staircase leading to Katie’s apartment with her heart in her throat. The idea of her best friend having just been shot and her being seconds too late to stop it made a mess of her mind. This thing, this horrible thing that she’d never gotten over the first time, was happening again. She felt like that same little girl, stuffed beside the washing machine and praying for a miracle that would never come.
But she wasn’t that little girl anymore. After that night, she had never been that girl ever again. She was a grown woman, and a fierce one at that. As an assistant district attorney, she’d made sure the worst of the worst were placed exactly where they belonged, and as a police officer, she was going to make sure they were stopped before it even got that far. No, she could do this. She could take this bastard down.
Sounds of gunfire moved through the upstairs again, and oddly enough, they gave her hope. Two shots were bad. They meant death. Four shots or more meant a fight.
Katie was a Southern girl at heart. Before her mother died, when Katie moved into this apartment to start her own salon, her mother had insisted that she get a gun.
“We oughta be able to protect ourselves,” Katie’s mother would always say. “Especially if we’re alone.”
Katie’d always hated the damn thing, which struck Jessie as odd seeing as how she’d grown up with guns surrounding her. Still, to make her mother happy, Katie bought the gun and learned how to use it. Though she never really liked pulling the trigger, Katie could hit a mark if she needed to. That gave Jessie some hope as she roared up the staircase, her own gun pulled, readying to face whatever she was about to find.
“Police! I’m coming in!” Jessie shouted as soon as she reached the door. Her words were drowned out by the sounds of more gunfire, but it didn’t matter. They were a formality, anyway. She was coming in there regardless of what the answer on the other side might be.
Jessie turned at the handle to find it locked. Cursing under her breath, she felt over the door’s casing to find the key she already knew would be there. Pulling it down, she slid it into the handle, hearing her father near from behind her.
“I said move slowly!” Clint said, catching up with her and grabbing the handle before she had a chance to open it. “This isn’t moving slowly!”
More popping sounds rang from the other side of the door, causing Jessie to shudder.
“We don’t have time for that,” Jessie growled, pushing her father’s hand away from the doorknob and her own. “That’s Katie in there, and she’s in trouble.”
“I know that, Jessie, but getting yourself killed isn’t going to help anything,” Clint said, more than a little urgency coloring his voice. “We have to be smart. There’s a fire escape at the back of the building. That’s the only other way out of here. If we’re gonna catch this bastard, we’re gonna need to cover all the exits. I’d have told you that when we got here if you hadn’t darted for the door like your damn shoes were on fire. I’m going to go in through the fire escape. So, I’m going to need you to hold your ground here until I do that. Do you understand me, Jessie? You wait two minutes. Regardless of what you might feel like you might need to do or what you might hear, you do not enter this apartment for two minutes. It’s an order. So, tell me that you understand.”
More shots rang out, shots that sent spasms of nervousness through Jessie’s body.
“Jessie!” her father shouted.
“I understand,” she replied, keeping her voice as steady as she could.
“Good,” Clint said. “Two minutes.”
Her father turned, rushing back down the steps and out toward the back of the building. As soon as she saw him going, the clock started counting down in Jessie’s mind. With her body fidgeting and her mind running, Jessie stood breathless outside the door, the key slipped into the lock and jerking in her trembling hand. All she could think about was Katie, about what her friend must be going through, and about how any second could be the one that made her too late.
More shots rang out through the air, and Jessie had to steel herself to stop from running straight through the door.
“Thirty-seven,” she counted. “Thirty-eight.”
More shots rang out as she shuddered again. Then she heard something new, something she hadn’t heard while standing outside the door yet. She heard her friend scream.
There it was, proof that her friend wasn’t dead yet, proof that she wasn’t too late, and proof that she likely would be very soon. Her entire body tightened as she lost track of the numbers rolling through her head. Could she really wait? Could she really risk it, even if her father—her boss—gave her the order?
Another shot and another scream seemed to answer her question with a resounding no.
“Screw it,” Jessie muttered. Taking a deep breath, she turned the key and plowed through the door, heading straight into what she knew to be a warzone.
19
With a gun in her hand and her father’s orders tossed aside, Jessie found herself in a place that, for all intents and purposes, should have been very familiar to her. She was still on the island when Katie opened up her salon. She could remember how happy the girl had been, setting up the chairs and picking out the decor. It was the first time either of them had ever had a place that was all their own, the first time either of them had ever thought of themselves as adults, with businesses and bills and all that those things entailed. She could remember the smile of Katie’s face the first time her best friend ever showed her around this place. Imagining the look that must have been on her friend’s face now would have been enough to make Jessie scream if she could have afforded to right now.
The entire room was pitch black, and in that moment, Jessie cursed her friend’s love of blackout curtains to keep the light out when she wanted to sleep late on her days off. Pulling from memory, she reached out and felt the light switch. Flicking it, she found it did absolutely nothing. Damn. Someone must have cut the power.
Jessie’s heart started to race as she put her free hand on the gun, double fisting it as she moved forward cautiously, waiting for her eyes to adjust. As she took her first step forward, she heard the popping sound again, a sound she had prescribed to gunfire. Looking forward, though, Jessie saw that she couldn’t have been more wrong.
Bright, brilliant lights shot out in front of her, blinding her all over again as they danced around across the floor and up the walls.
“Fireworks,” she yelped, startled. They popped again and again, first red and then green. Finally, as they settled, she blinked hard, yelling for her friend.
“Katie, I’m here!” she said. Figuring that her eyes would never adjust in this kind of environment, Jessie decided it was a good idea to get some sort of clue as to where in the room her friend was, and once she did, she’d use their connection to gain the upper hand.
“Jessie?” Katie asked, her voice shrill, loud, and obviously panicked. “Jessie, be careful. Someone is in here! He’s trying to hurt me!”
Again, the effects of fireworks flew across Jessie’s field of vision. The colors darted so closely to her face this time that she could feel the heat singe her eyebrows.
Pulling back, she realized something else this time, too. The things were being tossed from her left, and she knew this place well enough to know that there was only so much space to her left. That direction consisted of a wall with a long, flat couch and a few drying helmets. It also housed a utility closet, and Jessie would have bet the forty bucks in her pocket that the closet was exactly where this person was mounting his attack from.
“Katie,” she said. “Remember where you used to hide the tequila when your Aunt Marsha would come to visit?”
“Um . . . yeah,” Katie chirped, still obviously terrified.
“You’re not there, are you?” Jessie asked, lowering her gun and scanning the wall, reaching for the baseball bat she knew would be there—Katie’s makeshift security system, as she called it.
