Murder 42 - A Thriller (Sarah King Mysteries Book 2) Read online

  “That’s pretty impressive,” Natalie said as she stepped outside. He could smell the alcohol on her breath.

  Farkas looked at her and then back at the moon. “I worked for months on that piece, and even had I worked a century, it wouldn’t compare to a single glance at the moon. Art is a cheap imitation of nature. We’re motel paintings compared to nature. That’s my true regret: that I can never live up to its pureness… though I try.”

  “Well, maybe we can talk about it a bit more back at your place?”

  They stepped inside the home, and Natalie immediately wowed and chuckled. She ran through the house like a child at a playground. Open space was the theme, and it seemed almost like the only thing taking up any space was the metal banister and stairs leading up to the second floor and the bedroom. The home was designed as a loft. Farkas would’ve lived in a loft if he could’ve, but he preferred his privacy.

  He watched as she ran up the stairs and examined the bedroom and the pole that went all the way back down to the first floor. She grabbed the pole and slid down, squealing the entire time.

  “This place is amazing.” She ran up and grabbed his hands. “I really like the bedroom.”

  “I wouldn’t exactly call it a bedroom. It’s more of a shrine.”

  “Oh, well, you’re definitely going to have to show me what you worship.”

  Before heading upstairs, Farkas made certain she had a few more drinks. It had to be enough to abolish not only self-control but perhaps even lead to black spots in the memory of this night the next morning.

  She pressed her lips to his, and wearily, he obliged. Kissing was such a disgusting action. Saliva and bacteria exchanged in a wet embrace. Nothing about it seemed pleasurable. After a few seconds, she pulled away with a shy grin on her face and led him up the stairs to the bedroom.

  She sat him on the bed as she rose and undressed. Her skirt slipped off as though she had only just applied lotion, and her shirt, which had hugged her tightly the entire night, came off as well in one smooth motion.

  Natalie turned around and bent over, revealing her thong underwear. She ran her hands up her calves and then her thighs before turning to him with a smile on her face. She got between his knees and undid his pants. Her lips engulfed him and her head moved slowly… and then she stopped.

  “You all right?”

  “Fine,” he said.

  “You’re not getting hard.”

  He rose and crossed the room to the dresser. Inside was a black satchel that he removed and set on the top, unrolling it and revealing a plethora of scalpels, knives, needles, pliers, lighters, and shards of glass. “No, that type of thing doesn’t arouse me.”

  “Well, what does?”

  He ran his hand over the glimmering blades. “Let me show you.”

  21

  The flight to Phoenix had been scheduled for one in the morning but had been delayed for a reason the airline wouldn’t say. Gio told Sarah he once had to wait for a plane for three days, so a few minutes didn’t feel like anything. As they sat in the terminal, she rested her head against his shoulder and he let her.

  “What does this feel like to you?” he said. “Us?”

  “Comfortable. Familiar.”

  “That’s all? Familiar?”

  “That’s about the most important thing to me.”

  “I think it’s maybe the opposite for men. New is everything. Even supermodels get cheated on.”

  The airline announced that the flight would be boarding in ten minutes, and they rose and stood in line. Even at this hour, at least a hundred people waited to board. She stood in line with Gio and she could tell he was searching for something to say, so she made it easy on him.

  “Yes, I miss you.”

  He looked at her and grinned. “I wasn’t going to ask you that.”

  “You were thinking it.”

  “Maybe… I miss you, too. A lot. I don’t know what happened. I think it was my issues. I have this inability to commit right now. I feel like if I let you in, it would only be a recipe for you to get hurt.”

  “I can take care of myself.”

  He rubbed the side of his cheek with his finger. “I thought you might be the one. A house, kids, retirement, the whole thing… and then I just let it go to shit.” He shook his head. “I wish we knew why we did the things we did. It seems like no one knows.”

  “No one does. You just have to believe that tomorrow will be better than today and you’ll get by.”

  “You believe that? That tomorrow is always better than today?”

  She handed the airline worker her boarding pass, and the man’s finger brushed her own. In a flash, nausea raced through her. Her guts tightened and her heart beat furiously, so loud in her ears that she couldn’t hear anything else. She collapsed onto the floor.

  A plane was up in cloud-covered skies. A thunderstorm. It had moved in so quickly the pilots had been caught off guard. And in a brilliant, violent flash, the plane was struck. It went down in a smoking heap, turning to nothing more than fiery twisted metal on an open desert floor. Bodies lay everywhere, some of them melted into the seat from the heat given off at the collision with the ground, some torn in half, some ripped apart so violently limbs were tossed hundreds of feet.

  “Sarah!” Gio said, grabbing her. He lifted her in his arms, holding her head off the ground.

  “We can’t go,” she mumbled, the pain numbing her face. She thought her eyes were closed but then realized they’d been open the entire time: she was blind.

  “Lie down,” he said calmly, “lie down, I’ll call an ambulance.”

  She heard voices around her, Gio barking orders at them, and then her sight began to return. Gray hazy outlines at first and then actual images. Gio leaned over her, staring into her eyes, his hands on either side of her head.

  “We can’t get on that plane. They can’t take off. Tell them they can’t take off, it’s going to crash.”

  “You sure?”

  She nodded.

  Gio hesitated and then jumped up. He ran over to a gathering of airline employees and began telling them they couldn’t leave. Wisely, he withheld why. Just said it was a matter of national security.

  Sarah was helped to her feet and then sat in one of the chairs bolted to the wall. Her nose hadn’t bled, but the blindness was new. That had never happened, and it frightened her to her core. Images of blind witches locked away in mountains popped into her head.

  An airport paramedic ran over, but she explained that she didn’t need medical attention and insisted that they call off the ambulance.

  Gio came over after a few minutes and sat next to her. He exhaled and rested his elbows against his thighs, leaning forward as he looked her in the face. “You okay?”

  She nodded, not meeting his gaze. “I went blind for a few seconds. That’s never happened before.”

  “Maybe some medical attention wouldn’t be the worst thing?”

  “I’ve been to doctors. One neurologist said he thought I was schizophrenic, and another one thought I had a tumor, though of course no MRI or CAT scans showed anything. They need rational explanations for this, and there aren’t any.”

  He nodded. “They’ve contacted their lawyers, who’ll contact the local field office here, who’ll contact DC, who’ll ask me what the hell I’m doing. Eventually, that plane is gonna take off.”

  “I know.” She shook her head. “The worst part is that I don’t even know if it was this plane I saw, or even in this time. It could’ve been something from ten years ago or ten years from now.”

  “Something had to make you think it was this plane.”

  “Just a strong feeling.” She looked at him. “Thanks for believing me.”

  “Our gut’s sometimes the only thing we have to go on.” He leaned back in his seat. “So, another night in LA. What should we do?”

  She hesitated. “California Bill.”

  “What about him?”

  “He’s not being truthful. Someth
ing about him makes the hairs on my neck stand up straight. He’s hiding something from you.”

  “We went through everything at his house and he works from home, so we did a thorough scan of his work computer, too. Nothing. Either he has a great tech guy, better than the FBI’s, or he really doesn’t cross the line into illegal porn.”

  “Something about him is off.”

  He shrugged. “I think it could be fun to wake him up at three in the morning. Let’s go.”

  22

  Stefan had landed just before ten in Phoenix and found his car in short-term parking. He turned it on and found a Pandora station on his phone for David Arkenstone—something soft and soothing so he could hopefully lull himself to sleep with some wine tonight. In his early twenties, popping a few Quaaludes or smoking pot would’ve been the preferred method, but the Bureau performed random urine tests, and he couldn’t risk losing his job. He didn’t really know how to do anything else.

  The freeways were relatively clear, and he drove with his window down. By the time he got there, he felt slow fatigue catch up to him. It always began in his head with a headache and worked its way down his neck, back, and legs. Eventually, he would have to sleep or power through it with sugar and caffeine.

  His home was a condo with one bedroom and an abundance of space he could never fill. Kicking off his shoes, he grabbed a beer out of the fridge and stripped down to his underwear before flopping in front of the television. Spartacus was on, an episode he’d already seen, but it didn’t matter. He would’ve watched infomercials at this point. He just needed some background noise while he zoned out.

  The images on the video came back to him, over and over. Blood and bone and guts. The first time he’d seen something like that, he thought he could never be the same—that it had saturated him and changed his worldview. Now, it was his worldview, and the sunny, happy images and events other people saw as life were the aberration to him.

  Within minutes, he was asleep. A deep, dreamless sleep. Only the feeling of coolness on his leg woke him up, and he opened his eyes to see he had spilled the beer over his leg.

  “Shit.” He jumped up.

  He cleaned up his couch and wiped his leg with a rag then went over to the window and looked out onto the parking lot. The stars sparkled above, and across from him in another unit, the light was on. He checked the clock on the microwave: two in the morning.

  Something wasn’t sitting right, something about Naughty Nancy’s. They were clearly covering something up, but it ran deeper than that. He couldn’t shake the feeling that they weren’t just selling the video; they knew who made it. On his computer in the bedroom, Stefan logged into the secure FBI server and pulled up Jay’s home address. He then dressed and headed out the door.

  Only about fifteen minutes later on the freeway did he realize that he had a sour stomach. He thought it might’ve been something he ate at first, and so he stopped at a 24-hour pharmacy.

  The harsh lighting of the store made him squint, and the linoleum looked as though it’d been recently cleaned. Music was playing over the speakers, Johnny Cash, and he hummed along as he bought some Excedrin and antacid tablets.

  The pharmacist was the only one there and rang him up. “You want some beer with that?”

  “What?” Stefan said.

  “Beer. If you got a headache, beer and ibuprofen will make it disappear in a flash.”

  “I thought I wasn’t supposed to mix drugs?”

  He shrugged. “Whatever. I’m just telling you what I know. Take it or leave it. Ten fourteen.”

  Stefan handed him a twenty and got his change. A glass jar on the counter was collecting donations for a local girl with leukemia, twelve years old. Stefan put all his change into the jar and nodded to the pharmacist on his way out. He’d never had a pharmacist recommend beer for anything, and he wondered if that guy really was a pharmacist.

  Back on the road, he took the antacid and crackled the cellophane wrapper in his hand a few times before tossing it onto the passenger seat. He waited a few minutes, but the feeling wouldn’t go away. Maybe it wasn’t physical.

  He thought about the case. A violent—the most violent— piece of child porn he’d ever seen just happened to be sold out of a store that sold violent pornography, and the two weren’t connected? That seemed unlikely. There had to be a connection somewhere.

  He took the next exit, merging with I-17, and then looped around heading to Scottsdale. As he drove, he thought about Sarah—a unique woman if he’d ever met one. The claim that she was a psychic came out of left field but wasn’t a deal-breaker. His own grandmother had claimed she had visions in her dreams and saw things before they happened. Who knew? Maybe there was something to it. He doubted it, though. As far as he’d seen, humanity was just another bug on a rock floating through space: nothing special.

  Driving down the palm-tree lined streets, he was glad he’d been assigned to Arizona. Usually, the first few assignments an agent received with the Bureau were the worst of the worst, the ones nobody else wanted. Washington DC was a great example. Though the Bureau paid a cost-of-living expense, it didn’t come close to making up the difference for a government employee living in a big city. He’d known special agents with the FBI who had a hand in bringing down Bin Laden and yet lived in one-bedroom apartments with their families. Then again, nobody went into this for the money.

  Jay Aud’s home was upscale with a pool in the back that could be seen from the side as he drove up. A twinge of envy went through Stefan as he parked. He was out here risking his life, keeping people safe, bringing some sense of justice to families, and someone selling porn and dildos lived in a place like this while he had a one-bedroom condo with broken air conditioning.

  He got out and went up to the front door, taking a malicious exuberance in the fact that he could wake this man up at two in the morning, and there was nothing Jay could do about it. Stefan knocked and then rang the doorbell twice. He waited and then rang it again. An alarm beeped inside the house, and then the door opened. Jay stood there with a pistol in his hand.

  “Put the gun down slowly,” Stefan said, his hand falling to his own weapon holstered on his hip.

  “Easy, man. I just didn’t know who it was. It’s two in the fuckin’ morning.”

  “I need to talk to you.”

  “’Bout what?”

  Stefan brushed past Jay and entered the home. They were standing in the atrium which opened onto the living room, with a winding staircase going up to the second floor. Out back, past the kitchen, he could see sliding glass doors with a view of a massive green lawn. Floodlights illuminated it in patches of golden light.

  “You’re lying to me, Jay. We both know it.” He turned to him. “I know you just sell that shit. You don’t make it. I want the guy who makes it. And if you help me catch him, I will forget that you sold it.”

  Jay shook his head. “I’ve said enough, man. Talk to my lawyer.”

  He nodded, glancing around the home. “We’ll catch you eventually, asshole, and when we do, you’ll never get out of a cell again.”

  Stefan left, Jay mumbling to himself as he shut the door and turned on the alarm. Stefan turned to his car and drove around the block, coming back around before parking just a bit away. He waited several minutes and saw lights going off, all except in a room on the west side of the house.

  “Bingo,” he whispered, stepping out of his car.

  Stefan did a quick search of the street to ensure some neighbor wasn’t watching him. The last thing he needed was somebody to take a shot at him as a burglar. Convinced no one was around, he snuck back over to Jay’s home and to the sole lighted room. It was tough to see through the blinds, but at the bottom was a gap of about an inch. Stefan peered in, and saw Jay sitting at a computer. Jay was emailing somebody; Stefan just knew it, though he couldn’t read the screen from there.

  The email seemed short: taking just a few seconds to write, and then Jay leaned back and watched the screen a minute,
chewing on his lower lip. A reply must’ve come a minute later, and Jay read it then turned the computer off.

  Stefan noted the time: 2:12 am. He had a hunch whomever Jay just emailed had a lot more to tell them about the video than anyone they’d talked to yet. It was just a matter of finding an excuse to get inside that house.

  23

  Sarah sat in the car and watched California Bill’s home as they parked out front. As a kid, she’d dreamed about moving to Hollywood and living in a mansion like this. Hollywood was about as far from Lancaster County, Pennsylvania, as Mars, it seemed, and she would’ve done anything to get out and get here. Now that she was here, she wondered if dreams ever lived up to reality.

  Gio got out first. She followed him up to the porch as he pounded on the door. Surprisingly, California Bill wasn’t asleep. He answered the door, reeking of pot, his eyes rimmed red as he stared blankly at the two of them.

  “Had some more questions,” Gio said, pushing his way in.

  Sarah stepped inside as well. The two men stood near the doorway, and she quickly crossed the living room. She wanted somewhere quiet and alone, to see if anything would happen. A cold shiver went up her back. On the far end of the living room on the couch, the same woman as before sat staring at the walls. Sarah smiled at her, but the woman didn’t respond. It was then Sarah noticed the pale skin and the black circles around her eyes.

  She sat down next to the woman. She was nude.

  “My name is Sarah,” she said softly.

  “I don’t know where I am.”

  Sarah reached out to touch her, her hand hovering a moment over the woman’s flesh. Sarah’s fingers went through her as she pressed down and touched the couch. A cold tingle went up her spine, like an icy finger.

  “What do you remember?” Sarah asked.