Nightcrawler: A Supernatural Thriller (The Books of Jericho Book 2) Read online

  Chris looked over his shoulder and saw the girl sitting alone, stirring her drink with a thin, red straw. Reed held court at the other end of the bar with some other guys who fought on the card. Chris didn't want to meet anyone else, but looking over at her brown skin and long, curly hair, he wanted to meet her. She turned back to him and smiled, almost like she knew he was watching. He instantly turned away. Even shit-faced drunk, Chris couldn't flirt.

  "My name is Kim," she whispered into his ear.

  "Chris," he whispered back.

  She had an amazing smile. And it's for him. Not cause of who his father was, or where he grew up, or anything.

  "This is for you," she said as Chris felt her slide something into his back pocket.

  Without trying to sell it, Chris reached back and found a small plastic card. Did she give him her credit card? Is she offering to pay for his drinks? Is it Dennis Reed's credit card? That would be hilarious.

  It's her hotel room key, you dumbass.

  Kim's smile cleared everything up. Chris couldn't remember the last time a woman looked at him like that, if ever.

  "Hey, baby," another voice said.

  Dennis Reed walked over and dropped his hand around her shoulder. The same hand that knocked Chris unconscious a few hours earlier. He pulled in her in close and laid a sloppy kiss on her lips, but made sure not to break eye contact with his opponent.

  "Let's go," he said, intertwining the fingers of his knock out hand with hers.

  She turned back to Chris with a smile and shrug. He lost his chance again.

  "Sorry, Shane, she's going back with the champ."

  Kim laughed as the two of them left Chris on the stool. For the second time tonight, he got laid out. For a bit, he thought Dennis Reed might not be a bad guy. Yeah, he's a cocky dick, but it didn't make him a bad guy. Chris had actually entertained the idea of training with him since he had zero other ideas of what the hell he was going to do with his life. Training-partner-to-the-stars might not be a bad move. But now, the asshole had to pull a move that was only about showing him up.

  Don't even think about it, kid.

  I mean, she left her card with him. She made a choice, and that shithead came and claimed her like she's his property or something. And she went along with it.

  Stop. Don't do this.

  Dennis Reed isn't even that great of a fighter. He got lucky. Chris was winning that fight and would have won if he hadn't got caught. There's no doubt in his mind that in a real fight, a street fight, he could whoop that showboating turd.

  That's the booze talking. Trust me.

  They were up there right now. Maybe it's time he showed that cocky little shit a lesson. Maybe it's time someone caught him when he wasn't ready.

  You are about to make a gigantic mistake. Stop!

  Chris reached into his back pocket and pulled out a manila paper sleeve with the number 234 written in black sharpie. Inside is a white plastic card. Maybe it's time to repay Dennis Reed.

  I'm begging you to stop—

  "Shut up, Dad."

  You know what, you never listened to me when I was alive. Why would that change now?

  Chris hopped off the bar seat and made his way to room 234.

  XIX

  Chris stumbled down the hallway. The orange and brown pattern woven into the carpet made him dizzy. It might have given him a seizure if he wasn't so drunk. That makes sense, right? It didn't matter. All that mattered is, he's going to knock a dude out. A dude that had it coming.

  212, 213, 214. The closer he got to 234, the more his heart raced. There's a bounce in his step that wasn't there in the cage. Maybe this is the secret, maybe he needed to get drunk before every fight? That's genius! Then he'd calm all those fears and doubts. He could shut them up before he shut the other dude up.

  You're starting to sound like me, you know?

  Ignore it. It's not really Dad, it's just a little voice in your head that wants to push you around, like Dad used to. Like Dennis Reed did twice tonight. Time to shut them both up.

  227, 228, 229. It's go time. But what if they were like, naked and stuff? Is he going to jump the dude when they were in the middle of... stuff? That's kind of weird, and a little gross. Stop thinking like that! You're gonna embarrass and humiliate him, like he embarrassed and humiliated you in front of all those people.

  232, 233, 234. Chris stopped in front of the door and psyched himself up. Ready for war.

  KNOK KNOK KNOK

  No answer, of course. He tried to be polite. He didn't need to be. He had the key right there. Chris pulled the small, plastic card from its sheath and slid it inside the door. A green light inside the locking mechanism flashed. The door unlocked.

  Don't do this.

  Too late. Chris pushed the door open.

  "Hey, pussy!"

  Chris stopped.

  "Help!" Dennis Reed whispered.

  The world-class amateur fighter was on the floor, fully clothed, with Kim straddling his chest, but not in the good way. Her left hand pressed down on his neck, locking his torso in place, while her right pushed against his chin so his ear was under her mouth. It looked like she was going to whisper into his ear. When Kim picked her head up, Chris saw her eyes were solid white, like her pupils had disappeared. Her jaw hung open, and where a tongue should have been, was a long thing dangling under her chin. It almost reminded him of the extra mouth that lived inside the head of the creature in Alien. Except it was green and pulsating like it had a heartbeat of its own.

  "Help!" Reed tried to shout before the hand on his chin covered his mouth.

  Kim sucked the strange orb back into her mouth before pouncing across the room. As soon as she let the pressure off of him, Reed ran over to Chris.

  "What the fuck is that?" Chris asked.

  "I don't—"

  CCRRAAAAKKKK

  Kim swung the hotel room lamp by the cord across the room, hitting Reed in the back of the head. Reed dropped into Chris' arms. Kim swung the lamp one more time, again driving into the back of Dennis Reed's skull. Chris couldn't figure out what was happening. He froze with Dennis Reed's limp body in his arms, and his blood splattered across his face.

  Kim dropped the lamp, almost like she realized what she'd done. Her hands covered her mouth as tears welled up in her now normal-looking eyes. One of her fingers pointed out to Chris, and she screamed.

  "Oh, my God! You killed him!"

  "What?"

  "Help! He killed Dennis! Help me!"

  Chris sobered up quick when he realized she's trying to frame him for murder. You didn't have to be the son of a police detective to see those pieces fit together. Kim dropped to the floor and screamed as tears streamed down her lying face. Chris dropped the body and ran. He sprinted out the room, tearing down the stairs and bursting out the back exit of the St. Charles Marriott. Chris unlocked the doors of his black Ford Taurus and jumped in the front seat. Two seconds later, he pulled out of the hotel parking lot and headed straight for the highway.

  Nothing that happened made any sense. Chris came to her room to fight the man who beat him up earlier tonight. That man was dead. Dennis Reed was dead, and he was going to be the number one suspect. Now he was on the run. His name and face would be all over TV and the internet in a matter of hours. No one in the world would believe what actually happened.

  No one except...maybe the Man in Black.

  Today

  XX

  FBI Special Agent Andrew Nashida pulled up in the passenger seat of the Bureau's 2016 Chevy Traverse. In his four years with the Bureau's St. Louis office, he couldn't think of a time when a perp jumped across state lines so quickly. At first, he didn't have much interest in the case, at least on a personal level. The job is the job, and he is the type of guy who would put one hundred percent into every assignment and actually follow through with one hundred percent effort. This particular case seemed pretty straightforward. At least that's what Nashida thought before reading the profile.

  A
gent Nashida felt a little bad for the kid, but that didn't make him innocent. A man is dead. The STLPD would do the investigation. He just had to make sure Shane was brought back into Missouri.

  Nashida exited the Traverse and walk past the yellow caution tape where he met a Detective Brian Anderson. Anderson, a tall man, standing about 6'6" with short red hair and a neatly trimmed beard, is the lead investigator.

  "Agent Nashida," Anderson said, extending his hand.

  "Detective Anderson." They shook. "Sounds like we have a runner."

  "Yeah. Looks like a couple amateur fighters had some unresolved issues from their fight. A few too many adult beverages later, one takes things too far and kills the other with a hotel lamp."

  Detective Anderson led Nashida through the Marriott's automatic sliding door. The scene looked fairly typical of a public murder. The local blues were doing a solid job keeping things in order. Hopefully, the rest of the investigation would flow the same way.

  "What do we know about our perp?" Nashida asked, knowing most of the answers already.

  "His name is Christopher Jackson Shane. Age twenty-one. From Chicago, Illinois. The son of the late Jackson Shane, a Chicago PD detective who achieved slight notoriety for killing Marvin Alexakis a few years back. An alcoholic, single father who played games with a Satan-worshipping serial killer. The guy killed himself in a truck stop bathroom last Christmas Eve."

  "Jesus, that's horrible."

  "I know. It seems Mr. Shane was an accomplished high school athlete who washed out of college and was apparently trying his hand in Mixed Martial Arts. Guess he didn't like losing. Competitive guy gets knocked out in forty-eight seconds. Pretty easy to fill in the blanks."

  "Any witnesses?"

  "A girl. Name's Kimberly Aranda. Twenty-three."

  "Is she around?"

  Anderson was about to point her out when he paused. Nashida had only been a Special Agent for four years, but he knew when one of the local boys were reading him. These guys, good as they are—and most of them are that good—they don't like having their work questioned, especially by the Feds.

  "Why?" Anderson asked, knowing the crime scene investigation is under STLPD jurisdiction.

  "Look, Detective, I'm not interested in horning in on your investigation. This Shane, his motives, or whatever, that's all you guys. I just wanna know if she has any idea where he's heading."

  Anderson, the jolly red giant, looked Nashida up and down, trying to get a read on him. There isn't much to find. Not that Agent Nashida is a simpleton or anything like that. In fact, he was a sharp guy, graduating in the top twenty of his West Point class and serving two tours as a lieutenant before enrolling in the Academy. Andrew Nashida never hid anything. If he had a thought, he said it. He's not the type to play games. That's a waste of time, and he had a perp to catch.

  "She's back there," Anderson said, pointing down a hall.

  Nashida followed the long, freckled finger and found two uniformed cops tending to a very attractive Latina woman in her early twenties. Agent Nashida nodded and headed down the hall.

  Kim Aranda sat on a bench near the elevator drinking a cup of cheap coffee from an ecologically irresponsible styrofoam cup. The same kind of cups he got banned from the local office in St. Louis. Just looking at the monstrosity made him nauseous.

  "Ms. Aranda," he said, showing her and the two officers his badge and identification. "I'm Agent Nashida. May I ask you a few questions?"

  She nodded, not sure what to make of him. "Okay, but I told the police everything."

  "That's okay. Did you know Christopher Shane before tonight?"

  Kim Aranda shook her head. "No, I saw him fight Dennis. Then they all seemed to be having a good time at the bar. He kept looking at me with this creepy glare. It was very unnerving."

  "Did he say anything about having friends in the area? Any idea where he might have gone after what happened?"

  Kim shook her head again. "No. He seemed so creepy back at the bar, that Dennis took me back here. We started...getting intimate on the bed when Chris burst through the door. I thought he was coming after me, but Dennis jumped up to stop him. That's when he grabbed the lamp. I tried to stop him..." she trailed off.

  "So, the answer to my question is 'no, I don't know where he's going.'"

  Agent Nashida didn't ask for the story about how the victim died. He wondered if she knew anything about where the perp was going. Kim seemed a little taken aback by his statement, but nodded. Sympathy isn't something Nashida specialized in. He's a big-picture guy, and right now, the big picture is essentially a giant game of Where's Waldo.

  "I'm sorry, Detective," she said.

  "Agent. I'm with the FBI," he said, heading back to the actual detective, Brian Anderson. But then a thought hit. "Wait. How exactly did Chris Shane enter the room?"

  "What?"

  "You said you and the victim were starting to get intimate on the bed, and Christopher Shane burst into the room. How did he do that? Did you guys leave the latch in the door or something?"

  "No, he just broke in," she trailed off again.

  Agent Nashida nodded but was far from being in agreement with what Kim Aranda said. She was lying, but that didn't change the fact that Christopher Shane is a fugitive on the run, and innocent men don't run away.

  XXI

  DWI, assault with a deadly weapon, resisting arrest, fleeing the police, attempted murder—hopefully just attempted murder—

  Chris Shane went through all the charges he racked up on his trip to St. Louis. After jumping into his black Ford Taurus, he noticed the clock on the dash read 12:16 am.

  If you speed, they'll know something is wrong. They won't even check your plates unless you give them a reason.

  Chris set the cruise control to 74 miles per hour. Four over the legal limit. Driving at the exact limit could be seen as trying too hard to follow the exact letter of the law. Ten over, and you start asking for trouble, especially past midnight. Four over seemed casual. Four over is something a reasonable person would do on a dark highway late at night. Four over isn't something you expect from someone wanted for attempted murder. Please let it just be attempted murder.

  DING

  Chris looked at the left side of the consul and saw the near-empty gas warning light flash. Perfect. The plan was to gas up in St. Charles and get back on the road, but circumstances made that a tad difficult. After being in the car for two-and-a-half hours, the engine finally cried out for sustenance. The old Dixie Truck Stop is just ahead. That worked out.

  The truck stop was as old as Route 66, even though it was currently off Interstate 55. For nearly a century, truckers and travelers driving from Chicago to its little brother across the Mississippi would stop, gas up, and fill up on good, Americana-style breakfast food. Waffle House isn't a thing in most of Illinois, so the old Dixie is as close as you got. An omelet sounded good, but the idea of sitting down to eat with things wildly spiraling out of control is dumb. Like the meme with the dog drinking coffee inside a burning building.

  "This is fine."

  Chris pulled into the truck stop. It's 2:47 in the morning. Another two and a half hours to the family house on the far Northwest side of Chicago. A lot of things could be said about the old man, but he was smart enough to leave his son a paid-off house. Chris debated selling it a couple times, but had no idea how to even get that process started. Now that he lived on his own, having a place without rent was convenient, even if spending any time whatsoever inside made him ill. Being sick is cheaper than the alternative. It's also a better alternative to what was happening. He pulled the Taurus to the pump and started to fill it with unleaded. The credit card that Mom's guilty conscious paid for was another nice bonus.

  Grabbing a meal is a bad idea, but a quick snack and maybe a 5-Hour Energy shot is a different story. While the car drank in the petrol, Chris turned to find the old winged Dixie logo. The first time he remembered seeing it was when the family stopped here on vacation years back.
Chris couldn't remember where they were going, but remembered Dad had black coffee and eggs over easy. He and mom split pancakes. Today, a bag Doritos and a couple Mountain Dews would have to do the trick. Chris approached the entrance and realized the stop must have come under new ownership.

  "Road Ranger," he said, reading the sign above the entrance.

  Of course.

  Chris pushed the door open and nodded to the clerk behind the counter. She's an older woman, probably in her fifties, with short gray hair and glasses. Not the type of person you'd usually see in these types of places.

  Looking back to the car, his stomach dropped. Two Illinois State Troopers approached the Taurus. The first one, a tall man with a square jaw, checked the plates. Dammit. The second, a heavyset African-American, looked inside the doors. What now?

  Play it cool. Just buy the stuff and act natural.

  Chris grabbed two Mountain Dews from the cooler and a bag of chips, handing the nice old lady behind the register his food.

  "That'll be $7.47," she smiled. "Would you like a bag?"

  Chris nodded, trying not to look out the window at the police, who were clearly waiting for someone to walk back to the Taurus. He slid his card into the chip reader and grabbed the bag. Now what?

  You're on your own, kid.

  "Excuse me?" A voice said from behind.

  Chris turned and found another state trooper about his size, with hazel eyes and a round face.

  "That your car out there?" He asked.

  Chris didn't know how to answer. Every time he ever tried to lie to his father, the man deconstructed his story in seconds. What're the odds this guy would do the same?

  The longer you sit there with a dumb look on your face, the less he's gonna believe anything you say.

  "I'm not really sure—"

  "What do you mean, 'you're not sure?' Pretty straightforward question, son. Is that your ride or no?"