The 9th Hour (The Detective Temeke Crime Series Book 1) by Claire Stibbe Read Free Book Online

give it a name.
    “She liked flowers,” he murmured, knuckling away a tear and wondering how many more would streak down his cheeks like an open tap. “How did you find it?”
    “One of the field investigators found it in the barn last Friday,” Temeke said, biting his lip, “behind a brick in the wall.”
    Darryl felt a slight chill and wondered if he had left a window open in the kitchen. There was a time last week when he thought he saw something through the lashing rain standing beside the fir tree. He was overreacting of course, always thinking he was being watched.
    Was it the wind shaking Kizzy’s little swing or did he see someone moving about? He’d been more sensitive to sights and smells since the thing happened. He could never call it a murder. It just didn’t seem right. “I wonder why they didn’t find it sooner.”
    Temeke cleared his throat. He seemed to be watching him intently. “It can take hours, days to photograph and collect evidence. In this instance, months because of the monsoons. The most we’ve had in one hundred years, so they say.”
    Darryl drew his mouth into a straight line and pondered that for a moment. “Even with cadaver dogs?”
    “Well it’s funny now you mention it. A dog did find it. But not in the nick of time, sadly. Maybe it was all that rain. Maybe his sniffer was on the blink.”
    Darryl felt a surge of laughter in his chest, bubbling out into the open. It was louder than he expected. Genuine. It felt good to laugh again. “I appreciate you coming over,” he said. And he meant it. “Do you have any suspects?”
    “We’ve got one inside at the moment. Can’t tell you his name. I don’t think he did it. But I think he knows who did.”
    “I hear the police use psychics. Are they any good?”
    “Well that’s the thing,” Temeke began in his usual scathing voice. “We know a psychic, well he’s a nut-case really. Said he saw it in a dream. Most of the time he claims the president’s been shot and by the time you turn on the TV there he is in the White House, sipping a cup of Darjeeling. On this occasion the lying sod hit the jackpot.”
    “What did he see?”
    “Trees with faces. They were carved on the trunks. He was very accurate.”
    “Do you use psychics for every case?”
    “I won’t use them in any case, stanky-ass waste of time.”
    Darryl saw Malin give the detective a wide-eyed look.
    “What I meant was,” Temeke said, lowering his voice, “they’re usually after a fast buck. But I had a hunch this time. He took us right there, to the farm and all.”
    “Where are you from?” Darryl asked, hearing an accent. It was Australian or something similar.
    “Albuquerque.”
    “No, that’s Australian.”
    “England actually.”
    “Do you miss it?”
    “I don’t miss the rain and it’s bloody freezing even in the summer.”
    Darryl felt himself brighten. “Kizzy always wanted to go to England. She wanted to see the bluebells.”
    “My brother and I used to take the bus to St. Matthew’s Church in the spring. We’d find a few under the trees and pick them for my mum. They had a scent you’d never forget. That and furniture polish in the living room.”
    Darryl liked Temeke. He was somehow misplaced between one world and the next.
    “Talking of churches,” Temeke said, “have you seen your pastor recently?”
    “Last week as a matter of fact,” Darryl muttered. “He keeps talking about forgiveness. I can just about forgive the man that flipped me off in Smith’s last Saturday night but not a killer. Not the man that took my little girl and locked her in his house. There was no reason – no reason at all.”
    “It was her stories that kept her alive,” Temeke reminded, eyes floating to the floor. “And her optimism. You know that.”
    Darryl watched an army of dust motes drifting lazily in a beam of sunlight. He could hear the creak of his chair and the chimes from the clock in the hall. He wondered what Kizzy heard during