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

those last hours. Rain possibly, pattering against the windows and the bark of a dog somewhere in the distance. Had she thought of him? Had she cried out for him?
    Kizzy was in heaven where the bluebells are. And that’s all that mattered.
    “Darryl,” Temeke said, leaning a little closer. “The man we’ve got is being transported to the Penitentiary of New Mexico. He’s admitted to being there. But not to killing her. I promise you, I’ll find this man. And when I do I’ll squeeze him so hard he’ll be screaming for me to stop. We’ll let ourselves out.”
    Darryl watched them go from the living room window, studying their footprints in the snow. Flakes fell in tight clusters now, fast and thick, and he could hardly see the Ford Explorer through the haze.
    He didn’t much care that a prisoner would be shackled to the inside of a prison van and on his way to PNM. What bothered him more was the gun on Kizzy’s bed.
    There would be a day when that monster would come outside. And when he did, Darryl would be waiting for him.

SEVEN
     
     
    Temeke shifted his weight in the car seat and adjusted his shoulder holster. The drive-through of the local café was thick with exhaust fumes, most of which was up his nose by the time he tried to order a double espresso. Apart from an occasional gust of wind that blew in under the canvas roof of his jeep, he sensed something in the air, something that made his heart drop into the pit of his belly.
    It was the newspaper on the passenger seat. Morgan Eriksen had made front page news, color photograph included. It wasn’t a mugshot. He was sitting on a deckchair by a swimming pool with a beer in one hand a burger in the other. Nobody knew how it got there and if they did, nobody was talking.
    He hardly listened to the droning voice of the car radio, a pastor with a message about fathers. The bitter smell of coffee made his throat tighten and he couldn’t drink another cup. Strange memories began to swirl though his mind and he saw himself as a boy, cowering at his father’s raised hand.
    Temeke never cried after that, at least not that he could remember. He went through life protected by a thick wall of indifference. It was safer that way.
    At forty-three, he was recognized as one of the most persuasive negotiators the police had, a man with whom the prisoner could relate. According to his boss, there was one thing the department disliked and that was his unique quietness, the irrefutable feeling that he was hiding something. No one really knew him. But that’s how Temeke liked it.
    They can never build a case against me , he thought.
    Only they did, of course. They disliked him for being quirky, for his reserve, for his deprecating sense of humor. He was an unusual dog in the fight. All this was before Morgan Eriksen insisted he would talk to no one else. It shook the department up a bit.
    It was late afternoon when he turned west on Ellison and north into the station parking lot. He parked the jeep behind the building and clamped a cigarette between his lips, flame flaring and dying with every drag. He sat there for a while, sucking the nicotine into his lungs, wondering why he ever started smoking in the first place.
    Looking east, he studied the rugged slopes of the Sandia Mountains rising almost to the clouds. On sultry nights a large full moon could be seen hanging like a happy face in the sky and if he listened, he could often hear the warbling of a Navajo flute in the distance. To the west, adobe houses stretched as far as the eye could see, spilling into a rose-colored desert of piñon and sagebrush. It was a sacred place, a magical place.
    He hated it today.
    The phone vibrated on the console revealing Luis Alvarez’s number. Temeke could imagine his brother-in-law copping a wide-legged stance, duty belt sagging from the weight of his hardware.
    “I called the Journal, bro,” Luis said. “Spoke to Jennifer Danes about that article. She said it was you she spoke to.