Detective Carson Ryder Thriller Series Books 1–3: The Hundredth Man, The Death Collectors, The Broken Souls. J. Kerley A.
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gotten better. But, no, Carson-fucking-Ryder has to tattle to the great Doctor Peltier.”
“How tough is it to do a post when you’re toasted, Ava?”
“I’ve never gone to work drunk!” She steeled her jaw and looked away.
“Too proud to go in juiced, is that it? Admirable. Step right up, ladies and gentlemen, and see the pride of the county morgue, Ava Davanelle, hangover queen and martyr extraordinaire. But don’t stand too close, not if your shoes are new.”
“You’re a sick and ugly bastard.”
I sat at the foot of the bed. My hand touched her covered leg and she jerked it away. “How far do you have to fall, hangover queen? Don’t answer me, just answer it to yourself. How much farther are you going to fall?”
Her eyes said that if she’d had a knife I’d be singing with the castrati. I stood up and hitched my hands in my belt. “Here’s the way it’s going to work, vodka girl. I’ve made an appointment for you. Don’t give me that look, it’s not a hospital or detox unit, it’s with a friend named Bear. We’ll stop by your place, you can clean up, get fresh clothes.”
“Screw your meeting. You’ve ruined my life. Take me home now.”
“You’re staying here until you promise to meet Bear.” I couldn’t guarantee she wouldn’t back out after giving her word; it was just something I felt.
“No fucking way. I want to call a cab.”
I handed her my cell phone. She fumbled at it. “It’s not doing anything.”
“I took the batteries out. I locked the other phone in the closet.”
I ducked as the phone zinged over my head and exploded against the wall, plastic and circuitry flying like shrapnel.
“I’m getting the cops, say you’re holding me against my will,” she wailed.
“Order the meat loaf.”
“What?”
“The jail contracts with the Windbreaker Café. The meat loaf is excellent.”
“I’m calling the cops on you!”
I started laughing. “Too many people saw you crawling the bars last night like a drunken hooker, babe, the cops won’t listen. Plus I have a cabdriver who’ll swear you couldn’t pay the fare. I’ve got bartenders who saw you spending money. Remember stealing sixty bucks from me? Or did that get lost in the blackout too?” I neglected to mention the IOU.
Her mouth opened and closed like a beached fish. “You rotten bastard.”
“You have two ways home, Ava. Promise you’ll do what I ask, or…” I snatched her hand and studied it. “Is your thumb sober enough to hitchhike?”
She jerked it away and woozily struggled to sit upright. “I’ll fucking well do it, I will.” She tipped over.
I ticked off the situation on three fingers. “Do you want to go home? Then I want you to meet Bear. And I want your promise to meet him.”
“I want to go home now!”
What she wanted, according to Bear, was for the pain and the guilt to stop, and that meant more alcohol. My act made me feel lower than a stable worker’s bootheel, but Bear had told me to stand firm. He also suspected if Ava got drunk again she’d be ruined for working Monday. Her shoulders were hard against the bricks.
“I want out of here, now!”
I pointed to the door. “Out is that way, Ava, as you recall from last night. Wait. You don’t remember last night, do you? Here’s the gist: Our lovely young pathologist went barhopping. She ended up with the Gast brothers, dirty, amoral lowlifes. She wore a T-shirt and a cap and no underwear. I found her sitting on a picnic table with her legs spread and her tits jiggling. Earl Gast was playing with our lady’s boobs but she was too drunk to notice. The three playmates were about to take a nighttime cruise.”
I stared into her eyes. “A dozen miles out in the Gulf with the Gast brothers. Guess what the price of that cruise would have been, Ava? Paid over and over and all night long.”
She clenched her eyes tight and tears squeezed from them. I heard waves crash and repeat a dozen times before she spoke.
“I promise,” she said angrily, though I knew the anger was not at me. “You win.”
“It’s not a competition,” I told her. “We’re on the same side.”
Ava said she’d need fifteen minutes and went to her bedroom and closed the door. Too late I realized she might have liquor squirreled away in her room. I flung wide the drapes in her living and dining rooms and let the light pour in. Her furniture was eclectic, Shaker to contemporary, and everything fit against everything else. There was art on the walls, well-wrought repros of van Gogh’s Aries period, the fields and flowers of France, plus some lilies courtesy of Monet. I noted several small multimedia works by an artist I didn’t recognize—glittering concoctions of paint and silk and metal foil, abstract birds frozen in time against her roseate walls.
I opened and closed cabinets in her kitchen until I came across a half gallon of Dark Eyes hundred-proof vodka, one-third full. No mixers or liqueurs. No bottle of port or brandy to celebrate special occasions, just high-speed obliteration for the brain. The booze went down the drain and I put the bottle back in the cabinet.
I was in the living room admiring one of the jewellike paintings when Ava reappeared. Her weary frown said she hadn’t kept a stash in bedroom or bathroom. She wore faded jeans and a tee from St. John’s Hospital. Her hair was wet from the shower. The strings of one white Reebok slapped the floor as she walked.
We were on the porch when she tapped my arm. “Whoops. Forgot my purse. I’ll grab it. Please, Carson, get the AC running in your truck.”
Bear told me AA members define insanity as doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results. I got in the truck and waited for Ava to discover her bottle was empty, half expecting she’d simply lock her door until I went away, the easy way out.
She charged out the front door a minute later, slamming it hard enough for me to feel the concussion twenty feet away. She strode to the truck and got in, cold fury on her face.
“Let’s get this the hell over with,” she said.
Mr. Cutter brought the photos to his office. He had decisions to make and time was growing short. He had three choices left, though only one more was necessary for the project’s completion. His eyes scanned them from behind the security of his locked door. The men in the photos were from the same mold: broad shouldered and slender of waist and hips, differing mainly in hair and eye color and degree of musculature.
Something wasn’t right.
It had to be exact. This selection was the most important, the final incarnation: Boy, Man, Warrior. Boy and Man had been perfect, but Warrior needed raw fury and unbridled power. And size. Mama could melt steel with a glance and needed a man equivalent to the task. He picked up the photos and studied again. His choice for Warrior seemed to have shrunken in the past few days.
Or maybe he was growing beyond his own dreams.
A new vision of warrior formed in his head and he set the photos on his desk, picture side down. He already knew the man, had seen him, heard him speak. You could tell he was a fighter, an avenger. Was he a fit adversary for Mama? The one to take her, kill her, save her?
Yes. He was a warrior and had the strength.
Mr. Cutter relaxed into his desk chair. The universe had answered again. First Mama, then the boat, now the Warrior. It was beautiful. All he had to do was claim the warrior as his own, whisk, whisk, whisk.
Footsteps outside and the voices of his coworkers. The drones were returning. They’d soon