Chapter 9

I meet J. Thomas Miller at the office that morning. He looks like hell. He hands me the papers I asked for, along with the cash retainer I demanded. I start to ruffle through it.

"You tell your wife?" I ask. He nods.

"Yes," he says.

"You two are separating," I tell him. "You move out today. Your wife is going to trash your name around town. You don't want your family seen as a possible way to get to you."

He looks shocked. I guess he never thought about that. Fact is, it may not work anyway. But whatever can be done to make his family a little safer is the least this asshole can do.

He fucked up. Now he gets to find out what that really means.

"Annette loves me," he says. "We're going to work it out."

"Fine," I tell him. "Work it out. But not right now. You opened the door and now there's gonna be some scary people coming

out of it. You stay at your apartment. If someone kills you, maybe you don't take your whole family with you."

Mr. J. Thomas goes pale.

"But..." he says. Then he closes his yap.

Yeah, he's starting to get the idea.

"My lawyer says..." he starts.

"Fuck your lawyer," I tell him. "Your lawyer wants to keep you out of jail. I want to keep you alive. You do wanna talk with him, but remember he's gonna give you legal advice. The people after you don't give a shit about legal. They have their own way of handling things."

He sits on the chair in front of my desk and looks shell- shocked. That's good. The sooner he realizes just how bad things are, the sooner we can do what has to be done.

Mr. J. Thomas is about to get a harsh lesson in the real world.

I hear the front door of the office open and pull my Bulldog. But it's Muscles, in a suit that makes her look like a bull-dyke version of a Mafia hit man. It's a good look on her.

"This is J. Thomas Miller," I tell her. "You're his new girlfriend. He'll get you clothes or whatever so you can..." I search for the word. Getting butched up is one thing, but she wants to...

"Play a girl?" Muscles asks with a wry grin. "I think I can do that." She looks down at J. Thomas. "Come on," she says. "You're and I are gonna get real close."

"Real close," I tell him. "She's playing your new nookie, so you're together 24/7. She's a professional, so you do whatever she says."

The poor schmuck: he looks more threated at the idea of having this big, muscled bull-dyke as his twenty-four hour bodyguard than the idea of the Russian Mob being after him. But Muscles has already taken his arm and is leading him out of the room.

"Come on, lover," she says with a predatory grin. Yeah, she's already busting his balls.

I watch them go.

I look down at the eighty grand retainer. J. Thomas Miller is a very wealthy man.

But he's gonna learn money don't mean shit. You can't buy back your life after someone takes it away. And that's the situation he's just found himself in.

I take off in my Mustang. I just drive for a while: I think better when I'm driving.

Jane Conway is taken care of, for now. I casually wonder if Mr. Smiles has gotten his walking papers yet. But that case is closed.

I have a few other cases open as well. Okay, quite a few. Being in the news helped. The publicity from the Satanist thing was full of rumors and out and out lies, but I came off great. You read my press and I come off like a cross between Sam Spade and Abraham Van Helsing.

Bullshit or not, it's been really good for business.

But my cases right now are all pretty routine stuff. They can go on the back burner for a while.

So first thing I need to do is track down this accountant, Julia. I have her application and W-2 from Miller, and see her name is Julianna Krim.

I take off for the address on the latest W-2.

There are all kinds of accountants out there. But Miss Krim's address is hardly what you'd expect. It's a little mobile home on a couple of acres of land, several miles outside the city limits. Not exactly what you'd expect of a high-priced accountant in a major firm, especially not one who's helping herself to extras and fucking the big boss on the side.

I pull up and get out cautiously. I knock at the rusting door, but I already know no one lives here. There's a rural mailbox out front and I'm willing to bet that's the only thing that gets any use around here.

It's a convenient address and nothing more.

I stop by the mailbox on the way out and open it.

Yeah, it's a federal offense to steal mail: Tell me something I don't know. But I don't get the chance to offend the Feds: The mailbox is empty.

I pull away from the place and head back to town.

I see the other car coming up fast behind me. It's two lanes through here, and I pull to side a little. He swings out to pass.

I get a glimpse of blue side panel, and then my Mustang is slewing to the side as the passing car slams into the side of it.

Yeah, you see the movies where they bump back and forth and nothing happens. But the other car is big: an old Chrysler, I think.

I don't have a whole lot of time to check. The Mustang's right tires hit the dirt at the side of the road and dig in, and then I'm hanging on as the whole car rears up on its right side. I see the world doing a somersault through the front windshield and then the Mustang's roof slams into the ground and everything goes black.

Death doesn't hurt. At least, that's what I always assumed.

If that's true, then I'm definitely not dead. I hurt everywhere. My head is at an angle and when I try to move it, I hit metal. I feel like someone canned me.

I push, but crushed metal is everywhere. I think the car is upright now, but I'm not real sure.

Then I hear the screech of metal and see light to my left. A hand reaches in and touches me.

"You all right?" a male voice asks.

"I'm still here," I say. Hey, that's about all I know right now.

I feel my left leg being pulled and then I'm turning and the guy is dragging me out into the sunlight.

He looks down at me, concerned, and I feel him checking for broken bones.

"You a doctor?" I ask.

"A veterinarian," he says. "Close enough for now."

A few minutes later I'm standing, much to my own amazement. Especially after I look over at the Mustang. It must have rolled three or four times. Now it's in the middle of a field and though you can tell it was once a car, that's about all you can tell.

"I'll take you to the hospital," the good Samaritan says. But I've already decided I lived. There's no reason to waste time having some doctor tell me the same thing.

"Just take me into town," I tell him. "I can always go to the hospital later."

He nods. He's wearing high boots and heavy clothes, so I peg him as a large animal vet. They work with all kinds of farmers and ranchers who aren't bright enough to know when they should get medical attention.

"Just don't blame me if you fall over dead suddenly," he says with a wry smile.

Doctor Cecil Patterson gives me a ride in his old pickup into town. I tell him he can drop me off, but he insists on taking me all the way to Lila's. He even helps me get paint scrapings from the wreckage of the 'Stang.

No, I don't want the cops involved. I want to play this one out myself.

Cecil (that's sesil, not seesil, by the way, though his accent is American) even helps me up to the door. Nothing's apparently broken, but it all got a thorough tenderizing.

Lila opens the door and gasps.

"Murray!" she says. She helps Cecil get me over to the sectional sofa and sat down. I set back.

Shit, just what I needed.

Well, I can't really complain. It's like a call goes out, because Lila's friends start showing up. And Tina's there in seconds.

"Murray!" she gasps. "Poor baby!"

Yeah, this is the point where I want to go to my apartment and hide out for a while. I don't do sick or injured well. I just want to be left alone, not cared for like some wounded cat.

But I guess I can't complain, because I get stripped and laid back on the sofa, with cool cloths on the bruised parts of me. And that's just about everywhere. I'm gonna be mostly purple for a few days.

Cecil the vet ends up being useful. He checks me again, then gives Lila the paint chips. She calls the private criminalistics lab I use and arranges to get them examined. If the car hasn't been repainted, I should be able to find out the make and approximate year.

But that's just for the hell of it. Fact is, the car is likely stolen and already stripped or abandoned somewhere with the interior thoroughly wiped down. These people aren't fucking around.

My Mustang was totalled, but my habit of always wearing a seat belt (and having three point racing belts installed in all my rides) saved my ass from getting thrown free or beaten into jelly inside the car. Again.

Yeah, I sound like an advertisement. But good seat belts have saved me more than once.

I get up and started hobbling around the house. I'm sore, but that's something I can deal with.

I go up to my room to hide.

There's a tap on the door and I look up, expecting to see Tina. But it's Lila.

"You doing all right, Murray?" she asks. She takes my hand and begins to stroke it softly.

By the way, some asshole wrote me and said you don't pet girl's hair, you pet dogs. Hey, the other word for it is stroke, right? I stroke Jack, not women's hair. I pet hair, stroke Jack. Got that?

I hope so.

Anyway, Lila is stroking my hand, and yeah, she's getting the nice, sexual part in there too. I smile at her. Hey, Lila is every guy's wet dream, especially if you're into the Sharon Stone type. Hot, sexy and just a little blatant about it.

"I'm glad you weren't hurt," she says. "That doctor coming along was lucky."

Yeah, it was. Half of life is luck. You don't have it, you don't live long. Simple as that.

"I meant to thank him again," I say.

"Tina's taking care of that for you," she says. I grin.

"That's damned nice of her," I say.

Lila laughs.

"He's cute," she says. "I might even want to be grateful."

"Did you hear from Muscles?" I ask.

She nods.

"She's at this man Miller's apartment. She said it's not very secure, but she's going to take care of it. Wanted to know if you'd found someone named Julia yet."

I shake my head.

"That's what I was doing when someone tried to kill me," I say.

Lila looks at me, concerned.

"Murray, you should get the police involved."

I nod. Yeah, I should. But they'd just make a big mess and not tell me anything. Miller would end up in jail, and that's if he was lucky.

I don't want to go to the cops until I absolutely have to.

"I want to talk to Julia Krim first," I tell her.

"Sure," Lila says. "But I don't know how she can help you. I can call her, if you like."

I stare at Lila.

"You know Julia Krim?" I ask.

"Sure," she says, surprised. "She's Marina's girlfriend: you know Marina, she's a bartender at Bad Dolly's." She looks at me in sudden realization. "She's the Julia Muscles was talking about.

I nod. Shit, it is one small world.

"Call her and invite her over," I say. "Don't give her any hint why."

"No problem, Murray," Lila says as she leaves the room.

Small world. Real small. I start wondering just how much Marina knows about her girlfriend Julia.

Hell, this could get ugly.

My intercom buzzes. Yeah, I'm on the house system up here in my room.

"What?" I ask.

"I called Marina," Lila says breathlessly.

"And?"

"She's at their house. She just arrived. It's a mess: someone trashed the place." Her voice drops: I can hear the fear in her voice. "And she hasn't found Julia yet," Lila says.

"Tell Marina go outside and call the cops," I say, getting up and grabbing my jacket. "Tell her don't do anything or touch anything until I get there."

I hit the stairs running.

I borrow a car and take off toward Marina's place. Tina's in the seat beside me, hanging on. This little four-door Jag of Lila's is one hot sedan and we make great time.

Marina's place is close to the river, a nice older home set back from the road. I pull in and we get out. Marina is sitting out on the front porch. She's been crying.

I leave Tina to comfort her and go into the house.

It's a hell of a mess. It could be a burglary, and Julianna walked in on it. Or maybe the kidnappers decided to find other stuff of value while they were taking Julia.

Or they were looking for something.

I put on a pair of latex gloves. The police will be going through this, and I don't want to mess up their evidence.

I walk through the house, looking for clues.

In the living room a pair of torn women's panties hang from the end of the couch. Theres a reddish wet spot, possibly semen mixed with blood, on the cushions.

I see a torn blouse laying behind the couch.

I walk around the mess, avoiding the books and smashed pictures laying around. Everything has been methodically torn apart.

I'm starting to get a real bad feeling.

I head back into the bedrooms. The same mess back here. I go into the main bedroom. Even the big headboard is smashed, and the mattresses torn apart.

Then I smell cooked meat.

I find Julianna in the bathroom, almost standing. She's hanging by her hair in the bathtub, a propane torch laying near her body. There's blood everywhere. Julianna Krim's corpse is barely recognizable through the bruises, open cuts and deep burns. I've seen her at the bar, and mostly I recognize her long blonde hair, which has been tied to the shower head. I don't want to even imagine what her final hours were like.

I walk toward the front of the house.

The police arrive a few minutes later. Residential burglary is way too common and they immediately put it way down on the list when it was first called in. It could have taken hours for someone to show up. But after I called and told them they had a rape/homicide, they took a lot more interest.

I try to question Marina, but got nowhere. She is hysterical and I can't really blame her. I tell her Julianna is dead. There's no reason to put off the truth: Marina'd know soon enough. Luckily, she has no idea what her lover had gone through before she died, nor that Julia was having an affair behind her back.

For Marina, the nightmare is just beginning.

I pull Tina aside.

"Stay right with her. She doesn't talk to anyone without a lawyer. If she needs one, call Kennedy. Tell him it's a big case, so it'll look good on his resume."