In Our Blood'
A Jake Hawksworth Thriller
by William J. Goyette
PROLOGUE
They’ll never see it coming. A lazy finger brushed across a blurred photo of an attractive couple hurrying across a hectic urban street. Not in a million years. He studied their eyes, imagined himself peeling back the eyelids, crawling through. Really digging inside their heads. Not even after the last drop of blood has drained from their bodies. The man in the photo was attentive, purpose in his frozen stride. The woman appeared distant, oblivious to the traffic buzzing around her. She gripped her companion’s arm more out of necessity than affection. His eyes flicked across more images of the couple. Splitsecond glimpses of their lives–together, alone, or with a young boy and girl. His attention shifted to a narrow slit of a window, the only source of light in an otherwise bleak space.
Rain slammed the weathered panes at an impossible angle, painting an angry ripple effect on the bed beneath. The woman sprawled across it stared blankly at him. “What are you looking at?” His gaze slid back to the photographs, to the woman frozen in time, His Fair Maiden, each snapshot an open window to her soul. She was a doting yet ferociously protective mother. As a wife she was efficient, dutiful, if somewhat apathetic. She was kind and respectful as a rule, but had no patience for fools, and made little effort to hide it. She took painstaking care of herself. Not, he sensed, for her husband or anyone else, but out of a selfish need to preserve the beauty she’d always known, yet also knew was on temporary loan.
He riffled through the photos. Ah, there you are. His favorite. Caught in close-up. Apprehension, bordering on fear, chiseled into the subtle lines book-ending her mouth that only made her more real, more potent. What are you thinking, My Fair Maiden? A leisurely finger massaged the contours of the face, circled the full lips, caressed the silken hair. He stood abruptly, moved to the bedside, shoved the photo into the face of the woman twisted among the covers. “Why don’t you take care of yourself like this?” he said. He got no response. Not that he expected one. After all, she was dead. He was lulled by the tap-tap on the window above the ghastly corpse, the diminishing rain the only witness to his crime. Tears slid down the slick panes, mourning the woman because nobody else would. But they’ll all care about you, won’t they? He positioned the photo of His Fair Maiden so it shielded the blanched face of the woman on the bed. I’ve got a big surprise in store for you. You’ll never see it coming.
CHAPTER ONE
There is nothing quite as maddening as being shaken from a restless sleep by your ring tone. It cries out for immediate attention, until it is either answered or silenced. The latter is the choice of most. Unless you’re a cop. A thickly roped forearm emerged from a sea of wrinkles. Fumbling fingers connected on the fourth shout-out. The too small device slipped from too-fat fingers, drum-rolled on the floor. Cursing, pawing the floor blindly, at last hitting pay dirt. “This better be good.” Sleep was a precious commodity these days. Without Sheila’s rhythmic breathing on his back, nights were endless and vacant. His right index finger clawed at the right thumb, picking at the rough, calloused skin until it bled. It was one of two compulsions he had no control over. He’d tried to stop, had even worn gloves in desperation. But the gloves had to come off at some point, and when they did, the disfigurement resumed. “We’ve got a Sally over here at Cobb’s Corner.” Jake Hawksworth groaned. “Too early for games, Kyle.” “Come on, Jake. It’s an easy one.” Jake usually got a rise out of the Name the Crime Game. He and his partner used names of ghosts from their pasts, old girlfriends or drinking buddies, and linked them to on-the-job situations, especially the gruesome ones. A floater was a Teddy, named after Jake’s high school pal who drowned in a local swimming hole. A missing person was a Rita, in honor of a girl a much younger Jake had almost married while on a bender.
Listening to her shrill voice was enough to make you want to run away. Not all of the game’s subjects were as wry as Rita. Take Louis, for example. Louis Henderson, Kyle’s father, was killed in a botched robbery at a 7-Eleven when Kyle was ten. Though Kyle never confirmed it, Jake suspected this was why his partner had chosen a career in law enforcement. Hell, if Jake had a face like Kyle’s, he’d have gone the modeling route. Fewer doughnuts. Better pay. When Kyle added the man’s name to the game, Jake tried to dissuade him. After all, the purpose was to blow off steam, not reopen unhealed wounds. Kyle insisted. A tribute to the old man he said, and every fallen cop before and after him. The name had not yet come up in the short time Jake and his partner had been playing the game. Not yet. Free drinks at O’Callahan’s were at stake. As enticing as another victory sounded, Jake’s brain ached. “I give.” A heavy sigh puffed through the receiver. “Sally. My first–“ “–lay,” Jake finished. Let the kid have some fun. Not his fault you’re an asshole. “And?” The kid taunted him, the lilt in his voice signaling sure defeat. “And…” Jake paused. It was a stupid game. One he’d invented after his wife scolded him for a lack of interest in his partners’ personal lives. This one’s for you, Sheila. “You said she was the worst lay you ever had. Like sleeping with a sack of potatoes, if memory serves me right.” “So then, what’s a Sally?” Jake imagined his partner in fist-clenching, teeth-grinding anticipation. “Let’s just call it a draw.” “Bullshit,” Kyle said. “Looks like you’re buying tonight.”
“Okay, you asked for it, partner. I’m gonna go out on a limb and say we’ve got a Sally who’s dead in bed.” Silence. Followed by an overdramatic sigh. “Damn.” More silence. Licking his wounds. “Anyway, Chief says to get your ass over here.” Jake hoisted creaky legs to the creaky floor. “My ass is on the way.” He scribbled down the address and padded to the bathroom. The mirror on the wall was no dream child of Walt Disney. And the muddled reflection frowning at him held no claim to The Land’s Fairest. Hell, even Dopey had him beat there. He wasn’t handsome, never had been. Every school has that fat, homely kid who hides behind a clown mask. Back at Jefferson Heights a thousand years ago, that clown had been Jacob Francis Hawksworth. As he entered his twenties, Jake went from flabby to what he liked to call stocky. His face took on a new shape, the absurdly wide nose that dominated it upstaged by a granite slab of a jaw that looked as if it had been Play-Doh’d on as an afterthought. Eyebrows thick enough to be moustaches topped off brooding eyes. A great look if you’re a gangster. Or a homicide cop. Now, more than thirty years later, he gazed sullenly at a face that looked an awful lot like that fat, awkward teenager again– with a lot less hair and plenty more wear and tear. The shower was soothing but Jake’s head throbbed. He dressed quickly, skipped the shave.
He collected his wallet, keys and a handful of aspirin, and stepped out into the November air, as raw and ugly as his right thumb. Rick Smolinski, Jake’s neighbor and worthiest adversary in The Great Lawn War, was raking the last of the year’s leaves, those rogue hangers-on that so desperately fight their inevitable fate. Rick claimed bragging rights to the best landscaping on Edgewood Drive. At one time, there was no contest. When Sheila died, the lawn died with her. The flowers withered, the manicured lawn succumbed to brownish spots, like cancerous growths. Jake cut a clear path across the city. While the rest of the free world enjoyed their coveted weekend sleep, he was going to work.
He defied a NO PARKING sign, pulled out a notepad and pen, scribbled initial observations of the ramshackle apartment building, nodded to a neatly pressed officer, and went inside. The steady drumbeat in his head came right on in with him. Two more officers with spit-and-polish uniforms and regulation haircuts sipped coffee from Styrofoam cups. Jake wondered how long it had been since Yours Truly had cared about his appearance. Probably the day after Sheila’s funeral, he decided. One of the officers, who appeared to be just shy of his sixteenth birthday, motioned Jake up a narrow staircase. Jake was greeted by his partner of almost two months, Kyle Henderson. Henderson was young enough to be his son. Though Jake found him to be overzealous and oversensitive, he was also honest and reliable, if that judgement could be determined after a mere eight weeks. Kyle’s chiseled face and athletic build scoffed at their thirty years. His coal-black eyes had an alertness Jake had never before seen. “Jake.” Jake turned to the distinct voice of Frank Geoffreys, Chief of Detectives.
Frank’s ever-serious expression made him look like a man who is forever constipated. He thrust out a lengthy arm. Jake gripped the man’s baseball mitt of a hand, well-worn leather laced with thick blue ropes straining beneath transparent skin. “Good to see you, Jake,” Frank said in the deep monotone that had become his trademark. There wasn’t a cop in the district who hadn’t tried imitating the inimitable Frank Geoffreys. “How’s Nikki?” Jake nodded. “Doing well–considering.” Geoffreys opened his mouth to reply but Jake deflected him. “Who found the body?” “Neighbor. Over there.”
Frank thrust a sausage finger at a snap-in-two woman hunched in a chair. “She noticed an odor coming from the apartment,” Frank said. “The door was unlocked so she went in.” “M.E. been called?” “On her way now,” Frank said. “Ident’s inside.” “Let’s go have a look see,” Jake said. He and his partner entered the door labeled 2B. Crime Scene Services buzzed about with their high-tech equipment, doing their high-tech thing. Jake scrawled rapid-fire notes on pen and paper, old school all the way. He noted the stench that attached itself to everything in the apartment, burrowed into every nook and cranny. Some things you never forget. The smell of a putrefied body is one of them. “When are you going to get yourself a tape recorder?” Kyle asked. “Don’t like the sound of my own voice.” A CSS officer with an impressive camera motioned them to a door with a thousand-year-old paint job. “Vic’s in the bedroom, Jake. Looks like she put up quite a fight out here, though,” he said. “Just let us know when you’re all set in there.” Jake scanned the living room, decorated in Early White Trash. Overturned table. Discarded lamps.
Threadbare sofa cushions folded up on one another like a big-old-fat-old house of cards. It was impossible to tell where the occupant’s mess ended and the perp’s began. Jake surveyed a snap-together wall unit that housed a jumble of tattered books. Tawdry romance novels. Obscure detective pulp. A perfectly aligned row of shiny hardcovers caught his eye. The same author’s name ran up each of their glossy spines. Every book written by the guy. Jake knew this because he had the same collection on a shelf in his house. “She must’ve been a fan of McCauley’s,” an ID officer said. “How about you,” he added. “A fan, I mean?” “Who isn’t?” Jake said. He winked at his partner. “Let’s go meet your girl Sally.”
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