Vampires 3 (167 page)

I stepped away from the far wall and glided over to the small chair in the corner of her room. We had made the chair together one weekend, a father/daughter project for the Girl’s Scouts. To her credit, she did most of the work.

I sat in it now, lowering my weightless body into it, mimicking the act of sitting. Unsurprisingly, the chair didn’t creak.

As I sat, my daughter rolled over in her sleep, facing me. Her aura, usually blue and streaked with red flames, often reacted to my presence, as it did now. The red flames crackled and gravitated toward me like a pulsating static ball, sensing me like I sensed it.

As I continued to sit, the lapping red flames grew in intensity, snapping and licking the air like solar flares on the surface of the sun. My daughter’s aura always reacted this way to me. But only in sleep. Somehow her subconscious recognized, or perhaps it was her soul. Or both. And from this subconscious state, she would sometimes speak to me, as she did now.

“
Hi, daddy.”

“
Hi, baby,” I said.

“
Mommy said you got hurt real bad.”

“
Yes, I did.”

“
Mommy said that a bad man hurt you and you got killed.”

“
Mommy’s right, but I don’t want you thinking about that right now, okay?”

“
Okay,” she said sleepily. “Am I dreaming, daddy?”

“
Yes, baby.”

We were quiet and she shifted subtly, lifting her face toward me, her eyes still closed in sleep. There was a sound from outside her window, a light tapping. I ignored it, but it came again and again, and then with more consistency. I looked over my shoulder and saw that it was raining. I looked back at my daughter and thought of the rain, remembering how it felt on my skin, on my face. Or, rather, I was
trying
to remember. Lately, such memories of the flesh were getting harder and harder to recall.

“
It’s raining, daddy,” she said.

“
Yes.”

“
Do you live in the rain?”

“
No.”

“
Where do you live, daddy?”

“
I live here, with you.”

“
But you’re dead.”

I said nothing. I hated to be reminded of this, even by my daughter.

“
Why don’t you go to heaven, daddy?”

I thought about that. I think about that a lot, actually. I said, “Daddy still has work to do.”

“
What kind of work?”

“
Good work.”

“
I miss you,” she said. “I miss you so much. I think about you every day. I’m always crying. People at school say I’m a crybaby.”

“
You’re not a crybaby,” I said. “You’re just sad.” My heart broke all over again. “It’s time to go back to sleep, angel.”

“
Okay, daddy.”

“
I love you, sweetie.”

“
I love you, too, daddy.”

I drifted up from the small wooden chair and moved across the room the way I do—silently and easily—and at the far wall I looked back at her. Her aura had subsided, although some of it still flared here and there. For her to relax—to truly relax—I needed to leave her room entirely.

And so I did. Through the wall.

To hell with doors.

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Dark Horse

Jim Knighthorse Series #1

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J.R. Rain

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Chapter One

Charles Brown, the defense attorney, was a small man with a round head. He was wearing a brown and orange zigzagged power tie. I secretly wondered if he went by Charlie as a kid and had a dog named Snoopy and a crush on the little red-headed girl.

We were sitting in my office on a warm spring day. Charlie was here to give me a job if I wanted it, and I wanted it. I hadn’t worked in two weeks and was beginning to like it, which made me nervous.

“
I think the kid’s innocent,” he was saying.

“
Of course you do, Charlie. You’re a defense attorney. You would find cause to think Jack the Ripper was simply a misunderstood artist before his time.”

He looked at me with what was supposed to be a stern face.

“
The name’s Charles,” he said.

“
If you say so.”

“
I do.”

“
Glad that’s cleared up.”

“
I heard you could be difficult,” he said. “Is this you being difficult? If so, then I’m disappointed.”

I smiled. “Maybe you have me confused with my father.”

Charlie sat back in my client chair and smiled. His domed head was perfectly buffed and polished, cleanly reflecting the halogen lighting above. His skin appeared wet and viscous, as if his sweat glands were ready to spring into action at a moment’s notice.

“
Your father has quite a reputation in L.A. I gave his office a call before coming here. Of course, he’s quite busy and could not take on an extra case.”

“
So you settled on the next best thing.”

“
If you want to call it that,” he said. “I’ve heard that you’ve performed adequately with similar cases, and so I’ve decided to give you a shot, although my expectations are not very high, and I have another P.I. waiting in the wings.”

“
How reassuring,” I said.

“
Yeah, well, he’s established. You’re not.”

“
But can he pick up a blind side blitz?”

Charlie smiled and splayed his stubby fingers flat on my desk and looked around my office, which was adorned with newspaper clippings and photographs of yours truly. Most of the photographs depict me in a Bruin uniform, sporting the number 45. In most I’m carrying the football, and in others I’m blowing open the hole for the tailback. Or at least I like to think I’m blowing open the hole. The newspapers are yellowing now, taped or tacked to the wood paneling. Maybe someday I’ll take them down. But not yet.

“
You beat SC a few years back. I can never forgive you for that. Two touchdowns in the fourth quarter alone.”

“
Three,” I said. “But who’s counting?”

He rubbed his chin. “Destroyed your leg, if I recall, in the last game of the season. Broken in seven different places.”

“
Nine, but who’s counting?”

“
Must have been hard to deal with. You were on your way to the pros. Would have made a hell of a fullback.”

That
had
been hard to deal with, and I didn’t feel like talking about it now to Charlie Brown. “Why do you believe in your client’s innocence?” I asked.

He looked at me. “I see. You don’t want to talk about it. Sorry I brought it up.” He crossed his legs. He didn’t seem sorry at all. He looked smugly down at his shoes, which had polish on the polish. “Because I believe Derrick’s story. I believe he loved his girlfriend and would never kill her.”

“
People have been killed for love before. Nothing new.”

On my computer screen before me I had brought up an article from the Orange County Register. The article showed a black teen being led away into a police car. He was looking down, his head partially covered by his jacket. He was being led away from a local high school. A very upscale high school, if I recalled. The story was dated three weeks ago, and I recalled reading it back then.

I tapped the computer monitor. “The police say there’s some indication that his girlfriend was seeing someone else, and that jealousy might have been a factor.”

“
Yes,” said the attorney. “And we think this someone else framed our client.”

“
I take it you want me to find this man.”

“
Or person.”

“
Ah, equality,” I said.

“
We want you to find evidence of our client’s innocence, whether or not you find the true murderer.”

“
Anything else I should know?”

“
We feel race might be a factor here. He was the only black student in school, and in the neighborhood.”

“
I believe the preferred term is African-American.”

“
I’m aware of public sentiment in this regards. I don’t need you to lecture me.”

“
Just trying to live up to my difficult name.”

“
Yeah, well, cool it,” he said. “Now, no one’s talking at the school. My client says he was working out late in the school gym, yet no one saw him, not even the janitors.”

“
Then maybe he wasn’t there.”

“
He was there,” said Charlie simply, as if his word was enough. “So do you want the job?”

“
Sure.”

We discussed a retainer fee and then he wrote me a check. When he left, waddling out of the office, I could almost hear Schroeder playing on his little piano in the background.

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About the Author:

J.R. Rain is an ex-private investigator who now writes full-time. He lives in a small house on a small island with his small dog, Sadie, who has more energy than Robin Williams.

Please visit him at
www.jrrain.com
.

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