Bound for Magic (The Tortie Kitten Mystery Trilogy Series Book 1) Read online

  Bound for Magic

  by

  Constance Barker

  Copyright © 2021 Constance Barker

  All rights reserved.

  Similarities to real people, places or events are purely coincidental.

  No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

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  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  Copyright Page

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Thanks for Reading

  Catalog of Books

  Chapter 1

  “I don’t think you wanna look, Mary. It’s really gross.” My partner, Chuck Shen, turned green as he trundled out of the weeds. As a veteran homicide investigator, I’d seen my share of gross. I also understood the importance of maintaining a crime scene. I’d take a look after the techs arrived.

  “She’s all torn up.” Chuck went sweaty, swallowing hard.

  “Please don’t puke, Chuck.”

  “Do my best,” he gasped.

  “Make yourself busy. Secure Mr. Sanchez’ weapon,” I said. “Gloves?”

  Looking happy to have something to do, Chuck pulled latex gloves from his jacket.

  Antonio Sanchez hugged his rifle closer. “I got a permit for this.”

  “We’ll need it if we determine a crime was committed, Mr. Sanchez. Ballistics.”

  “Yeah?” He was small and grandfatherly, with a brush of gray mustache making up for his bald pate. His expression lit up. “Like on the CSI show? I guess that’s kinda cool. But I thought it was just raccoons.”

  Chuck took the weapon, a .30-30 I guessed, and walked around the block toward the unmarked car.

  “Raccoons?” A small crowd of neighborhood residents gathered in the pre-dawn light. We stood at the guardrail that kept people from driving off the West 9th Extension and into the river. The speaker was Maria Gutierrez, Mr. Sanchez’ next door neighbor. “You should arrest him. Possession of a firearm. Shooting in public.”

  “You’re just after me because of my dogs,” Mr. Sanchez said.

  “They poop in my yard!”

  “My property is fenced!”

  “Attempted murder, huh? How about that?” Miss (I think) Gutierrez said. “You thought you were shooting at a prowler.”

  “If I was shooting at a prowler, I’d have used my shotgun,” Mr. Sanchez said.

  “Oh, sure, so you wouldn’t kill him. Who would believe that?”

  “No,” Sanchez said. “To make sure I hit him. My aim’s not so good anymore.”

  “Neither are your dogs’ aims,” Maria said.

  “What, my dogs have wings now? They fly over my fence?”

  “I think you walk them in my yard when I’m at work.”

  As the discussion heated, I moved in closer. In part, to de-escalate the argument. Mostly, to find out the truth. I got a hit from Mr. Sanchez. Yes, he thought he was shooting at raccoons rooting through his garbage cans. Also, yes, he walked his dogs over to Maria Gutierrez’ yard when she was at work.

  “Can I see the dead guy?” One of Mr. Sanchez’ grandchildren tugged on his sleeve.

  “Guillermo, no, go back in the house now.”

  “I think that’s sound advice for everyone,” I said to the growing crowd. “We need to keep the scene from being compromised. That includes staying out of your backyard, Mr. Sanchez.”

  “You take my gun, you keep me out of the yard,” Sanchez grumbled. But he went back inside with his grandkids. The others did as well. Most of them stood under the shelter of their front porch so they could keep watching.

  “What do you think?” Chuck asked.

  “I think this is sheriff’s business.” This neighborhood, my neighborhood, was an unincorporated area called The Hammer west-southwest of Delta Vista. A few decades prior, there was a campaign to incorporate The Hammer into Delta Vista proper. Residents of DV voted it down. It was kind of a crappy area.

  “I mean what the guy said, Antonio Sanchez.”

  We’d just finished an overnight stakeout of the old Navy base. According to the FBI, human traffickers were using one of the thousands of miles of waterways around Delta-V to move their human contraband. Chuck and I found no evidence of this. At four a.m., we were relieved and Shen dropped me home, two blocks away, when we heard the shots.

  Sanchez said he’d heard a disturbance in his garbage cans at approximately oh-four-twenty-two. He grabbed his rifle. He’d headed into his back yard, shouting. To Mr. Sanchez’ surprise, it wasn’t a family of raccoons rooting through his cans.

  A large, ferocious animal leapt up from the shelter of the garbage cans. In its jaws and paws was a human body. Sanchez shot at the creature, winging it, before it leapt over the fence with its grisly prize.

  “You think he’s telling the truth?” Shen asked.

  “About this shooting business?” I said. “Yes. About his dogs pooping in Maria Gutierrez’ yard? No.”

  “What now? Should we take some pictures of the body?” Shen swallowed hard again.

  “We don’t do anything but keep the scene secure until the sheriff’s investigators get here. Then, this is all their game and we can go home and sleep.” Sleep would be good. I hadn’t been on good terms with sleep in nearly two months. This night duty might help. At least I wouldn’t be sleeping in the dark. “Does this kind of thing happen a lot around here? I mean, what kind of animal—”

  Sirens interrupted, heralding the end of our involvement, and we badged the sheriff’s first responders. An official vehicle parking lot formed at the terminus of West 9th. Geographically speaking, the San Joaquin County Sheriff HQ and Delta Vista Metro were equidistant from the scene. Day shift at DVMP started at 0400. I didn’t know when the sheriff got out of bed. Their vehicles were the standard black-and-whites, with a big gold Sheriff emblazoned on the sides. Two men in suits emerged from the last vehicle to arrive. They approached Shen and me.

  One was a tall guy, broad-shouldered and bald. The other was a tall woman, stocky, blonde hair up. Shen briefed them.

  “Thanks for standing by, Inspectors” the guy said. “We got it from here.”

  Which was when the green Dodge SUV pulled among the black-and-white Fords. The vehicle had a lot of antennae, but no official markings. Men exited on each side of the vehicle. They looked like cowboys.

  “Who the hell is that?” The female detective, I think her name was Johnson, stared.

  They were tall, tall-tall, making the sheriff’s detectives diminutive. Both wore long brown dusters with patches on the sleeves, brown tactical pants, cowboy boots, cowboy hats and dark green shirts. One of them was African American, and he was talking on a cell phone. The other had an olive complex
ion, of some mixed genetics I couldn’t identify. He had one green eye and one blue eye and brown hair that hung in a ponytail.

  “Special Agent Wallace, US Fish and Wildlife Service,” Ponytail introduced himself. “My partner, Special Agent Stoney. You have a body on federally protected wetlands. We’ll be taking over the case.”

  “Fish and Wildlife?” Johnson (I think) said. “This is a homicide investigation. No one here needs a fishing license.”

  “Let me put her on, sir,” Stoney, the black cowboy, said in his phone before handing it over to Johnson. “I have the undersheriff on the line, Detective.”

  Her brows knotted. “Sir?”

  I gave Shen the side-nod. We weren’t needed in this pissing contest. Special Agent Wallace gave me a look before tipping his hat at me. It was a little weird. No one wore hats these days. I wasn’t sure how to react to the tip.

  “You ever hear of Fish and Game investigating a murder?” Shen asked.

  I shrugged. It wasn’t our case. “It’s their jurisdiction, I guess. We don’t know if there was a murder.” Frankly, being exhausted after our shift, I didn’t know what to make of the incident.

  “If the animal took a left instead of going straight, it would’ve ended up in the old golf course. Would that make it a Parks and Rec investigation?” Shen wondered.

  We walked a block and turned right on Buitre Creek. The houses were all typical one-story, stucco structures in pastel colors with red tile roofs. All except the one at the dead end. The one I lived in. It looked more like a hasty construction from parts of a Conestoga wagon. A swayback roof sagged one way, the majority of the construction leaning the other. There were holes in the front porch. The front window was glazed with plywood.

  A dog door squeaked open. Bug-eyed, a tortoiseshell creature stared at me in accusation.

  “What is that?” Shen stopped walking.

  “That’s Ugly,” I said. “She lives here.”

  “Ugly?” Shen moved a little closer. “You have a...” Shen searched for the species. “...cat?”

  “She was here when I moved in. I can’t get her to leave.”

  Shen side-stepped over to the parked surveillance vehicle, like he was taking cover. “You live in the most haunted-looking house I’ve ever seen, with an animal I can hardly identify, a block away from a weird-ass crime. How the hell did you end up here, Mary Garcia?”

  “It’s a long story.”

  Chapter 2

  It was a long story that I didn’t want to relate. I was tired after my shift and shambled inside. Ugly made a strangled noise and attempted to trip me. I looked at her area in the empty kitchen. Half a pound of cat food sat around her bowl like an earthworks around a castle.

  “You have food.”

  Strangled sound.

  “It’s right there.”

  Bugged-out, fishy eyes locked with mine—judging me, my fitness for the simple job of keeping a cat. I grabbed the Meow Mix bag next to the bowl. It rattled pitifully. Crumbs. I scooped the surrounding food back into the bowl. Ugly set at it like a famine victim. It gave me a diversion, so I escaped upstairs and closed the bedroom door.

  My bed was a sleeping bag on the hardwood floor, my pillow a duffle bag full of dirty laundry. Brown newspaper covered the windows. I’d dated one to the late ’90s. Luckily, there was a built-in dresser with a vanity mirror. The bottom drawer had thus far resisted my attempts to open it. Other than two folding chairs and a card table in the living room, it was my only furniture.

  I undressed, stuffing the clothes into the pillow. The makeshift window treatment made the room dim, but not dark. I didn’t like the dark. I snuggled in for the day.

  How the hell did you end up here, Mary Garcia?

  Damn it, why did Shen have to bring it up?

  I AWOKE IN THE DEAD of night. It’s called that for a reason. My pretty little house in the Riverside neighborhood of Jacksonville, Florida, surrounded me in dark silence. Had the AC kicked on? The fridge? A passing car? Nothing. My bedside clock blinked 12:00. Power failure? Little red LED numbers was the only light.

  The debt is now yours, Mary Elizabeth Garcia.

  A voice—not a speaking voice, really, but sounding in my head. I reached across the king sized bed for Murph before realizing we were long separated. Well, that was too legal a word for it. Before he dumped me and took off to parts unknown a year before.

  I felt a little silly. After all, I was a vet, a cop, a homicide investigator. I didn’t need Patrick Murphy to protect me. There was a gun in the drawer of my nightstand. But I didn’t reach for it. I figured I had just awakened from a dream.

  The debt is yours, should you choose to accept it.

  My ears didn’t pick up the sound, yet I focused on the wall across from me, near the door. A shadow formed on the wall, blacker than the dark. As I watched, it grew, a long slender shape that moved along the wall. In the corner, it angled and turned upward. At the ceiling, it angled over me. From the narrow shape, arms formed, with long fingers. They spanned the entire room. The silhouette of a narrow head materialized, directly above my own. Eyes, predatory, green and luminous, slit open.

  Night terror, I thought. I’d never had a night terror before. But it was night. I was terrified. It seemed to fit.

  “What debt?” Could you talk during a night terror? I didn’t know.

  The Soul Brokers seek payment. The choice is yours; Earthly remuneration, or payment of an innocent soul.

  Frightened as I was by the nightmare shape, I recognized a shakedown when I heard it.

  “I don’t have any debts,” I tried sounding brazen. “My house is paid off, my credit cards. I have a car payment. That’s it. I don’t think my Camaro is worth an innocent soul.”

  Although the yellow muscle car was pretty sweet.

  Accept the debt in twenty-four hours, or forego the soul. The choice should be made immediately, else the vigorish will be exquisitely crushing.

  Vigorish, or vig, was either gambler-speak for the house take, or loan shark talk for exorbitant interest on a loan. Either way, this went back to Murph. My ex was a gambler: race track, dog track (we were living in Jacksonville), sports betting, cards, anything that involved luck or risk was how he made (and frequently lost) a living.

  Anger worked its way past my fear. “If Murph owes you, get it from him. We’re not together anymore.”

  Indeed? the shadow figure voiced in my brain. We shall see, Mary Elizabeth Garcia. We shall see.

  Memories....haunting memories of a time not so long ago. Would they ever stop?

  THE NEXT DAY SHEN AND I once again sat in a busted-up vehicle on Give-Em-Hell-Island. Our ride was a mid-70s, graffiti’d Chrysler Cordoba. It didn’t so much have a color as a moldy stain. While it ran fine, and in fact had a pretty big engine, the interior smelled like stale cigarette smoke and bullet holes marred all the glass. The only legible graffiti was on the hood. It read “Rot in hell babykiller.”

  “Hard to believe you can take a boat from here to San Francisco.” Shen looked out at the river. We could see the faint glimmer of the water between the square shapes of warehouses. “Delta-V seems so land-locked.”

  “When I was a kid, we used to ride bikes out here,” I said. “There was nothing but crumbling warehouses and lots of empty roads.” Since then, the port had taken over. New businesses took up a lot of space. Roads were fenced off or blocked by concrete barriers.

  We’d parked in a mostly empty lot on Boon and Fife. There was a view to the water beyond the warehouses north. South, we could see one of only two ways off the island. Plus, there was a Dumpster that I could hide behind and pee if I needed to.

  Nothing moved on the island; not even the wind. I could see skinny-trunk palm trees in a line along Embarcadero. I pulled out the log book. Three hours of nothing. I made a note.

  “Why would you ride bikes out here?” Shen popped the cup off his thermos.

  “Because Delta Vista is boring. There was nothing else to do. Access was
blocked back then. It was still Navy property. But we could get bikes and Big Wheels under the barricades. There must’ve been some MAs who screwed the pooch guarding the place, but we never saw them.”

  “MAs?”

  “Master-at-Arms, Navy MPs,” I said.

  “What are we doing out here?” Shen asked. “I don’t remember screwing the pooch on a case.”

  “Lieutenant Dan doesn’t like me,” I said.

  “Danielson doesn’t like anybody.” He carefully poured coffee and sipped. “Any uniform could sit out here. I don’t know why the FBI would specify CAP inspectors on surveillance.”

  Shadows swung. “Car coming.” Our night vision monocular hung from the rearview mirror on a D-clip. I unplugged the USB charger. Give-Em-Hell Island wasn’t well lit, but the scope brought everything into sharp clarity. I scanned the buildings.

  “Get down,” Shen said. “He’s coming from behind.”

  We scooted low, but I kept the monocular up. A black SUV rolled slowly past. I hit the record button as it did. “Write down the plate.” I recited it. Relying on the night vision scope’s camera might prove disastrous if the footage got lost or erased.

  I passed the scope to Shen. “Keep an eye on him.”

  “Heading for the river,” Shen reported.

  Opening the laptop that served as a Mobile Data Computer, I ran the plate through the DMV. The information came back quickly. “It’s a rental.”

  “A rental? I think someone else reported—holy shit, here comes a boat.”

  I squinted at the river. Since it was dark, I could only see the tiny red and green dots of light bobbing along. The boat was running dark. I could only see the approach intermittently between the warehouses along the shore. Headlights on the SUV blinked and shut off. The vehicle drove to the Embarcadero and made a right, disappearing behind a warehouse.

  Shen got out of the car. “I don’t have an angle.”

  “Chuck, wait,” I said.

  He was already running down the street to the next block. We were too far away to get a view of the river-side of the warehouses. I sat back and stole a few sips of Shen’s coffee. As shadows consumed my partner, I saw the red glow of brake lights. The SUV appeared. To my surprise, it didn’t turn toward the surveillance car. Instead, it turned east on Navy Road, heading toward the port proper.