The touch against his ankle brought his head up. Mama cat, with her missing ear and gold eyes, stared at him with caution. Brit swallowed the lump down his throat. “You’re stuck with me. Seems only the good die young.”
She let out a meow and tapped his leg again with the side of her face. Brit wanted to reach down to stroke her, but instinct told him she’d run. “I gotta get you off the streets.”
Footsteps sounded on the concrete. The cat jerked back and darted off.
Quarles walked over, eyeing the cat food cans. “You okay?”
“Yeah.” Brit got up and masked his emotion behind a frown.
“Good,” Quarles said. “Because I just got a call from a buddy of mine, a homicide cop with Clear Lake. I think we’ve got a break on the jewelry store case.”
~
Nothing smelled quite like days-old death. The smell permeated the hotel room. Brit looked around, but hung close to the door. He’d seen worse, but not by much. A huge red stain had dried into the motel’s worn beige carpet. Ditto for the specks of gray brain matter mixed with blood spattered on the pale yellow wall behind the bed. Two bodies. The one missing the top of his head from a gunshot got the credit for the wall decor. The other with his throat slit had added the coloring to the carpet. And as hard as it was to look at it, it was even harder to smell.
On the bed were plastic bags with the jewelry store logo and a bank deposit bag. Against the wall leaned a guitar.
“Our guys.” Quarles’ eyes were only a shade darker than his green-tinted skin. When Brit had pulled up a few minutes after his partner, he’d found Quarles standing beside his car, hurling his lunch on the pavement. Obviously, his new partner had a weak stomach. Not that he could blame him. Thankfully, Brit didn’t have any lunch to lose, or he’d be out there now doing the same.
“What do you have?” Brit asked, after one of the Clear Lake officers walked up and Quarles introduced them.
“Looks like the murders took place late Tuesday. We spoke to the hotel manager, and he said some guy came in and out of here this afternoon. Big guy, black hair.”
Stan Humphrey. Then Brit remembered the blood. He looked at Quarles. “Did CSI get some of the blood off McKay’s door?”
“Yeah.” Quarles wiped a hand over his mouth and seemed to think. “You think the blood at her house is from this crime scene?”
Another detective walked up. “I hear you might have something on these guys,” he said as he pinched his nose.
“Yeah.” Quarles turned back to the open door as if to get a breath of clean air.
Brit tried not to breathe through his nose, but air filtered through. Oddly, the first scent he got was cigarette smoke.
The other detective continued, “We found a cell phone in the bathroom. The last call made was about one o’clock today. Possibly from that Humphrey guy. I don’t think either of these guys made that call. What kind of sick fucker stays here in this?” The officer shook his head.
The same kind of sick fucker who would beat up women, Brit thought.
“Maybe he came back here looking for something,” Quarles said.
Brit tried not to look at the dead man’s face. God knew he already had enough images to keep him awake at night. “Where was the last call to?”
“Here’s a weird one. It was to Wells High School.”
A cold chill drummed through Brit’s body. Cali. He stared at his watch. Four. He’d dropped her off at the school around two. What if that bastard had been waiting for her?
He looked at Quarles. “I just remembered somewhere I need to be.” As he lit out to his car, he saw an image of Cali McKay’s sweet face and prayed he wasn’t too late.
~
He never stopped for a light. He wasn’t sure he ever hit the brakes the whole drive. He kept remembering how she felt up against him. Warm. Soft. Alive. Her car wasn’t in the school parking lot. Only a couple of cars were left in the lot. “Damn.”
He parked in front of the school and ran to the front. He jerked on the door, but it didn’t budge. Locked. He banged on the glass then caught movement in one of the open office doors. He pounded the door harder, louder. A dark-skinned woman, wearing a business suit, finally peeked outside the main office.
He snatched his badge from his pocket and pressed it against the glass. Surprise widened her almond-shaped eyes, then she hurried to the door.
“I’m trying to find Cali McKay,” he said. “I need her cell number.”
“I’m Mrs. Jasmine, the principal. Is she in trouble? She’s such a sweet girl. I can’t—”
“No. She’s not in trouble. I just have to find her.”
He followed the woman back into the office, and she told him again how sweet Cali was, how Cali loved her job, how good she was with her students. At last the woman pulled open a file cabinet and thumbed through the folders as if she had all the time in the world. “A...B...” He wanted to nudge her aside and find it himself.
“Here.” She pulled out the file. “Her home number is—”