Chapter 1

Prologue

THE NIGHT WAS dark and overcast, and the large trees in front of the house very nearly blocked all the illumination from the streetlight at the end of the block. A dark clad figure slipped out of the alley and into the backyard of the house, keeping close to the dense shrubbery. He slipped between a thick row of azaleas and the house and peeked into the first-floor window, which he knew opened into the library slash den, and saw that the room was dark, as was the rest of the house. He had, in fact, watched its sole occupant drive away some minutes earlier, but he was naturally cautious

Stupid old fuck, the burglar thought as he carefully eased the window open, using his gloved fingers. He always goes out on Thursday evenings, and he always locks the doors, but never the windows. Serves him right.When the window had been pushed open far enough, he slipped over the sill and closed the window behind him.

Payback time,he thought as he leisurely walked through the house, placing small and easily sold or pawned valuables into one of the two bags he’d brought along for the purpose. He’d allowed himself to be picked up by the owner a few weeks earlier in one of the gay bars, and had spent a weekend allowing the pathetic old queen to suck his dick and slobber all over him as often as he liked. During the course of that long and miserable weekend, he’d spotted enough goodies to make it all worthwhile.

Thirty minutes later, he carefully eased his two bags of booty onto the ground outside the same window. Then he slipped out through the window, quietly closed it from the outside, gathered his bags, and disappeared into the night.

1

Jacksonville, FL

IT WAS FRIDAY afternoon, and I was more than ready for the weekend as I settled down at my desk after attending an interminable meeting on the top floor of our building. At times like this, I almost wished that the sheriff hadn’t adopted a more personal and ‘hands-on’ management style, but I fully understood the need to make a complete break from the somewhat hidebound and autocratic approach his immediate predecessors had taken to law enforcement. The late and totally unlamented undersheriff had been a prime example of the previous regime. The man had been a “by the book” clown—and not very bright.

I’d heard my boss say of the former undersheriff that “an original idea and a cold drink of water would have killed him.” Stupid or not, it had taken the sheriff more than a year to ease the guy out of the hierarchy.

A knock on my open door roused me from my self-pity, and I heard a familiar voice say, “Got a minute, Captain?”

“For you, Lieutenant, always. Come in and have a seat.”

Janet Sanchez settled down in one of my side chairs. Still on the good side of forty (barely), she was fairly trim and not unattractive. Her somewhat unique Cuban/Irish heritage had contributed to her appearance, which was vaguely Hispanic and slightly exotic.

“What’s up, Janet?”

“Same old, same old. We’re still trying to wrap up the big case.”

“And?”

“I still have more body parts and videos than I have bodies.”

A few months earlier, we’d shut down a huge pornography operation that had included, in addition to the usual hard core XXX-rated gay porn, snuff, and torture films, and Lieutenant Sanchez, formerly Sergeant Sanchez, was still tallying the results. Even Janet, with all her research skills, hadn’t come up with a final body count—simply because in some cases, we had body parts and/or porn films that couldn’t be tied to a specific victim due to the fact that all the bodies had yet to be located.

“Still?”

The raid on a house on the extreme northern edge of the city had produced a ton of cash, a cache of porn/snuff/torture films on DVD, and numerous specimen jars containing male genitalia.

“Yes, Sir. As you know, those guys were meticulous about marking their trophies and their videos with names and dates. The problem is they used only nicknames in many cases.”

“Lieutenant, I know you like to dot your I’s and cross your T’s so you can close a case with everything all neat and tidy. That being said, you have to understand that sometimes it just isn’t possible.”

“I realize that, at some level, but I still don’t like it.”

“You don’t have to like it. The bottom line is that we made a major bust and, in so doing, solved a couple dozen murders. It’s time to shut it down and move on. Leave the mop-up to the FBI—they’ve got more manpower than we do, and a much bigger budget.”

“But—”

At that point, I cut her off. “But nothing. Shut it down and close the file by the end of the day Monday—it’s time to move on.”

“Yes, Sir,” she said, somewhat reluctantly.