She had the GPS search for the nearest location of the gym she had a membership in. She was hungry, but wanted to go someplace nicer than the places where she had recently dined. And a shower was currently more pressing than a meal. Unfortunately, the nearest one was in Sacramento, an hour or two east of her current location. She got onto the freeway and headed east. Three hours later, showered and refreshed, she sat alone at a table in a nice Italian restaurant, the laptop open, next to her plate of veal marsala. She was making a list. Cash, transportation, housing, income. How had other people managed these things? She thought about all of the people she had tracked down, especially the ones who had lasted the longest out in the wild. Learn from the best.
By the time the table was cleared and the bill presented, she had some glimmerings of a plan. Tonight it was sleeping in the car again. Tomorrow, a shower and new clothes, and then visit some banks. She drove around until she found a quiet spot where she thought she wouldn't be disturbed until morning. I need to call mom. Damn. It would be so much easier if mom had email at the new place. She reached for her purse, and remembered she didn't have her old phone, with her mother's new number in it. The events of the last few days caught up with her, and she buried her face in the sleeping bag, and let the tears come. Why now? Why not in a couple months, after it was all over? Scott, I'm so sorry. Mom, Jen, I just can't do this.
~~~
I'll be out of town until they stop looking for who killed him.
This is a way cool book! Fun to read just because of the way it was written. Consider, for example, that the above is the title of Chapter 1... Makes you sit up and say, "Whoa! What's Happenin' Man?" Right?
And each chapter gets a similar catchy title that makes you keep wanting to read... I have NEVER read a book that drew my immediate attention to the chapter heading. Most don't even have one... In any event... Get prepared...
Sandra is on the run... She is being hunted... Hunted just like she hunts... Only thing is that it is her job to help people find people... Now those who don't want to be found are on to Sandra... And she was already leaving when she discovers that Scott is now dead... Her partner is now dead but she has no time to grieve... Sandra recognizes that the guy who is hunting her now, and Scott before he found him... is good at his job! But is he as good as her? Sandra knows only one thing... She has to run and disappear! Hopefully, not to be found...
He was left hanging, and the suspense was killing him.
The officer at the scene stepped aside so Jack could enter the office. The small room was crowded. Another uniformed officer stood in a corner to allow more room for the group huddling around the body in the chair. One of them was his partner, Jaime Gonzales. "Took you long enough," Gonzales said, squeezing past an empty ambulance gurney. The medical examiner moved aside to let Jack examine the body. "Who kills somebody with a piece of wire?" Gonzales said. He held up the murder weapon, a length of picture hanging wire, with two handles made of wooden dowels.
Jack looked at the wire, and then at the bloody marks around the dead man's neck. He felt the arm of the dead man above the elbow. "Someone pretty strong." he said. "I bet this took a while." There were evidence cards still standing up around the desk and floor, marking blood splatter. Jack looked around the room. "Not likely he found that thing in here," he said. "So, he brought it with him. Premeditated," Gonzales said. Jack looked over at Gonzales. "If you were planning on killing someone, and you had plenty of time to choose just the right weapon, why not bring a gun, or a knife? Why make it so hard on yourself?" "You're thinking the guy gets off on it?" Gonzales asked. Jack shrugged.
"Cleaning crew found him like this?" "No crew, just that one guy. Took one step into the room, saw the dead guy, and stepped back out fast as he could. Took him another 10 minutes to call 911." Gonzales was holding an evidence bag. He lifted it up. "Dead guy is the owner, Scott Jason Tremain. Does skip tracing, some divorce stuff. Could have had a lot of enemies." Jack looked at the floor. "How much of this blood was tracked around by our people?" "None of it," Gonzales said. "Even the cleaning guy knew not to step in it."
"So the doer wiped his shoes off before walking out?" Gonzales looked at the floor. "No footprints. How do you strangle a guy with a piece of wire and not step in the blood?" "Careful planning," Jack said. "Like someone for hire?" Gonzales asked, his tone doubtful. An office called into the room from outside. "Morgan? Dispatch wants to talk to you. They say they have report of shots fired at this location." Jack took the radio. "I didn't hear anything." "A call came in just a minute ago," a woman's voice said over the radio. "Same address, said she heard gunfire, called right away. I said we had officers at the scene already, and she hung up." Jack looked around at the people in the room, and those he could see through the door. "Anybody hear shots?" he called out. Heads shook and shoulders shrugged. "No gunfire here," Jack said into the radio. He handed it back to the officer. "Related?" Gonzales asked. "Who knows," Jack said. "A woman. Said she heard shots from this location, just a minute ago. Didn't stay on the line." As the two of them walked out of the room, Jack motioned to the gurney. "We're done with him, you can take him out." Jack walked over to the uniformed officer who had let him in. "Did anything look like it was missing when you got to the scene?" he asked. "They took a computer, I think," the officer said. "Cables and stuff were on the desk, but nothing was attached. Probably a laptop, everything was on top of the desk, no keyboard, no mouse. The desk was locked." Jack turned to Gonzales. "The phone was reading zero messages. Make sure it gets to the lab, see if they can get any deleted messages off of it. I'll have Jules get his phone records. I want to listen to that 911 call, something's screwy there."
He turned to the officer. "Get me that bag of his effects. I want to open that desk." The dead man was wheeled out, and Jack went back inside. There was an automatic in the top desk drawer. There was no magazine in it, and no round in the chamber. He found the magazine in the bottom drawer. This was not a guy who thought he would ever have to use the gun. There was no filing cabinet. There was nothing in the desk that seemed to relate to any business that a private detective might have. It looked like everything was on the missing computer. There was nothing more to go on in the room.
~~~
Jack is a good cop AND a good guy... Soon he was looking for Sandra, but Sandra doesn't know who to trust. Still, sooner or later, she has to have some type of help... She was willing to bargain with Jack if he'd play along... In the meantime, she already knew that she didn't have time to deal with anything but getting away...and then a bit of luck came about... And she joined a band...
This motley group who traveled in a trailer needed only one thing from Sandra--money for gas. She quickly said, "I'm In." But she soon discovered that most of the music played at small venues across the states was original... and...really good! Soon, she was acting more as a manager and found she was good at it... They were moving into little bars... and after the first night, it was so packed that they put up speakers on the outside and there was literally dancing in the streets!
Ok, I thoroughly enjoyed the break from reality that this story brings... My only regret that I couldn't also be listening to the music created by this group who threw out eclectic sounds that soon were being heard far and wide, so far, that Sandra realized that she needed to leave so that they could proceed to get the glory that was due to them... and none of the danger she presented...
Just for fun, I'm sharing one of the songs... Get ready to get into it!
Got a five leg dog,
The guitar played another bar alone, letting the words sink in.
He don't walk too well.
Again, the guitar took the next verse, as if in response.
Got a fun-ny gait, ...
Likes to sit and wait. ...
But we have our fun, ...
'Cause he LOVES to RUN!
The guitar took off, and Sandra could picture a dog running free and fast, five beats and a leap, five and a leap, fluid and smooth.
Hold him still until you say go,
He'll be back before the echo.
We will always be together,
Love to watch him run forever.
Pocket jumped up on the stage and sat down behind the drum kit, and Charlie followed, picking up his bass. Tentatively, Pocket started marking beats, just little taps on the cymbals. Charlie thumped the bass on the first beat of each measure, feeling his way into the music.
"I gotta say," Cocayne said to Sandra,
"he's made it work,
but it's only half a song.
There's no metaphor yet,
no kick in the pants,
make you think,
pull you off the floor finish to it."
She got up and joined the band on the stage, nodding her head with the beat. She took the microphone.
If you think you're strange,
Can't quite make it right,
Like it's never been,
Yours to fit right in,
When you hear the gun,
Just get UP and RUN!
Don't hold back
until you get there,
Let them talk 'cause
what do you care,
Show them all
there's nothing to it,
We were born to ride
right through it.
Now I have to say
Ladies and Gents
That's Just how a song
Actually Gits Writ!
Seriously, readers will really get into the song, and, if you noticed, there's a line thrown in that when you hear a gun, better get up and run!
And Sandra hugged each one and off she ran, but she was indeed in contact with Jack... You get the feeling that once you read a rhyming group of words, you just happen to go with the flow? Well, this is one lover of music--of all kinds--that willingly closes this review, keeping track of the beat...
His final thought was what a good deal he had gotten on the parachute.
That, folks, is the title of the last paragraph in this book... I think I'll just go out and find a little more jammin' to close...
Have a Great Day!
Gabby
No comments:
Post a Comment