One Death at a Time

By Thomas M. Hewlett

“People think Alcoholics Anonymous is for drunks. It’s not. It’s for us, the real drinkers. The blood drinkers. All the rest of those meetings are just for show.”

Los Angeles, 1948. Detective Jack Strayhorn is killed while chasing down a suspect in the Black Dahlia murders all by himself.

Los Angeles, 2010. Jack Strayhorn is back in L.A. as a private investigator with a simple mission: catch the bad guys and try not to kill any innocent people along the way.

To him and his kind, human blood is the strongest drug in the world. Fortunately for Jack, he found the secret group within AA dedicated to helping Vampires survive the madness and destruction of their disease.

When a city councilman with ties to a drug-dealing Fae clan is found dead in his home and the woman lying next to him is Jack’s current missing person’s case, tracking down the ghostlike hitman will test him like nothing before.

But this time, Jack won’t be alone. With the help of his unique powers of investigation, his magically talented friends, and a Medical Examiner with a few secrets of her own, Jack will face down a gang of outlaw biker werewolves, spell-casting Fae high on pixie dust, and an underground order of Vampires intent on ruling the world.

As Jack learned long ago, the only way to get through eternity is one death a time.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Thomas M. Hewlett
• Release date: Nov 21, 2013
• ISBN: 9781311893758

Thomas M. Hewlett

Thomas M. Hewlett grew up in Los Angeles and was raised on a steady diet of science fiction, fantasy, and all things mythic or paranormal. While he knew he wanted to be a writer at the age of twelve, after college he strayed from the path and into drugs and alcohol addiction. Hewlett had his first drink when he was seventeen and blacked out shortly after finishing it. He woke up thirteen years later, with little to show for his life besides a notebook full of unwritten books. Finally, in 2011 he hit rock bottom and ended in up in a rehab facility. It was there, at his lowest point that he rediscovered the power of writing and found the idea for his first novel, One Death at a Time, when a good friend suggested he write a story about “vampires in AA”. With the encouragement and support of his loving wife, he decided to combine his experiences of addiction/recovery with his love of modern fantasy and noir mystery. Writing the “Twelve Stakes” series saved Thomas’s life and became his way of telling a new story about himself. It’s his hope that other lost souls will find through his work a community of readers and the inspiration to re-imagine their lives.

Book preview

CHAPTER ONE

They come in the room hot – physically aroused and trailing a parade of pheromones.

He’s excited. He gives off a sharp, animal smell. She’s not excited. Her scent is Chanel No. 5, over muted arousal. He’s drunk and horny. She’s cool and predatory.

He grabs her by the hair and pulls her to him. She grimaces and lets out a short laugh. He growls into her ear and bites her neck, just enough to break her skin, and then drops her onto the bed. She touches her neck, sees tiny drops of blood on her fingers.

He pulls the costumes from the hidden closet behind the mirrored doors. He throws the white dress and blond wig at her. She strips to her underwear in the center of the room and pulls the dress over her head. He moves around her, circling, his blood rising. He pushes her onto the bed, grabs her by the thighs, and slides her dress up to her waist. He enters her with a deep grunt and pins her to the bed with his hips.

Suddenly, the door slams open, they don’t have time to react. Two shots, pop-pop, center mass in the head.

*   *   *

I stand over them like an angel of death.

The body on the left is Los Angeles Councilman Matt Torres, up-and-coming politico and heir apparent to the shadowy Torres fortune. He’s in a cheap vintage suit from the 60s with a reddish-brown wig falling off his head, its thick straight hair parted to the side. Sprawled next to him is Julie Barnes, UCLA grad student and my current missing persons case. Her wig is blonde and she’s staring up at the ceiling with a half-surprised, half amused smile on her face.

Both of them have been shot once clean through the center of the forehead. I guess my missing persons case is now a double homicide. I hate surprises, but I’ve learned to live with them. As an old junkie once told me, When one door closes, another one opens. But the hallways are a bitch. I move in for a closer look.

Christ.

I’m hit by a wall of rich and heady blood scent, with a pungent note of splattered brain matter. My own blood starts pounding in response, the heat rising in every part of my body.

I am overcome by a familiar feeling of lust and rage, a shrieking need to sink my teeth into soft, blood-filled flesh and taste that sweet release.

Get a grip.

I breathe in. I breathe out.

Easy does it, Jack, easy does it.

The heat in my face decreases, my pulse slows, and my eyes stay blue instead of flaring into red.

Strayhorn! Get some booties on or get the fuck out of my crime scene! Detective Robert Himes of the LAPD’s Special Homicide Division has spotted me from across the room and he’s not thrilled to see me.

Cops and crime scene techs swarm everywhere. Himes and his partner Detective Martin Dempsey are giving orders and directing traffic. These two are Abbott and Costello without the laughs. They’re veteran cops with forty years experience between them and there isn’t much they haven’t seen. Himes’s thin, jerky frame circles like a shark while Dempsey, tall, dark and solid, stands big and steady in the center of the room, a quiet, angry mountain.

Himes isn’t my biggest fan – he’s still trying to figure out why I’m allowed to waltz right through police-tape barriers with nothing more than a P.I. badge and a smile. My endearing personality doesn’t help things either.

I look up from the two bodies on the bed and wave at him.

No problem, Bobby. Thanks for the call.

I didn’t call you. And don’t fucking call me – that’s Detective Himes to you! he shouts.

Dempsey looks across at Himes and frowns. Himes scurries back over to the Crime Scene Unit techs and starts grumbling orders. Dempsey turns the frown on me and I give him a big fake smile. It’s a pretty good frown but I’ve seen worse.

I think your case is closed, Jack. That’s her, right? It’s her. Julie Allison Barnes. Twenty-four and single. Good student. Good family. But that was yesterday.

Yeah, that’s her. I got the job three days ago. I’ll get you the contact info for the parents. The dad’s a big time church official out east. There are five more kids but this one was the favorite.

The prodigal daughter won’t be returning. They have any idea what she was up to out here?

I shake my head.

Last they heard she was studying for a poli-sci degree and didn’t have time for boys. The parents are good people who are utterly clueless. I don’t envy Dempsey the call.

Dempsey walks over to me, shaking his head at the bleak remains of two wasted lives.

What the fuck’s up with the wigs and costumes?

Jack and Marilyn.

Dempsey snorts. Jesus, he says, A Kennedy kink. Behind closed doors, huh?

Julie’s dress is hiked up around her thighs and her eyes have fallen wide open, a sad mockery of the iconic shot from The Seven Year Itch. It would almost be funny if it weren’t so pathetic.

Look, Jack. While you’re here, why don’t you look around? Tell me what you think. Dempsey doesn’t make eye contact. I make him uncomfortable. He doesn’t trust me and doesn’t understand how I work. He just knows that when I show up to a murder, it gets solved.

Humans think they know what Vampires are – they’re angst-filled, beautiful boys who love nothing more than to brood over virginal young girls. I saw that movie and laughed my ass off. If humans knew the truth about us, they’d hunt us all down and wipe us out.

Because we’re all around you – we’re your neighbor, your co-worker, your favorite barista – and we’re always right on the edge of losing control. We let our guard down for a second and we turn into cold-blooded psychopaths who hunt down our prey with no remorse and no human feelings – only a need to satisfy an ancient, insatiable hunger.

In real life, that shiny boy Vampire would have slashed his girl’s throat with his teeth, drained her blood and torn her apart into tiny bloody pieces. Have you ever seen what a coyote can do to a kitten? You’d be lucky if you found enough of her to bury.

Alright, Detective, I mutter, I can spare five minutes, I guess. He nods and walks away.

Each Vampire has his own specialty and mine is blood. I am a connoisseur of blood. I can smell all the different notes in your blood and see your death in the air around your body. And once I catch his scent, I can track your killer down like a hellhound.

But it’s a narrow line I walk, and I’m always in danger of losing myself in the hunger and the thirst. The blood tells me its secrets but it’s relentless in its call to feed.

I know what you’re thinking. It’s torture, so why do I do it? You could call it penance for the sins of my first life. You could call it a search for atonement. Or you could just call it same shit, different day.

Turning back to the bodies, I block out the noise and smells of all the living people in the room, and sink into that cold, clinical space in my head. Julie smells young but far from innocent. There's a note of corruption in her blood. Cocaine, booze, anger, and desperate fear. Human bodies are marked by their lives and tell the story of their days. Julie’s exudes the ink and toner, cigarettes and bad coffee of her day job. The classroom beneath that in the notebook paper, laptop, and dry erase boards. Her bottom scent flows beneath the rest like a sewer. It’s the sickly sweet smell of vice: sweat, sex, smoke, and the clawing odor of a hundred nameless men.

Torres is all surface smells, the bright, thin shell of his life. A public façade of tailored silk suits, steak dinners and top shelf liquor, the dusty marble and weathered wood of City Hall, and the expensive leather seats of private power lunches all over town. But all of this sits like a bank of golden smog over something deeper and older. I smell oak and grass, laced with dark drugs and darker magic. The blood splashed around him is red to the eye but doesn’t smell anything like human. It’s crystal instead of iron, with a hint of dirt and rock mixed in.

The scent registers and I smile a greedy, predator’s smile. This crime scene just got interesting. Torres is true Faerie, an honest to God member of the Kingdom of the Sidhe. I lean in close to his body – it’s there, the telltale electric buzz of power, jumping right off his skin. Too subtle for human senses, but as loud as a radio signal to a Vampire. Fae blood is a rare and delicate vintage, not at all like the human varietals. I flick my tongue into the air – it’s not often a Vamp gets a taste of this stuff. The Fae are pretty damned powerful and they’re rather protective of the source.

This has to be handled carefully. With a dead tinkerbell on the scene, trouble is sure to follow. Right about now, his clan is starting to wonder why they haven’t heard from him. And when they find out what happened, they’ll want answers and revenge.

I move on to the killer’s scent. Curious. I can’t pick anything up. I inhale deeply, passing though all the scents I’ve already registered.

Ah, there it is. The killer is cold, a professional, no scent of adrenaline or epinephrine, which means he came in calm and left the same. No accelerated heart beat, no nervous reactions.

But who is he? I move closer to the trail, walk along his steps across the carpet, as close as I can without disturbing any evidence. I see his clothes; leather jacket, wool trousers, soft-soled Italian shoes, plastic disposable gloves – powdered (even the killers take care of their skin in this city). I inhale again for a deeper look.

Nothing.

I stop and try again, but it’s not there. He’s not there. No blood scent, no trail. What the hell? The killer stood in the center of the room and shot two people like he was ordering lunch and left without leaving a goddamn trace.

My pupils dilate and I feel a growl starting in my chest.

This makes no sense. Everybody leaves a trace.

Unless, that is, you’re not human.

I frown and let that last bit sink in. Looks like this is now officially a supernatural crime scene. I glance over at Dempsey and Himes. These two have no idea what they’re in for.

I turn back around and it hits me.

It’s heavy, acrid, and musky. A drug I’ve never smelled before. Julie and Torres are covered in it. It's in their bloodstream and coming out of their pores. I lean in close, inhale long and deep.

It comes on in a wave, building up fast and crashing over me. It’s deep and mellow like a vintage wine, but soft too, and almost seductive. I relax and let the scent all the way in and I’m immediately overcome by an intoxicating blend of joy, expectation, desire, and the overwhelming feeling that every good thing in life is waiting for me right around the corner, all I’ve got to do is run faster and I’ll catch it.

I stand up and shake my head furiously, trying to get myself back into focus. Dempsey looks over, his eyebrows raised in a question. I hold up my hand – everything’s okay, boss.

Still dizzy, I move towards the hallway and the smell of fresh air coming through the front door. A hand grips my arm and shoots back when my muscles tense.

Whoa, Jack. Where are you going? What have you got for me? Dempsey is standing next to me. He pulls me out of the room, into a quiet space behind the stairs.

"What have I got? Torres was here for sex, obviously. But Julie wasn’t into it for kicks. She was here on business. They started fucking on the bed and it got kind of rough. Also, they were both high as kites. You’ll run the tox screen and you won’t know what it is. Don’t bother asking, I don’t know either.

The killer came in that way, got right up on them here, and popped them both. It was quick. They never even saw him. The shooter is a pro. No hesitation, no shakes, no emotion. And he’s clean. No traces and no evidence. You’ll look and you won’t find anything.

Anything else?

Watch out for this one. He’s good and he’s ruthless. It’s strictly a job for this guy, so if by some chance you actually find him, don’t fuck around. Throw as many guys as you can at him and don’t give him a shot at you – because he won’t miss.

CHAPTER TWO

There are three things in Los Angeles you should never turn your back on: a brushfire, an angry cop, and a politician with something to hide. The fire will take everything you own, the cop will club you senseless, but the politician will burn you out, beat you down, and then really go to work on you.

Chances are, you got one dead politician, another one is somewhere in the background. I don’t know enough about Torres yet to be sure, but Los Angeles has a lot of shallow graves beneath its shiny, bright streets, full of people who made the right kind of friends and the wrong kind of enemies.

I roll down the twisted avenues of the Hollywood Hills, mulling the case over, such as it is, and letting gravity pull the car to somewhere cleaner, or at least somewhere less dirty.

I wind my way around narrow, circling streets, squeezing past a Porsche, two BMW all-terrain tanks, and one of those wind-up, hybrid electric things. In the hybrid is a guy in coiffed hair and two hundred dollar sunglasses and a woman with enough plastic in her face to make another version of herself. The guy gives me the stink-eye as I wedge my way past him in my giant submarine of a car, as if I'm personally shitting on the environment right in front of him. I look him in the eye and honk my horn. His face gets red and he yells something I can’t make out over all the noise.

I should let it go. Los Angeles has always welcomed the self-righteous rich. They’re a good source of revenue. Call it the guilt tax. Charity minded socialites can guilt them out of half their trust funds in one well-prepared season. They’ll give the other half to whoever keeps up the fence around the ghetto.

Sunset Boulevard opens up before me at the bottom of the hill and I make my way along the Strip for a little sightseeing. It’s all over-priced bistros, glitzy bars, and flashy clothes. Pretty as a Christmas ornament and about as useful.

Last time I was here, this part of Sunset was nothing but sleazy mob hangouts, backdoor whorehouses, and badly hidden bookie joints. It wasn’t yet LAPD territory, so I only came by for a few drinks, a quick lay, and the occasional shakedown. The Sheriff’s boys got all the serious payoffs, but a Los Angeles detective with a loose interpretation of the law was always welcome.

I put away those dark and dirty times and focus on the street and the life around me. I drive on, scoping the foot traffic on the sidewalks. Women in high heels and too much makeup, guys with bad suits and desperate faces – it’s good to know some things haven’t changed.

A short drive down Santa Monica Boulevard gets me to the Formosa Café for a nightcap and some time to think. I luck out and only have to park two blocks away.

The little red