Quickfinger

By Désirée Nordlund

An unexpected friendship between the police detective and a thief is rocked when there is a murder, and the thief is their prime suspect.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Désirée Nordlund
• Release date: Jul 31, 2021
• ISBN: 9781005077587

Désirée Nordlund

I wrote my first novel when I was thirteen. It was more of a short story. Thirty-six pages. But I sent it to a novel contest nevertheless without a clue about its zero chances. Since then, I have learned a lot. I have even won a contest and have several short films based on my script produced. I'm not that best-selling world-famous writer I thought I would be when I was a teenager, but it is the writing that gives me joy.

Book preview

QUICKFINGER

by Désirée Nordlund

COPYRIGHT AND LICENCE

Published by Désirée Nordlund at Smashwords.

Copyright © 2021 by Désirée Nordlund

All rights reserved. This book or any portion thereof may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever without the express written permission of the author except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events, locales, and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.

Second Edition, 2018

Smashwords Edition, License Notes

This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to your favorite ebook retailer and purchase your own copy.

Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

AUTHOR’S THANK YOU

Andreas B for his feedback, support, and attitude.

For making a superb trailer for this book: Jerry J White III, Alicia Marie Sixtos, Shari Rhone Washington, Brian Swinehart, Kenny Keeler, Jessica Vergon, Shane Reilly, Jane Paul McCarron, and Kendall Beeman.

Watch the trailer on YouTube.

Chapter One

From the sky, most of Los Angeles looked the same – street by street, packed with small houses with tiny gardens. It was incredible how uniform the city was. The vast majority of L.A. consisted of one-story homes with a garage and a minuscule lawn in the backyard. Some places did not correspond to a grid. Like downtown, with glassy skyscrapers and worn-down apartment buildings, though those epithets did not show on Google Maps. Beverly Hills had curvy streets and more pools but was just as packed as the rest. There were Trousdale Estates and The Bird Streets, yes, places that could be as angel-like as the city’s name allluded to.

Celerina had spent hours and days studying the geography of Los Angeles. Area by area, she engulfed the vast city where she lived. It was her way to get the world to make sense. There were a lot of things she did not have where she grew up, in Nevada, but she sure had space. The whole idea of collecting four million people in one place was not her idea of smart.

There was a county in South Dakota with the same number of square miles as Los Angeles. A little over fourteen thousand people lived in that county. There were two-hundred-and-seventy-eight times as many in L.A. Just a little bit of trivia her brain had figured out on its own and served to her on a plate when she watched the satellite photos of the packed streets.

A few years ago, her whole sensible world had been her apartment – a miserable place with neighbors she knew by face and name, but little else. She had wanted to spend time with them. The first year she had chatted, even knocked on their doors, to get to know who lived there. Unfortunately, the interest was not mutual. Correct social interaction did not include arguing for the fun of it, discussing and dissecting political situations, and make witty comments. People in the house began to avoid her when it was clear that she did not want to talk about the latest gossip or some recipe for eggnog at Christmas.

No, the world made little sense to her. But she did her best to learn more about it. One day she hoped her studies would pay off and the puzzle would solve itself. Why did she stay? Because where else would she go? Where else could she go without money? Besides, she did not like to give up. She wanted things to make sense before she continued on, learn whatever there was to learn. If that made her mind uncomfortable, then so be it. It was not a bad thing spending your life wanting to learn.

Celerina put the tablet aside, got out of bed and pulled on her jeans. In the laundry pile, she searched for a shirt that was cleaner than the one she had worn the day before. She found one and put it on. It was time to go to the laundromat again.

She unpacked her backpack on the bed. Inside were just a few tokens – nothing worth selling on its own. One of them was a small tray of silver. She flipped it in her hands. It was such a pointless item. Why did people keep such things? That visit had been a waste of her time. She pushed the laundry inside the backpack instead.

Some breakfast would have been perfect. Celerina checked the time on her phone. More like lunch, actually. She opened the fridge. It wa time to do some shopping, too. The jar on top of the fridge was just about empty. She pocketed the few dollar bills inside. It was going to be one of those days.

She grabbed her current reading before she left. She enjoyed laundromat days because there was nothing to do but read.

Police Detective Patricia Palmer sat by her dying mother in the hospice. Patricia, or Trisha for those who had become friends with her, had passed the aget of forty a just few years ago. She was no longer in need of motherly care. These last years, it had been the other way around – her mom had needed her.

Now, the woman who had given birth to her, fed her, loved her, and dried her tears was about to die any day now. It could be hours, it could be weeks. The possibility that she would recover and return to her normal life was as impossible as Thor creating lightning with his hammer or polar bears eating penguins.

Though Trisha knew all people must die, just as her father had done many years before, she had always seen her mother as immortal. It had come as a shock when the first signs of approaching death had appeared. Her father had been beaten to death by a young woman who had seen too many movies and not realized what a fist could do to a man. It had never been a matter of aging on his part. One day he was part of her life and the next he was not. Her mother, on the other hand, had aged.

Trisha realized this when her mother complained that her daughter was always so impatient and in a rush all the time, never allowing her to think things through. It was not that Trisha had changed, and it was not her mind that went faster without her noticing, it was her mom’s that was slowing down. Two years later, and it was like waiting for a sloth to move, yet in her mother’s eyes, it was still she who was 'going so fast these days.'

Another year passed and she had been hospitalized, unable to take care of herself, and her basic needs. It was undeniable: Dara Jamille, who had brought her into this world and been there for her, was about to die.

Patricia had cared about a lot of people in her life. She had always enjoyed helping out when needed, had engaged herself in social activities, and fought for a better world on the small, graspable scale. When she got married and they had been blessed with two sons, she had found to her utter surprise that, though she had supported many other young children, she would do anything for her own boys. The surprise was not in what she would do for them but what she realized she would not have done for all the others she had helped.

Until then, she had never thought she would ever rank people. To her shame now, she would. If there was a group of children, her sons among them, and she could only save two, she would grab her own kids and run. Her husband had told her this was only natural, and he was probably right, but for her, it was not a pleasant conclusion.

Being African-American and growing up in a town with a large part populated by people with a Latin-American origin, creating a town of many cultures, everyone’s equal value had been a guiding principle all her life. She had defended this opinion and lived by it. Every criminal she had ever caught could be sure of a fair and respectful treatment from her. Every child she had found in the debris of fighting parents had found a safe haven by her side.

Even if it was as natural as it could be, she was not comfortable with the idea that she valued her kids’ lives more than other children or other people for that matter. Now, by her mother’s deathbed, she not only had to accept her mother’s mortality; she also had to admit that she would not fight for her mother’s life.

In case of a fire, she would save the nurse, the doctors, and the other visitors long before she paid any attention to the dying. The lives of the unknown around her were worth more to her than her own dying mom. Natural and logical as it was, she fought to accept the feelings that ran through her like a bucket of ice water.

Beaumont Chaney walked into his captain’s office together with Trisha, his long-time professional partner and colleague. Their commanding officer, Sarah Graham, sat on the other side of the desk. While he knew Trisha’s family and had spent quite a lot of time with them, he knew little about his boss. Graham did not share her private life at work. Being a bimbo-looking woman had disadvantages, and he knew his boss had had to fight to get to the position she now had, at the age of fifty-five.

Her long blond hair and ample bosom remained, same as her slender waist. Beau found it ironic that while she supported the women in the police force to achieve equality, she treated him as if he was Trisha’s handsome sidekick – the decorative part of a duo that the hero could share her thoughts with to let the audience knew what was going on. Like he was a babe in a Bond-movie.

Trisha did not consider him as such, and their previous captain had matched them together because their personalities complimented each other. It had been right after his promotion to detective. One young, one experienced. Beau knew his strength was in his charm. Maybe that was the source of Graham’s attitude, he thought. He had a knack for knowing what people needed to feel comfortable and spill their secrets.

His boss wanted to keep a professional distance, and the effect of Beau’s presence might risk to ruin it. Like he was an irresistible perfume, with impact impossible to control. The idea was absurd in Beau’s opinion. And Graham should be experienced enough to know that he had no intention to be anything but professional with his boss. Sarah Graham had earned her position on her own merits, and he intended to do the same.

This morning, the captain handed them a paper. Trisha took it.

A double murder last night, Graham informed them. Ellery and Felicia Hunter was found murdered in their bed, by the two security guards arriving in response to the burglary alarm. The CSI-team is there now.

The paper was a printout from their case system. So far all it contained was an address and a statement from the security guards who had faced the scene.

Relatives informed? Beau asked.

No. There’s a son in town. Theron Hunter. Get in touch with him at the house.

Of course Beau snapped. Overall he liked Graham, but she had a habit of telling them what to do like they had no clue how to do their job. On the other hand, it was this ability to keep track of even the little things that made her go far. She did not leave things to their fate nor did she blame the detectives and officers under her if something was missed in the process.

Celerina walked down the sidewalk browsing her book. She stumbled into a man. He caught her and stopped her from falling. It was a middle-aged man in a suit.

Oh, I’m so sorry! Celerina blamed herself. What kind of clumsy person walks right into things while they read?

At least you’re staring at a book and not a phone, the man replied with a grin and let go of her. But you should watch where you’re going, miss.

Quite a gentleman, she thought. They were rare these days. Was he flirting with her? She did not know, never had. Unless they overdid it with gestures and hints with the size of a dinosaur, she could not tell.

Yes, I should. You didn’t run me over, that's something. Celerina did not get why his smiling face changed to a frowning stare. As a truck would, I mean, she added to smooth over the involuntary sexual hint. The man’s friendly face was gone anyway.

Just don’t walk and read at the same time.

Celerina watched his back as he continued down the sidewalk. All these metaphors. They made it so difficult