Daniel steps into the frame of the open door. “Anonymous caller,” Daniel announces. “The report came from an anonymous caller. Male.”
My gaze shoots to Lang’s. “To my point. Just like the call last night. It’s the same person.”
Daniel motions to the security feed on my computer. “Did you catch him on camera?”
I bristle uncomfortably with what could be seen as a logical observation and question from a member of law enforcement. But he’s not law enforcement and I don’t know him. At all. It’s time for Daniel to mosey on downstairs, and I’m about to say as much, but Lang isn’t quite ready for him to go adios. “What I want to know, Daniel,” he says, “is how you snagged a security job with that tattoo on your arm. How long you been in a gang?”
There’s a barely perceivable stiffening of Daniel’s spine.
“Most people aren’t cops who know what it means. I got out a long time ago.”
“When?” I ask. “Because that particular gang is known for its brutality.”
“When I was eighteen, fifteen years ago now. Right after my pops got shot.”
“He was in the gang, too,” I assume.
“He pulled me in,” he confirms, which isn’t uncommon. These kids follow their fathers and siblings into a destructive future. “That was in San Antonio,” he continues. “After that, I got sent here to Austin to live with my grandma. She whipped my ass into shape.”
This all sounds reasonable, but I find myself pushing for more. “Where’s your mother?” I ask.
“She died when I was twelve of an overdose.” His tone is flat, his expression unreadable, and I feel the cut of a young child losing his mother.
Lang shows no sympathy. “In other words, you have a sealed juvenile record.”
“Look me up, man,” Daniel challenges. “I have no record.”
“And yet you’re a robocop, not a real one?” Lang snaps back.
“My girlfriend’s pregnant. This is my second job. I’ve been at this only a month.”
“What’s your day job?” I ask.
“Dell tech support.” His fingers curl into his palms. “Why do I feel like I’m being questioned for a crime? I was in my uniform, doing my job.”
Lang motions to his tattoo. “That gang you’re representing on your body there is a slaughterhouse of killers, therefore that tattoo is always going to get you attention.”
Daniel’s expression tightens and when footsteps sound behind him, he’s quick to seize an escape. “I better get back downstairs.” He backs away, into the hallway, and Wade steps into my apartment, but I’m still focused on Daniel.
I’m bothered by our exchange with him. But isn’t that The Poet’s point in standing at my door and at Dave’s bedroom window in a hoodie and baseball hat? For me to see monsters in every corner?
No. Not monsters. He wants me to see him everywhere.
Chapter 56
Three months earlier…
I sit at the end of the bar, in a hole-in-the-wall Mexican restaurant where Captain Jeremy Jazz chitchats with a pretty blonde waitress half his age. He touches her arm and gives her cleavage a deep, lingering inspection, the kind of inspection a married man should save for his wife. His objectionable behavior doesn’t come as a surprise. I’ve spent what is most of my life watching him sink deeper and deeper into a life of sin to such a degree that it’s as if I’m watching my own father.
I sip my drink, a tequila and lime mixture that isn’t my normal preference. I rarely deviate from my set structure—there is safety in what I know—but I want everything about this night to be memorable and unique. This is the night that will ensure she blossoms and becomes the magnificent poison rose of judgment that she is destined to become.
As if she heard me whispering her name, the poison rose walks into the restaurant, Detective Samantha Jazz, the future in ways her father can’t begin to understand. Her spine is stiff, confrontation in the air, the sins of her father on her tongue.
She crosses the room toward his booth, a beauty: petite with long brown hair and piercing green eyes that have the liberty of disarming or charming. Skills she will find useful throughout her training. She settles into her father’s booth, facing me, and I settle in to watch the show.
In The Merchant of Venice, Shakespeare wrote, “The sins of the father are to be laid upon the children.”
A profound truth. We inherit our parents’ sins, but we decide in which way we allow them to influence our behavior. Samantha has proven her father will drown in the blood of his sins without her. We, she and I, live a destiny meant to protect the sinners that are all of humanity with the prophecies and truths of the great words, and while this is true, there are exceptions to that protection. Anyone who stands between destiny and a Master of the Word such as me, or his protégée, such as Samantha, must be eliminated.
A man slides onto the stool next to me, a beanie on his bald head. I rotate to face the bar and down my drink, sliding him an envelope of cash. My keen side-eye watches as he opens the fold and peers inside, scanning the funds, his thick lips curving. Tonight will be messy for necessary reasons, and I don’t do messy. My visitor excels at such things. It’s a kismet connection. We have a shared hatred of Jeremy Jazz. Captain Jeremy Jazz put this man in jail for a decade while he kept Samantha in a jail of his making for far too long. The man doesn’t speak. He knows what is to be done. He knows what to do after it’s over, where to go, how to shelter. He simply stands and exits the restaurant to prepare for what comes later this evening.
Jeremy Jazz has served one necessary purpose in Samantha’s life. He’s opened his daughter’s eyes, which was abundantly necessary. To protect herself, she had to see sin clearly in all the places it hides and pretends to be something it isn’t. Sin can pretend to be fragile, sweet, honest, pure, intelligent, and yes, even parental when it is none of those things and yet all of those things.
The bartender refills my glass and I sip my tequila again, savoring the bite of the liquor gliding down my throat and warming my chest. She’ll feel the bite, too, tonight, but the burden that is that man will be lifted off her shoulders. She will rise stronger. We will rise stronger.
Chapter 57
Wade steps into the apartment and shuts the door. “I talked to patrol. I heard what happened. I don’t like the attention this guy is giving you, Sam.”
“No fear,” Lang says sourly. “The apartment hired a gangbanger to keep an eye on things. And we don’t even know if this guy was The Poet.”
Irritation bristles and I whirl on Lang. “Oh come on. He stood at Dave’s bedroom window last night. You think my father’s killer followed me to the murder scene last night?”