Skin Walk Read online

  Skin

  Walk

  Book 2 of the

  Lacey Fitzpatrick and Sam Firecloud

  Mystery Series

  Melissa Bowersock

  Copyright © 2017 by Melissa Bowersock

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means without the prior written permission of the publishers, except by a reviewer who may quote brief passages in an online review or one printed in a newspaper, magazine or journal.

  First Printing

  All characters appearing in this work are fictitious. Any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

  Cover by coversbydesign.net.

  ISBN-13: 978-1543273823

  ISBN-10: 1543273823

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  I am deeply indebted to two Navajo Rangers, Jonathan Dover (Ret. Lt.) and Ranger Sergeant Stanley Milford Jr. The Navajo Rangers are a federal law enforcement organization that serves the Navajo Nation of the Southwestern United States. Among other duties, the Rangers maintain and protect natural and historic sites, including national parks and archaeological sites. They are committed to protecting the traditions, history and artifacts of their culture.

  Stanley Milford Jr. and Jonathan Dover are two of these respected Navajo Rangers, but over the years, they have taken on additional duties. Seeing a need, they began investigating reports of paranormal activity, including UFO and Bigfoot sightings, and Skinwalkers. These two men gave generously of their time and knowledge to help me make this story as authentic as possible. Many (although not all) of the incidents portrayed here came directly from their files and were witnessed and documented.

  I sincerely hope I have done justice to their contribution, and to the warm and friendly Navajo people I portray.

  Books by Melissa Bowersock

  The Appaloosa Connection

  The Blue Crystal

  Burning Through

  Finding Travis

  (No Time for Travis Series Book 1)

  Being Travis

  (No Time for Travis Series Book 2)

  Fleischerhaus

  Ghost Walk

  (Lacey Fitzpatrick and Sam Firecloud Mystery Book 1)

  Skin Walk

  (Lacey Fitzpatrick and Sam Firecloud Mystery Book 2)

  Goddess Rising

  Lightning Strikes

  Love’s Savage Armpit by Amber Flame

  (Originally published as The Pits of Passion)

  The Man in the Black Hat

  Marcia Gates: Angel of Bataan

  Queen’s Gold

  The Rare Breed

  Remember Me

  Sonnets for Heidi

  Stone’s Ghost

  Superstition Gold

  Skin

  Walk

  Melissa Bowersock

  What cannot be said

  will be wept.

  -Sappho

  ONE

  Lacey froze. She watched the shadowy shape in her rearview mirror and sank down ever so slightly in her seat until her head was below the headrest. She flattened herself against the seat back as much as possible as the man walked past her car.

  He never looked her way. Only hunched down into the upturned collar of his coat and headed unerringly toward the front entrance of the bar.

  Holding her handy little spy camera in her lap, Lacey turned it on, then held it up to record the preacher as he pushed through the door and disappeared into the dingy little gay bar. His head was turned away, so even the night vision of her camera wouldn’t get a good view of his face, but she had plenty more video of him in that same coat, going to that same bar. Tonight, she hoped, she’d get the money shot and be done with this job.

  She had nothing against preachers, although she had no use for them, either, and nothing against gays, but she hated liars and cheats. Whether this guy went by Brother John or Reverand Leverbrook, he was very definitely both a liar and a cheat. He bilked money from the parishioners of his growing Baptist congregation, promising to fight the “gay menace” that was threatening their children at every turn, then spent it at gay bars and porno movie houses.

  Why was it, she wondered, that the ones who screamed the loudest about the “gay agenda” were always the ones caught with their pants down around their ankles and a boy toy in an isolated park bathroom? Or the ones who ranted the most about pornography were always the ones caught trolling Craigslist for preteens open to videotaping sex?

  Either the anti-immorality rants were a pure smokescreen or else the individuals were unable to come to terms with their own foibles, and projected the “evil” outward rather than deal with their own proclivities. Whichever it was, Lacey couldn’t care less about the psychology behind it. All she cared about were the victims. And God knew there was no shortage of those.

  She grabbed her purse, making sure she had both her cell phone and her spy camera safely within, and headed into the bar.

  It was mostly men inside, of course, but there were a few women, and some eyed her. This was now the third time she’d been in there, getting a good fix on Brother John’s routine, strategizing the best place to be to get the evidence she needed. The counter ran down the long back of the room with a short dog-leg around a corner. She took an empty stool on that short side and angled herself toward the far end of the longer counter. She ordered a beer, then laid her phone on the counter and held the pen camera in her hand. From any distance at all, it looked like a stylus. Much less obvious than trying to film with her phone.

  She could never quite get used to the stink of the place. Beer, sweat and bad breath. The music was too loud to allow for any decent conversation. This was not a nightclub, a social gathering place for dancing and partying. This was a meat market.

  Brother John sat at the end of the long counter, diagonally across from Lacey. She turned on her camera and held it at an angle that captured him, turning the pen slightly to get the best view on her phone’s screen. Occasionally she tapped the phone with the pen, just so it looked like she was actually doing something.

  The preacher tossed down a couple shots, glancing around as if he were waiting for someone. He seemed impatient but not nervous. Good. He didn’t suspect that he was being watched—and filmed.

  Taking small sips of her beer, she kept an eye on her phone. There. Someone moving up next to the preacher. Young guy, early twenties. Bleached blond hair, nicely sculpted nose and lips. The preacher, balding and easily in his forties, smiled and nodded. They talked quietly for a moment, heads together. Lacey could see the preacher’s eyes eating the boy up with a spoon. The hunger on his face made her want to gag.

  Finally the kid nodded and jerked a thumb toward the back. The preacher downed the last of his shot and slid off the bar stool. As Lacey watched on her phone’s screen, the two of them slipped around the far corner of the bar and disappeared into a back room.

  Bingo, she thought. This should be enough. The two sisters who had hired her were convinced their elderly mother was being scammed by the preacher’s church, since none of the hefty donations ever seemed to result in efforts to build the promised day care and Sunday school facilities. How could they, Lacey snorted, when all the money was going to alcohol and male prostitutes?

  She shut off the camera and cleared the screen on her phone, turning around on her stool to leave. Her knees banged abruptly against someone’s hip.

  “Hey, Red,” a sultry voice said. A tall, thin woman with piercings in her eyebrow and lip smiled at Lacey. Her teeth were terrible, jagged and decayed. Ugh, Lacey thought. Meth mouth. “You’re new here, aren’t you?” The woman tugged playfully on Lacey’s dark red hair.

  “Uh, yeah, sort of,” Lacey said. She kept her voice friendly but slid off the stool. “But you know what? I just got a text and I need to go. Sorry. Maybe next time.” She shouldered her purse and edged around the woman.

  “I’ll be here. Name’s Tina.”

  Lacey nodded and waved, then scooted out the door. Yeah, no, she thought. Not a woman and certainly not a meth addict.

  She breathed deeply of the fresh, damp air outside. Fresher, at least. L.A. was not known for its fresh air, but any air minus the stink of beer and bodies would do. That was one of the many drawbacks to being a private investigator: her suspects, generally speaking, did not hang out in the nicest places.

  In the four months since she’d quit her job as a security guard and gone full time as a P.I., she’d seen her share of dark and dingy places. Well, it was not that different from her time in the homicide department of the LAPD. Either way, she was dealing with the dregs of society. Maybe she should advertise more for white collar criminals. People who lived in penthouses and had slush funds.

  She snorted as she climbed into her car and started it. Yeah, like she could afford to advertise at all. No, all her business came by word of mouth, and it was slow coming. Having the two sisters hire her to rat out the preacher was a godsend.

  She drove back to her apartment and checked the clock as she came in the door. Almost midnight; no calling the sisters tonight. Tomorrow would be soon enough.

  Anyway, she was toast. She jumped in the shower to rinse off the stink of the bar and then fixed herself a cup of tea. Early December in L.A. may not have been as frigid as the northern tier of the country, but it was cold enough for her.

  She took her tea to the dining room table and reviewed the footage she’d recorded. That little spy camera did a good job. She was glad she’d sprung for the upgraded model, expensi
ve as it was. Even in the low light of the bar, the preacher’s lust was obvious. The man couldn’t possibly explain away the blatant arousal as religious fervor. This was not going to be any prayer meeting, although one or the other of the two men would probably end up on his knees.

  She clicked off the video and glanced around her empty apartment. It would be nice to have someone to talk to about this. She trusted her instincts, but felt better when she had a partner for a quick reality check. Two heads were always better than one.

  But this job didn’t have any ghosts in it.

  She sighed and sipped her tea. It had been months since Sam Firecloud had called her in to help with a haunting. She and the Navajo had struck up an unusual partnership, combining his talent as a medium with her abilities as a researcher to tackle unsolved cold cases. As weird as it was, she found those cases particularly satisfying. She was not only able to research and tease apart a mystery, but sometimes brought a murderer to justice and helped a troubled soul to move on. The only thing better than that would be to stop a horrific crime before it happened, but neither she nor Sam—even with his sensitivity to ghosts—could foretell the future. That was one talent neither of them had yet developed.

  But enough of that. She’d call the sisters in the morning and turn over all her data. It would be nice to not have to slink around in dingy bars for a while.

  ~~~

  “That’s disgusting!” Mariette Bledsoe said after watching the video.

  “Pipe down,” her sister Sidney hissed. She glanced around the dining room of the Beverly Hills Hotel, but no one else seemed to take any notice.

  Lacey refrained from making any comment. It wasn’t her place to be judge or jury, but only to gather information. What her clients did with that information was entirely up to them and none of her concern.

  She did, however, notice the almost gleeful anticipation shared by the Bledsoe sisters as they watched the video. It wasn’t the first time she had seen that. Either the sisters were getting their own little jolt of prurient excitement from the shadowy goings on or else they were just thrilled to have the evidence to bring down Brother John and free their mother from his scamming grasp. Lacey had a sneaking feeling that at least some of their protective fervor for their mother was more motivated by keeping their inheritance intact than with keeping their mother safe from con men. The silk blouses, sleekly highlighted hair and flawless make up all spoke to a lifestyle they’d be loath to give up. But, whatever the reason, it was all the same to Lacey.

  “So here is everything I’ve got,” she said, handing across a large envelope filled with detailed observations—dates, times, places—plus several DVDs with copies of all the video and still photos she’d shot. “I hope your mother will be receptive to the findings.”

  “Receptive?” Sidney asked. “What do you mean? It’s all right here in black and white.”

  Lacey shrugged. “People believe what they want to believe. However, I do hope you’ll consider all the other people this jerk has scammed, most of them probably less able to afford the ‘donations’ than your mother. I’d love to see them all get their money back.”

  The sisters looked at each other blankly.

  “What I would do, if it were me,” Lacey said, “is first make a copy of everything, then go visit Brother John and show it all to him. I’d give him a deadline—maybe a couple weeks—to give back all the money or I’d take all the evidence to the L.A. Times or KTLA or someplace like that.” She smiled innocently to the sisters. “Just a thought. But it’d be nice to do a good deed for all those poor people.”

  As Lacey stowed her phone back in her purse, she saw the women peek at each other, sly smiles on their faces. Perhaps imagining themselves as the champion do-gooders of the day. What the hell, a little positive recognition never hurt.

  “So,” she said, sitting up and ready to go, “I believe we are done here. Unless you have any questions.”

  “Oh, yes—no,” Mariette said abruptly. She pulled a check from her purse and handed it across the table to Lacey. “I’ve, uh, added a little bonus,” she said with a smile.

  “Well, that’s very sweet of you,” Lacey said, only glancing at the check as she stuffed it in her purse. “Thank you so much, ladies. If you ever need anything else…”

  “Oh, we’ll call you,” Sidney said. “Thank you for everything.” They all stood and shook hands.

  “My pleasure,” Lacey said. “Enjoy the rest of your afternoon.”

  Cool, she thought as she left the hotel. That’ll get me through the rest of the month and then some. Nothing like a little Christmas bonus to brighten the day.

  ~~~

  That evening, Lacey gave in to one of her favorite guilty pleasures and bought herself a fast food hamburger and a large order of fries for dinner. As celebrations go, it wasn’t much, but that nice bonus put her in the mood for the modest reward. She deserved it. She’d done a very thorough job.

  Munching the burger as she stared out the back slider of her apartment, she was already thinking ahead to what jobs she could scare up. It was lucky she had the history she did with the LAPD. She had many contacts, many people in and around the business who knew her and trusted her. Even after that circus around her vice officer ex-boyfriend’s arrest and conviction for drug dealing and extortion, she had emerged relatively clean. Resigning from the force had been a heartbreaking but necessary decision as her presence became a distraction, but even that had been a testament to her code of ethics.

  Luckily the bread and butter of being a P.I. was the mundane, the ordinary. Serving subpoenas, doing background checks, doing surveillance. The flashier stuff was fewer and far between, but at least she’d been able to keep her head above water.

  The only drawback, she was finding, was that she spent too much time in her own head. She really missed not having someone to bounce ideas off of. Having someone to double-check her assumptions. Keep her honest.

  So it was with pleasant surprise that her phone lit up with the name Sam Firecloud a couple of nights later. She answered eagerly.

  “Hey.”

  “Hey, yourself. How you doing?”

  “Doing okay,” she said. “How’s about you?”

  “Yeah, all right.”

  “The kids good?” she asked. Sam had two kids by his ex-wife: Daniel, twelve, and Kenzie, eight.

  “Oh yeah, they’re fine.”

  “Looking forward to Christmas?” she asked.

  “Yeah. You’ll never guess what Daniel wants.”

  Lacey smiled. “What?”

  “A drone. I think he’s going to start doing surveillance on the neighbors.”

  “Uh oh,” she laughed. “Guess my suggestion that he think about becoming a cop sunk in. How’s his hand?”

  Six months earlier, Daniel had stepped in between two fighting boys at school when the older boy pulled out a gun. Daniel had ended up saving the younger boy’s life by deflecting the bullet shot at him—with his hand. Luckily his injury had not been critical, and he’d been awarded a medal of valor by the L.A.P.D.

  “It’s fine,” Sam said. “He gets a lot of mileage out of the scar—probably more than the medal. Makes him cool, you know?”

  “Yeah, I’ll bet. So what’s up?” Lacey knew Sam never called just to chitchat. The half Navajo wasn’t much for small talk. He either had something to say, or didn’t.

  He heaved a sigh. “I got a call from my brother. There’s something going on out on the reservation.”

  Lacey blinked. “Brother?” She never knew Sam had a brother.

  “Yeah. He lives out there, outside of Tuba City. About a month ago, my cousin was killed. It was ruled an animal attack. The body was badly torn up by coyotes.”

  “Oh my God,” Lacey breathed. “How awful. I’m so sorry.”

  “Thanks. That was kind of weird in itself. Coyotes are very common out there, but they rarely attack people. They’re more apt to go after chickens or small dogs. Plus my cousin had lived out there his whole life. He knew the land, knew the animals. He wouldn’t be caught off guard like that.”