Bad Moon Rising Read Online Free PDF Page A

we’d be out
of business.”
    “Yeah?” J.D. gave a short, dry laugh that caused a
fresh spear of pain to cut through him. “I guess we’ll see soon enough, won’t
we?” He shoved by Mallory and moved up the alley.
    “Get some help for those ulcers!” Mallory shouted.
     
    Although the sweltering night air was rife with fear and tension—not to
mention suspicion over every sex-starved male who cruised slowly by in search
of companionship—J.D. had no problem locating Honey. Most of the hookers
prowling the district at midnight had been his clients at one time or another,
and they were fairly certain he wasn’t capable of decapitating and eviscerating
a woman whether he approved of her morals or not.
    Honey occupied an apartment on the second floor of a
renovated warehouse that had, at the turn of the twentieth century, been the
Jamieson Cottonseed Oil Mill. However, a devastating fire on June 23, 1925, had
consumed one-half of the warehouse district along the river, and the extent of
rebuilding the Jamieson Mill had extended only to its redbrick walls when the
owner declared bankruptcy and left the warehouse to fall back into decay.
    Marcus DiAngelo’s father, Mitchell, had purchased the
properties and rebuilt. Marcus had inherited it all upon his father’s untimely
death, which had shown evidence of a mob hit. But that, too, had been swept
under the city’s ever-spreading carpet of See No Evil.
    Honey had greasy platinum-blond hair with black roots,
breast implants that must have set her pimp back a bundle, and tattoos over her
arms and down the outside of her legs. Her nails were painted black, the polish
peeling off in chips. Each ear was studded with five dangling bobs and on each
finger was a silver ring, the kind the tourists bought at a booth in the
market. They were staining her skin green.
    She looked fifty, but J.D. suspected she was more like
thirty. The business was hard on the girls ... so were the drugs she was apparently shooting. The insides of her arms were
scarred with tracks, and her nose looked as if it had been scoured with sand
paper. However, at the moment, she appeared to be semilucid, if not totally
traumatized over Cherry’s demise. She paced her apartment, pulling at her hair
one minute and crying the next.
    As a defense attorney, J.D. knew from experience that
before he could hope to secure the kind of information that he needed, a
relationship of trust had to be developed. Patience was necessary. Except he
wasn’t feeling very patient at the moment. What little patience he held on to
these days had vaporized the instant he’d seen a headless Cherry Brown laid
open like a gutted pig.
    “I already told the cops all this. I don’t want to
talk about it again.”
    “I understand.”
    “It was horrible.” She covered her face and whimpered.
    “I understand.”
    “He cut off her head!”
    She was losing it. Time to back off a little. Think
sympathy.
    He walked to her and took her in his arms. “It’s okay.
Calm down, sweetheart.” She shook against him and he stroked her hair. Her
tears bled through his T-shirt, warm against his skin. “Take a breath and try
to relax.”
    She gulped several deep breaths and sagged against
him.
    “We’ll talk when you’re ready.” He scoped the apartment,
noting the many voodoo emblems hanging from the walls—gris-gris against evil.
    “Cherry was a really sweet girl, you know? I mean, she
didn’t deserve this.”
    “No one does.”
    “She was only twenty-one. And special. Real special.”
    “Have you any idea who her midnight john was?”
    She pulled away and began pacing again. “That’s the
thing. She wasn’t supposed to work last night. She hadn’t worked all week.” Wringing
her hands, she turned to face him. Black mascara had melted around her brown
eyes and streaked her right cheek. “She wanted out of the business. Wanted to
move home, back to California. The man was really pissed about it.”
    She needn’t explain who