Knight In Black Leather by Gail Dayton (ebook reader ink .txt) 📕

"I'm sorry." Jackson looked down at his shoes and the cuffs of his ruined pants and made a face. "Believe me, I'm sorry. But when we find a murdered woman with a phone number on her that's the same number as the one given to report a woman in danger--"

"Do you honestly think we're stupid enough to give the police that number if we had anything to do with her death?" Marilyn moved in on him.

Eli threw away the tissue and caught Marilyn's arm. "Let's take this into the hall. I want some water."

Jackson made another face at his shoes. "I got shoes in my car but no pants. Damn it, I'll have to go home and change."

"Serves you right." Marilyn led the way into the hall.

"Is it Teresa?" Jackson asked.

Eli rinsed his mouth at the water fountain down the hall by the bathrooms and took a drink. "Couldn't tell. I'll have to get a closer look."

"Oh, Eli, no."

"I'm okay with it," he told her. "It was just the shock, the first time."

"Her prints are in the system," Jackson said. "It'll take time, but we can ID her that way."

"Then why did you call us down here?" Marilyn demanded.

Jackson just looked at her, like the answer was obvious.

Eli touched her elbow. "Relax, Marilyn. He's just doing his job, okay? I want him covering all the bases."

"Why? We know who did it. We told them who did it before it even happened."

"But proving it is something else." He gave her arm a light squeeze, then let go. He turned to the detective who was wiping his shoes and slacks with wet paper towels collected for him by a kind-hearted tech on her way in to work.

"Jackson," Eli said. "I want to go in, see her."

"You don't have to." Jackson straightened.

"Yeah, I do. I need to know now. She's got a tattoo--"

"There wasn't one mentioned in her arrest reports." Jackson thumbed through the file folder.

"It's fairly new. If she wasn't arrested in the last six months, it wouldn't show in any report."

"Her last arrest was in May."

"For what?"

"Possession. Solicitation. Maybe she cleaned up her act after that."

Eli made a face. "Maybe. If she did, it didn't last."

"Describe the tattoo. I'll take a look. Let you know if it's there."

He shook his head. "I want to go in. I have to."

Marilyn touched his shoulder, whether in support or protest, he didn't know.

Jackson spoke, frowning. "I don't want you yakking on my shoes again."

"Nothin' left to blow. Dry heaves at worst. And now I know what I'll see, I'll be okay." Eli leaned his weight on the crutch, letting it hold some of his exhaustion. "I'm not leaving till I see her." He had to. Had to be sure it was Teresa. Had to tell her he was sorry.

Jackson studied him a long moment, then shrugged. "Okay. But I'm standing across the room when they lift the sheet."

"Are you sure?" Marilyn asked, hand warm on his arm.

"Yeah." He met her gaze, found a half-smile to reassure her. "Wait here, okay?"

She stared back into his eyes and finally nodded. "Okay."

True to his word, Jackson stayed by the door while Eli crossed the stainless-steel-trimmed room to the rolling table where the body lay covered by a sheet. The attendant lifted it, eyeing Eli warily.

She was thin like Teresa, her ribs starting to show. In contrast to the devastation of her face, her body was virtually unmarked, save for--Eli closed his eyes, but he couldn't avoid the burnt smell. Involuntarily, his hand lifted to touch scars on his own body the identical size and shape of the wounds on hers that he didn't want to see. I'm sorry. I'm so, so sorry.

"I need to see her hip," he told the attendant. Eli pointed at his hip, high on the left over the bone. "About here."

"Sure." The attendant moved the sheet lower and turned the stiff body.

The tattoo was there. Chinese characters a couple of inches high. Teresa had told him they meant "luck" and "fortune" when she showed it to him on his visit last summer, when it had been new. She hadn't had much of either in her life.

Eli nodded and the attendant laid her back down. He started to pull the sheet back over her face but Eli stopped him. "Give me a minute?"

The attendant hesitated, but at an apparent signal from the detective behind Eli, crossed the room and put his hands behind his back to wait.

Eli folded the sheet as carefully as he could at Teresa's neck, trying to figure out just what he felt. Numb mostly, now he was past the shock of seeing her, of knowing she was dead and how it had happened. But beneath that, he could feel rage whirling like a black cloud, coloring everything it touched, feeding off the sorrow and guilt. He hadn't been able to save her. Hadn't tried very hard. Certainly not hard enough, or she wouldn't be lying on this table.

Pete would miss her. She hadn't been much of a mother, but she was the only mother he had. Eli mourned for that reason. He mourned a life that should have been better but wasn't, and he mourned the ending of that life. Teresa had pretty much been a failure as a person, but as weak and pathetic as she was, she still didn't deserve to die. Not like this.

Steeling himself, Eli lifted his eyes and looked at her face, memorizing every bruise, every cut, every shattered bone. He owed it to her to remember her death. And he read the message written there. Flash considered this payback.

The rage roared, wanting out, and for a minute, Eli was tempted to let it. To find Flash and pulverize him into this same kind of bloody mess. But he'd learned a few things over the past twelve years.

Revenge spread like some vicious disease, destroying everything it touched without easing one bit of the pain, and the people it hurt most