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Jackal (The Justice Chronicles Book 2)

By Michael Jack Webb

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Chapter 1


“How many people do you know who have been resurrected?”

Kate Justice reflected on her investigative partner’s question as she sprawled on the couch in the living room of her parents’ rustic Grand Lake, Colorado, cabin, recovering from her fierce battle with a demonic entity. Chris Shindler was a homicide detective. He’d come to her Fort Collins home a little over a month ago. The night her parents disappeared. He wanted to meet her because she’d gained notoriety the year before as the lead FBI Profiler on The Ghost in the Darkness case.

She reached out, taking a sip from the half-full mug of lukewarm Peets Coffee sitting on the table in front of her, thinking about their month-old conversation, the events leading up to her parent’s mysterious disappearance, and how crazy her life had been since then in the weeks before her thirtieth birthday.

After her most recent lethal encounter with the serial killer, a year after she’d quit the Bureau, she’d been released from the hospital for the second time in a little over a year. Chris had called to check up on her. “You heading to the cabin?”

“It’s my refuge from everything.” Kate’s parents constructed the secluded, three thousand square foot second home they fondly referred to as “the cabin” before Kate was born. It had taken a year to build their magnificent home-away-from-home. They’d used hand-hewn Lodgepole pine—timbered during the 19th century from the majestic Rocky Mountains surrounding the largest natural body of water in Colorado—and stone quarried from nearby Granite Lake.

“Can’t say I blame you. Wish I was joining you.”

She didn’t dare read anything into his enticing words. Still, he might have been suggesting he wanted more than healing from his own time in a coma at the same hospital. The speed of both of their recoveries—along with their lack of lingering side-affects—had amazed the doctors.

She’d been at the cabin for a week binge-watching old movies. She’d just finished The Maltese Falcon. There was something about Bogie that never failed to make her heart flutter. One of her prized possessions was a small collection of his films, including The African Queen, Casablanca, The Big Sleep, Key Largo, To Have and Have Not, The Caine Mutiny, and The Left Hand of God.

She hoped her time away in the mountains would relax her, helping her put her failure to capture the Ghost in the Darkness serial killer behind her. She also hoped the “me” time would ease the ache she felt when she thought about Chris. Before their brief conversation in the hospital when she awakened and found him sitting at her bedside in a wheelchair, she’d been falling in love with him. Now, her emotions were a muddy mix of uncertainty, anger, and frustration topped off with questions part of her was afraid to ask. The other part, the investigator in her, kept prompting her to pick up the phone and call Chris, asking him to explain why he’d held back crucial information regarding his involvement with Angel Fire.

There was also a critical issue keeping her on edge. Did he know more than he was telling her about her parents’ sudden disappearance?

Kate sighed, snuggled under the lightweight blanket draped over her bare feet, fluffed the pillow under her head, and promptly fell asleep, dreaming.
She was Sam Spade talking to the main villain, Kasper Gutman, AKA the Fat Man. A nefarious, smooth-talking thief with bulbous pink cheeks, thick lips, and a double chin. But in her dream, Gutman was someone she didn’t recognize. This man was approximately six feet tall, well-built, muscular, with a full head of oily dark hair, a pencil-thin mustache, and hands looking as if they belonged to a stonemason, not a conniving criminal who earned his living stealing one-of-a-kind treasures.

She\Sam Spade was sitting on a couch in Gutman’s late 1920s San Francisco hotel room, drinking two fingers of cheap bourbon from a glass. Her Gutman was wearing an expensive dark-blue pin-stripe suit with a stunning tie the color of blood, sitting in the chair opposite, smoking a Treasurer Gold cigarette. At sixty-seven dollars per pack, they are the most expensive cigarettes in the world, manufactured in the UK. Kate knew this, because she saw the embossed gold package with the Chancellor Tobacco Company logo sitting on the small table next to him. He sported a large, odd-looking silver ring on his left wedding finger. It looked like the head of an animal with pyramid-shaped ears standing tall and eyes of blood-red rubies so full of fire they seemed alive. A gold ankh marked its forehead.

Sam Spade: If you kill me, how are you going to get the jackal? And if I know you can't afford to kill me, how are you going to scare me into giving it to you?
Kasper Gutman, the Fat Man: Well, sir, there are other means of persuasion besides killing and threatening to kill.
Spade: Yes, that's . . . that's true. But there are none of them any good unless the threat of death is behind them. You see what I mean? If you start something, I'll make it a matter of your having to kill me or call it off.
Gutman: That's an attitude, sir, that calls for the most delicate judgment on both sides. Because, as you know, sir, in the heat of action men are likely to forget where their best interests lie and let their emotions carry them away.
Spade: Then the trick from my angle is to make my play strong enough to tie you up, but not to make you mad enough to bump me off against your better judgment.
Gutman: By gad, sir, you are a character.

Kate awakened abruptly, glancing around the room in confusion, trying to get her bearings. She glanced at the clock. Only twenty minutes had passed.

She stood and walked onto the wooden deck overlooking the Grand Valley below. Although it was mid-May, the temperature was a crisp forty degrees. Kate breathed in the refreshing mountain air, savoring the smell of evergreen tinged with a hint of wood-smoke, thinking about her dream.

Something was off.

She could practically quote Spade and Gutman’s lines by heart and replayed the scene in her mind.

Sam Spade had said bird.

Not jackal.

Why was the word jackal instead of bird in my dream? And who was the Fat Man in my dream? I get the fact that I was Sam Spade. Detective and Profiler/Investigator. Makes sense. But the other stuff . . .

Her cell phone rang.

She stared at the name and number, then answered. “Vince?”

“Hello, Kate. How are you?”

“Better than I was a week ago. But not as good as I’d like.”

“Good answer. Tells me what I need to know.”

“Which is?”

“In a minute. First, I owe you an apology. Actually, more than one.”

“I’m listening.”

“You’re not going to make this easy, are you?”

“You called me, Vince.”

“I’m sorry I took you off the case. I was worried about politics. I shouldn’t have been. It almost got you killed. Again. I wouldn’t be able to live with myself if that had happened. You know how I feel about you and how much I trust your, um, unusual instincts.”

“I thought I did.” She tried to sound angry but failed. Truth was, she didn’t blame Vince for removing her from the Ghost in the Darkness task force. Had she been in his position, she’d have done the same. Vince had always stood by her, making allowances for her “out on a thin limb” profiling as he referred to her unique assessments. He’d always run interference, protecting her from being labeled a freak, or worse, hounded out of the Bureau, possibly all law enforcement, because of her unusual gifts and unique way of strategizing.

“As much as I hate to admit it, I’m embarrassed. Ashamed I caved to the pressure. You deserve better.”

“Apology accepted. What’s the next one?”

“I’m sorry I didn’t visit you in the hospital and wasn’t available when you were discharged. I should have been there for you. Especially since your parents are still missing.”

At the mention of her parents, Kate’s stomach lurched. “You’re batting a thousand, Vince. Now, what’s the real reason you called?”

Her former boss sighed. “You know me too well, Kate. At times, better than my wife.”

“That’s a scary thought.”

“Tell me about it.”

“The last time we had a similar conversation, you coaxed me into working for you as a consultant on the case that killed me, got me raised from the dead, then nearly killed me a second time. Please tell me you’re not calling about the Ghost in the Darkness killer.”

“I’m not. Although that case is still officially open. I received your written debrief in the mail. As far as I’m concerned, even though we don’t have a body, Helena Guitan was the Ghost in the Darkness killer. And she’s dead. Unless mutilated bodies start showing up again, and I pray they don’t, I consider the case closed. I hope you do.”

Kate remained silent. She wasn’t ready to acknowledge that. There were still too many unanswered questions about what happened on the Grand Mesa plateau. Questions she wondered if she’d ever find answers to. Part of her sensed that as much as she and Vince wanted the case closed, it wasn’t. The thought caused a knot in her stomach.

“I’ll take your silence as a yes. Now, why I called. Are you up for taking on another case as a consultant?”

“What kind of case?”

“An unusual murder involving the theft of a rare antiquity called a jackal.”

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