Bleeding Blue Read online

  Bleeding Blue

  DON WESTON

  Copyright

  © 2013 by Donald G. Weston. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and certain other noncommercial uses permitted by copyright law. For permission requests, write to the publisher, addressed “Attention: Permissions Coordinator,” at mystery.novel.one@ gmail.com.

  ASIN:

  B00ATHEPKU

  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  Copyright Page

  DEDICATION

  Author’s Note

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 31

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  Coming Soon: | The Facebook Murders | Featuring Billie Bly

  DEDICATION

  This book and all of my accomplishments in life have been possible because of my wife, Carol Weston. She has always supported me in my writing efforts and anything I have done in life.

  Author’s Note

  Although the setting for this story takes place in Portland, Oregon, and the locations are real, I have taken the liberty to fictionalize Billie Bly’s home, the warehouse scene and a scene where Billie was nearly run off the road. The locations are true enough; I just imagined a location within the real location. Also, any murders or mayhem taking place at specific locations in this book are truly imagined. They never happened. Any persons depicted in this story are also fictionalized and not based on any real person.

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  I want to thank those influences in my life that enabled me to write and get this book published. First, my father, Vernon Weston, who was taken from me early in life, but has been with me always; my critique groups which helped me sharpen my writing skills, and Dee Lopez, a writing instructor who believed in me and steered me toward writing a novel.

  If you enjoy a good mystery, check out other print books or e-books by Don Weston currently exclusively on Amazon. You can also find his books free on Kindle Unlimited.

  The Facebook Killer: A Billie Bly Thriller

  Death Fits Like a Glove: A Billie Bly Short Story

  The P.I. Who Found Christmas

  A Billie Bly Christmas Short Story

  The Homeless Pirate: A Billie Bly Short Book

  The Reluctant P.I. and the Redhead, Book 1. From the new exciting new Max and Maxine Series, Exclusive to Amazon Kindle Books.

  Chapter 1

  On the morning of my death, my psychic, Edna, warned me I might stumble upon a murder. I wish she could have given me more details. It might have saved my life.

  Death and Mayhem are common occurrences on the streets of Portland. Police are searching for a killer who eats his victims on the Grimm television horror drama filming on a vacant lot near the waterfront and Union Railroad Station. A few blocks away, in a room above a Chinese bar in Old Town, the Leverage cast is plotting revenge on an unscrupulous Portland businessman.

  My life as a Private Investigator feels like a television drama too, except at the end of the day my problems are still with me: a missing person determined to stay missing, my recent termination as a cop from the Portland Police Bureau, and a pending lawsuit from a con who I roughed up a bit for stealing my purse.

  My name’s Billie Bly. I’m told I’m pretty, smart and tough—not necessarily in that order. Because I’m a blonde, some people don’t take me seriously and that’s when being tough comes in handy.

  In my little drama, I died on a beautiful September day with summer still in the wind. I was oblivious to danger as I walked the streets not noticing the new paintings hanging in an art gallery in the Pearl District. It also didn’t occur to me to swing in Powell’s Bookstore and check out the new police procedurals. I had finished my workout at the gym and changed from my sweats into a tan jumpsuit, and I should have felt renewed not depressed.

  Instead, I was worrying about a ruling on the lawsuit filed against me by Chris The Creep, a.k.a. Chris Johnson. He’s a dumb thief who tried to steal my purse twenty months ago when I was off duty and shopping for Christmas gifts, and he’s also the reason the Portland Police Bureau wanted me gone. I had slammed his head in a revolving department store door for his efforts.

  Internal Affairs asked me why I had to slam his head in the door so many times—five or six by my guess. What else could I have done? My gun was buried in my purse and if even if I’d wrestled it away from the creep, he’d likely bit a bullet. So, in my eyes he got off with a warning. I mean, stealing a woman’s purse is the lowest. Forget the credit cards and money. Do you know how much cash I have tied up in makeup?

  I should have shot the son-of-a-bitch. Then there would have been no complaint filed, no lawsuits pending and the piece of crud would have been off the street for good. He was out of jail a few months after sentencing in my case but returned soon after on a breaking and entering rap in which he scared an old lady to death. I guess he got bored in prison and decided to sue me for something to do.

  In a subplot of the Billie Bly series, after turning the city upside down, I had failed to find a missing husband for a client, and she was pressing for results. I was beginning to second guess my decision to become a P.I.

  And that’s when it happened. I was feeling sorry for myself even as the rain started drizzling again, and I spotted another drama up the street. A flash of bodies struggled half a block ahead of me. It was two grown men against a kid. One was a thin guy with greasy brown hair dressed in lime green pants and a paisley green shirt (I know the seventies are making a comeback, but somebody call the fashion police). The other perp was a wiry Asian in dirty blue jeans and a yellow print shirt. The kid struggled not to be dragged down an alley.

  I looked around for other witnesses, but the rain discouraged pedestrians from venturing out for lunch. My adrenalin kicked in like two pit bulls fighting over a porterhouse steak. By the time I got to the scene and did the procedural backing against the safe side of the wall, pivoting around the corner with raised gun, they were gone. Had I imagined it? I spent so much time mind-racing lately anything was possible. I took a couple cautious steps.

  The alley dead-ended abruptly with doors into the backs of a pharmacy and a warehouse on each side. I eyed a garbage dumpster too small to hide two adults and a kid and walked ten paces to the drug store door on the left side of the driveway.

  I peeked through the window to see a pharmacist in a white coat standing behind a counter chatting with a young lady with reddish hair. The door on the opposite side of the driveway looked more like the place I’d find trouble. The solid metal grey door had no window, yet I knew it would offer no resistance. I turned the knob slowly and it responded by groaning a warning to me. At least it wasn’t a revolving door.

  I wondered if I was about to take the law into my hands again, causing trouble where no trouble was warrant
ed. I took a deep breath and pushed the heavy door open with my gun dramatically stuck up in the air like they do on the television cop shows. I was thinking I was going to shoot the first thing that made a move at me because I do try to be careful and, in my book, shooting first is the height of being careful.

  The dark and gloomy interior offered no answers, only oblique aisles surrounded by rows of shelves stuffed with oriental rugs and drab-colored window drapes. I walked among the narrow shelves, thinking they might be a good place to stuff a body and shivered at the thought of mummified corpses rolled in rugs and jammed into the deep vaults.

  “Help me, mmmph.”

  I scanned some 50 feet down the aisle of darkness toward the muffled cry. It sounded like the kid, although a little throaty. I continued forward and stared open-mouthed as the kid ran across my path at an intersecting aisle about 30 feet ahead and disappeared. He wore baggy short pants that hung off him like he was proud of his butt. The kid appeared maybe older than the ten-year-old I first made him to be. Could be a gang member, I cautioned myself.

  Before I recovered, the guy dressed in green darted down the same aisle. The other guy was nowhere to be seen.

  I shook my head, resisting the impulse to charge after them. About the time I reached the spot I’d seen them and cautiously turned the corner, two gunshots echoed in the air. One of the bullets whistled a foot over my head the other slammed into a wooden shelf somewhere in front of me. A dull sensation crowded my brain, searching for a way out.

  Someone had gotten the first shot off and it wasn’t me. I inched down the hall, hugging the wood shelves, taking splinters instead of bullets. My progress seemed to take days. My face flushed and my blond bangs dripped greasy sweat into my eyes.

  Ahead, double doors splayed open inviting me into the murder scene. My psychic had been right on her prediction, even if she was wrong about the supposed anonymous victim. The kid and the guy in green lay supine and motionless on the floor, a pool of blood between them. I gazed at the scene, trying to figure out how so much blood could be on the concrete floor already.

  I pivoted in all directions searching for the shooter and it occurred to me, even in the dim lighting, the liquid pool between the bodies looked too red, instead of the maroon or burgundy color you’d expect of blood. And the bullets came at me. How could these two be dead?

  I turned back to check out the scene and the kid sat up and grinned at me like something out of a surreal movie. He held a big gun in his hands. His crazed eyes radiated evil and his yellow teeth flashed a grin. I realized, too late, he was not a kid. He was a fully-grown man—a dwarf with childlike features.

  Before I got a round off, because every single nerve in my body screamed danger, a big ball of fire erupted from the dwarf’s gun barrel. I didn’t hear the explosion, but I swear the bullet came at me in slow-motion. I tried to get out of its way, but my body wouldn’t cooperate.

  At first, I didn’t feel the bullet, but I slammed onto the concrete floor anyway, fading in and out of consciousness, and became aware of a little sting in the center of my chest. I don’t remember the second bullet hitting me. Because of the first, I guess. I wondered if maybe it wasn’t a bullet but the toenail of an elephant because a minute later it felt like the beast had one foot on my chest and the other on my head.

  “She’s dead,” a voice said.

  “I don’t think so, but she will be in a couple minutes the way she’s bleeding.” I recognized the second voice as the gravelly one I mistook earlier for a child’s.

  “Billie Bly, the P.I. She’s not so tough. I thought she was going to be hard to kill.” I didn’t recognize this third voice, but I was memorizing all three just in case I didn’t die.

  Damn! Edna should have known I was the one who was going to be murdered. I made a mental note to get a new psychic.

  “You want I should put another bullet in her?” one of the voices said. “Just to make sure?”

  “Nah. Don’t spoil her pretty little face. At least she can have an open casket. She’s dead. She just doesn’t know it yet.”

  “This was easier than I thought,” the third voice said. “The boss said she might be a difficult hit. See her laying there, peaceful as an angel? No trouble at all. Ha, ha, ha!”

  I had fallen into a trap. They knew when I would be walking by the alley because I worked out at the gym every morning and came home by the same route each time. I felt safe because of the nicely dressed citizens along Tenth Avenue in the trendy Pearl District, with all its art galleries, healthy eateries, and such.

  Five blocks down, in Old Town, where crack dealers work with impunity, would have been the logical spot for an ambush. But I was on my guard down there. They found a solitary one-block stretch on the fringe of the Pearl District and lured me in to a private murder.

  I heard them laugh and call me an angel. I worried about my assistant, Angel, back at the office. What would happen to her if I died? Their voices softened as they departed. I tried to call out for help, but I couldn’t cough enough air from my lungs to make a sound. I fought passing out and flashed back to that guy in the revolving door who got me kicked off the Portland Police Bureau. Move over, buddy, I’ve got someone else to hate.

  I tried to crawl from the warehouse through the darkness. I remember seeing a blinding light, the whitest, brightest light I’d ever seen in my life. Peace and contentment embraced me. I answered the call to serenity and fell into a deep slumber.

  Chapter 2

  My psychic and the guy who shot me were wrong. I was still alive.

  Not the alive where you go out boogying on the town. More the alive as in barely generating a pulse with a truck parked on your chest.

  Still, it was better than the alternative. I learned I was still alive when I woke up from a dream where my four cop brothers chattered like playful squirrels coercing a dog into action.

  “What-are-you-guys-so-excited-about?” I sat up stiffly and coughed.

  “She’s awake,” Dag shouted. Of all my brothers, Dagwood got the worst moniker. We tell him it’s cool, but I laugh when I say it, so he knows I’m lying. He has sandy brown curly hair, is solidly built and is as strong as he is tall. No one makes fun of his name to his face, except me.

  “Where am I?” I asked. “The last thing I remember is that freaky little weasel pointing that huge gun at me.”

  “You’re in the hospital, little sister,” Dan said. He stared at me like you would a miracle. Dan’s the oldest, and he’s more like my dad than my brother since mom was busy raising a family without our cop father, who was shot in the line of duty.

  “I thought I was dead.”

  “Not yet,” Jason said. His big blue eyes met mine and a tear flowed down his chiseled face. Jason is the only Bly other than me with mom’s overtly blonde hair. He has a fair-colored pencil mustache which you have to look at twice to see.

  “I must be dead,” I said. “My psychic predicted it and that damn runt made it come true.”

  I spotted a bunch of bandages as I peeked inside my gown. Half a dozen plastic snakes extended from my arms to several plastic bags feeding me saline and antibiotics and such. A machine sucked something somewhere behind me and another machine blipped and bleeped alarms.

  My younger brother, with an older soul, smiled broadly. “You’ve been mostly sleeping for the last three days,” Darrin said.

  I reached for a mirror someone had left on a side table and gazed upon my face. Not dead, but not really alive. A ghostly yellowish tint shadowed my lower right cheek highlighted by the largest black eye I’ve ever had. I remembered the jolt when my face hit the concrete floor. My head still felt trapped in the spin cycle of a washing machine. All of my thoughts jumbled in the process. It was like trying to separate the whites from the colors in the middle of the wash cycle.

  “Is this Heaven?”

  “No,” Dag said. “You’re in the hospital.”

  “And you’re all with me? How long have you been here?” Still tr
ying to sort out reality and dreams.

  “We’ve been here all three days since the surgery,” Darrin said. “Telling stories, remembering how you use to thump us all the time. We’ve been trying to get you to wake up.”

  “But I have to be dead.” My head felt like a two-by-four with a nail through it. “I saw the bright light. I think I saw God. I remember going toward it. It was the brightest, whitest light I ever saw.”

  “Shit,” Dan said. “You crawled a hundred feet out of that warehouse with two bullets in your chest and pushed open the warehouse door to call for help. Then you crawled into the alley. The bright light was daylight. You’d been in that dark warehouse.”

  “What about seeing God?”

  They acted puzzled for a moment.

  “A tall, old guy with a scruffy white beard?” Dag asked.

  “Yes, of course. That’s what God looks like. Did you see him too?”

  “That’s the homeless person who found you.” Dag grinned. “He called for help.”

  I didn’t believe him. Part of me wished I had stayed with the white light and followed it to Heaven. Maybe God wasn’t ready for me yet. I must have drifted off to sleep, because when I opened my eyes again I was surrounded by doctors in white coats and nurses in maroon scrubs.

  “It’s good to see you awake,” one of them said.

  “How can I sleep with you shining a flashlight in my eyes?”

  “I’m Dr. Hoffman. Your brothers said you came out of your slumber, but when I got here you were out again. I was checking to make sure you were okay.”

  I peered around the ray of light into his brown eyes. He was young and serious, and I could see the early signs of worry lines on his forehead as he switched off his little flashlight.

  “It’s great to have you among the living again,” he said. “You’ve been in and out and pretty groggy when you did wake up.”