Black In White

  BLACK IN WHITE

  A Quentin Black Mystery

  by

  JC Andrijeski

  Copyright © 2015 by JC Andrijeski

  Published by White Sun Press

  Cover Art & Design by Jennifer Munswami at

  J.M. Rising Horse Creations

  www.facebook.com/RisingHorseCreations

  2015

  Ebook Edition, License Notes

  This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each person you share it with. If you're reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please visit an official retailer for the work and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the author's work.

  Synopsis for BLACK IN WHITE

  “My name is Black. Quentin Black…”

  Forensic psychologist Miriam Fox is gifted with an uncanny sense about people. So when police think they've finally nailed the "Wedding Killer," Miriam steps in to check the guy out, using her gift to discover the truth.

  But the suspect, one Quentin R. Black, isn't at all what Miriam expects. Claiming to be on the hunt for the killer himself, Black’s got an agenda of his own... and Miriam is bound and determined to uncover his secrets.

  When he confronts Miriam about the nature of her peculiar "insight,” Miriam is drawn into Black's bizarre world and embroiled in a game of cat and mouse with a deadly killer––who might just be Black himself. Worse, she finds herself irresistibly drawn to Black, who seems to want to force her into a love triangle between him and her current boyfriend. Can Miriam see a way out or is her future covered in Black?

  A paranormal mystery romance, introducing brilliant, dangerous, and otherworldly psychic detective, Quentin Black.

  Praise for JC Andrijeski’s Writing

  “Andrijeski delivers a whopper of an action flick...” ~ New Myths

  “The sexual tension is scorching...” ~ The Muses Circle

  “Amazing characters in an out-of-this-world scenario...” ~ The Indie Bookshelf

  “The most impressive display of world-building I have seen in a while.” ~ I (Heart) Reading

  Dedicated to my father

  (in the hopes he never reads it)

  ... who is also a riddle wrapped in a mystery inside an enigma

  wrapped in a fortune cookie.

  Sorry I never bought you that plane.

  Prologue

  PALACE

  FIFTEEN-YEAR-OLD Janine Rico was having a good night.

  Scratch that.

  She was having a great night.

  An epically awesome night, by pretty much any standard.

  First of all, getting alcohol was easy, for a change. She and her pals Hannah and Keeley managed to shoulder-tap some epically challenged, can-I-come-party-with-you-kids loser on their very first try, outside a seedy liquor store on Fillmore. The owner, an older Indian man, didn’t care––so loser boy emerged five minutes later with one of the big bottles of peppermint schnapps and another of cheap rum. They ditched him in the park minutes later, running off with two guys from their school and laughing their asses off.

  That was like, hours ago now.

  The boys had gone home.

  They’d been wandering the city most of the night since, determined to make the most of Keeley’s mom being out of town and letting them stay in her condo in the Marina District. They’d stopped at a few parks to pass the bottles around and talk and snap pictures with their smart phones, watching the orange-tinted fog billow in odd, smoke-like exhales across the wet grass. They’d already discussed their plans for the next day... which mostly involved sleeping in, along with ordering pizza and movies with Keeley’s mom’s credit card.

  An epic weekend, all in all. Awesomely flawless.

  Janine was tired now, though. The cold wind cut her too, even through the down jacket she wore over her hoodie sweatshirt and multicolored knit tights.

  It was Keeley’s idea to stop at the Palace of Fine Arts before they headed back.

  “Nooooo,” Janine whined, flopping her arms dramatically. “I’m ready to pass out. I’m cold. I have to pee... this is stupid!”

  “Come on,” Keeley cajoled. “It’s totally cool! Look... it’s all lit up!”

  “It’s lit up every night,” Janine grumbled.

  Hannah hooked Janine’s arm, but sided with Keeley. “We can take pictures... send them to Kristi in Tahoe and make her crazy jealous!”

  Hannah always wanted to dig at Kristi. Maybe because Kristi’s family was rich, or maybe because Hannah was jealous that Kristi and Janine were best friends.

  Either way, Janine couldn’t fight both of them.

  Her eyes shifted to the orange-lit, fifty-foot-tall, Roman-esque columns. They stood on the other side of a man-made lake covered in sleeping ducks and swans, making a disjoined crescent like ancient ruins from an old amphitheater. The fountain in the lake was turned off, so the columns reflected a near-perfect mirror on the glass surface of the water.

  As they tromped over slippery grass, Janine found herself thinking it did look pretty cool, with the robe-draped stone ladies resting their arms on top of each column, showing their stone backs to the world. Broken by deep black shadows, the stone faces looked otherworldly. Willow trees hung over the lake, rustling over the water as the wind lifted their pale leaves.

  “All right,” she mumbled, rolling her eyes to let them know they owed her.

  Hannah broke out the last of the peppermint schnapps, handing around the bottle by the neck. Shivering and pulling her down jacket tighter against the wind, Janine took a long drink, choking a bit. The warmth of the burn was welcome.

  She thought about school on Monday, and telling the other kids about their night.

  Hannah was right. This was so going to blow Kristi’s mind.

  Cheered at the thought, Janine grinned, taking another slug of the schnapps and shuddering when it wanted to come back up her throat.

  “I think I’m done,” she said, handing the bottle to Keeley and wiping her mouth.

  “I soooo want to get married here!” Keeley said, after taking her own drink.

  “Me too!” Hannah seconded.

  The three of them wandered the asphalt path between orange-lit columns. The path led to the rotunda, but would also spit them out through the row of columns on the other side, and back to the lawn that would eventually let them off at the edge of the Marina District.

  Maybe this wasn’t such a bad short cut after all.

  The columns looked way bigger and taller up close, like something really and truly old. Janine gawked up with her two friends, despite the dozens of times she’d walked here with her parents or during school trips or whatever.

  Pulling out her smart phone, she took a few pictures, first just of the columns themselves, then of Keeley and Hannah as they posed, hanging on the base of pillars and stone urn.

  “We should send these to Kristi now!” Hannah squealed, laughing with her arm slung around Keeley’s neck. “She will be sooo pissed!”

  “No, her mom checks her phone, like, every day,” Janine warned. “She would totally bust us if she saw what time we’d sent these.”

  Hannah’s expression sobered.

  Before she could answer, they all came to an abrupt stop.

  Keeley saw it first.

  She smacked Janine, who came to a dead stop, right before Janine grabbed Hannah, gripping her friend’s peacoat jacket in a tightly-clenched fist.

  Hannah froze.

  Before them, a woman wearing a white, flowing dress lay in a strangely elegant pose on the ground. Something about the wa
y her legs and arms were positioned struck Janine as broken-looking, despite the precision... like a store mannequin that had been accidentally knocked over and lay facing the wrong direction.

  The woman’s legs were almost in a running or leaping pose. Her arms curved up over her head, the wrists and fingers positioned inward like a ballerina’s. Her chin and face tilted up, towards the lake, as if to look between her delicately positioned hands.

  Whatever caused the position, it didn’t look right.

  The woman’s face didn’t look right, either.

  It belonged to a porcelain doll. Someone had slathered so much make-up on her cheeks and eyes that they appeared bruised.

  Those details, however, Janine remembered only later.

  In those few seconds, all she could see was the blood.

  The woman’s dress from waist to bust-line was soaked a dark red that looked purple in the orange light under the dome. That same splash of red covered her all the way to her thighs, past where the dress bunched up and flared out like the dress of a princess in fairytale.

  It was a wedding dress.

  The teenagers just stood there, all three of them breathing hard now, like they’d been running. They stared at the woman under the Palace of Fine Arts rotunda as if the sight put them in a trance. Janine found herself unable to look away.

  Then she realized they weren’t alone.

  Next to the woman in white, a man crouched, staring down at her.

  Janine must have seen him there.

  She must have been staring right at him, along with the woman. Even so, his form seemed to jump out at her all at once.

  Her first, irrational thought was: He must be the groom.

  Then Janine saw his hands reach for the mid-section of the woman on the ground.

  He was touching her.

  His face remained in shadow. Black hair hung down over his eyes. He straightened in a single, fluid motion and like the woman in white, blood streaked his skin like glistening paint, all the way past his elbows to the edges of his black T-shirt.

  His face and neck wore dark and shining splotches of the same.

  He turned his head, staring at the three girls.

  For the first time, the angles of his face caught the light, displaying high cheekbones and a distinct lack of expression in the sunset-colored flood lamps aimed at the dome. Those almond-shaped eyes looked oddly yellow––almost gold––under that glow of the rotunda.

  Janine saw those feral-looking eyes focus on Hannah, then Keeley.

  Right before they aimed directly at her.

  Her trance finally broke.

  A loud, familiar-sounding voice let out a piercing scream. The scream echoed inside the hollow chamber of the dome, replicating there.

  It occurred to Janine only later that the scream came from her.

  That was her screaming, Janine Rico.

  In the same instant, a voice rose in her mind.

  This one didn’t sound like her at all.

  Run away, little girl, the voice whispered. Run away now, little one, all the way home, before the big bad wolf decides to eat you, too...

  Janine didn’t have to be told twice.

  One

  SUSPECT

  “YOU’VE GOT TO get a load of this guy, Miriam,” Nick told me that morning, leaning against the jamb of my office door and grinning. “You really do. He’s a serious piece of work... like...” He made a motion by the side of his head with his fingers, expanding them out sharply, like his own brain just exploded. “...Total head job. Right up your alley.”

  I scowled.

  It was seven in the morning.

  I hadn’t even managed to finish my first cup of coffee yet.

  Inspector Naoko “Nick” Tanaka hadn’t bothered with a hello first, when he showed up at the door of my inner office. He was also there an hour before reception opened, not like that ever stopped him. I knew Gomey was out there too, as in Gomez Ramirez, my so-called administrative assistant and personal pain in my ass. And yeah, I knew Nick was a pushy bastard who never knocked, never asked permission, but it still bugged me that Gomey hadn’t even tried to stop him. He could have warned me at least.

  I combed my fingers through my long black hair and sighed, looking up at Nick with what I hoped was a flat-eyed stare. I hadn’t even put on make-up yet, telling myself I’d do it in the office bathroom before my first client. I could pull off the no make-up thing better than most, I knew––thanks to inheriting my mom’s Native American skin tone and good bone structure and dark eyelashes––but I still felt a little naked without it. I’d left my hair down too, and for some reason, that always made me feel a bit too visibly female at work.

  Truthfully, I felt unprepared to deal with anyone this early, even Nick, who I’d known forever. I hadn’t donned my professional armor yet.

  Nick took his weight off the doorjamb, all five-foot-eleven of him, most of it solid muscle.

  He looked tired, I couldn’t help noticing.

  I assessed his overall mental state out of rote, more occupational hazard than because I meant to do it. Tired, and more stressed out than usual, even if he was doing his usual and hiding it under a grin and his own professional armor, that of the swaggering, b.s.-talking cop. I knew that armor was partly calculated. I also knew it worked, in that people who didn’t know him constantly underestimated him.

  Nick knew I saw through it of course, but he couldn’t help himself.

  He lingered in my doorway for a few seconds more before entering all the way.

  I don’t know if he’d been waiting for an invitation or just letting me get used to the fact he was there. Nick, being a homicide cop, wasn’t dumb about psychology either.

  Technically, that was my bailiwick, though.

  I’m not a forensic psychologist by training, but somehow I ended up one––a de facto one at least––and most of that was Nick’s fault, too. Technically I’m a clinical and research psychologist, and honestly, I tried my damnedest to stick to the research side of that as much as humanly possible.

  Nick and I had history, though.

  He’d even introduced me to my current boyfriend (now fiancé, I reminded myself)... Ian. Ian was another old military buddy of Nick’s. They met in Iraq, though––not Afghanistan like me and Nick. I’d gone in later than Nick, being over a decade younger.

  Since Ian was British and worked in intelligence, not the regular armed forces, he and I never crossed paths over there. We met after Ian moved to San Francisco over a year ago and Nick took us all out for drinks, thinking me and Ian might hit it off.

  Well, that was Nick’s story, anyway.

  Ian told me that the drinks had been his idea. He claimed he’d pushed Nick for an introduction after seeing a picture of me on Nick’s mantle in his crappy apartment in South San Francisco.

  Either way, Nick and I had history.

  And Nick might be a cop now, but he still thought like a guy in a firefight.

  I watched Nick do his cop-walk into my personal space, wearing a rumpled black suit with a dark blue shirt underneath. Only then did I notice the splattering of stains on the front of his suit, visible under the heavier motorcycle jacket he wore over it.

  I frowned, trying to identify the exact stains.

  They didn’t look like coffee. Even so, the more conscious part of my mind refused to acknowledge the “blood” categorization that popped into my head.

  So yeah, Nick was tired, wound up, and he had blood on him.

  He put his hands on his hips, which rumpled both jackets enough that I saw the handle of his Glock poke out from where he had it in a shoulder holster on his right side. I noticed he’d cut his midnight-black hair shorter than usual on the back and sides, but left it longer in front.

  Even exhausted, he still looked good, did Nick Tanaka. Even at this ungodly hour.

  Unfortunately, he knew it.

  So did the women he burned through on a monthly or sometimes weekly basis.

 
; Not me, though.

  I’d become part of Nick’s inner circle, one of his go-to people when he was working a case, like an oddly-shaped tool in his tool box that he pulled out when he found the right-sized bolt that needed unscrewing.

  I’d already known something was going on at the station.

  Whatever it was, it had a lot of people excited. I’d heard smatterings on my way into the office, mostly via low-voiced conversations while I stood in line for my daily dose of high-octane coffee from The Royale Blend, the gourmet coffee shop that lived in the storefront directly below my office. Since my office is located just a few blocks from the Northern District police station, I share the same coffee shop with a lot of the cops that work out of there.

  Well, the cops willing to fork over four bucks for a decent cup of coffee.

  Still, even though I knew something was up, I was surprised to see Nick here already.

  Usually he didn’t need me this early.

  “Seriously,” Nick said, grinning at me as he assessed me with his dark brown eyes. “I can’t wait to get your diagnosis, doc.” He gave his head a theatrical shake. The smile didn’t entirely mask the tenser look I glimpsed underneath. “This guy... wow. You’re going to get a kick out of him, Miri. Assuming you can get him to talk to you at all.”

  I arched an eyebrow, giving him my best clinical stare.

  “You think he’s mentally unfit?” I said. “On what diagnosis?”

  As per usual, he totally blew past my sarcasm.

  “On the diagnosis that I think he’s a total nutcase,” Nick said, grinning at me. He pulled a toothpick out the back row of his white teeth, a habit I’d told him more than once was disgusting. I grimaced now as he tossed the frayed piece of wood into my trash can. “...That’s my expert opinion, doc. No charge. But I still want you to talk to him. If I could nail this guy without him dropping down into an insanity plea, I’d sleep better at night.”