Assassin Fish (Desert Fish #1)

Chapter 1 Unwelcome

Unwelcome

brADY CARNEGIE wrinkled his nose, clutching the plastic bag with the cell phone in it to his chest almost like a child.

Well, children’s pictures had been on the cell phone, but not the good kind. The terrible kind, imprinted in Brady’s unwilling gray matter, burned behind his eyeballs for the rest of his life, those sweet, innocent babies and the preacher of the revival tent church nearly forty miles away.

And of the man whose skeleton was currently charred beyond recognition in the burned-out carcass of his police SUV.

The phone, relatively unscathed, had been unlocked, and somebody had made the homemade pornography the phone’s wallpaper.

Deputy Roy Kuntz showed up in some of those pictures, but most of them featured his brother, Preacher Donnie Ray Kuntz as the star.

Brady had lived in the area for about a year and some change. He’d heard of Preacher Donnie Ray, who worked under the big revival tent about a parking lot away from a really big recently refurbished house.

And he’d worked with Roy. Hadn’t liked Roy. Had done backflips and double shifts and worked holidays to avoid being partnered with him. Had never thought the man had his back.

But they’d been coworkers nonetheless, and these… these abominations on the phone by Roy’s barbecued vehicle were blood-freezing and awful.

The sheriff, Arlen Cuthbert, didn’t seem as disturbed as Brady.

A big man, much of his high school football weight sagging on his middle-aged bones and much of his gray hair reduced to a tired hula skirt around his bald scalp, Arlen Cuthbert nonetheless held some power in this weird territory in California.

East of San Diego and Los Angeles, they were also south of Meth and north of Hell—at least they were on some of the maps Brady had seen. On the one hand, there wasn’t much out here but a whole lot of long, desolate roadways that cut through the Mojave Desert and Death Valley.

On the other hand, there were small towns strung together by hundreds of miles of two-lane freeways, towns that had banks and meth labs and mini-marts and innocent civilians and desperate people, all of whom could clash at unreasonable times.

Brady had done his research before he’d taken this job—he’d seen that the crime rate had been steadily on the decrease over the last two years before he’d transferred. He’d wanted in on that action, some police work that gave his profession a good name!

The one thing he’d realized over the last year was that whatever was affecting the crime rate, diminishing the mob presence, reducing the meth labs, getting rid of the dangerous people with guns who liked to knock over small businesses and banks—whatever the hell this force for good was, it was not the police force.

Not south of Meth and north of Hell, anyway.

And it sure as shit wasn’t Arlen Cuthbert.

“Well, Donnie Ray and Roy, they was tight,” Arlen said.

“This isn’t guys at a barbecue!” Brady heard the disgust cracking his voice and wondered at his own sanity.

The contents of this phone were an abomination—everything he knew about the world said that.

How could Arlen be so unfazed? “This is two pedophiles and a whole bunch of kids who are never going to be the same!”

Arlen hawked and spat, the spittle landing close enough to the still smoking remains of the SUV to sizzle. “They’ll be okay, I guess,” he said, not meeting Brady’s eyes.

Brady fought the urge to scream. “What about Roy?” he asked. “Will he be all right?”

Arlen stared at the blackened thing in the SUV for far longer than Brady’d had the stomach for. “Don’t reckon it matters much now what he did when he was alive,” he mused, and Brady wondered if he could be convicted for shooting his boss.

“It matters to those children!” he snapped. “It matters to their parents! My God, Arlen, somebody killed Roy Kuntz. Don’t you even care?”

“You got anywhere to start looking for that man?” Arlen asked him.

Brady gestured helplessly to the other wreck on the road, an empty Chevy Impala that lay, crushed and useless, a good seventy-five yards away.

The car was demolished—nobody could have walked away from that disaster.

And yet, nobody had. There were no prints in either direction of the wreck, and although Brady had searched for fifty feet in either direction of the entire collision site, he couldn’t find a sign that anybody had been nearby when the Impala had T-boned the cop car and gone rolling off into the desert.

So… what? Was it a magic fucking Chevy Impala?

It just tootled along, causing destruction and mayhem wherever it may roam?

Brady loved cars—always had—but as far as he knew, his dream of a magic car that talked and made decisions of its own had gone the way of Santa Claus and the Easter Buggy… erm, Bunny.

Brady choked back a snort of laughter at that, and Sheriff Cuthbert eyed him sourly.

“What’s so goddamned funny?” he asked.

“Who was driving the goddamned Impala?” Brady snapped.

“Who cares?” Arlen snapped back.

“You should!” Brady cried. “Arlen, whoever was driving that vehicle murdered a law officer!”

Arlen held out his hand and wobbled it, and Brady had to concede.

“Okay, they wreaked vengeance on a pedophile,” Brady muttered, clutching the phone to his chest. “Either way, don’t you want to get to the bottom of that?”

“The phone or the crispy critter there?” Arlen asked.

“Can we do both?” Brady asked.

Arlen rolled his eyes. “Son, you’ve got an inflated opinion of our little station house. What do I got? Eight, ten deputies? For how many square miles?”

“Then call in the CBI!” Brady told him. The California Bureau of Investigation was made for things like this, right?

“They’d just make a lot of fuss about that phone,” Arlen said, spitting again. The spit still sizzled, so neither of them were going anywhere.

“They should!” Brady burst out, and Arlen’s pose of annoyance gave way to absolute hostility.

“We don’t need to be digging into what’s already dead,” he said with conviction. “Now give me that thing, and I’ll put it in an evidence locker―”

“And let it rot?” Brady yanked it back from him. “No. No, Arlen. I’m taking this thing to the CBI in Sacramento if I have to drive there myself.”

Arlen blinked at him slowly—not as though he was surprised, but like a rattlesnake, calculating how and when to strike.

“You think you can do that?” he asked.

Brady fought the temptation to swallow. “Yes,” he said. “I’ll leave as soon as I clock—”

Arlen snatched the phone from his hand, and while Brady had fast reflexes, he pulled back before he broke the older man’s arm.

“What in the fuck?”

“You swear like a faggot,” the old sheriff said. “I don’t need you to do my job for me. Go write a ticket or something.”

While Brady stared at the old man, he hawked back in his throat and made to spit again—on Brady’s feet. Brady hopped backward, practically dancing, completely disgusted, and Arlen Cuthbert laughed.

“Go home, ya fuckin’ pansy. Or go back to your desk. Or go suck dick. I don’t fuckin’ care. This was one of ours. We’ll take care of him, and we don’t need no help from you.”

Brady’s eyebrows went up to his SCSD baseball cap, because this wasn’t Texas, but he still needed something to shade his eyes. “Roy and his brother haven’t been in Southern California much longer than I have,” he said, stung.

“Yeah, but I grew up with their daddy. Go the fuck away, Deputy Carnegie. I don’t fucking need you.”

“I’ll go file an accident report,” he said with dignity. He didn’t add, With the CBI, asshole! Because he didn’t think Arlen knew about that.

And he was on his way to do just that, heading west toward Barstow, when he got a call on his radio. Dispatch—who apparently didn’t know Arlen had lost his mind—was calling for all officers in the area to come to the residence of one Donnie Ray Kuntz.

He’d been murdered.

Brady was close enough to be the first responding officer on the scene, and as he stood in the man’s study, looking in horror at the puddles—puddles—of blood that had drained from the man’s arm as he’d sat half-naked at his desk in front of his computer, Brady listened to the screaming and sobbing of the women in the childcare wing of the house/church and had to fight off nausea.

There were pictures on that computer to match the ones on the phone near Roy’s flaming corpse.

Pictures, Brady was certain, that had been taken somewhere in this house.

Without second-guessing himself, he pulled out his cell phone and called his local FBI contact, Missing and Exploited Children department, and told them about the murder—and the evidence.

And then he told them that they had to get their asses out to the church before Arlen Cuthbert destroyed the crime scene the same way Brady was certain he was going to destroy the phone.

They were there before any other deputies from Brady’s station house arrived, and Brady turned the scene over to Jessica Chambers, a stout forty-ish woman who had competence written all over her freckled face.

“You sure you don’t want to help with this?” she asked, watching as her agents started taking the women aside to interview. It was a hard slog—so many children to contend with, most of them whimpering or outright screaming with upset.

Brady raised his eyebrow. “Is that a rhetorical question?”

She turned a rueful face toward him and then registered his expression. “What aren’t you telling me?” she asked.

So he told her. About the phone, about his sheriff’s refusal to investigate, about Brady’s threat to call the CBI—about all of it, and Jessica Chambers got a look of motherly concern that almost made Brady cry.

“Got it,” she said softly. “Yeah—we’ll investigate him. I’ll call you when I need information. What will you do?”

He shrugged and gave his best “aw shucks, ma’am” impression. “Well, here I was when suddenly the FBI just showed up. They must have picked it up over the airwaves somehow. I have no idea how they heard.”

Jessica nodded, but she didn’t look appeased. “Brady, we can offer you protection here. Are you sure you don’t want to take it?”

Brady thought of Arlen’s cutting words—and the homophobic slur—and shuddered.

Yes, a part of him was ready to be quit of this whole scene. He’d come here to be part of some exciting new law enforcement and had found himself embroiled into the same ol’ white boy corruption.

But… but… he still didn’t know why the crime wasn’t worse around here. It should be worse around here with Arlen Cuthbert in charge.

But it wasn’t.

“There’s something… odd about this area, Agent Chambers,” he said thoughtfully. “And a part of me loves it a lot. I think I’ll hang out for as long as possible. I’ve got some questions I need to answer, you know?”

“Fair, Deputy. Just… you know. Keep my number on speed dial. And let me know if any other developments in this case run by your desk, okay?”

Brady nodded his head, feeling a little like a secret agent.

At that moment, two squad cars from his department rolled up, sirens on full, humiliating blast.

“If you’ll excuse me,” he said, “I need to go lie to my fellow deputies.”