Daybreak (Crossroads #3)

Chapter 1

Dallas Homicide—Central Division

It was the time of Mother Nature’s uncertainty, also known as the lull between the last gasp of spring—right before the hellfire of a Texas summer.

Homicide detective Gunner Kingston hit Save on the report he’d just finished, printed out a hard copy for his files and another for his boss, Lieutenant Andy Samuels, then signed off the computer.

“I’m outta here,” Gunner said and headed for the door.

Gunner’s partner, Cliff Beale, glanced up from his phone conversation, nodding an acknowledgment while still on his call, wishing he had Kingston’s leg length and swagger.

Unaware of being on anyone’s radar, Gunner took the stairs down to the ground floor and out the back to the parking lot, shifted into a lope, and ran all the way across the lot to the black Mustang GT, wincing at the stifling heat as he got in, fired up the engine, and turned the AC to morgue.

He noticed as he was leaving that he was low on gas, so he stopped at a Gas and Dash to refuel.

Afterward, he went inside to get a cold drink and a candy bar and, on impulse, used the change to buy a lottery ticket and drove away, downing the Hershey bar he’d purchased, three squares at a time.

The cold drink lasted longer, but once he segued into traffic on the Loop, he settled in for the drive.

Another twenty minutes or so and he’d be home.

The fact that he lived alone was his saving grace. It was the bolt hole he needed to let go of the stress of working homicide, without having to explain to a wife why he didn’t want to talk about his day.

In his world, every case began with identifying a dead body, getting a time of death, and then working backward from the last twenty-four hours of their victim’s life to figure out who did it and why.

The most frustrating cases were the victims who died from acts of random violence, because there were no obvious starting points to look for perps.

The past few days had been even more hectic. All levels of Dallas law enforcement were on alert. The only witness in an upcoming federal murder trial was missing, and the four special agents who had been with him in the safe house were dead.

Freddie Welsh, a key witness in the Burgess Dixon trial, had disappeared two days ago, and every callout that Homicide attended, they half expected it to be him.

The fact that it was the FBI who’d lost him, despite him having been secreted in a safe house, was all over the media, while Burgess Dixon, the defendant in the case who was out on bail, was claiming innocence of any knowledge.

The Feds and the Dallas PD knew Dixon was behind it, but they couldn’t prove it.

The special agents who’d been guarding the witness had just enough time to alert their superiors that they’d been made when the call suddenly ended in a hail of gunshots.

By the time the Feds showed up at the scene, Freddie Welsh was gone, and the special agents who’d been guarding him were dead.

Gunner had known one of the agents personally and sent his condolences to the widow and her son, but it was yet another reminder of why being single in his job was a plus. He had only himself to worry about.

As soon as he got home, he locked up his weapon, changed into sweats and a T-shirt, ordered DoorDash, then spent the evening with Chinese takeout and a King Kong movie before going to bed.

Sometime before midnight, he heard thunder, and then rain blowing against the window and hoped it would quit raining before morning. Driving on the Dallas freeways added a whole other level of risk when it was wet.

He rolled over and went back to sleep, only to have it disrupted again with a phone call a couple of hours before daybreak. Groaning, he reached for the phone.

“This is Kingston.” Then he listened intently. “Text me the address. I’m on the way.”

* * *

All Yankee Dan wanted was to get out of the rain.

The city had already cleared out their squat at the warehouse months earlier, but he had an infected blister on the heel of his left foot and walking was hell.

He’d been scrounging in the dumpsters for food when the storm rolled through, and the warehouse was his nearest refuge.

The warehouse was locked and boarded up, but he knew another way and got himself inside.

The downside to his entrance was the water dripping rapidly from the ceiling and onto the floor, so he made his way up to the second floor, which consisted of a loft on the opposite side of the building where the old offices used to be.

The roof on that side didn’t seem to be leaking, and the floors were dry.

He knew from experience that it was warmer on the wooden floors above than the cold concrete below.

He found a corner and curled up. Still shivering and trying to ignore the misery long enough to fall asleep, he was startled to hear the screech of hanger doors rolling back downstairs and panicked. This place was off limits, and the last thing he wanted was to get picked up by the cops.

He slipped out of the cubicle and moved to the railing just as he saw the silhouettes of two men in the open doorway, dragging a third man between them.

What the hell? Those aren’t cops!

Yankee Dan went belly down. The shivers he was feeling now were not from the cold—they were from fear. He was witnessing a body dump. It took a few seconds for his panic to subside, and he began to assess his situation.

It was pitch black, and the dripping water echoed eerily throughout the building. He knew they couldn’t see him, but he was also blind to who they were or what they looked like.

The men, unaware that they were silhouetted by the streetlights coming in through the giant doorway below, dumped the body in the middle of the open floor, then walked out, talking between themselves.

Yankee Dan could hear their voices, but he couldn’t discern the words, and they’d been nothing but silhouettes, both coming and going. He waited until they pushed the doors shut, and waited even longer until he heard them drive away.

Acclimated to the absence of light enough to maneuver, Yankee Dan made his way downstairs to see if the victim was still alive.

He felt for a pulse and found nothing, then quickly removed both shoes.

He was going for the socks when he found the phone stuffed into the upper part of the sock on the dead man’s right foot.

He didn’t need the phone, but he didn’t have it in him to rob a dead man and leave him lying, so he decided that an anonymous call to the cops would save the body from the rats, and maybe a little of Yankee Dan’s soul for the theft.

But the good idea fell flat when he couldn’t open the phone. It took him a few seconds to realize it had to be opened with a fingerprint. Taking a chance, he pressed the dead man’s thumb against the icon. The phone screen opened with a multitude of other icons.

“Bingo,” he muttered and immediately called 911, told the dispatcher that he found a body, gave them the address, then hung up without giving his name.

Satisfied he’d done his moral duty, he wiped the phone free of his prints, slipped it into the man’s pocket, then headed for the stairs.

Desperate to get the new shoes on and get the heck out of the building, he sat down on the bottom steps to change his shoes.

He winced as the scab on his heel pulled off with the leather, but for the first time in months, he had socks to pad the sore and shoes that didn’t rub.

He was about to make a run for it when he began to hear sirens.

He hadn’t expected the police to respond so quickly, and now he was trapped.

If he ran out onto the streets at this time of night, in this part of town, he would be looked at as a possible suspect in this man’s death.

In a panic, he ran back up the stairs, hoping to hide among the discards of the company, forgetting that he’d left his old shoes behind.

Yankee Dan was running for his life in a dead man’s shoes. It did not bode well for him.

The first wave of police arrived, spilling into the warehouse in twos and threes. Fearing they would begin a search, Dan slipped into an office, crawled beneath drop cloths covering old filing cabinets that had been piled in the corner, and held his breath, praying that they didn’t search too hard.

There was a door at the far end of the second floor that would take him down two flights of stairs to the street below, but it would be locked. He could hear voices downstairs, but they stayed distant and muffled.

Just when he thought he might get out of this without being discovered, he heard more voices—louder voices, and then footsteps on the stairs, and in that moment, remembered the old shoes he’d left behind, and the body without any.

Reality hit. They would find him and blame him for the death. His only option was to run and hope for the best, and so he did, unaware that the man who was chasing him had once chased down a runaway longhorn on foot. He was already caught and just didn’t know it.

* * *

One wild ride through the rain-drenched city later, Gunner rolled up on the scene at an abandoned warehouse.

Crime scene tape was up, streets were already blocked off, and cop cars were everywhere.

His partner, Cliff Beale, was just pulling up behind Gunner as he reached for his tac light and got out of his car.

He paused, waiting for Cliff to catch up.

“Hell of a wake-up call, isn’t it?” Cliff muttered as he approached.

“Aren’t they all?” Gunner said and ducked under the crime scene tape and headed into the warehouse with Cliff beside him.