Sallow City Read online

  Contents

  Copyright

  Series

  Prologue

  Part I

  CHAPTER ONE

  CHAPTER TWO

  CHAPTER THREE

  CHAPTER FOUR

  CHAPTER FIVE

  CHAPTER SIX

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  CHAPTER NINE

  Part II

  CHAPTER TEN

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

  Part III

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

  CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

  CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

  CHAPTER THIRTY

  CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

  CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO

  CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE

  CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR

  CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE

  CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX

  CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN

  CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT

  Note to readers

  Dedication

  Books by

  About the Author

  SALLOW CITY:

  Micah Reed #2

  By

  Jim Heskett

  All material copyright 2016 by Jim Heskett. No part of this work may be reproduced without permission.

  Published by Royal Arch Books

  Www.RoyalArchBooks.com

  Please consider leaving a review once you have finished this book. Want to know when the next book is coming out? Join my mailing list to get updates and free stuff!

  Other books in the Micah Reed series:

  #0: AIRBAG SCARS

  #1: NAILGUN MESSIAH

  PROLOGUE

  Danny Garaffalo shed his latex gloves and sunk into the chair in the tiny break room at the rear of the morgue. Back aching. He’d been on his feet for nearly three straight hours, bagging and tagging. But that’s what happened when they didn’t double-check vacation time requests, leaving him the only forensic tech—out of three—in the Genesee County Mortuary for this entire week. He’d always thought late shift would be the slow shift. Not so much.

  Danny pondered his half-eaten hoagie, nestled in the waxed paper next to his laptop, and decided his stomach wasn’t up to the task of finishing it. Maybe later.

  The screen saver sent swirling colors and patterns across his laptop, lulling him into drowsiness. Danny wondered how long he could sit here, letting his unfinished tasks languish until the guilt of laziness would strike him. Those forms weren’t going to complete themselves.

  Before he could find his answer, the door at the far end of the room opened. Lights bounced off a dozen stainless steel surfaces. Those harsh and buzzing fluorescents. The latch shut with a clack and in front of the door now stood a rotund black woman with tidy rows of gray braids clenched to the top of her head. Despite the severe hair, she wore a kind and wrinkly smile, with black eyes like marbles. Looked mid-fifties, maybe. Sixty, tops. She was also wearing a red visitor badge around her neck.

  Visitors at this time of night meant someone official. Most families of the deceased came during the day when the medical examiner was present. Danny got to his feet, trying not to grunt from the aches in his back and legs. “Hello.”

  She stretched, grimacing. “Always think the flight to here from DC is going to be a hop and a skip, but it ends up feeling like I’ve been pushing a boulder up a hill all day.”

  “If you flew into Detroit, I can understand. It’s hell getting out of that airport. I fly in and out of Bishop when I can.”

  She grinned, and a rollercoaster of weird silence followed. Obviously, she wasn’t here to talk about airport convenience.

  “Can I help you, ma’am?”

  She dug into her purse and flipped open an ID. Department of Justice. “Are you the medical examiner?”

  He eyed the badge. “I’m just a tech, Mrs—”

  “Please, call me Anita.”

  “Well, Anita, the examiner leaves around five most days, or after noon on Friday, if she’s had a wet lunch.”

  Danny felt stupid for saying that, but Anita smiled politely. He cleared his throat. “Is there something I can help you with?”

  She put away the ID and adopted a serious face. “I’m with Missing and Unidentified Persons. You have a John Doe I’d like to see.”

  Danny didn’t know if he was supposed to do that, but he supposed a DOJ badge gave her the right to do whatever she wanted. He didn’t mind, though, because this Anita woman seemed on the level. Had a kind of folksy air about her. Like someone’s grandmother, baking pies and setting tea in the sun to brew.

  “You flew from DC to check out a body? We could have sent you the paperwork, if that’s what you wanted.”

  “Thank you, but I would like to see him personally.”

  Danny’s stomach yawned. He suddenly decided he wanted that hoagie, after all. “Sure, Anita, that’s no problem. Do you have a reference number?”

  She handed him a folded piece of paper with the number on it, and he escorted her to his workstation. He tried to log into the system, but for some reason, she was making him nervous, and he fat-fingered his password a couple of times. Felt a little weird as she watched over his shoulder. Maybe she wasn’t technically supposed to see this without a written request, but Danny made the executive decision. If they were going to leave him here alone, that meant he was in charge.

  “Got it. He’s right over here,” Danny said as he pointed at Cold Chamber C. He guided her back through the maze of steel gurneys and opened the door. A fog of wet and frigid steam rushed out, quickly dissolving into the air. “This one’s been here a while. We were about to get rid of him. Transfer to a bigger facility.”

  “I’m here just in time?”

  Danny nodded. “You sure are. Chamber D is unusable because of the power outage last month. Capacity issues.”

  “I understand,” she said. “Have the police concluded their investigation?”

  “Cops haven’t been by yet at all.”

  She raised an eyebrow. “Is that normal? He’s been here for days.”

  Danny emitted a little chuckle. “You don’t know Genesee County.”

  The body was on top of a steel gurney in the back left of the chamber, wrapped in a white bag. He put a hand on the bag, then paused before rolling it back. “I should warn you, Anita. His face is intact, but the rest of him is… I don’t know how else to say it. He’s in rough shape. Your John Doe was torn to pieces. Burned, cut, shot, the whole nine yards. I haven’t seen too many chewed up this bad before.”

  Anita smiled her kind and toothy smile. “I’ve been doing this a long time, dear. I don’t think you’ll be able to shock me.”

  He wasn’t sure about that. But one way or the other, they would both know in a moment. Danny peeled back the bag over John Doe’s face. Tried his best to hide the mass of meat that constituted the body from the neck down. Maybe she could handle it, but he didn’t want to have to see it again.

  He got an eyeful of the charred flesh around the neckline, and he changed his mind about his half-eaten hoagie. Wasn’t often that a body could make his stomach squirm.

  Anita bent over, her face scrunched up in concentration. Dark eyes flittered over the man’s features. The body she was examining was approximately thirty, with brown hair and brown eyes. Caucasian. Good-looking guy, or,
at least, he had been before someone had drained the life out of him.

  Anita took a business card from her purse and slipped it into Danny’s shirt pocket. “If the police do get off their butts and come by to investigate, please call me.”

  “No problem. I can do that.”

  She then sighed as she slipped a cellphone from her pocket.

  “Bad news?” Danny said.

  “Not so much for me, but for someone else, yes. I was really hoping I was wrong about this one.” She dialed a number and lifted the phone to her ear. Gave Danny a glance before the call connected. “Frank? It’s your little sister… yes, yes, but that’s not what I called you for. I’m in Michigan. Flint, exactly. That young man who works for you, what’s his name? The one you introduced me to last Christmas.”

  Danny crossed his arms, intrigued. So this woman had some personal connection to this body. It had seemed strange for someone in the DOJ to come all the way from Washington to identify some random John Doe. But the more Danny thought about it, the more he understood how everything lined up. The way this kid was torn to pieces, it had to be a mafia killing or something like that. Terrorist, maybe. Or perhaps the government themselves had done it. Wouldn’t have surprised Danny one bit.

  “Right,” she said into the phone. “Micah Reed, that was his name. Something caught my eye on a standard MUP search yesterday, and I came out here to Flint to examine it.”

  She paused, nodding as she listened. Her fingers gripped the edge of the gurney as she pursed her lips.

  “That’s the thing, Frank. I know this will be hard for you to hear, but I’m staring at Micah’s dead body in a morgue right now.”

  Part I

  GHOSTS

  FROM THE

  PAST

  CHAPTER ONE

  Frank Mueller sat up in his bed, the light from his phone glazing his legs in an eerie glow. He opened his mouth to speak, but a barrage of coughs came out instead. Damn herbal throat lozenges weren’t doing a thing. He hadn’t smoked a cigarette in fifteen years, but he still hacked up half his lungs as soon as the sun went down every night.

  Just another part of growing old.

  When he’d recovered, he managed to spit out, “it can’t be Micah’s body. It’s not possible.”

  Despite what he’d said, his rational mind told him it was absolutely possible. Every time Micah left the office each evening, Frank knew it might be the last time he’d see the kid alive. Those people from Micah’s past were always lurking on the fringes, waiting to rip him to shreds. And Micah dropping out of the WitSec program to fend for himself hadn’t been the smartest idea, either.

  He heard Anita slide her phone down, and what came out next was muffled. “Do you have any personal effects?”

  While Frank waited, he ran through the possibilities. Micah worked for Frank at Mueller Bail Enforcement, but he hadn’t been in all week because he was supposed to be on vacation in California. Birthday camping trip. Going to Yellowstone or Yosemite or whatever the hell national park was out there with the big mountains. They hadn’t spoken in six or seven days, not since a text message after Micah had landed in Fresno.

  Why would he have traveled to Michigan? If he hadn’t gone voluntarily, why would someone kill him in California and transport him to Flint? That made no sense at all.

  Frank had lived in Michigan, a long time ago. He had no desire to revisit his old stomping grounds.

  His phone beeped, and he held it out as a text message came through. A picture of a body, dark blue but somehow pale, with a crinkled body bag peeled back around the head. It was a little hard to tell with all the discoloration of the skin, but that body looked exactly like Micah. Same brown hair and brown eyes. Same chin, same cheekbone structure.

  A wave of lightheadedness floated up through Frank.

  If that was Micah’s body in the morgue, then whoever killed him had done so on behalf of the cartel. That was one thing he knew for sure. Even after two-plus years since he’d gone to prison and emerged in Witness Protection, some of those bastards refused to believe he’d died. Various rumors had circulated. Apparently, not all of them believed the rumors, because the kid had a price on his head.

  Someone had come to collect on that bounty. That was a reasonable explanation. Didn’t put Frank’s ripped heart back to pieces, though.

  “Frank? Are you there?”

  He cleared his throat and activated the speakerphone so he could run his hands through his thinning hair. He wanted to cry, something he hadn’t done in years. “I’m still here, Anita.”

  “Is that him?”

  “I’m not sure,” Frank said, even though he was becoming increasingly convinced as he stared at the picture. “It could be.”

  “I’m sorry you had to find out this way. I thought you might be the one to contact his family.”

  Most of Micah’s family, the McBriars, hadn’t seen their son Michael since before he disappeared from public view and then emerged as Micah Reed. They already thought he was dead. That was the best thing for them, because if they discovered he was alive, they’d only put themselves in danger too.

  “Let me call you right back,” Frank said.

  He hung up and looked up Micah’s contact record on his phone. His finger hovered over the call button, but he couldn’t bring himself to press it. Frank had grown attached to Micah in the year or so he’d been sponsoring him in AA.

  Micah had proven himself a capable skip tracer at Frank’s bond agency. And after Micah got sober himself, he’d become a dependable friend.

  Frank stood and lumbered to the window. Looked out on his downtown Denver neighborhood, at the aged brick houses, porch lights spitting yellow hues on budding spring lawns. When he’d moved in, he’d been the only black person on this street. The white people didn’t mind having him here, though, because he’d been a cop. Now, all the white people were gone, fleeing this grungy neighborhood for the clean and manicured suburbs.

  He pressed the button to call Micah.

  It rang. And rang. And eventually went to voicemail. Frank hung up, and then he shuffled into the kitchen to refill his water glass. So thirsty, all of a sudden.

  He called back and left a voicemail this time. Didn’t like the way his voice broke as he spoke into nothingness, sending a message to Micah that the kid might never hear.

  Frank walked his phone into the bedroom and slumped on the bed. Let a deep sigh rumbled through his body, long enough to make him lightheaded. Then, he called his sister back.

  “Which morgue did you say you were at?”

  CHAPTER TWO

  Micah Reed stretched his legs out under the seat in front of him, then reached up and tweaked the little nipple to control the airflow. He wondered if the blowing air was being recycled, even though the plane still awaited takeoff. Or, if that weren’t true, at what point did they switch it over to inside-only air? When did they lose the ability to touch the outside?

  He giggled a little, then realized the people around him probably thought he was crazy. Single white man, alone in an airplane row, laughing at himself. Sure, he could hold his phone up to his ear and pretend he’d been talking to someone, but that might be a little too pathetic.

  His body felt heavy, and his brain was full of mush. A week of hiking in California had left him gloriously drained. Had blunted the rollercoaster of thoughts that usually swirled inside his head.

  Yesterday, he’d packed up his tent at the Tuolumne Meadows campsite in Yosemite early and decided to spend his last night at a motel nearby. The thought of a night in a nice bed before getting on the plane seemed like a winner. Sleeping in an anonymous bed for his last night of vacation.

  The seat next to him was presently empty, but that wouldn’t last. Half the plane still had yet to board. While he waited, he took out his phone and powered it on for the first time all week. Seven days without worrying about where he’d left his phone charger. Had been a nice change.

  Jettisoning the technology was a close
second to his favorite piece of vacation tradition: that relief he felt when he could take his keys and drop them in his bag. No responsibilities for a whole week. No condo key, no car key, no key to Frank’s office. Vacation mode.

  That had also meant a week without an AA meeting, and he could feel the itch under his skin. The yearning to sit in one of those rooms. He needed to be with his people again, and soon. He didn’t feel in imminent danger of taking a drink, but the meetings helped with his general sanity levels. Like a regular oil change for the psyche.

  As his phone came to life, a few notifications and messages popped up. Those little numbers in the corners of the apps, screaming look at me look at me. Micah hovered his finger over the text message app, but he decided against it. He could afford to remain unplugged for the two-hour flight home, and then deal with civilization after. He flicked his phone into airplane mode and shoved it in his jeans pocket.

  As the single-file crowd trickled down the aisle, Micah’s jaw almost dropped. One of the hottest women he had seen in recent memory passed the first class curtain, headed into economy class. Hair a shade of red so deep it was almost purple, and green eyes. Arched eyebrows like half moons. Curvy figure under a sharp gray skirt and a button-down shirt, unbuttoned far enough to show a hint of cleavage and the tiny red dots of sparse freckles. Looked early thirties, probably, but Micah was often wrong about that. Within his age bracket, though, for sure.

  He glanced at the open seat next to him. Up at the woman. Back at the open seat. No, she wouldn’t stop here. Micah’s luck wasn’t that solid. And what would he say to her even if she did sit next to him? This woman seemed so out of his league.

  Plus, disposable small talk with people was always a struggle. Couldn’t tell them anything genuine about his past, so he usually didn’t bother.

  Yet, he kept glancing at her and the open seat. She slowed as she neared his aisle. Hefted a roller bag up onto her elbows and flipped it into the overhead storage bin.