Free The 9th Hour (The Detective Temeke Crime Series Book 1) by Claire Stibbe

his desk. She tried not to look at him now out of the corner of her eye, tried to concentrate on the road. He was silent for a time before his hand flicked directions. On the left-hand side of the road she could see the serried ranks of Spanish style buildings, one of which was the Old Town post office.
    “Want to know the real kicker?” he said as they parked. “Patti outwitted him even at the end. You wait until the results come back from Forensics. We’ve got a wine glass with his sodding spit all over it.”
    Malin couldn’t scrape up even the tiniest whimper of a comment. She merely opened the door, glad to breathe in a blast of cold clean air.
    Andrew Knife Wing was sitting on the bottom of the stairs leading to an upper terrace, thumbs dancing over a bright red phone. He looked normal to her and nothing like a psychic. But what did psychics look like anyway?
    “Ma’iitsoh,” Knife Wing said, waving one hand over his head as if wafting smoke from burning sage.
    “What did he say,” Malin whispered to Temeke as they approached.
    “It means big coyote or wolf .”
    “Is that what he calls you?”
    “No, it’s what he calls the spirit he sees in his dreams.” Temeke looked down at a fresh-faced man in his early thirties. “You said you wanted to see me.”
    Knife Wing gave a lazy smile, hesitating for a moment. “I had another dream. Well, it was a vision really. You got a light? Might need a cigarette for that light.”
    Malin studied the glossy-haired youth, five foot nine inches tall when he stood up, hair in a long ponytail, turquoise earrings. He was charismatic like the users she had interviewed in the county jail and she was aware of a small tremor of sadness in those laughing eyes. Temeke handed him a cigarette and pointed up the stairs.
    The balcony looked out on a restaurant and a colonnade of art galleries. Navajo blankets were draped over the banisters and wind chimes clanging from the vigas.
    “You said you had a dream,” Temeke said. “You also said you had a name.”
    Knife Wing drew hard on his cigarette and blew out a thick cloud of smoke. “I said I had an address .”
    “But you did say a name.”
    Knife Wing slipped the phone in his shirt pocket and took another drag of his cigarette. “Bought a truck from him a month ago.”
    “That’s a stroke of luck. His name will be on the paperwork,” Temeke said, peering over the bannister at a metallic gray truck with front fog lamps and alloy wheels.
    “I don’t keep paperwork.”
    “Clean title was it?”
    Knife Wing shrugged. “Great price.”
    “I’m guessing that’s a 2008 Chevy Colorado. Probably got the word salvage on that title. So what did this guy look like?”
    “Thickset, braided hair, tattoos. Same man in my dream. Only that one had a bloody axe in one hand and a severed head in the other. Girl with pale blue eyes.”
    Temeke seemed to think about that for a moment, mouth twitching. “Any particular tattoos?”
    “A snake round his arm, a sun and moon on his neck. He was saying stuff about the girl. Said a god had taken her. I just laughed. Thought he was crazy. But he grabbed me by the throat and said, ‘She’s a gift. A sacrifice for the father of victory.’ I wasn’t laughing much after that.”
    “When was this?”
    “I said a month ago.”
    “And you didn’t tell anyone?”
    Knife Wing shook his head, treating Malin to a wink. “No one to tell.”
    “Have you seen him since?”
    “Couldn’t get hold of him after my truck died. But I remember where I bought it. Cream house on the corner of Smith and Walter, the only two story house in the street. There was a black Camaro parked behind the gate. Reckon it’s his.”
    “Anything else you remember?”
    Knife Wing shrugged and thought for a moment, eyes grazing over Malin’s face. “It had a crime-stoppers sticker in the window.”
    Temeke handed Knife Wing the pack of cigarettes and a yellow Bic lighter and started down the steps to the road.