Dark Glory: A Mike Angel Mystery

By David H Fears

#20 in the series set in Portland and British Columbia.

This last episode begins when a vision from Mike’s first big case visits his office using lies and hypnosis to achieve her ends. The woman is a spitting image of her aunt who died in a hail of bullets in the 1960 case, a woman Mike became obsessed with. More diamonds from that old case surface. They get passed around between a murder in Spokane that fits into the South Hill rape cases; an attack by a gang on his partner Rick and wife; Mike being waylaid by a Ma Kettle type and two daughters in Rogers Pass; and a shootout at a remote cabin, hideout of Thuggees. Survival for Mike, Rick, Molly and Cathy hang by a thread, with a shocking conclusion. Will Mike survive his last big case? You’ll love this fast moving complex case.

Adult language and situations.

• Language: English
• Publisher: David H Fears
• Release date: Jul 20, 2017
• ISBN: 9781370445899

David H Fears

David was known by the handle “professor” as a boy (no doubt the thick black spectacles, Buddy Holly style), and has had a lifetime interest in Mark Twain. He has also written nearly one hundred short stories with about sixteen published, and is working on the 14th Mike Angel PI Mystery novel. Fears is a pretty handy name for horror stories, but he also has written mainstream nostalgic, literary, some fantasy/magical realism, as well as the PI novels. For the past decade he has devoted his full time to producing Mark Twain Day By Day, a four-volume annotated chronology in the life of Samuel L. Clemens. Two volumes are now available, and have been called, “The Ultimate Mark Twain Reference” by top Twain scholars. His aim for these books is “to provide a reference and starting-off place for the Twain scholar, as well as a readable book for the masses,” one that provides many “tastes” of Twain and perspective into his complex and fascinating life. He understands this is a work that will never be “finished” — in fact, he claims that no piece of writing is ever finished, only abandoned after a time. As a historian, David enjoys mixing historical aspects in his fiction. David recently taught literature and writing at DeVry University in Portland, his third college stint. His former lives enjoyed some success in real estate and computer business, sandwiched between undergraduate studies in the early 70s and his masters degree in education and composition, awarded in 2004. He was born and raised in Portland, Oregon, and has lived in New England, Southern California and Nevada. David is youthful looking and is the father of three girls, the grandfather of four and the great-grandfather of two; he’s written, “It all shows what you can do if you fool around when you’re very young.” David’s a card. How many of us think humor has a place in mystery tales or history tomes? He claims his calico cat Sophie helps him edit his stories while lying across his arm when he is composing, and sinking her claws in with any poorly drawn sentence. As a writer, a humorist, a cat lover and father of girls, he relates well to Clemens. Writing hardboiled PI novels is his way of saying "NUTS!" to politically correct fiction. UPDATE: Beloved Calico Sophie died on Apr 24, 2016 at 13 & 1/2 years. She is sorely missed.

Book preview

Chapter 1

Have you ever had a moment or a string of moments that convinced you of your own insanity? My magic moments came on a warm summer day in 1979, my world turned upside down from another galaxy, or so it seemed. An innocent day, not the kind given to shock or upset. I’d even opened the door to get a draft through the stale place. The office windows were breathing in sun-drenched zephyrs that made me close my eyes and drift back to my first days as a private eye in Newark. I drifted between dream and memory just as I currently drifted between cases, somehow teetering on a high wire of anticipation, which was strange because the whole week had been one boring drone.

The clack of high-heels crossing the room raised eyelids enough to see her. That first peek brought the chaos of twenty years before. Insane, yeah. For a few out-of-body moments I was in 1960, not 1979. My grip on reality buried. Even her scent carried was 1960, bringing those old disquieting obsessions that captured me then. Obsessions that must have hibernated in the back of my brain for twenty summers, like cicadas emerging into the sunlight. I hadn’t seen or heard a single cicada since heading to Oregon. I doubted they lived in these parts. But who knows what lurks in the hearts of men, or in the earth for that matter?

Back in the now, her face stunned and paralyzed me as it did for that sultry female in my first big case in 1960. The face of a woman I’d been desperate to rescue. The face of sin and lust and hope commingled. The face of a dead woman.

I was certain of that — she was dead.

I’d seen her meet her end in that farmhouse outside of Mattoon, Illinois, the rats nest for a bunch of Russian thugs who killed my father and gave me my long jaw scar. How could I forget that final scene in a blaze of gunfire? I’d struggled to save Kimbra with my love, my hopes, but my puny efforts were in vain that day.

Even with the passing of years I never understood the power Kimbra had on me. I’d ditched a body for her, a blackmailing weasel by the name of Joe Ambler, her husband as I found out that night, and a grandson of one of the old Purple Gang of Detroit. I’d been shadowing the couple for a week, trying to dig up dirt on an insurance scam they’d pulled. It became more of a need to peep on Kimbra, not a stunning beauty but with an aspect that called to both my pecker and my need to rescue her from Joe. Kimbra in her red bra and panties. Posing like she knew I was watching.

After she put a lucky .22 slug in Joe’s heart, I helped ditch the body in a deep quarry in south Jersey, one I’d played in as a kid. Rumors had it that the mob used those deep holes to dispose of enemies. I helped populate the abyss with one more loser. A strip mall now stood where the quarry had been. Joe would have a nice long nap.

Kimbra had been abducted by Russian goons and cut up pretty bad, so when I caught up with her it was too late for hope, for rescue, for love. My frantic chase into Mattoon with Nika, a pale delicate flower who also promised love was another dead end. Yeah, I nailed Dad’s killer but that was little consolation. Mike Angel, PI, loser at love, piss poor rescue man who will cross the line of the law to help a dame. Sucker Mike.

A lot of polluted water had passed under the bridge since those days, but gawking at the woman perched next to my desk it felt like last week.

We stared at each other, me in disbelief, her in some sort of perverse interest, the corners of her mouth barely turned in hinted grin, like she was into the world’s biggest joke. I couldn’t form words or even a cogent thought. Who was she? How could any woman be a dead ringer for Kimbra Philips? Even the way she wore her hair, her outfit, makeup and posture — Kimbra in the flesh. How could she be alive? And still 25?

She pulled out a gold cigarette case and lit up while I sat wooden like a drugstore Indian. She also took out a small crystal orb, like the ballroom variety only the size of a golf ball. Light seemed to flow from it, and heat, if that’s possible. For some reason I didn’t question her strange actions. I was too busy caressing her face and figure with my stare.

You haven’t changed all that much, Mike, she said, her eyes boring into me. She pulled out a snapshot of Kimbra and me taken somewhere in Chicago. I didn’t recall ever being photographed with her. I felt dizzy. Was this a dream? Much about Kimbra back then had been a nightmare.

Even in the warm office chills ran up and down my spine. I looked away then back at her. Still, the same. Now she dangled that silly ball of crystal. My eyes were drawn to the orb. What’s with that?

Kimbra? was all I could mouth.

She angled her head showing fine clean lines of her neck. This brazen Kimbra wasn’t any older than 25. The Kimbra I knew would be 45 now, if she had lived. And I knew she hadn’t lived. I was there when she drove her car through the barn doors killing several thugs and buying enough lead to challenge Bonnie Parker’s records with Clyde.

"You wish I were her, I’m sure of that. You craved her. That lonely sensual lust she radiated. Yes, I resemble aunt Kimbra, strikingly so my father often told me growing up in St. Louis. When I was sixteen he gave me a box of her things. This outfit was hers, and several photos. A diary which covers your place in her life, and the favor you did her. Also feelings and yearnings, both hers and yours. A diary I’m sure you’ve never seen, Mike."

The little ball spun in front of her smile.

You’re her niece then?

I am. Melody Andrews. They say a pretty girl is like one — a melody.

I slowly drifted back from my cloud to grip reality. Kimbra’s niece. I never knew much about her family, not beyond worthless Joe. She hadn’t mentioned a niece, but then if my math skills weren’t fantasy, this kid would have been a born around the time Kimbra ate lead in that farmhouse.

She held the crystal by a nearly invisible thread, and rocked it while it spun. Knock yourself out Miss Svengali, with your magic ball. Yeah, like you it’s enchanting.

At that moment I was horny as hell, and my moral sense gets pretty rubbery when that happens. Something else gets the opposite of rubbery.

A diary — one book I’d like to read, I said evenly, not knowing where that line came from, struggling for calm, gripping analytical even as flashes from her crystal fell across my vision.

I thought of Rick Anthony, my retired partner, Mister Analytical himself, or Sherlock, as we often called him. I imagined him translating Kimbra’s diary and underlining each of my missteps on that old case. Then I couldn’t seem to think much of anything. The crystal was holding my brain still. All by its little self, as if another brain pulsed inside of it, a brain full of dusty memories, longings eternal, fuzzy pictures of Kimbra unhooking that red brassiere.

She hipped around the desk and laid her beaded handbag on one corner. I brought it, she said with dove-like softness, pulling out a red leather book not much bigger than a pack of smokes. I’ll leave it with you to read. I’ve flagged the good parts where she noticed your erection, where she ate you in her dreams. Other fantasies, too. Your fantasies coming alive in this crystal. See them? Look inside it and you will know. You wanted her. Now you want me. That’s all you can think of. Having me. Pushing yourself inside my hot desire.

With that she swiveled my chair ninety degrees and nestled onto my lap. Her arms around my neck, her face close enough to bite. I was frozen in time, about to kiss Kimbra the all-powerful, this lustful doppelganger. Adam in the garden following Eve’s lead. Except this Eve twirled a magic crystal that held me powerless.

It’s my fantasy or the highway, she cooed. Do you agree? I felt dizzy from her voice — it sounded disconnected, a shadow, barely above a whisper yet clean, clear as if inside my head. It was a voice that had been marinating in lust. There seemed so many secrets hiding in that voice, that orb, those echoes of my past.

I nodded. Impossible to deny the crystal, much less to deny her shape, long legs skirt hitched up high, full red lips poised and ready, crystal light splinters playing off moist lips. I didn’t have to wait to feel them on mine. Her kiss was a feather, a gentle reminder of time gone by.

There’s no point in describing this dish to you. You might pass her on the street and take no notice. She wasn’t exactly beautiful, just unique. Something in her eyes, the way she moved her mouth, her walk — mesmerized. That was it, wasn’t it? My dick was hot now, expectant. She was Kimbra, in the flesh. I hadn’t been attracted to Kimbra’s beauty, because there wasn’t much, just like this number. What there was defined sultry, smoldering lust, a siren’s call.

She wanted you, Mike. You almost convinced her. But revenge took over her mind and body and pushed out any room for love. I’ve thought about my aunt for years, since my mother died when I was born. Kimbra was this girl’s fantasy, the exciting dangerous life she led. What she wrote about you convinced me to look you up and see if any of your passion still exists for her. I’ve planned on meeting you since I was twelve. When I turned sixteen I began having erotic dreams about you, followed your career. I’m not Kimbra but I’m the spittin’ image with a bigger cup size. She wrote how you loved her breasts, how she went down on you in your car after you dumped Joe the rat for her. I hope my small differences won’t dissuade you will they? Don’t I look just like her?

I nodded and glanced down the front of her blouse, which she’d unbuttoned to flash a lacy red bra. That night in 1960 when I’d walked in where Kimbra had just killed Joe with a lucky shot from a .22 peashooter, she was shivering in a similar red bra and panties. I’d been hooked by her aura way before that night. I’d been bored stiff chasing insurance frauds for years. Not the PI life I’d imagined, though I’d tried to follow in Dad’s footsteps after quitting the NYPD. He’d been murdered in a Newark alley right after solving a big case. So life had set me up to fall for Kimbra’s pouty lips, her hot kisses and life on the edge of nasty. Working mean streets rubs off on a mug, and it had on me. I careened on the edges of the law. The close call of dumping Joe and the worry it caused kept me on the right side of the law since. Well, mostly.

After a few days shadowing Joe I started watching Kimbra more, peeping in a high tiny window at her place. She was a man’s woman, doing things without words that ignited my insides. I went against everything I’d tried to be since I came home from what Truman called that police action. The way Kimbra walked invited me; the way she lit a smoke made me want her to light mine. Whatever her brand was would be my brand, whatever dance she offered was for me.

The boredom was gone. Danger does that. I didn’t seem to give a damn about my investigator’s license. It felt like I’d been in the wrong line of work anyway.

Now my past was in my lap, breathing down my neck, doing her damndest to control me — have you ever had it happen to you? I was shocked, and said so. Then said, You surely didn’t come all the way from St. Louie to kiss me and read me your aunt’s diary, did you?

No, I have a case for you, but first I want you to know how deep her feelings for you went, and I want you to make love to me the way you wanted to make love to her. Let me be her. I know about your code, you see, she wrote of it, of you not getting intimate with a client. So before I hire you, I will have you. Over there, on your loveseat, I think. Follow the heat from this magic orb.

If I wanted to say no, to resist, or even to offer my usual smartass response, I was helpless to do so. She had me, held me, conquered me.

Pretty sure of yourself, I mumbled, amazed at her hold on me. My lap grew steamy with old yearnings. In a minute I’d know just how Kimbra would have felt. Then there’d be no escape.

Chapter 2

Later that night I realized I’d been hypnotized, my mind had been given the heave-ho, if such a thing’s possible. I never had been put under that way before. I played it over and over in my mind, struggling to remember, to answer why I’d been so compliant. Was it to find out her case? Doubtful. Was I simply being led by my dick as I’d been nineteen years before? No — the real and only reason — that old mystery of Kimbra, her inexplicable pull on something deep inside me, something I was powerless to resist, something smutty I couldn’t turn away from. My long dormant urges had been released and I’d been compliant, complicit, confused. Her crystal orb simply made excuses for taking her body and imagining Kimbra under me.

After she locked the office door, she led me to the loveseat, pushed me down sweetly, like a baby for a nap. Before I could protest, not that I wanted to, she was sucking me. I remember her quivering tongue, like a fingerling trout swimming upstream. She kept it up for a long time, almost too long. She knew the precise moment to pull away and mount me, skirt hiked to her waist, panties — if she wore them — discarded. All the while my eyes rested on her face, on the ecstasy there, eyebrows arched. This was Kimbra herself, riding gracefully, deliciously, teasing like when I peeped in her window, my lust growing hotter. I was helpless, as much as I’d ever been for a skirt. Adam giving in to Eve in the garden. My consciousness was back in 1960. Strange. Vivid. Captivating.

Stupid.

Enough genetic material had found its way into this young woman to make me see her, feel her as my long lost tragic Kimbra, the siren I imagined before she was damaged. Given my old delusions I suppose my reaction to her lookalike made sense. It was more than some imitation my dick was in, she was in fact the number I’d risked so much for, gone against the law for, against my reason, and against my code when I stashed her victim on that snowy arctic night that brought the terror of Korea back.

How often are we victims to misshapen haunting memories? Why does a particular scene, whether earth-shaking or humdrum float to the top of our thoughts? At 48 I had so many of those floaties, not all wholesome. Nothing about Kimbra was wholesome. Or her niece, either. I felt the jarring impact of new and sudden emotions blending with old haunting ones.

My head was in a fog. I remember calling out Kimbra, Kimbra, yes, yes. She rode slowly, lifting her edges, then sliding it to the hilt and circling sweetly before pressing, pushing it still, leaning, planting another of those innocent kisses that kept me wondering, kept me still. Nearly on the edge, I came out of the trance, if that’s what it was. Now I was inside Melody. Kimbra had faded. Yet I didn’t seem to care. My dick sure didn’t.

Leave it in me awhile, she whispered, eyes shut, hands gripping mine. Don’t come yet. Cook it some more.

Then she’d start the rocking, riding motion again, never stepping up the pace, each round like those before yet feeling somehow new. No rush, no fuss, no thought of orgasm. Wishes come true.

A warm gust washed over us and with it a painful cry from her throat that triggered our release, hers in a shudder, half-cry, half-moan.

After she rose and dressed, I lay like a dead man, tracing the lines of her body and face with old dusty memories of Kimbra, bringing each into sharp focus, not wanting it to be over. Though thoroughly drained I felt remarkably fresh, new, alive. That’s how some sex is after being pent up for long days or years. Demons released, angels applauding.

She returned to the chair by my desk and lit up while I yanked on my pants and unlocked, opened the office door. If anyone came by, they’d see a normal client interview. I was conscious that the smells of sex had been pushed out by the breeze though they hung around in my nose. A lot of happiness rested in those smells.

I took my seat and watched her blow a cloud of smoke into the breeze. She was slightly flushed, rosy and smug. Full of herself. Or, rather, full of my juice. Her eyes were wet and shimmering like the adoration of a puppy.

That was on her bucket list, she said evenly. And her list is my list. You won’t have to worry about crossing the line of your client rules now. You have a wonderful organ, Mike. She suspected as much though never got to realize how much except to give you oral that time.

I wondered about that.