No, I haven’t got a working title yet.
The room was a bloody mess and it was my fault.
If I’d been there instead of John, I could have banished whatever monster Inglewood had sent. But no, I’d wanted to take a break and run to the store for more paper. If I’d sent John, we’d both be alive. I hadn’t thought about the vulnerability of our temporary office, and John paid with his life. I’d returned to find hotel security and the Los Angeles police crawling all over a murder scene. They might not be sure it was a murder but I was.
I could also have tried to teach John the spells Zeb had been teaching me. The banishing one would have been obviously useful to him in the situation he’d faced. Maybe it would have worked for him, maybe it wouldn’t, but at least I would have been able to say I’d tried.
The hotel surveillance tapes were clear, so at least this once I didn’t have police trying to frame me for John’s murder. They’d recorded my exit, and there had been cops and hotel security who saw me return, ignorant of what had happened until they showed me the awful truth.
Maybe I hadn’t done it, but I knew it was my fault John was dead.
I was wondering what all the fuss was about as I parked the Porsche and retrieved the paper from the front seat. Eve Destrillo, the hotel’s agent for special rentals, met me with a plainclothes cop, one I didn’t know. “What’s going on?” I asked, as Eve introduced us, “Sergeant Martinez, this is Mark Jackson, the leaseholder. Mark, Sergeant Martinez, L.A.P.D. He needs to talk to you.”
“About what?”
“Mr. Jackson, there’s been an incident in your room.” That’s when I knew, as the pit dropped out of my stomach. I wasn’t even worried about the two hundred deaths Whitehall and Ramirez were trying to pin on me. I knew what had happened before she ever said, “Some of the neighboring rooms reported gunshots. When hotel staff went to investigate, we found the body of a white male. We called the police immediately.”
“May I see the room?” I asked.
“It’s not a pretty sight,” Sergeant Martinez replied, “but it seems a necessary thing. I’ll need you to answer some questions first.”
That brought things to a screeching halt, “Then I’d better call my attorney. George Stuart of Morris Silver and Associates. Probably better if we all just wait for George before starting anything, as my responses are going to be repetitive and not informative until then.”
“You’re not a suspect, Mr. Jackson. Security cameras show…”
“Sergeant, my wife is an attorney. We both know ‘not a suspect’ is subject to change. Let’s just start this out the right way, shall we?”
“So you’re saying there is reason to suspect you.”
Our public servants hate it when somebody realizes they can become the target of a witch hunt or the whim of a police investigator. “No, sergeant, and you know better. I have been subjected to being made the subject of witch-hunts twice in the past few weeks because the person I suspect is behind this attack has political allies and allies in the police department who have decided that I am the only suspect in defiance of all evidence. If you’re not crooked, you will await the arrival of my attorney patiently. If you are, you’d use anything I said to fabricate a pretense of suspicion, so I’m definitely waiting for an attorney. Which is it going to be?”
“Call your attorney.”
So I called the Morris Silver number, but George was busy in court, and it was Julie came to my defense during the police interview. It took her about 45 minutes, and in the time I was waiting, I took two phone calls from clients, but Sergeant Martinez did not offer to allow me access to the office. I understood that given the circumstances, he couldn’t, but that still didn’t make it any better to leave me sitting isolated from all my work when I was now going to have to do John’s work as well as my own.
Copyright 2026 Dan Melson. All Rights Reserved.
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