Thriller – Page 15 – Joseph Carrabis, Author Blog

The Alibi (A John Chance Mystery) – Chapter 6

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The Alibi – Chapter 6

Cranston stopped at the doors to the precinct’s central office when he saw John Rhinehold kneeling beside his desk. Too-thin, too-young, and with a dark black beard and thick brown hair tied in a ponytail half way down his back, Rhinehold was the latest edition to the BPD’s undercover cybersecurity squad. He reached for the screen on Cranston’s desk and pulled his hand back quickly as if shocked.

Cranston frowned and focused on his mobile. He TXTed back Leddy “K U?”

The precinct’s wall mounted blues flashed ON-ON-off ON-ON-off. Chairs screeched across the hardwood floor.

Leddy TXTed “C THIS?” and Cranston’s attention returned to his phone. Leddy sent her video through. “SIMON GOT IT ALL!”

SIMON. Situational Intelligent MONitor. Leddy’s MIT-Harvard sponsored drone. She had it working? He needed to pay more attention during dinners.

Its cameras moved through hazy clouds flecked with ash. He wasn’t sure what he was seeing until the drone cleared the clouds. It flew just above street level and revealed the clouds as billowing smoke.

“WRU”

“BPL Johnson w Pen.”

Cranston’s jaw tightened briefly. He didn’t like to interfere in Leddy’s friendships. Getting into that special high school MIT-Harvard thing really made her blossom. She hadn’t been able to focus on anything since her mother passed five years back. Cranston knew his daughter was special, used his connections to get her time with top grief counselors and therapists, but it wasn’t until Penny Lane and through her father, Briggs, that Leddy got into the program.

She didn’t make the cut but Briggs put forward the money, sponsored her, convinced MIT-Harvard to make room.

Cranston met the man once. Briggs arranged the meeting at his top floor, corner office in one of Boston’s largest law firms. They smiled at each other and sized each other up, one a professional skeptic the other a professional SOB in a three piece, bespoked suit.

When Cranston asked questions, Briggs Lane explained Leddy’s inquisitive mind was too good not to be nurtured, given a chance to thrive.

Cranston shook his hand, thanked him, and told Leddy to make sure she let him know whenever she saw Lane, whenever she was about to see Lane, and everything that happened when Briggs and her had their biweekly lunch meetings.

Penny Lane shadowed her father’s footsteps; suck whatever you can out of people then cast them aside and always do it with a winning smile.

Cranston wondered if Penny, like her father, would acquire a deep knowledge of the law and maintain deep enough pockets to enure her from anybody saying otherwise.

But that was just Cranston’s opinion. Leddy didn’t see it that way and Cranston wanted her to learn the world which meant two things; protecting her from it as little as possible and being there when she learned what the real world was like.

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The Alibi (A John Chance Mystery) – Chapter 5

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The Alibi – Chapter 5

Dev Surely looked down at the orders in her hand, read them, then looked up at her DOS, Cam Connelly. “What’s this about?”

Director of Station Cam Connelly moused through emails on his desktop. “What’s written on it?”

“I’m suppose to go to Boston and join a protest movement?”

“That’s a problem?”

“I was promised an overseas assignment. How’d I pull this?”

Connelly moused through emails without looking up. “You read page two and beyond?”

She flipped the topsheet over. “Oh, come on. Are you fucking kidding?”

“You look in a mirror lately?”

The Alibi (A John Chance Mystery) – Chapter 4

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The Alibi – Chapter 4

Cisily Throne lay naked on her stomach on a white and black checkerboard beach towel. The S/V Lady Eglesia‘s Volvo Penta IPS gently thrummed. Sometimes Throne’s seventy-five foot power sail’s thrusters adjusted its position over its Boston Harbor anchorage. The low vibration transported Throne back home; one or two elders clapping, others singing, and a didgeridoo throbbing in the background.

She missed being washed in the didgeridoo’s sound, of feeling the Old Ones take semi-human shape and walk towards the fire.

But that was thirty-five years and half a world away.

Today she let the sun warm her back and stretched out until her fingertips and toes touched Lady Eglesia‘s teak foc’sle deck. Her left hand brushed past her mobile and she shoved it so hard it skidded to the fore-railing before banging to a stop.

She seldom took time off and when she did, it was understood – Nobody Bothers The Alpha Bitch.

Cisily chuckled.

Lady Eglesia served as her vacation while at work. A short dinghy ride from dock to boat and she could strip of her work clothes, close her eyes and be back home.

Her mind’s eye saw the brilliant magenta shield of Hamersley Range. She swam in pools of still, clear water, listening to the birdcalls of tiny white corella and pink galahs flying overhead. At night she would power out into deep water where the city lights grew dim. She’d shut down the Eglesia‘s running lights, lie on her back and watch the stars, so different from her northern Australia home, and remember the stories of her Banyjima, Yinhawangka, and Kurrama ancestors.

A passing launch tooted its horn. Throne rolled sideways on the towel and waved, her movement revealing her milk chocolate breasts capped by their dark chocolate aureola. Boys lined the launch’s deck and applauded. She smiled, shook her head and lay back down. Both men and women still appreciated her late forties body. Long legged, full hipped, narrow waisted, and with just enough breast to keep a partner satisfied without getting in the way. Her skin glistened without needing oils or balms or ointments. A child of biracial birth, she grew up desired and hated, a dark skinned lubra in a white goddess’s body. People assumed she was the child of rape. The thought of her black father and white mother cherishing her and each other beyond their bigoted understanding.

The Alibi (A John Chance Mystery) – Chapter 3

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The Alibi – Chapter 3

Cranston grabbed the railing as he jogged up the stairs to Precinct House 17. He may have been a linebacker in college, but that was thirty-five years ago and now he needed to pull himself up inclines when he jogged them.

He snapped his hand back as if the railing carried high-tension electricity and stared.

The railing was shaking?

The Alibi (A John Chance Mystery) – Chapter 2

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The Alibi – Chapter 2

Rexall Shaul stood quietly at the top of thirty flights of stairs. He held the door open for a moment and peered down the stairwell. The stairs descended from the art deco paneled hallway on AirCon’s corporate office floor to the garage underneath their building. There were many such buildings, some taller, some shorter, many shared, dotting Boston’s Incubation Center’s waterfront, and Shaul sometimes believed he could feel the waves rocking the building’s foundation pylons buried deep into the landfill supporting the Incubation Center’s population.

He let go of the door and waited, quietly, meditatively, listening to the pneumatic cylinder ease the door shut behind him. The click of the latch was his runner’s starting pistol.

He slowed his breathing and relaxed his still-lean body, techniques he learned as a USAA level competitive gymnast, and debated lifting his arm to check his Omega Dark Side of the Moon watch.

Lifting his arm would raise his pulse a beat, maybe two.

The hesitation alone raised his pulse a beat or two and he wondered if he was losing his edge.

The sound of the pneumatic piston slowly increased as it reached the last moments of its transit.

Quick glance at the Omega. The gun sounded.

Off.

He walked quickly but not hurriedly.

Steady pace. People wouldn’t think twice, let him pass. A burst of speed once in the garage if necessary and never necessary before.

Break a sweat and he revealed too much.

Keep it all inside. Maintained.

He opened the door to the garage, glanced at his watch.

Two-hundred-forty seconds. Eight seconds per flight. Not breathing hard. Didn’t break a sweat.

Good.

His best time made use of gravity and dropping down the stairwell, his hands working the railings like descending uneven bars.

He smiled and walked to his black Lotus Exige. Two parking spaces were assigned to him as part of his package. He parked over the center line of the two so the Exige had three feet on either side clear.

Footsteps. Running, flanking him.