HEAT LIGHTNING
November 2006
To win a free copy of FADE THE HEAT (five copies
available), read the excerpt from HEAT LIGHTNING
below. Afterward, follow the "Contact
Colleen" link to the right and e-mail me the
reason that Billy feels Grant Holcomb is the
wrong cop to investigate Luz Maria's case.
Coming from
Dorchester Publishing, 10/31/06:
CHAPTER ONE
Beneath
the vapor lights past moonrise, all color is
corrupted. From the humid, summer night sky to
the paint of cars in a parking lot to the ski
mask worn by the single, sweating man there,
nothing appears natural. Nothing appears real.
But the
man inside the ski mask doesn�t notice, absorbed
as he is by the small, square SUV whose lights
have just winked out. His full attention is
commanded by the slender figure emerging from
the vehicle and by his own, vise-like grip on
the steel shopping cart he has maneuvered into
prime position.
That focus
is his gift, the blessing left to him in place
of the fool�s burden of a conscience. Tonight
it serves him well � or would, except he fails
to note the other vehicle that slips into the
lot, its headlights dark despite the dim
illumination. The movement is peripheral, no
more important than the stirring of hot breezes
or the first pulse of distant thunder . . .
Or the
question of what color blood will gleam beneath
these eerie lights.
#
If anyone
in Houston should avoid a poorly-lit grocery
store parking lot after sunset, it was Luz Maria
Montoya, who had spent the past three years
pissing off people for a living. Not that she
lost much sleep worrying about it. Her job, as
spokesperson for the Voice of Poverty, charged
her with speaking out for those who couldn�t
afford the fancy lawyers of the select citizens
she offended during her frequent appearances on
the evening news.
The
trouble was, the business leaders, politicians,
and prominent sports figures she went after
could afford more than just attorneys. And some
of the �help� they hired didn�t hesitate to
color outside of the lines. Besides that, a
number of public figures, especially the sports
icons, had unbalanced fans, who wrote her
equally unbalanced letters. And then there were
Luz Maria�s own �admirers,� men - and the
occasional woman - caught up in the drama of a
fresh-faced twenty-six-year-old against the
system. With her wavy, waist-length hair, her
flowing skirts and tinkling bracelets, Luz Maria
had apparently become a gypsy warrior goddess in
the pantheon of the slightly off. So far this
summer, along with the usual hate mail, she had
received twenty-seven letters of admiration,
eight marriage proposals, and a good many more
less traditional invitations � the kind that
would have her mama insisting she give up
tilting at windmills, or at least cut her black
hair short and dress en ropa profesional.
Luz Maria sighed, thinking how Mama�s version of
business attire would likely involve a suit of
armor bristling with padlocks.
But as she
hustled through the scattered parked cars at
10:37 on a suffocatingly-humid August night, Luz
Maria Montoya wasn�t thinking of the nasty phone
messages or the even uglier e-mails and letters
she had received in recent days. Her work
attracted such things, as naturally as her
exhalations drew mosquitoes angling for a
late-night snack.
She swatted at
a small cloud of the insects as thunder murmured
in the distance, then teased her with a
half-hearted breeze that stirred the heavy air.
Heat lightning licked at the horizon, and Luz
Maria thought of turning back for her umbrella.
Instead, she flipped her single braid over her
shoulder and picked up her pace, eager to escape
to the air-conditioned store and grab the only
necessities she would be desperate enough to
stop for on her way home from a late meeting:
Chicken Nibblets canned cat food and a box of
tampons.
The
nibblets were for Borracho, the battle-scarred
old tom cat who had wandered into her life � and
the open window of her apartment � about six
months earlier. The yellow-eyed tabby, with his
torn ears, scruffy black-and-silver fur, and
broken-off fang, had been so put out after she
had had him neutered that ever afterward, he
yowled with outrage if she dared present His
Majesty with anything less than the most
expensive cat food known to man.
Neutered
or not, Borracho � Spanish for �drunkard� - had
no use for the tampons. But as crampy as she
felt, Luz Maria figured she would need them any
time now. And a pint of vanilla Blue Bell ice
cream, too, since Borracho wasn�t the only one
known to compensate with a little pampering.
Heaven
only knew that she could use some TLC after this
evening�s meeting with the board of Tex-Rid, a
company planning to build an industrial
incinerator a couple of hundred yards upwind
from the only low-income daycare center in a
rural corner of the county. She�d even put on
pantyhose �� in this heat - for those
idiotas, yet neither her sacrifice nor the
half-dozen adorable toddlers she�d rounded up
had dented their resistance.
�Certainly, we would have considered other
locations� � Not bothering to hide his
sneer, their pompous piojo of an attorney
paused to clean his half-moon glasses with a
linen handkerchief -- �had there been any
licensed childcare facilities in the
vicinity.�
She would
see how smug the louse was when she took
reporters to film the sweet-faced grandmother
hugging her little charges and serving homemade
soups and tortas � irresistible Mexican
sandwiches. That, in addition to the air
quality reports her assistant had unearthed from
other areas where Tex-Rid ran incinerators,
ought to poke some anthills.
With her
thoughts wandering toward a petition demanding a
public hearing, Luz Maria was slow to see the
movement out of the corner of her eye. Slow to
recognize � was that a shopping cart pushed
forward by the breeze? Reflexively pulling her
shoulder bag beneath her elbow, she jerked her
head toward the dull gleam �
And cried
out at the sight of the steel cart rushing
toward her, or more accurately, of the man
running behind it, his face obscured by a ski
mask.
With a grace
borne of years of Latin dancing, Luz Maria
whirled out of the cart�s path. Letting go of
the handle, the man leapt at her.
Their collision
abruptly cut off Luz Maria�s scream. She found
herself pitching forward, her body twisting in
mid-fall to land hard on her side.
A fraction of a
second later, her attacker hurled himself onto
her, slamming her rib cage against the asphalt
and bumping her head painfully. There was a
metallic clang � the cart striking a parked
car. The shrill blast from its alarm cut
through the buzzing in Luz Maria�s ears and the
terror ripping through her.
Now straddling
her, her attacker had his hands around her
throat, the fingers digging painfully into the
soft tissue. She struggled to scream again, but
her lungs refused to fill. Fighting to pull his
hands away, she ripped nails digging into what
felt like gloves. Too late, she remembered the
self-defense lessons her sister-in-law had
taught her and slashed at her attacker�s face in
a desperate struggle to reach the dark mask�s
eyeholes.
Luz Maria�s
world exploded into shards of sound: the buzzing
in her skull, the wailing of the car alarm, an
angry snarl of thunder and a distant voice � all
overlaid with a torrent of profanity as her
assailant shook her by the throat like a pit
bull throttling a stray cat.
Behind her
eyelids, heat lightning strobed, and there was a
series of pops a moment before the cacophony
inside her head rose to a crescendo . . .
But in the end,
a deathly silence reigned.
#
�The way I
see it,� Grant Holcomb�s newly-promoted partner,
Billy Devlin, went on, �there�s not an honest
man within a hundred-mile radius who�s got a ski
mask in his closet. If we could get Wal-Mart
and the like to track sales, we could just go
ahead and bust the guys before they did any
harm.�
Grant knew
his young partner was deadly earnest, but if
Grant laughed at him, the red-headed rookie
investigator would simply stare back in
confusion. Sucked the joy right out of teasing
Howdy Doody.
�Interesting concept, Billy.� As Grant turned
the corner, the unmarked Crown Victoria�s
balding tires squealed, and it rent the thick
night air with a greasy-sounding backfire.
Unlike the �real� investigators in Homicide,
those assigned to the Major Assaults Unit�s
night shift always drew the shittiest heaps.
�But what about all those guys preparing for
their ski trips?�
�In
August?�
Grant
shrugged, then decided to screw with the kid
despite his cluelessness. Grant told himself he
was doing it to keep his skills sharp for the
day he�d finally be assigned another partner
evolved enough to appreciate his sense of humor,
another partner who would get him the way John
Zeman had. Besides, jerking chains was just as
good as a fresh jolt of caffeine when it came to
revving Grant up � or getting him through what
promised to be one of the toughest victim
interviews he�d ever conducted.
�Oh, yeah,� he
said with a mock seriousness that would put the
veterans in his unit on alert. �Most of �em are
headed somewhere south of the Equator. Probably
the Andes Mountains, down in Chile.�
�Don�t
tell me they got skiing down there, too.�
Billy�s blue eyes widened, looking lonesome in
their nakedness, since his pale blonde brows and
lashes were almost invisible. The effect was to
make him look younger than his twenty-eight
years and somewhat dim, too, which Grant figured
could come in handy in their line of work.
Provided
that Billy turned out to be smarter than he
seemed. After a week together, the jury was
still out on that question. If it proved to be
the case, though, Grant thought they could get a
lot of mileage out of the Good Cop-Dumb Cop
routine.
�Oh,
yeah. It�s a well-known defense among criminals
in this part of the city,� Grant said as they
rolled up to a red light on Fannin. �Just
before popping on their ski masks to commit a
violent crime, they book Chilean ski trip
packages on the Internet. Then if they don�t
get caught, they cancel.�
During the
pause that followed, Grant could�ve sworn he
actually heard gears grinding inside his
partner�s head. As Grant wondered who the hell
had given the kid the answers to the
investigators� test, Billy burst out with, �I�ve
been warned about you, Holcomb. By more than
one of your ex-partners. You like to fuck with
people. Well, I�m here to tell you to save it
for the suspects.�
Billy shot
him an intense stare and Grant flipped on the
dome light. Amazing. Though he was clearly
pissed, without visible eyebrows, the kid
couldn�t muster a facial expression if his very
life depended on it.
�What the
hell are you looking at?� asked Billy as he
switched off the light.
�An edge,�
Grant told him seriously. �And I can damned
well guarantee we�re going to need one to get
through an investigation involving this
particular victim.�
�Luz Maria
Montoya? I saw her on the news last week,
demanding that somebody tear down those crack
houses off of Navigation. Sure, she stirs up
her fair share of shit now and then, but what�s
the big deal? It�s the city she goes after, and
rich jerkoffs who can�t think past their
wallets. Not regular guys like us.�
After
crossing the light rail tracks, Grant pulled
into the hospital parking lot, swung into a
space reserved for a day-shift administrator,
and jammed the brakes on hard. His gaze locked
front and center, he said, �The Z-man was a guy
like us. A guy better than us � or me at
any rate.�
Billy
gripped the door handle, then hesitated before
saying, �Aw, hell. I forgot about that. I � uh
� I�m sorry, Grant. I heard he was your
partner, but I completely forgot she was
involved. I was still with the Northwest Patrol
then, and I�d only been with the department for
a few . . . Listen, you think you can handle
this tonight? You don�t want any trouble your
last shift before vacation. Let�s call the
lieutenant to see if somebody else can take this
--�
Grant
popped the steering wheel with the heel of his
hand, then ripped his shaking fingers through
his short-cropped, wavy hair. �Lieutenant
Mouton�s out on leave � and I can do my job. I
just have to remember that this time,
it�s Luz Maria Montoya who�s the victim, and
looking into it�s my duty.�
If he was
going to get through this investigation, he
needed to keep focused on those two facts,
instead of his regret.
The regret
that Montoya�s assailant had fallen short in his
attempt to kill her.
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