Grab Read online

  Contents

  Copyright

  Other Books by Jeff Elkins

  Dedication

  CHAPTER ONE

  CHAPTER TWO

  CHAPTER THREE

  CHAPTER FOUR

  CHAPTER FIVE

  CHAPTER SIX

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  CHAPTER NINE

  CHAPTER TEN

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  An Excerpt from Steal

  Other Books by Jeff Elkins

  Copyright © 2019 Jeff Elkins

  All rights reserved.

  Check out these other books by Jeff Elkins on Amazon:

  Mencken and the Monsters

  Mencken and the Lost Boys

  Saving Deborah

  Becoming Legend

  Mark and All the Magical Things

  7 Nights in a Bar

  My Top Five in No Particular Order

  Revolution Church

  To follow Jeff’s work, subscribe to his monthly newsletter by clicking here.

  Every subscriber receives a free copy of the novel The Twelve Commandments and the short story The Window Washing Boy.

  For Avery, Deanna, Antonia, Morgan, and all the other amazing African American women I know.

  May there be more heroes in fiction like you.

  In memory of Obi Okobi.

  Special thanks to Laura Humm, Everette Robertson, and Lindsey Renee.

  Thank you for helping Moe and Stacie come to life.

  CHAPTER ONE

  Nadia braced herself, but it didn’t help. The back of his hand slammed against her cheek, knocking the breath out of her and making her teeth rattle. She lost consciousness for a moment.

  The impact of her face on the floor lurched her back to consciousness. She couldn’t catch her breath. Her face was on fire. She struggled to remember where she was. He’d hit her before, but never like that.

  Her instincts screamed to stand and run, but conditioning taught her to stay down. Nadia pulled her legs to her chest, covered her head, and waited for the next blow.

  The kick jammed her knees into her chest, knocking the wind out of her, again. The pain in her shins eclipsed the pain in her jaw. The world spun faster as vomit burned her throat. She gasped for breath. Tears leaked from her eyes, but she bit back the desire to scream. The sound of her voice would only entice him.

  Her fleeting sexual indiscretion happened three days ago. The flirtatious glances and stolen looks had been building for weeks. And then, they found themselves free of children, free of prying eyes, free to explore what they’d both longed for. Nadia knew the moment he offered that she would be lying in pain on the floor. She knew and she didn’t care, because it didn’t matter how hard they hit her, there was nothing left for them to take from her.

  A second kick revived her before she had fully recovered her breath. This time his foot connected with her ribs. There was a cracking sound. She choked on something warm and thick. A moan escaped her lips before she could stop it. Tears flowed freely from her eyes. Her whole body was on fire.

  She could hear voices in the room, but the ringing in her ears clouded them, making it impossible to tell whose voices they were. Or maybe, there were no voices at all. Maybe those were the angels coming for her. Was she dying?

  A third kick connected with her head and the blood filling her throat erupted from her mouth and nose. Her moaning became uncontrollable, as she stared at the sight of her own blood on the ground. She was dying. He was going to kill her. She didn’t have any energy left to brace for another attack. There was no fight left in her. She tried to roll onto her back, but the move brought agonizing pain.

  Suddenly, Nadia’s skull was on fire. She screamed and grabbed at her head as she started to move across the hardwood floor. No longer conscious of her actions, she kicked and tried to pull herself free. She clawed at the source of the pain and felt his hand. He was dragging her by her hair. She dug her nails into his arm, but it had no effect. She could feel the roots of her hair giving way, being ripped from her head. The world spun faster. Everything was coming apart. She could no longer make sense of what was happening.

  Then, it stopped. She lay on the floor in silence, alone with her pain.

  Hands grabbed her under the arms and lifted her.

  “Don’t die, bitch. We’re not done with you yet,” he whispered in her ear.

  She gasped for breath as her feet left the ground. She was falling. She felt weightless. He’d thrown her. It was freeing. She felt like a bird taking flight. Then, her side connected with wooden stairs. There was a searing pain in her arm and her ribs. Breathing became agonizing. She rolled down the remaining steps and came to rest on a cold hard floor. She felt the world around her spin, she took a final breath, and everything went dark.

  CHAPTER TWO

  Moe yawned as she stepped into the elevator and pressed the button for the basement. She didn’t like coming to the city morgue. It wasn’t dark and dirty like on TV. This morgue was always pristine, state of the art, and filled with fancy robotic lab equipment, stainless steel tables, and intelligent looking scientists in white lab coats. What frustrated Moe about coming here was the way the people looked at her after she did what they asked her to do.

  The elevator descended, and she tucked her hands into the front pocket of her grey hoodie. Biting her bottom lip, she said a silent prayer, hoping the murder hadn’t been too gruesome or violent. Moe liked using her gift to help the police, but she hated seeing the violence. It stayed with her, plaguing her nightmares and invading her daydreams.

  She looked down at her tennis shoes and smiled at the pink laces. She’d put them in earlier that morning. The touch of pink made her black Converses pop. She loved how fresh laces could make old tennis shoes seem new.

  The doors of the elevator slid open and Moe stepped into the room. All but one of the ten workstations were empty. In four hours, she imagined the room would be filled with pathologists scurrying around as they started their days. The scene was something she could only imagine, because they never asked her to come here during the day, only at night when no one was around to see what she could do.

  “Ms. Watkins, over here,” Detective James called from across the room. He and his partner, Detective Mason, were dressed as they always were: grey rumpled suits, nondescript ties, and gold badges that hung around their necks. Two men in white lab coats stood with them. The tall, bald, pasty skinned one was Dr. Andrew Keats. He was the pathologist Moe typically worked with. She didn’t know the short heavyset scientist with glasses.

  They spoke in hushed tones as she crossed the room. She knew they were talking about her, but she couldn’t make out exactly what they were saying. By the way, they were motioning toward her, she could tell the detectives and Dr. Keats were defending her presence to the fourth man. When she got within ten yards of the group, they fell silent. Joining the circle, she looked them each in the eye and offered a smile. When it wasn’t returned, she looked back down at her pink laces. If being the only woman and the only person of color in the room weren’t enough to make her feel uncomfortable, she was at least fifteen years younger than the doctors and detectives.

  “Thanks for coming in, Moe,” Dr. Keats said. “This is my colleague, Dr. Ron Schmitt. Ron, this is Moneta Watkins. She’s the one I’ve been telling you about.”

  “Nice to meet you,” Moe said, as she shook Dr. Schmitt’s sweaty hand.

  He replied with a grunt, as he looked her up and down.

  “I’ve been talking about what you do, and Ron wanted to see it for himself,” Dr. Keats said
.

  “It’s not much to see,” Moe said with a shrug, as she stuffed her hands back into her sweatshirt.

  “It’s pretty freaking amazing,” Detective James said. “I’ve lost count of the number of crimes she’s solved for us.”

  “This thing she does, surely you’re not using it as evidence?” Dr. Schmitt said.

  “No, no, no, no. Nothing like that,” Detective James said.

  The excessive number of noes made Moe smile.

  “Sometimes though, when the evidence fails us, we just need a push in the right direction,” Dr. Keats said.

  “So, how does this work?” Dr. Schmitt asked, crossing his arms over his chest. “Do we need to light some candles, hold hands, and chant some kind of nonsense?”

  “Ms. Watkins touches the victim, closes her eyes, and then, she tells us what happened,” Detective James said.

  “So, you’re some kind of psychic mind-reader?” Dr. Schmitt asked with a dismissive grin.

  “Not exactly,” Moe said. “When I touch someone and concentrate, I’m capable of sharing an electrical current with the person that allows me to experience their neural pathways by creating a replication in my mind of the memory the person is having.”

  Dr. Schmitt laughed. “Nonsense. Keats, this is nonsense,” he said, shaking his head.

  Moe shrugged again.

  “It’s real,” Dr. Keats said. “You’ll see.”

  “Fine,” Dr. Schmitt said. “Show me.”

  “The victim is this way,” Detective James said, motioning to the back corner of the room.

  They walked together toward a figure covered in a white sheet, lying on a stainless steel table. Moe could tell the person under the sheet was a slightly overweight male around six feet tall. She whispered another silent prayer, asking that this one not be violent or gruesome.

  As they surrounded the table, Detective James reached to pull back the sheet and uncover the victim, but Dr. Schmitt grabbed his hand. “Nope,” Schmitt said. “I don’t want you giving this charlatan any clues.”

  Moe looked down at her laces again and sighed. “It’s fine,” she said. “I don’t need to see him.” Reaching under the sheet, she found the victim’s hand. It was cold and stiff. “How long has he been dead?” she asked.

  “We estimate the time of death at ten hours ago,” Dr. Keats said.

  “He might be too far gone,” Moe said.

  Dr. Schmitt let loose a victorious laugh. “I knew it,” he said. “She’s a fraud.”

  Ignoring the doctor, Moe said to Dr. Keats, “If I’m going to see anything, he’ll need a boost.”

  “One step ahead of you,” Dr. Keats said with a smile. Reaching below the table, he retrieved a car battery attached to a small motor and a set of jumper cables. After setting the contraption on the table, turning on the motor, and attaching the cables to the battery, Dr. Keats tapped the free ends together, generating a small spark. The other men around the table jumped. “I love it when they do that,” Dr. Keats said to Moe with a smile.

  Moe grinned. “Just a quick hit, okay?” she said. “I don’t want to get everything in his head. Just the last couple things he saw.”

  Dr. Keats attached the grounding cable to the table and held the positive cable next to the dead man’s big toe. “Just a quick hit. Got it. Let me know when you’re ready,” he said.

  Moe took a deep breath, closed her eyes, and said, “Now.” She felt the charge rush through her arm.

  When Moe opened her eyes, she was standing perfectly still in a bright room. She held a brick in her right hand and a fishing net in her left. The floor was made of white ceramic tiles, and the walls were painted Sea Shell Blue. She remembered the name of the color because of how ridiculous it had sounded. Sea Shell Blue. Such a stupid name. Sea Shells weren’t blue.

  As the memory began to sharpen, Moe could tell the dead man was in his kitchen. His name was Charles, but everyone called him Chuck, or Grand-Pa. He was seventy-six. Even though his wife, Marge, had died two years ago, a sad loneliness still lived in his chest. He missed her every second of every day. She’d picked out Sea Shell Blue for the kitchen and the white tile. It was the only reason he’d kept it.

  Moe stood in the doorway, staring across the room at the base of a black stove. Above the stove was a silver hood and a shelf half-filled with various spices. When Marge had been alive, it had been packed with spice jars that were routinely replenished, but Chuck had been slowly throwing out the old bottles as they ran low. Now, only a few unused ones remained. For a reason Moe couldn’t see yet, she was focused on the floor. She was standing as still as she was able. Waiting.

  A small nose poked out from beneath the stove. It twitched, sniffing the air. The nose disappeared and the small head of a little gray mouse appeared. The animal also stood perfectly still, waiting to see if any predators had noticed its arrival.

  “I’ve got you now you sneaky little bastard,” Moe thought, as she squeezed the brick in her right hand.

  The mouse ventured out from beneath the stove, creeping toward the square of cheddar cheese Chuck had left in the middle of the room.

  “A little closer,” Moe thought, watching the mouse move a few inches at a time across the floor. “A little closer,” she said to herself, as a drop of sweat dripped from her bald head, down her cheek. She decided at that moment that she would use the brick and not the net.

  Determining the room was safe, the mouse scurried toward the cheese.

  “Got ya!” Moe yelled, as she jumped at the mouse with as much energy as she could muster. Moving at that speed made her knees and her backache, but she didn’t care. If she could kill this damn thing, the pain later would be worth it. Her knees crashed into the tile floor and sent a scream of pain through her body as she leaped at the mouse, hoping to smash it with her brick, but the mouse was too quick. It scampered away, returning to its hiding place under the stove before Moe’s brick could smash against the tile.

  “Get back out here, you little son-of-a-bitch!” Moe yelled, as she struggled to get to her feet. Reaching up, she placed the brick on the spice rack above her head, dropped the fishing net to the side, and then, returned to her hands and knees. Straining to see through the crack under the stove, she yelled, “I know you’re under there you furry bastard. Get out here, and fight like a man!”

  She shoved the stove with her shoulder, hoping the sudden jolt would scare the mouse into a panicked run. “You can’t hide from me!” she yelled, banging the stove a second time with her shoulder. “Get out here and face me!” she yelled, as she hit the stove a third time.

  There was a sudden sharp pain in the back of her head. She touched the back of her neck and was surprised to feel a warm, thick liquid coming from the base of her skull. She looked left and saw the brick next to her. It was smudged with blood. She thought about Marge. There was a feeling of relief, and peace, and completion. “I’m coming, baby,” she heard herself say, as her arms went limp and her cheek pressed against the floor.

  Moe opened her eyes and let go of Chuck’s hand. She looked at the four men standing around her. Each watched her with curious fear. It was the moment she dreaded, the moment when everyone in the room stared at the freak.

  “You okay, Moe?” Dr. Keats asked.

  She tucked her hands back into her sweatshirt and took a step away from the table. “Yeah,” she said. “I’m okay.”

  “Well?” Detective James said. “Did you see who killed him?”

  “Nobody killed him,” Moe said. She looked down at her pink laces and tried to forget the sight of the bloody brick on the floor and the memory of a wife named Marge, who she’d never actually met. “It was just an accident,” she continued. “He was alone.”

  “This is nonsense,” Dr. Schmitt said, throwing his hands in the air with dramatic flair. “She didn’t see anything. How does an elderly man accidentally bash his head in with a brick?”

  “He was hunting a mouse that had run under the stove,” Moe said. �
��He put the brick on the shelf with the spices and then started hitting the stove with his shoulder trying to scare the mouse. The brick fell, whacked him in the head, and he died. Freak accident. Not a homicide.”

  “That explains why you couldn’t find any prints,” Detective James said to Dr. Schmitt.

  “And why the neighbors didn’t see anyone coming or going,” Dr. Keats added.

  Dr. Schmitt stammered with his mouth hanging open. “But. I don’t see how… I mean… An accident? The brick just fell?”

  “Well Gentlemen, let’s call it a night,” Detective Mason said, his deep gravelly voice filling the room for the first time. Nodding to Moe, he added, “Thank you, young lady.”

  “I’m glad I could help,” Moe said with a smile.

  “Come on, Moe,” Dr. Keats said, motioning to the elevator. “I’ll walk you out.”

  “Thanks,” she said. As she stepped into the elevator, she tried to erase the moment from her mind. She tried to leave Chuck and his mouse and his loneliness on the table with the detectives. She looked at her laces and tried to remember threading them through her shoes that morning, but she knew it was hopeless. Chuck’s memory of his last moment was her memory now, and she’d see it over and over, until it finally wore thin in her mind and disappeared, as all memories do, only to be replaced by someone else’s.

  CHAPTER THREE

  The electric sounds of Stevie Wonder played from Moe's phone telling her it was time to get up. She debated reaching over and hitting snooze, but when the song transitioned to Stevie’s enthusiastic singing about how he had someone who needed him, she couldn’t help but dance under the covers. She bit her bottom lip and smiled. Today was going to be a good day. She was sure of it. Stretching, she sat up and checked the time. Six o’clock. A little earlier than usual, but she had a big meeting to prep for.

  A whine came from the floor near her feet. She looked down to see Bosley’s nose and eyes poking up from the end of the bed. “You need to go out, boy?” she said to the short haired dog. Moe had no idea what breed he was. She was pretty sure he was just a mutt. She’d found him in an alley one night walking home from a job. She'd bent down to pet him, he'd licked her face and wagged his tail, and they’d been fast friends ever since.