Desperate Souls Read Free Page A

hope so.” Edgar’s voice cooled. “Check that out.”
    Jake followed Edgar’s sight line. An emaciated Caucasian man lurked on the other side of the chain-link fence, scanning the field for a victim. Filthy rags hung off his skeletal frame.
    “Goddamned scarecrows are everywhere. The other day an old lady in Brooklyn got murdered in her own building. Some son of a bitch caved her skull in with a pipe. I just know it was a scarecrow. Black Magic is everywhere. That’s the kind of thing that drives a parent crazy.”
    Jake nodded. He had never witnessed anything like the drug epidemic sweeping the city.
    “If I catch those things anywhere near Martin …” He sighed. “The city just laid off another two thousand cops—can you believe it? We’ve already got our hands full with these Machete Massacres.”
    Jake had read in the newspapers that the corpses of several drug dealers had turned up, theirs limbs dismembered by machetes. As members of the Special Homicide Task Force, Edgar and Maria had their hands full. Jake did not miss that kind of action.
    “We’re still on for dinner, right?” Edgar said.
    “Of course. I wouldn’t miss meeting this new woman in your life for the world. Has Martin met her?”
    “Nah. I don’t think it’s a good idea yet.”
    “Why? He’s met your girlfriends before.”
    “Lady
friends. Dawn is different, though. She’s special. I don’t know if he’s ready yet.”
    Jake burst into laughter.
    Edgar shot him a look. “What?”
    “I never thought I’d see the day. Edgar Hopkins, murder police extraordinaire and eternal bachelor, head over heels in love.”
    Edgar looked away. “Fuck you.” Then he laughed, too.

    Jake took the R train to the Twenty-third Street stop in Manhattan, where he merged with a hundred other bodies exiting the dark subway station. Unemployment had skyrocketed, and more people used public transportation because fewer could afford taxis. On the sidewalk, he ignored panhandlers’ outstretched hands. Homeless people sat shoulder to shoulder with their backs against storefronts. Jake felt lucky to have a roof over his head.
    As usual, he passed through the cool dark shadow of the Tower, the high-tech office building he had protected as director of security for the reclusive billionaire Nicholas Tower and his company, Tower International. The high-paying job had been a short-lived assignment: when Jake discovered that Tower was manufacturing illegal genetic hybrids and had been responsible for the murders committed by the Cipher, he had fled. Old Nick then ordered the Cipher to murder Sheryl.
    Now the Cipher and Old Nick were both dead by Jake’s hand. So was Kira Thorn, Tower’s executive assistant, who had attempted to murder Jake in the apartment he had lived in with Sheryl. He had moved out soon after that, but first he mailed evidence of the company’s genetic experiments and illegal activities to the heads of the ACCL: the Anti-Cloning Creationist League. The grassroots organization had posted the evidence online, but government agencies dismissed the images and video footage as a hoax.
    A modern urban legend was born, and Tower International’s reputation died almost overnight. The government filed an antitrust case, which resulted in the megacorporation being broken into several smaller companies, and Tower International’s stranglehold on the genetics industry was broken. Every day brought a new scandal involving the company and saw a new Tower subsidiary fold.
    But the company still existed, with the Tower still its headquarters. Names and faces that meant nothing to Jake had assumed control of the corporation’s remaining assets. He did not trust them. If the government wouldn’t ensure that Tower International never again engaged in scientific skullduggery, Jake intended to do that himself. That was why he had set up his shop as a private investigator on the fourth floor of a small building on Twenty-third Street, where he kept an eye