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  The Unexpected Guest

  A Wade Parker Short Story

  Linsey Lanier

  Copyright © 2014 Linsey Lanier

  All rights reserved. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you are reading this book and did not purchase it, please return to your online distributor and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the author’s work.

  Felicity Books

  ISBN: 978-0-9892069-8-3

  ###

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  Private investigator Wade Parker is having no luck finding the killer of a teenage boy in a gang ridden area of town. But when he stops for gas at a local convenience store, he gets an unexpected surprise that’s about to change his life.

  Edited by

  Donna Rich

  Second Look Proofreading

  Contents

  The Unexpected Guest

  Someone Else’s Daughter, Excerpt

  Books by Linsey Lanier

  The Unexpected Guest

  Nothing worse than a murder case about to go cold.

  At the traffic light, Wade Parker took a sniff of stale coffee and set the cup back in the holder of his late model gray Mazda. When the light changed, he turned onto Buford Highway, the seven-lane stretch of road that ran from Atlanta’s Midtown to the DeKalb County border, feeling as sour as his drink.

  The asphalt lay before him, dark and slick as he made his way north, past the low rent apartments, the shopping malls with their colorful signage, the Hispanic medical center. His gaze scoured the shadowy parking lots while the summer rain fell softly against his windshield like a mother’s tears.

  It was past eight. He’d just spent three long hours going house to house in the neighborhood where a week ago, fifteen year old Emanuel Garcia had been shot to death by a local gang member. That was his theory, at least, deduced not only from the evidence police had gathered but from the awkward glances and evasive replies he’d witnessed this evening.

  What he needed was a name. But tonight no one was talking.

  Who shot Emanuel Garcia?

  The answer was out there. He could almost taste it. And the grieving mother, whose case he’d taken pro bono, deserved to know.

  Her son had been an honor roll student, had a bright future. Until one night he’d decided to go to a party where some friends she called a “bad influence” had made an appearance.

  Parker glanced at the dash. He needed fuel. For his car and for himself.

  There was a Quick Trip up ahead and he knew the clerk, Cesar Cheng, who usually worked there at this hour. Perhaps he could learn something from him about Garcia’s killer. He was often aware of the unseen conflicts among the younger residents of this area.

  He pulled into the station, filled his tank and was just about to walk inside when he saw it.

  The flash of metal at the counter. A blade.

  He ran for the door.

  As soon as he stepped inside the store, Parker regretted leaving his Glock in his glove compartment. A male Hispanic youth—he couldn’t have been more than seventeen—was threatening Cheng with a twelve-inch Bowie knife.

  Apparently the youth had selected several moon pies and three bottles of soda, then had hopped onto the counter beside them. Crouching near the register, with one hand he held Cheng by the collar of his yellow polo shirt. With the other, he pointed the knife at the storekeeper’s throat. He was agile.

  Parker rushed to the counter and grabbed the boy’s shoulder, digging his fingers into the collar bone.

  “I don’t believe the clerk can make change for that,” he told him.

  With a yelp, the boy let go of Cheng. Then he slapped a hand over Parker’s and swung the knife with his other as he leapt off the counter.

  Parker let go of him and backed away just in time to miss the blade.

  The boy could fight.

  The young man stood glaring at Parker with the look of a wild animal in his dark, turbulent eyes. He was lean but not scrawny, about five foot six or seven, with thick wavy black hair falling to his shoulders. He wore tight jeans with holes in the knees, a style Parker despised, a belt with a skull-and-crossbones on the buckle, and a dark T-shirt with the arms torn off. Parker recognized the gang tatt on his upper arm, which was rather muscular for his build. He worked out.

  Parker studied his well-shaped face. He was a good-looking boy, but Parker would have dismissed him for just another street thug if it weren’t for the spark of intelligence he saw in those eyes.

  At the moment, they said he was about to run. Before he could take off, Parker closed in and gave him a hard shove to knock him on his rear end.

  “Pinche culero!” the boy spat, falling backward. But before he lost his balance, his blade flew out and nicked Parker across the stomach.

  He was fast.

  And it was a bit more than a nick. Blood spurted out of a two inch cut, staining one of Parker’s best dress shirts. He had made a habit of wearing a suit on the job both for the authoritative appearance it gave him and the intimidation factor. He was starting to rethink that.

  Now he saw red. Literally and figuratively.

  The boy lay sprawled on the floor, scrambling to get to his feet like a drowning swimmer.

  Parker grabbed his hand by the wrist and drew back to cold cock him. Before his fist reached that well-shaped jaw, the boy twisted his legs around Parker’s with the speed of a cobra and forced Parker down on top of him.

  He landed hard.

  “Eres un pendejo,” the boy hissed in Parker’s face, struggling to get in another lick with his knife.

  Parker clung to the boy’s wrist, the blade flashing dangerously close to one eye. “I’ve been called worse than an asshole, son. And do you realize carrying a weapon like this is illegal in this state?”

  “Chupa mi verga!” the boy grunted, referring to what Parker should do with an intimate part of his body. Those intelligent eyes shone with the bright rage of youth. And of desperation.

  Parker almost had his legs around the young man’s waist and was about to knock the knife out of his hand and pin his wriggling body to floor when with a gargantuan effort, the boy kicked at his shin, swung an arm behind Parker’s neck, under his arm pit, and rolled over on top of him. He’d studied grappling technique somewhere. Using the momentum, Parker heaved him over again. And kept going.

  They rolled around on the floor, knocking over paper towels, bottles of dish detergent, and a display of doughnuts, spewing soap and powdered sugar everywhere. The place began to smell like a freshly washed candy factory.

  Parker heard Cheng cry out from the counter and hoped the clerk was dialing 911 before he hurt the boy more than he intended.

  As they headed down another aisle, the knife swung around Parker’s neck and nicked him along the shoulder blade. Lord, that stung. Parker was tempted to put both hands around the delinquent’s neck and squeeze. Then he heard police sirens from the street.

  He tugged him over onto his back and they rolled again.

  The boy had fire in him, and the gasoline of adrenaline to flame it. But by the time they reached the freezer case in the back, the fire began to die out. On the next revolution, Parker seized his flaying wrist and slammed it against the door of the freezer case.

  The knife flew out of the boy’s hand and clattered onto the tiles just as the police came through the door.

  ###

  At the police station Parker sat on a bench in the hall, garnering looks of curiosity from passersby as he tended to his wounds with a handkerchief.

  He couldn’t stop thinking about the look in the young boy’s eyes as he wrestled him. Anger, fear
, desperation, all mixed with that unmistakable spark of intelligence.

  A life wasted.

  The sound of approaching footsteps drew his attention. He looked up to find a small, plainly dressed Hispanic woman coming his way.

  She stopped when she reached him and stared at him with large round eyes. “Are you the man my son attacked?” she asked.

  Parker studied the woman. Her dark hair was pulled back from her round face, which was riddled with worry. She was wringing hands that looked like they were no stranger to hard work.

  “Your son attacked Cesar Cheng, the convenience store clerk,” he told her. “I stopped him.”

  “So you are that man.” She gestured to his bloody shirt. “Look what he did to you. I am so sorry.”

  “It wasn’t your fault.” Not directly at least.

  With an absent look, she sat down beside Parker on the bench and smoothed her plain dark skirt. “I just don’t know what to do.” She heaved a sorrowful sigh. “Antonio used to be such a good boy. He was an A student. Captain of the debate team. Well-liked. Then he fell in with Caruso.”

  “Caruso?”

  “A gang member. Older kid. Mean. Hombre malvado. Caruso got Antonio into smoking weed and—all sorts of things. I don’t even know what they were because Antonio hid them from me.”

  Sorrow displaced the soreness of the wounds. This wasn’t the first, or second, or even third time Parker had heard a story like this. His heart broke for this woman.

  “Antonio began staying out all night and screaming and cussing at me when I asked him why. Oh, the horrible things he said to me.” She kept wiping her hands on her skirt as if the material would never lie straight.

  “I’m sorry you have to go through this,” Parker said.

  She stared at the opposite wall as if she hadn’t heard him. “Antonio’s father died six months ago. He’s very angry about that. But I have a newborn at home. A baby girl.” Still wiping her hands, she began to rock back and forth. “I can’t have a drug addict, a gangbanger, in the house with my little Dulcea. A month ago I kicked Antonio out. Maybe I didn’t do the right thing but I didn’t know what else to do.”

  Parker opened his mouth, but he couldn’t find the words to say to the woman. What could he tell her? That everything would be all right?

  She stopped wiping her skirt and pressed her hands to her face. “I don’t even know why I came here. There’s nothing I can do. I don’t even think I can face him. Antonio, how could you throw your life away like this?”

  She began to cry and Parker felt even more at a loss. He couldn’t even offer her a handkerchief.

  “How old is Antonio?” he asked softly.

  She turned and blinked at him as if startled out of a dream. “He’ll be seventeen next week.”

  Parker couldn’t hold back a sigh of defeat. One week shy of his seventeenth birthday. That meant the attempted armed robbery charge could be reduced to robbery, which could mean a lesser sentence. The bad news was bail would be nearly impossible. Unless someone with connections intervened. Someone like himself.

  Shakily the woman got to her feet and stared down the hall as if she were saying goodbye to her son.

  Parker rose as well and got a closer look at her face. “Do I know you?”

  Frowning, she lifted a shoulder. “I have a restaurant off Peachtree Road near the strip.”

  “Ay Chihuahua!” He’d been there a few times. It was neat and clean. The food was good. “You run it by yourself?”

  “With my sister. We take turns with the restaurant and taking care of Dulcea.”

  No time to handle a rebellious lad with that busy schedule. But Parker couldn’t stop thinking of that desperate, fearful look in the boy’s eyes. And of the spark of intelligence in them. And of a young life destroyed on the streets. A life like Emanuel Garcia’s. Antonio wouldn’t make it long in prison. And when he got out, he’d be a hardened criminal.

  He turned to the woman. “I think I may be able to get bail for your son.”

  She shook her head with a pained frown. “I can’t afford bail.”

  “No, I realize that.” Parker wiped the blood off his fingers with his handkerchief and reached into his pocket. He drew out a business card and handed it to the woman. “My name is Wade Parker. I’m a private investigator. I think I may be able to help Antonio.”

  She nodded, taking the card. Then she extended a hand to him. “I’m Carlota. Carlota Estavez. Thank you for listening to me, Mr. Parker. I appreciate your offer, but even if you could get bail for him that I could afford, I can’t take Antonio back into my house. I just can’t. Not after this.”

  Parker patted the woman’s hand, trying to soothe her. “I understand, Ms. Estavez. I have something else in mind.”

  He briefly explained it and after several protests, succeeded in getting her to agree. After more thanks and cautions, she turned and made her way back down the hall, leaving Parker to his plan.

  If he could pull it off.

  ###

  Three hours later, after debating the D.A., arguing with the arresting officer, and persuading Cesar Cheng to consider dropping his complaint, Parker had posted the ten thousand dollar bail and was heading home with the young man in the passenger seat of his Mazda.

  The boy sat, silently chewing on a knuckle, one knee bopping up and down as he stared out the window.

  “What’s your name?” Parker said to break the monotony, though he already knew it.

  The boy didn’t turn around. “T,” he grunted. “They call me T.”

  Parker exhaled through his nose in disgust. He despised the appellations gangbangers gave themselves. As if a few letters or symbols could prove your manhood.

  “Your real name.”

  Lip curled with teenage repulsion, the boy turned his head. “You know my name.”

  “I’m double-checking my sources.”

  “Antonio,” he spat out and returned his gaze to the window.

  “Very well. I’ll call you Antonio. And you may call me Mr. Parker.”

  “Gilipollas,” the boy muttered under his breath.

  “No, not asshole. Mr. Parker.”

  Antonio made an indescribable sound of sheer repugnance.

  It would be a delightful evening, Parker decided as he pulled into the long circular drive of his home. He watched as the house caught the boy’s attention.

  He sat straight up. “This is where you live?”

  “It is.” He got out the car and led his new charge up the sidewalk to the porch.

  The stately Greek Revival house loomed before them with its austere columns and symmetrical shape. Five bedrooms. Not as large as the home he grew up in by any means. But comfortable enough for a man with a thriving private investigations business, his college professor wife, and their ten-year-old daughter.

  It had been a wedding present from his father, one of Atlanta’s most successful real estate developers.

  As the boy continued to gawk at the house, Parker put his key into the front door.

  He had been expecting a lonely night at home tonight, but at the moment he was thankful Sylvia had taken Gen to New York for a week of shopping, fine dining, and her first Broadway play. A well-bred woman like his wife would not abide an underage alleged felon in her home.

  Not to mentioned what his temperamental daughter would say.

  They would take more persuading than the D.A. But he had a few more days before they returned home. He was determined to make some headway during that time.

  He led Antonio inside and down the hall to the roomy kitchen his father had designed himself.

  “Have a seat.” Parker indicated a small oak dining table near the bay window.

  The boy slid onto a chair and watched him cautiously as he went to the refrigerator.

  Parker pulled out ham, bread, condiments, cheese and two sodas and set them down on the table, then he retrieved plates and utensils from a cabinet and drawer.

  Their first meal together, Parke
r thought as he constructed two sandwiches and set one down in front of the young man.

  The boy gobbled it down without a thank you and looked greedily at Parker’s. Parker made him another, which he wolfed down just as hungrily. Parker wondered if he had been stealing from the convenience store for food money. Life on the streets can be hard.

  As the boy downed a third sandwich, Parker packed up the remaining food, put it back into the refrigerator. He put the dishes into the dishwasher. Then he found a first aid kit and tended to his wounds. Antonio watched him cautiously as he bent down to hunt for what he needed next in the cabinet under the sink.

  “What are you doing, gringo?”

  Ah, gringo. He’d graduated from asshole. “That’s Mr. Parker to you, Antonio,” Parker reminded him as he stood and held out the treasure he’d found.

  An old toothbrush with a red handle. Just the tool for the type of discipline his father and grandfather would approve of.

  The boy’s lip curled as he stared at it. “What’s that for?” he sneered. “You want me to brush my teeth before bed?”

  “Not exactly.”

  His expression turned to defiance. “You think you’re going to brush my teeth for me?”

  Parker shook his head. “Not that either.”

  He stepped to where the lad sat and grabbed him by the back of the neck, this time putting the right amount of force against the pressure point. “We’ll start with the downstairs bathroom.”

  The boy tried to struggle, but he knew he wasn’t going anywhere. “You got to be joking, man.”

  “You’ll find my sense of humor has no end.”

  Parker ushered him down the hall, into the lavatory and onto his knees in front of the commode. He found a bucket under the sink, filled it with disinfectant, and put the toothbrush in the boy’s hand. He retrieved a wooden chair from the hall and settled himself in the doorway.

  “Get to work, Antonio. It’s going to be a long night.”

  ###

  Parker sat with him all night as they went through every bathroom in the entire house. All six of them.