Fortunate Son Read online

  Fortunate Son

  A Judah Black Prequel Novella

  © E.A. Copen 2018. All rights reserved.

  No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed or transmitted in any form by any means without the prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and certain other non-commercial uses permitted by copyright law.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events and incidents are used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  Copyright Page

  ***CONTENT WARNING*** | This book contains subject matter which some audiences may find disturbing or triggering. Reader discretion is advised. Not recommended for readers under 18.

  Cleveland, Ohio | August 2014

  ***CONTENT WARNING***

  This book contains subject matter which some audiences may find disturbing or triggering. Reader discretion is advised. Not recommended for readers under 18.

  Cleveland, Ohio

  August 2014

  Katie North’s body lay sprawled out on her bed, surrounded by the trappings of a normal college girl. The single gunshot wound to the head had packed enough force to wedge a piece of her skull in the Fall Out Boy poster on the wall. She was wearing a sweater when she died, despite the fact that it was a sunny, eighty-degree day.

  I stood at the foot of her bed, close enough that I could’ve reached out to touch her if I’d wanted. This wasn’t my first suicide, and I knew it wouldn’t be my last. Still, I hoped against all odds that I’d never see a scene like that again.

  The police photographer squatted next to me. A blinding flash made me throw my arm up to shield my face.

  “Would you quit it with that?” The lead detective, Dan Maybury, swatted at the photographer. He was a little short, dark haired, maybe five years older than me, but a good guy. I’d worked with him before. “Damn cockroaches. Can’t walk two feet in these tiny rooms without tripping on some idiot that should’ve been finished an hour ago.” Dan extended a hand to me. “Sorry about that, Judah. I told these guys to be done before you showed up.”

  I cringed when he used my first name, but only inwardly, and only because I knew he had a thing for me.

  “It’s alright,” I said, waving a hand. “He’s just doing his job.”

  The photographer scurried away and Dan came to stand at the end of the bed with me, hands on his hips. “Not even sure why they called you down here for this one. It’s pretty open and shut. Note on the desk over there. Half-empty bottle of anti-depressants next to the bed. We’re not sure where she got the gun yet, since it’s not registered to her, but someone’s working on it.”

  I turned my head away from Dan to scan the desk. A college girl’s desk should’ve been lined with textbooks, pens, pencils, maybe a laptop. Katie’s desk was bare except for a pile of notebook paper with jagged edges. They’d been ripped out of a notebook that wasn’t on the desk either. “Who was she?”

  “She’s registered as a werewolf, which is probably why they called you. System kicks these things over to BSI on automatic these days. I’ll have tech support fix it so you don’t get called out to every werewolf suicide in the district. Otherwise, they’ll be calling you every other week.”

  I left the bed and walked over to the desk. Her backpack was next to it on the floor, a pair of white earbuds sticking out. “I didn’t ask you what she was, Detective. I asked who. That’s not something you can deduce from statistics in a file.”

  “Does it matter?”

  I turned back, drawing my eyebrows together and pursing my lips. “A kid is dead, Dan. A kid with her whole life ahead of her. Of course it matters.”

  Dan rubbed the back of his neck and turned away. “Well, once the coroner rules out foul play, which’ll probably be shortly after they move the body, it’ll be history. Like I said, Agent Black, there’s no case here. Sorry for the inconvenience.”

  So, it was Agent Black after I snapped at him, but Judah before. Guess I’d touched a nerve.

  I shook my head and turned back to the desk, pulling a package of latex gloves from my pocket. After pulling them on, I picked up the note and scanned it. Nothing seemed out of place. Dan was probably right. There was no case here. But then, why was I getting that knowing feeling in my gut, telling me something wasn’t right?

  “Why’s she in a sweater?” I asked, putting the note back down.

  “Hell if I know. Maybe she was cold.”

  A bustling in the doorway made me turn around just in time to see the coroner step into the room backward, pulling along a gurney.

  I gave him a quick wave. “Hey, Victor.”

  He paused and twisted his short neck around to see me. Victor was built like a linebacker, but as gentle as a butterfly. He gave me a bob of his head. “Agent Black. What are you doing here?”

  Before I could answer, Dan cut in. “System kicked her a call on automatic since the vic is a werewolf.”

  I ignored the fact that Dan had answered on my behalf. He was always doing things like that. Interrupting me, talking over me, second-guessing my work. It was one of the reasons I’d turned him down when he asked me out. That, and I didn’t date co-workers.

  Victor brought the gurney through the narrow doorway with the help of his assistant, Michael, and lowered it to match the height of the bed.

  “Any idea why she’s in a sweater on an eighty-degree day in August?” I asked him as he unrolled the body bag on top of the gurney.

  Victor shook his head. “I’ll know more once I do the exam.”

  He and Michael positioned themselves to move the body from the bed to the gurney.

  They might have been willing to wait for an answer, but it was nagging at me. My brain wouldn’t shut up until I had an answer.

  There were only a few reasons why a young girl would wear a big, baggy sweater on a hot day in a room without air conditioning, and none of them have anything to do with temperature. Maybe the sweater had some significance to her. A lot of suicides picked out a favorite outfit to die in. That was always a possibility. But I’d never seen one pick an itchy-looking wool sweater.

  With a history of depression, I had to wonder if she wasn’t hiding something under those long sleeves.

  Before the coroner and his assistant could move the body, I reached out, grabbed Katie’s left arm, and tugged up the sweater. Old scar marks littered the inside of her arm, some small, some large. Some were straight, while others were jagged lines. There were dozens of them, with at least half of them scars old enough to tell me she’d been at it a while.

  I rolled my eyes up to meet the coroner’s. “Someone could have stopped her.”

  “You can’t stop the determined ones.” Victor nodded. He and his assistant hoisted Katie’s body onto the gurney and tucked her safely inside the black body bag.

  Dan’s phone rang. He frowned at the screen and flipped it open before making a bee-line for the door as he answered it.

  I stood beside the bed, fighting an ache in my chest, until they’d rolled her out of the room. As much as I hated to admit it, Dan seemed right. There was no case here, no bad guy to nab, no demons but the ones Katie had been fighting in her own head.

  Just in case, I decided to walk the room one more time in search of some clue the detectives and beat cops might have missed.

  Katie’s half of the room was stark and bare when compared to her roommate’s side, which I found strange. Most twenty-year-old girls in college had a full plate between classes, a social life, and a job or extracurriculars. The only textbook I found in Katie’s bag was a psychology book. A quiz page was tucked insid
e. I pulled it out for a look. The answers she’d chosen to fill in were all marked correct, but more than two thirds of the answers were blank. In red ink, the teacher had written at the top, “See me. Please.” No grade. Just a concerned note. Maybe someone had noticed her downward spiral. I tucked the paper back into the book and made a mental note to get her class schedule from the college if I could so I could talk to her psychology professor.

  Next, I turned back to the note. She’d written it in blue ink, the handwriting hurried and tilted to one side. It was three pages long, front and back. Too much to stand and read before Dan came back, so I skimmed it, looking for any words that jumped out at me or struck me as odd. Most of it was the standard note. A list of who got what and an apology that it had all become too much. What was too much, Katie? I wondered and read the note a little closer.

  Ever since that night, she wrote, things haven’t been the same. Everyone just keeps looking at me, saying I made it up because I was jealous. I wish I was. Baron ruined my life. My only regret is that he’s going to get away with it.

  “You want to talk to the roommate?”

  I lowered the paper and spun around.

  Dan stood just a few feet behind me, arms crossed, a frown fixed on his face. “Sorry about my earlier comment. It’s just this is my third suicide this week. They’re not related, but when you see ‘em back to back like this, kind of get numb to it.”

  “My very first case out of the academy was a suicide.” I stared at the blood spatter on Katie’s blue, gray, and black striped sheets. “I’ve seen my share and I’m still not numb to it. Maybe it’s just because of the energy it leaves behind, though. It’s like a bad stain in the air. A scar.”

  “Can you see it with that aura thing you do?” Dan swept his eyes from side to side around the room as if he’d see something if he looked hard enough.

  Vanilla humans like Dan could stare all they wanted and never see what I could. My ability to see auras and energies was what made me valuable as an agent working for BSI, the federal agency responsible for tracking and solving supernatural crimes. With a little preparation, I was one of the best interrogators east of the Mississippi because of my ability to read people’s auras. By extension, I could also see things regular humans couldn’t, like ghosts, demons, and residual magick. The downside to using that ability was that I also felt things. If I were to have a look around Katie’s room for auras and energies, I might have known what drove her to kill herself, or I might go crazy reliving her death over and over.

  “It’s not like you’re thinking. There’s no big tear in space-time or whatever. Just a bad, dangerous feeling. Some places in the world, where that energy builds up strong enough, you might see a rash of suicides. Ghost possession. Strange illnesses and people randomly going nuts.” I smiled a little when Dan shivered. “Don’t worry, Danny, boy,” I said, slapping him on the shoulder. “It probably won’t happen to you.”

  “Thanks,” he grumbled.

  “My pleasure. Say, Danno, do you happen to know who this Baron guy is?” I shoved the suicide note at him.

  He frowned and scanned the top page. “Only Baron I know is Baron Grahm.”

  My blood turned to ice. “The senator’s son?”

  “That’s the one. He’s a student here at Case Western. Senior, I think. Maybe the roommate will know more?”

  I placed the note back on the desk where I’d found it. If a senator’s son was connected to Katie’s suicide somehow, this was bound to get complicated and fast. The higher-ups would want it buried if there was any connection at all. Of course, I didn’t know what Baron had done to Katie, if anything. That would require more information.

  “Sure,” I said, trying to keep my voice upbeat. “Where’s the roommate?”

  KATIE’S ROOMMATE’S name was named Cecelia but went by Sissy. Sissy was pretty, dressed like what you’d imagine rich, popular and well-adjusted, midwestern white girls would dress like: designer jeans and a top that read PINK even though it was bright yellow and not pink. Her eyes were puffy, but she’d stopped crying by the time we came to talk to her. She sat in a narrow padded chair in the floor’s common room with a pile of used tissues on the end table beside her.

  After we’d introduced ourselves, she launched into an explanation before I ever had a chance to ask her a question. “You guys need to arrest Baron Grahm for what he did to her. God, I’m sorry I ever took her to that party that night. If I’d known she was such a lightweight, I’d have never let her drink. I thought werewolves were supposed to be able to metabolize alcohol really fast. Like, it’s supposed to be really hard to get them drunk, right?”

  “Slow down.” I held my hands up. “What’s Baron Grahm got to do with any of this?”

  Sissy sniffled, blew her nose and grabbed another tissue. “I mean, it should be in your files, right? I took her to the hospital. She filed a report.”

  “Help us out,” Dan said, putting his hands back on his hips. “Even if there’s a report somewhere, it might not be our department.”

  She blew out a breath through pale, pink lips. “Okay, so there was this party, right? Phi Beta Theta throws one every year at the end of the year. Best party on campus. Katie was stressed from keeping her grades up. She was here on scholarship and had worked her ass off. She’d also just broken up with Ryan because Ryan found out that Katie was a werewolf and was all, like, ‘No way I’m dating a dog.’”

  “What a jerk,” I interjected.

  Sissy’s eyes widened and she gestured to me. “Oh my God! I know, right? I mean, wolves are totally different from dogs. I mean, not that Katie was either. Katie was allergic to dogs.”

  Her chin quivered and her gaze turned distant.

  I decided it would be best to intervene before she started crying again. “So, you went to the party. What happened at the party?”

  “Katie got wasted.” She flattened her hand and sliced it through the air. “Like, bad. I offered to take her back to the room and went off to get my keys. By the time I came back, she was gone. Someone said they thought they saw her go out the back so I thought she’d decided to walk back. I mean, it wasn’t that far and they said Baron was with her so...”

  “What happened on the walk home?” I asked.

  “I didn’t see anything.” Sissy fiddled with a new tissue, directing her eyes to the ground. “So I guess it’s technically hearsay, right? But Katie didn’t show back up at the room for like three more hours. When she did, she was a mess. Dazed. When I finally got her to talk, she said...” She chewed on her bottom lip.

  I leaned in close. “What did she say, Sissy?”

  “She said Baron raped her behind the dumpster at Theta House.”

  The pieces fell together in my head. Suddenly, Katie’s suicide felt less like a tragic event and more like injustice. My only regret is that he’s going to get away with it, she’d written. No one believes me. And if I let this go up the chain, that would never change.

  “How long ago was this?” Dan cut in.

  Sissy opened her mouth to answer.

  I cut her off. “Doesn’t matter. In Ohio, the statute of limitations for rape is twenty years. If there’s a kit, if there’s a report and there’s evidence, then we can still put Baron away.”

  Sissy jumped out of her chair to throw her arms around me and wept into my shoulder. “Bless you, officer whoever you are. Bless you! Oh, my God! Why didn’t you come sooner? You could’ve...She could’ve...” Whatever she wanted to say devolved into choking sobs.

  Dan hovered at the edge of my vision, giving me the side-eye. “Agent Black, can I have a word?” He stepped out of the room to wait for me.

  It took a few minutes to get Sissy to calm down and sit. Thankfully, one of the R.A.s came in to sit with her so I could leave. As worked up at Sissy was, I didn’t want to leave her alone.

  In the hall, Dan paced back and forth, hands still on his hips. I leaned against the wall and crossed my arms. “If you’re going to tell me looking i
nto Baron Grahm is a bad idea, don’t.”

  Dan finally stopped pacing and whirled to face me. “Senator Grahm has a lot of pull high up in the department. What I’m going to tell you isn’t to look the other way, but it probably won’t matter. You could have video evidence of Baron Grahm assaulting that girl and he’d never see a day behind bars.”

  I pushed off the wall with a hip and stood toe-to-toe with Dan. “Let’s call a spade a spade, Danno. This isn’t an assault. It’s rape. It’s criminally negligent homicide!”

  “You know the law doesn’t see it that way. Katie pulled the trigger. Baron can’t be held responsible for that, not under the law.”

  He flinched when I waved a finger in his face. “It ought to be! That girl is dead and it’s Baron’s fault. I might not be able to get him for murder, but if there’s one shred of evidence against him, I’m putting him away for rape.”

  Dan pushed my finger away. “You can’t go after one of the Grahms. You just can’t. You do that, if you even try, someone somewhere in the department is going to fuck it up, Judah. They’ll tamper with evidence. Lose it. Hell, they’ll have the badge of anyone who tries.”

  “Well, they can’t have my badge.” I patted the badge at my hip. “I’m a federal agent. I don’t work for the Cleveland police. And if anyone gets in the way, I’ll expose them and make sure they’re also prosecuted to the full extent of the law.”

  “It’s not going to stop them from trying.”

  I pushed past Dan, making sure to knock him with my shoulder. Let them try, I thought as I pushed open the swinging door and stormed down the stairs. What’s the worst they can do to me?

  I WAS STILL MAD WHEN I made it to the precinct. The building was pristine white, baking in the direct sun behind a haze of smog and city stink. Sitting so close to Lake Eerie, Cleveland had the added bonus of a slight dirty water undertone to the air quality, particularly on hot days. I’d lived in Cleveland about eight months now, and I still hadn’t gotten used to the smell. It was worse on that side of the city.