Rarities Unlimited 04 - The Color of Death

victim’s eyes. They were wide and bugged out with fear. Kirby smiled and began speaking with the accents and rhythms of the border creole he’d learned so well in Miami.
    “ Buenos dias, Miguel. You and me, we talk. But first I hurt you so you no lie to me.”
    Kirby yanked down Purcell’s underwear, grabbed his genitals, and dug in. When he finally released Purcell, the man’s body was slick with sweat and the feral smell of his fear had blotted out that of stale beer. Kirby judged his victim, gave him a final shot to the balls, and waited until he stopped whimpering.
    “ Señor, you hear me, yes?” Kirby whispered.
    Purcell nodded frantically.
    “ Bueno . You move jus’ once and I rip off you cock and shove it up you fat ass.”
    Purcell lay on the bed and tried to be absolutely still, but he couldn’t control the shivers of fear racking his body.
    Sure that the man wouldn’t give him any trouble, Kirby went back to the cabinets in the other room. He pulled a crowbar from the duffel and systematically broke the locks on the cabinets. Movingquickly, he flashed the penlight around in each drawer before he emptied the contents into his duffel. There was a lot of satisfying shine and glitter in the drawers, but nothing that matched the sapphire he’d been told to take. He went back to the bedroom, bent over Purcell, and whispered in his ear.
    The smell of urine overwhelmed the other odors in the room.
    Kirby ripped off just enough of the tape for Purcell to gasp out, “Milk—in—fridge.”
    Kirby taped his victim’s mouth shut again, patted him on his bald head, and went to the kitchen. He opened the surprisingly large refrigerator. There were three cartons of milk inside. One of them had been handled so much that the carton’s cheerful black-and-white cow was mostly rubbed away. Purcell might as well have pinned a sign on his hiding place.
    Taking the carton, Kirby went to the sink, put in the stopper, and poured out the white fluid. Five gemstones emerged, shining through the milk. He picked them up, rinsed them, and put all but the sapphire in his duffel. He didn’t know yet why the sapphire was important to the Voice, but he was sure it was.
    That made it important to Kirby.
    From the first time the Voice had called out of the blue and recited chapter and verse of Kirby’s criminal life, he hadn’t been his own man. He’d been well paid, and the jobs had been well planned out, but it just wasn’t the same as being his own boss. Maybe the sapphire would be the key to his freedom. Maybe it wouldn’t.
    Either way, he was keeping it.
    He pulled a pearl-handled knife out of his jeans. He’d taken the knife off a Colombian smuggler years ago. Mostly, Kirby used it to clean his fingernails. Occasionally, he put it to heavier work.
    Adrenaline and anticipation hummed through him as he walked back into the bedroom and bent over Purcell.
    Moments later, the smell of blood overwhelmed the odor of urine.

Chapter 25
    Scottsdale
    Thursday morning
    When Sam slid in and shut the door behind him at three minutes after nine, Ted Sizemore’s suite was packed with crime strike force personnel. Sam looked at the assembled people with tired blue eyes and an expressionless face. At least he hoped it was expressionless. Mother of all clusterfucks wasn’t an observation his SAC or SSA would appreciate.
    As for Sizemore, he was a bomb looking for an excuse to explode.
    Screw him, Sam thought.
    The fact that Sam had spent the hours just after dawn reviewing the bloody crime scene might have had something to do with his impatience. Of all the others in the room, only Mario had been to see the trailer. No one else had been interested in the murder of a third-rate gem dealer and his shrew of a wife. The beating and robbery of a gem courier had drawn a lot more strike force attention.
    But then, Sam was the only one who had a gut certainty that the Purcell deaths were linked to the disappearance of a courier five months ago in Florida.
    A ringing telephone punctuated conversations erupting aroundthe room. No one picked up the phone. Everyone knew what would be on the other end—the media yammering for interviews with anyone who wanted the cheap fame of a sound bite on the six o’clock news. Normally, Ted Sizemore would have leaped to line up an interview, and the free advertising, but this wasn’t one of those times when Sizemore Security Consulting wanted to be linked to a sensational crime. Sam knew why Sizemore