Read Online Hell's Horizon by Darren Shan - Free Book Online Page B

I’d been expecting company.”
    “My name’s Al Jeery,” I said. “You may have heard of me?”
    “Should I have?”
    “I was a friend of your sister’s.”
    His guard came up instantly. “She had a lot of friends. They’ve been coming in droves to share their condolences. You’d be amazed how many are reporters.”
    “I’m not a reporter, Mr. Hornyak. I’d been seeing Nic for a month before she died. We were close.”
    “Lots of people were close to Nicola. How do I know you’re telling the truth? I had one esteemed member of the press pretend to be a long-lost cousin last night.”
    “I met her at AA. We were—”
    “AA? What was Nic doing there, for God’s sake?”
    I frowned. “You didn’t know she was attending?”
    “My sister and I rarely discussed matters other than those of a sexual nature.”
    “But she told me she was there because of you . That you threatened to cancel her allowance if she didn’t sort herself out.”
    “I made no demands of Nicola. She took what she liked. I never said boo.” I was confused. He noted it and smiled. “Nicola was a complicated woman. I knew her twenty-six years and she still had the capacity to startle me. Don’t let it worry you—she often spun lies and fairy tales.” An eyelid raised slyly on “fairy.”
    “Why are you here?” he asked.
    “I want to know why she was killed and who did it. The police are writing her off as a statistic. I think she deserves better. I think she deserves the truth.”
    “A crusader.” He whistled. “Are you a detective, Al?”
    “No. But I’ve got time. Resources are available to me. I’d like to talk with you about her and ask some questions. You don’t mind?”
    He thought it over, then shrugged. “It’s a slow afternoon. How can I help?”
    I opened my notebook, hoping I looked as if I knew what I was doing. “Let’s begin with the basics. Did you see Nic the day of her death?”
    “No.”
    “When did you last see her?”
    He scratched his chin. “About two weeks before. We ran into each other in a club. We exchanged some comments about the atmosphere, the fashion, the music. Parted after a couple of minutes and went our separate ways.”
    “You didn’t see her again?”
    “No.”
    “Did you talk with her on the phone?”
    “No. I didn’t e-mail or text her either, write a letter or waft smoke signals her way. As I said, we weren’t close. We’d gang up occasionally for a night on the town, but only three, maybe four times a year.” He stubbed out his barely smoked cigarette, turned and shot pool again. “I don’t have much time for women, and Nic didn’t have much time for my kind of man.”
    “Who was she with when you last saw her?” I asked.
    “Some black guy with a bald head. He was sitting by himself at a table, looking standoffish.”
    “Notice anything about him? Any distinguishing features?”
    “I think he was tall. Thin. Black as sin.” Nick smiled. “That was quite poetical, wasn’t it?”
    “You should publish. Anything else?”
    “I really didn’t get a good look.”
    I made a note of the bald, thin, black man and moved on.
    “Did anyone have the knives out for Nic?”
    “If they did, and I knew, I’d have told the police and they’d have questioned the guilty party.”
    “People don’t always tell the cops everything.”
    “But I did. I like the police. We get lots of officers here. I’ve always found them most obliging.”
    “You really don’t know anything about her death?”
    “No. There’s nothing I can tell you that I didn’t…” He paused.
    “Yes?” I prompted him.
    “She was wearing a brooch when she was killed.”
    “With a symbol of the sun. I know.”
    “The police asked me if I knew about it. I didn’t. But a few of her friends who called me since the news broke told me it had been a present from some mystic guy she used to see.”
    Her file had mentioned an interest in the occult. I flipped my notebook over and scanned down some