(I took a break from writing Jurgen Report stories to work on a vampire novel. Then I took a break from my vampire novel to write a Jurgen Report story. That’s how it goes. I hope you enjoy this, and I hope you enjoy my vampire novel if it ever sees the dark of night. -JC)
The woman who answered my knock looked me over suspiciously. She was in her 70s, with short gray hair and too much makeup on her face. She wore a faded yellow T-shirt and baggy sweatpants, and she looked as if I’d woken her up from an afternoon nap. “Yes?”
I didn’t blame her for being suspicious. “My name’s Tom Jurgen. I'm a private detective. I'm trying to locate your neighbor, Stacey Benedict? I'm working for her mother. She’s very worried.”
The woman looked at my business card. Then she looked at my phone, and its picture of Stacey Benedict. Young, blond, in a Northwestern University sweatshirt. I clicked through to more pictures, and she waved a hand for me to put the phone away. “I haven’t seen her lately. She’s nice, though. She helped me with my groceries one day.” Then she leaned forward, whispering. “Is it true about her boyfriend?”
I nodded. Stacey’s boyfriend, Kurt Reeding, had somehow escaped police custody after being arrested for murdering his mother and sister. He’d told the cops they were demons and he had to kill them, and they were transferring him to psych when he managed to overpower his guards, unlock his handcuffs, and run into the night.
His girlfriend’s mother had hired me because she hadn’t heard from Stacey since the escape. The thought of possibly running into an insane killer while searching for his girlfriend didn’t make me eager to take the case, but Stacey’s mother was frantic, the police weren’t helping her, and I have a cable bill to pay. Plus, I have some experience with demons. Maybe they weren’t real and Kurt Reeding was just an ordinary psycho, but I seem to run into the supernatural more than I’d like.
Rachel also wasn’t happy about the case, but she rarely tries to talk me out of stuff like this. We’ve been together for a long time, and the only thing she really tries to talk me out of is eating meat. She’s a vegetarian. She’s also psychic, a little. Plus, she’s hot. When I called to tell her where I was going, she only sighed. “Take Donald, maybe.” Donald is our handgun—we named it Donald Duck. But I didn’t expect to actually run into Kurt, so I’d left it locked up at home.
The old woman shuddered. “I saw him once or twice. He had bad vibes. You know?”
“That’s what they say.” I set my card on a table next to the door. “If you do see her, could you call me? Or give her my card and ask her to contact me?”
“I will,” she promised. “I pray she’s all right.”
“Me too.”
She closed the door.
As I checked off the apartment in my notebook I heard a door open down the hall. It closed again before I could turn and look. The hallway was still empty, except for me.
I’d started by calling all of Stacey’s friends that her mother knew about, and anybody I could find on her social media, and now I was talking to Stacey’s neighbors. The old woman was the last one, but the door that had opened and closed was right next to Stacey’s apartment, and they hadn’t answered my knock before.
So I went back and knocked again.
I had a card in one hand and my phone in the other looking for Stacey’s picture again, so I didn’t pay enough attention when the door opened and the person inside reached forward and grabbed the collar of my jacket. Then I was paying all my attention to the fact that he was pulling me through the doorway. He punched me in the stomach before I got a look at his face, and then he shoved me to the floor before my mind could process what was going on.
After I blinked once or twice, I was looking up at an unshaven face with bloodshot eyes. He wore a dirty T-shirt and jeans, and he had a handgun in his fist. A shiny weapon, pointed directly at my face. I blinked again and my stomach lurched as I recognized him from the picture my client had shared with me.
Kurt Reedling. Escaped murderer.
Oh hell.
Rachel had been right, of course. I’d tell her that when I got the chance. Maybe during a séance. If I survived this, she was probably going to kill me anyway.
Kurt slammed and locked the door, breathing hard. “Who are you?” His voice was raspy, out of breath, as if he’d just run a mile in the small apartment.
“T-Tom Jurgen,” I managed to answer, my heart pounding. “I'm a, a private detective. I'm unarmed. I'm harmless, I'm not going to hurt you. You don’t have to shoot me.”
It wasn’t the first time in my life someone had pointed a gun at me. Or a knife, or any other kind of weapon. But it’s never a pleasant feeling. I bit my lip and tried not to throw up.
Kurt’s handgun looked smaller than the one I’d left at home, but just as deadly with its bright metal shaking in front of me. This wasn’t the time for comparing our manhood, with Kurt staring at me as if I was speaking a foreign language he needed to decipher in his head. “What are you doing here? Why are you—where’s Stacey? Is she here?”
The part of me that wasn’t gripped by terror realized this was good—if Kurt didn’t know where Stacey was, he hadn’t found her either, which meant she was still alive. Hiding from him. The rest of me struggled to think of an answer that would keep him from killing me. “She’s not here. I don’t know. Her mother is worried about her.”
Kurt lowered his weapon. “I thought she’d come back. I thought if I waited . . .” His voice trailed away.
I felt something tickling my head. An itch on my scalp. But I didn’t dare move. Not even when Kurt took a step back and sagged into a dusty armchair. I started to say something, to reassure him again that I wasn’t going to hurt him, that he didn’t need to shoot me, but then I saw the body on the floor behind him.
A man. Middle-aged, Black. In a shirt and necktie, dried blood staining the floor in front of him. His eyes were wide open, as if fixed on something far away that no one else could see.
Kurt followed my eyes top look the dead man over. “That was, uh, a mistake. He wasn’t one of them. But I couldn’t let him leave. You know?” He swung his face back at me. “She’s not coming back, is she? Shit.” He was talking to himself. “It’s been three days. Three days? I don’t know, I don’t know—” He stood up.
I felt the itch on my scalp again, and this time I couldn’t stop my hand from reaching up to scratch it. Kurt saw me and then his gun was in my face again, and I froze, expecting my next frenzied heartbeat to be my last one. What would a bullet in my brain feel like? Would I see the white light? Would Rachel get married again?
Then his arm dropped. He ran a hand over his sweaty forehead, and turned for the door. “Stay away from her,” he told me. He fumbled with the lock, and then he was gone.
I sat on the floor, gasping, amazed that I hadn’t vomited pr soiled myself. I don’t know how long I stayed there, telling myself over and over, I'm not going to die, I'm not going to die, as I tried to catch my breath and make my heart slow down. Eventually I stretched out my legs and took a deep breath. I managed not to look at the dead guy as I dug out my phone to call the police.
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