Depraved Difference (A Detective Shakespeare Mystery Book #1) Read online

  From the Back Cover

  FROM USA TODAY BESTSELLING AUTHOR J. ROBERT KENNEDY

  Would you help, would you run, or would you just watch?

  When a young woman is brutally assaulted by two men on the subway, her cries for help fall on the deaf ears of onlookers too terrified to get involved, her misery ended with the crushing stomp of a steel-toed boot. A cell phone video of her vicious murder, callously released on the Internet, its popularity a testament to today’s depraved society, serves as a trigger, pulled a year later, for a killer.

  Emailed a video documenting the final moments of a woman’s life, entertainment reporter Aynslee Kai, rather than ask why the killer chose her to tell the story, decides to capitalize on the opportunity to further her career. Assigned to the case is Hayden Eldridge, a detective left to learn the ropes by a disgraced partner, and as videos continue to follow victims, he discovers they were all witnesses to the vicious subway murder a year earlier, proving sometimes just watching is fatal.

  From USA Today bestselling author J. Robert Kennedy comes Depraved Difference, a fast-paced murder suspense novel with enough laughs, heartbreak, terror and twists to keep you on the edge of your seat, then knock you flat on the floor with an ending so shocking, you’ll read it again just to pick up the clues.

  About J. Robert Kennedy

  USA Today bestselling author J. Robert Kennedy has been ranked by Amazon as the #1 Bestselling Action Adventure novelist based upon combined sales. He is the author of over twenty international bestsellers including the smash hit James Acton Thrillers series of which the first installment, The Protocol, has been on the bestseller list in the US and UK since its release, including occupying the number one spot for three months.

  He lives with his wife and daughter and writes full-time.

  "If you want fast and furious, if you can cope with a high body count, most of all if you like to be hugely entertained, then you can't do much better than J Robert Kennedy."

  Amazon Vine Voice Reviewer

  Find out more at www.jrobertkennedy.com.

  Join The Insider's Club to be notified when new books are released.

  Books by J. Robert Kennedy

  The James Acton Thrillers

  The Protocol

  Brass Monkey

  Broken Dove

  The Templar's Relic

  Flags of Sin

  The Arab Fall

  The Circle of Eight

  The Venice Code

  Pompeii's Ghosts

  Amazon Burning

  The Riddle

  Blood Relics

  The Special Agent Dylan Kane Thrillers

  Rogue Operator

  Containment Failure

  Cold Warriors

  Death to America

  The Delta Force Unleashed Thrillers

  Payback

  Infidels

  The Detective Shakespeare Mysteries

  Depraved Difference

  Tick Tock

  The Redeemer

  Zander Varga, Vampire Detective Series

  The Turned

  DEPRAVED DIFFERENCE

  A Detective Shakespeare Mystery

  Book #1

  by

  J. Robert Kennedy

  DEPRAVED DIFFERENCE

  By J. Robert Kennedy

  Copyright © 2010, 2012 J. Robert Kennedy

  Smashwords Edition

  This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to your favorite ebook retailer and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are products of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  First Edition

  1.1

  Table of Contents

  The Novel

  Acknowledgements

  Thank You from the Author

  Newsletter

  About the Author

  Also by the Author

  For my wife, my daughter, my parents, my friends.

  All of you made this possible.

  ONE

  Tammera flipped closed her laptop, the satisfying snap signaling the end of another long day, and shoved it into its well-travelled case. She lifted her dark brown suede jacket off the chrome coat-rack monstrosity she hid behind her office door, stuffed her arms in the sleeves and shrugged it up her shoulders. With her knock-off Prada purse over one shoulder, the case over the other, she pulled her long brown hair from under both, and marched to the elevators, tossing a wave and a half-hearted smile at the bored security guard perched behind the reception desk.

  He glanced up from the sports section. “Goodnight, Miss Coverdale.”

  “Goodnight, Joseph.” She pressed the down button. “Hold down the fort 'til I get back.”

  “Leaving us?”

  She jabbed at the button again. “Heading to Boston for a few days.”

  The elevator chimed. “Have a good trip!” said Joseph, his head already buried in his paper.

  “Thanks!” Not bloody likely. Tammera stepped onto the elevator and hit P3 as the doors closed. She leaned against the rear wall of the elevator, resting her head against the glass. She looked up at her reflection in the mirrored ceiling and sighed. The investment bank she worked for needed an extra body in Boston and she was it. A flurry of emails to cancel weekend travel plans had followed the bad news. Her fiancé was not happy and a rip-roaring fight ensued. As if he has a monopoly on being pissed. He demanded she quit. She called him an idiot. Quit in this economy? In my industry? She growled and took a deep breath to calm herself as she fumbled through her purse for her keys.

  When the doors opened, she stepped from the elevator into the nearly deserted parking garage, the few remaining cars belonging to the skeleton nightshift, or other poor SOBs like her—no longer a junior, but not senior enough to slack off. A shoe scraped on the pavement behind her. Her heart raced as she spun around to see a man’s gloved hand swing toward her head. She screamed but it was too late. Excruciating pain raced through her entire face from the jarring impact, her eyes filled with tears as she fell backward, her flailing arms, desperate to find something to hold on to, sent her keys flying over the railing to the next level. Her head bounced off the cold concrete floor and her world blurred, her keys hitting the ground in the distance, the last sound she heard before blacking out.

  She awoke, her mind a fog of pain and confusion. She slowly opened her eyes to find her head resting on her chest, her blouse torn and her nylons ripped at the knees spread immodestly before her in what appeared to be a straight back chair. She tried to close her legs, but felt something pulling against her ankles, preventing them from moving. Still groggy from the blow, it didn’t occur to her to be afraid. She tried to lean forward to see what the problem might be and winced, the movement sending her head throbbing with levels of pain she had never experienced before. Where am I? She steeled herself and tried to lean forward again, but found she couldn’t. How did I get here? She tried to remember, the fog in her head slowly clearing. Suddenly her memory returned with all the force of a sledgehammer, jolting her back to reality. Somebody punched me! Her mouth still stung where she had been hit and she tasted the salty blood from her swollen lip. A run of her tongue over her teeth rev
ealed two loose. She tried to reach up to touch them, as if shoving them back into place would help, but discovered her hands clasped behind the back of the chair, something holding them tightly together. Her heart started to pound and she felt the room spin as her situation became clear. I’ve been kidnapped! She took a deep breath to steady herself. The roar in her ears slowly settled as she regained control. She looked at her surroundings. It was dark, but not completely, some light from what most likely were street lamps, shone through dirty, cracked windows far overhead, years of pigeon feces blocking much of it. She was in what she guessed to be an abandoned warehouse, a musty smell and stray pallets strewn about the only contents. She opened her mouth to call out for help when footsteps behind her echoed off the walls and ceiling, their slow, methodical approach shoved her heart against her ribcage, faster and faster, as they neared. Too afraid to turn around, it was everything she could do to not shut her eyes and pray for deliverance from this nightmare.

  The footsteps stopped behind her, so close she heard the rustling of nylon scraping nylon, as who she was now certain was her captor reached into a pocket. It must be a gun. I'm going to die! Oh, God, please help me! She yelped as a gloved fist thrust in front of her face. She jerked her head away to avoid the expected blow and squeezed her eyes shut. Then she heard something strange. Voices. But far away, almost recorded. Yet familiar somehow. Opening one eye a crack, she was shocked to see a cell phone held in front of her, a video playing on it. Her captor clutched her by the hair and yanked her head to face the phone. Her eyes teared from the pain as he twisted the ball of hair he held tighter. She opened both eyes to watch.

  “Holy shit, man!” said a voice on the recording. “Look at what they're doin'!”

  “Are you getting this?” asked another excited voice.

  “Yeah, dude, we're gonna be famous!” The view flashed to the person’s face recording it, rampaging acne betraying his age, then to his equally challenged friend, who hammed it up for the camera with a small dance and a Gene Simmons salute. The phone was turned back and held high to record over the people in front. On the screen Tammera watched two young men kick and punch a woman, her unconscious body offering no resistance. One man lifted his steel-toed boot and brought it down hard on her head, eliciting a collective gasp and another “Holy shit!” from the kid taping it, as the subway car screeched to a halt. The two men bolted out the door and the passengers rushed in front of the camera as the kid moved closer to the woman’s motionless body.

  “Dude, we gotta get outta here!” yelled his companion. The camera jerked as its operator was dragged out. The angle spun around and froze on the image of a woman as she shoved her way off the train.

  It was her.

  She sobbed as the memories of that night flooded back, the horror of seeing that poor woman murdered before her eyes, the feeling of helplessness at being able to do nothing. And the shame. The shame of slinking away, rather than being human enough to at least give a statement, something she did rectify the next day, but only after much soul searching. The man flipped the phone closed, the snap of the case yanking her back to reality as he stepped around to face her. A Yankees baseball cap, drawn down low, and large, reflective sunglasses allowed her to see herself, but not him. A dark blue windbreaker, zipped tight to cover as much as possible, kept most of his emotionless face hidden from view.

  He stared at her.

  “Wh-what do you want from me?”

  Again he just stared.

  But she knew what he wanted. He wanted justice, he wanted someone to pay. Yes, she had done nothing, but what was she supposed to have done? She was one woman! They were two men!

  “I wasn’t the only one that did nothing!” she cried. It sounded feeble. She looked at herself in his glasses. Blood trickled down her chin, her eyes red and swollen from her tears reminded her of the woman. Pathetic. Helpless. “Did-did you know her?”

  Again, no response.

  “I-I know I should have done something! I know that, but nobody did anything.” She leaned forward as far as her bindings would permit as she attempted to make a connection, her pleading eyes tried to bore through the glasses, to see if a conscience she might reason with lay behind them. “I was scared. We were all scared!”

  He held the phone up between his thumb and forefinger, slowly rocking it back and forth as if wagging a finger at a child.

  She knew what he meant. Not everybody was scared.

  He pressed a few keys and activated the video camera. With his left hand he held it out to record her. With his right he pulled a gun from his belt and pointed it at her head.

  Her eyes focused on the end of the barrel as it became her entire world. She saw the gloved finger on the trigger begin to squeeze.

  “Oh, God, please no!”

  She squeezed her eyes shut and screamed as he squeezed the trigger.

  Merissa winced as she slowly rotated her wrist, trying to loosen the still tender scabs built up over the past week. She pushed the cause, a pair of handcuffs, up her arm in search of some relief. They slipped back down. She growled in frustration and was about to try pulling her hand through the cuffs again, when she thought better of it, and grabbed the chain they were attached to with both hands and yanked it instead. In the darkness above she heard the other end scrape against what she had determined must be a metal pole spanning the ceiling of her dungeon, as it slid toward her, providing a little more slack. I feel like a dog on a run. And that was exactly how she was being treated since her abduction several weeks before. Each day a platform lowered from the ceiling above with a bottle of water and a tray of food. She had been too scared to approach the first couple of days, and after what seemed an eternity, but was more likely only minutes, the rattling of chains sent her into a panic, each pull by her captor causing the platform to rise a few more inches, and with each pull, she pushed with her bare feet against the floor, trying to force the wall at her back farther from the horror in front of her. When the platform finally reached the ceiling, it filled the hole in the floor above seamlessly, leaving total darkness. The unknown sounds of her captor set her imagination ablaze with visions of some hellish reality just overhead, the mysterious clanging of metal, creaking of footsteps on wood, the sounds of things impossibly large scraping across the ceiling of her dungeon, followed by a silence even more terrifying.

  On the third day her tremendous thirst and hunger won out, hours of sobbing and the occasional screaming fit having exhausted her. This time she welcomed the sounds above indicating the impending arrival of her daily meal. She inched toward the lowered platform and stole a glance up at the bright hole in the ten-foot high ceiling which revealed nothing except the silhouette of her captor, the lack of details far more horrifying to her, leaving her fertile imagination to fill in the blanks of what terror now possessed her. She snatched the food, and as soon as she removed it and the bottle, the platform rose, signaling an end to the feeding.

  She cowered against the wall, staring at the ever shrinking hole above as the platform completed its return trip, sealing her in once again. In complete darkness, she placed the sandwich on her lap, and twisted the top off the bottle, downing at least half of it before she stopped. She breathed a sigh of relief, her thirst temporarily quenched. She felt for the sandwich with her spare hand, seized it and took a tentative bite. As she slowly chewed, the flavors almost overwhelmed her. Either desperate hunger made everything taste better, or her captor was a wizard with food. After swallowing the first delicious bite, she devoured the rest of the sandwich and finished off her water. She was about to toss the bottle when she thought better of it, the pressure on her bladder nearing the breaking point after holding it for so long. She felt the ground for the top she had discarded, and soon found it a few feet away. She screwed it back on the now empty bottle, and placed it against the wall for later.

  Later proved to only be a few minutes. She grabbed the bottle, removed the top, then stood up and dropped her pants and panties to her a
nkles. Carefully positioning the bottle, she let as controlled a stream as she could manage go, the satisfying sound of the urine actually going into the bottle a welcome relief, this being something she had never tried before. If only I were a guy. She harrumphed to herself. If I were a guy, then I wouldn’t even be here. The pitch of the stream quickly got higher as the bottle filled, finally rushing over the top, the warm fluid spilling on her hands. She clenched, cutting off the stream, and cursed. Lovely. She shook her hand then screwed the cap back on. She put the bottle on the floor then hiked her panties and pants back up, not completely relieved, but no longer in danger of having to squat in what was her new home.

  Her strength restored, she turned to thoroughly exploring her surroundings by touch, confident her captor wouldn’t return until the next day. She began first by facing the wall she had been sitting against since she arrived, save the brief moments she had spent retrieving the food and relieving herself. With both hands pressed flat against the wall in front of her, she slowly made her way to her right. She ran her hands over every square inch of the wall she could reach. Immediately in front of her, the wall felt damp and soft. She scratched at it with her fingernails, and she felt some of it peeling away, the sound reminding her of digging a latrine when camping as a child. She scraped some into her other hand and sniffed it, then rubbed it between her fingers, the gritty feeling unmistakable. This is a dirt wall! She shook the dirt from her hands, and reached upward. At about shoulder height the texture suddenly changed, from the cool, damp, softness of the earthen wall, to the colder, dry, hardness of another material entirely. She ran her fingers across the rough, pitted surface. It seemed to be consistent, no indentations or breaks in the feel, except for the distinct, even line, separating it from the dirt portion of the wall. This is concrete! Excited by this find, her mind raced as she continued along the wall. Could she dig her way out? If this was an outer wall, it might not be that far to dig? She shook her head. She’d never be able to dig enough in one day. And what would he do to you if he thought you were trying to escape? She shuddered at the thought, and continued her exploration.