Buckle up and hold on tight! Jonathon Marcel’s fast-action novella series will have fans reading cover to cover as they follow the self-willed private investigator DeShawn Mills from case to case.
Under the dim glow of streetlights, a brutal murder wakes a small Kansas City neighborhood. In the morning, police race to charge a young man with the heinous crime. A friend’s eyewitness testimony stands to convict the man, but a lack of evidence and too many unanswered questions suggest he’s innocent.
DeShawn Mills, a private investigator with unscrupulous methods and a checkered past, has been hired by defense attorney Candice Sullivan to uncover the clues that could clear her client. But when the veil of lies is lifted, DeShawn discovers more murders and a tangled conspiracy that will convict Sullivan’s client unless he can unravel the mystery before time runs out.

The Crime
Chapter 1
“KILL ME ALREADY!” Leo Jackson held his arms wide from his body with his chest thrust out, and waited for his so-called friends to make their move.
The dim streetlights cast a mild glow across the parking lot of the Brywood Apartments. A crescent moon hung behind the passing cloud cover.
Donny Foster’s wiry figure stood stone-faced in the shadow of an evergreen. His plats hung over the collar of his black leather coat and down between his shoulder blades. He gave the nod.
Moses Brown and his slender companion pounced on Leo with knives in a relentless fury. The dull thud of fist and hilt punching repeatedly against Leo’s chest and back woke a few light sleepers in the nearby apartments. Lights flipped on in the neighboring windows.
Leo stumbled in the yard between the two apartment buildings, whimpering, as his attackers continued their onslaught. His arms went limp. His keys fell from his hand. Blood drenched his heavy-knit shirt and jeans.
Moses’ butterball figure lunged. He thrust his steel into Leo’s throat. Warm blood sprayed his dark-skinned face and white gritted teeth. He spit and shook his head.
The slender kid snarled and jammed his knife into Leo’s lower back, just above the floating ribs.
Leo fell to one knee and landed on his back. He gargled, “Okay, you got me.”
Moses leaned down with a mystified look and thrust his blade one last time into Leo’s heart, then twisted.
Slender-Kid reached out with his long arms and snatched Moses by the collar. “Let’s go.”
They ran for their car out on the street, and vanished onto Blue Ridge Boulevard in a silver Land Rover Discovery.
Donny stepped out of the shadow with his mustache twitching and loomed over Leo. “Now we got you.” He spit then swaggered off toward his car parked behind the complexes.
Leo stopped gargling as life faded from his eyes.
*****
Moses wringed the steering wheel. His nostrils flared with each rapid breath. He couldn’t stop fidgeting and eyeing the windows and mirrors.
His slender friend pointed a knife at him. “Slow down before you get us pulled over covered in blood.”
“This is bullshit! Donny was supposed to shoot him. Ain’t nobody said nothing about us stabbing him like that.” Moses flipped on the dome light. “Look at me, man! I got Leo’s blood all over my face. The shit went in my mouth. I tasted his blood.”
His friend switched off the light. “Calm down. You wanna get us sent to prison. You knew what was going to happen. Man up, and quit acting like a bitch.”
“I got that nigga’s blood in my fade and you’re calling me a bitch?”
The speed limit sign read thirty-five.
Slender-Kid sat hunched over, holding his bloody hands above the floor mat. He peeked at the speedometer: sixty-eight.
“Moses, you gotta slow down.”
“I ain’t gotta do a damn thing. It wasn’t supposed to go down like that.” He slowed to thirty-five. “I gotta get this nigga’s blood off me, man.”
“Get us off Blue Ridge before we’re seen.”
Moses turned up Sni Bar. “I gotta cousin lives up this way. We can use her bathroom.”
“I don’t want no one seeing me, family or not.”
“She’s cool. She ain’t no rat. She don’t get down like that.”
“I don’t care, bro. She can’t see me.”
“She won’t.”
*****
Aleesha Dixon wasn’t happy being woke at three in the morning. Wearing nothing but an oversized tee for a nightgown, she tried stepping out onto the porch of her quaint three-bedroom ranch to see who else was at her house, but her younger cousin pushed her back inside.
“What the hell are you doing here so late?”
Sweat rolled down Moses’ forehead. “I need to use your bathroom. And I need you to go back to bed and stay there.”
Aleesha crossed her arms tight across her chest and cocked her hip. “What are you into? Whose blood is all over you? I don’t need this shit in my house.”
“I know, but I’m in a jam and you’re all I got.”
She huffed and stabbed her finger at the floor. “You hurry up and get out of here. I have to get up for work in a few hours. And you take everything with you. I don’t want nothin’ coming back on me, you hear me?”
Moses stood at the front door waiting for Aleesha to retire.
She hesitated before closing her bedroom door, and jabbed her finger at him. “Don’t you leave nothin’ in this house. And lock my door when you leave.”
Moses showed his friend into the house and whispered, “The bathroom is the first door on the right.”
“Your cousin got any bleach?”
“Man, I don’t know. Look under the sink.”
When they finished washing off the blood, Slender-Kid took a bottle of bleach and cleaned the sink bowl, then poured the remainder of the bottle down the drain along with a gallon of toilet bowel cleaner and a bottle of shampoo.
“What the fuck? My cousin’s gonna be pissed you wasting all her shit.”
“Let her be pissed. I ain’t letting no cop collect anything on me. Man, think!”
“Hold your voice down.”
Slender-kid took the liner out of the trashcan next to the toilet and dumped the soap bar and wash towels they used.
“Give me your knife,” he said.
Moses dropped his bloody knife into the small trashbag. Slender-Kid did the same.
Twenty minutes after entering the house, the two were out and on their way, heading down Sni Bar and across Forty-Seventh to Paige Auto Mart.
*****
Slender-Kid opened the dealership gate for Moses, and then opened a bay door to the Service Area. Ten minutes later he exited wearing a different set of clothes and jogged over to Papa Ray’s nightclub in the next lot, got into a Corvette, and headed for the highway.
Moses rolled up the floor mats and placed them in a large black trashbag, along with their clothes and shoes.
The sun would be up soon, and the dealership employees would be arriving for work.
Moses left the Land Rover in the detail shop, then flipped off the lights and locked up before trudging over to Papa Ray’s and dropping the trashbag into the trunk of his car. He unlocked the club’s backdoor and went in.
*****
Old man Larry Coleman waddled his dark, heavy-bodied frame out of LC’s Barbecue to the rust-plagued smoker he had chained to a light pole in the wedge-shaped parking lot on the corner of Forty-seventh and Sni Bar. LC didn’t take kindly to his fire going out during long slow smokes. He had to maintain a temperature of one hundred twenty degrees for ten hours.
The gentle breeze carried the hickory wood scent, masking the aroma of gasoline and motor oil puddled in the parking lot. To the west, a pale crescent moon was close to slipping below the dark velvet horizon.
LC pulled a pint of Canadian Hunter from the back pocket of his grease-stained overalls. He could drink an entire pint for what a two-ounce shot cost across the street at Papa Ray’s.
He reached into the smoker with a fire rod to stoke the logs. As he savored his pint, he caught a glimmer of light flickering inside Papa Ray’s. His eyes furrowed then released.
“What are you niggas doing over there this late at night?” he mumbled.
LC knew Papa Ray’s was a one-thirty bar. They didn’t have the proper permit to stay open ’til three.
He took another swig of whiskey and watched for a spell. Maybe they were just cleaning up. Maybe they were being robbed.
“I hope your no-good, mothafuckin’, crooked ass is being robbed.” He held his pint high in the air and toasted. “You deserve it, Malcolm Lane. Hope they take it all.”
LC chuckled and waddled back inside, minding his own business.
*****
Moses wiped his hands on a bar towel then threw it into the bar sink. He grabbed a couple bottles of Michelob from the reach-in before leaving out the back to head home.
Along the way, he pulled into the VA Hospital and disposed of the trashbag in a dumpster. Down the street, he wheeled through a McDonald’s drive-thru for a sack of double cheeseburgers, and then drove around for the rest of the morning.
Chapter 2
“HURRY UP, KID,” the driver of the van hollered out.
Fifteen-year-old Brian Thompson fumbled carrying a bundle of Kansas City Star newspapers to a handful of apartments. Corridor lights were always on, but this time of year it remained dark in the yards between the buildings.
Brian was an ambitious kid, trying to make a buck so he could afford to buy a used car when he was old enough to drive. Girls like guys who have their own car.
When the driver yelled out to hurry, Brian picked up the pace. He tripped over something large, causing him to fall in the grass. He felt wet and sticky. Something black covered his hands and clothes, along with the papers he was carrying. But when he moved into the light, the black glistened red.
He turned back around and gazed into the shadow at what he tripped over.
“Oh, shit!”
Brian flinched and dropped the papers. He took a step to run but turned back.
Boldly, he stood just feet away, bent over, staring into the dead man’s eyes. “Holy shit.”
The van driver honked the horn. “What are you doing?”
Brian pulled out his cellphone and snapped a photo of the body, then turned and snapped a selfie for his friends.
“Quit jackassin’ around and let’s go!”
“There’s a dead guy laying here!”

Chapter 3
SERGEANT RICHARD DEREK postured in the morning twilight of pink and orange clouds amidst flashing lights and squawking radios. He directed a cadre of young officers in securing the crime scene, and waited for Homicide and CSI to arrive.
A robust man with a fat baldhead and coffee-colored complexion, Derek was well poised with an intimidating demeanor. His black mustache, fuller than an oversized caterpillar, rested atop well-shaped lips. Massive arms and a barrel-chest made his uniform blouse appear two sizes too small.
A homicide detective flashed his badge and groaned as he ducked under the yellow tape encircling the yard between two apartment buildings.
Derek recognized the ordinary and gangly Detective Wallen. In a few months, the ailing detective would be celebrating his long-overdue retirement. Derek escorted him to the body.
“You catch the case, you old codger?”
“Afraid so.”
“You’re supposed to be cleaning off your desk and farming out your open cases, not piling on more work.”
“It’s the job. What do we have this fine morning?”
“The victim looks like he was shived prison style,” Derek said.
“Murder weapon?”
“Haven’t found one yet.”
“Witnesses?”
“No eyewitness to the murder.” Derek pointed to a Ford cargo van parked along a retaining wall. “Paper boy was delivering the Star and tripped over the victim.” He pointed to a ground-floor apartment. “Husband and wife woke to what they thought were two men arguing outside their window. The wife thinks she heard someone say ‘kill me,’ or ‘try and kill me,’ or something like that.”
“They say what time that was?”
“Just before three. Husband thought it was as early as two-forty. Wife thinks later, maybe two-fifty, two-fifty-five.”
“It’s a start. Anyone else?” Wallen asked.
Derek hooked a thumb into his utility belt and pointed to a third-floor apartment in the adjacent building. “Seventy-five-year-old woman, who wears glasses, saw three people running out this way to the street. She saw taillights and thinks the car was silver or gray, but she doesn’t know what kind of car. She did look at the clock. Two-fifty-six.”
The crime scene investigator extracted a wallet from the dead man’s back pocket and located his driver’s license. “Leonard S. Jackson,” he said to Wallen.
“Got an address for me, Phil?”
He handed Wallen the license then dropped the wallet into an evidence bag.
Wallen shined a light on the license. “Leonard S. Jackson, male, African American, thirty years old, five-nine, one hundred sixty-eight.” He looked down at the vic. “Yeah, that’s him.”
The vic’s address was right in front of the detective on the second floor.
“You almost made it home.”
After copying down the vic’s information, Wallen handed the license back to the CSI. “Care to take a stab at the time of death? Pardon the pun.”
“Rigor puts it no later than three.”
Wallen shared the vic’s name with Derek and the other officers and detectives. “Let’s recanvass and see who knew our vic.”
Derek knew him, but kept quiet about knowing him. He had pulled Leo Jackson over a couple of times for driving drunk. He knew Leo was a regular at Papa Ray’s, the same club his little cousin, Moses Brown, worked at as a barback and dishwasher.
He checked his watch. All around him, detectives and uniform officers pounded on doors, jumpstarting every tenant’s day. If Homicide didn’t catch a lead in the next few hours, he would reach out to Moses for information.
If Derek could toss Homicide a bone, Wallen might put in a good word to the Brass.