Unknown Victim by Kay Hadashi (top 10 books of all time txt) 📗

her window, so Gina couldn’t get a good look at her. All she could tell was that she was blond.

“Maybe it’s true, that blondes have more fun? She’s on a date, while I’m following them around. How pathetic is that?”

Gina made a turn. While she waited at a traffic light, she wondered what the point was to be out at all that evening.

“So what if a dead man gets a pauper’s grave? What is it to me? Why do I care so much about his name?”

Deciding to go home, she went around the block headed for the nearest freeway on-ramp. As she approached Pinoy Boy’s for the second time, Hughes was just coming out. He had something clutched in one fist, and a six-pack of beer in the other. She was able to duck into a driveway, hopefully without being seen by him. When he pulled out into traffic, she followed, now much more closely.

“Maybe it’s good I didn’t get picked up by him, if all he does is drive a girl around and drink beer.”

Hughes made one turn, and Gina wondered if her suspicions were right. After a couple of blocks, he parked in the small lot at Kapalama Park. She had some tricky maneuvering getting the Datsun into an alley without being noticed. After backing into an apartment building carport, she crept back down the alley until she got a view of Hughes’s car. He’d backed into the space, the only car there.

It was nearly dark by then, and parked next to a wall kept her hidden. She could see their faces through the windshield of his car. His dome light came on. She noticed something being handed back and forth, and figured it was a can of beer.

“At least they parked before drinking.”

She watched as it looked like he opened a second can.

“Yeah, babe. Let’s go get some brewskis and party in my car,” she said in a false baritone. “Classy.”

Only the occasional car went by on the street that separated them. She couldn’t see much of the park, just one corner of the restrooms and a small patch of grass. No one else was around; the homeless people that had been there earlier that morning were still staying away.

“Good place to party. No one else around, quiet neighborhood, no streetlights.”

Gina rolled her window down. Trying to listen to them, all she could hear was the music coming from his car.

“Lucky her. She gets music with her beer.”

She still couldn’t get a good look at the girl’s face. She could’ve been a teenager, or a thirty year old. She drank her beer fast, though, as though a clock was ticking. Setting her can on the dashboard, she shook her head about something, her blond mane barely moving.

Hughes got active about something hidden by the dashboard. He was still in the front seat with his date, so they hadn’t progressed to back seat activities quite yet. Or maybe what happened in the back seat of a car in Cleveland happened in the front seat in Honolulu, Gina didn’t know. Maybe all he was doing was counting money to pay her ahead of whatever act that was being planned.

Then Gina saw what it was that he’d been doing. He had a crude pipe with a foil ball at one end. When he tried handing it to his date, she waved it off. With a second more insistent attempt to get her to take it, she pushed his hand away. He seemed to accept that, and holding a lighter to the foil ball, he took a puff.

“Smoking meth is illegal anywhere,” Gina muttered. She got out her phone to call the police. “Even in a parked car.”

That’s when the girl opened her door. White smoke came out. While stepping out, she shouted a profanity at him.

That didn’t accomplish much except to get him more excited. While he took another puff from the foil pipe, he grabbed a hold of her and pulled back. The girl fired off a few more curse words, which only seemed to piss Hughes off. He had both hands on her by then, one pulling her arm, the other pulling her hair.

Gina waited for the 9-1-1 operator to come on the line while anxiously watching the girl get abused by Hughes. She was impressed with the fight the girl was putting up to keep Hughes off her.

“Come on…come on…answer my call…”

Then the horrible thing happened. Gina saw a fist slam into the girl’s face. She fell back against the car door on her side and didn’t move. With no more resistance, Hughes grabbed the girl’s blouse and tore it open.

“Oh, no you don’t!”

Gina tossed her phone with the unanswered call aside and swung the Datsun’s door open. She was running before her feet touched the ground.

No longer a police officer, she had little she could shout. The words, ‘Stop! Police! Put your hands up!’ by law had to fail her.

She was across the street in seconds. With no real plan in mind other than getting him off his date, she pulled his car door open. When she saw his pants halfway to his knees, she hoped she wasn’t too late. Gina grabbed his ankles and pulled.

It was too much of a surprise for him, and he barely had time to grab the dashboard. With a second yank on his legs, she pulled him out of the car. When his chest landed on the ground, his face bounced off the pavement. He rolled onto his back. With one hand reaching for his nose, he tried kicking at Gina.

“Stop! The police are on their way!” was all Gina could think to shout. She looked past him into the car. The girl was out cold, her head leaning off to one side. Somehow, she needed to control a man high on meth, and call for an ambulance for the girl. Patting her pocket, she remembered leaving her phone behind. When Hughes began to push up from the ground, Gina