A serial killer is loose in the city of Seattle stalking women in the downtown area near Elliott Bay. Detective Nate Cliff ton is assigned to the Monroe case, tagged with that name by the newspapers because the victims all look like 1950's pin-up models. Nate is relentless in his hunt for this smart killer who keeps eluding police to fulfill his bloodlust. Meanwhile, John Carpenter's peaceful life is changed forever following a terrible car accident. Awakening from a coma, John now has an ability to see events from the past - to flashback. During one such flashback into the past, John sees a distinctive tattoo when he witnesses a murder in an alleyway near Pike Place Market. Who can he trust? He certainly doesn't want to involve his family, so he turns to Nate. Nate is skeptical of John's newly acquired ability at first. Will the detective believe him, or will John become the number one suspect in the investigation into the brutal crime? When John sees the tattoo for a second time in another flashback, Nate must learn to use the past to alter the future. Another woman will die if the killer is not stopped. The clock is ticking. John must learn to accept his gift, and then learn to use it as he becomes mixed up in the hunt for a serial killer. Will John Carpenter end up a hero, or will he end up dead?

Flashback to the Dragon

By Terri L. Powers

Abbott Press

Copyright © 2012 Terri L. Powers
All right reserved.
ISBN: 978-1-4582-0560-5

Chapter One

April

John Carpenter loudly sang along to Katy Perry's "E.T." as the radio broadcast looked at the history of Top-40 hits over the past several years. The song blasted from the speakers of his car stereo as he drove to A.I. Technical where he worked. The top was folded down on his Mustang convertible, allowing the unseasonably warm morning breeze to play with his thick, brown hair and the slanting rays of the sun to warm his shoulders. He switched to the lower tones of Kanye West, following the words in the song and sounding out the technically altered vocals and staying mostly on-key.

He drove past the ice-cream parlor on Third Street and watched as a pretty girl opened the shop, cranking out the red-and-white-striped awning. He could almost taste the chocolate, marshmallows, and nuts of rocky road ice cream, his favorite flavor. It was getting to be that time of year when flowers bloomed, kites appeared in the sky, and eating ice cream again sounded like a good idea.

The song was over, and the news team came on as John brought the car to a stop at a red light. As he sat there waiting for the light to turn green, he started to mentally list off his day's agenda: finish the month-end report, call the auditors to get a list of their most recent findings, and set up a lunch with Brandy on her next day off.

John was the oldest sibling in the Carpenter family of East Essex Circle, and Brandy was John's baby sister. The two were as different in appearance as they were in actions. Where John was dark, soft-spoken, and deliberate, with interests in history or historic events, Brandy was blonde, outgoing, and hyper, interested in what was happening on a current reality television show or the latest fashion trend to hit the city. John loved her completely and looked forward to their monthly lunches. No matter what mood Brandy might be in that day, it was usually an entertaining hour. Maybe they should check out the new bistro over on Cavanaugh Avenue. He would call her from the office after ... shit!

A block from work, he remembered he was supposed to bring in bagels for the staff meeting at nine o'clock that morning. There would be hell to pay if he didn't. He knew not to get between the office staff and food. He swore a person could put out a serving platter filled with mouse turds, and there wouldn't be a single one left by noon.

Where could he get bagels between there and work? Mentally pulling up maps of the area, he searched around in his memory for a likely bagel place. Maybe I can show up with some story about having purchased the bagels but then leaving them at home because my apartment building caught fire, and my only thought was to get out of the building safely, leaving the bagels behind to the smoke and confusion. He shook his head, bringing himself out of his reverie. No one would believe him, or if they did, they would wonder why he hadn't waited for the fire fighters to put the fire out and gone back in for the bagels.

He took his foot off the brake and moved the car forward when the light turned green, thinking that he could turn left at the block his office was on, go down to Turner Street, and get bagels at Morning Sunshine Deli, a place that opened for the breakfast crowd. It would be expensive, but that's what he got for forgetting until now.

He never saw it coming. One minute he was moving forward, thinking about bagels and cream cheese, and the next he was looking over to his left and thinking how big the grasshopper was in the front grill of the semi-truck that seemed much too close for comfort.

John's world exploded with bright lights and the jangle of breaking glass. He threw one arm up to protect his face as his windshield caved and exploded inward. His head didn't feel attached to his body any longer, as it was whipped to the right and then left, hitting hard against the body of the car. He heard a crunch and imagined more than felt an explosion of white light inside his head, and then everything faded to black.

Chapter Two

The Mack truck driver was in a hurry and talking on his cell phone, getting a major ass-chewing from his boss over being late, laced with threats of losing his job. Ralph Thompson needed the job because it was the only thing that stood between him and living out of a discarded washing-machine crate on the streets of Seattle, eating out of garbage cans, and begging for enough money to continue his addiction to crack cocaine.

He had started on the drug a couple of years back to stay awake and to deliver the goods within an impossible timeline, beating out the competition, flying high like a superhero. At first, he was invincible, delivering truckload after truckload to the warehouse in record time; the golden boy of the shipping yards. But soon the crashes came, at odd hours of the day, and he needed more crack to keep going. It's only a little after eight-thirty, for chrissake; I'll get there in five minutes, he wanted to yell into the mouthpiece.

When the light up ahead turned from yellow to red, he figured it was more like orange anyway, and besides, who would challenge a big rig like that? Someone sees me coming, they will get out of the way and let me through, he thought, so he opted out of hitting the brakes, deciding to keep going straight through.

His boss on the other end of the line had pretty much wound down, and Ralph started to say, "I'll be there in five minutes. Don't get your shorts all in a bunch," when he saw a flash of red and felt the impact. Whatever his vehicle ran into made the cab shutter and jerked the steering wheel to the left. He threw the cell phone to the floor and grabbed onto the wheel with both hands, standing on the air brakes to stop.

"Oh God, oh God, oh God," Ralph muttered under his breath. Over the screaming metal, he still could hear his boss's voice, tinny and far away. "Please, no." Ralph started thinking of what he could say that would throw the blame anywhere but in his lap.

When the truck came to a stop, the silence was deafening. He felt frozen to the seat. Slowly he reached his hand down to disengage the seatbelt, pushed his stringy blond hair out of his eyes, and opened the door. He stumbled down from the cab to see what he had hit, thinking he didn't want to be around when the cops got there. What if they take me in and give me a blood test? If they find crack in my system, my boss is going to can my ass faster than a judge can say guilty, and I will no longer be searching for that perfect discarded carton, I'll be in jail. And it won't be my ass anymore; I'll belong to Butch in the lower bunk. Hold on there, the cops don't automatically arrest someone, right? He fought the urge to run. Hell, it was only an accident.

As he looked at the crumpled metal that once passed for a car, all he wanted to do was go home, do some coke, eat one of those frozen burritos, and crawl into bed to never come out again. Instead, Ralph moved shakily toward the red lump of metal caught up under the cab of his truck. Maybe I can help the person in the vehicle and be a hero, Ralph thought as the scene started to attract observers and halt traffic. He could hear a siren in the distance and absently wondered if it was headed to where he was. As soon as he caught sight of the driver stuck behind the steering wheel of the wreck and beneath the Mack's emblem on the front of the cab, Ralph's shitty day showed signs of getting worse.

Chapter Three

Hank Grossman sat outside of the Seattle fire station precariously leaning against the building so that he was balanced on the back two legs of a wooden chair. He sucked on a toothpick that was stuck between his front teeth and tilted his head back so that his face got the sun.

Hank had been working at Station Two for only a few months, but he had received army training to become an efficient paramedic and had passed all the necessary tests, both physical and mental, to get into a career as a firefighter for the city of Seattle. His job performance evaluations were mostly positive.

It was a beautiful morning, promising to be a beautiful day. He had just finished a game of basketball but came outside because he could not see merely sitting inside with the rest of the boys, fighting over who got the last doughnut or arguing about who has a greater rack, Jennifer Lopez or Katy Perry. He thought both ladies were fine examples of the feminine physique with their luscious attributes and smoking-hot looks, and he didn't see the need to hold one above the other. He would enjoy a quiet evening with either one of them with nothing but time on their side.

The firehouse siren sounded an alarm that jerked him out of his drowsy sunbathing. The chair slammed down onto all four legs as he shot up and started running inside to suit up and head out to whatever emergency called Station Two out on such a lovely spring morning.

The clock read quarter to nine. He shrugged into his gear and was in the ambulance before eight-fifty. His partner, Jason Creecy, was seated behind the steering wheel.

Hank got on the radio to get more details. "Repeat destination and details, ten-four." The destination was repeated, and Hank punched the address into the GPS for extra support. Both Jason and Hank knew the way to get to the accident but would leave nothing to chance if there was a roadblock. "Accident on Washington and Third, chance of a flash fire, victim still caught inside of vehicle, ten-four." Hank repeated the details while jotting them down in the log.

"We could be using the Jaws of Life today." Hank looked at Jason, "It will be good to use the JOL in a real emergency instead of training exercises." Jason nodded his agreement but didn't say anything. Hank liked Jason. Jason was a quiet "yes" man. A former armed serviceman, he was a seasoned firehouse veteran who was agreeable and excellent at what he did, but he needed someone to tell him what to do most of the time. He and Hank got along just fine because Hank liked to be the one in charge.

Hank clicked the button on the handset of the CB radio and spoke into it. "Headed up Turner Street now. Estimated time of arrival is," Hank glanced at his watch, "oh-nine-oh-five, repeat nine-oh-five. We're about fifteen minutes out. Over and out."

Hank looked over at Jason. "So, is our victim dead or alive? What do you think we'll find when we get there?"

Jason grimaced and shrugged his shoulders. "Your guess is as good as mine. Let's hope alive."

"Right." Hank drew out the one word and settled back in his seat for the short ride.

Chapter Four

Detective Nate Cliffton sat in the Ford assigned for his use. His vehicle was at a standstill with a lot of others on Washington Street. From where he was seated, it looked like a traffic accident at the intersection of Washington and Third. It was a dangerous corner with a lot of trees lining Third, which were planted back in the nineties in an effort to beautify this area of downtown.

Poor bastard. From what Nate could see from his vehicle, it didn't look good for the driver of the red Mustang since it was up against a Mack truck. David versus Goliath. However, he didn't think the driver of the Mustang had time to get out a slingshot, let alone use it.

He shifted his gaze to the rearview mirror, blue eyes alert, and watched as the cars behind him slowed and then fell into line as the vehicles were brought to a standstill that stretched down the block to the previous intersection. Thinking it might be awhile before they started moving again, Nate put his idling car in park and got out his paperwork.

His hand went to the door console, and he hit the buttons to roll down the front windows. Casually glancing to the right, toward the passenger side of the car, he noticed a woman in a business suit with a briefcase. She was standing on the sidewalk near a bus stop sign, talking into a cell phone. She noticed him as well, and when their eyes connected, she winked and smiled. He smiled in return before bending over his notes from the ongoing investigation into two deaths that appeared to have similar methods of operation.

The first victim, Carmen Rogers, was a young woman who worked in a downtown accounting firm. She was last seen alive on January 15 at a popular downtown bar. A week later, she was found dead in a dumpster outside of a shopping mall situated near a freeway. The second victim, Marie Jackson, disappeared on March 15 outside of a popular after-work spot for twenty-somethings, and was found yesterday afternoon in a park and picnic area along a scenic route north of town. Nate glanced at his watch; it was just nine-thirty. When he got to the office, he would go see Tom Bates, the medical examiner, to see if he had anything new.

He heard a horn honk, which caused him to look up and notice he was being waved through by a Seattle police department patrolman who was helping to clear traffic by directing cars to the outside lane. He nudged the Crown Vic forward and waved to the fellow officer.

He continued to think about the investigation on which he was working. The Homicide and Assault Unit of the Investigations Bureau was stretched a little thin due to early retirements and an ongoing hiring freeze. Currently, he was the lead and only detective assigned full-time to the two murders until something cracked. The department used two-man teams during the initial investigation of a crime, sometimes sending in two or three teams at first, and then dropping back to one to continue the investigation, checking leads until something broke. Nate's partner, Bill Draper, was primary on the case until he left on a medical retirement due to a heart condition at the beginning of this month. Nate was what was left of the two-man team and had taken over as primary with two other detectives helping out. There were some leads but nothing concrete. This one was still tangled up in knots, and he had only just begun to unravel the threads. If the crime wasn't solved during the investigation, the files went to the cold-case team. Nate was proud of his record and of the fact that less than 10 percent of his cases ever transferred to the CC squad.

Pulling past the intersection, he said a little prayer for the guy in the red car. Life is unpredictable; one minute you're riding into work per usual, with all the fears, hopes, joy, and boredom, thinking about the weekend or that vacation that's coming up—and wham, the next minute, you're being scraped out of a pile of metal with a slim chance of getting back to the grind.

Nate sped up once he was through the congestion, careful to look both ways at every corner.

Chapter Five

John floated somewhere between consciousness and numbing oblivion. When he floated up to become aware, his body screamed, and his head pounded. He heard the flurry of activity around him and smelled the tang of disinfectant, gasoline, and exhaust fumes, a pungent mixture. He tried to move and couldn't, and wondered briefly if he would ever move again. Then he would drift back into semi-consciousness, the pain would go away, and the sounds would even out and become muted.

The paramedics got John out of the tangled mess that was once his lovely convertible and loaded him onto a stretcher and into the ambulance. He died twice on the way to the hospital, only to be resuscitated by the first responders in the back of the ambulance with him.

"Fifty over ninety and falling," a man's voice broke through the cotton clouds that he figured must be stuffed in his ears. He could hear sirens somewhere, but they never became annoying because they were accompanied by the beeps from the equipment inside of the ambulance and blended into a musical beat that would soothe him as he floated back down to that numbing oblivion.

"Code Blue coming in, ETA three minutes."

The ambulance screamed into the circular driveway of Harborview Medical Center's emergency entrance, and one of the paramedics jumped out and ran inside the hospital to clear the way while one remained behind to get John out of the back of the vehicle. John was rolled through the double doors. The nurse behind the desk motioned them into an alcove where they transferred John to the waiting emergency room bed. The hospital staff began to check his blood pressure and heart rate.

John heard bleeping noises and conversation even though he was mostly unresponsive to the nurse who checked his vitals. He wanted to reach out, sit up, and tell them where it hurt, but he couldn't seem to make his brain play well with his body.

(Continues...)

Excerpted from Flashback to the Dragonby Terri L. Powers Copyright © 2012 by Terri L. Powers. Excerpted by permission of Abbott Press. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.