Witch Dancer

by Michael Robb

The first editor who read the original manuscript scribbled this in the margin…“congratulations, I checked my doors before I went to sleep last night, this is a nasty little tale.”New Orleans, a city that celebrates the night, has come to fear the night- a methodical killer with a hatred of attractive, dark-haired women, has struck for the second time. Leaving the second mutilated body, but little evidence beyond a taunting note written in scarlet-red lipstick, the killer continues stalking future victims with cold efficiency. For Detective Billy Ray Timmons of the New Orleans Police Department, not much in his life has gone the way he’d hoped and in many ways, fate has proven to be a harsh master. Mired in a dead end marriage with a cheating wife, his pleasures have largely been reduced to Irish whiskey, a good book and his precocious teenage daughter. Drifting through the final two years of a career marked by cynicism, bad luck and an act of presumed cowardice, he is an unlikely adversary to hunt a killer as violent and calmly efficient as the one who now calls himself, Simkiel.But, there is an old French proverb that says, “One often meets his fate in the road he took to avoid it” and Detective Billy Ray Timmons is soon part of the task force investigating the murders. To his surprise and chagrin he learns of a second investigation underway, a shadowy, high-level probe of corruption in the police department. Although the primary target of the corruption probe seems to be a team of Narcotics Investigators involved in pay-offs, rip-offs, extortion and possibly, several murders; it’s also clear the net is being cast wide and may include investigators assigned to the murder task force. Quickly trapped between his loyalty to fellow officers and self preservation, Timmons faces difficult decisions as it becomes obvious two high profile cases are being driven by equally intense, but totally separate agendas, either of which could pose a danger to him. During the course of the investigation, Timmons meets and falls in love with Jeri Brooks, a beautiful and tempestuous woman with her own checkered past. As their relationship deepens, Jeri becomes Timmons’ confessor and strongest supporter, but her relationship with him may have also brought her to the attention of a killer.When the killer, provoked by a news story, strikes again, Timmons, piecing together tiny bits of information, makes a startling discovery and the murder case and the police corruption case become tangled in a violent climax.Michael Robb retired after 22 years with the Illinois State Police. For 16 of those years, he was a Violent Crimes Investigator and later, Commander of a Major Case Homicide Unit. During his career, he was the department’s Chief Instructor for Advanced Homicide Investigation, Sexually Motivated Homicide Investigation and Offender Profiling. Along with SNITCH, a book of short stories, his political commentary and short fiction have appeared in a number of magazines. He, and his wife, Ann, live on Whitemarsh Island, Georgia.

237 pages, Kindle Edition

First published September 8, 2010