Sanguinary Angel by John Kissinger

Chattanooga private investigator Wayne Hoyer is alone in more ways than one. His indispensible secretary Sally is on vacation, leaving him to run the office by himself. His wife and daughter live with another man, leaving Wayne to go home to an empty apartment each night. He hasn’t heard from his few friends lately, and he is doing what he can to avoid his own shadowy past. Still, he needs to pay the bills, and at least there are a few clients showing up at his door. There’s Velouette, a frumpy, irritated woman who needs some rare type blood for her daughter’s operation and expects Wayne to find it for her. Sid, Wayne’s friend in the Chattanooga Police Department, has some suspicions about a group of police rookies who share a common past and uncommon social behavior, and wants Wayne to check them out. On top of that, Wayne is summoned to the house of Andrew Batrassen, local crime lord, because Batrassen’s brother is missing and he wants Wayne to locate him. None of the jobs look promising, but we’re talking about paying clients here, and at least it will give Wayne something to do. One day later, everything has come apart at the seams. Wayne was involved at a shootout inside Batrassen’s house and is running for his life, and there have already been two attempts on his life from sources unknown. Wayne finds himself beholden to a secret organization hiding behind the façade of a local artists’ colony, and he is also a target for another secret organization whose methods are ruthless and murderous even on its good days. Being alone is starting to look better all the time. Then Wayne meets RueAnn, a beautiful singer with a tragic past and an uncertain future, whose fate is somehow meshed with the seemingly unrelated events of Wayne’s recent history. Well, maybe he doesn’t have to be completely alone…