Toxic Prey, April 2024
Hardcover / e-Book Judgment Prey, October 2023
Hardcover / e-Book / audiobook Righteous Prey, September 2023
Trade Paperback / e-Book / audiobook (reprint) Dark Angel, April 2023
Hardcover / e-Book Righteous Prey, October 2022
Hardcover / e-Book / audiobook Eyes of Prey, July 2022
Trade Paperback / e-Book (reprint) The Investigator, April 2022
Hardcover / e-Book Ocean Prey, April 2022
Mass Market Paperback / e-Book (reprint) Ocean Prey, February 2022
Trade Size / e-Book (reprint) Dark of the Moon, July 2021
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Hardcover / e-Book Masked Prey, April 2021
Mass Market Paperback / e-Book Masked Prey, February 2021
Trade Size / e-Book Shadow Prey, July 2020
Trade Size / e-Book (reprint) Bloody Genius, June 2020
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Hardcover / e-Book Neon Prey, April 2020
Mass Market Paperback / e-Book / audiobook (reprint) Bloody Genius, October 2019
Hardcover / e-Book Holy Ghost, October 2019
Mass Market Paperback Bloody Genius, October 2019
Mass Market Paperback / e-Book (reprint) Rules of Prey, June 2019
Trade Size Neon Prey, May 2019
Hardcover / e-Book Twisted Prey, April 2019
Mass Market Paperback / e-Book (reprint) Holy Ghost, October 2018
Hardcover / e-Book Twisted Prey, May 2018
Hardcover / e-Book Golden Prey, April 2018
Mass Market Paperback / e-Book (reprint) Deep Freeze, October 2017
Hardcover / e-Book Escape Clause, October 2017
Mass Market Paperback / e-Book The Best American Mystery Stories 2017, October 2017
Trade Size / e-Book Golden Prey, May 2017
Hardcover / e-Book Extreme Prey, April 2017
Mass Market Paperback Saturn Run, February 2017
Mass Market Paperback Escape Clause, October 2016
Hardcover / e-Book Extreme Prey, May 2016
Hardcover / e-Book Easy Prey, November 2015
Mass Market Paperback / e-Book (reprint) Saturn Run, October 2015
Hardcover / e-Book Gathering Prey, May 2015
Hardcover / e-Book Field of Prey, April 2015
Mass Market Paperback / e-Book (reprint) Certain Prey, December 2014
Mass Market Paperback / e-Book (reprint) Deadline, October 2014
Hardcover / e-Book Chosen Prey, September 2014
Mass Market Paperback / e-Book (reprint) Silken Prey, May 2014
Mass Market Paperback / e-Book (reprint) Field Of Prey, May 2014
Hardcover / e-Book Secret Prey, November 2013
Mass Market Paperback / e-Book (reprint) Storm Front, October 2013
Hardcover / e-Book Silken Prey, May 2013
Hardcover / e-Book Stolen Prey, May 2013
Mass Market Paperback / e-Book (reprint) Sudden Prey, November 2012
Paperback / e-Book (reprint) Mad River, October 2012
Hardcover / e-Book Shock Wave, October 2012
Paperback / e-Book (reprint) Buried Prey, May 2012
Mass Market Paperback / e-Book (reprint) Mind Prey, November 2011
Mass Market Paperback / e-Book (reprint) Shock Wave, October 2011
Hardcover Buried Prey, May 2011
Hardcover / e-Book Storm Prey, May 2011
Mass Market Paperback / e-Book (reprint) Night Prey, November 2010
Mass Market Paperback / e-Book (reprint) Bad Blood, October 2010
Hardcover / e-Book Wicked Prey, May 2010
Paperback / e-Book (reprint) Winter Prey, November 2009
Mass Market Paperback / e-Book (reprint) Rough Country, October 2009
Hardcover / e-Book Phantom Prey, May 2009
Mass Market Paperback / e-Book (reprint) Wicked Prey, May 2009
Hardcover / e-Book Silent Prey, November 2008
Mass Market Paperback / e-Book (reprint) Heat Lightning, October 2008
Hardcover / e-Book Phantom Prey, May 2008
Hardcover / e-Book Invisible Prey, May 2008
Mass Market Paperback / e-Book (reprint) Dark of the Moon, October 2007
Hardcover / e-Book Invisible Prey, May 2007
Hardcover / e-Book Dead Watch, May 2007
Paperback (reprint) Eyes of Prey, March 2007
Paperback / e-Book (reprint) Dead Watch, May 2006
Hardcover Broken Prey, May 2006
Mass Market Paperback / e-Book (reprint) Shadow Prey, March 2006
Mass Market Paperback / e-Book (reprint) Rules of Prey, August 2005
Mass Market Paperback / e-Book (reprint) Broken Prey, May 2005
Hardcover / e-Book Hidden Prey, May 2005
Mass Market Paperback / e-Book (reprint) The Hanged Man's Song, October 2004
Mass Market Paperback / e-Book Naked Prey, May 2004
Mass Market Paperback / e-Book (reprint) Mortal Prey, May 2003
Mass Market Paperback / e-Book (reprint) The Devil's Code, October 2001
Mass Market Paperback / e-Book The Fool's Run, December 1996
Mass Market Paperback / e-Book The Empress File, November 1992
Mass Market Paperback / e-Book
Early morning, Virginia, and a woman is on the run. Her
husband, a former U.S. Senator, has been missing for days.
Kidnapped? Murdered? She doesn't know, but she thinks she
knows who's involved, and why. And that she's next.
Hours later in Washington, D.C., a cell phone rings. The
White House chief of staff needs Jacob Winter now. His
chief investigator and an Army Intelligence veteran, Winter
knows how to move quickly and decisively, but he's never
faced a problem like this. The disappearances are bad, but
when the blackened body shows up barbed-wired to a tree,
Winter knows there is much worse to come. And soon enough,
there is. Large forces are at work, determined to do
whatever it takes to achieve their ends. Winter will have
to use all his resources not only to prevail but also to
survive. And so will the nation. . . .
Despite the mist, she spent an hour working Chica, and
working herself, and she smelled of it, mare-sweat and
woman-sweat, with a tingle of Chanel No. 5. They'd turned
down the trail from the south forty, easing along, and she
could feel the mare's heart beating through her knees and
thighs.
The mist hadn't felt cold while they were jumping, but now
they were cooling off, and her cheeks and forehead were
pink, and her knuckles were raw. A shower, she thought,
would be nice, along with a hot sandwich and a cup of soup.
They'd just crossed the fence. She turned in the saddle to
watch the gate re-latch behind them, and saw the face in
the tree line. There was no question that it was a face –
and in a blink, it was gone, dissolving in the trees.
She turned away from it, casually, tried to capture an
after-image in her mind. A pale oval, truncated at top and
bottom, with a dark trapezoid beneath the oval. The face of
a man who'd been watching her through binoculars, she
realized. The dark shape, the trapezoid, had been arms,
joined at the binoculars, in a camouflage jacket.
A thrill of fear ran up her spine. They might be coming for
her.
She suppressed the urge to run the mare, but not the urge
to push her into a trot. They came down the fence-line and
she took the remote from her pocket, pointed it at the
inside gate, and it swung open in front of them. They went
through, and she turned and closed the gate, her eyes
searching the tree line as she turned. Nothing. They went
on to the barn, Chica in a hurry now, anticipating the feed
bag.
When she came off the horse she was feeling loose and
athletic and was beginning to question what she'd seen. Was
she losing it? Was the pressure pushing her over the edge?
There'd been nothing but a flash of white.
Lon, the barn man, came over as she led the horse inside to
the smell of horseshit and hay and feed, the odors of a
comfortable life. She brushed a fly away from Chica's eye
as she handed the reins over. "I worked her hard, Lon.
She's pretty warm."
Then over the groom's shoulder, in the lighted square of
the open barn door, she saw the housekeeper jogging across
the barnyard, a folded newspaper over her hair to deflect
the rain. Lon, an older, hook-nosed man whose skin was
grooved like the bark on an oak tree, turned to look and
said, "She's in a hurry."
She met Sandi, the housekeeper, at the barn door. "Sandi?"
"Two men are here."
"Two men?"
"Watchmen," Sandi said.
She looked up at the house: "Did you let them in?"
"Um, it's raining..." Sandi was suddenly afraid that she'd
done wrong. "I left them in the front hall."
"That's okay. That's fine." She smiled. "Tell them that
I'll be a moment."
Sandi fled back across the barnyard into the house. She and
Lon talked about the horse for another thirty seconds,
then, as she turned toward the house, Lon said, "Be
careful, Maddy."
She took her time, cleaning her boots on the boot-brush
outside the door, and on the mat inside, peeling off her
rain suit and helmet, shaking out her hair, hanging the
gear on the wall-pegs in the mud room. Still wearing the
knee-high boots, she clumped across the kitchen and up the
back stairs to the bedroom. From the closet, she got the
bedroom gun, a blue-steel .380. She jacked a shell into the
chamber and disengaged the safety, stuffed it in her jacket
pocket.
She was afraid of the Watchmen, but more than that: she was
also interested in what they'd say and excited by the
prospect of conflict. She wasn't exactly a thrill-seeker,
but she enjoyed a test, and the more severe, the better.
She'd been a rock climber, she drove fast cars. And always
the horses: the horses might some day kill her, she
thought. Riding was as dangerous as a knife fight.
She took the back stairs down to the kitchen, walked out
through the living room to the front entry. Two men waited
there, both in leather bomber jackets, blue shirts and
khaki slacks. They'd put on their uniforms for the visit.
She knew one of them: Bob Sheenan, who worked behind the
parts counter at Canelo's Farm & Garden. He was about
fourth or fifth in the local Watchmen ranks. She knew the
other man's face, but not his name.
"Been out riding?" Sheenan asked, when she walked into the
entry.
She didn't answer. No pleasantries for the Watchmen: "What
do you want, Bob?"
"Well now..." Sheenan was a big man, with a bar-brawler's
face: pale blue berserker's eyes, one damaged eyelid half-
shading his left eye, scar tissue under both of them, a
crooked banana nose, large yellow teeth. He smelled of
pizza and beer, though it was not yet ten o'clock. "You're
telling people that the Watchmen had something to do with
your husband."
"You did," she said flatly. "I want to know where he is. If
you're not here to tell me, then get out."
He jabbed a finger at her, and stepped closer. "We had
nothing to do with your husband. If you keep talking that
way, we will take you to court."
She squared off to him. "Or beat me up?"
"We don't do that."
"Bullshit. What about that Mexican kid two weeks ago? You
broke his cheekbones."
"He was attempting to escape," the second man said.
"You're not the cops," she snapped. "You're supposed to be
old Boy Scouts. What were you doing capturing him, huh?"
Sheenan and the second man looked at each other for a
second, confused, then Sheenan pulled himself back. "I
don't care about the Mexican. That's got nothing to do with
this."
She bared her teeth: "Is this coming from Goodman? Or is
this just some moronic crap you made up on your own?"
"This is not crap, missus." His eyes widened and his
shoulders tensed, as if he were about to strike at
her. "You are tearing down our good name. I don't know what
your husband is up to, or where he's gone, but we will find
out. In the meantime, you shut your fuckin' mouth."
"I'm not going to shut my mouth," she snarled at him. "I'll
tell you something, Bob: you better be here on Goodman's
orders, because you're going to need as much backup as you
can get. If you came here on your own hook, I'll have your
balls by midnight. Now: are you going to get out, or do I
call the sheriff?"
Sheenan shuffled a half-step forward, looming, not worried
at the threat. The security cameras were on. All of this
was on tape. She refused to move back, but slipped her
right hand into the pocket of the jean jacket, touched the
cold steel of the .380.
"Something's going on here," Sheenan hissed, jabbing the
finger again, but not touching her. "We're going to find
out what it is. In the meantime, you stick close to the
house, missus. We don't want something to happen to you,
too."
Then he laughed, and turned, and walked out. The other man
held the door, and before pulling it closed behind him,
said, "We're watching."
She exhaled, walked into the library, out of range of the
security cameras, took the pistol out of her pocket with a
shaking hand and engaged the safety. Her biggest fear was
that they would do something stupid – that they would stage
an accident, a mishap, a mystery killing, a disappearance.
Even if they were eventually caught, that wouldn't do her
any good.
She could hear the local news anchor: "...and then she
vanished, into the same darkness that took her husband."
She'd worked as a reporter for a television station in
Richmond, and used to write that stuff; that's how she'd do
it.
She'd been planning to run for two weeks. Sheenan had
pulled the trigger. She put the gun back in her pocket,
headed for the stairs and shouted, "Sandi?" Sandi came out
of the kitchen, wiping her hands on a dish towel. "Yes?"
"I'm going into town. Did you pick up the dry-cleaning?"
"Yes, I did. I've still got them in the kitchen."
"I'll need the red blouse and the grey slacks. Bring them
up, and put them on the bed. I'll be in the shower."
"What about the schnitzel? Will you be back for lunch?"
"I'll get a bite in town. You and Lon and Carl could have
sandwiches...and leave one for me in the refrigerator. I'll
eat it cold, this afternoon."
"Yes, ma'am."
She took the pickup into Lexington, driving too fast,
enjoying the feel of the back-end kicking out in the turns,
grabbing the gravel and throwing it. She was moving fast
enough that anyone trailing her would be obvious. If anyone
was there, she didn't see him. The face across the fence
haunted her: had it been real? Was it imaginary?
In town, she stopped at the bank, took out five thousand in
cash, returned two books to the library, filled the truck's
gas tank, went to the feed store and picked up four bags of
supplement for the horses. At the Post Office, she turned
off the mail, and had it forwarded to Washington. The
window clerk was a Watchman, but he was whistling as he put
together the temporary change of address, and smiled at her
when she said good-bye.
With the chores done, she stopped at Pat's Tea House for a
scone and a cup of tea. Pat was a friend, a fellow
horsewoman, and came over to chat, as she always
did: "How's everything?"
"Delicious," she said. "Listen, can I borrow your phone to
call Washington? I left my cell at home."
"Absolutely. Stop in the office when you're done."
She made the call, thinking all the time that she was being
paranoid. They wouldn't be watching the phones. Would they?
She was back at Oak Walk at one o'clock, sent Sandi to get
Lon and Carl. When the three were assembled in the kitchen,
she told them that she was going to Washington and didn't
know when she'd be back.
"With the controversy about Lincoln and with the Watchmen
visiting this morning, I think I'd better move into town
for a while. So you three will be running this place.
Deborah Benson will deliver your paychecks on Fridays. If
you need to buy anything big, call me, we'll talk, and I'll
have Deborah issue a check. I'm going to leave three
thousand in cash with Lon. If you need to buy small stuff,
use that, and put the receipts in the Ball jar on the
kitchen counter. I'll leave the keys for the truck and the
car with Lon."
They had questions, but they'd done this before.
"Any idea when you'll be back?" Lon asked.
"I'll check back every once in a while, just to ride, if
nothing else. But it could be a while before I'm back full-
time – probably not until we find Linc," she said.
When she was satisfied that the farm would be handled, she
ate the cold schnitzel sandwich, opened the safe and
removed and packed her jewelry, packed a small suitcase
with clothes she wanted to take to the city, went to the
security room, took the tape out of the security cameras,
and put in a new one.
She spent another hour on Rochambeau – Rocky – an aging
gelding that had always been one of her favorites, then
cleaned up, put on her traveling clothes, and wandered
around the house at loose ends, until four o'clock, when
she heard the gate-buzzer chirp. She looked out the front
window down the lawn where the driveway snaked up from the
road. Two cars were coming up the hill, a gun-metal grey
Mercedes Benz sedan and a black Lincoln Towncar.
She went out on the porch when the cars stopped in the
driveway circle. A chauffeur got out of the Benz, and
waited. Another chauffeur got out of the Towncar, and held
the back door. A young woman got out, followed by a
slightly older man, both carrying briefcases. Madison met
them at the top of the porch stairs.
"Hello," the woman said. "I'm Janice Rogers, this is Lane
Parks, Johnnie said to say hello for him. He will see you
tonight."
"Two cars?" she asked.
"Johnnie thought a convoy would be better," Rogers
said. "If you're really worried...it would make it more
complicated for anyone to interfere with us."
"Good. Let me get my things," she said.
The trip into DC took a little more than three hours. Her
attorney, Johnson Black, was waiting on the porch when the
Benz pulled up to the townhouse, alerted by the two junior
attorneys in the Towncar. Black was dressed like his name,
in shades of black, under a black raincoat, but with a
brilliant jungle-birds necktie.
She got out, the chauffeur popped the trunk to get her
luggage, and she walked up the sidewalk and Black kissed
her on the cheek and said, "Quite an adventure."
"The kind I don't need."
"Randall James is coming over tonight, if you don't mind.
He wants to talk about those tapes – he wants you on his
show tomorrow."
She was fumbling for the keys to the front door, found
them. "You think that'd be the thing to do?"
"Well, I'll have to look at the tapes, but so far, the
press is acting like we're just bullshitting about Linc and
Goodman. This could change things. Depends on the tapes..."
Randall James had a noon gig as the Washington Insider on
the local ABC outlet. The show got to the right demographic.
James showed up at nine o'clock, an unctuous man with
careful black hair, a sharp nose and a dimple on his chin.
He would, she thought, lie for the pure pleasure of it; but
he had the demographics.
He sat in the chair, watching the tapes, checking her
profile from time to time. When they were done, he
said, "I'll put you on right at the top, at noon. Live.
This is great shit, Mrs. Bowe." He picked up a remote and
ran back to the point where Sheenan had shuffled toward
her. The threat seemed more explicit on the tape than it
had in person. James froze the scene, said, "Look at the
face on that fucker..."
Her name was Madison Bowe. Her husband was an ex-U.S.
Senator from Virginia, who, two weeks earlier, had vanished
after a speech in Charlottesville. Vanished like a wisp of
smoke.
Next day.
The governor of the Commonwealth of Virginia stood in the
living room of the private quarters on the second floor of
the governor's mansion, watching the television. He was
flushed, angry, but silent.
His brother was not. His brother screamed at the
television: "Look at the bitch, Arlo. Look at that bitch.
She's ruinin' you, and she knows it. Goddamn her eyes..."
"She's good at it," Arlo Goodman said after a moment, a
small smile on his face. "That silly-ass Randall James is
wearing a toupee, huh? He looks like a circumcised cock
being attacked by a rat."
Darrell Goodman wasn't amused. He sat on the couch behind
the governor, wearing a tan raincoat, his hands in the
pockets, a tennis hat shading his eyes, making them
invisible in the already dimly lit room. His body was
canted toward the TV, trembling with tension.
"You want me to..."
The governor turned and pointed a finger at him: "Nothing.
Nobody goes near her, not for any reason. I'll make a
statement, sweetness and light, apologize, kick the
Watchman's ass. What's his name? Sheenan. We kick his ass.
But if anything happened to her, I'd be cooked. Done.
Finished. Stay the fuck away from her."
"What about Sheenan? Maybe he's working with her. Maybe it
was a setup."
The governor grunted: "If that was a setup, he oughta get
the Oscar. But it wasn't a setup, Darrell. That was a real,
honest-to-God bare-faced threat. He thought he was doing
the right thing."
"Dumb fuck, getting on tape."
"Let it go. I'll have Patricia deal with him. But I'll tell
you what, this is no way to get to be president."
Darrell Goodman watched his brother, his calm face, the
smile as he watched the televised assassination. Sooner or
later, the governor would realize that they were in a war.
Then he'd do more than rave. Then he'd get angry, then he'd
move. Darrell looked forward to the day.
The hunter knew Madison Bowe's name. He'd seen her picture,
had never met her, had no idea where she lived, had no
thought that she might be in his future. As she spoke to a
half-million people on Randall James' show, he knelt on a
rubber tarp, not forty miles from her farm, waiting. Above
him, the sun was a dull nickel hidden in the clouds.
The rain had come every night for the past three, courtesy
of a low-pressure system stalled over the Appalachians. The
night before, the rain began just after 3 a.m. He'd woken
in his guest room, upstairs in the cabin, snug under the
slanting tin roof. He'd listened for a few moments, the
water whispering down a drainpipe, the cotton smell of the
quilt around him, and then he'd rolled over and slept
soundly until four-thirty.
He woke at four-thirty every morning. When he opened his
eyes, he lay quietly for a moment, surfacing, then looked
at the bedside clock, stretched, and got out of bed. He did
fifty push-ups and fifty sit-ups on the colonial-style
hooked rug from China, then a series of stretches, working
hard on his bad leg. As he was finishing his routine, he
heard an alarm go off down the hall.
He grabbed his jeans and a pair of fresh underpants from
his bag, and padded barefoot down the hall to the bathroom.
Better first than at the end of the line...
He brushed his teeth, skipped shaving, showered quickly.
Out of the shower, he dried himself with his designated
towel, pulled on the shorts and jeans, and opened the door.
Peyson Carter was leaning against the opposite wall, green
eyes, sleepy, wrapped in a bathrobe, holding a hair dryer.
"Morning, Jake," she said, not looking at his bare chest.
His name was Jake Winter. "Billy's just getting up."
"Yeah, let me get out of your way."
He slid past her in the hallway, careful not to brush
against her. Peyson was his best friend's wife. Since Billy
Carter first brought her around, fifteen years ago in
college, he'd been a little in love with her. Some of the
feeling, he suspected, was returned. They were always
careful not to touch, because there might be a question of
exactly when the touching would stop. And she loved Billy...
The guys downstairs were slower getting up, but by the time
he'd gotten dressed and into his boots, and gathered his
coveralls and gear, they were moving around. He could hear
the downstairs shower going, and the plop-gurgle of the
coffee-maker, the smell of hot coffee on a cool, rainy
morning.
As he left the room, Peyson came out of the bathroom,
steamy and pink, wrapped in the robe, and he
said, "Scrambled?" and she said, "Yes," and shouted "Billy,
get up," and he followed her down the hall, watching her
ass, and god help him, if Billy his best friend ever died
in a car wreck, he would be knocking on this woman's door
the next week.
He needed help; the kind you get from a woman.
Peyson went on to the other bedroom and he turned down the
stairs.
In the kitchen, he started breaking eggs into a bowl, got
some muffin-premix poured into pan-molds, fired up the
oven, took a package of bacon out of the refrigerator. Bob
Wilson came out of the downstairs bathroom, hair wet from
the shower, and said, "Rain."
"Mist."
"Gonna make the woods quiet, anyway. Hope the birds don't
hunker down."
Sam Barger walked sleepy-eyed from the bedroom and asked
Wilson, "You all done in the shower?"
"Yeah, go ahead."
"Rainin'," Barger said. "TV says it should be outa here by
noon."
They took a little time over breakfast: the smell of
muffins rising in the oven, bacon and eggs, coffee, the
pine-wood walls of the cabin. Peyson Carter across from
him, curly blond hair, catching his eyes. Did all
attractive women keep a spare tire?
They hunted together every spring and fall, looking for
Virginia wild turkeys, four men, one man's wife. They had
the routine down. Everybody knew what to bring – bows,
boots, camo, pasta, booze, garbage bags, toilet paper,
target faces – and everybody knew about where he or she
would set up. They were all bow hunters. Turkeys were tough.
All that brought him to the rubber tarp, where he knelt in
the gloom, waiting for his bird to move. A little hungry
now, trying to ignore it. The four-foot-square mat made it
possible to shift his weight silently; he had to shift
frequently because of his lame leg. The tangle of brush
around him made it possible to draw the bow without the
motion being seen.
He had a Semiweiss Lighting compound bow, the draw weight
adjusted down to provide for a very long hold. He was
shooting carbon-fiber arrows, one-inch broadheads with
stoppers. A good-sized tom hung out in the oaks behind him.
And the tom would be coming out to this cornfield, and with
luck, following a track along a shallow ravine below him.
He knew the bird sometimes did that, because he'd seen the
scat and the tracks on scouting trips.
Whether the tom would do it this day, he didn't know.
He waited, listening, straining to see in through the
brush, the problems of the bureaucracy falling away from
him. He'd hunted most of his life, since his grandfather
had first taken him out when he was six years old. He
hunted deer and turkeys in Virginia, elk and antelope out
west. He hunted turkeys with a bow because it was so hard.
Their group took an average of two turkeys a year. He was
the killer in the group, and he usually took one of them.
When he was hunting, he stepped into a zen-space and became
part of the landscape. Time didn't pass, nor did it stop;
it simply wasn't. He faded away from himself and his day-to-
day problems.
He'd been in place since dawn. The sun came up, rose
higher, broke briefly out of the clouds, disappeared again.
A breeze sprang up, played with the oak leaves, died again;
squirrels ran across the ground, noisy beasts; a chickadee
stopped on a branch a foot from his nose.
He saw it all, but didn't look at it. He was waiting...
When the cell phone went off.
"Ahhhh...Jesus!"
The sound was stunning, like being hit in the face by a
snowball. He rushed back to the present, out of the zen-
space to the here-and-now. He unzipped a panel on his camo,
pushed his hand through to a shirt pocket underneath, and
took the phone out.
"Yes." The only people who had the number for that phone
were people who he needed to talk with.
A woman's voice, quiet, cultivated: "Jake, this is Gina
Press. I'm sorry to bother you, I understand you're on
vacation. The guy needs to see you."
"When?"
"Today. Where are you?"
"Down in the valley. It'll be a while."
"It's pretty urgent. Can I put you on the log for 4:45?"
He looked at his watch: One o'clock. "Okay – but give me a
hint."
"Madison Bowe."
"I'll be there."
The killer could feel the pull of the .45 in his pocket,
pulling down on his shoulders, and maybe his soul.
He was moving Lincoln Bowe. Bowe was pale, naked,
unconscious, a sack of meat, for all practical purposes.
The killer had him slung in a blue plastic tarp, purchased
at a Wal-Mart, and wrestled him down the narrow stairs,
under the single bare basement bulb.
He was a big man, straining with the load, trying for a
kind of tenderness while moving two hundred pounds of inert
human being. He wore blue coveralls from Wal-Mart,
purchased for the murder, and a hooded sweatshirt, with the
hood pulled over his head, and plastic gloves. He knew all
about DNA, and it worried him. A hair, a little spit, and
he could wind up strapped to the death gurney, a needle in
the arm...
He got the load down, puffing and heaving all the way, then
looked back up the stairs: two minutes and he'd have to
take the body back up. But he couldn't do the killing
upstairs, the neighborhood was too tight, somebody might
hear the shot.
He moved Bowe under the light, spread the tarp, exposed
him. He was lying on his back, soft and helpless. His body
was dead white, touched here and there with blemishes,
pimples, the rashes and scrapes of an out-of-shape man in
his fifth decade. He looked at Bowe for a few seconds, then
said aloud, "Here we are. Christ Almighty."
No response. Bowe had taken an overdose of Rinolat.
The killer took the .45 out of his pocket, an old, worn
gun, made in the first half of the 20th century, bought at
a weekend sale, inaccurate at any distance further than
arm's length. Which was enough for the task.
He cocked it with a gloved hand, then thought: "The phone
book. Damnit." He ran up the short flight of stairs, got
the phone book off the kitchen table, and went back down,
closing the door behind him. The phone book already had two
bullet holes in it: tests he'd done out in the Virginia
countryside. He placed it on the naked man's chest.
He slipped the safety, and said, "Linc..." and
thought: "Ears...damnit."
He put the safety back on, ran back up the stairs, and got
the ear plugs. They were two bullet-sized bits of
compressible yellow foam, made for target shooters. He
twisted each one, fitted them into his ears, waited for
them to re-expand. If he'd fired the gun in the confines of
the basement, without the ear protection, he wouldn't have
been able to hear for a week.
He slipped the safety again, teared up, wiped the tears
away, pointed the pistol at the point where the phone book
covered the naked man's heart, said, "Lincoln," and pulled
the trigger.
Without the ear plugs, the blast would have been
shattering; it was bad enough as it was. The naked man
bucked upward, his eyes opening in reflex, the pupils milky
with sleep. He stared at the killer for a second, then two,
then dropped back flat on the floor.
"Holy mother," the killer said, appalled. He stood staring
for a second, shocked by the milky eyes, by a possible
gleam of intelligence, the hair rising on the back of his
neck. Then, after a moment, he stooped and picked up the
phone book. The slug had gone through, and blood bubbled
from a purple hole in the naked man's chest. The hole was
directly over his heart. He engaged the safety on the .45,
slipped the gun back in his pocket, and squatted.
The naked man wasn't breathing. His eyes, when the lids
were withdrawn, had rolled up, showing only the whites. He
pressed a plastic-covered fingered against he naked man's
neck, waiting for any sign of a pulse. Didn't find one.
Lincoln Bowe was dead.
He rolled Bowe up, enough to look at his back. No exit
wound. The phone book had worked like a charm: the slug was
buried inside the dead man.
The killer was silent, kneeling, looking at the face of the
man on the floor. So many years. Who would have thought
it'd come to this? Then he sighed, stood up, pulled the
magazine on the pistol, jacked the shell out of the
chamber, replaced it in the magazine. Looked at the stairs.
This would be the dangerous part, moving the body. If the
cops stopped him for anything, he was done.
But they'd made their plans, and he was running with them.
He had a lot to do. He stood, still looking at the dead
man's face, then said, "Let's move, Linc. Let's go."
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