Ryne Douglas Pearson's Blog, page 13

I like to do this from time to time, just take a fast look at one of the bookshelves in my office and post what's there. Ready...GO!

The New Bar Guide

The Book Of Execution

Putnam's Contemporary German Dictionary

Illusions by Richard Bach

San Francisco - City By The Bay

Death Scenes (

Cars Of The State Police And Highway Patrol

Now, how Illusions got mixed up in there, I'm not sure. But as you can tell I have an amazing organizational system by category.

And does anyone other than a writer have such a mix of books?

Traditional bookstores are dying. Whether they (Borders, Barnes & Noble, etc...) can save themselves through some value-added services provided to readers in their brick and mortar stores (beyond just turning them into coffee shops stocked with magazines and bargain books) is an unknown.

How did this happen? Was it arrogance? Greed? A myopic, short-sighted view of publishing's future? All of the above?

Maybe. But I think the booksellers, both large and small, missed one overriding lesson from both the film and music industries in the past ten years.

People increasingly want content to come to them.

Remember the days when you'd drive down to Blockbuster to pick a movie on VHS to rent for a Friday night? Or browse through a Tower Records for a new release CD? What do the majority of people do now?

They rent a Pay Per View movie online or through their Satellite/Cable provider. Or they make a quick stop at the vending machine planted near the door of their supermarket. Or open their mail for the Netflix flick they had in their queue. For music they download from iTunes or Amazon or other online sources. Even video games are falling into this model. When not being ordered pre-release on Amazon, many can be purchased through online sources such as Steam for immediate download.

Increasingly, consumers have become accustomed to not going out of their way to obtain most of their entertainment.

Physical bookstores are the antithesis of this paradigm shift. With the competition of online retailers such as Amazon, those who still want a physical DTB (dead tree book) have little need to seek out the Borders or Barnes & Nobels stores that might be near them. Or might not.

But the true change for books, which is accelerating even faster than it did for music and movies, is digital distribution. eBooks, whether people want to admit it or not, are set to end the traditional notion of a bookstore in less than five years. You will have little reason to go to a physical bookstore, most prominently because it is likely there will be fewer and fewer DTBs on the shelves.

This change is the result of a perfect storm of consumer desire and economic reality. Printed books cost too much to produce, making them too costly for many to purchase, and people want what they want now, where they sit.

The shrinking legions of browsers who enjoy strolling the aisles of their favorite bookstore are insufficient in number to stop this change. It is not coming--it is here.

So what do bookstores do in this age where content is delivered to everyone while they sit on their couch? I don't know. Does anyone out there have any suggestions that might save the traditional brick and mortar presence that many of us love despite our embrace of eBooks?

My new thriller series begins this spring with the release of Cop/Killer, the story of...well, don't want to give that away just yet :)

 

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Cop/Killer will be available from Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Sony, Apple, and every major online retailer of eBooks.

Earlier I posted the Prologue of my thriller Top Ten. Today I'm posting Chapter One to sample. After the snippet below you'll find links to online retailers where you can buy the eBook.

 

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What is Top Ten about?
 

A killer who believes himself an artist of unmatched talent is incensed when he is placed last on the FBI's most wanted list, and begins killing off those fugitives above him, each in a twisted manner that serves his creative vision.

But his horrific climb to the top, which leaves both guilty and innocent dead in its wake, must be stopped by a young, driven FBI agent who is given an almost impossible and equally inexplicable task— save number five on the list.

At all costs.
 

I hope you enjoy the sample.
 

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One

Dots

God's gray rain fell on Damascus, New York.

Special Agent Bernard Jaworski, stern and stick-like, bald and yellowed by the chemo and radiation the whitecoats were hopeful would do a number on the tumor raging low in his back, sat at his desk mid-morning on Monday, the weather glazing the window behind him, and read the orders just handed him for a third time.

"I don't get it." He looked up to the person who'd brought the orders with her. "Why is Atlanta sending me personnel?"

"I've been reassigned to you," Ariel Grace told him, though to her a more proper term would be 'exiled'. She'd thought that from the minute she saw the orders Saturday morning. Expecting Jack Hale to shift her to FEDBOMB for her perceived failure to get DeVane, or maybe have her sitting on a wire, or at worst running background on clearance applications, she'd instead gotten a letter with a plane ticket attached. And here she was, standing before her new boss, pissed as hell and unable to do anything about it but curse Jack Hale under her breath and move on.

"From Atlanta?" Jaworski asked, puzzled. A cough shook his wasting frame. He took a long sip of ice water. Ariel thought his fingers looked like dying twigs wrapped 'round the sweating glass.

"The orders were approved by Washington," Ariel said. And mustn't that have been a trick for Jack Hale to arrange overnight.

"I can see the signature, Agent Grace, but what I can't see is why I'm getting you from all the way down south. I've requested additional personnel, but usually they get pulled from somewhere close."

"I didn't request this, sir. But I'm here, and I'm ready to work."

"Sit down, Agent Grace." She took the only other seat, a government issue facing Jaworski's desk, stiff and gray, vinyl and metal. He looked at the orders again as she shifted for a comfortable position. "What did you work in Atlanta?"

"I ran task force five," she said, surprised that he didn't know that.

Jaworski looked to her, squinting a bit. "You ran a most wanted task force?"

"Looking for Mills DeVane, sir."

He considered her for a moment. Businesslike, she was, in matching blue blazer and slacks. Her hair was brown and fell just below the collar, coiffed very proper. Voice clear, blue gaze steady. All things very right—very purposely right. She was trying hard to not be something. To not be seen as something.

"How old are you Agent Grace?"

There was the briefest pause before she replied. "I'll be thirty in December, sir."

"Twenty nine then, are you?"

She nodded to his 'clarifying' query.

"Twenty nine and running a task force," he said as comment. "How long have you been with the Bureau?"

"Six years, sir," she told him. No hesitation this time. "I was fully capable of doing the job."

He nodded. "So why aren't you still?"

That pause stalled her again. Jaworski had her number. Had her dialed in. She wasn't sure she liked that.

"One of my warrant services went bad," she told him. That was one man's opinion, anyway.

Lines cleaved his brow. Hell, he'd been living and breathing his own task force, number ten, night and day, but he hadn't been that disconnected from Bureau happenings, had he? "People get hurt?"

She shook her head.

Now he was really lost. "No one was hurt. So what went bad about it?"

"DeVane wasn't there." Would have been, except for that car...that car that was and wasn't there.

"Wait," Jaworski said, sitting back, letting the chair's soft cushion nearly swallow him. "You got yanked and spanked because your guy wasn't there? Because you missed him?"

That might seem the reason, but Ariel knew better. Knew as soon as she'd read her orders Saturday morning. The orders that also mentioned her replacement.

"ASAC Hale made the call, sir. It's his task force now."

"I see that," Jaworski said. Right there, in the orders, it was spelled out. And wasn't that odd? Why in the hell was the number two agent in Atlanta taking on a task force? There had to be something more to this.

But whatever that might be, it was not Jaworski's concern. He had no time for it. More pressing matters were at hand. Like catching his own freak, who was very much out there, and very much active. And now he had one more body to throw at his boy. One more body that he had to get up to speed. Fast.

"You're all squared away, then, Grace?"

"Sir?"

"Ride, place to stay? The F.O. get you what you need?"

"Yes, sir." She'd flown in on Sunday and had been issued a Bureau Taurus by the Albany Field Office, and vouchers for the Bright I Motor Hotel here in Damascus. She'd spent a restless night there watching an old horror flick on the tube and eating take-out Chinese. When sleep finally dragged her down she dreamt of Jack Hale. He was getting the shit stomped out of him by some Frankensteinish fiend.

"All right then," Jaworski said, and pushed himself up using both arms of his chair. With a grimace and some difficulty he stood and came around his desk, heading for the door. "Your learning curve here is going to look like the steep side of the Matterhorn."

"I can handle that," Ariel said. She stood and followed her new boss out of his office. They made a quick left through an outer office, and a right after that, heading down a long, dim hallway. Stacks of boxes yet to be unpacked crowded the passage, creating chokepoints through which one had to slip sideways. Jaworski took those walking straight on.

He moved fairly quick, considering, Ariel thought. But then maybe being up was better than being down. A physical thing. Maybe mental, too.

Her mother had done housework all through her chemo. Called it her 'therapy'. She did the dishes the day she died, looking better than the man walking ahead of Ariel right then. Walking as he started talking.

"Welcome to Task Force Ten, Agent Grace," Jaworski said. "Around here we call it Base Ten. Someone nicked it that. I don't know why." At an intersection with another passage they turned left. More boxes cramped their way. A lone window in the distance washed the corridor with dim and dirty light. They walked toward it. "The Bureau rented it for our operations when we outgrew the space at the Utica R.A." The R.A., or resident agency, was the Bureau equivalent of a police substation, a local presence maintained in areas from which a field office was too distant, or where one was deemed necessary. "The building is vacant except for us and the rats."

"How many agents are you running?" Ariel asked. The bulge of her hip-holstered weapon snagged a box as she squeezed by and almost sent it tumbling.

"Sixteen counting you."

"I only saw one agent at the door when I came in."

"I believe in field work, Grace. Our freak is not going to walk in here and hold out his hands. This ain't Hollywood. People who work for me work leads. Cold, warm, or hot. That's how I run Task Force Ten. I only wish I could get out there more."

"Someone has to run things," Ariel reminded him.

"It's kind of you to put it that way," Jaworski said. "So how many did you run, Agent Grace?"

"Forty full time."

"How long?"

"Ten months."

"So you were around for this numbering crap."

"I was," Ariel said.

"Tell me, did it 'focus task force efforts' any more by having that number tacked on to DeVane."

"It was crap, sir, like you said."

Jaworski glanced back at her as he walked. A smile flashed. "Glad to see me and the other five thousand or so people aren't alone in our thinking."

"Washington comes up with some beauts," Ariel said. She knew that now better than most.

They neared the window. It had once been clear but now was filmed opaque with grime. A heavy door was set into the wall to the right of it. Jaworski mustered all his strength and shoved it open, letting them into the stairwell. They started up.

"Did you take the elevator up to three, Grace?"

"Yes, sir."

"Use the stairs from now on. They don't break down twice a week."

"Thanks for the warning." They made it to four and passed through another heavy door and were in another hallway when a question came to Ariel. "Why are you on three, sir. If the building's vacant."

"The rats have one and two. They rarely come to three."

Ariel looked at the ground as they moved down this hallway and wondered how often they came by four.

"How much do you know about our freak, Grace?" Jaworski asked her. His pace had slowed. His breathing hadn't.

"Some."

"I'll give you the quickie on him before I show you something. He calls himself Michaelangelo. Like the artist, but he spells it wrong. One extra 'a'. He thinks he's an artist, too. A master, even. He's killed six already. Two just this last Friday." Jaworski stopped suddenly, half propping himself against one wall with a stiff arm. He sucked a deep breath of stale air. A shallow, wet cough hacked up, and he swallowed its spawn back down again. He looked straight at Ariel. "Let me tell you something, Agent Grace–off the subject. They may save my life, but until the day I do kick I will hate every doctor who ever lived for practically killing me with this cure."

She made no comment to what he'd said. Simply let him take a few more breaths and compose himself.

"Four men, two women," Jaworski went on. "All found in either Jersey, Pennsylvania, or our dear Empire State. He...uses them. Makes 'art' out of them. And I'm not talking recreating The David. This freak goes for shock value." He paused, took one more deep breath, and continued on down the hall. "He treats the men and women differently."

"How?"

"Couple of ways. There's mutilation of the males' genitalia. ISU and some outside shrinks have looked at everything and decided either he's gay or not, afraid he's gay or afraid he's not, was abused or was an abuser. You get the picture, Grace?"

"He's not easily profiled."

"I hate that term, Jesus. Sometimes there are just monsters. Freaks. Evil pieces of human garbage that need to be hunted down. The only pigeonhole this guy fits into is fucked up...pardon my Polish."

"Pardoned, sir," she said, smiling at his back. "So he doesn't mutilate the women?"

"Oh, hell, he'll mutilate the hell out of them. But he's not interested in their genitalia. Plus we don't get any letters on the women."

"He writes?"

"After each male murder a letter arrives at the Metropolitan Museum of Art addressed to the chief curator. Gives us the 'titles' of his 'works'." Jaworski shook his head. "Since the first one we've been able to intercept them."

"Prints?"

Jaworski stopped again, this time outside a door just before another intersection of corridors. His breathing was not terribly labored.

"Oh, he's not afraid of leaving prints. We've got them by the hundred."

"So he's never been arrested, in the military, or had certain jobs."

"He's been a careful boy," Jaworski said, and reached into his pocket for a small ring of keys.

Ariel looked to the door they stood at and noticed now a makeshift sign tacked above it: GALLERY.

"Did you eat breakfast, Agent Grace?"

Ariel shook her head.

"That's probably a good thing."

He inserted a key into the lock on the door but didn't turn it. "That agent you saw on your way in..."

"Yes..."

"That was Vargas. He's the gatekeeper. No one gets into this building unless they have business here. Any tabloid photographer worth his salt would give a limb to get shots of what's behind this door."

"More rats to deal with," she observed, and Jaworski turned the key and opened the door to a darkened room.

"After you."

She stepped in and heard the door close behind her, making the space black for a second before Jaworski switched on the lights and set the walls to scream.

"Dear God," Ariel exclaimed softly, as though to speak too loud might stir the madness fixed upon three of the room's four walls to life.

Jaworski himself gave the room a long look, taking it in yet again. It stoked the fire. Helped him to hate the freak that was his to catch.

Ariel was in the center of the room, her eyes tracking from right to left, vibrant and vicious hues assaulting her from dozens upon dozens of stills the Bureau photographers had captured. A visual symphony of horror.

In one a man's penis had been grafted to his forehead, making him a unicorn.

Jaworski saw where she was looking and stepped that way. He tapped the photo holding her rapt. "Calvis Winkler, the one our freak made into a unicorn, was victim number one. Twenty three years old, an auto mechanic from Shakes Ferry." He pointed to a less prominent photo of the crime scene. "His body was found on Valentine's day in a Utica motel room standing before a mirror."

"Standing?" Ariel asked, looking closely at the indicated photo. There was Calvis Winkler, standing at the vanity in a motel room, hands planted on either side of the single-bowl sink, his boxer shorts and white tee shirt wet red nightmares. He seemed to be intently gazing at the mirror. At the dead perversion of himself in the mirror. But how...

"Re-bar," Jaworski said in response to the question her puzzled expression was asking. "Those metal rods they put in concrete to strengthen it."

Ariel nodded at the horror.

"Cut to length and bent just right," Jaworski explained. "He made holes in Mr. Winkler and pushed the re-bar in along the long bones in the legs and arms. Spine, too. The medical examiner said that one was hammered down through the skull. That would have killed him if he wasn't dead already." Jaworski paused. "I hope to God he was dead already."

"He sculpted him," Ariel observed. "He made himself a human sculpture on a frame."

Jaworski nodded. "His letter told us he called it 'Reflections Of A Myth'."

"The unicorn is a mythical figure," Ariel said. "But here he gave it a reflection."

"Don't chew on it, Grace," Jaworski warned her. "Don't try and figure him out that way. Let the shrinks and the gurus at Quantico handle that end of it. Focus on the tangible. Be a cop, not a psychoanalyst."

She looked to him. "Those methods have worked, sir."

He allowed a nod and looked to the pictures. "I don't think it's going to be that way with this freak. I just don't."

She turned toward the next set of photos in line as Jaworski moved to them. In all the photos an older man sat naked in a chair, his right hand fixed over his mouth, his left over his eyes. His penis was nowhere in sight. "Ricardo Lomanico, sixty, a retired army master sergeant. Found dead in his house in Jersey City in early March by his painter who was touching up the trim around his bedroom window. His uvula had been removed and his penis attached in its place. It was blocking his windpipe."

Ariel grimaced, but stayed focused on the photos. "He couldn't have been alive..."

"Traces of a muscle paralyzer called napoxcypharin were found in his system. And in Calvis Winkler's. It was found in all the men. The medical examiner said this drug paralyzes the voluntary muscles, but lets you breath and lets your heart beat." Jaworski glanced at Ricardo Lomanico's hideously abused face. "It also allows one to still feel pain. But not scream."

A shiver scampered up her spine at the thought of that terror. Agony without expression. The cry withheld. She wondered if that could drive one mad.

"This creation is called 'Hear My Evil'. Try and pick that one apart."

Jaworski took a step down and was now on a new wall, the one opposite the door. He touched the picture of a heavyset woman whose breasts had been removed and fixed to the side of her severed head like earmuffs. Her head rested on a lamp whose shade had been removed. The burning bulb glowed through her gaping mouth. "Susan Rollins, age forty-one, she was from Trenton, New Jersey, but was found in a motel room just outside of Centre Hall, Pennsylvania. Her body was found in the bathtub, here." Ariel looked where directed. "Fully clothed but drained of blood. We found about four pints in the toilet tank."

Stone, Ariel thought. Be stone. It was hard. She felt her stomach churning.

"Like I said, we didn't get a letter for this victim or the other woman, but he did leave what I guess you'd call messages at each scene. This one he left in lipstick on the bathroom mirror."

Ariel saw the photo nearby. "Women bleed."

"You think that means something other than the disgustingly obvious?"

"It might," Ariel replied.

Jaworski shook his head and tapped the wall in a random succession of spots. "Connect the dots, Grace. Connect the dots."

"When was she found?"

"April second, though we know she was killed on the first."

"April fools day," Ariel said. "The second significant day with Valentine's day."

"And March fourth, Agent Grace?" Jaworski challenged her. "What day of significance is that, other than the day that Ricardo Lomanico choked on his own dick?"

There was no answer to be had. She was thinking too fast, here. Taking in too much all at once and trying to put it in place, without knowing what the places were. She was trying a puzzle without having a picture for reference. That would not work. She had to see all the dots before trying to connect them.

"Who was next?" Ariel asked, signaling her readiness to go on. Jaworski obliged.

"This one is called 'Taken For A Ride'," Jaworski said. The accompanying photos showed the naked upper torso of a man seemingly grafted to a horse lying on its side, both dead. "The guy with half of himself missing was James Ondatter, victim number four. He drove a taxi in Centre Hall, Pennsylvania. He was found in the same area. The mount he's stuck to was called Lady Anne Green Apples. Her owner looked out a window in the morning last April third and saw Lady Anne galloping around the pasture. It looked like someone was riding her. Someone was."

"The horse was alive when he did this?" Ariel exclaimed more than asked.

"Police shot it when they got there. They found Ondatter's lower half less the dick stitched to the underside of another horse wandering through open country outside of town. The dick was in the horse's rectum, which was stitched up. That one died before they could shoot it. Stress from a too-high dose of a veterinary tranquilizer called equipsyx."

"He has access to drugs."

"And surgical glues, sutures," Jaworski said. "But we've done those dots. Pharmaceutical companies, hospitals, doctors, etcetera, etcetera."

"You couldn't have checked everywhere," she said.

"You can never check everywhere, Agent Grace. And even if you could, there's no guarantee you'd see this guy. I doubt he's walking around drooling and showing off his collection of catgut and equipsyx."

Likely not, she knew, but he had to be getting his toys somewhere.

"He used duct tape on Susan Rollins," Jaworski added. "We ran the lot. It came back as shipping to over eight hundred outlets over a year. Maybe fifty thousand people bought it. Mostly cash transactions."

"Not much chance there," Ariel commented. A thought came to her. "Susan Rollins was from New Jersey—how'd she end up in Centre Hall one day before Ondatter was found?"

Jaworski tipped his head approvingly toward her. "Now there are some dots, Agent Grace. Susan Rollins was in Centre Hall on business. Real estate business. A company she worked for back home was purchasing a tract of land in the area. She was there for an appraisal. She never showed up."

"So why kill her?"

"Dots, Agent Grace. Dots." Another step down the line, to the last two in the grisly series. "For six months our freak was quiet. Then these next two were killed. Close in proximity, and even closer in time." He touched a photo showing a naked man impaled on an iron rod in a clearing in some brush. "Lew Bradford, fifty. A car salesman. Found in a field near Oneida, his home town, on Friday morning. Not far from here. He was killed Thursday night. Napoxcypharin in his system, as well. Our freak hammered a sharpened piece of scrap iron about an inch thick into the ground so that about six feet of it stood proud like a flagpole. The he sat Lew Bradford on top, positioned the point in his anus, and let him slide. Gravity did the rest. Near the end our freak helped things along, tipping Bradford's head back so the top of the pole would slide out his mouth. Topped it off with you know what on the end of the spike."

There it was, the object of number ten's interest, hovering a foot above the victim's mouth.

"He called this one 'Snacktime'."

Ariel looked away, and her eyes fell upon the dismembered pieces of a woman suspended from a ceiling.

"Doris May," Jaworski began. "Victim number six. Thirty eight. A postal worker. She was found cut up, photocopied, and hung like a mobile in a post office in Pembry late Friday night. Pembry's just up the road from Oneida. An hour before you got here this morning the letter concerning Mr. Bradford was flagged at the Metropolitan Museum. It came from this post office."

"He mailed it there, then killed her?" What sense did that make? Ariel wondered. Then again, what sense was there in any of the things she was seeing.

His sense, the answer came to her.

"No drugs, just like the other female victim. But unlike her, he didn't use duct tape."

Ariel was making mental notes as best she could. Later she'd put them on paper. Reduce what she was being shown, being told, to cold words. When this was all done, the next day, the next week, the next year, she could file them away. Or toss them. Make them gone.

If only the memories could be so easily dealt with.

"On the wall he wrote in her own blood 'She Went To Pieces'." Jaworski showed her the photo. Ariel looked. Made it a memory.

The light above dimmed briefly, then went back to bright. Ariel would have preferred it go black. She had seen enough.

"Someone's on the elevator," Jaworski said. "I have an appointment. Doctor here to give me a shot of insta-sick. Oh joy." He turned and opened the door. "Shall we?"

She was ready to leave. She wanted to leave. But when given the chance right then by the man who was now her boss, she did not. She could not.

"Agent Grace?"

The walls were still screaming at her.

"Agent Grace?"

Making memories.

"Agent Grace?"

She turned finally away from the walls.

"I have work for you," he said.

"Right, sir."

The light clicked off. Darkness killed the screams.

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Top Ten is available as an eBook for Kindle, Nook, iPad, Sony Reader, PC, Mac, iPhone, Android, Blackberry, and other devices using the appropriate reading apps. You can purchaseTop Ten from the following online retailers:

Amazon   Barnes & Noble   Sony   Smashwords

In addition, you can purchase Top Ten directly from Apple using the iBooks app on your iPad or iPhone.

Thank you!

In the spirit of George Costanza, I am doing the opposite. I will not be resolute in doing things, but in not doing things. And here they are.

1   I will not watch a single hockey game, thus continuing a streak which began on February 23rd, 1980.

2   I will not run a marathon.

3   I will not travel to Antarctica.

4   I will not eat chicken heart.

5   I will not drive over 95 mph.

6   I will not write one book.

7   I will not read one book.

8   I will not arbitrarily and without cause wish painful death upon anyone.

9   I will not actually assemble the nuclear weapon.

10 I will not drink Vodka and Frangelico.

11 I will not be mean to people, unless they fall into a category defined in #8 above.

12 I will not stop being funny.

13 I will not go up to a random person on the street and ask them if they know the time in infinity.

14 I will not run from a Grizzly bear.

15 I will not carbo-load before every chapter.

16 I will not learn to ballroom dance.

17 I will not avoid procrastination.

I've given this advice before. It dovetails off my favorite writing advice: Don't get it right--get it written. In essence that means, 'Don't self edit.' Get it on the page and then worry if it's crap.

My advice goes one step further. It means, 'Don't self censor.' Get it on the page no matter how revolted you might be with even the conceptual bounds of what you are writing. Forget your morality, your humanity, your sense of human decency, and get every element of the story on the page, unfiltered.

Then, grab a match. Or hover your finger over the delete button. Decide how much of what you've let out needs to be seen. Or, if you are squeamish, how much you are willing to let the world see.

This is not some exercise in free form artistic expression where you throw mangled verbiage at the page. It's simply unplugging the natural filters we all have in order to let the story become.

I'm big about that term: become. To me it means that, regardless of what we know, and outline, and plot in advance, every story can take us, and itself, in surprising directions if it needs to go there. And if we let it.

In my experience, the only way to let that happen is to unplug that filter and let the words fly.

One thing I do in this endeavor as I write is this: I don't look at the computer screen until there is a natural break in the narrative. The end of a paragraph, a scene, a sequence. I look at the keys as I type. Being a two-fingered typist this often reminds me of my inadequacy where speed is concerned, but it keeps me focused on getting the words out. In a way, it stops me from equating the visual of the story with the essence of the story.

I do write some intense stuff. One of the greatest compliments I've ever received was when a producer said to me, 'You're a dark little F*&%%$, aren't you?'

She should have seen the stuff I burned.

At the end of 2009 I wrote several predictions down and put them in a time capsule, which was unearthed just yesterday during a routine body search at my house. Nothing to be alarmed about.

Let's see how accurate I was.

1 Thirty Four miners in Peru will be rescued after an extensive stay underground. (off by one miner and one country...not bad)

2 I will lose 20 lbs. (unless hair has much weight, not gonna happen)

3 McDonalds will change its name to Mick's. (I thought I'd nail this one)

4 Saints will win the Super Bowl. (bingo!)

5 To outdo Coke Zero, their main rival will introduce Pepsi Negative One (inside info on that one wasn't so accurate)

6 Alien Life will visit earth. (take your pick, Bieber or Gaga, I'm calling this one nailed)

7 'Monkey Bone' will finally be embraced for the national treasure that it is. (still waiting)

8 MMA and UFC will merge to form FUCMMA. (still might happen)

9 Andy Kaufman will finally resurface and rip off the Jeffrey Ross body suit he's been wearing for 25 years. (trust me on this one)

10 The media will thank the entertainment gods for the arrival of Dectomom and her ten babies on New Years Eve. (fingers crossed)

The new cover for my short story collection, Dark and Darker, came in yesterday. It's already propagating to the online retailers, though some will still show the old cover for a couple weeks.

 

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Dark and Darker contains four tales of horror and suspense:

Beholder... Two police officers step inside a suspect's personal hell, and discover just how close they are to the real thing.

Creation... What is art? Derek Devine thinks he knows. But a visit from a dangerous stranger, who looks uncannily like a subject in one of Derek's older paintings, leads the young artist to a place where the line between life and art seems not to exist at all.

The Key... Jason Riley's wife was brutally murdered. When he comes across evidence that the police missed, he plans his own unique brand of justice for the killer.

Shark... A lawyer learns there are consequences to winning in court when he accepts a dinner invitation from the party he successfully sued.

You can purchase Dark and Darker for just .99 from the following online eBook retailers:

 Amazon   Barnes & Noble   Sony   Smashwords   Diesel   Kobo

Thanks!

Today I'm posting the opening of my thriller Top Ten to sample. After the snippet below you'll find links to online retailers where you can buy the eBook for just $2.99.

 

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What is Top Ten about?
 

A killer who believes himself an artist of unmatched talent is incensed when he is placed last on the FBI's most wanted list, and begins killing off those fugitives above him, each in a twisted manner that serves his creative vision.

But his horrific climb to the top, which leaves both guilty and innocent dead in its wake, must be stopped by a young, driven FBI agent who is given an almost impossible and equally inexplicable task— save number five on the list.

At all costs.
 

I hope you enjoy the sample.

 

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Prologue

Pieces

He cut the woman to calm her down.

Not deeply, mind you, just a quick flick with the tip of his blade high on her right cheek, something to clear her head, to focus her thoughts, to crystallize the reality of the situation.

As with the others, it worked like a charm.

He had waited most of the day for a few moments with this one, biding his time in the shrubs behind the small post office, listening to the waters of some nameless slough rustle toward Great Sacandaga Lake, occasionally drawing the blade of his knife slowly and silently across the whetstone always with him, watching as carrier after carrier returned from their routes and left for their homes, or taverns they fancied, or wherever the joy of an ended week might take them on a Friday evening. Waited and watched until just after seven, until the lights inside went low and just one car remained in the gravelly lot. Until the building's rear door opened and the pretty clerk from whom he'd earlier purchased a single stamp backed out with her keys in hand and her eyes on the lock, a pleasant tune whistling from her lips. It was then that he'd grabbed her, from behind, initiating the expected struggle, keys and purse falling, arms flailing. But with the fast sting of his knife and the sight of her own blood upon its tip, lit to a creamy blackness by the moon's pale fire, her struggling ceased, muscles going taut with fear, with understanding, and the scream that had raged against the leathered palm of his hand withered to a convulsive flurry of whimpering gasps.

"I'm sorry," he began, drawing her backward against him, the union almost an embrace, his words a warm and breathy whisper upon her ear. "I require your assistance for awhile."

He kicked her purse and keys aside and forced her back through the door, into a dim and open space populated by mounded sacks of mail and ranks of head-high sorting bins. Surrounded by the tools of this woman's most banal trade he paused, pulling her close, glove still over her mouth, and asked from behind, "Will we be interrupted?"

Her mind raced at he question, at what act it implied, and she stiffened against his grasp, her chest heaving in a quick and shallow rhythm, the urge to fight, to flee, rising once again.

But there would be not of that. He spun her halfway around, keeping his gloved hand over her mouth and forcing her hard against the bare brick of the inside wall. The impact stunned her, forced her eyes shut for a the briefest of moments, and when they fluttered open again it was there. The blade. Right before her eyes, its tip darkened with her blood. She stared it, transfixed, and hardly flinched when he flicked the blade once more and cut the soft flesh beneath her left eye, a slow trickle of blood tears upon both cheeks now, crimson drops that dragged wet red streaks down her face and onto the brown leather wrapping his hand.

"I can cut you in other ways, in other places," he assured her, stepping close, his slim and chiseled face in intimate proximity now, half-veiled in a shadow that lay across it like a gash of night. His gaze raged at her. "Shall I do that?"

Her head shook beneath his grasp.

"Again, then, will there be any interruptions?"

She answered with another shake of her head, weak this time, resignation tempering it, and to that he smiled, it seemed, the stony mask of his face now showing a gleeless baring of teeth. The warning of a predator in sight of its prey.

She wet herself as he pulled her away from the wall.

He drew her close once again, whole arm around her neck now and her mouth free, and moved toward the front of the building, leaving the sacks and sorting bins behind, traveling a corridor with a room on either side, packing materials filling one and a copy machine the other, its green READY light glowing. Through a doorway next and into the cramped station behind the front counter, where he had first encountered her, had handed over some change with no thought that soon they would be together again, and finally out into the modest public spaces of the post office where his plans for the day had changed in an instant. To the exact spot he took her, the high table against the wall where one could affix stamps to letters, or address an envelope with the pen that was anchored to the counter top with the flimsiest of chains. Almost nine hours earlier he had done both, then dropped his readied letter into the OUT OF TOWN slot next to the table. Those tasks completed, he would have been gone from the Pembry, New York Post Office those seven hours now, gone from all of zip code 12078 for seven hours now, likely never to return...

Except for that glance.

Innocent, it was. Just the passing of his gaze, really, over the board above the table where notices were posted. The latest issues of interest to philatelists. Bold promises of low prices and on-time delivery of rush packages. And pictures.

Yes, pictures. Photos, actually, but for one. All upon one stiff piece of paper tacked to the board. A medley of faces and that single approximation one very mediocre artist had rendered (if only the hack had been required to sign his work...). Ten in all. All men, though those of the fairer sex had been featured in the past, because deed, not gender, was the price of admission, and the deed must be bad. Very, very bad. The act or acts of criminals. The worst of the worst. And stamped upon the paper that bore this gallery of rogues, the very official seal of the entity that determined one's worthiness of such a low (or high) honor, none other than the Federal Bureau of Investigation.

"Look," he said, pressing the flat profile of her stomach to the table's edge and grabbing a bunch of hair with which he aimed her face at the offending scrap of paper. "Would you mind explaining this?"

She gulped air, sucked it fast and tried to understand what it was that he wanted, searching the wall and the notice board for something amiss, something that might need clarification. But she saw nothing. As hard as she tried she saw nothing except the very, very ordinary. "Explain...explain what?"

He released her hair and reached past her face to rip the paper from the board, bringing it right before her eyes so there could be no mistake this time. "Explain. Now."

The FBI bulletin filled her field of vision, but still she had no clue as to what it was she was supposed to explain to him. "It's the FBI's Ten Most Wanted poster. It's always on that board."

His breath on her neck grew hot and quick through a few long and awkward seconds of silence, and when he spoke again the words came out low and harsh, a human growl if there could be that. "I know what the fuck it is. But what is that on it?"

The blade came to her neck now, its sharp and gleaming edge a delicate threat against her windpipe. Her eyes began to puddle. "What is what?"

"THE FUCKING NUMBERS!"

The scream jolted her, the blade seeming so close to slicing her now, to parting the layers of skin beneath and letting her life spill out. "Numbers? Numbers?"

"ON THE FUCKING POSTER! THE NUMBERS! DO YOU SEE THEM?" He ground the paper to her face and pulled it back, the blood trickling from beneath her eyes smeared upon it. "DO YOU SEE THEM NOW? DO YOU?"

"Yes!" she cried out, suddenly focused by the sense that worse things than this insane interrogation might be close at hand. "Yes! I see them!"

"There are numbers!" he barked at her.

"Yes. Yes. Numbers."

"Numbers. One two three four five six seven eight nine ten."

"Yes. One through ten. I see them."

The blade came away from her neck and he fisted a bunch of her mousy brown hair, using it to twist her face toward his. "Why are there numbers on there?"

Her wide eyes puzzled at his question. "Aren't there always numbers?"

He sneered at her stupidity. "No. No, no, no. There aren't always numbers. There weren't always numbers. There never have been numbers. No numbers. No numbers. It's always been just one big happy family, everybody the same. A club with no officers. No president, no vice president. No rank. No one better than anyone else." His stare probed the vapid terror of her face. "Do you understand what I'm saying? What I'm trying to make clear to you? Do you?"

She didn't, but nodded nonetheless.

"You see, there are numbers on here now," he went on, holding the bulletin close to her wounded face once again. "And everyone has a number. Everyone is ranked. Why is that? Why have some people been made to feel special and others..." He quieted without calming, then demanded explosively. "WHY ARE THERE NUMBERS?!!"

"I don't know," she told him, the tears dripping from her eyes to sting the cuts upon her cheeks. "I don't know. We just get those and put them up whenever they come in."

He turned her head fully toward the bulletin. "Read me number one."

"Number one?"

He nodded and squeezed the bunch of her hair tight, painfully tight. "His name, his crime. Read it."

Tears were blurring her vision, and the ache of his grip upon her scalp was numbing, but she blinked hard and made herself focus. Made herself do this little thing that he wanted. That this crazy man with the knife and no reluctance to use it wanted. "Alvaro Camacho..."

"Name and crime," he prompted her when she hesitated.

"Alvaro Camacho, he...he killed three agents of the Drug Enforcement Administration."

"And..."

"He trafficked narcotics."

"Very good. Number two..."

"Desmond Hart. Bank robbery. Murder. Two counts of murder. Flight from persecution."

"Prosecution," he corrected her. "Number three..."

"Ahmed Faisal. Destruction of a civilian airliner. Murder."

"Number four..."

"Luke Mayweather. Flight from...prosecution. Attempted murder of a police officer."

"And five..."

"Mills DeVane. Assault on a federal officer. Drug trafficking."

"Six..."

"Rudy 'Rooster' Coletti. Racketeering. Attempted murder."

"Seven..."

"Robert Jack McCormack. Destruction of federal property. Arson. Assault on a federal officer."

"Eight..."

"Lee Tran. Assault. Extortion. Racketeering."

"Nine..."

"Francis Gunther. Bank robbery. Assault. Kidnapping."

"Ten..."

The next recitation was about to slip past her lips when recognition damned it there. Her eyes angled slowly toward her captor.

"Ten..."

Her lips began to quiver. "Please..."

He set the bulletin on the table and turned the woman around so that she faced him, gently guiding her to that position, his manner suddenly becalmed. "We needn't cover number ten, I suppose. Tell me, what is your name?"

"D-d-doris."

"Without the stutter, I imagine."

"Please let me go," she begged in the most pitiful of whimpers, groveling most sincerely. "I have a child, and...and...and..."

His head shook silent regret. "You're not going to be able to help me after all, I see."

"My little boy, he's...he's..."

He touched the knife to her lips and she fell instantly silent. "Don't tell me about your little boy, Doris. When I was a boy I was made to play little league baseball. They put me in right field." He gazed at her desperate face for a moment, but saw chalk dust rising from green fields turned brown and heard laughter from the leaning bleachers. "I am not a child anymore, Doris, and I will not allow myself to be put in right field. I most certainly... I..."

Quiet came over him, a deep and settled stillness as he drifted off, to an old place that was not a diamond of grass dying under the summer sun, but a better place where hushed corridors smelled of cool grace and sang with mad brilliance. Soon a fond twinkle danced on his gaze and he was back. Back and savoring the sight of sweet Doris without shame.

"A thousand years ago Therata captured the nymph of Mygoria in marble," he told her, and she shuddered as the knife came suddenly to her left breast, the tip tracing across the thin material over her nipple. "Her mams were magnificent."

"Please... Don't... Not that... Please..."

In the silence beyond her pleas he noted an amusing and incorrect assumption. A misconception so laughable that a grin curled one side of his mouth. "Oh, Doris, do you think I am going to violate you?"

Her breath wheezed in and out in fast, dry sobs, the point of the blade slowly circling the soft crest beneath her blouse.

"Doris, I am not a rapist," he said, and slipped the blade deep between her fifth and sixth ribs, puncturing her left lung and nicking the vital muscle that was her heart, withdrawing it quick and easy, like a palette knife from gouache. His free hand clamped fast over her mouth, pinning her to the wall and trapping the scream that did finally rise, a cry for mercy that God might hear, but no one else. "I am an artist."

He pushed her chin upward and with a quick stroke carved a crimson grin across her throat.

*   *   *

"Clusterfuck."

His back was to her, but FBI Special Agent Ariel Grace knew precisely for whom her supervisor's comment was intended.

"Sixty friggin' agents, lord knows how many blue suits, and to the last they're all just standing around waiting to get rained on." Jack Hale, Assistant Special Agent in Charge of the Bureau's Atlanta field office, lifted his gaze toward the threatening sky and shook his head. "Beautiful. I'd call this a well executed operation, Grace."

"He was supposed to be here, sir," Ariel told the ASAC, with certainty so firm that he turned sharply toward her. "I'm positive of that."

Hale glared at her. "Then why isn't he?"

"Why don't you ask whoever left their ride parked on the boulevard?" Ariel suggested, gesturing with her head to a gaggle of agents milling about in front of the Proper Peach Motel. "A blind man wouldn't have missed those hubcaps and that antennae."

"There is no Bureau car on the boulevard," Hale challenged her. "I came from that direction."

"There was."

"You saw this?"

"No," she told the ASAC, hands going to her hips, the unbuttoned front of her windbreaker flapping in the stout breeze. "But Atlanta P.D. reported it. That would have spooked him, easy."

"Did Atlanta P.D. think enough of it to note the plate?" Hale asked.

"They described a Bureau car, sir," Ariel said, unwilling to give up ground on this.

A disgusted nod moved Hale's sour face. "Wonderful, Grace. Blame another agent. Blame their car—which you never eyeballed. Blame every last man or woman with a badge within a mile of here for Mills DeVane not showing up for this meeting you were sooo certain of. Blame everyone, Grace. You can even blame me, 'cause I'm the one who apparently was fool enough to let you run this case." He stepped close to her now, his six-five frame towering over her. "But whatever you do, don't blame yourself. No. Don't do that."

Ariel seethed, swallowing her desire to spit venom back at the ASAC. "My work on this case was solid."

Hale considered her for a long moment before looking away toward the taped-off front of the Proper Peach. "Solid? We just wasted a whole lot of dollars and time pissing off a motel full of people and busting one very unlucky junkie who chose to shoot up in the wrong place at the wrong time. That's an interesting take on 'solid'."

Lights from the TV trucks lined up on the boulevard glared suddenly to life. It was one minute 'til eleven.

"Congratulations, Grace," Hale said, giving the electronic vultures a desultory glance. "Looks like your solid police work is going to be the lead on the late news."

The first spots of mist began to brush her face as Hale turned to walk away.

"You're off this case, Grace," Jack Hale informed her, not even affording her a look as he delivered his decision. "Pick up your reassignment in the morning."

The ASAC turned to leave her there, but a hand on his arm stopped him cold. Her hand. He looked at it, then at her.

"Wait one minute, Jack," Ariel said, a weak and shocky smile on her face, as if she had just been the victim of some absurdly unfunny joke. "What the hell was that?"

"You want to get your hand off me?" the ASAC asked. It was not a question.

Ariel maintained her grip while the last bit of false smile drained from her face, then her hand slipped off of him. "What is going on, Jack?"

"You heard me."

"You're taking DeVane away from me?"

"Yes."

Deep lines cleaved into her brow. Was she hearing him right? Was she? "You're booting me all the way off this case?"

"You did hear me," Hale said Harshly. He glanced impatiently over his shoulder toward the camera crews. He needed to get to them. He wanted to get to them. Anything to get away from her. "So are we done now, Ariel?"

Her head cocked quizzically at him, that uncertain smile coming again. "Jack." She inched closer to him and spoke in soft, measured tones. Reasonable tones. She could be reasonable, he could be reasonable. Right? "Jack. Come on. You can't take DeVane away from me. I've worked this case like a dog. You know that. I'm on him, Jack. I'm close. I know it."

Hale stared at her briefly then surveyed the scene around them. He looked back to her and shook his head, thinking of what to say. "I can't tolerate 'close' Ariel. I'm sorry."

"Jack," she called to him as he turned and left her there, alone and on display, the stares of a hundred or so law enforcement brethren hot upon her as he went to the line of cameras and reporters, their mikes stabbing at him like daggers. She watched him for a moment, unable to move, her being feeling disconnected from the moment. This could not have happened. No way could it have happened. Jack Hale could not have taken her case away. Would not have taken it away.

But he had. And he'd taken her away from it.

"I was close, you idiot," she muttered to herself as she watched Jack Hale from a distance, doing his PR thing for the newsies, and then she could watch no more. She turned away. Through the front lot of the Proper Peach Motel she walked, toward the knots of agents waiting for the order to stand down, to pack up, to head home, an order she could no longer give, and so she waded through them. Through the debacle her meticulously planned fugitive warrant service had become. Some asked her what was going on; some averted their eyes having shrewdly guessed exactly what was going on. The rest stepped silently aside as she hurried to her car.

She sat behind the wheel and stared out through the skim of new rain sheeting down the windshield, asking herself the thousand why's. Why had Jack Hale done it? Booted her? For nothing? For one warrant service that would have gone down smooth as silk if that damned car hadn't been parked on the...

She stopped herself. Because she was starting to hate Jack Hale, and he was not the one who truly deserved the brunt of her enmity right then. Some, but the lion's share of it belonged to the man who was nowhere to be found. Who should have been in handcuffs in the seat behind her right then, but wasn't. The man whose capture was no longer her concern, but for whom she had a question. A single, simple question that she asked the watery night.

"Where the hell are you, Mills DeVane?"

*   *   *

The Atlantic night roared, thunder high in the weeping black sky and wind whipping a froth upon the dark and violent sea. Waves were at forty feet. The twin engine Beech was at sixty.

It had fought the storm to make the Florida coast after a fast flight from the north of Georgia, its pilot's departure premature and hasty, but nonetheless successful. The field attendant was on his payroll and would dispose of the stolen car left behind, and would remember nothing of any encounter with anyone remotely resembling the pilot, a generous man he simply called 'Buddy'.

He'd taken it up fast and kept it low, skimming the trees all the way to the beach. Out to sea, then a turn to the south to parallel the coast forty miles out, all the way to where he was now, giving all he had to a sixty knot headwind, gusts to almost ninety, throttles firewalled against the maelstrom. A major and monumental bitch if ever there was one.

But then what could one expect flying in a hurricane?

He went feet dry barely above a stall and hopped his way inland just above the trees, beacons left and right of his course telling him that JAX was to his south and TLH was almost due east. But neither Jacksonville or Tallahassee were his destination, nor any of the smaller fields like Hilliard, which was coming up fast as he crossed the black and desolate strip of pavement below that was I-95. No, the point of termination for this flight was like that for most all he had ever flown—just a strip of terra firma maybe long enough to land on and not too short to take off from. And all navigation beacons aside, his gut and his fuel gauge told him that he was going to be putting in pretty damn soon, one way or another.

He flipped a switch on the overhead console and an electronic display fuzzed to life on the instrument panel before him. The darkened cockpit glowed green with its light.

"Where's the tree?" the pilot asked the display, his eyes moving between it and the windshield as his plane trembled through the storm's weakening fringe. "Come on tree. Come on."

The earth below was a jumble of featureless blacks and grays occasionally lit by bolts of lightning, but not on the display. The small screen which the pilot was using to find his way showed the terrain not as it was, but as it might be through the eyes of some nocturnal bird of prey adapted to squeeze even the faintest bit of light from the night, though these eagle eyes had cost seventy thousand dollars. And right then he was wishing for every penny's worth of what it could do to find his landmark. That damn hundred and twenty foot southern yellow—

"Shit!" he screamed, looking up from the night vision display just in time to heel the Beech hard over to the right, missing the enormous pine by scant feet, cutting power and lowering flaps and gear as he caught his breath and put his plane wings-level in a shallow descent, his heart thudding, adrenaline stoking it, but everything fine, just fine. The field should be straight ahead now, and his expensive night eyes would have no trouble guiding him there, but a quick glance out the windshield told him that would not be necessary. In the dark distance he could make out a line of flares right where his centerline should be.

Someone was expecting him.

That could be good news or bad, but right then it didn't matter because his right engine began sputtering, its life blood almost spent. The pilot cut it all the way back and fought the squirrelly winds toward the brightly burning beacons, clearing the last of the trees just as his left engine started to hack. That one, too, he cut back, both props dead weight now, the Beech vibrating as he brought it down, down, down, the white-hot flares closer, coming up at him, faster, faster, faster, the earth and he about to meet just as he brought the stick back, nose up, flaring the aircraft and setting the wheels down almost gently in the muddy grass.

Momentum carried the plane almost to the far end of the flare line before it stopped, the pilot turning off his systems before the batteries were drained. He undid his safety harness and had the small side door open just as the beam of a flashlight glared in his face.

"Who the fuck is that?" Mills DeVane asked, shielding his eyes with his hand, hard rain pecking at him.

"Hey there, number five," the voice behind the light said.

"Gareth?"

The light clicked off and Mills could see that it was, rain cascading off Gareth Dean Hoag's dark green poncho and gathering in the deep scruff of his gray-black beard. And he could see that the light which had blinded him was fixed beneath the barrel of one substantial looking scattergun.

"I'm in no mood to get shot, Gareth," Mills said, and the man who paid him handsomely lowered the weapon. "How'd you know I'd be here?"

"Oh, I thought you might be back early after seeing the news," Gareth said, and the night dazzled suddenly with electric brilliance as lightning pulsed the sky, one of its white hot fingers striking to the north of the field, a tree that way exploding with a sound rivaling the crack of thunder that rolled in fast behind the brightness. "You are one lucky flyboy."

Mills glanced skyward as he hopped from the Beech and closed its door against the wet night. "This? I can get it up in any weather."

"I'm not talking 'bout the rain," Gareth told him, cradling the shotgun across his chest as two men approached from a barn-like building and began stamping out the flares in the soupy mud. "I'm talking about the party you missed in the city. It was all over the news."

Mills bent to look under his wings. "Not a big deal, Gareth."

"A lot of people waiting for you at that party," Gareth said. Mills stood and zipped his parka against the rain slanting at him. "Imagine their surprise when the guest of honor didn't show up."

"Imagine," Mills agreed, grinning calmly, casually, cautiously.

"Imagine my relief, as well."

Mills nodded, and Gareth raised the shotgun fast and put its barrel against his employee's face, forcing him back against the slick white fuselage of the Beech.

"Jesus, Gareth, take it easy," Mills implored him, twisting his face away from the weapon as best he could, eyeing the sudden and unexpected threat sideways.

"Do not take the Lord's name in vain," Gareth warned him.

"Sorry. Sorry."

"You were in Atlanta."

"Yes."

"You were not in Atlanta on my business."

"No."

"Then why were you in Atlanta?"

"You know I have other customers."

"None who pay you like I do."

"You contracted me two years ago saying you had a year's worth of deliveries. Two years. You think I can't do the math, Gareth? You're not going to be paying me forever."

"Thinking about the future, are you?"

Mills nodded, the muzzle of the shotgun scraping his cheek.

"Who were you flying for tonight?"

Mills swallowed and said nothing. The muzzle pulled back from his face and the light blazed at him once again. He squinted at the glare.

"Who were you flying for?" Gareth repeated.

"I can't tell you that."

"Moreno? Barker Meeks? Who were you flying for?"

How the hell did he know about them? "I'm not going to tell you."

Silence from behind the light, a long silence, then the sound of the safety being thrown. The light went black and the weapon came down.

"Good answer," Gareth said. Mills reached up and touched his cheek. A small round circle indented the flesh. "There were a hundred officers of the law waiting for you tonight, every one of them with a question like that for you, I'd imagine."

"You think I'd talk?" Mills challenged his employer.

"I think I can't afford to take that chance," Gareth said, and the gun he cradled drew a long gaze from Mills.

"You gonna kill me, Gareth?"

"I'm going to counsel you," Gareth corrected. "Against the error of your ways."

"I'm not stopping my sidelines, Gareth. Some of those people would kill me if I tried."

"Drug dealers are a dangerous lot," Gareth said with a snicker, and again Mills's gaze was drawn to the shotgun.

"Anyone can be, I guess."

To that Gareth nodded. "I suppose."

"You know," Mills began, "you have other pilots."

Thunder shook the night, and Gareth glanced toward its source. "None who can fly in stuff like this. Or would."

Mills looked down the makeshift runway as the last of the flares was stamped out, just the blackening trail of his touchdown and rollout leading back toward the trees. In daylight it could be seen as a field, one where sugar beets had grown some time ago, but long gone fallow now. Gareth Dean Hoag owned it, and the hundred twelve acres around it. Rotten land, the locals said it was. But Gareth had seen some value in it. It and the barn big enough to park a plane in.

"Did they spell my name right this time?" Mills asked. "Big D, big V?"

Gareth nodded. "But that picture they got still doesn't do you justice."

"Good. Make it harder for the federales."

"You were lucky tonight, number five. But you need to be careful. Especially now."

"What do you mean?"

"I got another deposit coming up," Gareth explained. "Special things after that. I don't want to lose you."

"Skunky or Lane could take it," Mills suggested, but Gareth shook his head. The two who'd put out the flares joined them now, Nita Berry and Lionel Price, Gareth's 'other' halves.

"You can get in and out of anywhere," Gareth told him, and Mills knew he should be pleased. But what he was was tired. "Better than anyone."

"I always told you so."

The night exploded and lit them with white hot radiance. Gareth cast a joyous face to the raging sky. "Soon, number five. Big things are coming soon."

"He shits you not," Lionel said. Nita tucked her hand in Gareth's front pocket and agreed with a nod.

Mills wiped his eyes, the night spitting hard at him now, at them all now, a squall line moving through, a harsher piece of the storm upon them.

"Big things," Gareth repeated, laughing now as the heavens dumped on them.

*   *   *

Troopers Jimmy Nance and Kyle Callahan of the New York State Police were cruising down Roseland Road toward the coffee shop at the Pembry Lanes, the former extolling to his rookie partner of three weeks the utter magnificence of the Lanes' lemon meringue pie and how fantastic it was with a good cup of coffee, when the sweep of their unit's headlights lit up the front of the town post office.

"Ho-ly Moses," Trooper Kyle Callahan exclaimed calmly from behind the wheel, slowing the dark blue Chevy Caprice to a stop at the curb as his partner put a spotlight on the building. "Ain't teenagers got nothing better to do on a Friday night?"

"You call it in," Nance instructed as he swung the passenger side door open. "I'll have a look-see at what the fine young citizens of Pembry have cooked up this time."

And cooked up was a darn good way to put it, Nance thought as he stepped from the warmth of his cruiser and took his flashlight from its place on his Sam Browne. The last time the kids from Hollister High had gotten some beer and stupidity in them at the start of a weekend, two dumpsters and an empty shed had gone up in smoke. And though there was nary a hint of smoke or flame coming from inside the Pembry Post Office, there was going to be damage inside. Oh, yes. That Jimmy Nance could tell quite plainly as he got to the top step and shined his flashlight on the twin glass doors that let into the building.

"Hooligans," he commented, shaking his head and playing the light over the display that had been plastered upon the inside of the glass. "Where the hell are your parents when you're pulling this crap?"

"Someone's gonna call the postmaster," Callahan said as he reached his partner's side. He took his own flashlight in hand and added its beam to the mix. "Creative little buggers."

"It don't take much creativity to photocopy your teet, Callahan," Nance said, and illuminated one of the three dozen or so pieces of paper taped to the inside of the glass doors, each a small section of a human–a very naked human–body that had been arranged into a garish mosaic of the female form. "Sick little punks."

"Can you imagine the positions she must've had to get into to get all her parts on the glass?" Callahan asked, taking a moment to survey the creation, stepping back to take it in whole as one might a museum piece, noting the careful mating of all the sections of the body into a whole and how the assembled black and white image seemed to him to be of a woman cut out of mid-air, arms and legs outstretched as if falling, the picture oddly intriguing, and disturbing, and vexing for one very obvious reason. "So how come there's no head, Jimmy?"

Nance shook his head at his trainee's question. "These kids are stupid, Kyle–not dumb. They're not going to put a damn photocopy of one of their faces up there."

"True," Callahan agreed, catching the logic he should never have missed. But then it was the obvious that tripped you up sometimes. It was that way with criminals, especially. Folks would do something they shouldn't in a place they shouldn't be, they'd wipe down the door knobs and light switches to get rid of their fingerprints, but they'd forget that they leaned against a doorjamb, or a banister, or some other thing like—oh, yes, like that! "Jimmy, we might just have a line on these little shits."

"How?"

Callahan shined his light at the weird mosaic's right hand, which was palm and finger tips down and clear as the October sky above them. "We got ourselves some prints."

"I'll be..." Trooper Jimmy Nance never finished the exclamation. Not when his own light shined upon the figure's right hand, from a sharper angle than his partner's, and lit up what was covered by the overlapping piece of the paper above it. His free hand went to his pistol and he said, "Oh, God dammit Kyle! Dammit! Look!"

Callahan sidestepped toward his partner and peered under the obscuring flap of paper as best he could, which was plenty good enough to see that when the copy of the hand had been made, the appendage had not been connected to any arm. The ragged cut just at the wrist made that quite indisputable.

This was no case of vandalism. At least none like they'd ever seen.

"Mother, mother, mother, what the hell is this?" Callahan asked himself as he stared wide-eyed at the macabre image.

"Call it in, Kyle," Jimmy Nance instructed, his hand wrapping tight around the grip of his holstered pistol now. Breath puffed from him like the white exhaust of an ancient locomotive at speed, fast and furious.

"What the hell do we call in?" Callahan asked.

"I don't know," Nance answered, and put his light close to the captured image of the severed hand. Close enough that it touched the glass and moved the door.

He drew his weapon now and took a step back. "Kyle, it's open."

Callahan stepped back as well, drawing his own weapon and reaching up to the mike attached near his collar. "Trooper Ten, we have an open door, Pembry Post Office. Can you roll us a backup?"

The acknowledgment came from dispatch and Nance reached for the door.

"Shouldn't we wait, Jimmy," Callahan reminded his partner.

"I know folks that work here, Kyle. Let's just see what we got."

"Yeah, but backup'll be here in five minutes."

"If there's anything that looks bad, we'll pull back," Nance said, and crouched low next to the right door. "Okay."

Callahan assumed an entry position as well next to the left door. "Okay."

"We go fast and cover the sides," Nance said, and got a nod from his partner. "On me. Ready?" Another nod. And a breath. And another. And another. And... "Go."

They pushed each swinging door inward in sync, Nance going right and Callahan left, the aim of their weapons tracking the sweep of their flashlights over the dark inside of the Pembry Post Office's lobby.

"I got nothing, Kyle," Nance told his partner in a hushed tone, the beam of his flashlight scanning the ranks of dull metal P.O. boxes filling the east wall.

"Jimmy?"

"Yeah?" Nance answered, crouched low still, not advancing yet as he lit up a dark corner behind a waste can.

"Jimmy?"

"What?"

"Jimmy?"

Finally Nance just looked over his shoulder, toward his partner, but saw instead what Kyle Callahan's unmoving flashlight had lit up on the west wall. "No, Jesus. No."

It was clear and stark under the harsh beam, the lettering was. Big and bold and red upon the white wall next to the courtesy table and bulletin board. Four words splashed there. One distressing message borne of the grotesque mosaic they had stumbled upon.

she went to pieces

"This is not good," Callahan said, so quietly that his partner could barely hear him. "Not good, partner."

"No, not good at all," Nance concurred, and duck-walked the few steps toward his partner. Almost there his boot slipped on something slick. He shined his light on the old linoleum floor and saw thick red shoe prints leading both directions from their place at the front entrance to the side of the service counter. "We got a lot of blood, Kyle."

Callahan looked, and lit up a second trail of bloody prints going back and forth from the writing on the wall to the service counter. "Jimmy, let's back off now and wait for backup."

Nance did not reply immediately, though his intention was now to agree with his partner and get some more manpower on scene before pressing their entry any further. But in the near silence before he could reply, he heard something. A soft and rhythmic sound. Maybe a clicking. Definitely mechanical.

"You hear that?" Nance asked.

"Jimmy, let's back off."

"Listen."

Callahan did, and he could hear it, too, but right then he would have still wanted to wait for backup if what he'd heard was the Lord Himself saying 'come on down, Kyle'. "Jimmy..."

Nance rose slowly out of his crouch and aimed his light and his weapon north at the far end of the lobby, covering the service counter and the hidden spaces beyond it. Just part of a doorway was visible, leading to a hallway it seemed from this vantage, and down that hallway there appeared to be...

"Kyle, you see that?"

Callahan stood and looked in the direction of his partner's light, just as Nance clicked the beam briefly off. In the din that followed he could plainly see what had caught his partner's eye. "What is that?"

"I don't know," Nance told him, studying the flashing light coming from the opening on the right side of the hallway, its rhythm long with but a brief burst of darkness between sustained pulses. Pulses that seemed synced to that sound. "But let's find out."

Callahan would have protested again, but his partner was already moving, his light back on and scouring the area before him. There was nothing to do but follow.

They made it to the service counter and carefully checked behind, finding only more footprints there, dark red under the glow of their flashlights. Nance moved first there, trying to straddle the bloody trail as he stepped behind the counter and peered down the hall, seeing the pulsing light more clearly now, and hearing the clicking with near full clarity, both things mating in a deduction that was confirmed by what he saw fluttering from the doorway on the right. Paper.

"Copy machine's running," he told Callahan in a hushed tone.

"Copy machine?"

Nance nodded and shined his light on the floor outside the doorway. Hundreds of sheets of paper were piled there, another one settling atop the uneven mound every few seconds, enough so that the bloody trail was obscured from view. Some pure white, and others showing something on their surface, depending on whether they were landing face up or face down, it was clear.

"It's copying something," Nance told his partner.

"Oh, Jimmy, you don't think..."

But he did think, exactly what his partner could not voice, and for some reason even he did not understand Trooper James Fitzgerald Nance had to know. Had to see. Had to lay his gaze upon what he knew, just knew, was in that small room off the right of the hallway. Maybe to convince himself that this was real, or unreal, or something in between, some macabre scene come to life, to his life. And so he started down the hallway, his partner hanging back now, covering from where he waited. Stepping with care on either side of the ghastly trail, nearing the pile of papers, new ones shooting out from the doorway one after the other, one floating earthward and slipping down the side of the mound and landing face-up at Trooper Nance's feet. He shined his light down upon it and swallowed hard.

A dead face stared back at him in black and white.

It was what they'd feared, and he'd seen the image captured, but not the truth from which it had been cast, and so he took one more step forward and looked through the doorway and saw the copy machine pushed almost out into the hall, its lid angled half open and resting upon the severed head of a woman, light flashing beneath it every second or so, blood and tissue dripping from the ragged edge of the neck, pooling in large, slick clumps on the glass.

"Oh, Jesus," Nance said, stepping back, the sight his now for all time. "Oh dear sweet Jesus."

"Jimmy," Callahan said as he watched his partner back away from the door and through another opposite it. "Jimmy!"

But Trooper Nance wasn't hearing his partner. His senses were tuned to what was across the hall from him now, that face, that head, the machine chugging along, its rhythm seeming the echo of a dead heart's beating, and nothing could have drawn him from his rapt fixation upon the horrid scene.

Nothing but the hand that brushed his cheek and sent him reeling.

He spun in place in the darkened space, the hand tapping him, and another, the beam of his flashlight slicing the din, tracking fast across the hand, and an arm, and a leg, a breast, all seeming to be in a floating stasis about his head. He swatted at the passive assault and his hand came back wet with blood.

"NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!"

He fell to the floor and scooted his way through a slick puddle, driving himself into a corner as his partner made it to the doorway and lit up the space with his own flashlight.

"Oh my God," was all Trooper Kyle Callahan could say at the sight of his partner huddled fetally, the severed pieces of a woman dangling above him in some grotesquely prepared mobile, each suspended to the drop ceiling supports by various lengths of twine. Chest in the center, legs at the rear, and arms and hands toward the door as if reaching across the hallway for the head that lay on the copy machine. "Oh my God. God. God."

"He's not here," Trooper Jimmy Nance said, laughing and weeping, hugging himself as blood fell upon him in a slow rain.

 

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Top Ten is available as an eBook for Kindle, Nook, iPad, Sony Reader, PC, Mac, iPhone, Android, Blackberry, and other devices using the appropriate reading apps. For just $2.99 you can purchase Top Ten from the following online retailers:
 

Amazon   Barnes & Noble   Sony   Smashwords   Diesel

 

In addition, you can purchase Top Ten directly from Apple using the iBooks app on your iPad or iPhone.

Thank you!

I do get asked quite often by people considering a purchase of my books, 'Which book of yours should I read first?'

I sometimes dig a little into what their tastes are--thriller, suspense, mystery, supernatural. Once I know that, I can then direct them to a particular book that would most closely match what they are looking for.

Sometimes, though, I get this question: 'Which book of yours would you want me to read?'

I can answer that without hesitation: All For One.

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This book is special to me because it is primarily about children who are thrust into a very adult situation--covering up for a killer. I've also been asked how I would classify this novel, and I've often shifted on trying to nail it down genre-wise. I am most comfortable calling it a dark mystery, because the two main adult characters, a teacher and a detective, are forced to face their own personal demons in the story.

But, it's the kids that make this so dear to my heart. I had such a fantastic time writing them, and though it's been many years since I completed this novel, I recall each and every one in vivid detail. Their heartbreaks and triumphs. Their idiosyncrasies. Fears. Who they loved. Writing these characters allowed me to revisit my own childhood, and play again with friends who had been so central to my early life. Much of them has made it into Joey, PJ, Jeff, Michael, Elena, and Bryce.

So if you have a new Kindle, or Nook, or iPad, or any other reading device this Christmas, and if you are wondering which of my books I'd want you to read first...I'd humbly suggest All For One.

All For One is available as an eBook for Kindle, Nook, iPad, Sony Reader, PC, Mac, iPhone, Android, Blackberry, and other devices using the appropriate reading apps. For just $2.99 you can purchase All For One from the following online retailers:

 Amazon   Barnes & Noble  Sony  Kobo  Smashwords  Diesel

In addition, you can purchase All For One directly from Apple using the iBooks app on your iPad or iPhone.

Thank you!