DESERT

a novel of terror

PLACES

Blake Crouch

THOMAS DUNNE BOOKS

ST. MARTIN’S MINOTAUR

NEW YORK

for my parents, Clay and Susan Crouch

THOMAS DUNNE BOOKS.

An imprint of St. Martin’s Press.

DESERT PLACES. Copyright © 2004 by Blake Crouch. All rights reserved. Printed in the United States of America. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews. For information, address St. Martin’s Press, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, N. Y. 10010.

www.minotaurbooks.com

Design by Kathryn Parise

Excerpts from “Desert Places” and “The Road Not Taken” from The Poetry of Robert Frost edited by Edward Connery Lathem. Copyright © 1916, 1969 by Henry Holt and Company, 1964 by Lesley Frost Ballantine, 1936, 1944 by Robert Frost. Reprinted by permission of Henry Holt and Company, LLC

LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING-IN-PUBLICATION DATA

Crouch, Blake.

     Desert places : a novel of terror / Blake Crouch.—1st ed.

       p. cm.

     ISBN 0-312-28644-9

     1. Anonymous letters—Fiction. 2. Murder victims—Fiction. 3. Extortion—Fiction. 4. Novelists—Fiction. I. Title.

PS3603.R68D47 2004

813′.6—dc22

2003058549

First Edition: January 2004

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

They cannot scare me with their empty spaces

Between stars—on stars where no human race is

I have it in me so much nearer home

To scare myself with my own desert places.

—R

OBERT

F

ROST

, “D

ESERT

P

LACES

”

Acknowledgments

I’VE been in good hands from the start. Linda Allen came along with her faith and encouragement and found a home for this story. She’s an extraordinary agent and a wonderful friend. Marcia Markland made my first editing experience everything I’d hoped it would be, with grace, humor, and unfailing insight. Bland Simpson, greatest creative writing professor of all time, was the first to believe. His brilliance as a writer is matched only by the generosity he extends to his students. Mary Alice Kier and Anna Cottle have been amazing, and I’m grateful to have them in my corner. And Diana Szu is a superhero. Sam Stout, M.D., Ted Vance, M.D., Michael James, and Marianne Fuierer shared their medical and pharmacological acumen in answering a handful of creepy questions. Paul Lowry was my encyclopedia on firearms. Myrna Woirhaye told me all about ranching in Pinedale, and Sandra L. Mitchell, Ph.D., graciously lent her expertise on the high desert flora and fauna of Sublette County, Wyoming. Ritchie Kendall, Ph.D., another UNC great, helped me out with a Shakespeare question. All mistakes, exaggerations, and impossibilities are mine. In this moment of completion, the love and sacrifice of my parents, Clay and Susan Crouch, overwhelm me. My brother, Jordan, lets me bounce titles off him even though he never likes any of them. He’s a great guy, and he’s going to be a writer. In the wife department, I’m blessed beyond belief. Rebecca, your friendship and love guide me through. And finally, a nod to Pamela Bumgarner, who stoked the coals at a delicate time.

1

ON a lovely May evening, I sat on my deck, watching the sun descend upon Lake Norman. So far, it had been a perfect day. I’d risen at 5:00 a.m. as I always do, put on a pot of French roast, and prepared my usual breakfast of scrambled eggs and a bowl of fresh pineapple. By six o’clock, I was writing, and I didn’t stop until noon. I fried two white crappies I’d caught the night before, and the moment I sat down for lunch, my agent called. Cynthia fields my messages when I’m close to finishing a book, and she had several for me, the only one of real importance being that the movie deal for my latest novel, Blue Murder, had closed. It was good news of course, but two other movies had been made from my books, so I was used to it by now.

I worked in my study for the remainder of the afternoon and quit at 6:30. My final edits of the new as yet untitled manuscript would be finished tomorrow. I was tired, but my new thriller, The Scorcher, would be on bookshelves within the week. I savored the exhaustion that followed a full day of work. My hands sore from typing, eyes dry and strained, I shut down the computer and rolled back from the desk in my swivel chair.

I went outside and walked up the long gravel drive toward the mailbox. It was the first time I’d been out all day, and the sharp sunlight burned my eyes as it squeezed through the tall rows of loblollies that bordered both sides of the drive. It was so quiet here. Fifteen miles south, Charlotte was still gridlocked in rush-hour traffic, and I was grateful not to be a part of that madness. As the tiny rocks crunched beneath my feet, I pictured my best friend, Walter Lancing, fuming in his Cadillac. He’d be cursing the drone of horns and the profusion of taillights as he inched away from his suite in uptown Charlotte, leaving the quarterly nature magazine Hiker to return home to his wife and children. Not me, I thought, the solitary one.

For once, my mailbox wasn’t overflowing. Two envelopes lay inside, one a bill, the other blank except for my address typed on the outside. Fan mail.

Back inside, I mixed myself a Jack Daniel’s and Sun-Drop and took my mail and a book on criminal pathology out onto the deck. Settling into a rocking chair, I set everything but my drink on a small glass table and gazed down to the water. My backyard is narrow, and the woods flourish a quarter mile on either side, keeping my home of ten years in isolation from my closest neighbors. Spring had not come this year until mid-April, so the last of the pink and white dogwood blossoms still specked the variably green interior of the surrounding forest. Bright grass ran down to a weathered gray pier at the water’s edge, where an ancient weeping willow sagged over the bank, the tips of its branches dabbling in the surface of the water.