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PART TWO
15
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PART THREE
29
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PART FOUR
44
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PART FIVE
53
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57
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59
60
61
PART SIX
62
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ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Teaser chapter
Epilogue
Copyright Page
For Wendy
Love always
PART ONE
These be
Three silent things:
The falling snow . . . the hour
Before the dawn . . . the mouth of one
Just dead.
—ADELAIDE CRAPSEY, “Triad”
1
Creighton, Maine, two years ago
Gasping for air, Quinn tried to lengthen his stride but couldn’t. He swallowed, accepted the pain. Kept running.
The killer was far enough ahead of him that he couldn’t be seen through the trees, but occasionally Quinn could hear him crashing through the brush in his flight for freedom. The noise of the killer’s desperate dash seemed to be getting louder.
Quinn was gaining. Some of the others were, too, he was sure. But he had laid out everything he had in the beginning, putting every fiber and muscle he had into the chase. Now he was paying for it, but he was closest.
Quinn was closest, and closing.
It was like a fox hunt, and he was the fox.
The killer, whose grisly calling card read simply D.O.A., pressed on through the rustle and crackle of last year’s dead leaves, listening to the barking dogs, the occasional human shouts. His pursuers were gaining on him. It was as if they were actually having fun with him. With him!
He was out of breath, and almost out of options. But almost could be the most important word in the English language.
The ground was gradually falling away. He could see it beginning to slope, and he could feel it in the fronts of his thighs. He knew from the grade that he was approaching water.
Almost there!
The hectic barking of the dogs was getting louder. More frantic. He wondered what kind of dogs they were. The animals sounded as if they were in a frenzy, as if they wanted to kill him.
And maybe that was the game.
The killer glimpsed a blue-green plane of water through the foliage ahead, and his hope surged. The lake!
The question was, where along the shoreline was he going to emerge from the woods? Where would his sudden appearance not draw attention and bullets?
This can still work! It can still work!
He put on what in his mind was a burst of speed, but was in reality simply a great deal of thrashing around, like an exhausted long distance runner approaching the tape.
Almost there!
Almost!
2
Sarasota, Florida, 1992
“Dwayney!”
The house where it happened was at the edge of the water. The green lawn sloped gently away from the house, to an Olympic-sized swimming pool that appeared to merge with the bay. It made for an interesting illusion.
“Dwayney, honey?”
Maude Evans was lying posed on a webbed lounger at the edge of the rectangular pool, looking oddly as if she were floating on an invisible horizon. Every half minute or so she stretched her lithe, tanned body so she could reach her whiskey sour, take a sip, then replace the glass on a small white table. Towels were folded carefully beneath her so the lounger’s webbing wouldn’t make temporary ugly marks on her sleek body.
“Dwayney, fetch me another drink!” Maude called.
Dwayne’s body jerked. He’d been half dozing in the late-morning Florida sun. He peered over at Maude above the dark frames of his sunglasses. Looking back at him, Maude held up her drink and swished around what was left in the bottom of the glass. A clear signal and command.
He obediently went inside to the kitchen and carefully made a whiskey sour the way he’d been taught. Dwayne personally didn’t like whiskey sours. For that matter, what limited experience he’d had suggested to him that he’d never like alcoholic drinks. But after building Maude’s drink he sipped it to make sure it tasted the way she wanted it to taste.