Steven Womack: By Blood Written

“Excuse me,” a masculine voice behind her said. The voice was low, a smooth baritone, confident and relaxed.

She turned.

“You’re Audrey Carlisle, aren’t you?” Michael Schiftmann stared over the top of her glass, making direct eye contact and offering her his right hand.

“Yes,” Audrey said. She switched the glass from her right hand to her left, then took his outstretched hand before realizing her palms were wet with condensation from the glass.

“Oh, I’m sorry,” Audrey said, pulling her hand away and wiping it on the side of her corduroy jacket.

“No problem,” Michael said, smiling. Audrey realized, suddenly, that the black-and-white picture that took up the entire back cover of his latest hardcover didn’t do him justice. His blue eyes were clear and penetrating, and the deep lines around his eyes seemed to bring an age and maturity to a face that would have otherwise perhaps been too boyish.

“I was hoping we’d get to meet,” Michael said, taking her arm and gently escorting her away from the bar. “Taylor told me she’d invited you. I’m so glad you came.”

As the two crossed the large room, the music started up again. Audrey winced.

“Wish they wouldn’t play that so loud.”

“Here,” Michael said loudly, motioning toward the far wall, “we can get away from most of it.”

A moment later, Audrey noticed the room’s acoustics did seem to direct the music away from the corner where she now found herself in intimate conversation with Michael.

Suddenly it seemed as if they were the only two in the room, that he was devoting his entire focus and attention to her. Audrey Carlisle felt warm and hoped she wasn’t too visibly flushed.

“This is probably totally inappropriate,” Michael said, leaning in close to her, “but I wanted to thank you for the piece that’s coming out tomorrow.”

Audrey smiled. “Why would that be inappropriate?”

“I don’t know,” he said, shrugging slightly, “professional detachment, that sort of thing. Maybe in this business it’s just not cool to admit that you’re in someone else’s debt.”

Audrey had convinced her editor to run a full-length piece on Michael’s latest book, The Fifth Letter , and to time it with the book’s first appearance on The List. As was the paper’s practice, she’d sent an advance copy of the review to Brett Silverman as a courtesy, and obviously Michael had been given the chance to read it. It had been the first of Michael’s new series that she had reviewed personally. After reading the latest, she did something she had rarely done before in her career: She went back and read the first four installments before writing her review.

“I guess I just wanted you to know how grateful I am,”

Michael offered.

“You know,” Audrey said, sipping her drink, “I almost tracked you down to interview you for the piece, but I was up against deadline, and Brett Silverman said you were somewhere down in South Carolina or someplace like that.”

“I did three signings in South Carolina,” Michael said.

“One in Charleston, one in Hilton Head, and the other in-”

He hesitated a moment. “Jeez, I can’t remember. Colum-bia, maybe? I’m two-thirds of the way through a forty-city tour, and they’re all starting to run together.”

“I’ll bet,” Audrey said.

“So,” Michael asked, lowering his voice, “what would you have asked me if you’d been able to track me down?”

Audrey took another sip of the drink, this one longer and fuller, and felt the bubble of warmth in her stomach pulsate back and forth as the Scotch hit.

“I think the thing I’m most curious about is the disparity,”

she said after a few moments.

“Disparity?”

“Yes, the disparity. The incongruousness of someone who seems so nice, so pleasant, so normal, writing novels that clearly reflect an imagination so-”

“So what?” Michael asked.

“Deviant,” she said after a moment’s hesitation.

Michael’s forehead seemed to tense, the blue eyes darken.

“What do you mean by that, Audrey?”

“Other writers have written books featuring assassins, hit men, as protagonists. Larry Block, Andrew Vachss, Elmore Leonard, for instance. But your books are the only books I’ve ever read that authentically, realistically capture the mind of a sociopath, a serial killer, a human being totally without conscience or sense of ethics or morality, and do it in such a way that you’re so drawn into the story that before you even realize it, you’re cheering for evil.”

Michael Schiftmann stared at Audrey Carlisle for a few beats, then looked uncomfortably down at his drink.

“Tell me, Mr. Schiftmann,” Audrey said, “do you have a moral compass?”

“In this day and age, how does one even know what a moral compass is?”

“Oh, one can know quite precisely what a moral compass is, and whether one has one …”

“I believe that all crime fiction is a morality play,” Michael said. “Everyone who writes about crime must confront the duality of and the battle between good and evil. I do it in my own way and with my own insights. I look around me every day and I see that in the battle between good and evil, evil is winning.”

Michael stopped for a moment, pausing to sip his own drink. “How else can you explain the resurgence of the Republican right wing?”

Audrey smiled. “Okay, you’ve got me there. Still, no one’s ever seen anything quite like this before. At least not with this degree of popular success. How do you do it?”

Michael smiled back at her, then raised his glass as if about to make a toast. “With the same two tools every writer uses: imagination and research.”

Sunday morning, Nashville

Max Bransford couldn’t remember the last time the entire Murder Squad of the Metro Nashville Police Department had been assembled in one room at one time. The fourteen investigators were a mix of male and female; black, white, and Hispanic. On the surface they appeared diverse, almost a chaotic and random sampling of the population yanked in off the street and cast as homicide detectives in a cop movie.

Bransford knew, however, that each of his homicide investigators shared one common trait: the inability to fit in with any other part of the police department. Homicide detectives were mavericks, independent and contentious. More than a few of them were openly disrespectful of the police hierarchy, local politicians, and authority in general. Many were obsessive-compulsive to the point of burnout. Unable to let go of their work, they often had to be forced to take accumulated vacation time.

Gary Gilley, for instance, hadn’t been home in almost thirty hours. He was already beyond his shift end when the call came in on the two murdered girls at Exotica Tans. He could have passed the case along to another detective, but had chosen to stay on as the primary. He’d been at the crime scene most of the night, then at the lab waiting for the autopsy and the results from the dozen or so tests that had been performed on the victims. Now Bransford watched as Gilley wearily sat down in a folding chair, eyes swollen and red from lack of sleep, stale air, and cigarette smoke. Bransford knew that if Gilley’s stomach was anything like his, it was already burning from too much charred squad-room coffee and too little decent food. Bransford intended to order Gilley home to sleep as soon as the briefing was over.

Bransford stepped to a worn wooden podium in front of a dusty chalkboard and cleared his throat loudly.

“Let’s go, folks,” he announced. “Let’s take our seats and get rolling on this one.”

“This better be good, Lieutenant,” Maria Chavez-