J. Black - The Shop

THE SHOP J. CARSON BLACK

To John Lescroart, for helping me become a better writer. You are the class of any field.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

It takes a village to raise a book. Many thanks to my agent, Deborah Schneider, and to Courtney Miller and Charlotte Herscher for making this the best book it can be.

For your practical help, support and encouragement: Chris and Marcelino Acevedo of Clues Unlimited; Maynard Allington; Lori G. Armstrong; John Cheek; John Garrett; Alison Gaylin; Liam Hopper; Carol Jose; John Lescroart, Lee Lofland; Carol Davis Luce; Donald Maass; Daniel Piel; George, Cliff, Barb, and Daniel McCreedy; Michael Prescott; Diana Ross; Don and Rose Shepperd; Lynn Spencer, Karin Tabke; Bonnie Toews and Elaine Walsh. To Barbara Schiller, Darrell Harvey, Janice Jarrett, Robin Williams, Solange Jarrett-Williams, Edie Laude, Jennifer Jarrett, Celia and Dale Halstead, and Lafayette and Beth Barr. Thanks also to Southwest Crime Ink: Elizabeth Gunn, J.M. Hayes, and Susan Cummins Miller.

Special thanks to William Simon, a.k.a. The Caped Crusader. Without you, this book could not have been written.

Once again, as always, thanks to my mother, Mary Falk, and my husband (and partner in crime), Glenn McCreedy.

PROLOGUE

MEMORIAL DAY WEEKEND

ASPEN, COLORADO

Landry thought: The kid’s positively giddy.

Landry had been getting comfortable with the night, watching from the woods as the party wound down at the house on Castle Creek Road, people getting into their expensive cars and driving away, leaving just the core group.

Shortly after, the young man came out and made his unsteady way to the deck railing. He had spiky hair and a scarecrow frame. He looked down at the rushing water, then up at the stars. Landry could see his smile even from where he was. The kid’s skinny arms hugged his body, as if he couldn’t quite believe his good fortune. Tipsy—more than tipsy, inebriated—but something had delighted him, thrilled him. Something had gone very right for him today.

The young man twirled around, looking at the stars. Mesmerized by them. He could have been the leading man in his own musical—the wonderful story of his life. He could barely contain his joy. He had less than an hour to live.

As they reached the walkway, Landry said, “Gloves and masks from now on.”

They split up. Jackson would go in first, through the back door. Landry and Davis would go in the front. Green would remain outside; he was surveillance only.

They waited for Jackson to report in. “Upstairs clear.”

“How many?”

“Two. The couple. They were laying in bed.”

“Lying,” Landry said.

“What?”

“Lying in bed. Not laying.”

A pause. Then, “Roger that.”

Davis opened the front door in one smooth, quick motion, and they stepped inside.

The lights were on. Landry saw the expensive furnishings and enormous stone fireplace, cataloging these things briefly before dismissing them. His eye was on the four targets. Three of them were sleeping: a male and female entwined on a zebra skin near the fireplace and a young woman crashed out on the couch. The fourth was in the process of walking unsteadily toward the kitchen. He was the kid Landry had seen twirling under the stars. A lot worse for wear. He’d done some steady imbibing, or toking, or snorting, since last Landry saw him on the deck.

The kid looked at them. His eyes had difficulty tracking. He said, “You should’ve come earlier, there was a lot more food.”

Landry fell into step with the kid and put an arm around his shoulder, casually pulling him around so he held him from behind. He slit the kid’s throat and dropped him like a sack of grain. Dead in eight seconds.

Davis finished dispatching the couple as Landry turned his attention to the sleeper, who was half-sitting, half-lying, her head resting against the couch back. Some sixth sense must have awakened her because she cocked her head upward, her eyes bewildered.

Startled.

He’d seen her before. It came to him—Brienne Cross. One of those celebrities in the news all the time. His daughter had a poster of her up in her room.

He hesitated just long enough for alarm to dawn in her eyes, which dismayed him. He touched a finger to his lips, letting her know it was all right, and pulled her up toward him with one hand. He drew his knife across her throat with the other.

Her mouth went slack. The light in her eyes died. He let her back down on the couch, gently.

“Four here,” he said into the radio. Thinking: Brienne Cross .

Jackson joined them. There were six people dead. All in all the operation had taken fewer than five minutes.

Landry looked at Jackson. Jackson shifted his feet, then started back toward the stairway. His reluctance was clear. He might not do a convincing job.

Landry said, “I’ll do it.”

The couple lay in bed, naked above the sheets. They looked peaceful despite their slashed throats. Landry crossed himself, trying to think of what he did next as gutting a deer. They were dead; they would feel nothing. But their mutilation bothered him.

Done, he glanced around the room, which now resembled an abattoir. His regret at the desecration of these young people was eclipsed by the satisfaction of a job accomplished with flawless precision. It had taken him three and a half minutes, including painting the two eights on the mirror with the woman’s blood.

As he started down the stairs, Landry thought about the girl on the couch, the look in her eyes: frightened, then trusting, and finally, empty.

His daughter wanted to grow up to be Brienne Cross.

They were almost out of there. One last check of the perimeter and—

Then he heard sirens. They were a long way off but coming fast.

Simultaneously, Green’s voice crackled in his ear.

“Police heading this way.”

“Where?”

“Up from the valley. Two units.”

“We’re out of here.”

Landry turned off the lights and slipped out the back door. The sirens screaming in the night now. His mind ranging far ahead as he tried to make sense of this. He wasn’t worried about escaping. What worried him was something else.

Who had betrayed them?

He melted into the woods, found a suitable vantage point, and stretched out, stomach-down, on the ground. Relied on his training to make himself part of the forest.

Cataloging faces, phone calls, names. Who?

The lights burst through the trees below, blinking white, red, and blue. Engines straining. In his mind’s eye he saw them swerving in at the house, slamming into park—

But that did not happen.

The cars did not slow. They rocketed past, two Pitkin County Sheriff’s cars.

It was okay.

No one had betrayed them.

As the sirens receded, he spoke into his radio. “Wait where you are until I give the signal.”

1 MEMORIAL DAY WEEKEND

NICK

It came to Nick Holloway, gradually, that he was lying on cold hard concrete. Something above held him fast. His shirt was hooked on the undercarriage of a car.

He managed to get loose, tearing his shirt in the process, and crawled out from under. Enveloped by the stench of motor oil, shaking and sick, Nick finally realized where he was: the two-car garage beneath the Aspen house.