“The bastard in the car, Bennett, knows where he is, but he’s not telling. So have your men spread out, and for God’s sake, be careful—he may be armed, too.” When the two uniforms had trotted away, the man looked down at Dulcie and then quickly at Jason. “Is she hurt, lad? You need to take her over to that tent by the big tree, you see?”
“She’s not hurt. Not much,” he corrected himself at Dulcie’s protest, and went on firmly. “There’s a man with the FBI in the United States named Glen McCarthy. I really need someone to help me get in touch with him.”
The man looked puzzled, and then to Jason’s amazement he said, “I wish that was the hardest thing I had to do today.” He raised his head and shouted across the yard, “Hey, McCarthy. There’s one of your countrymen here, wants to talk to you.”
Jason watched the approach of this mysteriously conjured figure of ultimate authority with a mixture of suspicion and awe.
“You wanted me?” the man asked in his American accent, and then took a closer look at the girl. “Dulcie?”
“Mr. York!” Dulcie cried. “What are you doing here?”
“You’re Glen McCarthy?” Jason asked incredulously. “With the FBI?”
“That’s me.”
“Ana told me that if I—”
“Where is she?” McCarthy demanded.
“She’s in the abbey.”
“She’s naked,” Dulcie said, and let out a high-pitched giggle. Glen stared at her briefly before turning to Jason.
“Show me,” he demanded.
Jason refused to move, just shook his head violently and cast a significant glance down at Dulcie.
“Oh my God,” Glen murmured, and turned away with his hand across his mouth.
Jason looked around and spotted Benjamin and his mother. He led Dulcie over to them, dropped to his knees, and told her that she would have to stay with Benjie for a few minutes while he took Glen McCarthy to find Ana. Dulcie’s lip trembled, but she allowed her brother to transfer her hand to that of Benjamin’s mother, who picked up a blanket and wrapped it around Dulcie’s shoulders. Jason went back to Glen.
“Okay,” Glen said grimly. “Let’s go.” He looked around for the first policeman, and called, “Paul! Okay if we borrow a car?”
The tweed-covered arm waved its permission, but Jason said, “I don’t think you can get there in a car.”
The Land Rover took them most of the way, leaving them a five-minute walk to the abbey ruins. Glen strode across the uneven ground, torn between the habitual need to hurry toward the scene of any disaster and the deep knowledge that he really did not want to lay eyes on Anne Waverly’s dead body.
She was there, naked, as Dulcie had said. She lay in a welter of blood across the still figure of a big, bearded man who appeared to have taken the main brunt of the shotgun blast that had downed them both. There had been a struggle, the boy Jason started to explain. His young voice broke, loosing tears of despair and self-loathing to run down his scratched and filthy face. Ana had tried to get the gun away from Jonas, and it went off. He should have stayed; he could have helped her. He should have put Dulcie down in the woods and come back to Ana, but the gun went off then, and they ran for help and got lost, and it was his fault, all his fault.
Glen knelt down next to Anne Waverly, less aware of the boy’s words than he was of the cropped hair on Anne’s head, the worn brace on her knee, and the unutterable tragedy of her pale nakedness. Some of the blood that covered her upper body was still bright red and wet. He settled his fingers automatically over her pulse, brushing aside a cord she had around her neck, knowing the search for life would be futile. He was so busy trying not to see her that it was a full twenty seconds before his fingers gave him the message: She still had a pulse. It was thready, but it was there, and in that moment Glen’s hands felt a faint movement as the naked, bloodied woman drew a tiny breath.
Glen shouted aloud and stumbled to his feet, fumbling for his cell phone with shaking hands. Anne Waverly was alive.
Thus here the Tract of Alchemy doth end,
Which (Tract) was by George Ripley Canon penn’d;
It was composed, writ, and sign’d his owne,
In Anno twice Sev’n hundred sev’nty one:
Reader! Assist him, make it thy desire,
That after Life he may have gentle Fire.
Amen.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
LAURIE R. KING lives with her family in the hills above Monterey Bay in northern California. Her background includes such diverse interests as Old Testament theology and construction work, and she has been writing crime fiction since 1987. The winner of the Edgar, the Nero, and the John Creasey awards, her next novel is The Language of Bees.
Visit her website at www.laurierking.com.
“Rousing… riveting… suspenseful.”
—Chicago Tribune on The Beekeeper’s Apprentice
“Prickling with excitement.”
—Booklist on A Grave Talent
“A lively adventure in the very best of intellectual company.”
—The New York Times Book Review on A Letter of Mary
Enter the spellbinding world of
LAURIE R, RING
The thrill of the chase… literate, harrowing suspense… There’s nothing elementary about the mysteries of Laurie R. King!
Since 1993, Laurie R. King has been tantalizing readers with her award-winning, internationally acclaimed novels of mystery and suspense. Turn the page for a special look at Laurie R. King’s books, along with excerpts from the more recent novels. Each is available now wherever Bantam Books are sold.
A GRAVE TALENT
A Kate Martinelli Mystery
WINNER OF THE EDGAR AND JOHN CREASEY AWARDS FOR BEST FIRST NOVEL
The unthinkable has happened in a small community outside of San Francisco. A series of shocking murders has occurred, each victim a child. For Detective Kate Martinelli, just promoted to Homicide and paired with a seasoned cop who’s less than thrilled to be handed a green partner, it’s a difficult case that just keeps getting harder.
THE SECOND CHILD was found six weeks later, fifteen miles away as the crow flies, and in considerably fresher condition. The couple who found her had nothing in common with Tommy Chesler other than the profound wish afterwards that they had done something else on that particular day. It had been a gorgeous morning, a brilliant day following a week of rain, and they had awakened to an impulsive decision to call in sick from their jobs, throw some Brie, sourdough, and Riesling into the insulated bag, and drive down the coast. Impulse had again called to them from the beach where Tyler’s Creek met the ocean, and following their picnic they decided to look for some privacy up the creekside trail. Instead, they found Amanda Bloom.
Amanda, too, was from over the hill in the Bay Area, though her home was across the water from Tina’s. There were a number of similarities in the two girls: Both of them were in kindergarten, both were white girls with brown hair, both were from upper-middle-class families. And both of them had walked home from their schools.
“An amazing first novel with intelligence, intrigue, and intricacy… This work exhibits strong psychological undertones, compelling urgency, and dramatic action.”
—Library Journal
The Beekeeper’s Apprentice
A Mary Russell and Sherlock Holmes Mystery
In 1915, long since retired from his observations of criminal humanity, Sherlock Holmes is engaged in a reclusive study of honeybee behavior on the Sussex Downs. Never did he thinly to meet an intellect to match his own—until his acquaintance with Miss Mary Russell, a very modern fifteen-year-old whose mental acuity is equaled only by her audacity, tenacity, and penchant for trousers and cloth caps, unthinkable in any young lady of Holmes’s own generation….
I WAS FIFTEEN when I first met Sherlock Holmes, fifteen years old with my nose in a book as I walked the Sussex Downs, and nearly stepped on him. In my defence I must say it was an engrossing book, and it was very
rare to come across another person in that particular part of the world in that war year of 1915. In my seven weeks of peripatetic reading amongst the sheep (which tended to move out of my way) and the gorse bushes (to which I had painfully developed an instinctive awareness), I had never before stepped on a person.
It was a cool, sunny day in early April, and the book was by Virgil. I had set out at dawn from the silent farmhouse, chosen a different direction from my usual, and spent the intervening hours wrestling with Latin verbs, climbing unconsciously over stone walls and unthinkingly circling hedgerows, and would probably not have noticed the sea until I stepped off one of the chalk cliffs into it.
As it was, my first awareness that there was another soul in the universe was when a male throat cleared itself loudly not four feet from me. The Latin text flew into the air, followed closely by an Anglo-Saxon oath. Heart pounding, I hastily pulled together what dignity I could and glared down through my spectacles at this figure hunched up at my feet: a gaunt, greying man in his fifties wearing a cloth cap, ancient tweed greatcoat, and decent shoes, with a threadbare Army rucksack on the ground beside him. A tramp perhaps, who had left the rest of his possessions stashed beneath a bush. Or an Eccentric. Certainly no shepherd….
“The Beekeeper’s Apprentice has power to charm the most grizzled Baker Street irregular.”
—Daily News, New York
To Play the Fool
A Kate Martinelli Mystery
When a band of homeless people cremate a beloved dog in San Francisco’s Golden Gate Park, the authorities are willing to overlook a few broken regulations. But three weeks later, when the dogs owner gets the same fiery send-off, the SFPD has a real headache on its hands. The autopsy suggests homicide, but Inspector Kate Martinelli and her partner have little else to go on. They have a homeless victim without a positive ID, a group of witnesses who have little love for the cops, and a possible suspect, known only as Brother Erasmus, whose history leads Kate along a twisting road to a disbanded cult, long-buried secrets, the thirst for spirituality, and the hunger for bloody vengeance.
HIS BREATH huffing in clouds and the news announcer still jabbering against his unemployed ears, the currently unemployed former Bank of America vice presidential assistant was slogging his disconsolate way alongside Kennedy Drive in the park when, to his instant and unreasoning fury, he was attacked for a second time by a branch-wielding bearded man from the shrubbery. Three weeks of ego deflation blew up like a rage-powered air bag. He instantly took four rapid steps forward and clobbered the unkempt head with the only thing he carried, which happened to be a Walkman stereo. Fortunately for both men, the case collapsed the moment it made contact with the wool cap, but the maddened former bank assistant stood over the terrified and hungover former real estate broker and pummeled away with’ his crumbling handful of plastic shards and electronic components. A passing commuter saw them, snatched up her car telephone, and dialed 911.
Three minutes later, the eyes of the two responding police officers were greeted by the sight of a pair of men seated side by side on the frost-rimed grass: One was shocked, bleeding into his shaggy beard, and even at twenty feet stank of cheap wine and old sweat; the other was clean-shaven, clean-clothed, and wore a pair of two-hundred-dollar running shoes on his feet.
The two officers never were absolutely certain about what had happened, but they filled out their forms and saw the two partners in adversity safely tucked into the ambulance. Just before the door closed, the female officer thought to ask why the homeless man had been dragging branches out of the woods in the first place.
By the time the two officers pounded up the pathway into the baseball clearing, the second funeral pyre had caught and flames were roaring up to the gray sky in great billows of sparks and burning leaves. It was a much larger pile of wood than had been under the small dog Theophilus three weeks earlier, but then, it had to be.
On the top of this pyre lay the body of a man.
A Monstrous Regiment of Women
A Mary Russell and Sherlock Holmes Mystery
The dawn of 1921 finds Mary Russell, Sherlock, Holmes’s brilliant young apprentice, about to come into a considerable inheritance. Nevertheless, she still enjoys her nighttime prowls in disguise through London’s grimy streets, where one night she encounters an old friend, now a charity worker among the poor. Veronica Beaconsfield introduces Russell to the New Temple of God, a curious amalgam of church and feminist movement, led by the enigmatic, electrifying Margery Childe. Part suffragette, part mystic, she lives quite well for a woman of God from supposedly humble origins. Despite herself, Russell is drawn ever deeper into Childe’s circle… far closer to heaven than Mary Russell would like….
THE DOOR CLOSED behind Veronica, and I was half-aware of her voice calling out to Marie and then fading down the corridor as I sat and allowed myself to be scrutinised, slowly, thoroughly, impassively. When the blonde woman finally turned away and kicked her shoes off under a low table, I let out the breath I hadn’t realised I was holding and offered up thanks to Holmes’s tutoring, badgering, and endless criticism that had brought me to the place where I might endure such scrutiny without flinching—at least not outwardly.
She padded silently across the thick carpet to the disorder of bottles and chose a glass, some ice, a large dollop from a gin bottle, and a generous splash of tonic. She half-turned to me with a question in her eyebrows, accepted my negative shake without comment, went to a drawer, took out a cigarette case and matching enamelled matchbox, gathered up an ashtray, and came back to her chair, moving all the while with an unconscious feline grace—that of a small domestic tabby rather than anything more exotic or angular. She tucked her feet under her in the chair precisely like the cat in Mrs. Hudson’s kitchen, lit her cigarette, dropped the spent match into the ashtray balanced on the arm of the chair, and filled her lungs deeply before letting the smoke drift slowly from nose and mouth. The first swallow from the glass was equally savoured, and she shut her eyes for a long moment.
When she opened them, the magic had gone out of her, and she was just a small, tired, dishevelled woman in an expensive dress, with a much-needed drink and cigarette to hand. I revised my estimate of her age upward a few years, to nearly forty, and wondered if I ought to leave.
“Why are you here, Mary Russell?”
“King has a gift for the rich, decisive detail and the narrative crispness that distinguished Conan Doyle’s writing.”
—The Washington Post Book World
With Child
A Kate Martinelli Mystery
Adrift in mist-shrouded San Francisco mornings and alcohol-fogged nights, homicide detective Kate Martinelli can’t escape the void left by her departed lover, who has gone off to rethink their relationship. But when twelve-year-old Jules Cameron comes to Kate for a professional consultation, Kate’s not sure she’s that desperate for distraction. Jules is worried about her friend Dio, a homeless boy she met in a park Dio has disappeared without a word of farewell, and Jules wants Kate to find him. Reluctant as she is, Kate can’t say no—and soon finds herself forming a friendship with the bright, quirky girl. But the search for Dio will prove to be much more than either bargained for….
AND STILL, ALL THAT FALL, she looked for Dio. Once a week, she made the rounds of the homeless, asking about him. Always she asked among her network of informants, the dealers and hookers and petty thieves, and invariably received a shake of the head. Twice she heard rumors of him, once at a house for runaway teenagers, where one of the current residents had a friend who had met a boy of his description; and a second time, when one of her informants told her there was a boy-toy of that name in a house used by pederasts over near the marina. She phoned a couple of old friends in the Berkeley and Oakland departments to ask them to keep an ear out, and she arranged to be in on the raid of the marina house, but neither came up with anything more substantial than the ghost she already had. She doubted he was in the Bay Area, and told Jules that, but she
also kept looking.
That autumn, in one of those flukes that even the statistician will admit happens occasionally, it seemed for a while that every case the Homicide Department handled involved kids. A two-year-old with old scars on his back and broken bones in various states of mending died in an emergency room from having been shaken violently by his eighteen-year-old mother. Three boys aged sixteen to twenty died from gunshot wounds. Four bright seventeen-year-old students in a private school did a research project on explosives, using the public library, and sent a very effective pipe bomb to a hated teacher. It failed, but only because the man was as paranoid as he was infuriating. A seven-year-old in a pirate costume was separated from his friends on Halloween; he was found the next morning, raped and bludgeoned to death. Kate saw two of her colleagues in tears within ten days, one of them a tough, experienced beat cop who had seen everything but still couldn’t bring himself to look again at the baby in the cot. The detectives on the fourth floor of the Department of Justice made morbid jokes about it being the Year of the Child, and they either answered the phone gingerly or with a snarl, according to their personalities….
“Like a slow-burning fire, the story makes you hurt deeply for King’s characters before you realize what’s happening to you.”
—Kirkus Reviews (starred)
A Letter of Mary
A Mary Russell and Sherlock Holmes Mystery
Late in the summer of 1923, Mary Russell Holmes and her husband, the illustrious Sherlock Holmes, are ensconced in their home on the Sussex Downs, giving themselves over to their studies: Russell to her theology, and Holmes to his malodorous chemical experiments. Interrupting the idyllic scene, amateur archaeologist Miss Dorothy Ruskin visits with a startling puzzle. Wording in the Holy Land, she has unearthed a tattered roll of papyrus with a message from Mary Magdalene. Miss Ruskin wants Russell to safeguard the letter. But when Miss Ruskin is filled in a traffic accident, Russell and Holmes find themselves on the trail of a fiendishly clever murderer.