Detective Carson Ryder Thriller Series Books 4-6: Blood Brother, In the Blood, Little Girls Lost

A long pause. “No. Not really.”

“Letting out is like floodwater piling up behind a dam. You can picture water rising behind a dam, right?”

The slightest motion as the boy nods. The driver continues speaking.

“The dam holds back the water – keeps it inside, under control. But a dam can’t stop the rain. So let’s say it keeps raining, day and night. The water rises and that held-back lake gets longer and wider and deeper. You know how that goes, don’t you? Maybe from experience?”

“Yes.” The boy’s whisper is almost lost in the sound of the insects.

“The dam’s a strong one and wants to hold. But that rain whips down day and night. Water keeps backing up, pushing harder. What do you think happens next?”

The boy’s face quivers and his eyes shimmer with liquid. A crystal tear traces down his cheek.

“It keeps raining. And the dam breaks.”

The man reaches over and erases the boy’s tear with his thumb.

“No, son. The dam opens just in time. And that’s how it saves itself.”

Chapter 1 (#ulink_4353a385-22c5-592e-8c47-570bebba31f8)

It was a morning for firsts.

My first landing at LaGuardia Airport, my first escort from a 737 while the other passengers were ordered to remain seated, my first hustling through a terminal by security police, my first ride in a siren-screaming police cruiser through gray Manhattan rain.

And I, Detective Carson Ryder of the Mobile, Alabama, Police Department, had accomplished them all in the past twenty-three minutes.

“No one’s gonna tell me what this is about?” I asked my driver, a Sergeant Koslowski by the nameplate. We skidded sideways through an intersection. Koslowski spun the wheel, goosed the gas, and we straightened out two inches from tagging a taxi. The hack driver gave us a bored glance and I wondered what it took to scare a New York cabbie.

“No one told me nothin’,” Koslowski growled. “So how can I tell you somethin’?” The growl fit; he looked like a bulldog in a blue uniform.

“What were you told, exactly?” I asked.

“Pick up your ass at the airport and deliver it to an address in the Village. There, now you know as much as me.”

Two hours ago I had been at my desk in Mobile, drinking coffee and waiting for my detective partner, Harry Nautilus, to arrive. My supervisor, Lieutenant Tom Mason, had called me into his office and closed the door. His phone was beside the cradle, thrown down instead of hung up.

“You’re on a new case, Carson. You got to be on a plane to New York City in twenty minutes. Your ticket’s waiting. The plane too, probably.”

“What the hell? I can’t just up and –”

“There’s a cruiser waiting outside. Move it.”

Koslowski did the sideways skid again, setting us on to a slender street. He jammed the brakes in front of a three-story brick warehouse. We threaded past four radio cars with light bars flashing, a Forensics van and what I took to be a command van. There was also an SUV from the Medical Examiner’s office. Whatever had gone down, the full cast and crew was present and accounted for.

I saw a portly man shambling our way, his black hat tucked low and his gray raincoat rippling in the wind. Mr Raincoat opened my door and I stepped out.

The guy looked in his late fifties, with a round face as morose as a bloodhound. His nose was large and beaklike. His eyes sagged above, bagged below, and probably looked sad even when a woman said Yes. Unlike everyone else, he seemed in no hurry. He offered his hand. “My name is Sheldon Waltz, NYPD. Friendlier folks call me Shelly, which I invite you to do. How was your flight?”

The warmth and sincerity in his voice made me drop pleasantries in favor of the truth. “I hate jets, Shelly. I’d have preferred being shot here by cannon.” I paused. “You gonna tell me what’s going on?”

He sighed and patted my back. Even his pats seemed doleful. “Actually, I was hoping you might tell me.”

The warehouse reeked of stale water and fresh rat droppings. We walked a plank floor toward a service elevator. A print tech dusted the paint-peeling wall for latents. I thought the tech was shooting me curious side-eyed glances, but realized he was studying Waltz. Also eyeing Waltz was a young guy in a Technical Services jacket who sat cross-legged on the floor with a small video monitor in his lap. He looked ready to spring into action, just as soon as someone told him what the action was.

To the right the corridor opened into a side room, the light coming from a bank of ancient fluorescents, bulbs sizzling and giving a jittery quality to the scene. I saw three detectives inside, the Alpha dick spotlighted by a sharp bark as the others bobbed their heads. Alpha was a woman, early thirties, with an ovoid face, slender lips, dark hair pulled straight back and held with a rubber band. Efficient and aerodynamic. Her rust-colored, no-frills business suit had a gold badge hanging from the jacket pocket. Her eyes flashed with intelligence and she looked as hard and fit as a dancer.

The woman’s eyes found me and glared, like I’d spit in her soup and run away laughing. I flicked a genial wave. Alpha showed me her back and her puppets followed suit. I heard one of the men’s voices mutter the word yokel.

“Who’s that woman, Shelly?” I asked as we stepped into the elevator, a cage with a floor. Waltz thumbed the button and we jolted upward.

“It doesn’t matter right now.”

The elevator clattered to a stop and we stepped into a maze of semi-finished sheetrock walls dividing a large room. Waltz said, “The building’s being turned into lofts. The construction foreman stopped in at six a.m. to leave instructions for the workers, found the victim. The foreman’s an older guy with angina. The sight had him grabbing at his chest. The med types didn’t want him to add to the body count, so they sent him to a nearby ER.” Waltz nodded to a second doorway. “The victim’s back here.”

I followed Waltz to a framed-in space I suspected would be a complete unit when finished, fifty feet long, twenty wide. At the end of the space a pair of sawbucks carried a sheet of plywood. Atop the wood was a blanketed shape I knew was a human body. I shivered, then realized the air conditioning was cranked to meat-locker level.

“The cold’s helping stabilize the body,” Waltz said, seeing my puzzlement.

“Until what?”

“Until you got here.”

There was a plastic runner on the floor, a path to walk without disturbing evidence. I saw a snip of hair beside the runner, a slender brown comma. Beside it was a tuft of white. I crouched, pursing my lips and puffing at the debris. The result floated in the air. “Several colors of hair,” I said. “Strange.”

Waltz turned. “Come on, Detective. We don’t have much time. Forensics will deal with the minutiae.”

The runner was slick and we walked with the care of men on ice. When we reached the form Waltz grabbed an edge of the white blanket. I took a deep breath and nodded, Go. Waltz pulled back the cover. I saw a woman’s body, headless. No, my mind suddenly screamed, the head was there. It had been jammed into a slashing cut made in the abdomen. The head, its eyes wide, stared at me from the belly. The scene was horrific and utterly incongruous.

Then I realized: I knew the face in the belly.

I gasped. My knees buckled and the room veered sideways. Waltz grabbed beneath my arm. I closed my eyes. Long seconds passed before they opened again.

“You know her, right?” Waltz looked at my face. “Take your time.”

I waited until the room stopped spinning. Found the breath to rasp out words. “Her name is Dr Evangeline Prowse. She’s the director of the Alabama Institute of Aberrational Behavior. It’s where some of the country’s strangest killers are kept, walking nightmares.”

“I know of the Institute. You’re sure it’s her?”

I nodded and strode to an open window to suck in air, hoping to stop the spinning in my head. Waltz appeared with a paper cup of water. He steered me to a chair.

“Better?” he asked as I gulped water.

“Getting there,” I lied.

“How well did you know her?”

“She consulted on several cases for the Mobile police. We enjoyed one another’s company. I guess you could say we were the kind of friends who always promise to see one another more, but can’t find the time.”