The businesses down there on the fringes of Port City were clean and mostly recent-built, and Bunny’s was no exception: a handsome darkwood single- story building, perched on a little hilly lawn with an almost absurdly large parking lot surrounding it. Long smoke- color windows fronted the street...
We wound up on the same block where the Ragen shooting had taken place not twenty-four hours before, parking not far from the drug store whose broken window had since been haphazardly patched with cardboard. We had plenty of foul sideways glances and suspicious looks from the men and boys loiteri...
The few bedroom windows had venetian blinds, which were drawn nice and tight, making it easy to sleep in, and that’s what we were doing. Not an infrequent practice of mine, after a late night out with a lady—a privilege of age and rank. Unless I had an appointment, I didn’t bother going in to the...
The laundry bag was empty. The gun wasn’t. He stood silently beside Rigley in front of Shep Jackson’s desk, at the rear of die bank, near the vault. The bank was silent, too, and dark, only the lights in the rear having been turned on as yet. Jackson was wearing a money-green sportcoat and pale g...
But in the ten years Carl and his family had been living in their ranch-style home on the outskirts of West Lake, Iowa (a village just west of Lake Ahquabi, just south of Des Moines), the cubicle-size study had provided an invaluable sanctuary from evenings disrupted by the sounds of two teenager...
The $2 hamburger was cold, the potato chips stale, the Coke flat and mostly ice. Jon looked out the window. The sky was overcast. Right in front of him, some men in coveralls were stuffing the belly of a 727 with luggage; behind them stretched an endless concrete sea of runway, planes taxiing aro...
Every time he had hold of something, it evaporated, as if he were chasing a ghost. He was starting to think that’s what Bradley Slavens was—somebody who’d fallen off the grid and died and nobody noticed. At least nobody on the Net. An unnoticed death, however, was not as likely as somebody’s conc...
I sat. I hadn’t seen him in about a year. He looked skinny and quite a bit older; he’d shaved his mustache off. Still, he was a roughly handsome man, with flecks of scar here and there on his face, notably his lower lip. His hair was slicked back and parted at the left. A former barber, he was al...
Rich shifted nervously in bed, the sheet wet with his uneasiness, causing his brown-tressed bed partner to groan in displeasure at his restless turning, tossing. “Am I bugging you, Nance, hon?” She pulled the covers up and over her head and answered his question by peeping one runny mascaraed eye...
Addwatter?” the doctor asked. “Couldn’t really clear her, Doc,” I said. “Let’s face it—the smoking gun in this case was in her hand, after she killed her husband and his hooker.” “Yes, but surely her mental condition, this reprehensible manipulation of medications....” “Oh, I had extenuating circ...
Ahead, immediately ahead, was San Diego. Boot camp. It was a three-day journey cross-country. Barney and I weren’t the only ones aboard over thirty, and a fair share of these recruits were in their twenties; but the bulk of ’em were kids. Goddamn kids—seventeen, eighteen years old. It made me fee...
Midafternoon, I was tooling the powder-blue Lincoln up rutted Featherbed Lane to the whitewashed stone house where a child, not so long ago, had been stolen. Evalyn rode in front this time, and I wasn’t in the natty gray uniform with the black buttons. She was a little depressed and, frankly, so ...
He knew three things immediately: he was in the back seat of a car, on his side; it was dark, so it wasn’t morning yet, or anyway the sun wasn’t up; and his head ached so bad, his eyes hurt. He sat up; it took some doing, but he sat up. His hands were behind him, and he could feel the cold steel ...
As late as the meet last night (this morning, technically) had broken up, he didn’t figure Comfort would be going anyplace at the crack of dawn. Nolan hadn’t argued with Jon’s logic on that point, and over a breakfast of scrambled eggs and sausage, which Nolan prepared, Jon asked Nolan what the g...