Robert B. Parker Read online

  HE FELT THE THRILL OF PURSUIT.

  THE INSTINCTS OF A KILLER HAD BECOME HIS OWN.

  Newman began to run after Karl. He had closed the gap. He felt stronger, as if he could run on at this pace until he grew old and died. Karl steadied himself and aimed the .45 with both hands. He heard another click as Karl squeezed the trigger in a kind of blind panic.

  Newman laughed loudly and Karl heard him; it was an explosion of mirthless and savage sound.

  “It’s empty, you son of a bitch. … It’s empty and I’m coming!”

  “ONE BURNS WITH SYMPATHY FOR THEIR PURSUIT OF JUSTICE, HOWEVER ONE MAY BE CHILLED BY THEIR METHODS.”

  —The Boston Globe

  Dell books by Robert B. Parker

  THE GODWULF MANUSCRIPT

  GOD SAVE THE CHILD

  MORTAL STAKES

  PROMISED LAND

  THE JUDAS GOAT

  WILDERNESS

  LOOKING FOR RACHEL WALLACE

  EARLY AUTUMN

  A SAVAGE PLACE

  CEREMONY

  THE WIDENING GYRE

  LOVE AND GLORY

  VALEDICTION

  A CATSKILL EAGLE

  TAMING A SEA-HORSE

  PALE KINGS AND PRINCES

  CRIMSON JOY

  A SEYMOUR LAWRENCE BOOK

  Published by

  Dell Publishing

  a division of

  Bantam Doubleday Dell Publishing Group, Inc.

  666 Fifth Avenue

  New York, New York 10103

  Copyright © 1979 by Robert B. Parker

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without the written permission of the Publisher, except where permitted by law. For information address Delacorte Press/Seymour Lawrence, New York, New York.

  The trademark Dell® is registered in the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office.

  eISBN: 978-0-307-57088-8

  Reprinted by arrangement with Delacorte Press/Seymour Lawrence.

  v3.1

  This is for Joan in whom

  God finally got it right.

  Contents

  Cover

  Other Books by This Author

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Dedication

  Prologue

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Epilogue

  Prologue

  It was Wednesday and the sky was a flat acrylic blue when Aaron Newman saw the murder. He was jogging home from the health club along the railroad tracks. His biceps were pumped up from forty-five curls, his pectorals swollen from forty-five bench presses, his latissimus dorsi engorged from forty-five pull downs. His legs felt loose and easy and the sweat seemed to oil the hinges of his body as he ran. His breathing was easy and spring was still left in his calves. Ahead of him, where the road looped in close to the tracks, he saw a tall gaunt man with black hair slicked back fire three shots into the head of a kneeling woman. The gun was short and gray, and after the third shot the man slipped it under his coat and got into a blue Lincoln with an orange vinyl roof and drove away.

  The woods were still. There was a locust hum and a bird chatter that Newman didn’t recognize. He stood where he had stopped and looked at the woman’s body. He was too far to see clearly, but the back of her head was bloody and she was motionless, lying on her side, her knees bent. She looked like a small animal that had been run over on the road. Newman was sure she was dead.

  “Jesus Christ,” he said.

  He began to walk toward her slowly, squinting, fuzzing his vision deliberately so that he didn’t have to see the scramble of brains and blood. A crow swooped in from his left and landed on the ground beside the woman’s body with a rustle of wings. Newman jumped at the sudden dark flash of life. The bird pecked at the pulpy mass of the woman’s head and Newman looked away.

  “Jesus Christ,” he said. He picked up a pine cone and threw it at the crow; it flared up away from the woman and circled into a tree.

  “Nevermore,” Newman said.

  He stood now directly over the woman, squinting, looking only obliquely at her. He didn’t want to touch her. What if he touched her and she were alive with her brains drooling out of the back of her head. If she moved he was afraid he’d bolt. He felt helpless. He wouldn’t be able to help her. He’d better run for the cops. It was maybe another mile. That wasn’t hard. He’d run thirteen Friday. He’d already run nine today.

  Is she dead? they’d say.

  I don’t know, I didn’t dare touch her, he’d say.

  And the cops would look at each other. No, it would be too embarrassing. He’d have to touch her. He squatted down on his heels and felt around for her neck, looking at her only sideways with his eyes nearly shut. He felt for the pulse in the carotid artery. The same place he took his own after running. There was no pulse. He made himself feel hard for nearly a minute. Nothing. As he moved his hand he felt something warm and wet and jerked his hand away and rubbed it on the ground without looking. He stood up. The woods were nearly all white pine here, and the sun coming through the trees made a ragged dappled pattern on the woman’s white slacks. One shoe was missing. Her toenails were painted maroon.

  Newman turned and began to jog down the railroad tracks. As he jogged he could feel the panic build in him, and he ran faster toward the cops.

  1

  She was there when he drove back with the two local cops. The crows had been at her, and as the patrol car pulled in beside the railroad tracks three crows flew up and went to the trees.

  For the two cops it was the first shooting victim they had ever seen. They had seen bad corpses in car wrecks and people who’d died of heart attacks on the way to the hospital, and once they’d had to remove the remains of an old man who had died three weeks prior. But never before a murder. The murder scared them a little.

  The senior officer was Ed Diamond, six and a half years on the force. Four years of high school, three years in the Army and on the cops. He was not quite twenty-eight.

  “Check her, Jim,” he said.

  Jimmy Tinkham was twenty-six, high school, college, a criminal justice major, and onto the Smithfield force. He was blond. His cheeks were rosy and he shaved three times a week.

  He squatted beside her, the big handle of his service revolver sticking out at an odd angle. He felt her neck as Newman had done. Newman liked that. He’d been professional. Like they were.

  “Dead and starting to cool,” Tinkham said.

  Diamond nodded. “I figured,” he said. Above them on the tree branch in a row, the crows sat. Their bodies motionless, moving their heads.

  “We better run it through,” Tinkham said.

  Diamond nodded. He took a notebook from his shirt pocket, a pencil from the same pocket. He pushed his campaign hat back on his head a bit more; the Smithfi
eld force wore them in the summer.

  “What time you find her?” he said.

  Newman shrugged. “I don’t know,” he said. “I left the health club at five. It’s about four miles to here. I run ten-minute miles. It must have been about twenty of six.”

  Diamond wrote 5:40 in his notebook. “She just the way you left her?”

  “Yes.”

  “And you saw the man shoot her?”

  “Yes.”

  “Why didn’t you intervene?”

  “It was too quick. I was too far away. It was over before I knew what happened.”

  “And you didn’t get the license number?”

  “469—AAG,” Newman said. He hadn’t consciously registered it. It surprised him. But he knew that he noticed things. He always had.

  Tinkham raised his eyebrows and stuck out his lower lip.

  Diamond said, “Can you give us a description?”

  “Of him or the car?” Newman said.

  “Both. Him first.”

  “He was tall. Maybe six three, and skinny. No, not skinny, gaunt, but sort of strong looking, like Lincoln, you know?”

  Diamond wrote 6′3”. Lean. Muscular.

  “And his hair was black and slicked back tight against his scalp. Short. No sideburns. He had on a lime green leisure suit and white shiny loafers with brass tassels.”

  “And the car?”

  “Lincoln, new. Orange roof, blue body. Roof is vinyl.” Newman found himself talking like a television cop. Christ, he thought, even here I’m trying to sound right.

  “Okay,” Diamond said, “now where were you …”

  “Eddie,” Tinkham said. “Why fuck around with that? You know the staties are going to do this and we’re not. We don’t even have mug books, for crissake. Whyn’t you put out a pick-up on the radio for that car with that description. Then we’ll inventory the scene so that when some state police corporal shows up here and looks around he won’t think we’re a couple of fucking assholes.”

  Diamond nodded and went to the patrol car.

  “Aren’t you the writer?” Tinkham said.

  Newman nodded. “The one,” he said.

  “Oughta get a few good stories out of this one,” Tinkham said.

  Newman nodded.

  “I see you running every day,” Tinkham said. He stood with his back to the dead woman. The earth had rotated a bit and the dappling shadow of the trees fell across the police cruiser, leaving the woman in shade. “How far you go?”

  “I do about ten miles,” Newman said. “Three days a week I run up to the health club and lift a little.”

  “Losing any weight?” Tinkham said.

  “Yeah. Maybe twenty, twenty-five pounds so far,” Newman said. He was conscious of saying yeah. A regular guy. One of the boys. At ease with cops and jocks and guys that played pool for money.

  One of the crows made a swoop over the dead woman and didn’t dare. He kept in the air and circled back up to the tree branch. There were five crows there now.

  Diamond came back from the cruiser. “Couple of staties coming down from the Smithfield barracks,” he said. “Alden says don’t touch anything till they get here.”

  Tinkham nodded. “You want to write?” he said.

  Diamond said, “Yes.”

  Tinkham squatted down again beside the woman. “Female,” he said. “Black, age”—he shrugged—“twenty to thirty, white slacks, yellow halter top, black sling-strap high-heel shoe (one), one shoe missing, gold hoop earrings.”

  Diamond said, “You sure there’s two?”

  “You want to turn her head and look?” Tinkham said.

  Diamond said “No” and continued to write in his notebook.

  “Large gold ring on index finger of right hand, picture of a queen on it.”

  Diamond said, “What?”

  “Picture of a queen,” Tinkham said. “How the fuck do I know who it is. You know?” He looked at Newman.

  Newman leaned closer. You get used to anything. The woman’s hand was sprawled out away from her body and Newman could look at the ring without seeing the shattered skull.

  “Nefertiti,” he said.

  Diamond looked at him. Tinkham said, “Or at least not often.”

  “It’s the King Tut craze,” Newman said.

  Diamond said, “Never mind.”

  “Victim is prostrate on left side, appears to have been shot several times in right rear quarter of head. No evidence of rape or sexual abuse. No sign of struggle. No bruises or abrasions on visible parts of body, neck, right arm. Face obscured by blood and disfigured by apparent gunshot wound.”

  Newman realized he’d been hearing the siren for a time without noticing. Then a blue Massachusetts State Police car pulled in beside the Smithfield cruiser. Behind it, another Smithfield cruiser.

  “Inside of the right arm shows marks of probable hypodermic injections,” Tinkham said.

  Two big troopers got out of the Massachusetts State Police car. They wore campaign hats and black boots. Their faces glistened with the closeness of their shaves. Their uniform shirts were pressed with military creases. Their gunbelts glowed with polish. Their hair barely showed under the hats. The sideburns were trimmed short. One was black.

  The white trooper said to Diamond, “Touch anything?”

  Diamond shook his head.

  The black trooper looked down at the woman. “Black,” he said. “What the hell she doing out here?”

  Tinkham said, “I don’t know. She don’t live around here, though.”

  The black trooper looked at Tinkham for ten seconds, then he said, “No shit?”

  Tinkham’s face reddened. “Maybe she was selling watermelon,” he said.

  The black trooper smiled. Once. A smile that came on and went off. He looked down at the woman. “Junkie,” he said.

  The white trooper said, “Tracks?”

  The black trooper nodded. “All up and down her right arm.”

  The white trooper said to Newman, “You see the shooting?”

  “Yes,” Newman said.

  “Could you identify the killer?”

  “Yes,” Newman said. “I’m sure I could.”

  2

  It’s like the Army, Newman thought. You go in one end of the process and it starts taking you along and you get numb and after a while you come out the other end. Honorable discharge. Or whatever. He sat at a gray metal table in the homicide squadroom at state police headquarters on Commonwealth Avenue and looked at the pictures of criminals in large albums. He was still in warm-up pants and a white T-shirt that said Adidas across the front. He wore yellow Nike training shoes with a blue swoosh. The sweat that had been so lubricant two hours earlier had stiffened and chilled. He was hungry.

  At 8:47 in the evening he saw the man. Profile and full face, staring at him. Hair slicked back, deep eye sockets. Adolph Karl, male, Caucasian, dob 7/15/30, aka Addie Kaye.

  “This is him,” Newman said.

  A state police detective named Bobby Croft swung his feet down off the top of his desk and walked over. He looked at Karl’s picture.

  “Him?” Croft said. “Adolph Karl? Son of a bitch. You sure?”

  Newman said, “Yes. That’s him. I’m sure.”

  Croft walked to the end of the squadroom, opened the frosted glass half-door that said Lieutenant Vincent on it, and poked his head inside.

  “Hey, Murray,” he said. “Come have a look.”

  Lieutenant Vincent came out, round-faced and graceful, with a bald head and blue-rimmed glasses. He walked down to the table where Newman sat and looked over Newman’s shoulder at the mug book.

  “Show him,” Croft said.

  Newman pointed to the picture of Adolph Karl. “Him,” he said.

  Vincent raised his eyebrows and looked at Croft. He said to Newman, “You’re sure?”

  “I’m sure,” Newman said.

  Vincent smiled. “Why don’t you have Adolph brought in, Bobby. We can put him in a show-up and just dou
ble check. We wouldn’t want Adolph’s civil rights compromised.”

  Croft nodded and went out of the squadroom.

  Newman said, “You know this Karl, Lieutenant?”

  Vincent said, “Yes. He’s a bad man. Prostitution, narcotics, loan sharking, extortion. He’s important enough to have most of his assaults done for him now. I’m a little surprised. Must have been personal. Anybody with him in the car?”

  “There must have been,” Newman said. “He got in the passenger’s side when the car drove off.”

  “And he did it himself.” Vincent sucked on his bottom lip. “You want some coffee?”

  Newman nodded.

  Vincent said to a uniformed trooper, “Charlie, get us a cup of coffee, will you? Cream and sugar?”

  Newman said, “Black.”

  Vincent went back to his office.

  The trooper brought the coffee. “You want more,” he said, “out that door and turn right.”

  Newman said, “Thanks.”

  He drank the coffee and three more cups. He read the morning paper. He looked at the policemen coming and going. He stared at the fluorescent lights. At a quarter to twelve Croft came into the squadroom.

  “Let’s take a look, Mr. Newman.”

  The show-up room was dark. Three men stood on a small lighted stage. One of them was Adolph Karl. He was wearing a dark blue polyester leisure suit with light blue piping, and a light blue polyester shirt with dark blue trim. His hair was black and combed tightly against his skull. It looked wet. His eyes were deep in the eye sockets. His ears stuck out. He swallowed once and his big Adam’s apple moved. Newman knew that Karl couldn’t see him in the dark, but he felt scared. Six hours earlier Newman had seen Karl shoot the back of a woman’s head off.

  “Recognize the murderer among those men?” Croft said.

  “On the end in the blue leisure suit. That’s him.”

  Croft said, “You’re sure?”

  Newman nodded, then realized Croft couldn’t see him in the dark. “Yes,” he said. “I’m sure.”

  “No doubts? You could swear to it in court?”

  “Yes.”

  “All right,” Croft said. He stressed the second word.