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179 pages

English

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Set in Pacific City, a fictional southern California town nationally recognized for its safety. A promiscuous teenager is murdered: suspects include a respected football coach, family members, an escaped convict and a high school student planning to replicate the Columbine massacre. A white supremacist group within the police department intent on furthering its racist agenda inhibits the investigation, led by a former Marine hero. The murdered girl was seeing a therapist for treatment of a sex addiction. Her promiscuity, revealed in her diary and exposed on a homemade sex tape, led to her murder. The lead detective on the case, a widower, falls in love with one of his subordinates who, unknown to him, an undercover FBI agent is sent to investigate the racist cops in the department. Their budding relationship is derailed when she is slain by one of the racist cops leading him to exact revenge outside of the justice system in a manner reminiscent of how he gained Marine Corps fame as "The Ghost."

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Publié par	First Edition Design Publishing
Date de parution	01 novembre 2015
Nombre de lectures	0
EAN13	9781506900698
Langue	English

Informations légales : prix de location à la page 0,0360€. Cette information est donnée uniquement à titre indicatif conformément à la législation en vigueur.

Extrait

The Final Word

Frank Infusino
The Final Word
Copyright ©2015 Frank Infusino

ISBN 978-1506-900-68-1 PRINT
ISBN 978-1506-900-69-8 EBOOK

LCCN 2015956277

November 2015

Published and Distributed by
First Edition Design Publishing, Inc.
P.O. Box 20217, Sarasota, FL 34276-3217
www.firsteditiondesignpublishing.com

ALL R I G H T S R E S E R V E D. No p a r t o f t h i s b oo k pub li ca t i o n m a y b e r e p r o du ce d, s t o r e d i n a r e t r i e v a l s y s t e m , o r t r a n s mit t e d i n a ny f o r m o r by a ny m e a ns ─ e l e c t r o n i c , m e c h a n i c a l , p h o t o - c o p y , r ec o r d i n g, or a ny o t h e r ─ e x ce pt b r i e f qu ot a t i o n i n r e v i e w s , w i t h o ut t h e p r i o r p e r mi ss i on o f t h e a u t h o r or publisher .

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.
Death and evil will not have the last word…

Samuel Aguila
Denver Archbishop

For the believer, death does not have the final word.

R. C. Sproul
Ligonier Ministries
Prologue
Republic of Vietnam, 1970

Shadows!

Shadows, dancing in the moonlight or in the grey glare of flares under the jungle canopy, tricked the mind. Every tree, vine or piece of scrub could morph into the enemy at any time. Take chances with shadows and you might die.
On some nights the shadows became Vietcong guerrillas emerging from the undergrowth to kill, maim and harass the Marines defending the local village. Casualties mounted. Fear engulfed the defenders like a fog choking, blinding. But one Marine, a seventeen-year old lance corporal, frustrated, angry, overcame his fear and resolved to act. Marines were trained to attack. He would attack and use the shadows to his advantage.
After dark each night, with the knowledge of the sentries, but not his platoon commander, he slipped out of his platoon’s perimeter and crawled under the razor wire into the darkness to blend with the shadows. Concealed in the dense foliage, he waited; his face blackened, a sharpened K-bar and 45-caliber pistol strapped to his belt. The first night a four-man sapper squad crept toward his position intent on breaching the Marine line and detonating their explosives. He slit the throat of each man from behind, last man first, as they slithered by single file. They never saw him, never heard him.
Every night for over a month, he hid himself until daylight springing on the enemy without warning if they showed up, lying still when they didn’t. He killed twenty-five men before the attacks stopped. Mere mortals couldn’t fight such a being, a phantom lurking in the shadows. The Vietcong called him MA—Ghost.
The lance corporal was decorated for his daring forays, but the experience changed him. He became reclusive, seldom ate. His uniform hung on his slender frame like a sack. His eyes betrayed his inner turmoil, dark, penetrating, wild like those of an animal prepared to strike.
His appearance and demeanor shocked his lieutenant who worried the Ghost had become a stone cold killer. On the lieutenant’s recommendation, the young marine received a battlefield promotion to sergeant and was sent home to rest.
Scuttlebutt, of course, followed him. Stories of his exploits swept through the Corps. Veterans of the war regarded him with awe, as did eager recruits undergoing the rigors of boot camp, his bravery and daring the epitome of Esprit de Corps.
Yet the newly promoted sergeant did not revel in his acclaim. He realized how close he had come to crossing a line from which there was no return. The killing came easy after a while. He vowed never again to let rage consume him and believed nothing would provoke him to revisit that line or those shadows.
He was wrong.
Chapter 1
Pacific City, California
November 2002

She was every boy’s dream, every man’s fantasy; a bronzed California girl, angelic face, sun bleached blond hair cascading to her shoulders. Only her pale blue eyes revealed sadness born of experience that neither her looks nor youthful bravado could hide.
She sat on the couch, legs splayed, skirt hiked to mid-thigh, the top two buttons of her blouse unfastened. She smiled and patted the seat cushions beside her. “Come sit next to me, Jeffrey,” she coaxed.
Her therapist, forty-one year old Jeffrey Palmer, PhD, forced a smile. Advances from attractive patients were common. Addicts would do anything to avoid facing their demons, even a seventeen year-old high school cheerleader. He accepted her as a patient because of the nature of her addiction, rare in one so young. He hoped successfully treating her might lead to a journal article to enhance his professional standing.
“Sitting next to you won’t help us resolve your problem,” he said in a calm, dispassionate tone.
“I don’t have a problem,” the girl said, crossing her arms and twisting her mouth into her best effort at a scowl.
“Your parents don’t agree.”
“My parents are out of it. To them smoking a joint makes me a hard core doper.”
“They didn’t bring you here for smoking a joint,” Palmer said, his voice composed, clinical.
She scooted to the edge of the couch, her dress sliding over her hips exposing her panties. “What did they tell you?”
Palmer’s gaze fell to the patch of white before he caught himself. She was not being seductive now. Her attitude had changed, her swagger gone.
“They told me everything,” he lied, his eyes locked on hers. “They love you and want to help you.”
The color drained from the girl’s face. She brushed a dangling strand of hair from her forehead, wrapped her tanned arms around herself, remained like that for a minute or two, then recovered, thrusting her chin toward Palmer, challenging, arrogant. Her parents would never reveal the truth.
“They didn’t tell you everything,” she said. “Not everything.”
Chapter 2
He was a fugitive on the run, deep-set brown eyes darting from side to side, jaw clenched, right leg shaking. Rivulets of sweat rolled down his back, each droplet a reminder of his fear and a warning of danger. One misstep would send him back behind bars—might even get him killed although he wasn’t armed. You couldn’t predict what trigger-happy cops might do to a pervert like him .
Four hours earlier, he escaped from Atascadero, a California maximum- security facility for violent sex offenders. Now, he slouched down in the backseat of a white Honda Civic inching south on a gridlocked interstate 405. The traffic ebbed and flowed, drivers jockeying for the slightest advantage. Horns blared, hand gestures flashed as men and women vented the frustrations of the day. Noxious fumes filled the air from a huge cement truck belching black smoke from an elevated exhaust pipe. An American Airlines Boeing 757 swept low over the highway on its approach to Los Angeles Airport, the whine of its powerful Rolls-Royce engines adding to the cacophony of sound and the dismal air quality.
The jammed roadway was both a haven and a trap. The man doubted anyone could spot him in this mess, but if they did, he was trapped. His altered appearance, he’d cut his long black hair, shaved his mustache, donned glasses, wouldn’t fool his pursuers like it had the lax guards at Atascadero.
Those morons.
He used a forged identification badge and stolen lab coat to walk out of the main administration building with a group of visitors.
No time to gloat though. He was at the mercy of the traffic and fate. He scrunched further below the side window, eyes riveted on the back of the driver’s head.
The driver gripped the wheel, one hand at ten o’clock, the other at two, his knuckles white, palms moist. He avoided the interplay between cars and drivers keeping a safe distance from other vehicles, no need to risk a fender bender and a visit from the highway patrol.
The driver was twenty-five years old, had been for all of two days, a gang-banger like his passenger. And like his passenger, he disguised himself. A black wig covered his shaved, bullet-shaped head, the gold crucifix that had dangled from his left ear, gone. He wore an open necked white dress shirt and a tan sport jacket; a banger since the age of thirteen; no stranger to the law. Yet, his offenses had been minor. He faced hard time if caught now.
His mouth dry, he swallowed often. No amount of shifting in his seat relieved the numbness in his butt. He kept jerking his head around to eye his homeboy. The man smiled each time but the driver saw fear in his eyes. He anticipated this and reached into his jacket pocket and flipped a baggy of white powder, along with a small mirror, over his shoulder into the backseat.
Knock yourself out, hombre, he thought but did not say.
His passenger flinched when the objects struck him on the chest and landed on the seat beside him. He looked around with a sheepish grin, as if someone might catch him breaking the law.
He took the baggy, sprinkled some of the powder on the mirror and snorted. The meth rush hit him within minutes. His face flushed, his nerves tingled, the power, the sexual excitement denied him for so long returned. He smiled at his reflection in the window .
I’m coming home, chicas.
Chapter 3
Reaper compiled the death list.
He sat alone in his room hunched over his desk, arm around the sheet of paper like a schoolboy protecting test answers from prying eyes. People would soon know him; he felt euphoric, ready.
He smiled and pulled from a drawer the files downloaded from the Internet long ago. He examined them often; newspaper and magazine accounts of the April 20, 1999, Columbine High School massacre; the photos of the shooters, Eric Harris 18, and Dylon Klebold 17, grainy and yellowed, but reassuring.
Reaper kept smiling as he read about the havoc