Running From The Dead , livre ebook

Ecw Press - Mike Knowles

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161 pages

English

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'Critically acclaimed author Mike Knowles receives THREE STARRED REVIEWS with his newest crime novel Private detective Sam Jones s six-year search for an eight-year-old boy ends with gunshots in a basement and cold bodies that would eventually lead the police straight to him. Jones had never promised Ruth Verne that he would find her son alive, but he knew deep down that she believed he would worse, he had believed it too. Jones wasn t ready to look Ruth in the eye and tell her he had failed. He wasn t ready to admit that he lost everything and had nothing to show for it. But an unsigned note scrawled on a bathroom door gives Jones a second chance a chance for redemption. Thirteen words left by a young girl in trouble give him someone to chase and a reason to keep moving before the cops move on him. Jones follows the trail from an idyllic small town to the darkest corners of the city, running from the boy he failed toward the girl he could still save.

Informations

Publié par	Ecw Press
Date de parution	02 juin 2020
Nombre de lectures	0
EAN13	9781773055008
Langue	English

Informations légales : prix de location à la page 0,0450€. Cette information est donnée uniquement à titre indicatif conformément à la législation en vigueur.

Extrait

Running from the Dead
A Crime Novel
Mike Knowles

Contents Dedication 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 About the Author Copyright

Dedication
For Andrea. It could be for no one else.

1
Jones noticed the blood on his sleeve when he reached for his wallet. For a second, he thought the barista had noticed it too, but the look she gave him was too brief for shock. She sidestepped the length of the counter and pierced a Danish with a cheap pair of tongs while Jones turned his body to conceal the evidence he had missed. The young woman left the bagged pastry in front of the well-dressed man who had been standing ahead of Jones in line and reused the same parting words Jones had heard her use with the previous two customers.
Jones had initially pegged the barista’s age at twenty, but up close he was less sure. The toque and pigtails had influenced his initial hunch, but the tattoos climbing her right arm changed his mind. A winding branch populated with colourful birds started at the wrist and continued under the sleeve of her t-shirt. The quality of the work varied, and Jones could tell there was a degree of trial and error until one final artist completed the bulk of the work. There was something tough and not at all twenty about her.
“What can I get you?”
Jones had already looked at the menu board while he waited out of the range of the well-dressed man’s cologne. His regular was listed and so was his backup; the presence of both meant the coffee shop was good. Jones had never set foot in Brew before. He had only found the place after a minor fender-bender caused a massive traffic jam on Queen Street East. The red taillights stared Jones in the eye and refused to blink first. When Jones did, his mind was waiting. The split-second of empty thought was all the opening his brain needed to start rolling. His thoughts picked up faster than the cars on the road around him and Jones knew where they were headed. He searched hard for a distraction, any distraction, that would put the brakes on his mind. Jones found what he was looking for buried back from the road on a quiet looking side street. A U-turn and few right turns got him a closer look at the busy café, and at the vacant parking space far from the crawling traffic on the main road.
“Cortado.”
The barista nodded and turned her back to Jones. She stepped to the espresso machine and let her hands simultaneously reach for a container of beans and a cup. When she spoke, it was over her shoulder.
“You want it for here, or to go?”
He should have asked for it to go, but to go implied a destination and Jones was not ready to go anywhere.
The barista tamped the coffee and started the drip before she turned to ring Jones up. When his change was in his palm, he dropped the coins in the coffee mug that had been stationed next to the register and heard the money clink against the other tips. The sound produced a nod of appreciation from the barista and she said, “Thanks,” just loud enough to be heard over the noise of the espresso machine.
It was just after six, and there was a steady choral hum in the busy coffee shop fueled by the conversations taking place at most of the tables. Jones stepped left and glanced around the room; people were either focused on their companions or their phones—no one was looking at him.
The slap of metal against granite pulled Jones’ eyes toward the barista, who began adding steamed milk to his coffee. The waitress turned faster than anyone with a hot drink in their hands should have and set his order in front of him. Jones paused and stared at the coffee. The drink had all the qualities that he had expected; it was the cup that threw him. The barista had made the cortado in a cheap juice glass instead of a mug. Jones glanced toward the woman to see if she was going to offer an explanation, but she had already side-stepped toward the register and the next customer.
The glass was uncomfortably hot and it made the journey to the corner table feel longer than the few seconds it took to cross the floor. The table had just been vacated and Jones had noticed a few people debating a seat change as he approached it. Jones put the drink down and gave his fingers a small shake as he shrugged off his coat and took his seat against the exposed brick wall. The coffee shop had been filled with eclectic pieces of furniture and antique bric-a-brac to give it a sense of history. The décor felt forced; the wall was the real deal. The bricks lacked uniformity and the mortar in-between displayed long fractures. Jones was sure that he could have picked chunks of the aged concrete away with his fingernails if he tried.
The table afforded Jones with a view of the entire room and the door. There was only one table separating him from the entrance and it was occupied by a woman waiting for her companion to return to the jacket left draped over the backrest of her chair. The short window of solitude left her unable to resist the impulse to pick at the cement. Jones watched a shiny blue fingernail probe the cracks the way a bird uses its beak to probe the dirt for worms. She eased the sliver of mortar free and spent a few moments looking at it before she suddenly dropped it so that she could inspect her nails. She suddenly had no further interest in the wall or the piece of concrete next to her cup.
Jones braved a tentative sip of the coffee and found the heat of the misappropriated juice glass manageable, but the coffee still too hot to drink. He let his fingers loosely linger on the glass and felt the warmth diffuse into his palm. He liked the feeling almost as much as he liked the taste of coffee. He swung his focus from one physical sensation to the next, as though they were monkey bars that allowed him to stay above the feelings lurking beneath. He had no emotions for what he had done—this was not the first time he had killed a man, but it was the first time he had done it at home. There were different rules about murder on the other side of the world: there, it earned you a medal; here, it was more complicated. The dead were victims even when they weren’t.
Jones felt his focus turning inward and he began searching for another diversion. Jones watched the woman at the next table take another sip from her glass. Her sips were frequent and she paired the wine with glances around the room. The last look caught the eye of the barista. There was a nod from behind the counter and Jones pegged the woman as a regular. A mane of dyed blonde hair resisted the impulse to move as the woman tilted her head to drain the last of the wine in her glass. Jones glanced at the counter and saw the barista rise from a crouch with a bottle in her hand. She removed a stainless steel stopper a fraction of a second before a dull tone announced the bottle had made contact with the counter. The blonde rose from her seat to get the bottle, as though beckoned by the sound, and slipped past a man waiting in line. Judging from the amount of contact and the dirty look from the guy in line, the blonde had either misjudged the space or the width of her hips; either way, she didn’t apologize.
“Thanks, hon.”
“No problem, Diane.”
Diane’s status as a regular allowed her the perk of refilling her own drink, and when she turned to make her way back to the table, Jones saw that the wine was flirting with the lip of the glass. She paused before taking her seat to again look around the room, and Jones noticed that Diane was a pleasant looking woman made less attractive by her efforts to emphasize her sexuality. Her clothes were just a bit too tight and her make-up just a bit too loud. The overall effect held Jones’ gaze longer than he had planned, and he realized too late that the cosmetic decisions had been a trap. Diane sensed his attention and she turned her head in his direction. Jones shifted his glancing eyes back to his drink and lifted the glass to his lips. He heard the tinkle of the wine glass touching the tabletop, but he didn’t hear the chair move. He glanced toward the other table and found eyes looking back at his. Jones met Diane’s stare, and she responded with a tiny smile and a slow shift of her shoulders that lifted her chest and elongated her torso. Jones didn’t respond to the subtle carnal introduction; instead, he took another sip of his cortado and then fished out his phone.
Jones heard Diane’s chair scrape over the uneven pre-war floorboard before making a final bark as she jerked it toward the table. Even though the coast was clear, Jones didn’t lift his head again; his eyes drifted from his phone to his sleeve and again the spot of blood he had missed. The blood that had been red inside the veins of Kevin McGregor was now black on his sleeve. Jones lifted his arm and rotated it back and forth. There were no other stains, but he could pick up the faint scent of gunpowder from his hand. He rolled up his sleeve and then sat back in the chair to give his shirt and pants another look. He didn’t see any other signs of missed evidence, but the light at the table wasn’t much better than the light in the basement.
Jones slid his phone back into his pocket and then lifted the glass. The thin material that had radiated with such ferocity a few minutes ago had given away most of its heat. The coffee inside was colder than he liked, but Jones drank it quickly. He let the glass linger at his lips until the last of the coffee lost its