Dead Man Running - Couverture rigide

***This excerpt is from an advance uncorrected copy proof***

Copyright © 2018 Steve Hamilton

 

The act was done in a moonless desert darkness, but seen in the light, half a world away.

It was just before 4 p.m. on a bright February day on the Mediterranean Sea when a man named Frank Thompson logged on to his laptop. He was one of more than three thousand passengers on the cruise ship, midway between Sardinia and Sicily. His home in Scottsdale, Arizona, was six thousand miles and eight time zones away. Now that the ship’s Internet service had finally been restored, Frank just wanted to know two things: That the video cameras installed in his house were working. And that his house was safe and secure.

The man’s wife was up on the deck. She didn’t think he should be worrying about the house. She thought he should be relaxing and actually enjoying this cruise, after waiting so many years to do this. After spending twelve grand to make this trip happen.

I’ll start enjoying this, Frank said to himself, when I can get a little peace of mind.

He checked the first video feed. It came from the X10 Internet camera mounted on the bookshelf next to the fireplace. It was positioned so that the lens would look through the legs of a wooden elephant, and it communicated wirelessly with the server in the study, which in turn fed the images to the Web. Available to see anytime, anywhere in the world. At least when the Internet was working.

The live image, as Frank hit the key to bring it up, showed the front door and half of the living room. Everything looked normal to him, and yet not normal in a way he couldn’t identify.

He kept looking at the image. The couch, the door, the little welcome mat to wipe the desert sand off your feet when you came in.

What’s wrong with this picture?

Then it finally hit him. There was too much light.

It was early in the morning back home, which on most days would mean that sunlight should be coming through the big window in the kitchen. Just as it seemed to be doing here.

But when they had left the house, those curtains had been closed. Frank was sure of that.

He clicked the link to restart the video, which ran on a continuous eight-hour loop. The image jumped back eight hours to darkness, the only light a thin glow from the one lamp they had left on in the living room. He hit the fast-forward button and watched the image flicker, the minutes passing by in fast motion, with no movement.

Until there was.

It was just a flash. He backed up the video, then ran it at normal speed. The front door opened. How could it be unlocked? This video would never reveal that secret to him—he could only go back eight hours, and as of eight hours ago, the door was obviously unlocked and any goddamned person in the world could walk right into their house.

Like this stranger.

Who was in their house.

Frank paused the video to get a better look. The man was tall and well-built, a few years younger than Frank, with fair skin and long brown hair that went down to his shoulders. He was dressed in black jeans and a black button-down shirt. Black shoes. Even a black baseball cap, his brown hair trailing down the back of his neck. Frank’s mind caught on the hair first—he’d always hated long hair on men. Then on something else, a certain quality about the man himself, how he moved with complete composure. No rush. No nerves. Like he was actually comfortable being in another man’s house after dark. Frank watched as the man crossed the room, moving from the front door toward the hallway.

Frank hit the pause button again, sat there going through a series of emotions. Shock, anger, surprise. And if he was being honest with himself, a slight tinge of excitement.

This thing really works.

He switched to the kitchen feed, went back eight hours, ran it through at fast speed, watching for the same kind of flash. As he was doing this, his wife came back to their stateroom.

“Marion, look at this!” he said to her. “There’s someone in our house!”

“What are you talking about?”

“Sit down.” Frank went back to the living room feed, found the time stamp when the front door had been opened. Just after midnight, Arizona time. Eight in the morning on the ship’s time.

Marion watched the video, looking confused and skeptical until she saw the man walking through her living room. Her eyes went wide.

“How did he get in? We have to call somebody!”

“Just a minute,” he said. “Let’s find out where he went. Let me see if he . . .”

Frank didn’t finish the thought. He had switched to the bedroom feed now. The camera was mounted on top of the armoire in the master bedroom, partially covered by the arrangement of silk flowers in a basket. It looked down on the bed and the dresser with the jewelry box on top. All of Marion’s diamonds were in that box. He hadn’t let her bring any of them on this trip, a pronouncement he was already regretting. The apology was half formed on his lips when the screen went from black to something else.

A light had been turned on. In their bedroom.

The stranger stood in the doorway, looking at a woman who was already lying on the bed. Waiting for him.

“That’s our bed,” Marion said. “That’s our bed.”

The man stepped forward. He stood over the woman and looked down at her for a long time.

Frank was about to pause the video. No need to see what came next. But Marion stopped him.

“What’s wrong with her?” she said. “Look at that woman, Frank . . .”

He looked closely. The woman was lying on her back, her hands folded together on her stomach. She wasn’t moving.

Her skin . . .

White. Like wax. Her mouth was open. Her eyes . . .

Staring at nothing.

“Oh my God,” Marion said. “That woman, she’s . . .”

She didn’t finish the thought.

She didn’t have to.

Frank and Marion Thompson sat in their cabin and watched the stranger in their bedroom as he began to take off his clothes.

 

Chapter One

There are some things a man should never have to see.

Roger Halliday had an older brother who’d done three tours in Vietnam. When he’d asked him what had happened over there, that’s what his brother had told him. Those exact words, and nothing more.

Forty plus years later, his brother long gone, Roger Halliday was an FBI agent taking his last lap before retirement. He’d started as a probie on an Evidence Response Team, put in some time with the Behavioral Analysis Unit before going mainline with the Criminal Investigative Division. So he’d seen his share of dead bodies, shot or stabbed or thrown off a thirty-two-story building onto the hood of a car.

But he’d never seen anything like this.

“How many times did you watch it?” his partner asked. Agent Juwan Cook, in the Bureau for eight years now. He was black, with a smooth head he shaved every morning and a thin mustache. Cook kept his eyes straight ahead as he drove.

“Three times,” Halliday said. The first time, it had been just a matter of getting through it. When it was done, he had watched it again. Twice. Looking for details. Doing his job.

Cook shook his head and kept driving.

The house was on the north side of Scottsdale, up by the McDowell Sonoran Preserve. One of those places you drive by and imagine yourself living someday, if you work long enough and are smart with your money. Spanish architecture, the standard for any house in this neighborhood. Clay tiles on the roof, an in-ground pool in the back. Five thousand square feet, one story, easier to keep cool in the summer. A single strip of grass, just a token amount of green for the dog to walk on. Everything else typical Arizona—rock, gravel, and cactus.

Once they turned down the street, it wasn’t hard to find the Thompsons’ house. There were already half a dozen police vehicles lined up on the street, and there were so many men walking through the yard it was raising a dust cloud you could see from two miles away.

Halliday had gotten the call just after eleven thirty, the last link in a long chain that had started somewhere on the Mediterranean Sea. It was almost noon now, on a clear February day, seventy-six degrees on the car’s digital thermometer, the kind of day that makes Arizona feel pretty much perfect. Halliday wished the call had come in sooner, that he had had the chance to get here first, to see the house, to see the victim. He wasn’t looking forward to pulling rank when he finally got here—that was the kind of thing that made the local cops hate the “feebs,” if they didn’t already. But this was going to be his case. He could feel it.

After chasing him around California, Utah, Nevada, and now Arizona, this UNSUB, the unknown subject  suspected in the abduction and murder of at least five other women, had finally left a victim in the wrong place.

But why here?

Halliday tried to see this house the way the UNSUB would have seen it. A quiet street, not many neighbors. They had driven by a guard shack on the main road, but the UNSUB would have known this was just for show. With all of the trails in the preserve running along the backs of these property lines . . . There were plenty of ways to get to the house. You do it at night, and nobody sees you.

But as easy as it would be to get in, he had to know this place would have something else: a level of internal security that would make it different from all of the other places he’d used before. Sure, maybe the owner of this house put too much trust in the guard shack and didn’t have an alarm, but those Internet cameras he’d installed—the cameras that recorded everything that happened inside that house . . . The UNSUB should have suspected they were there. And even if he’d decided it was worth the risk, he should have found them and disabled them.

He’d never been this sloppy before.

So maybe this is someone else, Halliday thought. But no. No way. He thought back to everything he’d seen on that video . . . How many human beings on this planet are capable of doing something like that?

It had to be the same man.

Cook pulled off the street and stopped behind a long line of squad cars. As Halliday led the way up the sidewalk to the front door, he was already getting the once-over from the uniformed locals. Everything about him, from the ground up, screamed Fed: his shoes, his suit, the expression on his face. Nobody tried to stop him. He asked the uniform standing by the door for the name of the man in charge and was sent in to see Detective Millens from Scottsdale PD. He found the man standing alone in the kitchen, in plain clothes, a gold shield shining on his belt. He was young for a detective, around Cook’s age, and he was busy talking into his cell phone. As soon as Millens saw Halliday, he ended the call.

Halliday got out his ID and showed it to him. Then he introduced Cook.

“Back of the house,” the detective said. “Master bedroom.”

As Halliday followed Millens, he looked down at the carpeting in the hallway and saw the shoeprints.

“How many of your men have been in here?”

“Two,” the detective said, looking back at him. “Maybe three.”

Halliday scanned the rest of the hallway with a frown as the detective led them into the bedroom. That was where he saw the body on the bed. It was covered by a white sheet.

Halliday took a moment to walk around the room. He looked out the window at the backyard—more rock, gravel, cactus—and at the road that looped around the lot and started climbing up toward Dixie Mountain. He stood motionless for a full minute, looking at every window in the neighboring houses, every vantage point from the road, every spot on the preserve where a man could use a set of high-powered binoculars to peer right into this room.

He could be out there right now, Halliday thought, watching us.

But something tells me he’s not there. Not now.

“Were these curtains open?”

“Yes,” the detective said.

“Was the light on?”

“No, it wasn’t.”

Halliday left the window and went to the big jewelry box on the dresser, took out a pen, and used it to gently lift the lid. Nothing looked out of place. No conspicuous blank spots from which something might have been taken. So probably nothing stolen, even though, to his untrained eye, it looked like there were some real diamonds that would be worth putting in your pocket on the way out.

Halliday took a quick look in the bathroom, came back out and stood at the foot of the bed. The body lay in a straight line, perfectly centered on the bed, and even with the sheet over it he could tell that the arms had been folded neatly across the chest.

Five minutes in the house and he had already decided what needed to be done. Even if he knew it wouldn’t be popular.

“Everybody out!” he said, moving to the doorway so that anyone else in the house could hear him. “Now.”

“I understand if you need to take over the crime scene,” Millens said, “but the ME’s on his way right now and—”

“No,” Halliday said. “We’re not moving the body.”

Millens took a moment to process what he was hearing. He looked back and forth between Halliday and Cook.

“You’re not serious,” he said.

“He’ll come back again tonight,” Halliday said. “She needs to be here. One more night.”

He didn’t feel like giving the detective a crash course on how a certain kind of “organized” serial killer works, the kind of killer who returns to the body several times after death for his further sexual gratification.

Like Gary Ridgway, the Green River Killer.

Like Ted Bundy.

“You’re not leaving her here,” Millens said. “You don’t have to. Think about it, Agent Halliday. If he comes back, you can still catch him.”

“You don’t understand,” Halliday said. “He’ll know if the body is gone. He won’t come anywhere near this place.”

“I’m not leaving her here,” Millens said, nodding toward the body under the sheet. “It’s that simple.”

“Not your call to make,” Cook said, standing next to his partner.

“Get all of your men out of here,” Halliday said. “Make everything look exactly like it did. I mean everything, right down to those footprints in the hallway. Which never should have happened, Detective. Find a rake, a brush, whatever it takes. In thirty minutes, I want this place to look untouched.”

Millens just stood there, looking back and forth between the agents.

“The sheet over the body,” Halliday said, knowing this would be the hardest part. “I assume you did that.”

“No way,” Millens said. “No . . . fucking . . . way.”

“I’ll do it. After you’ve left.”

“When they find out you didn’t let us take her away—”

“We can’t help her now,” Halliday said. “What we can do is stop this guy before he kills ten more.”

Millens shook his head and left the room without saying another word. Halliday looked at his partner.

“Go,” Halliday said.

“You really think he’d know if the body was gone?”

“You heard the man. The curtains were open.”

“And the light was off,” Cook said. “Even...

Praise for Dead Man Running 

“Brilliant...The plot develops in multiple unexpected directions, and its logical convolutions are matched by Hamilton’s deepening portrayal of his fully realized lead.”—Publishers Weekly

“Alex McKnight’s been put through the ringer before, but never quite like this....Steve Hamilton rakes his hero over the coals, taking him to hell and back as he faces off with a man so evil that he’d scare the hell out of the devil himself. Full of twists and turns, Hamilton’s latest McKnight novel is raw, dark, and absolutely relentless....Dead Man Running proves that Steve Hamilton is one of the best crime writers on the planet, and his latest showing will leave readers begging for more.”—The Real Book Spy

“Hamilton’s long-awaited reboot of the McKnight series is a streamlined, gut-wrenching thriller.”—Booklist

Praise for Steve Hamilton and the Alex McKnight series
 
“Whatever he writes, I'll read. Steve Hamilton's that good.”—Lee Child

“Steve Hamilton writes the kind of stories that manly men and tough-minded women can't resist.”—The New York Times

“I'm often asked to recommend a detective series readers might have missed. This is it.”—Harlan Coben

“Hamilton's compelling, vigorous prose doesn't allow the option of taking a break.”—Los Angeles Times

“Steve Hamilton writes tough, passionate novels with a strong emphasis on heart and humanity.  This is crime writing at its very best.”—George Pelecanos