Thicker Than Blood - Crouch Blake - Страница 54
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The vents channel warmth into my face, and the speakers emit a solacing oceanic ambience: sparse piano, waves and seagulls, the calming voice of a man reading Scripture.
And as Orson, Luther, and the Maddings harden on the cabin porch, in the massive desertic silence, I bask in the breathing of the children.
FOREWORD TO LOCKED DOORS
This book was born over Thanksgiving in 2002. Instead of going home to spend the holiday with our families, my wife and I decided to do Thanksgiving just the two of us in the North Carolina Outer Banks. I'd heard they were haunting and beautiful, and on some subconscious level, I'm sure I was hoping the setting would inspire me for the Desert Places sequel, which I was struggling to conceptualize.
We decided to stay in a B&B on the remote island of Ocracoke, so the day before Thanksgiving, we left our apartment in Chapel Hill and headed east.
It was during the ferry ride over to Ocracoke when I started to get excited.
These barrier islands felt like they existed at the edge of the world—narrow spits of land with the Pamlico Sound on one side, the Atlantic on the other, and a slate-gray November sky hanging over it all.
The island itself was even better.
Small. Quaint. Quiet. Completely off the beaten path.
The beaches were practically empty.
The lighthouse was spooky.
The live oaks with their Spanish moss draping from the branches looked like a southern gothic nightmare.
But what really blew my hair back was the island just across the inlet to the south of Ocracoke.
Portsmouth.
It had an abandoned village on the north side, and it was during my tour of that ghost town by the sea, that the story of what would become Locked Doors finally hit home. I knew I had to set the Desert Places sequel there. Suddenly, I saw it all so clearly, and it was the exquisite scenery of the Outer Banks that made that happen.
So I hope you enjoy the book, and if you ever have the opportunity to visit the North Carolina Outer Banks, in particular Ocracoke Island, don't hesitate.
I haven't begun to do them justice.
Blake Crouch
LOCKED DOORS
* * *
Seven years ago, suspense novelist Andrew Thomas's life was shattered when he was framed for a series of murders. The killer's victims were unearthed on Andrew's lakefront property, and since he was wanted by the FBI, Andrew had no choice but to flee and to create a new identity. Andrew does just that in a cabin tucked away in the remote wilderness near Haines Junction, Yukon. His only link to society is by e-mail, through which he learns that all the people he ever loved are being stalked and murdered. Culminating in the spooky and secluded Outer Banks of North Carolina, the paths of Andrew Thomas, a psychotic named Luther Kite, and a young female detective collide. LOCKED DOORS is a novel of blistering suspense that will scare you to death.
L U T H E R
For the angels who inhabit this town,
although their shape constantly changes,
each night we leave some cold potatoes
and a bowl of milk on the windowsill.
Usually they inhabit heaven where,
by the way, no tears are allowed.
They push the moon around like
a boiled yam.
The Milky Way is their hen
with her many children.
When it is night the cows lie down
but the moon, that big bull, stands up.
—Anne Sexton, "Locked Doors"
1
THE headline on the Arts and Leisure page read: "Publisher to Reissue Five Thrillers by Alleged Murderer, Andrew Z. Thomas."
All it took was seeing his name.
Karen Prescott dropped The New York Times and walked over to the window.
Morning light streamed across the clutter of her cramped office—query letters and sample chapters stacked in two piles on the floor beside the desk, a box of galleys shoved under the credenza. She peered out the window and saw the fog dissolving, the microscopic crawl of traffic now materializing on Broadway through the cloud below.
Leaning against a bookcase that housed many of the hardcovers she’d guided to publication, Karen shivered. The mention of Andrew’s name always unglued her.
For two years she’d been romantically involved with the suspense novelist and had even lived with him during the writing of Blue Murder at the same lake house in North Carolina where many of his victims were found.
She considered it a latent character defect that she’d failed to notice anything sinister in Andy beyond a slight reclusive tendency.
My God, I almost married him.
She pictured Andy reading to the crowd in that Boston bookshop the first time they met. In a bathrobe writing in his office as she brought him fresh coffee (French roast of course). Andy making love to her in a flimsy rowboat in the middle of Lake Norman.
She thought of his dead mother.
The exhumed bodies from his lakefront property.
His face on the FBI website.
They’d used his most recent jacket photo, a black and white of Andy in a sports jacket sitting broodingly at the end of his pier.
During the last few years she’d stopped thinking of him as Andy. He was Andrew Thomas now and embodied all the horrible images the cadence of those four syllables invoked.
There was a knock.
Scott Boylin, publisher of Ice Blink’s literary imprint, stood in the doorway dressed in his best bib and tucker. Karen suspected he was gussied up for the Doubleday party.
He smiled, waved with his fingers.
She crossed her arms, leveled her gaze.
God he looked streamlined today—very tall, fit, crowned by thick black hair with dignified intimations of silver.
He made her feel little. In a good way. Because Karen stood nearly six feet tall, few men towered over her. She loved having to look up at Scott.
They’d been dating clandestinely for the last four months. She’d even given him a key to her apartment where they spent countless Sundays in bed reading manuscripts, the coffeestained pages scattered across the sheets.
But last night she’d seen him at a bar in SoHo with one of the cute interns. Their rendezvous did not look work-related.
"Come to the party with me," he said. "Then we’ll go to Il Piazza. Talk this out. It’s not what you—"
"I’ve got tons of reading to catch up—"
"Don’t be like that, Karen, come on."
"I don’t think it’s appropriate to have this conversation here, so…"
He exhaled sharply through his nose and the door closed hard behind him.
Joe Mack was stuffing his pink round face with a gyro when his cell phone started ringing to the tune of "Staying Alive."
He answered, cheeks exploding with food, "This Joe."
"Hi, yes, um, I’ve got a bit of an interesting problem."
"Whath?"
"Well, I’m in my apartment but I can’t get the deadbolt to turn from the inside."
Joe Mack choked down a huge mouthful, said, "So you’re locked in."
"Exactly."
"Which apartment?" He didn’t even try to mask the annoyance in his voice.
"Twenty-two eleven."
"Name?"
"Um…I’m not the tenet. I’m Karen Prescott’s friend. She’s the—"
"Yeah, I get it. You need to leave any time soon?"
"Well, yeah, I don’t want to—"
Joe Mack sighed, closed the cell phone, and devoured the last of the gyro.
Wiping his hands on his shirt he heaved himself from a debilitated swivel chair and lumbered out of the office, locking the door behind him.
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