A Deadly Row Read online

  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  Copyright Page

  Dedication

  Epigraph

  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

  Fatal Game

  I didn’t have any facts about the case, or how the killer operated, but then again, it wasn’t my job to solve the case. I was there for moral support, along with a prod every now and then if I thought my husband’s investigation was going off-course. No one knew about my input but Zach, and for my protection, he didn’t tell anyone that I was his unpaid and extremely unofficial consultant.

  And I liked that just fine myself. I had no desire for the limelight or any credit for solving one of my husband’s cases any more than I wanted his name on one of my puzzles, even if he did spot mistakes from time to time. Most of them went straight to my publisher, but every now and then I had Zach solve one to make sure I was playing fair. We were a team, both in our professions and in our marriage, and I wouldn’t have it any other way.

  And now we were going to try to find a killer before he had the chance to strike again.

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  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental. The publisher does not have any control over and does not assume any responsibility for author or third-party websites or their content.

  A DEADLY ROW

  A Berkley Prime Crime Book / published by arrangement with the author

  PRINTING HISTORY

  Berkley Prime Crime mass-market edition / September 2010

  Copyright © 2010 by Tim Myers.

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be reproduced, scanned, or distributed in any printed or electronic form without permission. Please do not participate in or encourage piracy of copyrighted materials in violation of the author’s rights. Purchase only authorized editions.

  For information, address: The Berkley Publishing Group,

  a division of Penguin Group (USA) Inc.,

  375 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014.

  eISBN : 978-1-101-44274-6

  BERKLEY® PRIME CRIME

  Berkley Prime Crime Books are published by The Berkley Publishing Group,

  a division of Penguin Group (USA) Inc.,

  375 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014.

  BERKLEY® PRIME CRIME and the PRIME CRIME logo are trademarks of Penguin Group (USA) Inc.

  http://us.penguingroup.com

  For my inspirations,

  Patty and Emily;

  and Michelle Vega,

  for all of her hard

  work on this project!

  AUTHOR’S NOTE

  Charlotte, North Carolina—the Queen City—is obviously a real locale, and in many respects, the city is a key character in this book. Some of the places mentioned here exist, including Luigi’s—the best pizza in the city, in the author’s humble opinion. Several of the places mentioned are actual neighborhoods and businesses, and at the time of this writing, were all thriving in real life. Other information—such as the location of police headquarters and its distance from the mayor’s office—has been fictionalized in order to aid in telling a good story. Trust me when I say that the architecture in Charlotte is beautiful, and the people as a rule are genuine, but there are killers in many locales, big cities and small towns alike, and Charlotte is no exception.

  It’s important to remember that when all things are considered, Charlotte is a city with many sides and facets, worthy of exploration.

  Puzzles are like songs—A good puzzle can give you all the pleasure of being duped that a mystery story can. It has surface innocence, surprise, the revelation of a concealed meaning, and the catharsis of solution.

  —STEPHEN SONDHEIM

  Prologue

  THE MURDERER STARED AT THE MAP, CAREFULLY CALCUlating the next strike. The complication of the scheme was delightful, adding another layer to the fabric of the plan. Crime was too easy when it was random. There was grace and beauty—dare the killer be bold enough to admit elegance?—to the transgressions committed, and if the world was too blind to see the pattern of the actions, it would all be revealed in the end.

  No one could stop the plan once it was in place, certainly not the police.

  No one would even realize what was happening—the completion of the grand scheme—until it was too late.

  By then, the ultimate prize would be achieved.

  The life of the last target would rest in a single outstretched hand, and then it would be squeezed until there was nothing left.

  Chapter 1

  “ARE YOU STILL FIDDLING WITH THAT PUZZLE, SAVANNAH? I need some help in the bedroom with that blasted shelf I’m putting up. You’re the one who wanted it in the first place, remember?”

  “Hang on a second. I’ve almost got it.” My dear husband loomed over me as I worked on the couch with paper and pencil, toiling over my latest creation. My name’s Savannah Stone, and it’s my job to create a variety of the math and logic puzzles you find in your newspaper every morning, just as long as you subscribe to one of the forty-two papers my syndicate sells my puzzles to every day. While I might not be in The New York Times, I am in the New Bern Register, along with the Covington Chronicle and the Grandfather Mountain Gazette. I taught high school math in Charlotte until puzzles came into my life, and though the money I make now is somewhat less than I made before, the freedom my current career provides is well worth the cut in pay.

  I wasn’t sweating literally like my husband was, but the math on this new puzzle was taxing me just the same. Working a puzzle and creating it were two very different things.

  I looked up and saw beads of sweat traipsing down Zach’s nose and threatening to despoil the puzzle I’d been toiling so hard over for the past two hours. As I pulled my work safely out of the way, I noticed that the silver touches of frost around his temples were matted with sweat as well. Why was it that my husband’s graying hair looked so distinguished? On me, it looked like I was nearing my expiration date—though I wasn’t even up to my fortieth birthday, whi
le he was two years past his.

  He looked at me, the exasperation clear on his face. “Seriously? You can’t put that down for one minute to help me? It won’t take that long, Savannah, I promise.”

  “Zach, I’ve almost got it. That shelf is going to have to wait until I’m finished. You’re supposed to be retired anyway, remember? So why don’t you be a dear and go retire somewhere else until I wrap this up?”

  My husband had been the police chief in Charlotte, North Carolina, when a bullet had hit him in the chest and ended his career. The irony had been that he’d been stopping a robbery when he was off duty and heading home to me. My husband was a hero, no matter how much he downplayed what had happened. Zach had managed to save three people with his intervention. Just thinking about that night sent me into shivers. It still felt like yesterday when I’d gotten the call, the one every police officer’s wife dreads. As I’d raced to the hospital, I frantically worried if I’d be a widow by the time I got there. Fortunately the gunshot wound hadn’t been nearly as bad as it might have been, but I didn’t think I could ever go through that again. At least no one would be shooting at him anymore. Or so I hoped.

  Unfortunately, the wound had left him technically disabled with an injury too close to his heart, though you’d never know it by the way he acted. Zach had taken early retirement—though not willingly—but he’d soon been bored with his idle lifestyle. Instead of puttering around the garden on our mini-farm on the outskirts of Parson’s Valley in the foothills of the Blue Ridge Mountains or tinkering in his woodworking shop, Zach began working as a consultant to various police forces in North Carolina, and occasionally even the rest of the country. He was good at what he did, and the freedom of my job allowed me to travel with him whenever he was on a case.

  “You know how hard it is for me to slow down and take it easy,” he said as he mopped his brow with a colorful bandana he always kept in his back pocket, even when he was wearing his nicest navy blue suit. “I get bored if I sit still too long. Why isn’t anything happening? Surely there’s some case somewhere that needs me.” Almost as an afterthought, he glanced down and pointed at my formula.

  My eraser struck and removed one of the offending digits. “That’s why I said I wasn’t finished yet. Honestly, you need something else to keep you busy. Isn’t there anything besides police work that interests you? I thought you loved it here near the mountains as much as I do.”

  “This place is nice.” He gestured around our cottage, tucked away in the western North Carolina Mountains. We had four acres, half of it wooded, and enough open land left to have a magnificent lawn and garden. It had always been our dream to own something like it some day, and I enjoyed it even more than I ever could have imagined. It would have been fine with me if we never left our serene enclave again, but my husband was a different story altogether.

  “But . . .” I said, waiting for him to fill in the rest.

  “It’s not the big city. Savannah, I can’t help it. I’m used to being in the middle of the action.”

  I had a tough time understanding the pull that tugged at him constantly. “Zach, that’s why we came here, remember? I know your police consultant business isn’t getting you as much work as you’d hoped, and goodness knows our life here isn’t as stimulating as your old job used to be, but we’ve had our fill of that kind of excitement in our lives, haven’t we?”

  He frowned at me, and it was all I could do not to laugh. My husband could be an imposing man—six foot three and two hundred ten pounds of lean muscle—but to me, there were times he looked like a little lost puppy. Sometimes it was all I could do not to rub him behind the ears.

  “Don’t be so glum,” I said. “I’ll be finished with this puzzle in a jiff, and then I’ll help you with your shelf.”

  He shrugged as he stared at my layout grid. “I don’t get it, Savannah. They’re just numbers. Why do they take so long to make?”

  “I’m not solving the puzzle, Zach, I’m creating it. You know that takes a great deal more time and concentration.”

  “You should give it up,” he said. “We don’t really need the money. We’re both supposed to be taking it easy now, not just me.”

  I laughed. “Now why on earth would I do that? I’m in my puzzle-making prime.” I was good at what I did, just as good as he had been at his job, and I wasn’t about to stop.

  Zach clearly didn’t know how to respond to that. After a look I’d seen a thousand times in our marriage that said he’d clearly lost interest in our topic of conversation, he said with a sigh, “Come up when you’re finished, then.” Zach tromped back to our cozy bedroom suite upstairs, which happened to be the hottest part of our cottage at the worst time of day. While I loved the warm sun that nurtured the rows of beans, corn, and tomatoes in our vegetable garden, I avoided the attic space devoutly in the summer afternoons; my husband’s internal thermostat was much more tolerant than mine. The mountain breezes we counted on to keep us cool had stalled somewhere else at the moment, and we were enduring a particularly miserable summer.

  Before he left, I suggested, “Why don’t we get cleaned up and go into Asheville after I finish this? We can eat out, and maybe even catch a movie. What do you say?”

  He grumbled something and continued up the stairs, and I knew enough not to pursue it. It was clear that the man was bored, but I wouldn’t have traded our new life for the old one in Charlotte for all of the money in the world. I’d help my husband with his shelf project just as I’d promised, but there was no way I was going to rush what I was doing. Stewing upstairs would give him time to cool off a little, as odd as that sounded in the heat of the day. I glanced at the puzzle with a sense of pride. I reveled in creating them too much to rush the process. I stared at the proposed puzzle formula, enjoying the elegant beauty of it. I knew that some of my peers created their puzzles by computer, but I liked to do them with a pencil in one hand and an eraser in the other. Building the logical progression into my creations was just part of the experience for me. I liked the test of balancing the results of the puzzles to challenge my readers. As I worked, I created my puzzles for one particular challenger, though she existed only in my imagination. As I finished each one, I could see her worry her way through the numbers, and I could almost hear her shout of joy as she finished.

  I transferred the completed puzzle to a pristine sheet of paper, then studied the finished puzzle one last time before I faxed it to Derrick—my syndicate editor—a man I was not particularly fond of, despite the checks he sent me for every completed puzzle.

  After glancing at my computer email and stalling a half dozen other ways, I realized I couldn’t delay my trek upstairs any longer.

  I was going to have to help with that blasted shelf after all. I knew it was going to be miserably hot up there, but there was no way to avoid it. I’d promised for better or for worse on our wedding day, and enduring scalding temperatures helping install a shelf I didn’t really need was just one more check in the worse column, though that side was happily sparse.

  My foot was on the bottom step when the telephone rang, and in my ignorance, I nearly skipped as I raced to answer it. If I’d known who was calling—and more importantly why—I would have pulled the blasted thing out of the wall and chucked the telephone out the window instead of picking the receiver up.

  “Hello,” I said, not suspecting a thing was amiss.

  “Er, hello, Savannah. I need to speak with Zach.”

  Before I could protest, he hastily added, “I wouldn’t ask if it wasn’t important.”

  I didn’t need caller ID to tell me who was on the other end of the line. At least he’d had the decency to sound embarrassed by his request.

  “Sorry, Davis. You can’t. He’s busy right now.” Zach would have killed me if he’d overheard my end of the conversation, but I was tired of him being bothered by his former employees. It wasn’t just because they were reluctant to pay for his services, though they felt free to tap into his knowledge any t
ime it suited them. I didn’t care about the money—we were doing just fine on his retirement and my income—but I didn’t like anyone taking advantage of him.

  I started to hang up when I heard a whining protest. “Savannah, please. This is something he needs to hear.”

  I took a deep breath, and then said, “Davis Rawles, my husband is retired. He doesn’t work with you anymore. He’s a consultant now. If you’d like his fee schedule, I’d be glad to fax it over to you.”

  “Send it. You know the number. There shouldn’t be any problem covering it this time.”

  That caught me off guard. I’d never dreamed I’d hear him say he was actually willing to pay for Zach’s services. He must be in real trouble. “What’s going on, Davis?”

  “Savannah, Zach is my very last option. We’ve got a killer case on our hands, and there’s no one but your husband who can solve it.”

  Davis Rawles had been my husband’s immediate subordinate on the police force, and upon Zach’s retirement, Davis had stepped into his shoes. At least he’d tried to. But no one could get inside a criminal’s mind like my husband, and Davis had grown to rely on him too much in the past few months since my husband’s retirement.

  I’d never heard that level of desperation in Davis’s voice before, and there was something about it that chilled my blood. This sounded too dangerous to me, and it wasn’t my husband’s battle anymore. “You know what? I’m sorry, but the answer’s still no. You’ll just have to muddle through this time by yourself,” I said, and then on an impulse, I hung up the phone.

  Please, oh please, don’t let Zach have heard that ring.

  To my dismay, his size 12 shoes clomped down the steps two at a time a second later. “Who was that on the phone?”