Warning Signs: A Novel of Suspense (Alan Gregory, Band 10) - Softcover

Buch 9 von 19: Dr. Alan Gregory Novels

White, Stephen

 
9780440237419: Warning Signs: A Novel of Suspense (Alan Gregory, Band 10)
Softcover
ISBN 10: 0440237416 ISBN 13: 9780440237419
Verlag: Random House Publishing Group, 2003

Inhaltsangabe

Sometimes the warning signs come too late...

The brutal slaying of Boulder’s controversial D.A. strikes deep in the heart of everything clinical psychologist Alan Gregory holds dear: After all, Alan’s wife, Lauren, worked for the dead man.

When a new patient walks into Alan’s office—a terrified mother with an explosive secret—he finds himself edging even closer to the darkness. Soon her privileged exchanges convince Alan that a crime is about to be committed. And when he uncovers a shocking link to the D.A.’s slaying, Alan is suddenly locked in the ethical dilemma of his career, thrust into a desperate manhunt for a killer whose identity no one could have guessed.

As the minutes tick down, Warning Signs explodes into a gripping story of crime and punishment, tragedy and retribution—and of human beings caught in the shattering cross fire of forces beyond their control...forces sometimes within themselves.

Die Inhaltsangabe kann sich auf eine andere Ausgabe dieses Titels beziehen.

Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

Stephen White is a clinical psychologist and New York Times bestselling author of Cold Case, Manner of Death, Critical Conditions, Remote Control, Harm's Way, Higher Authority, Private Practices, and Privileged Information. He lives in Denver, Colorado, with his wife and son.

Von der hinteren Coverseite

Sometimes the warning signs come too late...
The brutal slaying of Boulder's controversial D.A. strikes deep in the heart of everything clinical psychologist Alan Gregory holds dear: After all, Alan's wife, Lauren, worked for the dead man.
When a new patient walks into Alan's office--a terrified mother with an explosive secret--he finds himself edging even closer to the darkness. Soon her privileged exchanges convince Alan that a crime is about to be committed. And when he uncovers a shocking link to the D.A.'s slaying, Alan is suddenly locked in the ethical dilemma of his career, thrust into a desperate manhunt for a killer whose identity no one could have guessed.
As the minutes tick down, Warning Signs explodes into a gripping story of crime and punishment, tragedy and retribution--and of human beings caught in the shattering cross fire of forces beyond their control...forces sometimes within themselves.

Aus dem Klappentext

mes the warning signs come too late...

The brutal slaying of Boulder s controversial D.A. strikes deep in the heart of everything clinical psychologist Alan Gregory holds dear: After all, Alan s wife, Lauren, worked for the dead man.

When a new patient walks into Alan s office--a terrified mother with an explosive secret--he finds himself edging even closer to the darkness. Soon her privileged exchanges convince Alan that a crime is about to be committed. And when he uncovers a shocking link to the D.A. s slaying, Alan is suddenly locked in the ethical dilemma of his career, thrust into a desperate manhunt for a killer whose identity no one could have guessed.

As the minutes tick down, Warning Signs explodes into a gripping story of crime and punishment, tragedy and retribution--and of human beings caught in the shattering cross fire of forces beyond their control...forces sometimes within themselves.

Auszug. © Genehmigter Nachdruck. Alle Rechte vorbehalten.

Chapter One


Hands nipple high, palms up toward the night sky, Bruce Collamore started talking before the cops were even out of their car.

"I almost didn't call you guys. I was thinking that it was all too much like the O.J. thing. Don't you think? I mean, my dog didn't bark like that dog did, but I was walking my dog when I heard the scream. That's pretty close to the O.J. situation, isn't it? Anyway, that's why I almost didn't call. I'm still not sure I should have called. I haven't heard anything since that first scream. Right now, I think maybe it was nothing. That's what I'm beginning to think."

Two Boulder cops had responded to the 911. A coed team. Both were young, handsome, and strong.

The woman was a five-year vet on the Boulder Police force named Kerry VanHorn. She was a devout Christian who kept her religion to herself; she'd once even confided to a girlfriend that she thought proselytizing should be a capital offense. She had dirty-blond hair and a friendly Scandinavian face that put people at ease even when she didn't want to put them at ease. Over the years she'd discovered that if she squinted like she was looking into the sun people took her more seriously.

She was the first out of the squad car and the first to speak to the man who apparently remembered way too much about the O.J. case. She tucked her long flashlight under her arm and grabbed a pen before she squinted up at him--the guy was at least six five--and said, "Your name, sir?"

"Collamore, Bruce Collamore." He was wearing a ragged Middlebury College sweatshirt and an accommodating smile.

"This your house?" She gestured toward the home closest to where they were standing. Jay Street was high on the western edge of Boulder, in territory that the foothills of the Rockies seemed to have yielded only reluctantly to housing. If there was a boundary between urban and rural on the west edge of town, Jay was definitely on the side of the line that was more mountain than burg. The trees and grasses were wild and haphazard, and the curbs cut into the sides of the roadway fooled no one--this was one part of Boulder where the Rockies still reigned.

"This? My house? No. God, no."

"You live on this street, sir?"

"Here? No, I live a couple blocks over on Pleasant. I was out walking Misty. This is Misty." He reached down and tousled his dog's ears. The yellow Lab dipped her head and wagged her tail. Bruce Collamore and his dog both seemed eager to please.

"So . . . you were out walking your dog and you heard a . . ." While she waited for him to fill in the blank, she briefly lost her focus as she entertained an unbidden association to a crush she'd had on a junior high school teacher she had thought was cute.

Collamore brought her back to the moment as though he were someone who was accustomed to being in conversations where the other party's attention was wandering. He said, "A scream, I heard a scream. A loud one. Long, too. I mean, I haven't heard that many screams in my life but it, you know, seemed longer than . . . well, a normal scream. If there is such a thing? Jeez, 'a normal scream.' Did I really say that? What's wrong with me? Anyway, I think it came from that house. I'm pretty sure it did. That one. There." Collamore pointed at the gray-and-white two-story house directly across from where they stood on the edge of the road. "I had my cell phone with me so I thought I'd go ahead and call 911. Maybe it wasn't the right thing to do. I don't know. I'm a little nervous. You can probably tell I'm nervous."

She could tell. And she wasn't sure that he was nervous only because she was a cop. That suspicion made her a little nervous, too.

His left hand was balled around the dog's leash, so she couldn't see if Collamore was married. When she looked back up at him she squinted, just in case he was thinking what she was worried he was thinking. "What time was that, sir? That you heard the scream?"

"Nine fifty-one."

She wrote down the nine before she looked up from her notepad and lifted an eyebrow. The expression of incredulity interfered with her squint.

"I checked my watch when I heard the scream. You know, the O.J. thing? I thought somebody might want to know what time it happened. It really was that kind of scream--a somebody's-killing-me scream. So I checked my watch when I heard it." He exhaled loudly and ran his fingers through his hair. "God, this is embarrassing. I shouldn't have called, should I?"

She tried to make a neutral face, but wasn't sure she'd succeeded. She said, "No need to be embarrassed. We appreciate help from citizens. Can't do our jobs without it." But she was thinking that in most cities civilians ran and hid after they called 911. In Boulder they stick around on the sidewalk with their cell phones and their yellow Labradors named Misty. And maybe they keep contemporaneous records of their movements on their Palm Pilots. For all she knew this whole situation was already being tracked live on the Net.

Boulder.

Now she looked at the house he'd identified. The dwelling was an oasis of orderliness at the end of the block, the only home that looked like it could be plopped down comfortably in one of Boulder's more sedate neighborhoods. The owners of the surrounding houses--all of which were shabby in the way old cashmere is shabby--were either celebrating their good fortune at having modest homes in such a spectacular location or they were waiting for land values to escalate even more obscenely before they sold their fixer-upper to somebody who'd scrape the lot clear and start all over. She said, "You know who lives in this house, Bruce? May I call you Bruce?"

"Sure. Here? No, I don't. Like I said, I was just walking Misty. We come this way almost every night about this time. Since we walk late, most of the time we don't see anyone. Certainly don't hear many screams. Actually, we don't hear any screams. Before tonight, anyway. We heard one tonight, didn't we, girl?" He lowered his tone at least an octave as he addressed the dog.

VanHorn watched Misty's tail sweep the ground. She said, "And that was at nine fifty-one?"

"Yes, nine fifty-one."

"Well, we'll check that out. You don't mind staying here for a few minutes in case we have some more questions? My partner and I are going to speak to whoever is inside the house."

"No, no. We don't mind at all. Misty and I are happy to stick around."

The other cop, Kerry VanHorn's partner, was Colin Carpino. He had two years on the job. He was built like a bulldog but his creamy skin was almost hairless. VanHorn sometimes teased him that she had female relatives who shaved their upper lips more often than he did. She called him Whiskers.

As they moved up the brick walk in single file, she asked, "What do you think, Whiskers?"

"I buy lunch for a week if this is anything other than a waste of time." He shifted his long Mag-Lite from his right hand to his left.

She laughed. "It's your turn to buy. You're getting lunch tonight whether this is the Great Train Robbery or the lady of the house freaking out over a spider."

Carpino hit the doorbell button by the front door. They listened as it chimed like a carillon in a cathedral, and they waited.

He knocked. They waited some more.

He hit the bell again. This time he said, "Boulder Police," right after he heard the bells begin to peal inside the house. His tenor carried in the still air. The whole neighborhood of shuttered windows and closed doors had to know now that the cops were here. VanHorn waited...

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Verlag
Random House Publishing Group
Erscheinungsdatum
2003
Sprache
Englisch
ISBN 10 
0440237416
ISBN 13 
9780440237419
Einband
Taschenbuch
Anzahl der Seiten
512
Kontakt zum Hersteller
Nicht verfügbar
Verantwortliche Person
gpsr@libri.de
gpsr@libri.de

Friedensallee 273
Hamburg
22763
Deutschland

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