Verwandte Artikel zu No Control

No Control - Softcover

Solomita, Stephen

 
9780553576597: No Control
Softcover
ISBN 10: 0553576593 ISBN 13: 9780553576597
Verlag: Bantam Doubleday Dell Publishing Group, 1999

Inhaltsangabe

Novice detective Clarry Neumark, a single mother and former State Trooper, investigates a pattern of brutal slayings of important political figures in her Pennsylvania township, meeting stubborn silence from other officials and endangering her life. Original.

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

Aus dem Klappentext

killer with no guilt. No fear. No limits.

Like every good hunter, he studies his prey.

He knows their every habit, their every weakness.

He knows exactly when to strike.

And when he steps out of the shadows, it's already too late....

After years as a state trooper and a struggling single mother, Clarry Neumark's finally getting her chance at detective. But it won't come without a price. For Clarry recognizes pure rage in the brutally slain body of local politician Winston Rollok--and a twisted cunning in the single eagle feather the killer carefully placed at the crime scene as if to taunt her.

Soon there's a second influential victim, then a third. One by one, the men who run the small Pennsylvania townships under Clarry's jurisdiction are being destroyed. And none of the remaining officials are talking--even though their lives depend on it.

Baffled by their lack of cooperation, Clarry is still determin

Auszug. © Genehmigter Nachdruck. Alle Rechte vorbehalten.

As he yanked his left foot from the yielding earth alongside the narrow walkway, he told himself that he'd made a mistake and that there was nothing he could do about it. The shoes would have to go, of course, but that wouldn't necessarily help him. In a few hours, the cops would be all over this garden, his footprint found, photographed and filled with plaster of Paris. What he should have done, considering that it was four-thirty in the morning and dark enough to walk into a tree, was slap on a pair of cheap shoes and not go out in his Ferragamo tasseled loafers.

Briefly, he considered running his hand over the soft earth until he found, then obliterated, the print his shoe had made. But, no, he'd worn these clothes--the suit, the tie, the polished dress shoes--because he needed to make a good impression on his host. Otherwise, he'd have come in a plastic raincoat, rubbers, and a shower cap.

He consoled himself by remembering that if his enterprise went well, he could always buy another pair of two-hundred-dollar shoes. And another, and another, and another.

Still, he took great care to steady himself, stretching out his right arm to graze the shrubs that lined the walkway, his left to graze the brick wall of the Blue Heron Lodge. Then he took a careful step forward.

He continued on until he turned the corner of the building, then hesitated long enough to square his shoulders and draw a deep breath. Some twenty feet ahead, curtain-filtered light poured through a pair of French doors to illuminate a concrete patio hedged with sharp-leaved holly. The effect, after the darkness of the pathway, seemed almost magical, a scene that might have been taken from a fairy tale he'd once upon a time read to his daughter. A fairy tale that had failed to raise the slightest glimmer of recognition in her eyes.

Maybe, he told himself, it's because you won't be taking this path again, because next time you'll be coming through the front door.

Without further hesitation, he walked into the light, then stepped through the partially open door. As he closed and latched the door behind him, the mingled odors of furniture oil and pipe tobacco filled his nostrils, and Winston Rollok, seated behind a wooden desk large enough to serve as a coffin, slowly turned. Rollok was a powerful man. Despite the heavy jowls and the layer of fat that ballooned his gray suede jacket, his strength was evident in his broad back and thick hands. It wasn't difficult to imagine him--even with his mouth hanging open, his eyes widened in surprise--as he'd once been: the high school hero, center on a basketball team headed to the state championships for the first time in its fifty-year history.

"Good morning, Winston," he said as he crossed the room to stand before an open safe. "How are we on this glorious September morn?" He watched Rollok's shoulders stiffen, his narrow lips clamp down as he struggled to put the pieces together. "Oh? Are we in a bad mood? Did we miss our cup of tea? Was our morning poop unproductive?"

Having apparently come to some sort of a decision, Rollok responded by pushing a thick white envelope to the edge of the desk. "Take it and go."

"What's the rush, Winston? You don't like my company? You think I'm an asshole?"

Instead of snatching the envelope, he began to circle the room. His eyes took in the woodcuts, a collection of Biblical scenes dirty and dark enough to be originals as Rollok claimed, and the eighteenth-century copper weather vanes: a centaur extending a bow and arrow, a soaring eagle, a puffy-cheeked Gabriel blowing on his horn. Finally, he stopped before an oil painting of an early steamship, its sunlit sails furled over twin smokestacks, plowing through a dark, roiling sea. A brass plaque beneath the painting named the ship, the S.S. Commander, but not the artist.

"You've done great for yourself, Winston," he said. "Just great." And that, of course, was the understatement of the century. Rollok had seventy-five, maybe a hundred grand on the walls. And this was only his office. The man's house, he knew, was a virtual museum."

"Considering how low you started and the low road you've taken in life."

Rollok leaned back in his brown leather chair, but did not look up. Instead, he busied himself with a meerschaum pipe, its yellow bowl carved into the shape of a turkey. "How fortunate for you," he said.

"My doing well. How very, very fortunate."

"Shit." The man shook his head in disgust. The way he saw it, making the money was all right, even making it the way Rollok had. But the transformation from poor boy to country squire was too repulsive to contemplate.

Rollok jammed the pipe stem between his teeth and fumbled in his pocket for his lighter. "Why don't you take the money and go?" he said. "What is it that you want?"

Instead of responding directly, he slid the knife from its sheath, pressed it against his right thigh, and took a step forward to grab Rollok's chin with his left hand, to yank it back so hard the stem of Rollok's pipe snapped between his teeth like a twig beneath a hard-soled boot. "What is it I want?" he asked as he slammed the knife through the back of the chair, through bone and muscle, through Rollok's lungs and into the center of his heart. "What I want, Rollok, is more and more and more. I want to catch up."

Though he was certain that Winston Rollok was dead, he continued to jam the knife into Rollok's body, putting his full weight behind each thrust, stopping only when the leather on the chair back was fully shredded. Then he calmly returned the knife to its sheath and cleaned his hands on the inside of his jacket. Finally, he took the envelope from the desk, removed several packs of bills from the safe, and walked to the patio door where he carefully wiped the inner handle and the latch.

As he opened the door and felt the moist, predawn air wash across his face and throat, he tried to think of something else to say, some parting comment that would, though unheard, define the moment. But no, there was nothing there, and that, he told himself, was because he'd already said more than enough. He'd already said it all.

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Verlag
Bantam Doubleday Dell Publishing Group
Erscheinungsdatum
1999
Sprache
Englisch
ISBN 10 
0553576593
ISBN 13 
9780553576597
Einband
Taschenbuch
Anzahl der Seiten
408
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