Exposure (A Rita Todacheene Novel, Band 2) - Hardcover

Buch 2 von 2: A Rita Todacheene Novel

Emerson, Ramona

 
9781641294768: Exposure (A Rita Todacheene Novel, Band 2)
Hardcover
ISBN 10: 1641294760 ISBN 13: 9781641294768
Verlag: Soho Crime, 2024

Inhaltsangabe

In the follow-up to the National Book Award–longlisted Shutter, Navajo forensic photographer Rita Todacheene grapples with a fanatical serial killer—and the ghosts he leaves behind.

A dual-voice cat-and-mouse thriller, told from the points of view of a killer who has created his own deadly religion and the only person who can stop him, an embattled young detective who sees the ghosts of his Native victims.

In Gallup, New Mexico, where violent crime is five times the national average, a serial killer is operating unchecked, his targets indigent Native people whose murders are easily disguised as death by exposure on the frigid winter streets. He slips unnoticed through town, hidden in plain sight by his unassuming nature, while the voices in his head guide him toward a terrifying vision of glory. As the Gallup detectives struggle to put the pieces together, they consider calling in a controversial specialist to help.

Rita Todacheene, Albuquerque PD forensic photographer, is at a crisis point in her career. Her colleagues are watching her with suspicion after the recent revelation that she can see the ghosts of murder victims. Her unmanageable caseload is further complicated by the fact that half the department has blacklisted her for ratting out a corrupt fellow cop. And back home in Tohatchi on the Navajo reservation, Rita’s grandma is getting older. Maybe it’s time for her to leave policework behind entirely—if only the ghosts will let her . . .

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Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

Ramona Emerson is a Diné writer and filmmaker originally from Tohatchi, New Mexico. Her debut novel, Shutter, was longlisted for the National Book Award and the Bram Stoker Award, nominated for the Edgar for Best First Novel, a finalist for the PEN America Open Book Award, the PEN/Hemingway Award, and the Macavity, Barry, and Anthony Awards for Best First Novel, and winner of the Lefty Award for Best First Novel. She has a bachelor’s in Media Arts from the University of New Mexico and an MFA in Creative Writing from the Institute of American Indian Arts. She resides in Albuquerque, New Mexico, where she and her husband, the producer Kelly Byars, run their production company Reel Indian Pictures.

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Chapter 1
Gunpowder Girl
Nikon D2X • f/16, 1/8 sec., ISO 200)

The little girl’s breath smelled of blood and gunpowder.
     I’ve heard it said that children’s souls ascend into the heavens without the tethers of recollection and the pull of longing that their mothers carry—the connection to their bodies and their blood and their memory. But sometimes they must stay behind—their little voices must tell us their stories. The grief is just too much to carry.
     It was 3:15 in the morning when her cold hand squeezed mine. My apartment had gone so bitter cold that I could hear cracking glass coming from my window ledges. I pulled my blankets closer, my gaze traveling toward the darkness in the corner. Her eyes were bright and framed by darkened bruises. I stared at her as the moon fell on our faces. I had no idea who she was, but she pulled on me, my stretched skin stinging as she drew me toward her.
     “We’re waiting for you,” she said.
     I became aware of the six other sets of eyes standing in the shadow, of the sound of their breathing like a collective wheeze, the liquid in their throats. I felt a sickness deep in my stomach—the pain of grief. There were so many of them, wheezing until their hearts went quiet. Time stopped as we stared at each other, fifteen minutes of their whispers on my skin. Our confrontation was interrupted by the sound of my phone ringing, the light bouncing on the nightstand. My heart was racing. I answered and the ringing stopped. “Hello.”
     The black eyes were gone and the room had begun to warm.
     “Hello, Rita. We need you up on the west side.” Samuels sounded strange. “Our specialist . . .” He paused long enough for me to check the blue reflecting light of my phone’s screen. We were still connected. “Our new specialist can’t continue.”
     “I still haven’t been cleared with Dr. Cassler.” I looked at the clock. It was now almost 3:30 a.m.
     “We need you down here.” There was a long and distant silence.
     “Send me the address.” I hung up the phone and looked around the darkness of my room. Even though the girl and her shadows were gone, I couldn’t shake her or the smell of her breath. As I stood in my bathroom, water dripping from my face, I could smell smoke, gunpowder and the stench of burning hair, like it was billowing from my walls. I dressed, pulling my leg brace up over my thigh, the sharp sting of pain rolling down to my ankle. It did this every day. I told no one. It would be one more thing they would be able to talk about, another whisper around the water cooler. I would tell no one about my visitors this morning either.
 
7310 Platero Road NW, 4:14 a.m.
There were eight units already at the scene, mostly police vehicles and two quiet ambulances. Officers had the property taped off all the way through the end of the block as early risers stretched their necks over their fence lines. The air was still cold as I readied myself to begin another morning in my paper suit.
     It had been an hour since the original 911 call. The report stated that a James Sandoval, pastor at First Desert Light Church, was on his way to the crime scene with the suspected perpetrator in the back of his vehicle. The suspect was a teenager, a Jude Montaño, the oldest son of Steven Montaño, a retired Albuquerque PD detective. Jude had come to the church in the middle of the night still holding a gun, blood splatter on his face. When Pastor Sandoval approached him, he raised the gun to the pastor’s face and pulled the trigger. Luckily, there were no bullets in the gun. Pastor Sandoval called the police and drove with Jude straight to the boy’s house, where they found every single member of his family dead from gunshot wounds—three girls, aged three, seven and fourteen; three boys, five, eight and ten; and both parents, Steven and Elizabeth Montaño, both forty-three.
     Jude Montaño sat in the backseat of the patrol car, staring at me through the window as I pulled up. His back shook with every breath and tears rolled down his cheeks. He stopped crying when he saw my arm rise. I was pulled toward the house like a pendulum. I wondered if he could see her too.
     The little hand pulled harder as I walked toward the crime scene. I looked down to see her bruises, the gunpowder freckles on her cheeks, the hole in her face like a honeysuckle bloom. Her mouth was bloody and swirled with white that leaked from both sides of her lips.
     “I knew you would come,” she said. “Can you play with us?”
     All the dead children were outside on the playscape in their pajamas, cavernous wounds in their backs and heads. I watched them chase one another up and down the slides while the oldest stared at the people passing in and out of their doorway. She turned her eyes on me, her expression one of anger—of finality. I think she was the only one who wasn’t confused about what happened.
     The little girl never left me as I stepped onto the crime scene. Her siblings ran up and surrounded us, their voices unaware—a strange echo still giddy with childhood. The smallest one cried, raising her hands to me, wanting me to pick her up.
     “Come play with us.” A boy pointed to their yard, scattered with dolls and toys.
     I looked toward the door where the techs were assembling. A few officers stared at me, as they often do. I pulled away from the children.
     “Rita, over here.” Samuels stood by a man with a graying beard. Sandoval, the pastor. The air was cold, the sun still behind the mountains.
     “Rita Todacheene, photo specialist.” I extended my hand, and Pastor Sandoval took it, never saying a word.
     Samuels motioned to the responding officer, the first on scene, a senior investigator named Louis Giovanni, to join us. He was already making his report, checking the temperature, and calculating the times. He read out what he had already taken down as I loaded my camera. Giovanni was brand-new to APD after four years in Minneapolis and another five in Los Angeles. He had come to Albuquerque to replace Sergeant Seivers, who had finally retired and moved to California to be with her grandbabies. I liked Giovanni because he was committed, and he wore horn-rimmed glasses—there was a mad scientist buried in him somewhere. He was very tall, quiet and reserved, but always seemed to know what questions to ask on scene and how to leave no stone unturned. That was how Seivers used to be. They had found someone who was almost her equal. Giovanni wasn’t privy to my special radar. Samuels still considered it compromising to cases. He never talked to me about it as long as I kept going to the shrink.
     “Pastor Sandoval says the kid walked into the church and stood there silent, gun in hand. He knew right away something was wrong and drove them straight over here,” Giovanni concluded.
     “Did you go inside, Pastor?” I asked Sandoval.
     “Yes,” he answered after a hesitation. “But once I saw Steve, I came right back out. He was a friend of mine.”
     I...

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Verlag
Soho Crime
Erscheinungsdatum
2024
Sprache
Englisch
ISBN 10 
1641294760
ISBN 13 
9781641294768
Einband
Gebundene Ausgabe
Anzahl der Seiten
288
Kontakt zum Hersteller
Nicht verfügbar
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Pärnu mnt 139b-14
Tallinn
11317
Estland

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