Inhaltsangabe
In this bestselling debut thriller, reminiscent of Dexter and The Talented Mr. Ripley, a family man obsessed with digging up the undiscovered remains of serial killer victims catches the attention of a murderer prowling the streets of Seattle.
For years, Martin has been illegally buying police files on serial killers and using them to locate long-lost victims. After he uncovers the bodies, he calls the police anonymously and taunts them with his finds. He sees his work as a public service, a righting of all the mistakes cops have made for years. On his latest dig, he searches in a graveyard for the first kill of Jason Shurn, the murderer also thought to be responsible for the disappearance years before of Martin’s sister-in-law. But at the site, he is shocked to discover a fresh body lying among decades-old remains.
Detective Sandra Whittal is a case-closer on a meteoric rise through the police ranks. She’s suspicious of the mysterious caller—the Finder, she names him. Even if the Finder isn’t the killer, who’s to say that he won’t start killing soon?
Then the call about the latest find comes in. Whittal’s fears deepen. And Martin wonders what’s going on—because whoever made the call, it wasn’t him…
Die Inhaltsangabe kann sich auf eine andere Ausgabe dieses Titels beziehen.
Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor
Nathan Ripley is the pseudonym of Toronto resident and Journey Prize winner Naben Ruthnum. Find You in the Dark, Ripley’s first thriller, was an instant bestseller and an Arthur Ellis Awards finalist for Best First Novel. As Naben Ruthnum, he is the author of Curry: Eating, Reading, and Race. Follow him on Twitter @NabenRuthnum.
Auszug. © Genehmigter Nachdruck. Alle Rechte vorbehalten.
Find You in the Dark
CLEANING UP THE DIG SITE took longer than usual, leaving me little time to sleep. I grabbed two hours in my tent and was on the highway to Seattle by four a.m., with a thermos of coffee and some of those legal speed-drinks truckers use. I would have been at the club an hour ago, if the traffic had cared about getting my daughter from swim practice on time as much as I did.
I checked the rearview to make sure I’d ditched every piece of my equipment, and that only camping gear was visible in the back. Nothing was sticking through. My scrapbook was under, not on top of, the backseat where Kylie would throw her gym bag. Looking for traces of dirt or worse on the fabric of the seats, I almost missed an old Camry turning illegally across my lane. I tapped then slammed my brakes, accepting the honks from behind me and kept going, finally pulling up at the curb.
“You’re late,” Kylie said, falling into the front seat and throwing her gym bag overhand into the backseat, nicking my eyelid with the strap. She waved out the open door at Danielle, or Ramona, or one of the other fourteen-year-old girls on her team—after practice, they all looked eerily identical, with their wet hair gathered and tucked into wool hats and their collars pulled up. Sliding her schoolbag to rest at her feet, Kylie looked hard at me. Driving to the Seattle Athletic Club at five in the morning for half the week and five in the afternoon for the rest of it is only sane behavior under very specific conditions. Vanity couldn’t have gotten me to do it. Love, probably not—not the wife-kind of love I had for Ellen, anyway. For Kylie, I did it, sometimes to my own surprise. I’d been late eight times in the past two years, and this was the ninth.
There was enough resemblance between us—the dark eyebrows, light blue eyes—and between her and Ellen—the narrow nose and the wide mouth, equally suited to smiling or abrupt dismissal—that getting stared down by Kylie was like being in trouble with my wife and confronting a disappointed reflection at the same time.
“Leave before anyone sees you, Dad. Screeching tires.”
I pulled out at normal speed, but got the message. “Sorry. I drove right here from the campsite. Would have cleaned up at a truck stop if I knew I was going to embarrass you.”
“Where were you again?”
“Place near Tacoma. Beautiful.” I had indeed registered and paid in full for a slot at a campsite in Kent, near Tacoma, setting up a small tent there before setting off for my drive to California, just to have a paper trail if I got asked later, by Ellen or anyone else. Anytime I went on a dig it was a cash-only affair. Usually I “forgot” my phone charger, letting that GPS tracker we all carry fade to a dead-battery flicker by the time I was a few miles from the city. Other times, when I knew Ellen would be calling me, I disabled anything that would make me trackable. Twenty years of working in tech had left me with a skill or two, not just a bunch of money.
“You’re late, and you stink,” said Kylie.
“You stink, too.”
“Chlorine isn’t a stink. It’s a scent.”
“I smell of pines and fresh air and the glory of the outdoors, not the stuff they put in a pool to neutralize pee.”
“You smell like unwashed old man, Dad.” She was looking at her phone, and I was looking at the road, but I could feel her holding laughs in, just like I was. For the last year or so, this was what getting along had sounded like: an enjoyable exchange of insults, not much meant by either party. I’d never picked her up right after a trip to the field, and I was surprised how quickly one responsibility synched into the next. Next to the part I played in making Kylie, my digs are the best thing I’ve done with my life. Nothing that has happened since I started looking and finding has ever shaken me in that belief.
At the end of our block, I asked Kylie something I should have asked her back at the pool so I could prep.
“How’s Mom? Things were good while I was away?”
“Noooope,” Kylie said, popping in her fourth piece of the near-flavorless natural gum Ellen bought by the case in an attempt to keep aspartame and sugar out of the family’s bloodstreams.
“Oh,” I said. Ellen’s car, a VW from last year, was approaching the house from the other side, the sun coming down behind it and beaming orange light through the back window to silhouette her head. I slowed down and let Ellen get into the garage long before I hit my blinker and turned in.
Ellen was waiting for us inside, a grocery bag in each hand and the leather strap of her purse in her mouth. While Kylie deliberately took her time getting her stuff together, I got out of the Jeep and walked over to Ellen, hopping up the two steps to the door that opened into our house, feeling the stiffness in my legs and arms from the strain of digging for hours and then sitting down for a long drive. I took both grocery bags from her and she keyed us inside.
“Am I in for another high-tension week?” I asked Ellen, being quiet even though Kylie was still sitting in the Jeep and likely would stay there until her mom and I were in the kitchen and she could safely bypass us both on her way to the upstairs shower.
“Oh, I didn’t realize the point of all of this was to minimize impact on you, Martin. Real sorry.” She smiled midway through telling me off and gave me a kiss.
Ellen wasn’t good at maintaining the exasperated spouse stance, even if she’d had plenty of time to practice. She’d stopped being my girlfriend and started being my wife eighteen years ago.
“You stink,” she said.
“Your wonderful daughter said the same thing.”
“We got in a small fight on Saturday. Should have been a mini one but we were both tired and it got out of hand. She wanted to sleep at Jhoti’s house after they went for dinner. The dinner was planned, the sleepover wasn’t, so I said no.”
“Firm no?” I started emptying out one of the paper bags item by item, avoiding the tomato sauce spatter and sticky milk-glass rings on the counter: the tidiness of the kitchen, in particular, tended to fall off when I was away in the woods. Ellen was watching me, so I just upended the bag and let the produce tumble out for sorting. I’m good at faking carefree.
“With sleepovers or late nights out, all my no’s to her are firm, Mart, you know that. I didn’t think I needed to bicker about it with her or you anymore. It’s just the way it is.”
“Yeah.” I slit a small plastic bag of plums open with my thumbnail, which still had a rim of dirt under its white crescent, a leftover from disposing of the dig tools. I was always thoroughly gloved-up when I was doing the actual work, never leaving any of my skin free to flake over or touch my finds. The fruit tumbled into a wooden bowl on the counter, covering up a shrinking, aged lime. “But I think we’ll all have to talk again about this, and soon. She’s hitting fifteen in what—five weeks?” Before Ellen could answer, I added, “You were totally in the right, stick with the plan this weekend—not that you need me to confirm. What...
„Über diesen Titel“ kann sich auf eine andere Ausgabe dieses Titels beziehen.
