Chapter 1 Most of the media had already made up their minds. They were calling Wyatt Butler the worst serial killer in decades. Depraved. Evil. A twisted, calculated madman who had preyed on innocent children. News vans and angry members of the public packed Foley Square outside the New York County Courthouse on this,…
Now Friday, May 3 Leah The key is to go to a few different stores. I used to always go to Jerry’s Liquors on Bonifant Avenue. I was a regular. Too regular. Jerry’s mouth started to form a thin line when I’d come in. I could see the conflict on his face. He was glad…
Amelia FEBRUARY 2020 My husband doesn’t recognize my face. I feel him staring at me as I drive, and wonder what he sees. Nobody else looks familiar to him either, but it is still strange to think that the man I married wouldn’t be able to pick me out in a police lineup. I know…
CHAPTER 1 Warren Kitzmiller looked around the large, almost empty morgue, tugging at the sleeve of his starched white lab coat and painfully aware he should be presenting a more detached demeanor. He was standing alone beside a flayed, cold, gray corpse, spread out in a grotesque parody of a post-Thanksgiving feast. It was supine…
Saturday, 10:00 a.m., seventeen hours after drop-off Whitney had been up for hours, and still hadn’t heard from Amelia. Last night was restful. Quiet. Peaceful. All the things Whitney had wanted it to be. Much needed. But this morning she was suffering from a serious case of mom guilt. She missed her daughter. Was anxious…
Chapter 2 DENVER, COLORADO July 2 Special Agent James Mason emerged from the elevator onto the fortieth floor of a building that resembled a giant obsidian stake driven into the heart of downtown Denver. He’d thrown on a plain white T-shirt, jeans, and a baseball cap, covering his sandy blond hair and shielding his…
Chapter 1 I looked at the faces of the people around the large oval table in the dining room of the Asheboro Bed & Breakfast—the place I was calling home, at least temporarily. I knew I should begin the meeting soon, but I was relishing the sight of my ragtag gang, assembled all in one…
Prologue GRACE NOTES Journal Entry #441 DO YOU REMEMBER THE MOMENT YOU REALIZED YOU WERE GOING TO DIE? I was five years old, lying in my princess bed with its canopy and pink dust ruffles. My mother had sent me there after I put her expensive brassiere on Louie, our beagle. I might’ve gotten away…
Chapter 1 “I promised fifty times already,” I said, looking down over the whole green world. “As soon as we get on the highway, I’ll tell you the longest, weirdest story.” “With a mad doggy who rips off a kid’s face, okay, Saski? A naughty kid. A bad kid like a bad guy.” The…
PROLOGUE It was a routine Sunday afternoon for Thomas Gilbert Sr., the founder of a multimillion-dollar hedge fund and a longtime fixture on Wall Street. After playing two strenuous rounds of tennis at the River Club, he was relaxing in his bedroom watching a football game. Three days earlier, on New Year’s Day 2015, the…
