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…
Chapter 1 If you looked up “New England” you’d probably find a picture of my hometown, Penniman, Connecticut. Miles of gray stone walls bordering narrow country lanes? Check. A covered bridge? A town green with a war memorial in the center of the emerald swath of grass? Check and check. My rented car’s engine…
PROLOGUE KYUSHU, JAPAN MARCH 1945 It was pleasantly cold at a makeshift airstrip ten miles out of the port city of Kagoshima on the island of Kyushu, Japan. There was a high overcast and the nearby mountains had a dusting of Spring snow on their flanks. Six Yokosuka D4Y carrier dive bombers were lined up…
Claudia The details of whatever happened were gone from her mind, but present all over her body. Claudia dropped her hand below the stiff dorm bed and felt for a water bottle. It was nearly empty, but she sucked the liquid down and it was enough to get her sitting. Upright, there was pain. Her…
Chapter One A perfect Los Angeles morning: a cloudless sky so devastatingly blue, you’d swear God had Photoshopped it; a hint of sea in the air that embraced you in a balmy hug; palm fronds waving laconically in a gentle breeze. Beautiful people strolled Santa Monica sidewalks and disappeared into polished storefronts that enticed capacious…
PROLOGUE LAST SUMMER I spent the bulk of the call with my eyes shut, thinking I was still asleep and in some kind of lucid dream. I may have even called the night sergeant out of the Chicago Police Department’s 12th District “Mom” before he barked at me to wake the hell up and get…
Chapter 1 The woman looked up at Bernie. Something about her face, turned up like that, made an impression on him. I can feel those impressions happening in Bernie, but what they are exactly is something I find out later or not at all. “No, it was a good joke,” she said, agreeing with me.…
Prologue The policeman, with his slicked-back hair, stands at the bottom of my hospital bed, staring at me intently. “So, can you confirm you knew the deceased?” he says, in heavily accented English. I nod, but even that hurts. His eyes narrow as he studies me. “Do you remember what led up to this unfortunate…
