A Darker Side of Paradise
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Synopsis
A brand new thriller from the internationally bestselling author of A QUIET BELIEF IN ANGELS
****
Rookie police officer Rachel Hoffman has never seen a dead body before.
It will not be her last.
Her first murder case is a young woman - sent off to sleep with a mysterious note that quotes from an eight-hundred year old book: Dante's Divine Comedy.
So begins an investigation that will haunt her for the rest of her life, and lead Rachel on a descent into obsession that upends everything she thought she knew about justice.
As the killings unfold over the decades, Rachel's obsession will drive her from small-town America through the streets of NYC, to a revelation that will cost her everything.
Because every case she thought she solved was a lie.
And the truth is more dangerous than she could have imagined.
****
PRAISE FOR R.J. ELLORY
'Beautiful and haunting... A tour de force' MICHAEL CONNELLY
'Beautifully written novels that are also great mysteries' JAMES PATTERSON
'A uniquely gifted, passionate, and powerful writer' ALAN FURST
'In the top flight of crime writing' SUNDAY TELEGRAPH
'The master of the genre' CLIVE CUSSLER
Release date: June 26, 2025
Publisher: Orion
Print pages: 496
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A Darker Side of Paradise
R.J. Ellory
The rains came, and they did not stop for days.
Ulysses, New York – no more than fifteen miles from the banks of Lake Ontario – caught between the Oswego River wetlands and the tributaries that fed the Finger Lakes – was caught in a crossfire of flooding that gave no respite or sanctuary. When the levees finally broke, the town lost three children within the first twelve hours.
The Oswego, drawing homesteaders towards it with the promise of fertile land for more than two centuries, itself the promise of life and sustenance, was now – once again – a murderer. It was not the first time the river had burst its banks and carried people away to the lakes. Back in 1909, the same thing had happened, but those who were present had long since passed. No one had spoken of it for years. The river had a history of both life and death, the former outweighing the latter in time and memory, and thus the natural human instinct to celebrate that which gave over that which took away prevailed.
On February 15th, 1975, the storm now heading north towards Canada, emergency services, Police, the Sheriff’s Department and numerous volunteers from Syracuse and Rochester, began the weeks-long, laborious and heartbreaking process of salvage and recovery.
The body count rose to seven. Beyond that, a further two were missing, presumed drowned, their bodies now lost forever in the depths of the Ontario.
An eighth body was then discovered on Monday 17th – a wenty-three-year-old schoolteacher called Caroline Lassiter. Caroline did not drown. She was found lying in her own bed, her position one of repose, her hair brushed and laid out across the pillow like some pre-Raphaelite study, clutched in her right hand a carefully-folded piece of paper.
In a precise blocked script were written the words, ABANDON HOPE, ALL YE WHO ENTER HERE.
Present at the Lassiter apartment, charged with maintaining the integrity of the crime scene until the coroner arrived, was a police officer called Rachel Hoffman. Younger than the deceased girl, Rachel was a recent Syracuse Police Academy graduate. On loan to Ulysses from the Patrol Division, her initial posting order had been approved for three months. She had been there for a week shy of six. She had raised this issue with her superiors on two occasions. Each time she’d been told it wouldn’t be much longer before she was transferred home.
Caroline Lassiter was the first dead person Rachel had seen up-close and personal. And if her death proved to be a homicide, it would also be the first murder Rachel had attended.
Standing in the neat, very feminine bedroom – as still as a cigar-store Indian – Rachel could not help but feel like an intruder. To her, it seemed that birth and death were somehow sacrosanct, inviolate events that should only be witnessed by those who were bound by blood or friendship to the players in this unfolding drama. Caroline’s eyes were open, as dull as old pennies. Had they been closed, she would have appeared to be sleeping, such was her composure. The bedcover was drawn up to her neck, her arms on top of it, her shoulders bare. The stillness of her form was unsettling. Rachel willed the girl to move, to suddenly exhale as if she’d been merely holding her breath for as long as she could. A game, perhaps. A child’s game. A prank to scare her siblings.
Rachel stood for close to an hour, and then she heard voices in the hallway from which each room of the small apartment was accessed.
The Tri-County Coroner – early-fifties, bespectacled, his rumpled corduroy suit and woven tie giving him the appearance of a college professor – covered Onondaga, Oswego and Oneida from his office in Syracuse.
He entered the bedroom, looked at the dead girl, then looked at Rachel.
‘You’ve been here alone?’ he asked.
‘Yes, sir.’
‘Sir? We’re not on parade here, my dear. What’s your name?’
‘Hoffman. Rachel Hoffman. Syracuse Patrol Division.’
‘Lawrence Hill. I hate it, but everyone calls me Larry.’
Rachel gave a faint smile. ‘Then I’ll call you Dr. Hill. Or Lawrence.’
‘Lawrence is fine,’ Hill said. ‘And I like you already.’
Hill set down his bag.
‘So what do we have here?’
‘Caroline Lassiter,’ Rachel said. ‘Twenty-three. Schoolteacher. That’s it. Nothing has been touched aside from the piece of paper that was in her hand. It’s over there on the chiffonier.’
Hill laughed. ‘Where are we? Nineteenth-century France?’
‘Sorry. That’s my grandmother.’
Hill crossed the room and looked at the paper. ‘So, she wrote this herself?’
‘I don’t know. As I said, it was in her hand. Apart from removing it and putting it over there, nothing else has been touched.’
‘And you did that?’
‘No, that was the first responder.’
‘Well, we’ll know soon enough. There’s bound to be examples of her handwriting around the apartment.’
Hill opened his bag and put on latex gloves.
Standing over the body, leaning down until his face was mere inches from the dead girl, he said nothing. The only sound Rachel could hear was that of her own breathing.
It seemed a small forever until Hill stood up once more.
‘I need forensics here,’ he said. ‘I need pictures before I remove the bed cover.’
‘As far as I know, they’re on the way,’ Rachel said. ‘Shouldn’t be much longer.’
Hill walked to the window and looked out into the street. There was a single police car.
‘You’re from Ulysses?’ Hill asked without turning around.
‘Born in Utica,’ Rachel replied. ‘My folks moved to Syracuse when I was five. And now I’ve been stationed here for the past six months.’
‘And you always wanted to be police?’
‘I wanted to be a ballet dancer.’
Hill turned, smiling. ‘And why aren’t you a ballet dancer?’
‘Because it turns out I’m as clumsy as hell. All the grace of a newborn foal.’
Hill laughed. ‘Seems to me that a police officer is quite the change of direction.’
Rachel was about to speak when further voices could be heard.
Entering the bedroom, Detective Tom Marcus was accompanied by two forensic technicians and a crime scene photographer.
Rachel had met Marcus before. Laconic, seemingly diffident, she had never warmed to him. During her training, he had given a series of presentations on crime scene protocol, preservation of evidence, fingerprinting, other such things. He wore an expression of perpetual irritation, as if the world provided an inexhaustible supply of things he was obligated to tolerate.
‘I know you,’ he said to Rachel.
‘Hoffman, sir. From the academy.’
‘Right. They exiled you to the sticks, then?’
Rachel didn’t reply.
‘And now you have to deal with a dead schoolteacher and the worst flood in a century at the same time.’
Marcus paused for a second, as if figuring out the best wisecrack.
‘Out of your depth?’ he asked.
‘Funny,’ Rachel said. ‘You should get a half-hour slot at the Comedy Club. The world shouldn’t be deprived of such great material.’
‘I need your guys to take pictures before I remove the bedcover,’ Hill said, interrupting whatever road Rachel and Marcus were heading down.
Marcus gave instructions. Rachel and Hill stepped out of the room and waited for them to be done.
‘Okay, come on back,’ Marcus told Hill.
Hill approached the bed once more. He carefully lifted each of Caroline Lassiter’s arms in turn, bringing the bedcover down to reveal her breasts, her stomach. He folded it neatly as he went, laying it flat at the foot of the bed. Her naked form was exposed, and – once again – he stepped back to let the photographer take a dozen or more photographs from various points in the room.
‘So, whaddya reckon?’ Marcus asked. ‘Doesn’t seem to be any indication of foul play.’
‘I’ll do my preliminaries here,’ Hill said. ‘More than likely we won’t know until I perform the full autopsy.’
‘There’s a note, sir,’ Rachel said. She nodded towards it.
Using a pen to hold it flat, Marcus read the single sentence.
‘What the hell is this?’ he asked.
‘It was there when I came in.’
‘Did you move this, Hoffman?’
‘No, sir. The first responder. He said it was in her hand.’
‘To see if it was a suicide note,’ Marcus said.
‘That’s what I figured.’
‘Well, someone’s gonna get a harsh word or two, aren’t they?’
Marcus instructed one of the technicians to bag the note and then find a sample of the dead woman’s handwriting.
Hill stepped away from the bed. ‘I need her on the table,’ he said. ‘Could be an OD, but I need to do blood tests and all else.’
Marcus turned to Rachel. ‘You go on up to Syracuse with the body. I’ll clear it with your chief.’
‘Yes, sir.’
‘You guys all done?’ Marcus asked the technicians.
They were. There was nothing to see of any significance. Marcus left with his people.
‘Looks like it’s just the three of us, then,’ Hill said. ‘You ever seen an autopsy?’
‘No.’
‘Brace yourself,’ Hill said. ‘First few times can be pretty grim.’
Grim was an understatement. It was as if Rachel was witnessing the unzipping of a human being. As the scalpel made its way through flesh and muscle – a precise Y from below each shoulder to a point between the breasts, and then down to the navel – Caroline Lassiter’s innards were at last being released from twenty-three years of captivity.
‘Wait until you get a ripened one,’ Hill said. ‘A week undiscovered, all swollen up, and it smells like … well, it doesn’t smell like anything, to be honest. That stink stays in your nostrils for days.’
Rachel tried to focus as one organ after another was hefted out of the cadaver and placed on a weighing scale.
‘If you need to take a break, do so,’ Hill said, recognizing at once that she was struggling.
Standing in a small courtyard behind Syracuse Coroner’s Office in a small courtyard, she breathed deeply, quelling the rising wave of nausea that threatened to paint the sidewalk with her lunch.
Rachel was outside for a good fifteen minutes. She didn’t vomit, but she retched several times and experienced a wave of dizziness and cold sweats. How someone could get used to such things she didn’t know. She had no intention of finding out.
By the time the blood analysis came back, it was past 8.00 in the evening.
‘Barbiturates and chloroform,’ Hill told Rachel. ‘Barbiturates knocked her out so she wouldn’t struggle, and the chloroform killed her.’
‘I thought chloroform made someone pass out immediately.’
‘A very common misconception. Takes a good four or five minutes of uninterrupted inhalation. Someone is going to fight like hell against that. And there are no signs of a struggle, no bruising or lacerations anywhere on the body. And after they’re unconscious, it takes a great deal longer for them to ingest enough to bring about death. And the chin needs to be supported from beneath to keep the tongue out of the airway. Hence the barbiturates. At least that’s my opinion of what happened here. She was drugged so she didn’t resist, and then someone stayed right there and made her inhale enough to kill her.’
‘So we have a murder.’
‘Undoubtedly.’
‘When can we get a report?’
‘Tomorrow.’
‘And what happens now?’ Rachel asked.
‘With her? I stitch her up and put her on ice. Your guys inform her family. That’s if they haven’t already. I’m guessing the charming Detective Marcus or one of the others gets to work on finding your perp.’
Hill paused for a moment, and then he said, ‘How do you deal with that? People like Tom Marcus.’
‘I deal with it,’ Rachel replied.
‘Is he threatened by you, or what?’
‘I have no idea, and I really have no interest in finding out.’
‘Is it this way with all the men you work with?’
‘There’s always going to be a few, and it would be the same in any line of work. Hell, they even get into head-butting with each other. The amount of time that’s wasted by lack of cooperation between different units and departments is incredible. Sometimes it seems that taking the credit is more important than solving the case.’
‘Egos, eh? I guess I’m lucky I work with people who can’t talk back.’ Hill smiled. ‘Even when I open them up from gullet to gizzard.’
‘This is just a regular day for you, isn’t it?’
‘I’ve been doing this a good many years, Rachel. There’s not a great deal I haven’t seen.’
‘And you can just go home, kiss your wife, watch TV, have your dinner and forget about it.’
‘All of the above except the wife part.’
‘You’re not married?’
‘No.’
‘How come?’
‘Just lucky, I guess.’
‘You are too cynical.’
‘Don’t get emotional about it. That’s the trick. Whoever she was, she’s gone. The personality, everything that they were, is not hanging around in cells and bones and blood. The moment the heart stops beating, something goes. Don’t ask me what it is, because I sure as hell don’t know. The spark goes out, and it’s like switching off a light. There’s just a hundred and fifty pounds of muscle and bone left behind. It’s like a house with no one home.’
‘Doesn’t change the fact that it’s a tragedy. She’s pretty much the same age as me.’
‘And there we go,’ Hill said. ‘That train of thought stops right there. You didn’t know it was going to happen, and so there was nothing you could’ve done about it. Now all you have to do is make sure that whoever did this doesn’t get to do it again.’
‘I’m not a detective. Not yet, anyway.’
‘Is that where you’re headed?’
‘Yes,’ Rachel said. ‘That’s what I want.’
‘Well, I guess you better hang out with me a bunch. Get yourself all bullet-proof. You get into Homicide, you’re gonna see the very worst that human beings are capable of doing to one another. That’s something to look forward to, right?’
Rachel drove back to Ulysses.
Circumventing the roadblocks that were still in place, taking a winding route back towards the center of town, it was past 10.00 by the time she closed her front door behind her.
She took a shower, opened a bottle of wine, and then sat in her kitchen with the lights out.
Trying her best not to think about the events of that evening, her mind was nevertheless assaulted by images of Caroline Lassiter’s autopsy. To die so young was a tragedy; to die in such a manner made it so much worse. Perhaps, as Hill had said, you became inured to such things. Not insensitive, not unaffected, but somehow emotionally and psychologically detached. And for any chance of being a detective, detachment and objectivity were key. This was now a homicide investigation, nothing more nor less. She didn’t know the victim. They had never crossed paths, never shared a single word. That, in and of itself, did not reduce the urgency or diligence required for the investigation, but that investigation was not her remit. Syracuse PD was running the case, and the best she could hope for was to be somehow kept in the loop regarding its progress. However, if Marcus was primary, then there was very little chance of that. To Marcus, Rachel was little more than a passenger in a squad car, required to merely monitor the radio while the men did the heavy lifting.
Sleep was evasive. Somewhere near 2.00 on Tuesday morning, Rachel drifted off. Her last thought was for the note found in Caroline Lassiter’s hands. Abandon hope, all ye who enter here.
Whoever had sat so patiently with Caroline as she suffocated had something to say, and if that message was understood then they might be a little closer to understanding who had left it.
A week went by.
Tom Marcus was assigned primary on the Lassiter case. As far as Rachel could determine, it had yet to break. Forensics had found nothing indicative of the killer’s identity. There were no leads, no further developments, no fragments of information that indicated the motive for Caroline Lassiter’s death.
Rachel had accompanied another officer when the woman’s parents were informed. She sat and watched; she was required to say nothing, and for this she was grateful. She observed the shock, dismay, disbelief and heartbreak of a mother and father as they tried to absorb the profound weight of the news being delivered. Biased though they might have been, they described their daughter as a gentle soul – caring, considerate, patient and kind. All she’d ever wanted to do was teach. There was no one they could imagine would wish her harm. Of course, they asked why. Why would someone do such a thing? There was no way to answer that question, and thus no answer was given. Until the perpetrator was identified, arrested, interrogated, there would be no explanation, and – even then – the explanation might have no understandable rationale.
Sometimes people were killed for no reason other than that which existed in the mind of the killer. Those reasons could be beyond all reason. Ultimately, it seemed, it was impossible to rationalize irrationality.
The very nature of Caroline Lassiter’s death was in defiance of Nature. Parents should not bury their children. That was not the way things were meant to be.
On the morning of Tuesday 25th, Rachel received a call from Lawrence Hill.
‘You remember that note in the girl’s hand?’ he asked. ‘Well, it bugged the hell out of me, so I did some digging. I spoke to a few friends, one of whom is an English professor up at the university. He told me it’s a line from something called The Divine Comedy by Dante Alighieri.’
‘Okay, so we need to go talk to this Alighieri guy.’
Hill laughed. ‘Unless you have a time machine, that will be something of a challenge. The book was written about six hundred and fifty years ago.’
‘Right,’ Rachel said. ‘In one sentence I have demonstrated how ignorant and uneducated I am.’
‘Don’t take it personally,’ Hill said. ‘I’d heard of it, but I had no real clue what it was.’
‘And what is it?’
‘A poem, essentially. It’s about the afterlife, about Purgatory and Hell and whatever. In essence, it’s the journey of the soul to Heaven.’
Rachel was quiet for a moment.
‘I know what you’re thinking,’ Hill said. ‘You’re thinking that maybe we have a crazy out there.’
‘Actually, I was thinking that there must have been a reason for whoever killed her to have left that particular line. And that maybe they have more to say.’
‘Well, see what you can do with that. Give it to whoever’s running the investigation. See whether it sheds any light on anything.’
‘I really appreciate the call, Lawrence.’
‘You’re welcome, Rachel.’
Tom Marcus looked at Rachel with such a dismissive expression that she wanted to floor him.
‘Why is Hill calling you?’ was his first question.
‘I guess because I was there for the autopsy.’
‘And how does he think this is going to help us any?’
‘I don’t know, sir. I guess we could check the libraries, see who’s withdrawn the book. Seems like it’s a pretty unusual title. I sure as hell had never heard of it.’
‘You have any idea how many libraries there are in the state?’
‘No, sir.’
‘And who’s to say that whoever did this is from New York?’
Rachel didn’t respond. This was going to be a one-sided conversation; she was going to be shot down no matter what she suggested.
‘Has there been any further progress on the case, sir?’ Rachel asked.
‘Nothing that concerns you, Officer Hoffman. Now, don’t you have some traffic citations to chase up or something?’
‘Yes, sir. Of course, sir.’
Rachel backed up a step, turned and left the office.
At her desk she breathed slowly and purposefully. There was no point getting riled. Men like Marcus would always be men like Marcus. It wasn’t even misogyny. It was more basic than that. Such people – inflated with a sense of self-importance that seemingly knew no bounds – treated everyone but their superiors in the same manner. To the captain, Marcus was polite, matter-of-fact, businesslike. He said what was required to curry favor, to protect his reputation, to evade criticism or censure. No doubt Marcus was working whatever angle he could to ascend ever higher in the ranks. His goal was to be in a position where everything could be delegated. From such a vantage point, anything that went well would be something for which he could take credit; everything that didn’t would be someone else’s fault.
By the end of the first week in March, Rachel knew that Caroline Lassiter’s investigation had been abandoned. Marcus was heading up other investigations. That file, along with so many others, would gather dust in a cabinet. The girl would be forgotten, relegated to a statistic, remembered solely by those who knew her and missed her. Why it haunted Rachel, she could not explain. Perhaps their similarity in age, perhaps the mere fact that Caroline had been the first murder case in her police service, perhaps because she believed Caroline’s parents when they’d said that there was no imaginable reason for someone to kill her. A truly innocent victim.
There was also the manner of death – meticulous, even surgical. It had not been a crime of passion, nor had it been spontaneous and unintentional as in the case of an interrupted burglary. This has been planned and executed with forethought and preparation. No forced entry, no struggle, no sexual assault, no violence. Caroline Lassiter had been put to sleep. Like an animal. Like a sick, old animal that would merely live to suffer if mercy played no part.
Rachel knew she would have to let it go. If she reacted in such a way to every murder in her career, her mind would be crowded with the dead, each periodically surfacing to the forefront of her thoughts clamoring for an answer. She had no answer, and – it seemed – there might never be one.
Whoever had done this was out there. They walked and talked, they ate dinner, they watched TV, they visited friends and family. They wore a face for the world, and behind that face was another face entirely; perhaps a gallery of different faces, each of them carefully constructed to present a different persona dependent upon the circumstances. They had undertaken research; they had obtained barbiturates and chloroform; they knew that to bring about death the victim’s chin had to be raised to prevent the tongue from blocking the airway. Perhaps they had done this before, perhaps not. And, if this was as methodical and conscientious as Rachel believed it to be, then – in all likelihood – there would be another, and yet another. Of this she felt sure, and there sensed a conflict. Motivated by an intense dislike for the attitude of Tom Marcus, she wanted him proven wrong. Against that was the knowledge that in order for that to happen, another human being’s life would have to end. If it did, would she carry that on her conscience, as if she had somehow possessed the power to influence an outcome? That was crazy talk. She could not go there.
Perhaps every human being on Earth walked a narrow tightrope strung between birth and death. At some point they would fall, whether through loss of balance, perhaps stepping off voluntarily, sometimes because they were pushed. And maybe that moment was preordained, a destiny that was mapped out before they took their first breath. You live for so many years, in some cases months, other times merely days or hours, and then the lights go out. Darkness descends, and all that remains are the memories of those you left behind.
It was a dangerous thought, as likely to prompt apathy as a hunger for life. We have the time we have. We make the most of it, or we succumb to the whims of fate with no belief in our power to avert them.
Raymond Keene was forty-eight years old, and his second marriage had just come to an end.
The first one had begun much the same as most courtships. Each of them had woven a web of lies. He, in truth, had never served in the military; she had never been Homecoming Queen three years in a row. After less than two years, the marriage finally collapsed beneath the weight of falsehoods. One afternoon, facing one another in a roadside diner booth, Raymond and his wife saw one another for who they really were. He said he’d drive her to her folks in Buffalo. She declined, said she’d call her brother to come pick her up. That was the last they ever saw of one another. The divorce had been finalized through phone calls, letters from one lawyer to another. They owned nothing, so there was nothing to divide. There were no children, so custody arrangements never had to be considered.
Four years after the divorce, Raymond met Gayle Willard at an all-you-can-eat buffet in a Chinese restaurant in downtown Rochester. Having unceremoniously failed to make the slightest positive impression at a job interview that same afternoon, he’d decided to book himself into a motel, grab some dinner, and then drink himself into a stupor before heading back to Syracuse the following morning.
As he helped himself to the last four wafer-wrapped king prawns, Gayle – waiting in line behind him – gave an audible sigh of disappointment. Turning to look at her, Raymond apologized and put two back on the hotplate.
‘It’s okay,’ Gayle said. ‘You go ahead and eat everything and leave nothing for anyone else.’
And then she touched the sleeve of his jacket. Raymond caught the faintest ghost of her perfume.
‘You can apologize with a drink, Mr. Greedy.’
They talked for three hours. They navigated their way through two bottles of wine. Later that night and into the early hours of the morning, they fumbled their way through awkward, drunken sex in Raymond’s featureless low-cost motel room.
The following morning, they shared breakfast. She was five years out of a long-term relationship. She wasn’t looking for anything serious. This had been fun. She’d like to do it again.
They met weekly for the next six months. By Christmas they were talking about the possibility of getting a place together.
‘If we’re gonna live together,’ Raymond said one Tuesday in January, ‘then why don’t we …’
‘Get married?’
‘I mean, I don’t want you to feel …’
‘If you mean it, ask me properly, Raymond.’
He did. He got down on one knee. He didn’t have a ring in his pocket. That could wait. It was the right moment to ask her, and there wasn’t going to be a better one.
Gayle said yes.
The wedding was a small affair. They bought a place together in the Syracuse suburbs. Once again, the marriage lasted less than two years.
‘The way you look at me, I know you’re going to lie before you open your mouth,’ she said.
To Raymond, the pitch of her voice gave everything she uttered the ominous sense of an ultimatum. Even when she told him she wanted to make it work, it sounded like a warning.
Raymond understood that when it came to women, he’d spent his entire life trying to figure out the right words without ever realizing that the right words did not exist.
The end of the marriage was like a house fire. A bad one. Kicking through the ash and rubble, there seemed to be nothing worth salvaging.
Their divorce was finalized in April of 1974.
With what little remained of their halved assets, Raymond put down a deposit on a first-floor, one-bedroom apartment in Baldwinsville. He changed jobs, then changed again. Since November 1974, he’d worked in the accounts department of a Home Depot in Rochester. He was responsible for stock control, reorders, returns processing and refund administration. He drank too much. He ate the wrong food. He did not belong to a gym. He drove a crappy car that had too many miles on the clock and rarely started when the temperature dropped. He spent his weekends alone in front of the TV. He’d stopped asking himself when his life would get better.
Returning home on the evening of Wednesday, March 5th, 1975, Raymond took off his jacket, loosened his tie, kicked off his shoes and walked through to the kitchen. He opened the refrigerator and surveyed the contents. Cheese, two eggs, a jar of pasta sauce, an overripe tomato, half a carton of milk. Putting his shoes back on, he figured he’d get a burger and a couple of beers somewhere. He picked up his car keys, paused for a moment, and then put them down again. The way he felt in that moment, two beers would be followed by two or three more, and then he might make everything go away with a couple of shots. He would aim for one of the watering holes within walking distance, preferably a straight line from the apartment so he wouldn’t get lost on the way back.
Opening the front door, Raymond turned at the sound of something from the kitchen. He frowned, left the door ajar, and walked back. There was insufficient time for him to consider where the sound might have originated from, but any uncertainty he might have had was resolved when he saw a man standing facing the window ahead of the sink.
‘What the hell?’ Raymond said. ‘Who the fuck are you?’
The man turned. He was a head taller than Raymond. He had on work clothes – jeans and a canvas jacket. His hair was cut short, almost to the scalp.
‘Sit down, Raymond,’ the man said.
‘Who the fuck are you?’ Raymond repeated. ‘What the hell are you doing in my house?’
From his jacket pocket, the man produced a .38. He pointed it directly at Raymond’s head.
‘Christ almighty,’ Raymond said. ‘Okay, okay.’
Raymond took a seat.
?
Ulysses, New York – no more than fifteen miles from the banks of Lake Ontario – caught between the Oswego River wetlands and the tributaries that fed the Finger Lakes – was caught in a crossfire of flooding that gave no respite or sanctuary. When the levees finally broke, the town lost three children within the first twelve hours.
The Oswego, drawing homesteaders towards it with the promise of fertile land for more than two centuries, itself the promise of life and sustenance, was now – once again – a murderer. It was not the first time the river had burst its banks and carried people away to the lakes. Back in 1909, the same thing had happened, but those who were present had long since passed. No one had spoken of it for years. The river had a history of both life and death, the former outweighing the latter in time and memory, and thus the natural human instinct to celebrate that which gave over that which took away prevailed.
On February 15th, 1975, the storm now heading north towards Canada, emergency services, Police, the Sheriff’s Department and numerous volunteers from Syracuse and Rochester, began the weeks-long, laborious and heartbreaking process of salvage and recovery.
The body count rose to seven. Beyond that, a further two were missing, presumed drowned, their bodies now lost forever in the depths of the Ontario.
An eighth body was then discovered on Monday 17th – a wenty-three-year-old schoolteacher called Caroline Lassiter. Caroline did not drown. She was found lying in her own bed, her position one of repose, her hair brushed and laid out across the pillow like some pre-Raphaelite study, clutched in her right hand a carefully-folded piece of paper.
In a precise blocked script were written the words, ABANDON HOPE, ALL YE WHO ENTER HERE.
Present at the Lassiter apartment, charged with maintaining the integrity of the crime scene until the coroner arrived, was a police officer called Rachel Hoffman. Younger than the deceased girl, Rachel was a recent Syracuse Police Academy graduate. On loan to Ulysses from the Patrol Division, her initial posting order had been approved for three months. She had been there for a week shy of six. She had raised this issue with her superiors on two occasions. Each time she’d been told it wouldn’t be much longer before she was transferred home.
Caroline Lassiter was the first dead person Rachel had seen up-close and personal. And if her death proved to be a homicide, it would also be the first murder Rachel had attended.
Standing in the neat, very feminine bedroom – as still as a cigar-store Indian – Rachel could not help but feel like an intruder. To her, it seemed that birth and death were somehow sacrosanct, inviolate events that should only be witnessed by those who were bound by blood or friendship to the players in this unfolding drama. Caroline’s eyes were open, as dull as old pennies. Had they been closed, she would have appeared to be sleeping, such was her composure. The bedcover was drawn up to her neck, her arms on top of it, her shoulders bare. The stillness of her form was unsettling. Rachel willed the girl to move, to suddenly exhale as if she’d been merely holding her breath for as long as she could. A game, perhaps. A child’s game. A prank to scare her siblings.
Rachel stood for close to an hour, and then she heard voices in the hallway from which each room of the small apartment was accessed.
The Tri-County Coroner – early-fifties, bespectacled, his rumpled corduroy suit and woven tie giving him the appearance of a college professor – covered Onondaga, Oswego and Oneida from his office in Syracuse.
He entered the bedroom, looked at the dead girl, then looked at Rachel.
‘You’ve been here alone?’ he asked.
‘Yes, sir.’
‘Sir? We’re not on parade here, my dear. What’s your name?’
‘Hoffman. Rachel Hoffman. Syracuse Patrol Division.’
‘Lawrence Hill. I hate it, but everyone calls me Larry.’
Rachel gave a faint smile. ‘Then I’ll call you Dr. Hill. Or Lawrence.’
‘Lawrence is fine,’ Hill said. ‘And I like you already.’
Hill set down his bag.
‘So what do we have here?’
‘Caroline Lassiter,’ Rachel said. ‘Twenty-three. Schoolteacher. That’s it. Nothing has been touched aside from the piece of paper that was in her hand. It’s over there on the chiffonier.’
Hill laughed. ‘Where are we? Nineteenth-century France?’
‘Sorry. That’s my grandmother.’
Hill crossed the room and looked at the paper. ‘So, she wrote this herself?’
‘I don’t know. As I said, it was in her hand. Apart from removing it and putting it over there, nothing else has been touched.’
‘And you did that?’
‘No, that was the first responder.’
‘Well, we’ll know soon enough. There’s bound to be examples of her handwriting around the apartment.’
Hill opened his bag and put on latex gloves.
Standing over the body, leaning down until his face was mere inches from the dead girl, he said nothing. The only sound Rachel could hear was that of her own breathing.
It seemed a small forever until Hill stood up once more.
‘I need forensics here,’ he said. ‘I need pictures before I remove the bed cover.’
‘As far as I know, they’re on the way,’ Rachel said. ‘Shouldn’t be much longer.’
Hill walked to the window and looked out into the street. There was a single police car.
‘You’re from Ulysses?’ Hill asked without turning around.
‘Born in Utica,’ Rachel replied. ‘My folks moved to Syracuse when I was five. And now I’ve been stationed here for the past six months.’
‘And you always wanted to be police?’
‘I wanted to be a ballet dancer.’
Hill turned, smiling. ‘And why aren’t you a ballet dancer?’
‘Because it turns out I’m as clumsy as hell. All the grace of a newborn foal.’
Hill laughed. ‘Seems to me that a police officer is quite the change of direction.’
Rachel was about to speak when further voices could be heard.
Entering the bedroom, Detective Tom Marcus was accompanied by two forensic technicians and a crime scene photographer.
Rachel had met Marcus before. Laconic, seemingly diffident, she had never warmed to him. During her training, he had given a series of presentations on crime scene protocol, preservation of evidence, fingerprinting, other such things. He wore an expression of perpetual irritation, as if the world provided an inexhaustible supply of things he was obligated to tolerate.
‘I know you,’ he said to Rachel.
‘Hoffman, sir. From the academy.’
‘Right. They exiled you to the sticks, then?’
Rachel didn’t reply.
‘And now you have to deal with a dead schoolteacher and the worst flood in a century at the same time.’
Marcus paused for a second, as if figuring out the best wisecrack.
‘Out of your depth?’ he asked.
‘Funny,’ Rachel said. ‘You should get a half-hour slot at the Comedy Club. The world shouldn’t be deprived of such great material.’
‘I need your guys to take pictures before I remove the bedcover,’ Hill said, interrupting whatever road Rachel and Marcus were heading down.
Marcus gave instructions. Rachel and Hill stepped out of the room and waited for them to be done.
‘Okay, come on back,’ Marcus told Hill.
Hill approached the bed once more. He carefully lifted each of Caroline Lassiter’s arms in turn, bringing the bedcover down to reveal her breasts, her stomach. He folded it neatly as he went, laying it flat at the foot of the bed. Her naked form was exposed, and – once again – he stepped back to let the photographer take a dozen or more photographs from various points in the room.
‘So, whaddya reckon?’ Marcus asked. ‘Doesn’t seem to be any indication of foul play.’
‘I’ll do my preliminaries here,’ Hill said. ‘More than likely we won’t know until I perform the full autopsy.’
‘There’s a note, sir,’ Rachel said. She nodded towards it.
Using a pen to hold it flat, Marcus read the single sentence.
‘What the hell is this?’ he asked.
‘It was there when I came in.’
‘Did you move this, Hoffman?’
‘No, sir. The first responder. He said it was in her hand.’
‘To see if it was a suicide note,’ Marcus said.
‘That’s what I figured.’
‘Well, someone’s gonna get a harsh word or two, aren’t they?’
Marcus instructed one of the technicians to bag the note and then find a sample of the dead woman’s handwriting.
Hill stepped away from the bed. ‘I need her on the table,’ he said. ‘Could be an OD, but I need to do blood tests and all else.’
Marcus turned to Rachel. ‘You go on up to Syracuse with the body. I’ll clear it with your chief.’
‘Yes, sir.’
‘You guys all done?’ Marcus asked the technicians.
They were. There was nothing to see of any significance. Marcus left with his people.
‘Looks like it’s just the three of us, then,’ Hill said. ‘You ever seen an autopsy?’
‘No.’
‘Brace yourself,’ Hill said. ‘First few times can be pretty grim.’
Grim was an understatement. It was as if Rachel was witnessing the unzipping of a human being. As the scalpel made its way through flesh and muscle – a precise Y from below each shoulder to a point between the breasts, and then down to the navel – Caroline Lassiter’s innards were at last being released from twenty-three years of captivity.
‘Wait until you get a ripened one,’ Hill said. ‘A week undiscovered, all swollen up, and it smells like … well, it doesn’t smell like anything, to be honest. That stink stays in your nostrils for days.’
Rachel tried to focus as one organ after another was hefted out of the cadaver and placed on a weighing scale.
‘If you need to take a break, do so,’ Hill said, recognizing at once that she was struggling.
Standing in a small courtyard behind Syracuse Coroner’s Office in a small courtyard, she breathed deeply, quelling the rising wave of nausea that threatened to paint the sidewalk with her lunch.
Rachel was outside for a good fifteen minutes. She didn’t vomit, but she retched several times and experienced a wave of dizziness and cold sweats. How someone could get used to such things she didn’t know. She had no intention of finding out.
By the time the blood analysis came back, it was past 8.00 in the evening.
‘Barbiturates and chloroform,’ Hill told Rachel. ‘Barbiturates knocked her out so she wouldn’t struggle, and the chloroform killed her.’
‘I thought chloroform made someone pass out immediately.’
‘A very common misconception. Takes a good four or five minutes of uninterrupted inhalation. Someone is going to fight like hell against that. And there are no signs of a struggle, no bruising or lacerations anywhere on the body. And after they’re unconscious, it takes a great deal longer for them to ingest enough to bring about death. And the chin needs to be supported from beneath to keep the tongue out of the airway. Hence the barbiturates. At least that’s my opinion of what happened here. She was drugged so she didn’t resist, and then someone stayed right there and made her inhale enough to kill her.’
‘So we have a murder.’
‘Undoubtedly.’
‘When can we get a report?’
‘Tomorrow.’
‘And what happens now?’ Rachel asked.
‘With her? I stitch her up and put her on ice. Your guys inform her family. That’s if they haven’t already. I’m guessing the charming Detective Marcus or one of the others gets to work on finding your perp.’
Hill paused for a moment, and then he said, ‘How do you deal with that? People like Tom Marcus.’
‘I deal with it,’ Rachel replied.
‘Is he threatened by you, or what?’
‘I have no idea, and I really have no interest in finding out.’
‘Is it this way with all the men you work with?’
‘There’s always going to be a few, and it would be the same in any line of work. Hell, they even get into head-butting with each other. The amount of time that’s wasted by lack of cooperation between different units and departments is incredible. Sometimes it seems that taking the credit is more important than solving the case.’
‘Egos, eh? I guess I’m lucky I work with people who can’t talk back.’ Hill smiled. ‘Even when I open them up from gullet to gizzard.’
‘This is just a regular day for you, isn’t it?’
‘I’ve been doing this a good many years, Rachel. There’s not a great deal I haven’t seen.’
‘And you can just go home, kiss your wife, watch TV, have your dinner and forget about it.’
‘All of the above except the wife part.’
‘You’re not married?’
‘No.’
‘How come?’
‘Just lucky, I guess.’
‘You are too cynical.’
‘Don’t get emotional about it. That’s the trick. Whoever she was, she’s gone. The personality, everything that they were, is not hanging around in cells and bones and blood. The moment the heart stops beating, something goes. Don’t ask me what it is, because I sure as hell don’t know. The spark goes out, and it’s like switching off a light. There’s just a hundred and fifty pounds of muscle and bone left behind. It’s like a house with no one home.’
‘Doesn’t change the fact that it’s a tragedy. She’s pretty much the same age as me.’
‘And there we go,’ Hill said. ‘That train of thought stops right there. You didn’t know it was going to happen, and so there was nothing you could’ve done about it. Now all you have to do is make sure that whoever did this doesn’t get to do it again.’
‘I’m not a detective. Not yet, anyway.’
‘Is that where you’re headed?’
‘Yes,’ Rachel said. ‘That’s what I want.’
‘Well, I guess you better hang out with me a bunch. Get yourself all bullet-proof. You get into Homicide, you’re gonna see the very worst that human beings are capable of doing to one another. That’s something to look forward to, right?’
Rachel drove back to Ulysses.
Circumventing the roadblocks that were still in place, taking a winding route back towards the center of town, it was past 10.00 by the time she closed her front door behind her.
She took a shower, opened a bottle of wine, and then sat in her kitchen with the lights out.
Trying her best not to think about the events of that evening, her mind was nevertheless assaulted by images of Caroline Lassiter’s autopsy. To die so young was a tragedy; to die in such a manner made it so much worse. Perhaps, as Hill had said, you became inured to such things. Not insensitive, not unaffected, but somehow emotionally and psychologically detached. And for any chance of being a detective, detachment and objectivity were key. This was now a homicide investigation, nothing more nor less. She didn’t know the victim. They had never crossed paths, never shared a single word. That, in and of itself, did not reduce the urgency or diligence required for the investigation, but that investigation was not her remit. Syracuse PD was running the case, and the best she could hope for was to be somehow kept in the loop regarding its progress. However, if Marcus was primary, then there was very little chance of that. To Marcus, Rachel was little more than a passenger in a squad car, required to merely monitor the radio while the men did the heavy lifting.
Sleep was evasive. Somewhere near 2.00 on Tuesday morning, Rachel drifted off. Her last thought was for the note found in Caroline Lassiter’s hands. Abandon hope, all ye who enter here.
Whoever had sat so patiently with Caroline as she suffocated had something to say, and if that message was understood then they might be a little closer to understanding who had left it.
A week went by.
Tom Marcus was assigned primary on the Lassiter case. As far as Rachel could determine, it had yet to break. Forensics had found nothing indicative of the killer’s identity. There were no leads, no further developments, no fragments of information that indicated the motive for Caroline Lassiter’s death.
Rachel had accompanied another officer when the woman’s parents were informed. She sat and watched; she was required to say nothing, and for this she was grateful. She observed the shock, dismay, disbelief and heartbreak of a mother and father as they tried to absorb the profound weight of the news being delivered. Biased though they might have been, they described their daughter as a gentle soul – caring, considerate, patient and kind. All she’d ever wanted to do was teach. There was no one they could imagine would wish her harm. Of course, they asked why. Why would someone do such a thing? There was no way to answer that question, and thus no answer was given. Until the perpetrator was identified, arrested, interrogated, there would be no explanation, and – even then – the explanation might have no understandable rationale.
Sometimes people were killed for no reason other than that which existed in the mind of the killer. Those reasons could be beyond all reason. Ultimately, it seemed, it was impossible to rationalize irrationality.
The very nature of Caroline Lassiter’s death was in defiance of Nature. Parents should not bury their children. That was not the way things were meant to be.
On the morning of Tuesday 25th, Rachel received a call from Lawrence Hill.
‘You remember that note in the girl’s hand?’ he asked. ‘Well, it bugged the hell out of me, so I did some digging. I spoke to a few friends, one of whom is an English professor up at the university. He told me it’s a line from something called The Divine Comedy by Dante Alighieri.’
‘Okay, so we need to go talk to this Alighieri guy.’
Hill laughed. ‘Unless you have a time machine, that will be something of a challenge. The book was written about six hundred and fifty years ago.’
‘Right,’ Rachel said. ‘In one sentence I have demonstrated how ignorant and uneducated I am.’
‘Don’t take it personally,’ Hill said. ‘I’d heard of it, but I had no real clue what it was.’
‘And what is it?’
‘A poem, essentially. It’s about the afterlife, about Purgatory and Hell and whatever. In essence, it’s the journey of the soul to Heaven.’
Rachel was quiet for a moment.
‘I know what you’re thinking,’ Hill said. ‘You’re thinking that maybe we have a crazy out there.’
‘Actually, I was thinking that there must have been a reason for whoever killed her to have left that particular line. And that maybe they have more to say.’
‘Well, see what you can do with that. Give it to whoever’s running the investigation. See whether it sheds any light on anything.’
‘I really appreciate the call, Lawrence.’
‘You’re welcome, Rachel.’
Tom Marcus looked at Rachel with such a dismissive expression that she wanted to floor him.
‘Why is Hill calling you?’ was his first question.
‘I guess because I was there for the autopsy.’
‘And how does he think this is going to help us any?’
‘I don’t know, sir. I guess we could check the libraries, see who’s withdrawn the book. Seems like it’s a pretty unusual title. I sure as hell had never heard of it.’
‘You have any idea how many libraries there are in the state?’
‘No, sir.’
‘And who’s to say that whoever did this is from New York?’
Rachel didn’t respond. This was going to be a one-sided conversation; she was going to be shot down no matter what she suggested.
‘Has there been any further progress on the case, sir?’ Rachel asked.
‘Nothing that concerns you, Officer Hoffman. Now, don’t you have some traffic citations to chase up or something?’
‘Yes, sir. Of course, sir.’
Rachel backed up a step, turned and left the office.
At her desk she breathed slowly and purposefully. There was no point getting riled. Men like Marcus would always be men like Marcus. It wasn’t even misogyny. It was more basic than that. Such people – inflated with a sense of self-importance that seemingly knew no bounds – treated everyone but their superiors in the same manner. To the captain, Marcus was polite, matter-of-fact, businesslike. He said what was required to curry favor, to protect his reputation, to evade criticism or censure. No doubt Marcus was working whatever angle he could to ascend ever higher in the ranks. His goal was to be in a position where everything could be delegated. From such a vantage point, anything that went well would be something for which he could take credit; everything that didn’t would be someone else’s fault.
By the end of the first week in March, Rachel knew that Caroline Lassiter’s investigation had been abandoned. Marcus was heading up other investigations. That file, along with so many others, would gather dust in a cabinet. The girl would be forgotten, relegated to a statistic, remembered solely by those who knew her and missed her. Why it haunted Rachel, she could not explain. Perhaps their similarity in age, perhaps the mere fact that Caroline had been the first murder case in her police service, perhaps because she believed Caroline’s parents when they’d said that there was no imaginable reason for someone to kill her. A truly innocent victim.
There was also the manner of death – meticulous, even surgical. It had not been a crime of passion, nor had it been spontaneous and unintentional as in the case of an interrupted burglary. This has been planned and executed with forethought and preparation. No forced entry, no struggle, no sexual assault, no violence. Caroline Lassiter had been put to sleep. Like an animal. Like a sick, old animal that would merely live to suffer if mercy played no part.
Rachel knew she would have to let it go. If she reacted in such a way to every murder in her career, her mind would be crowded with the dead, each periodically surfacing to the forefront of her thoughts clamoring for an answer. She had no answer, and – it seemed – there might never be one.
Whoever had done this was out there. They walked and talked, they ate dinner, they watched TV, they visited friends and family. They wore a face for the world, and behind that face was another face entirely; perhaps a gallery of different faces, each of them carefully constructed to present a different persona dependent upon the circumstances. They had undertaken research; they had obtained barbiturates and chloroform; they knew that to bring about death the victim’s chin had to be raised to prevent the tongue from blocking the airway. Perhaps they had done this before, perhaps not. And, if this was as methodical and conscientious as Rachel believed it to be, then – in all likelihood – there would be another, and yet another. Of this she felt sure, and there sensed a conflict. Motivated by an intense dislike for the attitude of Tom Marcus, she wanted him proven wrong. Against that was the knowledge that in order for that to happen, another human being’s life would have to end. If it did, would she carry that on her conscience, as if she had somehow possessed the power to influence an outcome? That was crazy talk. She could not go there.
Perhaps every human being on Earth walked a narrow tightrope strung between birth and death. At some point they would fall, whether through loss of balance, perhaps stepping off voluntarily, sometimes because they were pushed. And maybe that moment was preordained, a destiny that was mapped out before they took their first breath. You live for so many years, in some cases months, other times merely days or hours, and then the lights go out. Darkness descends, and all that remains are the memories of those you left behind.
It was a dangerous thought, as likely to prompt apathy as a hunger for life. We have the time we have. We make the most of it, or we succumb to the whims of fate with no belief in our power to avert them.
Raymond Keene was forty-eight years old, and his second marriage had just come to an end.
The first one had begun much the same as most courtships. Each of them had woven a web of lies. He, in truth, had never served in the military; she had never been Homecoming Queen three years in a row. After less than two years, the marriage finally collapsed beneath the weight of falsehoods. One afternoon, facing one another in a roadside diner booth, Raymond and his wife saw one another for who they really were. He said he’d drive her to her folks in Buffalo. She declined, said she’d call her brother to come pick her up. That was the last they ever saw of one another. The divorce had been finalized through phone calls, letters from one lawyer to another. They owned nothing, so there was nothing to divide. There were no children, so custody arrangements never had to be considered.
Four years after the divorce, Raymond met Gayle Willard at an all-you-can-eat buffet in a Chinese restaurant in downtown Rochester. Having unceremoniously failed to make the slightest positive impression at a job interview that same afternoon, he’d decided to book himself into a motel, grab some dinner, and then drink himself into a stupor before heading back to Syracuse the following morning.
As he helped himself to the last four wafer-wrapped king prawns, Gayle – waiting in line behind him – gave an audible sigh of disappointment. Turning to look at her, Raymond apologized and put two back on the hotplate.
‘It’s okay,’ Gayle said. ‘You go ahead and eat everything and leave nothing for anyone else.’
And then she touched the sleeve of his jacket. Raymond caught the faintest ghost of her perfume.
‘You can apologize with a drink, Mr. Greedy.’
They talked for three hours. They navigated their way through two bottles of wine. Later that night and into the early hours of the morning, they fumbled their way through awkward, drunken sex in Raymond’s featureless low-cost motel room.
The following morning, they shared breakfast. She was five years out of a long-term relationship. She wasn’t looking for anything serious. This had been fun. She’d like to do it again.
They met weekly for the next six months. By Christmas they were talking about the possibility of getting a place together.
‘If we’re gonna live together,’ Raymond said one Tuesday in January, ‘then why don’t we …’
‘Get married?’
‘I mean, I don’t want you to feel …’
‘If you mean it, ask me properly, Raymond.’
He did. He got down on one knee. He didn’t have a ring in his pocket. That could wait. It was the right moment to ask her, and there wasn’t going to be a better one.
Gayle said yes.
The wedding was a small affair. They bought a place together in the Syracuse suburbs. Once again, the marriage lasted less than two years.
‘The way you look at me, I know you’re going to lie before you open your mouth,’ she said.
To Raymond, the pitch of her voice gave everything she uttered the ominous sense of an ultimatum. Even when she told him she wanted to make it work, it sounded like a warning.
Raymond understood that when it came to women, he’d spent his entire life trying to figure out the right words without ever realizing that the right words did not exist.
The end of the marriage was like a house fire. A bad one. Kicking through the ash and rubble, there seemed to be nothing worth salvaging.
Their divorce was finalized in April of 1974.
With what little remained of their halved assets, Raymond put down a deposit on a first-floor, one-bedroom apartment in Baldwinsville. He changed jobs, then changed again. Since November 1974, he’d worked in the accounts department of a Home Depot in Rochester. He was responsible for stock control, reorders, returns processing and refund administration. He drank too much. He ate the wrong food. He did not belong to a gym. He drove a crappy car that had too many miles on the clock and rarely started when the temperature dropped. He spent his weekends alone in front of the TV. He’d stopped asking himself when his life would get better.
Returning home on the evening of Wednesday, March 5th, 1975, Raymond took off his jacket, loosened his tie, kicked off his shoes and walked through to the kitchen. He opened the refrigerator and surveyed the contents. Cheese, two eggs, a jar of pasta sauce, an overripe tomato, half a carton of milk. Putting his shoes back on, he figured he’d get a burger and a couple of beers somewhere. He picked up his car keys, paused for a moment, and then put them down again. The way he felt in that moment, two beers would be followed by two or three more, and then he might make everything go away with a couple of shots. He would aim for one of the watering holes within walking distance, preferably a straight line from the apartment so he wouldn’t get lost on the way back.
Opening the front door, Raymond turned at the sound of something from the kitchen. He frowned, left the door ajar, and walked back. There was insufficient time for him to consider where the sound might have originated from, but any uncertainty he might have had was resolved when he saw a man standing facing the window ahead of the sink.
‘What the hell?’ Raymond said. ‘Who the fuck are you?’
The man turned. He was a head taller than Raymond. He had on work clothes – jeans and a canvas jacket. His hair was cut short, almost to the scalp.
‘Sit down, Raymond,’ the man said.
‘Who the fuck are you?’ Raymond repeated. ‘What the hell are you doing in my house?’
From his jacket pocket, the man produced a .38. He pointed it directly at Raymond’s head.
‘Christ almighty,’ Raymond said. ‘Okay, okay.’
Raymond took a seat.
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A Darker Side of Paradise
R.J. Ellory
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