What the Fly Saw

Book 2: Detective Hannah McCabe

by Frankie Y. Bailey

Genres: Mystery

Synopsis

Frankie Bailey introduced readers to an exciting new protagonist in The Red Queen Dies, the first book in the Detective Hannah McCabe mystery series. Now in What the Fly Saw, Hannah and her partner Mike Baxter are back with an even more puzzling case.

Albany, New York, January 2020

The morning after a blizzard that shut down the city, funeral director Kevin Novak is found dead in the basement of his funeral home. The arrow sticking out of his chest came from his own hunting bow.

A loving husband and father and an active member of a local megachurch, Novak has no known enemies. His family and friends say he was depressed because his best friend died suddenly of a heart attack and Novak blamed himself. But what does his guilt have to do with his death? Maybe nothing, maybe a lot. The minister of the megachurch and the psychiatrist who provides counseling to church members—do either of them know more than they are saying?

Detective Hannah McCabe and her partner, Mike Baxter, sort through lies and evasions to solve the riddle of Novak's death, while unanswered questions from another high-profile case, and McCabe's own suspicions make for a dynamite crime novel.

Release date: March 3, 2015

Publisher: St. Martin's Publishing Group

Print pages: 352

Sample

1



Saturday, January 18, 2020

5:47 A.M.

After the storm passed, in the chilly hour before dawn, the last of the "space zombies" found their way back to their nest in the derelict house.

From his command post, the squad leader gave the signal: "Go!"

A black van pulled up in front of the house. Albany PD vice cops wearing protective gear jumped out and stormed up the walk. They used a battering ram to smash open the wooden door.

"Police! Albany PD!"

"Police!"

Their high-powered torches illuminated the grotesque horror movie creatures in the 3-D posters on the walls.

One of the cops ripped down a dangling black plastic replica of the 2012 UFO. He tossed the boomerang-shaped object to the floor.

Hippie freaks, he thought. Ought to make them all go live out in the Mojave Desert and wait for the mother ship to arrive.

He kicked at the nearest mattress on the floor. "Police!" he shouted down at the long-haired occupant. "On your feet!"

Blank eyes in an eerie white-painted face stared up at him.

"Hands up! Hands up!" the cop yelled as the kid stumbled to his feet. He shoved the boy against the wall and patted him down.

Upstairs, in a bathroom, another cop found a girl sprawled out, unconscious, on the dirty tile floor beside the toilet. She had vomited in the toilet bowl. Her jeans were stained with urine and feces.

Reaching down, he shook her, and then rolled her onto her side to see her face beneath the mop of dark hair. A nasty bruise on her cheekbone stood out against the streaked white paint. He moved her red scarf aside to feel for a pulse in her throat. The scarf was damp, like her tee shirt and soiled blue jeans.

"Whaddya have?" another cop asked from the doorway.

"Looks like an OD," the cop inside the bathroom said. "Still breathing, but the wagon had better get here fast."

"Got it," the other cop said, touching the comm button on his helmet.

The cop in the bathroom spotted a smear of blood on the corner of the sink. That explained the bruise. She'd banged her face on the sink when she passed out.

Downstairs in the kitchen, cops surveyed the debris of dirty dishes and rotting garbage-and an impressive array of drugs and paraphernalia.

One lowered her weapon and observed, "With a stash like this, they could have stayed zonked out until the next UFO came to visit."



Copyright © 2015 by Frankie Y. Bailey