Jeffery Deaver

“Shallow Graves is a real pleasure — tough-minded, intelligent, and very well written. Bravo!”
– Lawrence Block, author of “Everybody Dies”

The drapery man had been warned that even though it was now well after midnight, Sunday morning of the Thanksgiving holiday, there would very likely be people in the firm here, attorneys and paralegals, still working.

And so he carried the weapon at his side, pointed downward.

It was a curious thing — not a knife exactly, more of an ice pick, but longer and made of a blackened, tempered metal.

He held it with the confidence of someone who was very familiar with the device. And who had used it before.

Dressed in the gray coveralls bearing the stencil of a bogus drapery cleaning service, the big, sandy-haired man in a baseball cap now paused and, hearing footsteps, stepped into an empty office. Then there was silence. And he continued on, through shadows, pausing for long moment, frozen like a fox near a ground nest of skittish birds.

He consulted the diagram of the firm, turned down one corridor and continued, gripping the handle of the weapon tightly in his hand, which was as muscular as the rest of his body.

As he neared the office he sought, he reached up and pulled a paper face mask over his mouth. This was not so that he wouldn’t be recognized but because he was concerned that he might lose a fleck of spit that could be retrieved as evidence and used in a DNA match.

The office, which belonged to Mitchell Reece, was at the end of the corridor, not far from the front door of the firm. Like all the offices in the firm, the lights were left on, which meant he wasn’t sure that it was unoccupied.

But he glanced in quickly, saw that the space was empty and stepped inside.

The office was very cluttered. Books, files, charts, thousands of sheets of papers. Still, the man found the filing cabinet easily — there was only one here with two locks on it — and crouched, pulling on tight latex gloves and extracting his tool kit from his coverall pockets.

The drapery man set the weapon near to hand and began to work on the locks.

* * *

 

“Deaver whips up enough atmosphere for a whole series here: late-night music, copious jazz lore, performance-art interludes, man troubles aplenty–the plucky Taylor partakes of them all.”
– Publishers Weekly

Loaded with character and action and a very devious plot, “Mistress Of Justice” is a top-notch legal thriller.”
– Mystery Lovers News

“…an intelligently written thriller.”
– Booklist

“This novel is a solid achievement.”
– Mystery News

“The official bag of tricks used by the feds and police against Pellam includes interrogation, threats of prosecution on false charges, disruption of Pellam’s life and business and hints that the film he’s working on could be shut down.”
– Publishers Weekly

“…topnotch writing, snappy dialogue, solid pacing, and excellent characterization.”
– Amazon.com

All he wanted was a case of beer.

And it looked like he was going to have to get it himself.

The way Stile explained it, “I can’t hardly get a case of Labatts on the back of a Yamaha.”

“That’s okay,” Pellam said into the cellular phone.

“You want a six-pack, I can handle that. But the rack’s a little loose. Which I guess I owe you. The rack, I mean. Sorry.”

The motorcycle was the film company’s but had been issued to Pellam, who had in turn loaned it to Stile. Stile was a stuntman. Pellam chose not to speculate on what he had been doing when the rack got broken.

“That’s okay,” Pellam said again. “I’ll pick up a case.”

He hung up the phone. He got his brown bomber jacket from the front closet of the Winnebego, trying to remember where he’d seen the discount beverage store. The Riverfront Deli was not far away but the date of his next expense check was and Pellam did not feel inclined to pay $26.50 for a case, even if it had been imported all the way from Canada.

He stepped into the kitchenette of the camper, stirred the chili and put the cornbread in the small oven to heat. He had thought about cooking something else for a change. Nobody seemed to notice that whenever Pellam hosted the poker game, he made chili. Maybe he would serve it on hot dogs, maybe on rice but it was always chili. And oyster crackers. He didn’t know how to cook much else.

He thought about doing without the beer, calling back Stile and saying, yeah, just bring a six pack. But he did the calculation and decided they needed a whole case. There would be four of them playing for six hours and that meant even a case would be stretched pretty thin. He would have to break out the mescal and Wild  as it was.

Pellam stepped outside, locked the camper door and walked along the road paralleling the gray plane of the Missouri River. It was just after dark, an autumn weekday and by rights ought to be rush hour. The road dipped and rose away from him and it was deserted of traffic. He zipped his jacket tight. Pellam was tall and thin. Tonight he wore jeans and a work shirt that had been black and was now mottled gray. His cowboy boots sounded in loud, scraping taps on the wet asphalt. He wished he had worn his Lakers cap or his Stetson; a cold wind, salty-fishy smelling, streamed off the river. His eyes stung, his ears ached.

He walked quickly. He was worried that Danny — the scriptwriter of the movie they were now shooting — would show up early. Pellam had recently left a ten pound catfish in Danny’s hotel room bathtub and the writer had threatened to weld the Winnebego door shut in retaliation.

The fourth of the poker players was a grip from San Diego who looked just like the merchant marine he had once been, complete with tattoo. The fifth was a lawyer in St. Louis, a hawkish man with tight jowls. The film company’s L.A. office had hired him to negotiate property and talent contracts with the locals. He talked nonstop about Washington politics as if he had run for office and been defeated because he was the only honest candidate in the race. His chatter was a pain but he was a hell of a good man to play poker with. He bet big and lost amiably.

Hands in pockets, Pellam turned down Adams Street, away from the river, studying the spooky, abandoned red-brick Maddox Ironworks building.

Thinking, it’s damp, it may rain.

Thinking, would the filming in this damn town go much over schedule?

Would the chili burn, had he turned in down?

Thinking about a case of beer.

*  *  *

With every passing mile her heart fled a little more.

The girl, nine years old, sat slumped in the front seat, rubbing her finger along the worn beige armrest. The slipstream from the open window laid a strip of blond hair across her face. She pulled it away and looked up toward the stern man of about forty who drove with his eyes fixed beyond the long nose of the car.

“Please,” the girl said.

“No.”

At the first click of the turn signal the girl jumped as if a gun had fired. The car slowed and rocked into the driveway, aiming toward a low brick building. She realized that her last hope was gone; the man was not going to weaken at the last moment.

The car rolled slowly to a stop.

The man reached over and pushed her buckle release. The seat belt retracted.

“I don’t want to. Please.”

“Sarah.”

“Just for today.”

“No,” the man said.

“Please!”

“Come on,” he said.

“I’m not ready!”

“You’ll be fine. Just do the best you can. Nobody expects more than that.”

Her inventory of excuses was depleted. Sarah opened the car door but remained sitting.

“Give me a kiss.”

She leaned over and kissed her father quickly on her cheek then climbed out of the car, which happened to be a late-model police cruiser. She stood completely still, breathing in the cool spring air heavily scented with the bus’s exhaust, breathing it fast, nervously, growing dizzy. She took three steps toward the building then paused, watching the police car pull out of the elementary school driveway.

Maybe her father would catch a glimpse of her in the mirror, change his mind and return.

The car vanished over a hill.

Filled with stinging hopelessness, close to panic, Sarah turned and entered the building. Clutching her lunch box to her chest she walked reluctantly through the corridors. Although she was as tall as any of the children swarming around her she felt younger than them all. Tinier. Weaker.

At the fourth-grade classroom she stopped.

Sarah looked inside. Her nostrils flared and she felt her skin prickle with a renewed rash of fear.

No one made fun of her. No one threatened her. No one even noticed her.

Go ahead, she told herself.

You’ll be fine. Just do best you can. Nobody expects more than that.

But, yes, they do, Sarah thought. Everyone expects more than your best. Always, always, always.

And she hesitated only for a moment before turning and walking resolutely out of the building, buffeted and jostled as she forced her way through the oncoming stream of shouting, calling, laughing children.

* * *