row?”
The partner arguing with Jackson chuckled. “I know you won’t give up. That’s what I like about you. It makes us lots of money.”
“Come and get it while it’s hot,” the chef called from the barbecue.
“So?” said Jackson’s adversary as they abandoned the pool. “What did that bench of judges do with the cannibals?”
“ Dudley and Stephens. ” Jackson winked. “Look it up.”
That was the day Alex decided that she, too, would be a lawyer. Intrigued by the dark side of her father’s work, she focused on abnormal psychology. The passing years saw her dad become a judge of the Oregon Supreme Court, while she completed a master’s degree in preparation for law school. Tragedy, however, altered the course of her life.
First, her mother perished in a car crash on the I-5. Then, three months later, her father suffered an epileptic fit in court. The neurosurgeons were unable to get all the cancer, so Alex faced a choice between law school and him. She took her dad to the West Coast town of Cannon Beach, and there she nursed him through his slow death. To occupy her mind during that ordeal, Alex turned her master’s thesis on America’s premier serial killer into a true-crime book.
House of Horrors: The Case of H. H. Holmes caught the morbid imagination of enough readers to launch her career as a writer. It also inspired two psychos to create horrific Castle Crag.
The invitation seemed innocent enough. A group of crime writers would fly somewhere secret for a mystery weekend; there, they would match wits with a homicide detective from the Mounted Police. The outcome would determine how much was given to charity. So off Alex flew for a good cause, hoping a little R & R in Canada would ease the pain of her dad’s death. But instead, she found herself trapped in the deadly maze of her own book as one by one the writers fell victim to Castle Crag, the murder mansion on Deadman’s Island.
How she got from there to here was charted in her subsequent books. She had escaped from the island with a thrilling story and a new boyfriend, for the Mountie sent to match wits with the writers was Insp. Zinc Chandler of Special X.
What Justin Whitfield had in Maddy Thorne, Alexis Hunt had in Zinc.
An inside source.
Her own Deep Throat.
The white police cars parked in front of townhouse 11 were jaundiced yellow by the sickly glow of sodium-vapor streetlights. Waiting ominously at the curb was a black station wagon manned by dark-dressed undertakers from the body removal service. Mist billowed from the outside vent of a clothes dryer next door, and lights peering through the fog were ringed by eerie halos. Mounties in blue windbreakers kept the curious away from death’s door, where a cop with a clipboard stopped the couple.
“Inspector Chandler,” Zinc said, his buffalo head badge in hand.
The officious rookie logged him in.
“She’s with me,” Zinc said, indicating Alex.
“Sorry, Inspector. No unauthorized entry is the order from my sergeant.”
Zinc snatched the clipboard and signed Alex in. “I’m sure your sergeant will find that sufficient authority.”
Cops call them bunny suits, the duds piled on a chair inside the door. The phrase made Alex think of plunging cleavage and cottontails and Hef working the room in silk pajamas. Only Keystone Kops fail to take precautions against tainting evidence, so the two paused in the entry hall to don disposable headgear, overalls, and booties. The bunny suits made them look like astronauts, a simile reinforced by what they saw in the two-story vault off the hall.
Six of the seven in the room wore the same white suits as Zinc and Alex. They could be performing an experiment on a shuttle in outer space. Weightlessness seemed to lift the seventh off the floor. What could be an oxygen hose rose from her neck to the landing above. Was she a species from another galaxy, this creature dressed like a vamp in skimpy underwear, with a legless torso and a
The partner arguing with Jackson chuckled. “I know you won’t give up. That’s what I like about you. It makes us lots of money.”
“Come and get it while it’s hot,” the chef called from the barbecue.
“So?” said Jackson’s adversary as they abandoned the pool. “What did that bench of judges do with the cannibals?”
“ Dudley and Stephens. ” Jackson winked. “Look it up.”
That was the day Alex decided that she, too, would be a lawyer. Intrigued by the dark side of her father’s work, she focused on abnormal psychology. The passing years saw her dad become a judge of the Oregon Supreme Court, while she completed a master’s degree in preparation for law school. Tragedy, however, altered the course of her life.
First, her mother perished in a car crash on the I-5. Then, three months later, her father suffered an epileptic fit in court. The neurosurgeons were unable to get all the cancer, so Alex faced a choice between law school and him. She took her dad to the West Coast town of Cannon Beach, and there she nursed him through his slow death. To occupy her mind during that ordeal, Alex turned her master’s thesis on America’s premier serial killer into a true-crime book.
House of Horrors: The Case of H. H. Holmes caught the morbid imagination of enough readers to launch her career as a writer. It also inspired two psychos to create horrific Castle Crag.
The invitation seemed innocent enough. A group of crime writers would fly somewhere secret for a mystery weekend; there, they would match wits with a homicide detective from the Mounted Police. The outcome would determine how much was given to charity. So off Alex flew for a good cause, hoping a little R & R in Canada would ease the pain of her dad’s death. But instead, she found herself trapped in the deadly maze of her own book as one by one the writers fell victim to Castle Crag, the murder mansion on Deadman’s Island.
How she got from there to here was charted in her subsequent books. She had escaped from the island with a thrilling story and a new boyfriend, for the Mountie sent to match wits with the writers was Insp. Zinc Chandler of Special X.
What Justin Whitfield had in Maddy Thorne, Alexis Hunt had in Zinc.
An inside source.
Her own Deep Throat.
The white police cars parked in front of townhouse 11 were jaundiced yellow by the sickly glow of sodium-vapor streetlights. Waiting ominously at the curb was a black station wagon manned by dark-dressed undertakers from the body removal service. Mist billowed from the outside vent of a clothes dryer next door, and lights peering through the fog were ringed by eerie halos. Mounties in blue windbreakers kept the curious away from death’s door, where a cop with a clipboard stopped the couple.
“Inspector Chandler,” Zinc said, his buffalo head badge in hand.
The officious rookie logged him in.
“She’s with me,” Zinc said, indicating Alex.
“Sorry, Inspector. No unauthorized entry is the order from my sergeant.”
Zinc snatched the clipboard and signed Alex in. “I’m sure your sergeant will find that sufficient authority.”
Cops call them bunny suits, the duds piled on a chair inside the door. The phrase made Alex think of plunging cleavage and cottontails and Hef working the room in silk pajamas. Only Keystone Kops fail to take precautions against tainting evidence, so the two paused in the entry hall to don disposable headgear, overalls, and booties. The bunny suits made them look like astronauts, a simile reinforced by what they saw in the two-story vault off the hall.
Six of the seven in the room wore the same white suits as Zinc and Alex. They could be performing an experiment on a shuttle in outer space. Weightlessness seemed to lift the seventh off the floor. What could be an oxygen hose rose from her neck to the landing above. Was she a species from another galaxy, this creature dressed like a vamp in skimpy underwear, with a legless torso and a
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