Written in Blood Read online

  Published 2017 by Seventh Street Books®, an imprint of Prometheus Books

  Written in Blood. Copyright © 2017 by Layton Green. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, digital, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, or conveyed via the Internet or a website without prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

  Cover images © Alamy Stock Photo

  Cover design by Jacqueline Nasso Cooke

  Cover design © Prometheus Books

  This is a work of fiction. Characters, organizations, products, locales, and events portrayed in this novel are either products of the author’s imagination or used fictitiously.

  Excerpt from Agatha Christie’s Five Little Pigs, © Agatha Christie, 1942, and published in 1984 by Berkeley Books.

  Excerpt from Fyodor Dostoevsky’s Crime and Punishment, © David Magarshack, 1966, and this translation first published in 1951 by Penguin Books.

  Excerpt from Edgar Allan Poe’s The Murders in the Rue Morgue, published in 1999 by Barnes and Noble Books.

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  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Names: Green, Layton, author.

  Title: Written in blood / by Layton Green.

  Description: Amherst, NY : Seventh Street Books, an imprint of Prometheus Books 2017.

  Identifiers: LCCN 2017024043 (print) | LCCN 2017029804 (ebook) | ISBN 9781633883628 (ebook) | ISBN 9781633883611 (paperback)

  Subjects: LCSH: Private investigators—Fiction. | Murder—Investigation—Fiction. | BISAC: FICTION / Mystery & Detective / Police Procedural. | GSAFD: Suspense fiction. | Mystery fiction. g

  Classification: LCC PS3607.R43327 (ebook) | LCC PS3607.R43327 W75 2017 (print) | DDC 813/.6—dc23

  LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2017024043

  Printed in the United States of America

  A literary creation can appeal to us in all sorts of ways—by its theme, subject, situations, characters. But above all it appeals to us by the presence in it of art. It is the presence of art in Crime and Punishment that moves us deeply rather than the story of Raskolnikov’s crime.

  —Boris Pasternak

  Contents

  Cover

  Title Page

  Copyright Page

  Epigraph Page

  1

  2

  3

  4

  5

  6

  7

  8

  9

  10

  11

  12

  13

  14

  15

  16

  17

  18

  19

  20

  21

  22

  23

  24

  25

  26

  27

  28

  29

  30

  31

  32

  33

  34

  35

  36

  37

  38

  39

  40

  41

  42

  43

  44

  45

  46

  47

  48

  49

  50

  51

  52

  53

  54

  55

  56

  Acknowledgments

  About the Author

  1

  The body was lying faceup on a sheepskin rug, the top of the head caved in like a squashed plum. Detective Joe “Preach” Everson kneeled to view the corpse. To him, the splayed limbs suggested an uninhibited fall, rather than a careful arrangement of the body.

  Which didn’t fit with the two miniature crosses, one wood and one copper, placed side by side on the slain man’s chest.

  Officer Scott Kirby eyed the battered skull and let out a slow whistle. “What did that? A sledgehammer?”

  Preach replied without averting his gaze from the body. “It’s blunt force trauma, for sure.”

  “How come the eyes are open?” Kirby asked. “I thought that was for TV.”

  “Gravity. The muscles relax, the lids peel back.”

  “Huh. Smell’s not as bad as I thought,” Kirby said, though Preach had seen the junior officer’s brown skin blanch when they entered the living room of the fashionable townhome.

  The detective knew it was Officer Kirby’s first body, his first whiff of rotting flesh tinged with the sticky sweet odor of spilled blood. Kirby had been on the force for just two years, fresh out of community college and a string of dead end jobs before that, and the number of murders in Creekville, North Carolina, in the last two years was an easy one to remember.

  Zero.

  Preach had returned to his hometown only a month before, after a sixteen-year safari in the jungle of the human condition. Flashes from his last murder investigation, the one in Atlanta that had derailed his career, kept flooding his thoughts. He forced the past away and pressed the back of his hand to the forehead of the corpse. “Seventy-five degrees in here, not much odor . . . rough guess, I’d say we’re looking at eight to twelve hours.”

  “That’s a pretty specific guesstimation,” Kirby said. “I know you worked murders before, but . . . how many you seen?”

  “Too many,” Preach murmured, then held up a finger for quiet as he studied the facial features: eyes the color of frost on a windshield, a goatee sprinkled with grey, tight skin around the mouth, long creases in the forehead.

  Preach’s gaze roved upward, to a triptych of photos hanging on the wall. The deceased was smiling in all three, but an icy arrogance in his eyes told the detective that, whoever their John Doe was, he was not an empathetic man.

  A successful man, perhaps. Someone who had taken what he wanted from life.

  But not a man who would see a beggar on the streets of Creekville, or a child staring out from the back of a milk carton, and take on that muted pain as his own.

  Not a man who shared Preach’s affliction.

  The dead man looked about fifty, fleshy but not fat, the white skin a touch sallow. He wore an untucked blue dress shirt and brown cotton pants. Slip-on Merrells with gray socks. No wedding ring. White-collar hands and nails. No signs of a struggle, no visible wounds besides the head.

  Kirby stepped back from the body. “He look familiar to you? I feel like I’ve seen him around.”

  “A bit, yeah.”

  “What do you make of those crosses? Are they from a particular kind of group or sect, whaddyacallit—”

  “Denomination?”

  Kirby cocked one of his signature white-toothed smiles that broadened his narrow face. He was not thick-bodied like Preach, who looked like he could play tight end for a professional football team. Kirby was tall and lean and hit the gym like Mother Teresa attended mass. “Yeah. That.”

  Preach folded his arms, creasing the fabric of his double-breasted, forest green overcoat he had bought during his first week as a detective. “The holes imply something was threaded through the crosses, probably a loophole for a necklace. Catholic, if I had to guess, simply because Catholics wear more crosses.”

  They donned evidence gloves, and Kirby extracted a leather wallet. “Our vic’s name is Farley Grover Robertson, poor guy. Business card s
ays he owns the Wandering Muse. That’s the local bookstore.”

  Preach snapped his fingers. “That’s it.”

  Kirby coughed a chuckle. “We’ve all been wondering where you go at night.”

  “You should give reading a try. I can help with the letters.”

  “Literature doesn’t advance my career plan.” Kirby flashed another megawatt smile. “Scotty the Body’s coming to a reality show near you.”

  Preach held out a hand for the wallet. “Dare to dream.”

  “We should team up. Chicks dig that blond All-American look, plus the coffee and cream angle—they’ll lap us up. Cops meets The Bachelor.”

  “I’d rather be waterboarded before breakfast every morning than be on a reality show.”

  Kirby looked relieved but nervous at the light banter, unsure if they should continue. In Preach’s experience, it happened at almost every murder scene. A way of flinching at the horror without losing face.

  He flipped through the wallet, finding two grand in cash, plus an array of credit cards. The driver’s license claimed that Farley Robertson was born in 1964, stood five foot eleven, and weighed two-twenty. “You find a phone or a computer?”

  “Yup,” Kirby said. “Both password locked.”

  “Get IT on that.”

  Preach rose to take in his surroundings. They were in the living room of an upscale townhouse, nestled in the forest hovering just outside the sliding glass door. Floor-to-ceiling bookshelves on one wall, original art on the other, white leather furniture, a flat-screen television mounted above a gas fireplace, an island partitioning the stainless steel kitchen, a dead body lying on a blood-soaked rug covering half the living room floor.

  An enormous cockroach climbed out of an air vent, lurching about as if some fat, drunken god of the netherworld had stumbled onto the surface. Must be a recent spray. He told Kirby to check pest control records.

  They searched the two-story condo, which was a little too clean, too artsy. If Preach were back in Atlanta, he would have pegged Farley Robertson as homosexual, perhaps metro.

  But in the People’s Republic of Creekville, which was what everyone in the Research Triangle called the eccentric little community outside Chapel Hill, it was hard to tell. Gay or straight or bi, grad student or semi-homeless, artist, hipster, young professional, skater, brewer, doctor, yogi—the social lines were blurred in the People’s Republic like nowhere Preach had ever been.

  His final stop was the laundry cubby between the master and guest bedrooms. When he saw the washer and dryer, he started thinking about the amount of blood they had found downstairs. He kneeled and asked Kirby to tilt the washer.

  After a moment of searching, Preach said, “Check out the grouting.”

  They switched positions. Kirby whistled. “Is that a spot of dried blood?”

  “It’s not Tabasco sauce.”

  Kirby eyed the bottle of liquid detergent perched atop the washer. “You think the killer smashed the vic’s skull and then went upstairs to run a cycle of laundry? That takes a calculating perp. Wait—wouldn’t that mean he didn’t come here to kill him? Because he could have brought a change of clothes and a plastic bag.”

  “Maybe the killer washed the blood out in an abundance of caution, in case a cop pulled him over.”

  After pointing out the blood to forensics, the officers returned downstairs. “So what now?” Kirby asked. “The bookstore? Let ’em know the boss is on permanent vacation, find someone to ID the body?”

  Preach snapped a photo of the corpse with his cell phone, eying the two crosses on the victim’s chest while he gave a slow, uneasy nod. “I’ll have Terry talk to the neighbors and search for next of kin.”

  “Strange how the crosses were left there,” Kirby said, noticing the focus of his attention. “Like it’s a message or something.”

  “Oh, it’s a message,” Preach said. “The question is for whom?”

  2

  Sunlight flared as Preach and Kirby stepped outside, the cloudless sear of a crisp October sky. Voices followed, a few local reporters pressing against the police tape cordoning off a tiny front lawn strewn with pine cones.

  Preach could see Kirby preparing to preen for the media. “Don’t talk to them,” the detective said in a low voice.

  “What?”

  Preach lowered his head and headed straight for the Chevy Impala, forcing Kirby to keep up. As they strode past, neighbors clutched coffee cups in their front yards, staring in shock at the array of police cruisers.

  The questions from the reporters came rapid fire:

  “Can you confirm Creekville’s first murder in ten years?”

  “Is this Farley Robertson’s residence? How was he killed?”

  “When can we expect a—”

  Preach slammed the door and saw Kirby staring at the reporters in the rearview. The naiveté in the junior officer’s eyes made Preach think about the article currently headlining the front page of the Creekville Police website.

  Tips for Dealing with Unwanted Deer Incursions on Your Property.

  “You want to be on camera if and when you solve the case,” Preach said. “Not before. Unless you want to be the guy who failed to protect and serve?”

  “Yeah, sure,” Kirby muttered.

  “The chief can dish out the basics when she’s ready.”

  They entered downtown on Hillsdale Street, passing a half-mile spree of lavish Southern homes with lawns shaded by hundred-year-old oaks. Creekville’s Beverly Hills.

  Preach still felt a pang of bittersweet emotion whenever he drove down Hillsdale. He had once been the town’s golden boy, with all the unearned privilege and little cruelties that term implies. Right after high school, still reeling from a breakdown after his cousin’s death, he had left home and enrolled at a two-year Bible college. The decision was part newfound faith, part a jab at his parents, and mostly a lack of direction. Ten months of preaching after that had led to a loss of faith, not in God but in the narrow interpretation of the divine.

  Next came a stint as a nondenominational prison chaplain. It had been the only job he could find, a brutal job, but one he respected. A second breakdown had caused him to take refuge in a random motel in a sunbaked town in Georgia, close to the last prison where he had worked. He numbed his mind with manual labor on a pecan farm. Reflection, searching, a chance encounter with a novel that altered his worldview. He decided to read every good book that had ever been written and made a new pledge, this time to help those who could not speak for themselves.

  After taking a job with the Atlanta police, he had made a rapid rise through the department. No breakdowns for a decade, his past issues firmly in the rearview.

  Or so he thought.

  They turned onto Main Street, the bustling farmer’s market signaling the start of the small but vibrant commercial district. Preach cracked the window for some air as they passed the town hall and its unapologetic display of the rainbow flag.

  “It’s my first murder,” Kirby said. “Chance to make a name for myself, right?”

  “Someone’s dead. Don’t get too excited. What do we know so far? Tell me something.”

  Kirby flexed his fingers on the armrest. “Housekeeper called it in. Said the front door was unlocked when she arrived. No sign of forced entry, which means Robertson let him in, left the door unlocked—unlikely after midnight—or the murderer had a key.”

  “The vast majority of murders are committed by someone the victim knew.”

  Kirby whistled out a breath. “If you hurt the ones you love the most, then someone must have really loved Farley Robertson.”

  “What’d you notice about the townhome?”

  “That our guy had a ten thousand dollar couch, museum quality art, and two grand in his wallet. I thought bookstores made about as much money as a travel agency in a trailer park.”

  “Maybe he had family money,” Preach said.

  He parked across the street from a long, two-story brick building that hous
ed a line of storefronts. The building was painted Carolina blue, and whimsical street murals covered the two end walls.

  The Wandering Muse was wedged between a speakeasy and a throwback barber shop. There was also a tattoo parlor and a store called Brewed Vinyl that was pretty much as advertised: a combination coffee shop and vinyl record shop.

  Kirby paused with his hand on the door. “I know the chief sent us on the call cause you’re the Man and I was available—”

  “The chief picked you because she sees something in you.”

  Kirby tried to disguise his pleasure at the compliment. “Anyway, you think she’ll keep us together on this? I’d like to learn a thing or two.”

  “You sure you want to work a homicide in Creekville? It could get ugly. No big city lights to hide behind.”

  Kirby’s mint green eyes glowed with determination. “Oh yeah.”

  With its high ceilings and exposed brick walls, track lighting illuminating narrow shelves groaning with books, Preach thought the Wandering Muse resembled a microcosm of Creekville: disheveled at first glance, but carefully so. Educated but not studious; lively but not raucous; a welcoming, laid-back vibe ready to explode the moment someone was suspected of not conforming to the welcoming, laid-back vibe.

  A thin, pale young woman was arranging a stack of hardcovers by the front door. She had short dark hair that stuck out like twigs, a wide mouth, and cappuccino eyes. Preach didn’t remember seeing her before, but he had only been in a few times.

  “Can I help you?” she asked, coolly eying Officer Kirby’s uniform.

  Her eyes were cautious, edgy. Not the shifty wariness of a criminal, but the guarded look of someone who has lived outside the candy-coated center of mainstream society.

  Preach held up his badge. “I’m Detective Everson. Are you in charge this morning, ma’am?”

  He could sense her gauging the power structure. “Just by default,” she said, “since the owner hasn’t shown up. And I’ve got class at eleven.”

  He took a closer look at the collection of sharp angles and delicate curves that defined her narrow face, quite attractive in a waifish way. Her clothing, like her hair, made a statement: a long-sleeved black fishnet top with a white camisole underneath; ripped jeans rolled at the cuffs; a layered assortment of necklaces inset with colored stones.