Loyal readers of this blog, thank
you. Thank you for reading and sharing it.
Our numbers are way up this year since my hiatus to write my new novel
is over. And now the novel has
dropped. It’s available on Amazon and
through the publisher, SNR Creative.
It’s a crime thriller that follows parallel
stories that weave together in the end.
There are four dead bodies in a mechanic shop
in southwest Houston, one witness who is shot in the back with a wild tale of
witnessing the killer, a MS-13 gangster.
The police don’t believe him. The gangsters hunt him. A drug and bullet trafficker works his way up
and down the middle of the continent, leaving bodies in his wake until his
blood-lust removes the protection of the cartels he serves and the revenge
abduction of children trafficked sets off a wild manhunt across. A young attorney wakes up in jail with no recollection
of how he got there or the waste his life has become. He seeks redemption in a
death-penalty appeal of John Doddy, the Train Car Killer who begins to talk, giving
up the secret tale of his life that draws all the violence in a fulcrum around
him until it meets its end.
Ghosts of the Mid-Country is the sequel to Devils Walk Through Galveston, and continues the story with beloved
and reviled characters, answering its questions and delivering on its promise. It has two five star reviews on Amazon already. Two weeks ago, I gave a
teaser from the beginning of the story.
Here is one from the middle.
43. Churning
Six a.m. and
Western South Dakota was quiet. The call
came in to Houston and he recognized the number. He answered without introduction, which was
his custom, “You’re two days late reporting.”
“It was a long
ride back. We didn’t stop anywhere I
could call.”
“From Chicago
to the Black Hills, there was nowhere to call?”
“I’ve got less
than five minutes. You want to talk
about my schedule?”
“Did the
bullets get to the Mara kid?”
“No. He got double crossed back. The bullets went
to the original guy. The bald buy.
Nobody says his name.”
“The guy who
comes in like a ghost.”
“And who goes
out like one.”
“How’d it go
down?”
“Red made a
call and told him the offer that was being made. He matched the price and paid
some extra if the kid was thrown in.”
“Thrown in?”
“Kid’s gone.
Kid went with the ghost. You have a
better idea where the kid is than I do.
I doubt he ends up back in Texas.”
“Where are the
bullets?”
“They got on a
train going south.”
“You get the
train number?’
He gave it
up. The DEA agent in Houston wrote it
down quick as he could and heard something stir in the background. Heard before the guy did and said, “Out” and
was off.
He was on his
computer tracking one car on Union Pacific, trying to see if he could find out where
it was, where it would go. Trying to see if they could intercept it, or track
it or see who picked it up. They’d tried
to engineer a double cross and found out where loyalties lay. Found out part of what they wanted to.
§§
The boxcar was
hot, even with the wind whistling through the slats. It was at speed and locked from the inside
with the jerry-rigged hasp he put on to make sure no one got in while he was
inside. He needed the lock to
sleep. He needed the safety of it now
that he was alone on this trip and had to let his guard down for three
hours.
Judas slid into
the slot a foot wide between the pallet and the boxcar wall and laid down,
resting his head on his arm and let himself go into nothingness for three
hours. Three hours of the sleep of the
dead and he wouldn’t need any more for two days. He could wake and sit in half sleep until
they stopped at a yard or stopped for a temporary break for track
maintenance. Trains now moving on half
the track they did when they deregulated.
More track coming on line every year since 2009 when the oil fields in
the Bakken opened with those in the Eagle Ford and the oil had to get out. Those harder to use for his purposes. Those mostly made up of tanker cars coming
out. Some box cars coming in, none
out. All the space and fuel reserved for
oil. For hundreds of thousands of barrels every day that had to find a
market. So he was still relegated to the
lesser dry freight track but it served his purposes He
knew the guys in the yards and had coopted with drugs or money or fear or all
of each. He needed a tiny bit of space and time on millions of miles of track,
on millions of miles of train cars snaking all over the country, every once in
a while, north to south. And here he
was.
Here he was
three hours later groggy, trying to make out the geography, the topography all
the same: flat. There was the must of the water roiling nearby. He stood up and peered out and by the
twilight saw the bluffs across from New Madrid, new he’d be coming into Cairo
soon. Knew there’d be a stop here or
across in Paducah. Usually a problem
with the tracks around here. Usually a break for a couple of hours and he had
an itch. He had an itch that needed a scratch.
Hadn’t had the itch in a couple of months and it itched bad. He’d find someone to scratch it.
§§
A lion in a zoo
will take raw meat thrown into his pen and eat it. He’ll taste the blood. He’ll remember he likes it and eat it
silently and it’ll fill his belly. It
won’t fill his lust to hunt.
He could taste
the blood lust in the back of his throat, the iron on his tongue.
