RED MOUNTAIN (Detective DiPino Thriller) by David Thayer

RED MOUNTAIN (Detective DiPino Thriller) by David Thayer

Author:David Thayer [Thayer, David]
Language: eng
Format: azw3
Publisher: David Thayer Consulting
Published: 2013-12-27T16:00:00+00:00


PART TWO: Michelle

Chapter 16

Whitestone, Queens

Sunday, 12 AM

My husband is dead. I say the words out loud in this dismal room with the paint peeling off the walls and unpleasant odors rising like smoke from the bedspread, the carpet, the bathroom. The motel is called the Bridgeview in Whitestone, Queens. I am writing this all down in case I live through the night and have to face the consequences for my husband’s murder. I can’t say his name, so I call him my husband even though for years I avoided thinking of him that way.

I’m on the run. I’ve never felt so excited or alive as I do tonight at the prospect of leaving my old life behind. Was it so terrible? I think it was.

I have an hour before Edon Calcani arrives. He’s the attack dog Josef Brint is using tonight.

Where to start?

I first met Josef Brint last summer, after Labor Day. The weather had remained hot for a few weeks into September, record-breaking heat according to the newscast. Brint appeared as an unannounced guest at a lunch at the Regency Hotel where I had gone to meet Allen Cantwell. Allen and I had become friends after my father died eighteen months ago.

If I had to trace where my troubles began I’d start at my father’s funeral, which was held in the pouring rain out in Calverton at the national cemetery. My father had been a naval officer and was buried with full military honors, something that struck me at the time as the sort of hypocrisy men enjoy in lieu of grief.

I remember jumping out of my skin during the twenty-one gun salute. Jesus, when I look back I can see the way I behaved toward my sister, and my husband. I was acknowledging no one in those days—as though I believed the entire world had slid away behind a curtain of deceit, stranding me in a place of my own choosing, cut off and isolated. I wasn’t grieving for my father. I was angry that his estate had gone to my mother and an ex-wife, Penny.

I’ve been angry ever since.

Donna could care less since she has money of her own. My sister cried and carried on about Daddy in a way that made me want to kill her in the back seat of the limo.

Donna and my father had despised each other. Her outpouring was for show in case the paparazzi caught her smirking or snorting cocaine—two of the things my sister is very good at. She’s an actress, after all, a professional in the fine art of giving the idiots who idolize her fresh grist for their devotion.

I can honestly say I never want to see Donna again. I hope she chokes on a bone or blow her head off when she figures out that thirty-five is a dangerous age for vapid actresses. If my mother were still alive I think she’d feel the same way that I do, betrayed by everyone who is supposed to matter.

Last September Josef strolled through the Regency lobby with enough bravado to impress the staff.



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