Sudden Impact

William P. Wood

Description

Bestselling author William Wood spins this dark, riveting tale of a beloved Sacramento cop killed in a bizarre accident, and the hunt to track down his killer—a fast-paced thriller of murder, deceit, haunting pasts, and one man’s dangerous scheme to fight for those he loves.

Officer Tommy Ensor did not see the car that struck him down on a rainy night in California’s capital.

Ensor is no ordinary cop. He’s a hero, winner of the Medal of Valor, devoted family man and coach, helping at-risk kids. But the driver who struck him down and didn’t stop isn’t ordinary either. He’s Judge Frank Stevenson, up-and-coming member of the bench, also devoted to his wife and daughter, involved in charities and good works. In a split second he did something completely uncharacteristic that irrevocably changes his life and the lives of everyone close to him.

Terry Nye is a couple of weeks from retirement as a detective, head of Major Crimes. He’s trying to pack thirty years of bloody experiences and hard lessons into those two weeks for his new partner, Rose Tafoya. Rose is a young detective, smart, more than a little ambitious, but also insecure. Together she and Nye are a powerhouse team. He’s determined to find Ensor’s assailant and he’s going to make sure Rose doesn’t make the same mistakes he did, especially the unforgivable one that has come back to darkly haunt him after Ensor’s accident.

The city is in turmoil when Ensor dies and the hunt for a cop killer rushes ahead relentlessly, moving from Nye and Tafoya to Stevenson and his wife. The guilty and innocent are sucked randomly into the intense, high-powered investigation. Nye and Rose face death in a shoot-out; a politician’s sad, dirty secret is exposed; and ambitions threaten to destroy the investigation.

The hunters and the hunted know the stakes are life and death.

Frank Stevenson knows he’s being hunted. Stevenson is both stunned because he didn’t stop that rainy night and steeled to do whatever he has to do to avoid the hunters. Even if it means committing more crimes. He’s not just protecting himself. He’s fighting for those he loves.

Stevenson comes up with a brilliant scheme to throw Nye and Tafoya off the track. But even if it works, Stevenson is tormented wondering how he can sit in judgment on others now. 

A final hard moment of reckoning arrives for the hunters and the hunted. Everyone will realize that their lives will change in the blink of an eye.  

Sujets

• Policier & Thriller
• Thriller
• Sacramento
• Fiction
• Le Retour de l'inspecteur Harry
• Sacramento, California
• Sudden Impact
• William Wood
• Medal of Valor
• Thrillers
• Legal

Informations

• Publié par: Turner Publishing Company
• Date de parution: 18 février 2014
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781620454688
• Langue: English

Extrait

Praise for William P.Wood -->
William P. Wood

"No one writes a better police procedural than Bill Wood, and Sudden Impact is his best one to date-lucid prose, meticulous legal detail, and unforgettable characters struggling in various moral quandaries. Terrific, unputdownable stuff."
-John Lescroart, New York Times bestselling author of The Thirteenth Juror and The Hunt Club
"William Wood is a master of suspense. Sudden Impact is Wood at the peak of his powers, tense and eloquent, with characters and a story of political intrigue and riveting tragedy."
-Steve Martini, bestselling author of Compelling Evidence
"Wood clearly knows the inner workings of the judicial system."
- Publishers Weekly
"A feeling of truth permeates this book . . . one of the better courtroom dramas of recent years."
- New York Times , for Rampage
"The story never cools down and never plays tricks."
- Kirkus Reviews
"The nonstop action and relentless pace will satisfy fans of the hard-boiled thriller genre."
- Publishers Weekly , for Gangland
"A spellbinding tale about the men and women who dispence justice from the bench."
- Associated Press , for Broken Trust
"William P. Wood . . . knows the intricacies and ironies of the legal system. He also knows how to employ them to weave a compelling story."
- San Diego Union , for Stay of Execution
Also by William P. Wood
The Bone Garden
Rampage
Gangland
Fugitive City
Broken Trust
Stay of Execution
Quicksand
Pressure Point
The Bribe
SUDDEN IMPACT
SUDDEN IMPACT
A NOVEL
TURNER -->
Turner Publishing Company
424 Church Street Suite 2240 Nashville, Tennessee 37219
445 Park Avenue 9th Floor New York, New York 10022
www.turnerpublishing.com
SUDDEN IMPACT
Copyright 2014 William P. Wood
All rights reserved. This book or any part thereof may not be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher.
This is a work of fiction. All the characters and events portrayed in this book are either products of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously.
Cover design: Maxwell Roth
Book design: Glen Edelstein
Library of Congress Catalog-in-Publishing Data
Wood, William P.
Sudden impact / William P. Wood.
pages cm
ISBN 978-1-62045-466-4 (pbk.)
1. Murder--Investigation--Fiction. 2. Legal stories. I. Title.
PS3573.O599S83 2014
813'.54--dc23
2013025220

Printed in the United States of America
14 15 16 17 18 19 0 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
For my mother, Eleanor, and my father, Preston, with more love, admiration, and gratitude than I can express
SUDDEN IMPACT
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OFFICER BOB QUINTANA did not see the car that hit his partner Tommy Ensor.
It was one thirty in the morning, now Thursday, and the rain had gotten heavier in the last fifteen minutes. When he looked down the dark, rain-sheeted Capitol Mall, he could just make out the lighted white front of the ornate State Capitol three blocks away. He was bored and cold on the N Street side of the large construction site so he went to see what Ensor was doing at the front of the new building.
He found Ensor standing outside the foreman's trailer, sheltered by twenty stories of partially finished red steel girders and flooring for the new Wells Fargo Bank headquarters. Ensor wore a black Sacramento Police Department raincoat, his uniform hat in protective plastic, and he carried a large flashlight. He swung the flashlight around the gaping, unfinished lobby, where the plastic sheeting covering machinery and scaffolding crackled in the storm's wind.
"So what the hell did you get me into?" Quintana asked.
"Forty an hour plus," Ensor said. He grinned. He was tall and angular and ten years older than Quintana. "Maybe in September I can swing us to work security at the State Fair. That's maybe a hundred an hour."
"I can take the heat. This weather's killing me."
"Only about five hours to go." Ensor strolled to the raw concrete edge of the lobby and Quintana followed him. Rain pooled in the dirt outside around large trucks and digging equipment glistening. "Speaking of, you still coming with me to Clear Lake on Saturday?"
"Hell, yeah. I got guys in Auto Burg begging, begging for some of the smoked trout I brought back a couple months ago."
"Okay. We're on. I plan on pulling out around four. I'll bring the peppermint schnapps. You bring the cigars, I don't care what kind." He looked over at Quintana. "You asked Beth about taking off for the weekend?"
Quintana shook his head. "I don't have to ask. She's okay and we're not married yet."
"Oh, Bob, Bob," Ensor said slowly, "listen to me. This is the perfect time for you to ask about stuff like this, before you get married. Get a routine going. It saves a lot of road wear down the line, believe me. Sixteen years now and I tell Janey when I'm going on a beer run, for Christ sake. You get trust going early."
"Beth's fine," Quintana said. "She's talking about something else."
"So she's talking about kids."
"Oh, yeah. Like right away. Like we didn't agree we'd wait a year, two maybe."
"Talk all you want, do whatever you have to do," Ensor said, moving his flashlight beam among the dark, bulky machines. "You still get surprised. My second kid, Marty, he was a total surprise, but it works out, believe me. My four-two were on the schedule and two weren't, and it's all great."
"Shit. Four," Quintana said. He cursed into the rain and dark. "I need to rethink my options." He laughed and so did Ensor.
"Hey, you got any coffee left?" Ensor asked.
"I got a Thermos full in my car."
"Bring that sucker out here. It is too goddamn cold." He stamped his feet, clicked off the flashlight and put it in his raincoat pocket. A sudden rush of wind pelted them with rain even in the shelter of the unfinished lobby. They both darted further back.
Quintana pulled his uniform hat down so he would not get rain flying right into his face. "Hey, Tommy, some asshole knocked over the cones out in front. I saw them just now as I was coming by. I'll get the coffee while you put them back up." He grinned.
"I'm senior tonight," Ensor said, "so you should go get your ass soaked." He grumbled and pulled his own hat down. "Yeah, yeah, meet you back here in a couple."
Quintana watched him, hunched over in the rain and wind, heading for Capitol Mall which the grand new structure faced. Half of the block had been cordoned off partly with chain-link fence and orange traffic cones for the men and machines to use during the day. Quintana realized that Ensor, like him, had taken off his orange, reflective vest sometime during their dull, lonely vigil. People emptied out of the heart of California's capital after five. After midnight there was no traffic, either. Just extra off-duty pay.
He turned and headed back through the lobby that reeked of damp cement and upturned earth. His flashlight beam bouncing around the man-made cavern made spectral shadows and fantastic monsters.
Suddenly Quintana heard a crunching-almost gelatinous-thud and a speeding engine's whine fading swiftly with distance. The sounds came from behind him. They were the sounds of an impact. Between them it seemed like a great deal of time passed, even though he realized it was a second, a fraction of a second perhaps.
He yanked out his handie-talkie from his raincoat and at a lope started back to the front of the construction site. "Tommy? What's up? Tommy, you there? What's going on?" he said rapidly.
His harsh questions to Ensor were met with silence. He snapped off his flashlight in case someone was waiting in the darkness and picked up his pace as he now raced toward the entrance.
Quintana splashed through the pooled rain and mud outside the building, past the trucks and cranes. He got to Capitol Mall, rain swept and deserted. He looked up and down the street and saw no one and he kept calling for Ensor on the handie-talkie, then he lifted his head and shouted aloud.
He snapped his flashlight back on and sent its beam sparkling with raindrops dancing into the street, past the link fence and the ragged line of overturned orange plastic cones. Then he spotted a bunched black shape in the middle of Capitol Mall.
As he ran toward it, Quintana wondered why everything was so dark; then an observant, detached part of his mind noted that several of the high overhead streetlights had blown out at some point during the storm.
When he got to the middle of the street, he instantly recoiled. Ensor had been thrown onto his back, his uniform hat farther down in the lane. His right arm was bent across his body, white bone sticking up jaggedly, and his legs were tangled impossibly with each other so that he seemed to have two left feet. Quintana got down on his knees and quickly checked for a pulse. He found it in Ensor's neck, and checked his breathing. He then saw that the left side of Ensor's head, the prematurely gray-white streaked hair, was red, and, through a ragged hole, Quintana could see the pale gray of Tommy Ensor's brain.
"Tommy? Can you hear me? Tommy? Tommy?" Quintana said loudly as a red sheet spread across Ensor's face, blood and rain obscuring his unseeing eyes.
Quintana knew he should not move Ensor, but he could not leave him in the middle of the street. Any car or truck would not make out either of them until it was too late.
He got his hands under Ensor's armpits and awkwardly dragged him the six feet across one lane of Capitol Mall to the grassy median where he carefully laid him down. Then Ensor stopped breathing.
Quintana swore, the rain running down his face, making it hard to see. He started chest compressions, blowing air alternately into Ensor's mouth. He fumbled, dropped the handie-talkie in the grass, found it, and, between brutally pushing down on Ensor's chest, and trying to will Tommy to live with each forced breath