Cry from an Unknown Grave

Joseph LeValley

Description

A late-night cry for help from a teenage girl puts Tony Harrington and his colleagues at a small-town newspaper onto the trail of a ring of human traffickers. The girl's description of the horrors she and others have endured, fuel the determination of Tony and fellow journalist Madeline Mueller to find and stop the wicked people who are enslaving and abusing children. Then, when one of the young victims is found buried in a shallow grave close to home, the chase escalates to fever pitch, with county, state and federal investigators joining in the hunt. What Tony and Madeline don't realize is that, as they grow closer to finding the victims and their captors, they have attracted the attention of the perpetrators. The people willing to subject children to unspeakable tortures, now have added the two young reporters to their list of intended victims. Despite the danger and the limited resources of the Orney, Iowa, Town Crier, Tony, Madeline and Editor Ben Smalley are undeterred, determined to find and save a group of missing children, before another young life is lost forever. The chase takes them throughout the Midwest, from Iowa to Chicago, to Kansas City, and on to a terrifying and potentially mortal end. This second Tony Harrington mystery-thriller by Joseph LeValley draws on today's heart-wrenching headlines regarding the pervasiveness and egregiousness of human trafficking. LeValley again creates a story with compelling characters and all the elements of a "must-read" thriller: drama, action, romance, tragedy, villains and heroes. Join Tony and his friends and colleagues on this epic adventure, as they risk everything to save a group of children they've never seen.

Sujets

• Thriller

Informations

• Publié par: Bookpress Publishing
• Date de parution: 01 octobre 2020
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781947305113
• Langue: English

Extrait

Praise for Tony Harrington’s first adventure:
BURYING THE LEDE
“LeValley draws on his own experience as a newspaper reporter to give the mystery an authentic feel. Fans of reporter sleuths…will be pleased.”
— Publishers Weekly
“Suspense is handled adroitly. It bobs and weaves its way toward an exciting climax. While you’ll definitely want to know what happens next, you’ll savor the telling of this tale as much as you’ll enjoy its revelations. Don’t miss it. RECOMMENDED.”
— U.S. Review of Books
“Nearly impossible to put down and more than satisfying in its surprising conclusion.”
— Midwest Book Review
“This book is filled with suspense that begins in the courtroom, and keeps readers on edge through a reporter’s emotional investigation of a doublehomicide. Overall score: 9 of 10.”
— BookLife Prize
“A mystery thriller that takes you on more twists and turns than an Iowa gravel road. Start the book with nothing else to do because you may not be able to put it down.”
— The Honorable Thomas Vilsack, former Governor of Iowa and Former U.S. Secretary of Agriculture
“A pleasing blend of courtroom drama and an unsolved crime, all told through the eyes of a good, old-fashioned investigative reporter. An enjoyable read that kept me turning the pages.”
— John Shors, Bestselling Author of Beneath a Marble Sky
CRY
FROM AN UNKNOWN
GRAVE
JOSEPH LEVALLEY
Copyright © 2020 by Joseph LeValley. All rights reserved.
No portion of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means—electronic, mechanical, photocopy, recording, scanning, or other—except for brief quotations in critical reviews or articles, without prior written permission of the publisher. Requests to the publisher for permission or information should be submitted via email at [e-mail] .
Any requests or questions for the author should be submitted to him directly at [e-mail] .
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events, locales, and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.
Published in Des Moines, Iowa, by: Bookpress Publishing P.O. Box 71532 Des Moines, IA 50325 www.BookpressPublishing.com
For our children:
Rachel, Christopher, Alex, Emma, Beth, and Luke, who are cherished, as should be all children.
READER’S CAUTION:
Creating a realistic picture of the subject matter in this novel required referencing, and occasionally depicting, abuse and violence against adults and children. This book may not be appropriate for all readers.
“These are the woes of Slaves; They glare from the abyss; They cry, from unknown graves…”
— Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, from “The Witnesses”
Contents
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Afterword
Acknowledgements
Chapter 1

Would today be the day he killed her? The girl couldn’t help but wonder. He came to her nearly every day, seemingly powered by an insatiable lust for her. How many times had he taken her? How many different ways? She had lost track. She had been abused, injured, and humiliated in ways she couldn’t have imagined only a few months earlier.
Before this nightmare began, she had little experience with men beyond a drunken father who never got out of his chair except to pee and a few male teachers who seemed too busy to even notice her at school. She hadn’t known a man could do such things to a woman or would do such things to a girl still in her teens and half his age.
She had endured horror upon horror nearly every day since she had awoken and found her ankle padlocked to a steel cable anchored in a concrete wall. She was trapped in this…place. What was it? A basement? A storm shelter? She couldn’t imagine the purpose for a room such as this, windowless, with a concreate floor and walls and a metal ceiling interrupted only by the door that swung up at the top of the open wooden stairs. Unless, of course, this was its purpose—to imprison and abuse girls, undetected by the eyes and ears of the outside world.
And if that was the purpose—her heart nearly stopped at the thought—it meant, undoubtedly, that others had come before her. Others who had been raped and tortured by the beast who called himself Justin.
The ordeal hadn’t started with him. It had started with a young man with a nice smile and soft hands. “Just call me Donny,” he’d said when he’d stopped his pickup truck and offered her a ride.
She knew it was risky to climb into the cab of the truck with a stranger, but Donny had big, chocolate-brown eyes, wavy blond hair, and dimples. The dimples attracted her and, to be honest, it was cold walking on the road at night. The inside of the truck looked so warm and comfortable, she couldn’t say no.
“I’m Brittany,” she said shyly. “Thanks for the lift.” She didn’t want him to know she was running away from home. It seemed so dumb when she thought about saying it out loud. She also worried he wouldn’t let her ride with him if he knew. Looking back, she realized it had to have been obvious, when she was unable to name a destination and was content to stay in the truck for as long as he would allow.
Donny worked hard to put her at ease and succeeded. After a couple of hours of driving, they pulled into an interstate highway truck stop. He bought her waffles and a Pepsi and seemed genuinely concerned about her. He asked why she was walking on the highway alone, and eventually she told him everything. She was miserable at home. Her dad was worthless to everyone except the owner of the liquor store, and her mom was gone. One night, two years previously, Brittany’s mom had met a rodeo cowboy in a Kansas City bar. They had spent the night together at the Best Western, and the next morning, when the cowboy had asked her to go with him, she had gone.
Brittany had taken the phone call. With one call, her mother had tried to make everything okay, explaining why she had no choice but to go, why she couldn’t handle life at home anymore. As if one final comment of, “You know I love you, baby,” could make it all okay, could make her mom any less selfish.
As soon as the phone call had ended, Brittany had known her life had changed from bad to impossible. Now she was the one who had to worry about finding money to keep the lights on and the rent paid for their tiny two-bedroom apartment in Platte City, Missouri. Now she was the one who had to make up lies about her dad’s “illness.” Now she was the one who had to cook and clean and try to maintain some semblance of dignity in their existence. All of this on top of the pressures of school.
And so, after two years of trying, failing, and crying, Brittany had followed in her mother’s footsteps and had walked out the door. It was her seventeenth birthday. She was certain she was old enough to do better on her own. She’d taken only what she could stuff into her school backpack: some clothes, a few toiletries, and her only friend—her smartphone. Less than an hour later, Donny had picked her up walking along the paved county road north of town.
Brittany knew now that Donny had put something in her food or drink at the truck stop, probably while she used the restroom. She barely remembered the end of the meal and was unconscious by the time Donny pulled the truck out of the parking lot. When she’d woken, she was in this dungeon, a single light bulb hanging from the ceiling to fend off the darkness, one double mattress on a wooden platform, and a toilet and sink on one wall.
She was left alone for the first full day. Locked in this cell that smelled of mildew and sweat, tethered like a lamb left as sacrifice for the lion, she was terrified beyond comprehension. She screamed until she was hoarse, then cried until she passed out from exhaustion. When she awoke again, she was hungry, hungrier than she could remember ever being. This deep hollowness, combined with the fear she was being left to starve to death, made her nearly wild with anxiety.
When she heard the door open and saw a man appear on the steps, she wept again, this time with a mixture of fear and relief. The man was huge—tall and wide and a little overweight, like some of the football players she had seen on TV. He was carrying a bag of food from McDonald’s. The aroma washed over her like a dream, as if the meal were from the finest restaurant in the world. Disoriented, scared, and angry, she wanted to scream at him. She wanted to strike him. But overwhelmingly, she wanted to eat. He set the bag in the far corner of the room, just out of her reach. He smiled broadly, not with warmth or compassion, but with an ugly and ominous leer. His words stopped her cold.
“I’m Justin. I don’t give a damn what your name is. You wanna eat, you gotta do something for me first. Take off your clothes. You heard me! Hurry up. I paid a lotta dough for you. Now you’re gonna make it worth it.”
Brittany remembered every detail of that first time, but hated dwelling on it. Justin had raped her. He was brutal and demanding. Pain, fear, shame, and hunger had overwhelmed her. Now they were her life. Day after day for… How long now? Weeks? Perhaps a couple of months.
Slowly, Brittany was becoming numb to it all. The horrors of her captivity were erasing nearly every part of the person she used to be. That teenage girl with dreams of finishing school, getting a job, meeting a nice boy—that girl was gone. She had been replaced by this creature who existed only to eat once a day and lie in a room waiting for the beast called Justin to arrive and seek his pleasure.