Nothing to Hide (A Roland March Mystery Book #3)

Mark Bertrand J.

Description

The Stakes Have Never Been Higher for this Homicide CopPublishers Weekly calls J. Mark Bertrand's writing "gritty and chilling." He returns once more to the streets of Houston for another twisting mystery featuring Detective Roland March. This time, a new case is launched by the discovery of a headless corpse...only the investigation quickly becomes complicated when a blood sample analysis brings a phone call from the FBI.The body was an undercover agent working to bring down Mexican cartels. The feds want the case closed rather than risk exposing other agents in the field, but March can't abide letting a murder go unsolved. And he doesn't have to dig long to figure out something isn't right. Someone is covering something up, and it seems that everyone has something to hide. Maybe even March, as the case soon intersects, unexpectedly, with the murder that led him to become a homicide cop, all those years ago.

Informations

• Publié par: Baker Publishing Group
• Date de parution: 01 juillet 2012
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781441271006
• Langue: English

Extrait

© 2012 by J. Mark Bertrand
Published by Bethany House Publishers
11400 Hampshire Avenue South
Bloomington, Minnesota 55438
www.bethanyhouse.com
Bethany House Publishers is a division of
Baker Publishing Group, Grand Rapids, Michigan
www.bakerpublishinggroup.com
Ebook edition created 2012
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 for example, electronic, photocopy, recording without the prior written permission of the publisher. The only exception is brief quotations in printed reviews.
ISBN 978-1-4412-7100-6
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is on file at the Library of Congress, Washington, DC.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, incidents, and dialogues are products of the author’s imagination and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to actual events or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
Cover design by Faceout Studio
Cover photography by Yiu Yu Hoi/Getty Images
Author is represented by MacGregor Literary, Inc.
Praise for BACK ON MURDER and PATTERN OF WOUNDS
“This is one of those series that is worth getting attached to.”
Books & Culture
“Gritty and chilling.”
Publishers Weekly
“Roland March is a great character, driven by a moral code, haunted by his past, and struggling with questions about God, good and evil. . . . He is not perfect. He can be stubborn at times. But ultimately he wants to see justice prevail.”
Eric Wilson, author of One Step Away
“Bertrand’s got a pitch-perfect ear for dialogue. The cop-talk, for fans of the tough guy genre, hits the right note every time. . . . Each sentence builds anticipation; each scene leads deeper into the distinct but converging crimes.”
Comment
“Bertrand’s well-plotted and tightly written novel offers glimmers of a world beyond the gritty Houston streets his cop must roam.”
World
“One of the strengths of this excellent novel is the credibility of this rogue detective’s voice.”
CBA Retailers+Resources
“The first paragraph makes you feel like an astronomer discovering a growing brightness in an unmapped area of the sky, and as you continue you get the excitement of realizing you’re the first to witness a supernova, and there’s no way you’re going to take your eyes off it until it’s finished. The story and writing is that good.”
Sigmund Brouwer, author of Broken Angel
“A rogue homicide detective is assigned to a grisly murder case, and through the investigation discovers core life values that overturn his world. Bertrand’s first novel is an astonishing and powerful mystery. Extremely well-crafted.”
Davis Bunn, author of Rare Earth
“With exquisite prose and poetic style, Bertrand has captured the surreal world of homicide detectives with a realism and power rarely seen in fiction.”
Mark Mynheir, homicide detective, author of The Night Watchman
“ Back on Murder has the grit and tension of a great crime novel, with true three-dimensional realism.”
Tom Morrisey, author of Pirate Hunter
“Roland March leads the reader along the streets of Houston in what is as much a personal rediscovery as it is a page-turning detective tale.”
Don Hoesel, author of Serpent of Moses
For Laurie
Contents
Cover
Title Page
Copyright Page
Praise for BACK ON MURDER and PATTERN OF WOUNDS
Dedication
PART 1: SHOOTER’S PARADISE
CHAPTER 1
CHAPTER 2
CHAPTER 3
CHAPTER 4
CHAPTER 5
CHAPTER 6
CHAPTER 7
CHAPTER 8
CHAPTER 9
CHAPTER 10
PART 2: THE VESTIBULE
CHAPTER 11
CHAPTER 12
CHAPTER 13
CHAPTER 14
CHAPTER 15
CHAPTER 16
CHAPTER 17
CHAPTER 18
CHAPTER 20
PART 3: DOWN THERE
CHAPTER 21
CHAPTER 22
CHAPTER 23
CHAPTER 24
CHAPTER 25
CHAPTER 26
CHAPTER 27
CHAPTER 28
CHAPTER 29
CHAPTER 30
Author’s Note
Books by J. Mark Bertrand
Back Ads
Back Cover
Però, se ’l mondo presente disvia, in voi è la cagione, in voi si cheggia.
If the present world goes astray,
the cause is in you. In you it is to be sought.

When an ulcer of the soul is to be probed, naturalism can do nothing.
JORIS-KARL HUYSMANS
CHAPTER 1
It’s the uniform’s fault, my fall, for shining his light past my feet to the edge of the gully, flicking the beam back and forth in a skeptical circuit, saying, “Careful there, Detective,” in a cautious, solicitous tone, the same one he’d use if his frail granddaddy reached on tiptoes for a too-high shelf. Hearing the voice, I ignore the distance between the two sides of the gully, ignore the muddy banks and the buzzing mosquitoes and the ripple of ditchwater down the middle. I kick my lead leg out into space, flashlight in one hand and notebook in the other.
Nothing but net, I think, clearing the gap, but then my foot lands just short of the other side. The ground gives a little, goes all slick, and I’m aloft again, dipping backward, flailing the air until my body crashes spine-first into the mud.
I glance up into the dark pines, illuminated by moonlight and the Fenix still gripped in my hand. The damp seeps through the back of my shirt, through my pants and up against my hot skin. My gun, torqued by the fall, digs painfully into my flank. I blink a few times, taking inventory, and then the uniform’s up above me, shining his light down.
“You okay there, Detective March? I told you to watch out.”
I roll a little onto one hip, then wrench myself over to the other side of the gully. No pain at first, not until I put weight on my left leg, at which point a knife blade runs up the back of my thigh and buries itself in my lower back.
“You all right?”
I wince a little, then shake it off. “I’m fine. Now leave me be and get back over there. I don’t need your prints tracking up my scene. My own are bad enough.”
He smiles at my irritation. I have to wave my hand to get him to go. Don’t mind me, that hand says. I should have known better than to reach for the top shelf.
After surveying the ditch one last time it’s just a couple of feet deep and maybe three and a half, four across I straighten my holster and limp a little deeper into the woods.
Back there behind me, gathered in the parking lot under the mist-haloed streetlights, a row of cruisers cast blue and red filters over the night, along with the obligatory crime scene vans and support vehicles. Beyond the scrim of officialdom, the news crews are arriving, too, setting up their tripods and adjusting their lamps. There’s nothing for them to see but the coming and going of uniforms and plainclothes detectives. The body’s already been screened off by a tent enclosure erected on the free-throw line of the park’s covered basketball court.
Whoever dumped our John Doe, he had a sense of humor.
Between the parking lot and the court, a path runs along a sandlot where several tetherball poles stand with severed cords dangling from their top loops, the balls carried off long ago. Big lights hang under the basketball court’s corrugated roof, but according to the first officers on the scene, they’re no longer operational. To light things up, we had to bring our own equipment, something we’re accustomed to from long experience. Past the court, a cluster of lopsided picnic tables, weathered and sunbaked, separate the park from a thick perimeter of pines, and beyond them the poorly lit gully, and beyond that me.
I scratch at a fresh mosquito bite on the back of my neck, then limp through the trees a ways, testing my leg. There’s still a twinge. I wipe my waterlogged shoes against a nearby trunk, trying to scrape off the clumped mud. Then I head in deeper, tracing an imaginary line all the way from the body under the tent to here. The brush gets higher, the ground firmer, until finally I hit a tall hurricane fence half threaded with weeds. Beyond it a curving side street, with Allen Parkway in the distance.
There’s nothing out here. I pass my light over the ground once more to be certain, then hit the treetops with it just in case. Gotta think outside the box. But no one’s been back here in a while. Another false lead.
It won’t be the last.

Back under the tent, Jerry Lorenz crouches a few feet from the body, rubbing his chin in contemplation. He holds a ballpoint in the other hand, clicking out a preoccupied beat. While the photographer works, our bosses hold a confab in one corner Captain Hedges, sweating through his summer-weight wool suit, briefs a uniformed assistant chief while my shift commander, Lt. Bascombe, nods in the background. Only the lieutenant seems to notice my arrival, giving me the slightest of nods.
As I approach the body, he comes over.
“Where you been?” he asks, not waiting for an answer. “I assume you feel okay about this?” He tilts his head doubtfully in Lorenz’s direction.
“Compared to the rest of the guys on our shift, he’s practically an old-timer.”
“Even so, I want you on top of this one, March. You feel me?”
“I’m all over it, sir.”
He gives my shoulder a pat, then pulls his big hand away, noticing for the first time that I’m caked in mud. Before he can ask, I limp over toward Lorenz.
Jerry glances up, eyebrows raised. “You find it?”
“There was nothing out there.”
“Find what?” Bascombe asks.
The hunch that led to my fall had been Jerry’s idea in the first place, so I let him explain. The body was dumped, no question about that. If the killing had taken place here, there would have been a lot more blood. But whoever made the drop took the trouble to arrange the corpse, settling it down all neat and tidy like a body in a coffin, except for one arm extending in the direction of the woods, the skinned hand shaped into a fist apart from the index finger.
“Like it was pointing,” Jerry explains. “I thought if we followed the line, we might find . . .” His voice trails off. “You know. The head.”
The three of us stare down at the nude, headless corpse of a Caucasian male, several days dead though the medical examiner has yet to render an opinion on the e