The Dead of Night Read online

  Praise for The Dead of Night

  Jean Rabe always manages to surprise and never fails to deliver the goods! THE DEAD OF NIGHT has plenty of twists and turns. Highly recommended!

  —Jonathan Maberry, New York Times bestselling author of Dogs of War and Mars One

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  Jean Rabe writes the perfect mystery! I was kept guessing about everything to the very last word. Great characters. The girl can write!

  —New York Times bestselling author Faith Hunter, writing as Gwen Hunter

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  In THE DEAD OF NIGHT, Jean Rabe gives us another compelling Piper Blackwell mystery. After a clandestine meeting with a grizzled WWII veteran “Mark the Shark,” also known as “Mr. Conspiracy,” Piper stumbles, literally, over the bones of a child. Rabe weaves Piper’s investigations of this long-cold case and the high-tech theft of an old man’s earnings into a thoroughly satisfying and complex novel with deeply realized characters and beautifully vivid writing.

  —Jaden Terrell, Shamus Award nominee and internationally published author of the Jared McKean Mysteries

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  THE DEAD OF NIGHT was my first introduction to Piper Blackwell’s world, and based on this one, I’m looking forward to seeing more. The story of two different crimes, set many years apart—one against the very young and one the very old—pulled me in until I had to finish the last section in one sitting so I could find out “whodunit.” Rabe keeps the reader on the edge of their seat, but also includes a lot of terrific character building, especially Piper, her father, and the quirky “Mark the Shark.” The characters were engaging and very real—I care about what happened to them, which for me is one of the most important things in any kind of story. A great read!

  —Amazon bestselling author R.L. King, author of the Alastair Stone Chronicles

  Praise for The Dead of Winter

  Mystery just got a little less cozy in THE DEAD OF WINTER.

  New York Times and USA Today bestselling author Steven Savile

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  Jean Rabe delivers a suspenseful morsel that not only celebrates the Yuletide season, but also keeps you up at night with a well-crafted mystery. THE DEAD OF WINTER is chilling indeed!

  Raymond Benson, author of The Black Stiletto series, New York Times bestselling author of James Bond novels

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  For years I’ve admired Jean Rabe’s work in the science fiction and fantasy genres, and now, with THE DEAD OF WINTER, she’s applying her considerable talents to the field of mysteries. The first in a very promising series with an attractive main character, Piper Blackwell, a female county sheriff who faces obstacles both on and off the job while investigating a puzzling homicide. Very much recommended.

  Multiple award-winning and three-time Edgar nominee author Brendan DuBois

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  THE DEAD OF WINTER was a blast—lots of fun to read! Jean Rabe’s characters come to life through the written word, and it takes a real writing talent to accomplish this feat.

  Denise Dietz, USA Today bestselling author

  The Dead of Night

  A Piper Blackwell Mystery

  Jean Rabe

  For Bill Gilsdorf and Robert Scales

  who taught Piper how to be a good sheriff

  Contents

  1. One

  2. Two

  3. Three

  4. Four

  5. Five

  6. Six

  7. Seven

  8. Eight

  9. Nine

  10. Ten

  11. Eleven

  12. Twelve

  13. Thirteen

  14. Fourteen

  15. Fifteen

  16. Sixteen

  17. Seventeen

  18. Eighteen

  19. Nineteen

  20. Twenty

  21. Twenty-One

  22. Twenty-Two

  23. Twenty-Three

  24. Twenty-Four

  25. Twenty-Five

  26. Twenty-Six

  27. Twenty-Seven

  28. Twenty-Eight

  29. Twenty-Nine

  30. Thirty

  31. Thirty-One

  32. Thirty-Two

  33. Thirty-Three

  34. Thirty-Four

  35. Thirty-Five

  36. Thirty-Six

  37. Thirty-Seven

  38. Thirty-Eight

  39. Thirty-Nine

  40. Forty

  Acknowledgments

  Afterword

  Also by Jean Rabe

  This book is a work of fiction. The names, characters, and incidents are of the author’s imagination. The places are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, places, entities, facilities, or persons is coincidental.

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  © 2018 by Jean Rabe

  Cover design by Juan Villar Padron

  Interior design by John Hartness

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  Scanning, uploading, and distribution of this book without permission is a theft of the author’s intellectual property. If you would like permission to use material from the book—other than for review purposes—please contact: [email protected]. Thank you for supporting the author’s rights.

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  Boone Street Press

  * * *

  Name: Rabe, Jean, author

  Title: The Dead of Night / Jean Rabe

  First Edition Imajin Books: September 2017

  Boone Street Press: June 2018

  Identifiers: ISBN-13: 978-1-7320036-9-9/ 10: 1-7320036-9-6

  LCCN: 2018905558

  Printed in the United States of America

  Created with Vellum

  1

  One

  Monday, April 30th

  The old man sat in the middle of a bench under a big oak, his shoulders hunched and back curved, reminding Piper of a turtle. Hard to make out more details from where she stood under the streetlight.

  The light didn’t quite reach his perch, and she suspected he’d picked the spot for that reason; there were closer benches. The clouds hindered, a dense gray dome that coupled with the hour had turned the stretch along the bluff into a mass of twisting shadows. Lights in the houses at the edge of the park were flickering dots, will-o-the-wisps, she mused, more fitting for Halloween than spring.

  She started toward him as threads of lightning flashed. Maybe the rain would hold off for a little while. Despite the frequent storms of the past several days, Piper hadn’t brought an umbrella. The ground felt spongy, comfortable to walk on. She quickened her step.

  Maybe this wouldn’t take long and she could go home and crawl into bed with the latest Harry Bosch book.

  He scooted over, making room for her. She guessed him to be in his early eighties. Twin canes were hooked over the top slat, and he wore a bulky jacket. The dispatcher had mentioned he was a geezer—“a whack-job paranoid geezer likely visited by aliens” were the exact words—and said that he claimed it was urgent and he would only speak to the sheriff… and only at this time and place.

  “Evening, Mr. Thresher,” Piper said as she sat, keeping a good foot between them. He was redolent of old-man smells—warring liniments and too much aftershave. She swiveled to face him, took off her hat and rested it on her knees.

  “Mark, Sheriff Blackwell.”

  “Evening, Mark,” she said.

  “Mark the Shark.”

  “Interesting nickname,” Piper said.

  “Had it a long time. Had it since the war.”

  His voice was gritty like sheets of sandpaper rubbing together, a smoker’s voice, though she didn’t detect a hint of nicotine. She tipped her head and found the scent of the nearby river and the headiness of the sodden ground. More lightning speared the clouds, looking like metallic
threads embroidered on a garment.

  “You were in a war of sorts yourself,” Mark the Shark continued. “Read it in the newspaper last fall. That was a few weeks before the election. Read all about you.”

  “Two tours in Iran. Downrange assignments mostly.”

  “That’s why I voted for you. I like folks with military experience, serving the country and all. Patriotic. Didn’t matter to me that you were what—”

  “Twenty-three.” She still was. Her birthday was five months away.

  “Yeah, didn’t matter that you were a pup. The article said you were Military Police. I figured that’d make you an excellent sheriff… just like your dad. Good man, Paul Blackwell. Good sheriff.” A pause. “Despite his politics.”

  The wind gusted and the branches above gently clacked. Piper grabbed her hat to keep it from blowing away, and with her free hand pushed the annoying curls out of her eyes, a reminder of the haircut appointment tomorrow. She watched Mark the Shark fold in on himself and wrap his jacket tighter. The temperature in the mid-fifties, her windbreaker sufficed. But she knew some elderly people chilled easily. He’d mentioned the war. Korea probably.

  “I helped liberate the Philippines,” he said. Leaning forward with his elbows on his knees, he looked around, nervous, and then focused on the streetlight.

  She corrected herself. WWII. He had to be ninety-something.

  “Signed up in forty, saw a recruiting poster ‘Man the Guns, Join the Navy.’ Got my pop to sign permission ‘cause I was seventeen. Way at the end, Luzon in forty-five, that’s when I got my nickname.” He rubbed at his chin and coughed, his shoulders bouncing. “Before we left the islands, one very early morning, me and some mates went fishing. We jury-rigged poles and tackle, used shiny fish we’d scooped out of the surf with a bucket. Went out on a sandbar and cast into the shallows. Figured we might catch something ‘cause we saw lots o’ life in the shoals. I still remember how good the water felt, and how salty the air tasted.”

  She forced down her impatience. Whatever matter he’d called the department about obviously wasn’t urgent after all.

  “Out in them shoals, I hooked something with size to it and it broke. The sky was lightening, all pale and pretty like a Kinkade painting, and so we saw it clear the surface. ‘Bout shit my pants, I did. Excuse the language, ma’am. Easy a dozen feet long, maybe longer, probably longer, half of it tail. It snapped the line and we got the hell out of there. It was a goddamned big shark. My mate Gerald, he’d been studying to be a marine biologist before the war. He said it was my namesake, a thresher shark. We looked it up in a book when we got back to the ship. Threshers are a mackerel shark, you know, nocturnal with big eyes to help them see in the dark. Like deep water they do, but they come into the shallows early in the morning to feed, use their tails to sweep the little fish together so they can eat ‘em easier. There’s not as many of ‘em anymore, them threshers. Sharks declining all over, hunted for their fins and meat. Pity, don’t you think?”

  Piper nodded as if she was interested. More lightning flashed, a broad stroke that illuminated his face. Horsey, fitted with a long nose, white whiskers peppering his jawline, skin wrinkled and ruddy like a farmer’s or someone who spent a lot of hours outdoors. Couldn’t tell the color of his eyes behind the thick lenses of his boxy-framed glasses, and a hood covered his head, adding to the turtle image. His clothes were a mix of dark blue and gray, everything rumpled and worn. Old man attire. He nervously scanned the park again and cocked his head, listening. After a moment, he lowered his voice.

  “I’m being hunted, too.”

  Piper sat straight. Now he had her interest. “Hunted, Mr. Thresher?”

  “Mark,” he countered.

  “Mark,” she said.

  “Mark the Shark. Guys on the ship… that fishing story I just told you spread. They started calling me Mark the Shark. Thresher for a Thresher. Mark the Shark stayed with me all through my Navy days, and I kept it afterward, liking the sound of it. Put in thirty years in the Navy before I retired, bought a big piece of property along the north line of the county with the military pay I’d saved up. Started farming that year. I was forty-seven then. A second career.”

  “Hunted?”

  “I’m getting to it. Don’t you go hurrying an old man. Never ever should you hurry an old man.”

  Piper did the math. Mark the Shark was probably ninety-four. Who would hunt a nonagenarian in a sleepy little county?

  “You told my dispatcher it was urgent,” Piper pressed. “What did you—”

  He interrupted with a tsk-tsking sound. “You don’t know where Malapascua is, do you? Being Army and all. Airborne. You were with the Screaming Eagles, right? I remember that from the news article, the 101st out of Fort Campbell.”

  “I don’t know where Malapascua is,” Piper admitted. She was going to repeat her question, but he cut her off with a wag of his long-fingered hand.

  “Don’t you hurry me.”

  “Sorry.”

  “It’s a sunken island in the Philippines. I went there years and years ago, right after I bought my farm. A tropical vacation with the girl I’d just married—a late start at that for both of us, eh? Way the hell too late for kids. Wanted to show her where the war had been… part of the war. A history teacher, she was interested in where I’d been stationed. She’s been dead three years now.” He shook his head. “Anyway, we did some diving. I used to dive, you know. I was certified for open ocean. The Monad Shoal is near Malapascua, and the sides of that island, they drop off to the real inky depths. Thresher sharks hunt there, and though we weren’t looking for them, we saw a couple on our early dive. Beautiful creatures. Cleaning wrasse, those are small fish that live on the dead skin from the shark—its gills, inside its mouth—the wrasse were hanging on them threshers. A symbiotic relationship, and—”

  Thunder boomed, and Piper felt the tremor ripple through the ground beneath her three-day-old Nikes. Ozone mingled with the river scent and Mark the Shark’s old man smells.

  “Gonna rain,” Mark said.

  “Yeah.”

  “I like the rain. Good for the ground. Good for the early beans and peas the farmers put in. I’d have had carrots and cukes in by now, too. It’s supposed to be sunny tomorrow and the rest of the week. I heard the forecast. But it looks like April’s wanting to go out with a nice drenching.”

  “Yeah, looks like it,” she said. “Listen, I—”

  “Do you got a dog?”

  “My father does, an old pug.”

  “Everyone should have a dog.”

  “Someday, when I’m not living in an apartment above a garage. When I have my own place with a yard.” Why was she continuing a pointless conversation? “Listen, I—”

  “My dog doesn’t like the rain. But I do. April showers bring May flowers. May Day tomorrow. Maybe you’ll get a bouquet from your feller. You probably got a feller, right?”

  She let out a long breath. “You said this was urgent.”

  “It is. I suppose you want me to get to the point of this. Regretful to bring you out here so late, Sheriff, weather threatening and all.”

  Piper put her hat on when she felt the first big drop find its way through the branches. “I can handle rain.” She couldn’t handle an old man rambling about long-tailed sharks far removed from Spencer County, Indiana.

  “I ‘spect you can handle a lot of things, Sheriff. Medals and such… I read that in the article. About your medals, saving all the soldiers you were with.” He glanced nervously around the park again, then leaned back against the bench, squared his shoulders, pulled his hood down farther over his forehead so all of his features disappeared. “I’ve been robbed, Sheriff Blackwell. Money taken from me, some of what I got from selling the last parcels of my farm to that real estate company. I got a stash at my house, hidden real good. That hidden money’s safe. It’s what I got in the bank… some of that is gone. Good money gone. Hunted for my money just like sharks are hunted for their meat.”


  “Mr. Thresher—”

  “Mark.”

  “Mark—”

  “Mark the Shark.”

  Piper stood. “Listen, Mark, you should come to the office, first thing in the morning and we’ll fill out a report. Detail how much you think has been taken.”

  “A lot. A lot was taken.”

  “We’ll call the bank, maybe go over there—”

  “Not coming to your office. Too many eyes there. Eyes downtown. I done called the bank about it. Didn’t get nowhere.”

  “We’ll call the bank,” she pressed, “see if there really has been a theft. See if it’s just a records problem instead. Maybe you—”

  He made fist and bumped it against his knee just as thunder boomed again. “I’m not some daft codger that can’t remember shit, what he’s done with his money! It’s a conspiracy, Sheriff Blackwell, and that’s why we’re out here, away from any eavesdroppers, away from any gawkers… away from the government and—”

  “Mark—”

  “It’s a good bit of money and you need to fix it. Get back for me what they took and keep them from taking the rest of it. A symbiotic relationship we can have, working together to catch the thieves. We’ll be the hunters now.”