Code Sixty-One: A Novel - Hardcover

Harstad, Donald

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0385501188 ISBN 13: 9780385501187

Verlag: Doubleday, 2002

Inhaltsangabe

While probing the apparent suicide of a colleague's niece, Iowa deputy sheriff Carl Houseman and his partner, Hester Gorse, discover a bizarre group of would-be vampires, led by a sinister twenty-first-century Dracula named Dan Peal who has connections to drug trafficking and who is being pursued by a real-life vampire hunter.

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Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

DONALD HARSTAD is the author of Eleven Days, Known Dead, and The Big Thaw. A former deputy sheriff and twenty-six-year veteran of the Clayton County Sheriff’s Department, he lives in Elkader, Iowa.

Aus dem Klappentext

With his dead-on depictions of the rural crime beat in such critically acclaimed novels as Eleven Days, Known Dead, and The Big Thaw, Donald Harstad proved himself to be a master of the police procedural and a keen observer of the intrigues and eccentricities of the American heartland. In Code Sixty-one, Harstad furthers his talents, bringing his offbeat, Fargoesque style to a gripping tale about modern-day vampires.

Investigating the apparent suicide of a colleague s niece, Iowa Deputy Sheriff Carl Houseman uncovers a group that has transformed the dark fantasies of vampire legend into grisly reality: they ritualistically drink small amounts of one another s blood. As Houseman and his partner, Hester Gorse, are drawn deeper into this alternate, alien world, they come to the chilling conclusion that the dead young woman may have been the victim of a twenty-first-century Dracula. Their prime suspect, Dan Peal, is a sinister and commanding presence within the group, but without proof to substantiate such a heinous theory, the trail is in danger of running cold. When their suspicions are bolstered by the report of a card-carrying vampire-hunter who is also pursuing Peal, Houseman and Gorse suddenly find themselves scrambling to track the vampire before he kills again.

A spellbinding journey into the dark recesses of the modern-day heartland, Code Sixty-one unfolds with relentless speed and precision. Veteran police officer and author Donald Harstad continues to craft his work from the fabric of personal experience and insider know-how, cutting to the quick of well-imagined fiction, rattling nerves along the way.

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One

Thursday, October 5, 2000 23:33

I guess I could say it started for us on Thursday, October 5, 2000. I can say that now. I sure couldn't at the time.

It was exactly 23:33 hours, and I was just leaving the scene of a minor fender bender, and was en route home when the communications center called.

"Comm, Three?" came crackling over the radio, from the familiar voice of my favorite dispatcher, Sally Wells.

I picked up my mike, suspicious already. "This is Three. Go ahead."

"Three, we have a 911 intruder call, 606 Main, Freiberg. Female subject needs immediate assistance. Freiberg officer has been dispatched and is requesting backup."

I sighed audibly. "Ten-four, Comm." I took stock of my current location. "I'll be ten-seventy-six to the scene from about seven miles out on County Four Victor Six."

"Three, ten-seventy-six. Three, not sure if this is completely ten-thirty-three, but you might be aware that the female subject indicated that there was a man trying to come in her window."

I reached down and turned on my red and blue top lights. "Three is en route. Can she ID the suspect?"

"Contact was broken by the caller, Three. Auto callback rings through, no answer. Female subject was very excited, but described the intruder as a white male with . . ." She paused, and I thought I had detected barely suppressed humor in her voice. "Ah, continuing, Three. Suspect described as white male with teeth."

"Teeth, Comm?"

"Ten-four, Three. Teeth."

"Ah, okay, ten-four. Still en route. Advise when the Freiberg car goes ten-twenty-three at the scene." Teeth?

"Ten-four, Three. Will advise."

Teeth? I distinctly remember thinking that I wasn't going to hear the end of that one for a while. At least it wasn't a gun or a knife. I really hate knives.

Our usual shortage of deputies available for duty had been aggravated by an early appearance of the flu in the last two weeks, so from a total of nine, we were down to five or four effectives, depending on who called in sick next, and when the next officer came back. As senior officer, I still had to pull twelve-hour shifts, but my exalted status meant that I got first choice of which shift I would work. I'd chosen noon to midnight. It was a combination of the shift that was the most fun, and the one where you could get the most actual work done.

About two minutes later, I heard Byng, the Freiberg officer, go 10-23 at the scene.

"I was ten-four direct, Comm," I said, letting Sally know that I had heard him and to keep her from having to tell me. That was because her transmissions from the base station were so much more powerful than ours, she could obliterate a transmission from the Freiberg officer, especially when he was on his walkie-talkie.

She simply clicked her mike button twice in close succession, in acknowledgment.

I passed the last farm before the Freiberg city limits, took the big, downhill curve at about eighty-five, and began braking as I entered the forty-five zone. I was down to forty as I made the next turn, and was on Marquette Street, the two-story frame houses of the residential area changing into the three-story brick storefronts of the nearly deserted four-block business district. I cut my top lights, the red and blue reflections in the store windows being a distraction as I looked for anybody out on the sidewalks. Still slowing, I headed down the gently sloping street that was cut short by the black line that was the Mississippi River.

I heard the static distorted voice of Byng. "Where ya at, Three?"

"Downtown." As I keyed the mike, I saw his car parked off to my right. "Have your car in sight." By telling him that, he could give me better directions.

"Okay . . . I'm on the second floor above Curls & Cuts. Up the stairs on the right, the blue door."

"Ten-four." I swung my car to the right, pulling up near the curb about thirty feet ahead of his car. "Comm, Three's ten-twenty-three," I said into my mike as I unsnapped my seat belt, grabbed my rechargeable flashlight, turned on my own walkie-talkie, and opened my car door. Simultaneously, I heard the voices of both Byng and Sally back at Comm. She, being over twenty-five miles away and using a powerful transmitter, and he, very close but behind a brick wall and using a very weak transmitter, canceled each other out almost perfectly.

Knowing that she was merely acknowledging me, and not being at all sure of what Byng had said, I picked up my car radio mike and said, "Stand by a sec, Comm." The feedback into my now active walkie-talkie let out a screech, and I turned its volume down without thinking. Still with the car radio, I said, "Byng?"

"Yeah, Three. Hey, why don't you come around the back way? I don't know what we got here. Neighbor says the victim has gone and thinks she heard her leave and that she went up onto the roof."

I swung my feet back into my car, started the engine, shut the door, and said, "I'm on my way."

"Uh, Three . . . You might want to check ground level . . . Can't figure why she'd go to the roof."

"Ten-four." I couldn't, either, but people do strange things when they're scared. I sure as hell wouldn't go up, but then I have a thing about heights.

I had to go almost another block before I reached a side street. Freiberg is located between two big bluffs, and is only four streets wide at its widest point. Spaces being at a premium, cross streets are few and far between. The fact that the cross streets all required a bridge to span the open drainage "conduit" contributed to their scarcity. The so-called conduit was about thirty feet wide, ten to twelve feet deep, with limestone banks and a concrete floor. It was dug in the 1890s to accommodate the vast drainage that came down off the bluffs during heavy rains. It ran the length of the town, and emptied into the Mississippi. It was not, as they say, kid-proof, and offered a nearly invisible path for burglars as well. I bumped over the bridge deck, and took a sharp right, doubling back on the other side of the stores and apartments above them. I stopped as close to the bridge as I could, and opened my car door for the second time. "Comm, Three's out'a the car," I said, mostly to let Byng know I was now behind the buildings.

"Ten-four, Three," said Sally. She was monitoring the conversation between Byng and me, and was starting to sound a little concerned.

The conduit was, unfortunately, between the buildings and me. The fire department had fits over that all the time, but there was just no way to put a road in behind the stores on the other side of the big ditch. Not without tearing all the buildings down and moving them into the street on the other side.

Without a road or alley directly behind the buildings, most of them had constructed their own little footbridges across to their loading areas. Easy access, as they say, but easy for burglars as well. For that reason, I had gotten very, very familiar with the area over the years.

The lighting sucked. One yellowish orange light at the road bridge, and one about a block away. Not much room for them, either, because of the hundred-fifty-foot limestone bluff looming up on my left. It was sheer, naked rock for about fifty feet, and then brush and trees began sprouting all the way to the top. The builders had to squeeze the road in, and the whole area was a sandwich of necessity. Bluff, road, conduit, buildings. No room for anything else.

I squeezed the rubberized transmit button of my walkie-talkie....

Details zur Ausgabe

• Verlag: Doubleday
• Erscheinungsdatum: 2002
• Sprache: Englisch
• ISBN 10: 0385501188
• ISBN 13: 9780385501187
• Einband: Gebundene Ausgabe
• Anzahl der Seiten: 370
• Kontakt zum Hersteller: Nicht verfügbar
• Verantwortliche Person: Nicht verfügbar