Disturbance - An Irene Kelly Novel

Informationen zum Autor Jan Burke is the author of a dozen novels and a collection of short stories. She is the founder of the Crime Lab Project and is a member of the board of the California Forensic Science Institute. She lives in Southern California with her husband and two dogs. Learn more about her at JanBurke.com. Klappentext Investigative reporter Irene Kelly is back in this heart-pounding sequel to the Edgar Award-winning novel "Bones." ONE Some people claim to be able to feel trouble coming, the way they might feel a storm approaching from a long way off. They sense a disturbance in the atmosphere, something stirs the hairs along the backs of their necks or makes them wary when old, slumbering injuries awaken and ache. My own sense of such things is not entirely reliable. Just as I am more likely to be caught in a downpour than I am to be the only one with an umbrella, trouble has blindsided me more often than it has announced its approach. Hindsight being so sharp-sighted, when I look back on that June afternoon, I can say that my sixth sense, if it was working at all, was fully occupied by the distinct possibility that I would be out of a job within a few months. That didn’t make me different from ninety-nine out of a hundred of the country’s newspaper reporters. So as I sat at my desk in the newsroom of the Las Piernas News Express , rewriting a city council story that wasn’t likely to excite anyone, my thoughts were taken up with trying to find a better angle on it. What I felt, when the phone on my desk rang, was not fear but irritation at the distraction. “Kelly,” I answered, using my headset. “Irene? Aaron Mikelson.” Mikelson used to work for the Express , but he had moved up north to Sacramento several years ago. He covers California state government for a news service there, reporting on everything from the legislature to the prison system, and putting up with all the jokes about the inhabitants of both being similar. “You hear about Nick Parrish?” he asked. “No,” I said, and my next, exhilarating thought was He’s dead. “You know he regained the ability to speak, right?” “Yes.” During the first months after Nick Parrish had sustained head and spinal injuries, he had gradually recovered speech and movement in his hands and feet, though he wasn’t walking. The speech impairment had cleared up as the swelling from the head injury was reduced. That he had fully recovered his speech wasn’t news to me, and Mikelson knew that—he was the one who had let me know Parrish was asking about me at the time. “You haven’t talked to him?” “Nothing has changed in the last few years,” I said. “I have no interest whatsoever in talking to him or in hearing what he has to say.” “He tried to sue you, right?” For a stunned moment, I wondered if Mikelson could possibly believe that my only complaint about Nick Parrish was a frivolous lawsuit. Aloud I said, “Tried. The courts rejected the suits he filed against me and the paper, so after that … well, that was more than enough of hearing from him.” “Understood. He’s one sick bastard.” “Yes,” I said, thinking that “sick bastard” didn’t come close to describing Parrish. Mere words couldn’t draw a line around him and hold the monster he was within. “You know about the Moths?” I sighed. “His online fan club? Yes. Almost too predictable that some group like that would form, right? If the Internet has given us anything, it’s some idea of how much psychosis goes undiagnosed.” “Amen.” “Look, Aaron, you cover a prison beat, so you know how this goes. Parrish has doubtless had a dozen marriage proposals, too.” “That’s true. I don’t claim to understand it. I don’t know if I’ll ever figure out why anyone would want to marry a serial killer. How could anyone ignore what he did t...

Product details

• Authors: Jan Burke
• Publisher: Pocket Books USA
• Languages: English
• Product format: Paperback / Softback
• Released: 29.05.2012
• EAN: 9781439152850
• ISBN: 978-1-4391-5285-0
• No. of pages: 384
• Series: Irene Kelly Mysteries (Paperba; Irene Kelly Mysteries (Paperback)
• Subject: Fiction > Suspense