Chapter One
His first fix of the day bloomed like a slow explosion in his chest.
Skip Lacey, a desolate sixty-year-old with a body ravaged by decades of hard drugs, leaned against an abandoned watchman's shack in the Union Pacific rail yard. Driven outside by San Francisco's worst heat wave in decades, he sat watching the trains come and go, screeching steel on steel.
Fighting back the pain of his chronically aching teeth, he took an Oreo from his jumbo bag and let his head fall back.
As Lacey floated on the rolling wave of his high, he closed his eyes, the image of who he used to be appearing like a ghost behind his eyelids.
He opened his eyes, not sure if he'd fallen asleep, and noticed a man crossing the tracks. Heading toward him. At first Lacey thought it might be a yard cop coming to roust him. He considered trying to stand, to stumble away. But his brain couldn't quite get the signal to his legs.
As the man got closer, Lacey could see that he wasn't a cop. Just some guy carrying a cardboard box. Probably looking for a place to flop.
When the man finally reached the shack, he squatted in the shade. Lacey noticed that although he was dressed in a clean white shirt and chinos, he was barefoot.
Lacey shaded his eyes from the halo of sun behind the man's head. "You got a candy bar?"
The man set his box down by the rock circle of Lacey's dormant cooking fire. His face still in silhouette, he stripped off his shirt.
Lacey squinted at the man's body, sweat-streaked and powerfully sculpted. "Hot, huh?"
"It don't bother me," the man said, his voice low. He unbuckled his belt and let his pants and underwear fall to the dirt next to the rocks."
"Then whythe fuck you taking off your clothes?" Lacey said, irritated that the sweet privacy of his morning fix was being interrupted. He pried another Oreo apart and scraped the white sugar filling across his lower teeth. They pulsed with a dull aching throb.
The man squatted down next to him and jutted his face in close to Lacey's. "Because I don't want to get blood on my new clothes."
Somewhere in the recesses of Lacey's drug-soaked brain, a primitive flight instinct was triggered. His hips twitched in response, but that was all.
The man reached over to the fire circle and picked up a large jagged rock. Lashing out, he cracked the rock against Lacey's temple.
Before Lacey could understand what was happening to him, the man smashed the rock into his face again, shattering his cheekbone.
Lacey fell over on his side, his hands flailing to protect his face. "Why?" he screamed. "Why are you doing this to me?"
"Because," the man spit as he caved in Lacey's nose with another blow, "I am Jacques Carpenter."
Lacey blinked at him. "I don't know what that means." He struggled to prop himself up on his elbow. "Do you have any idea who I am?"
"Only who you used to be." Carpenter kicked out Lacey's elbow, sending him thudding back onto the dirt. He swung the rock into his jaw, splintering his teeth.
Lacey lay still. His face split and bloody, he drifted in and out of consciousness. The blazing sun was in his eyes, but he couldn't manage to close them.
Carpenter dropped the rock and opened his cardboard box. He removed his shoes and put them on top of his clothes. Then, reaching deep into the box, he came up with a grey metal spoon. He glanced over to Lacey's chest. It rose andfell as he moaned in pain.
Good, Carpenter thought, he's alive.
He'll feel this.
Carpenter ran his thumb over the razor-sharp edge of the spoon. He had stolen it from the prison mess six months ago and had sharpened it every night since. Methodically scraping it on the floor of his cell, he had read aloud from his Bible to cover the scratching sound of metal on concrete.
Stepping over to Lacey, he put his bare foot on the injured man's forehead and bent over.
"Lacey!" he hissed. "Lacey!"
Skip Lacey stirred, blood from his broken mouth streaming down to his ear.
"It's time," Carpenter said.
He brought the blade of the spoon close to Lacey's left eye.
A powerful survival reflex erupting within, Lacey bucked his body, his back arching. In one brutally swift motion, Carpenter dropped his knee onto Lacey's chest, pinning him, and plunged the spoon into his eye socket. With a hard twist of his forearm, he gouged the eye out of his head.
Lacey screamed, his voice pitching higher and higher in his agony. His cries were lost beneath the squealing of the railroad cars as they clattered out of the yard.
His hands bloodied and the anticipation of the kill rising in his throat, Carpenter steadied Lacey's head with his other knee. He jammed the spoon into the right socket and yanked out his other eye. Then, before Lacey could even gasp, Carpenter brought the rock down with the full force of his pent-up rage. It cratered deep into Lacey's skull.
Wheezing a crimson mist, Lacey died in the bloodstained dust.
Carpenter stood and held his hands before him. Then he urinated on them, washing the blood away.
Never taking his eyes off Lacey's devastated face, he slowlydressed himself. He put his shoes, the spoon, and the rock into the box, and lifted it up. Then he walked back the way he had come.
The dusty wind of a passing train curled over him and he knew that revenge is what would keep him alive.
This second novel featuring Homicide Inspector Jane Candiotti ("Fall from Grace") begins as her relationship with partner Kenny Marks is rocked by an ex-con bent on revenge. After 15 years of hard prison time, he's back in San Francisco to prey on the officers he holds responsible. Jane and Kenny must find this madman before they are the last two left alive.