Dear Irene,
“INTRICATE PLOTTING” (THE WASHINGTON TIMES) . . .
“CHILLING SUSPENSE” (CLIVE CUSSLER) . . .
“CRISP, CRACKLING PROSE” (LIBRARY JOURNAL) . . .
THE CRIME FICTION OF EDGAR AWARD–WINNING AUTHOR
JAN BURKE
HAS IT ALL!
“Jan Burke’s Irene Kelly stories [feature] tense and thoughtful plots, writing that manages to be sharp and sardonic without calling attention to itself, [and] a Southern California setting that skips all the clichés. . . . [An] excellent series.”
—Chicago Tribune
“Gripping . . . compelling . . . Jan Burke doesn’t come up for air until every detail is nailed down.”
—Michael Connelly
“Spine-tingling, nerve-fraying, breath-suppressing suspense . . . in the mystery pantheon with Patricia Cornwell, Sue Grafton, Robert B. Parker, and John Sandford.”
—The Tennessean
“I’ve always counted on Jan Burke’s Irene Kelly books as one of my favorite guilt-free pleasures.”
—Janet Evanovich, author of Hard Eight
“Ever since her auspicious debut, Jan Burke has raised the emotional ante with each succeeding book . . . a witty and resourceful writer.”
—Los Angeles Times
NATIONAL ACCLAIM FOR JAN BURKE’S IRENE KELLY NOVELS
GOODNIGHT, IRENE
“Readers who want nonstop action, spare dialogue, and a heroine who’s a combination of Nancy Drew, Katharine Hepburn, Lois Lane, and Lauren Bacall, should snap up Goodnight, Irene at the first opportunity.”
—Booklist (starred review)
“Jan Burke writes with a verve that makes this an eminently satisfactory debut, one that bodes well for the future.”
—The San Diego Union-Tribune
“As fresh and chilling as a winter sunrise.”
—Kirkus Reviews
“Jan Burke has created a sharp, witty, and utterly endearing detective.”
—Susan Dunlap, author of Death and Taxes
SWEET DREAMS, IRENE
“A compelling mystery . . . virtually nonstop drama. It’s hard to see how Burke can top this one.”
—The Drood Review of Mystery
“A highly readable mystery with a rapid heartbeat and a thoroughly modern point of view. [Burke’s] detective is a welcome addition to the world of the contemporary mystery.”
—The Dallas Morning News
“A joy. . . . A beautifully crafted book, played against an intriguing backdrop.”
—Orange County Register
DEAR IRENE,
“Powerful . . . exquisite . . . entertaining . . . hard to put down.”
—West Coast Review of Books
“An exciting, well-plotted, edge-of-your-seat mystery.”
—Indianapolis News
“Top notch. . . . Action-packed, riveting, and cleverly plotted.”
—Booklist
REMEMBER ME, IRENE
“A splendid addition to an excellent series.”
—Los Angeles Times
“Burke is in top form here.”
—Publishers Weekly
“A deliciously tense mystery that hungry whodunit fans will devour.”
—Colorado Springs Gazette
HOCUS
“[An] intelligent and deftly paced thriller.”
—The Washington Post
“A story that will grab you on page one and just won’t let go.”
—Robert Crais
“Heads above the average thriller. . . . Hocus shines with memorable characters . . . [and] tears through to its conclusion at a heart-stopping pace.”
—Star-Tribune (Minneapolis)
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CONTENTS
Acknowledgments
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Flight Excerpt
Nine Excerpt
For My Husband,
Timothy Burke,
who is one in a gazillion.
All my words are paupers at your door,
begging you to know what they cannot express.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
I am especially grateful to Dan Coburn for his help with airplanes; Ed and Kelly Dohring for once again providing help with medical questions (even during walks on Sanibel Island); Detective Dennis Payne of the LAPD Robbery-Homicide Division, for putting up with all kinds of pestering; Andy Rose and Debbie Arrington of the Press-Telegram for reporting insights; Robert Samoian, Deputy District Attorney for the County of Los Angeles, for help with judicial system questions; Larry Ragle, author, instructor and former Director of Forensic Sciences for Orange County; John Olguin of the Los Angeles Dodgers organization, Jack Shinar, Bill Granick, Debbie Arrington (yes, again!), and everyone else who helped with the baseball questions; Sharon Weissman for unfailing support and willingness to help; and Ken McGuire of the Los Angeles County Flood Control District, who patiently answered some strange inquiries from a mystery writer during a break in the rainy season. Special thanks are due my uncle, Robert Flynn, retired political reporter for the Evansville Press, whose work has always fascinated me, and undoubtedly influenced Irene’s choice of a career.
No small part of the information about child care and women in the workforce during World War II was gathered from my participation as a research assistant on the “Rosie the Riveter Revisited” oral history project at California State University, Long Beach, a project funded by the Rockefeller Foundation and the National Endowment for the Humanities. I am indebted to Sherna Gluck, who designed and directed the project, for allowing me the remarkable privilege of interviewing women who worked in Southern California’s aircraft factories during World War II. I am also indebted to the women themselves, whose recollections and thoughts about their lives changed my own life in ways I cannot measure.
Thanks to a great many librarians for your assistance in research and beyond, especially to those of you who work for the Long Beach Public Library, the Angelo Iacoboni Branch of the Los Angeles County Library, and the University Library of California State University, Long Beach.
As always, readers are asked to understand that while all of these individuals were of help in the research for this book, I will not allow them to take any credit for my errors.
Nancy Yost deserves thanks for so much, including insightful comments on early drafts.
My family and friends have kept me going during those times when I thought I was a goner. Tom and Marty Burke have been especially wonderful, putting up with their daughter-in-law’s oddball, PST night-owl work schedule during her visits to the East Coast. Tim remained a steadfast companion and cheerleader during days when my DNA might not have tested out to be human. Robert Hahn, Heather Harkins, and members of the Flynn family who waited for me in Cincinnati deserve
my special thanks for their patience.
The people who make up a company called Simon and Schuster have given me support at every level, more than I can detail here. And Laurie Bernstein will never know how much I appreciate her guidance and encouragement, because this book would cost each reader an additional ten bucks if I were allowed the time to sit here and write about it. Will “THANKS!!” do for now?
1
November 28, 1990
Please hand deliver to:
Miss Irene Kelly
Las Piernas News Express
600 Broadway
Las Piernas, CA
Dear Miss Kelly,
I am writing to you because those guys who write the Sports Section are a bunch of jerks who won’t take me seriously. My dog, Pigskin, can predict the outcome of the Super Bowl. So far, he has a perfect record. Once the playoff teams have been decided, I simply glue the team emblems to the bottoms of two dishes of dog food, put them on the floor, and whichever one Pigskin goes to, that’s which team will win. I think this is pretty interesting and thought maybe you should do a story on it . . .
I crumpled that one into a ball and spiked Pigskin right into the round file—and did it all left-handed. But after a moment, I pulled the letter back out of the trash. Setting aside my generally rotten mood that day, I decided Pigskin might be of help with this year’s office football pool.
Going through my mail that Wednesday afternoon in late November, I had already sorted out the flyers on meetings and the invitations to local political wingdings. That left only the pile of the envelopes which were less easily identified. Some were handwritten, some typed, some bore computer-generated labels. Few had return addresses.
I. Kelly
Las Piernas News Express
Dear Bleeding Heart Kelly,
The recent media worship of the Premier of the Soviet Union is disgusting. Presenting Mr. Gorbachev as a reformer is the most insidious communist plot yet. Not that you lily-livered leftists of the press are hard to fool, but I think it should be obvious that this is all just a charade to get us to drop our guard . . .
I was unfazed by these unflattering descriptions of my internal organs. I admit that I was a little distracted, not paying much attention to the occasional crank among my readers’ correspondence. My mail isn’t always as oddball as it was that day, but the approach of certain major holidays seems to make nut cases reach for their stationery.
Most are harmless, lonely people who just need somebody to listen to them. Every now and again, one of them causes some trouble, like the guy who showed up in the newsroom one day with his parrot, claiming the bird was the reincarnation of Sigmund Freud. I don’t know what women want, but Sigmund wanted a cracker.
Ms. Irene Kelly
Las Piernas News Express
Dear Irene,
I very much enjoyed the recent commentary column in which you said that the state lottery is a tax on hope. I agree with you one hundred percent. You are the brightest, most insightful writer on the staff of the Express. Your prose is brilliant. I was greatly impressed by your grasp of the complex statistical data on the Eberhardt study of lottery purchasing patterns, as well as your ability to clearly explain the study’s significance to the average reader. I would really like to meet you, but if this is not possible, would you please send me a pair of your panties?
Lydia Ames laughed as she read that one over my shoulder. She works at the paper as an ACE, or Assistant City Editor. “Going to show that one to your fiancé?”
I gave her my best scowl. She’s known me since third grade, so she wasn’t much intimidated. She really delighted in that word “fiancé.” Like a lot of other people I know, she’s spent a number of years wondering if I would ever give her any reason to use it. I had been getting a lot of this “fiancé” stuff lately; given the way Frank Harriman had proposed, I doubt we could have managed a secret engagement.
As if thinking about the very same thing, Lydia looked down at the new cast my orthopedist had just put on my right foot that afternoon. “Did you save the ‘Marry me, Irene’ cast?”
“My fiancé has it.”
She caught my tone. “I guess you’re really disappointed about having to wear another one.”
“Yeah, I am. I hobbled in there with visions of being free of these damned things and look how I ended up.”
“Well, at least you’re out of the sling, and the doctor did take the cast off your right hand.”
“And replaced it with a splint.”
“A removable splint.”
“Terrific. He walks in and announces, ‘So today we’ll give you a new foot cast! This one will be easier to walk with! It’s made of fiberglass!’ Acting like I’d won a Rolls-Royce in a church raffle.”
She didn’t say anything.
I sighed, looking down at my latest orthopedic fashion accessory. Fiberglass.
I was recovering from a run-in with a group of toughs who wanted to rearrange my bones. I was healing, but my emotions could still surprise me. This was my first week back at work, and I found I had to be on guard against sudden bouts of extreme frustration.
“Sorry, Lydia. I’ll cheer up in a few minutes. Things aren’t going the way I planned. Thought I’d be running around, no casts, no slings, no splints. My day to be wrong. I’m also cranky because I feel useless around here.”
“Just be patient with yourself, okay?”
“I’ll try. But patience and I have been estranged for many years.”
She laughed. “I don’t think you’ve been introduced.”
Mr. Irene Kelly
Las Piernas News Express
Dear Mr. Kelly,
I am writing again to tell you that something must be done to stop the United States Government’s heinous MIND CONTROL experiments. I am just one of THOUSANDS of persons who, after being INVOLUNTARILY incarcerated in a government mental hospital under the PRETEXT of being under observation, was subjected to SURGERY in which a computer chip was embedded under my skin. This chip is used by the government to send MESSAGES TO MY BRAIN. Fortunately, I received an earlier model, so THEY DON’T KNOW that I’m writing to you. The newer models can tell them EVERYTHING you are thinking at all times. PLEASE HELP US. If you don’t, there will be BIG TROUBLE for all concerned . . .
Big trouble. Frank has complained that sometimes I seem to go around looking for trouble. Not a comforting thing to hear a homicide detective say, but maybe he’s right. After all, being a reporter often involves looking for somebody’s trouble. But it’s not supposed to become my trouble. My news editor, John Walters, tries to impress this point on me every so often.
Irene Kelly
Las Piernas New Express
Dear Irene Kelly,
I was dismayed to learn that Las Piernas does not have a city song. I am a songwriter (still waiting for my big break) and I know I could write a terrific song for our city. However, I would like to be fair about it, so I came up with the idea of a contest. I asked around City Hall and found little interest there until I happened to talk to a Mr. P.J. Jacobsen who said that maybe the newspaper could sponsor a contest. Mr. Jacobsen said you were just the person to contact. He said to be sure to tell you that this was the least he could do for you after that article you wrote about him last August . . .
Poor P.J. “Sleepy” Jacobsen. What a lousy attempt at revenge. The previous August, I had brought the public’s attention to the slipshod way in which Sleepy ran his office as Assistant City Treasurer. I guess he hadn’t heard that old adage that says you shouldn’t pick fights with people who buy ink by the barrel. The Express buys it by the tanker truckload.
* * *
I WASN’T CONCENTRATING at all now, just flipping through the envelopes, bored silly. Among other injuries, my right shoulder had been dislocated and my right thumb had been broken, so I was slow as molasses on the keyboard. Over the last few days, I had managed to peck out a few commentary columns and a couple of obits. Lydia sent some rewriting my way, noth
ing that was on fire.
* * *
MY THOUGHTS DRIFTED to Frank, and the conversation we had as he drove me back to work.
“You know what you need?” he had said, glancing over at me. “You need a good story to work on. Something that will get your mind off your injuries.”
“I’m not much use as a reporter right now. Besides, the most intriguing stories don’t just knock on the paper’s front door, looking for a reporter. You have to go out and find them. And I’m stuck at a desk.”
Nobody’s right all the time. As I said, it was my day to be wrong. That November afternoon, trouble came looking for me. Trouble got lucky. There was a story waiting for me on my desk. It was over two thousand years old, but it would become big news in no time.
2
I DIDN’T SEE IT until I made a second pass through my mail. It arrived in a plain blue envelope, addressed to me in care of the paper, the address on a white computer label.
Dear Miss Kelly,
You will always be the first to know, because you will be my Cassandra. Who will believe you? I will.
The time has come for us to begin.
The first Olympian will fall on Thursday. The hammer of Hephaestus will strike her down and the eyes of Argus will be upon her remains.
Clio will be the first to die.
Forgive me my riddles, but it must be so. Soon you will be able to see the truth of it, Cassandra. But who will believe you?
Your beloved,
Thanatos
Oh brother. Here was a letter from no less a figure than Thanatos, the ancient Greeks’ name for Death himself. My beloved. And I was going to be his Cassandra, the prophetess who spoke the truth but was never believed. Charming. I looked through the rest of my mail. Little of worth.
Having nothing better to do, I read the Thanatos letter again. It had been years since I had read anything about ancient Greek stories or mythology. I couldn’t remember Hephaestus or Argus. Thursday—tomorrow. My brows furrowed for a moment over that.
Clio would be the first to die. Clio was one of the Greek Muses, the nine daughters of Zeus who presided over the arts. I was trying to remember which one she was when the phone rang.