Never Fear Read online

  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  Copyright Page

  Dedication

  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

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Chapter 39

  Chapter 40

  Chapter 41

  Chapter 42

  Chapter 43

  Chapter 44

  Chapter 45

  Chapter 46

  Chapter 47

  Chapter 48

  Acknowledgements

  Praise for Never Fear

  “Frost wraps his narrative in an atmosphere so thick with foreboding that its disorienting events take on a surreal quality . . . eerie storytelling.”

  —The New York Times Book Review

  “With enough plot lines for several crime novels, Scott Frost provides a page-turner in Never Fear . . . [Frost] keeps the audience in suspense . . . fast-paced plotting makes it hard to put the book down.”

  —The Tampa Tribune

  “Scott Frost is a heck of a good storyteller . . . we will probably be hearing more about Alex Delillo . . . [She] has all the makings of a series character.”

  —The Associated Press

  “Another pulse-pounding, complex thriller in the tradition of Peter Straub . . . Frost’s combination of psychological depth, complex plotting, and an evocative, arid Los Angeles setting will have lovers of intellectual suspense counting the days until his next book.”

  —Publishers Weekly (starred review)

  “Never Fear is to mystery novels about Los Angeles what Chinatown was to movies . . . Even when you know what happens at the end, you want to go back and start again.”

  —D. W. Buffa, author of The Defense

  “Amazing . . . a great sequel to his knockout debut novel Run the Risk . . . It gets creepier as the tension mounts and the body count rises . . . Frost’s expertise is brilliant; this is ideal for the compulsive page-turner who enjoys excellent writing and suspense.” —Lansing State Journal

  “Frost delivers a superlative scorcher with a cast of memorably eccentric characters (including a brilliant schizophrenic hell-bent on revenge) and a sinuous plot that crackles and pops. Fans of Robert Crais and Michael Connelly should check out this series.” —Booklist (starred review)

  “Frost makes good on the promise of Run the Risk as L.A. police detective Alex Delillo returns in a case as intricate as a diagrammed compound-complex sentence ... Tight, tricky, and wickedly complicated, with sharp, swiftly drawn characters.” —Kirkus Reviews

  "Thrilling.” —The Birmingham Post

  “Vivid and riveting . . . Strong writing, an increasingly complex heroine, and an enthralling plot full of cops, both good and bad, highly recommend this for public and academic collections.” —Library Journal

  “A classic crime novel.” —Independent on Sunday (London)

  Praise for Run the Risk

  “A riveting thriller, implacable in its intensity.”

  —Catherine Coulter

  “Alex Delillo is a single mother and L.A. homicide detective, and one of the best main characters you’ll ever meet. This is an absolutely heart-stopping debut, the kind of book that owns you by the end of the first chapter. If this really is Scott Frost’s first novel, then he’s clearly a writer to watch.” —Steve Hamilton, author of Ice Run

  “[A] chilling debut novel . . . This, the first in a series, is a jaw-dropper that will leave readers clamoring for more. This novel should be a hit.” —Publishers Weekly

  "A taut, swiftly paced thriller . . . an assured debut . . . scenes a latter-day Hitchcock would love to film.”

  —Kirkus Reviews (starred review)

  “Better known as the cowriter of the cult TV show Twin Peaks . . . Frost has created a puzzle with razor-sharp edges, and as the stakes grow, he keeps putting new pieces on the table. Run the Risk was written for people who like their books frantic and frightening, and by those measures, it delivers the goods.” —Booklist

  “Scott Frost delivers everything a thriller writer wants— crisp prose, a page-turning plot, and a completely original voice. His protagonist, Alex Delillo, is one of the most sympathetic narrators I’ve come across in a long time.”

  —Rick Riordan, author of Southtown

  “[A] taut thriller . . . liable to keep you up reading all night, offering frenzied action and carefully crafted suspense. Run the Risk is an outstanding, nail-biting new novel by a highly talented screenwriter whose credits include Twin Peaks . . . Frost is definitely a rising star in contemporary crime fiction—and this is just the first in his explosive proposed series.” —Lansing State Journal

  Titles by Scott Frost

  RUN THE RISK

  NEVER FEAR

  THE BERKLEY PUBLISHING GROUP

  Published by the Penguin Group

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  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental. The publisher does not have any control over and does not assume any responsibility for author or third-party websites or their content.

  NEVER FEAR

  A Jove Book / published by arrangement with the author

  Copyright © 2006 by Scott Frost.

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be reproduced, scanned, or distributed in any printed or electronic form

  without permission. Please do not participate in or encourage piracy of copyrighted materials

  in violation of the author’s rights. Purchase only authorized editions.

  For information, address: The Berkley Publishing Group,

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  eISBN : 978-1-4406-3377-5

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  JOVE is a registered trademark of Penguin Group (USA) Inc.

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  For Valerie, Ginsy, and Warren

  We all have secrets. In childhood they’re innocent, tucked away in the imagination like a favorite toy hidden from a sibling under the bed. If you’re lucky, that’s the way they remain. I haven’t met many lucky people.

  My mother divorced my father when I was five. What I know of him comes mostly from reruns that appear late at night on Nickelodeon, replacing actual memories of my own. On an episode of Gunsmoke he was a hapless traveling salesman who was tarred and feathered by drunken cowboys for trying to sell them bicycles to replace their horses. On an episode of Bonanza he played an Indian who was shot to death for falling in love with a white woman. He was in one movie titled War of the Colossal Beast, a low-budget horror film about a giant Cyclops that terrorizes L.A. The beast stepped on Dad while attacking the Griffith Park Observatory. They’re what I have instead of home movies.

  He was in his late twenties when he got the roles. A journeyman actor whose Richard Widmark-like features and crisp, penetrating eyes even today seem to look right through me from the television screen. Shortly after the divorce he disappeared from our lives. Not one letter was ever sent. Not one phone call made. Not on birthdays, or Christmas, not ever. Two episodes of television, a Cyclops movie, and my presence are the only evidence of his existence.

  I don’t know what his secrets were. I don’t remember the touch of his hand, or the smell of his aftershave. I imagine for a brief moment he dreamed of becoming a star, but instead played a hapless salesman, an Indian, and a Cyclops victim. What I know for sure is what’s left on the screen— a perfect smile, dark hair, and a voice that sounds just a little too high for his good looks. And I also know that without any proof to the contrary, I don’t believe my father was one of the lucky people.

  1

  It was 6:30 A.M. when the dream woke me. I’ve had it for as long as I can remember. Or at least for as long as I can remember since I became a cop. There’s a dead body in my bedroom closet going through all my clothes. I smell the ripening of decaying tissue. I hear the sliding of the hangers on the rail—the soft fall of fabric, as one outfit after another is dropped to the floor. A Maurice Sendak nightmare for the clothes-challenged homicide detective. If it were about anything more than that, I’d rather not know.

  I pulled the sheet up around my chin and tried to settle back into the pillow. I knew from experience that there would be no more sleep, but with a little luck I could at least hold off thinking about what was ahead for another hour.

  The heat of the day was already beginning to gather, slipping in through the open window. It has a sound all its own, or more accurately a quality of silence that is different from any other—and one that always seems to hold the potential for change.

  The slap of a newspaper landing on the driveway interrupted the spell. A mourning dove’s singsong and the soft rustling of wings outside my window marked the first rays of sunlight reaching over the San Gabriels. I took a long, deep breath and pulled the sheet over my head.

  Five minutes passed, and another. I listened for a sound coming from my daughter’s bedroom down the hall, as I have every morning since the killer Gabriel turned our house into his own private horror show. For weeks after we returned home Lacy greeted every dawn with a shriek of fear as the memory of what he did invaded her dreams. Months gradually turned shrieks to soft whimpers, the night sweat-soaked sheets gradually dried. A year later each day finally arrived with silence, if not promise.

  I slipped out of bed and walked down the hallway to her open door. I’ve done it every day, even after the dreams had quieted. And now, three days after she left for college, I’m still doing it. Staring at her empty bed. “Small steps” is what the therapist called these routines. Each step taking you that much closer to the life we had before, as if normalcy were something that had just slipped through our fingers and could be retrieved like a misplaced set of car keys.

  I hate therapists.

  It was Lacy who ended the sessions with the shrink by saying to him, “You just don’t have a fucking clue, because if you did, you would be embarrassed to listen to yourself. It’s not your fault, you’ve just never had a bomb wired around your neck.”

  After she said it she looked at me and smiled. I knew right then that she was going to be all right. You go girl. My girl.

  She’s just across town at UCLA, but it may just as well be across the country for my ability to protect her. Not that being within arm’s reach worked out so well before. She’s registered under my maiden name of Manning. I had wanted her to use a completely fictitious name but she wouldn’t have it. Gabriel had taken enough of her life and she wasn’t going to let him take anything more. Using my maiden name was as far as she would go.

  She’d had firearm training and self-defense, and both of us knew it would probably make no difference should Gabriel ever descend into our lives again. I lingered at the door for a moment, then the phone rang. The clock on Lacy’s nightstand read 6:40. Someone in Pasadena is dead.

  I sat down on Lacy’s bed and picked up the phone.

  “Delillo.”

  “You were staring into Lacy’s room, weren’t you?” said my old partner Dave Traver. “You were standing at the door, staring into the room. That’s why it took four rings for you to answer.”

  “No, I was sleeping.”

  “I bet you’re sitting on her bed.”

  I started to stand, then sat back down. I thought I could hear Dave smile over the line.

  “You can’t help it, you’re a mother.”

  “That would be Lieutenant Mother to you.”

  “You want to come over and look at the twins? You’ve never seen anything so perfect. I still can’t figure out how I produced something so beautiful.”

  “You know the first night they go on a date you’ll be hospitalized.”

  “They’re never going on dates.”

  If Traver were as natural a detective as he was a parent, no crime would ever go unsolved.

  “Where’s the body?” I asked.

  “An apartment near Caltech. ME believes it’s natural causes.”

  “You want me to come and look?”

  “No, I think he’s right.”

  “So you called because . . .”

  “Because you’re alone for the first time in years, sitting in Lacy’s room.”

  “I’m not alone, I have you.”

  The silence on the other end lasted a moment longer than is natural between us.

  “What?” I asked.

  “It’s probably nothing, but you got a fax last night at the office—part of a fax, a cover sheet. It’s on your desk.”

  "From?”

  “That’s the thing, it’s the same last name that Lacy’s registered under at school.”

  “Manning?”

  “Yeah, first name John. It said one page to follow but it never came through.”

  “Where’s it from?”

  “Two-one-three area code.”

  “Downtown?”

  “You know a John Manning?” Traver asked.

  “No.”

  “You want me to look into it?”

  “No, I will.”

  “You think it’s something?”

  He meant did I think it could be Gabriel.

  “I don’t know.”

  The truth was, even a year after our encounter I thought just about everything could be a result of Gabriel’s work. I saw his face in passing cars on the freeway. I heard his voice in telemarketers trying to sell phone service.

  I quickly hun
g up and called Lacy’s cell as I had done a half dozen times when I thought she was at risk. On the third ring she answered.

  “Did I wake you?”

  “No, I was having a PTSD moment.”

  My heart jumped a beat.

  “Are you—”

  “I’m joking. I’m lying in bed listening to the radio. I have a class at nine. Are you being a cop, or is this an empty-nest thing?”

  “I received a fax from someone using the name John Manning. It’s probably nothing, but until I check it out I want you to be alert.”

  Lacy said nothing for a moment.

  “How could Gabriel know I’ve changed my name?”

  “He couldn’t.”

  “Then why are you calling?”

  “You know why. I’ll figure this out; until then, you remember the drill?”

  “Don’t be alone, stay in public places.”

  Neither of us said a word for a beat. At some level words seemed useless when it came to what Gabriel had done to us.

  “Like I said, it’s probably nothing.”

  “Then who’s John Manning?” Lacy said.

  It was just before nine when I pulled into headquarters on Garfield. A Santa Ana wind was beginning to blow down out of the mountains—hot desert air, that can blow fifty miles an hour, rushing toward the Pacific. If the winds continued for twenty-four hours you could bet the car that crime would be up in Pasadena. If they blew for forty-eight hours, bet the house that a fire freak with a box of matches would start an inferno.

  Detective Dylan Harrison was waiting for me at the entrance to the building with a cup of coffee. The crescent-shaped wound near the corner of his eye, from Gabriel’s explosion in my kitchen, had healed into a thin raised line of pink skin. He held out the coffee and looked at me with those penetrating green eyes. Though as supervisor of Homicide I didn’t have an official partner, if I decided to take a case, Harrison would be it. It was probably the only reason I hadn’t made a fool of myself with him yet. Too many people are always looking for ways to see me fail. Falling in love with a subordinate would be like lighting a fuse to my own career. Being five years older than him didn’t particularly help, either, at least in my own head, which of course is the most dangerous place.