The Thin Edge

by Peggy Townsend

  PRAISE FOR SEE HER RUN

  “Journalist Peggy Townsend’s superb debut delivers an intense character study . . . Townsend’s sophisticated plotting and affinity for character development elevate See Her Run.”

  —Associated Press

  “Townsend’s debut is driven by brisk plotting with bursts of stylish prose. Her eye for sharp character details makes her one to watch.”

  —Kirkus Reviews

  “See Her Run is fast-paced with many surprising twists that make this a page-turner. When you think you know who the killer is, this book will prove you wrong, building up the mystery and leaving you on the edge of your seat until everything comes crashing down at the conclusion. See Her Run is truly a novel you will not want to miss.”

  —RT Book Reviews (Top Pick)

  “An award-winning journalist herself, Townsend has created a nuanced young protagonist . . . This could be the beginning of an intriguing series.”

  —Booklist

  “Aloa Snow, the appealing heroine of Townsend’s gripping first novel and series launch . . . investigate[s] the apparent suicide of twenty-five-year-old adventure runner Hayley Poole . . . Aloa’s pursuit of the story of Hayley’s death plunges her into a world of murder and corporate intrigue. Readers will look forward to seeing more of plucky Aloa.”

  —Publishers Weekly

  “If you’re looking for a sweet little whodunit that could have been cribbed from Murder She Wrote, one that won’t bother you with disturbing mental images of death, violence, and the darkness that lurks in the recesses of the human soul, look elsewhere. This ain’t that.”

  —GoodTimes Santa Cruz

  “Snow is a multi-faceted and intriguing character . . . Kudos to the author for providing a fresh and interesting protagonist.”

  —Mystery Playground

  “With a flawed but relatable heroine and many twists, this book will grab readers’ attention.”

  —The Parkersburg News and Sentinel

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, organizations, places, events, and incidents are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.

  Text copyright © 2019 by Peggy Townsend

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be reproduced, or stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without express written permission of the publisher.

  Published by Thomas & Mercer, Seattle

  www.apub.com

  Amazon, the Amazon logo, and Thomas & Mercer are trademarks of Amazon.com, Inc., or its affiliates.

  ISBN-13: 9781503903234

  ISBN-10: 1503903230

  Cover design by Shasti O’Leary Soudant

  CONTENTS

  PROLOGUE

  DAY 1

  DAY 2

  DAY 3

  DAY 4

  DAY 5

  DAY 6

  DAY 7

  DAY 8

  DAY 9

  DAY 10

  DAY 11

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  PROLOGUE

  * * *

  TEN DAYS EARLIER

  Aloa Snow stood on the headlands and looked out over the Pacific. Below her, waves thundered against a jawline of ragged rocks. The sky was the color of lead.

  She shrugged out of the thick denim jacket she wore and laid it carefully on the dirt. Next, she took off her boots and placed them on the ground. Beyond her feet, the cliff fell seventy feet into the sea. The wind was hard and out of the north.

  Fly, whispered the voice in her head.

  Her body seemed loose and unconnected, as if gravity had lost its hold on her, and she hesitated for only a heartbeat before pulling the note from her shirt pocket and tucking it into her left boot, where the breeze wouldn’t snatch it away.

  “This is the most honest thing I’ll do,” the note read.

  Behind her, the driver who had brought her here, a former dentist from Calcutta, backed his car out of the parking spot and left.

  Aloa straightened, swaying slightly.

  Fly, the voice whispered again.

  She walked the few steps to the cliff’s edge. An image of her father, long dead, floated into her memory. The water rushed in and then fled outward, beckoning her to follow.

  She inhaled a long breath, spread her arms wide, and leaned.

  DAY 1

  Aloa leaned into the curve, her 1971 Honda CB-350 motorcycle humming with speed. A fog had slipped over the hills, spreading over the landscape, and her helmet visor speckled with moisture. It had been a good day.

  She’d awakened that morning, made herself a cup of strong coffee, and climbed aboard the old machine. The bike had been a gift from a trio of aging anarchists known to the denizens of San Francisco’s North Beach as the Brain Farm.

  The three—an old war photographer called P-Mac who’d left whatever innocence and hope he’d possessed in the jungles of Southeast Asia, an ex–Black Panther turned college professor nicknamed Doc, and a gray-haired former monkeywrencher christened Tick for his supposed expertise with anything that had a tendency to go boom—had discovered the abandoned bike near Pier 39 last August. It had taken the men four hours and two stops at local watering holes to push the broken machine to Doc’s apartment, where they’d spent two weeks bringing the old motorbike back to life with an assortment of salvaged and questionably acquired parts.

  They’d presented the bike to Aloa as a celebration of their belief in the nobility of freeganism, and also to mark her first step back into the world of journalism with a series she’d written about the tangled murder of a young runner. The stories had not only appeared on the website of a newsmagazine called Novo but had also spurred a US House committee hearing into what had led to the runner’s death. The three had then taken Aloa to a deserted parking lot and, over the course of two nights, taught her how to ride. Aloa had been instantly enchanted by the feisty machine and today had been a test of her skills.

  She’d stopped once to watch a pod of surfers work a small but clean swell and later found a tiny café in the town of Pescadero that featured a fine guitarist and an even finer barista. She’d ordered a cup of coffee and a chicken pesto sandwich, which she ate with near-ravenous hunger, something which, as a recovering anorexic, she never took for granted.

  Now she was headed home.

  Outside Pacifica, the fog pressed more thickly against the ground and she slowed as the pavement grew slick. She wiped her gloved hand across her visor to clear it, felt the tiniest loss of control, and quickly put her hand back on the grip. Besides the rush of speed, the thing she liked most about riding was the absolute concentration that was required. There was no room for daydreaming, no room for thoughts to crowd in. On a bike, you simply were.

  She took the long way back to her neighborhood and parked, the vibration of the old Honda echoing in her thighs. It was early, just after five o’clock, but a chill ran through her body and she thought a glass of wine was called for. She hooked her helmet over her arm and pushed her way into what was arguably the least trendy nightspot in the city, a hole-in-the-wall bar in North Beach named Justus.

  “Omigod, did Amy Winehouse and Alice Cooper have a baby and not tell anybody about it?” called the linebacker-size man behind the bar. “Look at your hair and what have I told you about waterproof mascara, hon?”

  Aloa rolled her eyes and slid onto a cracked leather stool, clunking her helmet onto the bar. “Speaking of Winehouse, how about a glass of red?”

  “Here, make yourself presentable,” said the bartender, wetting a napkin and pressing it into
Aloa’s hand. He poured a generous glass of pinot noir and pushed it in her direction.

  She scrubbed the black streaks from beneath her eyes. “Thanks, Erik,” she said as a middle-aged couple, dressed in matching fleece jackets and khaki pants, opened the door, glanced at the scattering of North Beach regulars—scruffy artists, down-on-their-luck musicians, divorced fathers—and quickly fled back onto the sidewalk.

  “Tourists,” Erik muttered and shook his head. “Why do they go places if they want everything to be the same as where they came from?”

  A former Hollywood costume designer, Erik had left the glittery life of LA for the Bay Area after members of an unnamed Colombian drug cartel had threatened his husband, a slender chef named Guillermo, or Gully, as his spouse called him. The couple had come to San Francisco, found the failing saloon on one of North Beach’s alleys, and used their savings to buy the liquor license and the aging building. They lived in a two-bedroom apartment above the bar and rented out a trio of third-floor studios to a revolving cast of writers, painters, and suddenly single men and women. “It’s a living, which is a helluva lot better than the alternative,” Erik always said. He pulled a mug of beer and slid it down the bar to a bleary-eyed regular.

  “Something to eat, hon?” he asked Aloa.

  “I’m good,” she said.

  He lifted his eyebrows. He was one of the few who knew about her slide into anorexia in college and her stubborn determination to beat back the demons that had reared their ugly heads a few more times in her life.

  “Really,” Aloa assured him. “I had a sandwich an hour ago.”

  He waited.

  “Scout’s honor,” she said and lifted two fingers.

  Erik leaned toward a narrow opening to the kitchen. “Gully, bring our biker chick a cup of your soup. She doesn’t think she wants it but I’m 99.9 percent sure she does.”

  The face of a man twelve years Erik’s junior appeared in the opening. He had dark hair, a fine nose, and brown eyes that missed little.

  “Chica,” he cried. “What brings you so early to this throat of the forest?”

  “Neck of the woods, sweetie,” Erik said.

  “Whatever you say, mi amor.” Gully smiled.

  Just as with his ability to meld multiple cuisines into remarkable offerings, Gully’s fusion of English and Spanish sometimes resulted in extraordinary turns of phrase.

  He nodded his head toward Aloa. “You have been on your machine?”

  “I rode down the coast,” Aloa told Gully. “Kind of needed a head-clearing. Novo wants me to do another piece, but I’m not sure.”

  “Writing is like food. You must not hurry,” Gully said solemnly.

  “Give them the old Harper Lee, darling. Let ’em wait,” Erik agreed.

  A few minutes later, Aloa was digging into a steaming cup of what Gully called Asian cioppino—shrimp, mussels, and halibut in an amazing ginger-lime broth—when she sensed another body slide onto the stool beside her.

  “House red, and keep it coming,” growled the familiar voice.

  Aloa turned to the gray-ponytailed anarchist next to her. “Hey, Tick,” she said.

  “Ink,” said the old man, lifting a grizzled chin in her direction.

  The Brain Farm bestowed nicknames on the few people they liked. Aloa’s was Ink for what they claimed ran through her blood after years of newspapering.

  “What’s up?” Aloa asked. “You look terrible.”

  “This.” Tick fished a folded newspaper clipping out of his jacket pocket and slapped it on the bar as Erik slid a glass of red wine in front of him.

  Aloa took the last spoonful of the seafood soup and smoothed out the rectangle of newsprint.

  WIFE OF FBI HERO MURDERED, the headline declared.

  Aloa frowned. “What’s this?”

  “Just read,” Tick said and took a long pull from his glass.

  According to the article, the forty-nine-year-old wife of a former FBI interrogator was found stabbed to death in their Potrero Hill home four days ago.

  The newspaper described the ex-FBI man, Christian Davenport, as a hero for his role in wringing a confession from a suspect in the kidnapping of a wealthy CEO’s daughter.

  According to the article, the multilingual, Stanford-educated Davenport had gone on to pull admissions from a money manager who had swindled millions of dollars from his elderly clients, and from a shadowy computer programmer who was trying to sell secrets to the Russians in exchange for two Rolexes and $10,000 in cash. Four years ago, Davenport had been in a car crash that had left him paralyzed from the shoulders down and he retired from the bureau. His wife, Corrine, had been his chief caregiver.

  Davenport, the story reported, had heard a knock at the door, voices, then his wife cry out. Lying helpless in bed, he had shouted his wife’s name until, exhausted, he’d fallen asleep. Around 7:00 a.m., his assistant had showed up for his morning shift, saw the body, and called 911.

  The article said the mayor had pledged a full investigation and that the FBI had issued a statement praising the interrogator and offering condolences for his loss. A police spokesman was quoted as saying the investigation was progressing but gave no more details.

  Aloa turned to Tick, who had already drained his first glass of wine. “Interesting,” she said, “but why did you want me to read this?”

  Tick pushed his empty glass toward Erik and lifted an index finger for a refill. “Because the cops think my kid did it.”

  DAY 2

  The sidewalk was gray with drizzle as Aloa left her North Beach home. The house was a wooden shotgun structure built by her paternal grandmother, Maja, and was now sandwiched between two monstrosities erected by a pair of millionaires from San Francisco’s bumper crop of tech tycoons. But her home’s stunning view of the Bay Bridge and its proximity to the landscaped Vallejo Street steps more than made up for its shadowed existence, and Aloa never forgot to mumble a quiet thanks to the woman who had spent her days styling hair and applying makeup in the basement of a local mortuary in order to pay for the simple house. Today was no different.

  Aloa locked the front door and strode down the steep hill, her Timberland boots slapping the sidewalk with a percussive beat. She’d dressed that morning in jeans and a dark sweater, running her fingers through her short black hair. Her blue eyes were outlined in dark liner, and she checked the four silver hoops that pierced the upper cartilage in her right ear. Before she’d left, she’d slipped into the fine leather jacket she’d bought when she was working and living in LA and pulled on a startlingly pink watch cap against the cold. The cap had been bestowed on her by the Brain Farm, who’d unearthed it from the library’s lost-and-found bin and thought it would be perfect for her. It wasn’t, but she appreciated the gesture, and on a day when a cold marine layer pushed down on the city and temperatures hovered in the low forties, she was glad to have it.

  She’d awakened at eight that morning, made a pot of French press coffee, and sat down at her computer. She’d done a little research and read through a series of articles about the murder, including a longer piece in the Los Angeles Times, where she’d worked until an error in judgment had caused her disgrace and resignation two years before. The article described the house where the crime occurred, gave more background on the victim’s husband, said San Francisco police were questioning “a person of interest” in the case, and that the investigation was proceeding with “all available resources.” Aloa knew that meant somebody important was leaning on the chief of police, who in turn was leaning on the acting head of the Homicide Detail in the Major Crimes Unit, which meant Lt. Rick Quinn would not be in the best of moods when she went to see him this morning. Of course, there wasn’t much that was cheerful about facing a desk full of violence and murder every day.

  She’d met Quinn five months earlier while working on her story about the runner’s death. Quinn was six feet one with studious hazel eyes and just enough muscle to let you know he worked out but wasn’t a fanatic about
it. He also was married, she reminded herself as she headed toward the alleyway next to Justus where Erik and Gully allowed her to store her bike. Not that she was looking for a relationship at the moment. Chastity was just fine.

  The CB-350 was cranky, a reaction to the wet and cold, but it finally started, the now-familiar rumble of its engine giving her the kind of happiness she couldn’t explain to anybody who didn’t own a motorcycle. She removed the plastic cover that protected the seat, stuffed the pink beanie into her leather daypack, slipped on her helmet—she liked the anonymity of the headgear—and took off.

  Traffic was heavy and she threaded her way around cars and delivery trucks, admiring the palm trees that lined the Embarcadero and inhaling the scent of the ocean before turning inland toward Quinn’s office. The ride, combined with a mission to figure out what was going on with Tick’s son, heightened her mood. She missed her days at the newspaper when her work made a difference, when she could right a wrong with a two-thousand-word story on the front page. She didn’t know if Tick’s son had been falsely accused or if he was guilty, but at least she could use her skills to help a friend. She parked the bike outside the Hall of Justice, removed her helmet, and spiked cold fingers through her hair. It would have to do.

  Aloa gave her name to the receptionist, asked for Quinn, and proceeded to scan the press releases on the waiting room counter, including one about the arrest of a burglar who’d left his wallet and ID at the crime scene. Some crooks were so dumb it almost hurt to read about them. Finally, Quinn stuck his head through an open door and motioned her to follow him inside.

  As Aloa trailed Quinn to his office, heads popped up from the tight warren of desks that was the department’s homicide detail, then turned back to their work. The smell of burned coffee perfumed the air.

  “It’s been a while,” Quinn said, settling behind his government-issue steel-and-fake-wood desk and gesturing Aloa toward a hard chair in front of it.

  His desk was cluttered with folders, tilting stacks of paper, and a softball trophy with the head of a Ken doll mounted where the face of the player should have been. A photo of Quinn and his wife—which Aloa had noticed the first time she met the detective—was now missing, although a wedding ring still encircled his finger. A decorating decision or something more? She pushed the thought from her head and sat.