A Killer Harvest
Page 37
He loved his father—still does—and misses him greatly. He can’t help be angry that his dad brought his own death upon himself. If he and Uncle Ben hadn’t gone to kill Simon Bower that day, then none of this would have happened.
Joshua and Olillia have been praised for saving Ruby Carter, but they’ve also been thoroughly reprimanded for placing themselves in such danger. Other than school and the funeral, he’s been grounded for a month, as has Olillia. He suspects charges won’t be laid against them. He knows Detective Vega has put in a good word for them, and he knows their story has been the headline all week, blasted out on all forms of media—there’s no way the police could charge the teenagers who found Ruby Carter and not have a riot on their hands.
Yesterday, Dr. Toni came to see him. He didn’t ask her what happened while he was outside the cabin trying to move her car. She came to tell him that Ruby is recovering well. Other than her severed finger, most of her wounds are psychological. She’s remaining positive too. She knows there are worse things Simon and Vincent could have done to her. Both Joshua and Olillia would like to see her again, and Dr. Toni suspected Ruby would like that too.
The funeral ends. Vincent Archer’s body is lowered into the ground. The small crowd consists of family—Vincent’s parents, his brother, even his niece. There have been photographs of them all over the news. Vincent’s mom turned him in to the police, but even so, thousands of people have gone online to write comments, calling her the worst things imaginable. None of the Archers are showing any emotion right now. After what they’ve been through, they probably want to at least have some semblance of control over their feelings. The only sign of life is coming from the little girl, who looks like she’s just itching to run around and chase the leaves, anything to get way from the circle of sadness that is her family. The funeral ends and Vincent’s dad throws a flower into the grave but no one else does, and then they walk away.
Joshua can’t rightly say why he’s here. It was more a feeling that he needed to be, and he suspects the urge came from the DNA in his body that once belonged to Simon Bower. He thought about asking Dr. Toni to remove the eye, but he’s decided to keep it. The same way some people wear scars to remind them of something in their lives, he’s going to keep the eye to remind him of what his father did. Olillia told him he’s only punishing himself by thinking that way, and he suspects she’s right—but he’s still going to keep it.
When the curse came for Joshua, it took Vincent instead, but he knows it’s still out there waiting for him. He knows this because of what Dr. Toni came to tell him yesterday.
Joshua and Olillia turn around and switch hands and head back to the parking lot.
As they drive away from the cemetery, he thinks about that conversation. Dr. Toni told him it wasn’t just him and Dustin and Gregory who received new organs that day, thanks to his father’s benevolent execution.
There are six other patients with organs from Simon Bower out there who could be having weird dreams of their own.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
A Killer Harvest has been a different outing for me—but boy, have I enjoyed it! Five or six years ago, I was having lunch with Tim Müller, my friend and German editor, and another buddy, Craig Sisterson, who has done more than anybody to put New Zealand crime fiction on the world map. We were at a Crime Writing festival in the UK. I can’t remember what we were chatting about when Tim asked, “Have you ever considered writing a young adult novel?” to which I said, “No,” to which Craig said, “You should really think about it,” to which I said, “It’s not my thing,” to which I then followed up with, “But, if I were to write one . . . maybe I could write it about a boy who is blind from birth and gets his father’s eyes after his dad is killed chasing a serial killer. Wait . . . wait . . . what if he had one eye from his father and one from the killer?” Just like that, completely out of thin air, this novel came to be. Often that’s the way.
I wrote a few chapters and then shelved the idea for years to work on other books back then. It was in 2015 when I was hanging out in Sydney with my US editor, Sarah Branham, that the book became “unshelved.” I told her about it, and she said, “Write it.” So I wrote it—my very first young adult novel. I remember later that year I was hanging out with the folks at Atria in New York and telling them how the book had turned out . . . and everybody kept saying, “Hmm . . . that may not be young adult, but adult . . .” It turned out they were right.
A Killer Harvest exists firstly because of that lunch all those years ago, but it also exists because of the team at Atria in New York, who convinced me to go ahead and write it—and I’m so glad they did. We put in a lot of work on this thing—and I couldn’t be more proud of the result. Sarah got me thinking in so many directions, my head was spinning by the end of the editing process. This was my last book with Sarah—we had ten together—and now I’m working with another very cool editor, Rakesh Satyal, on the next novel, and he’s got me thinking in all those same directions too. Judith Curr, David Brown, Lisa Keim, Emily Bestler, Haley Weaver, Hillary Tisman, Loan Le, and all the others—thank you once again for giving my books a home.
Let me sign off once again by thanking you, the reader. You guys have been brilliant. You guys are the reason I like to make bad things happen . . .
Paul Cleave
March 2017
Christchurch, New Zealand
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
PAUL CLEAVE is the internationally bestselling author of ten award-winning crime thrillers, including Joe Victim, which was a finalist for the 2014 Edgar and Barry Awards, Trust No One and Five Minutes Alone, which won consecutive Ngaio Marsh Awards in 2015 and 2016. He lives in Christchurch, New Zealand. Visit his website at PaulCleave.com.
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ALSO BY PAUL CLEAVE
Trust No One
Five Minutes Alone
Joe Victim
The Laughterhouse
Collecting Cooper
Blood Men
Cemetery Lake
The Killing Hour
The Cleaner
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This book is a work of fiction. Any references to historical events, real people, or real places are used fictitiously. Other names, characters, places, and events are products of the author’s imagination, and any resemblance to actual events or places or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
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Library of Cong
ress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Jacket design by Darren Haggar
Jacket photograph by Robert Daly/Getty Images
Author photograph by Martin Hunter
Names: Cleave, Paul, 1974– author.
Title: A killer harvest : a novel / Paul Cleave.
Description: First Atria Books hardcover edition. | New York : Atria Books, [2017]
Identifiers: LCCN 2016037791 (print) | LCCN 2016043091 (ebook) | ISBN 9781501153013 (hardcover : alk. paper) | ISBN 9781501153020 (pbk. : alk. paper) | ISBN 9781501153037 (ebook) | ISBN 9781501153037 (ebook)
Classification: LCC PR9639.4.C54 K54 2017 (print) | LCC PR9639.4.C54 (ebook) | DDC 823/.92—dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2016037791
ISBN 978-1-5011-5301-3
ISBN 978-1-5011-5303-7 (ebook)