by Mark Nykanen
Table of Contents
Praise For The Thrillers Of Mark Nykanen
Striking Back
Copyrights
Dedication:
Prologue
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
Acknowledgements:
About Mark Nykanen
These men like to hurt women. Now it’s payback time for an unknown murderer who’s slaughtering the abusers in ways that mirror the ugly violence they forced upon the women in their lives. Maybe the men deserve it. But as the death count grows—and media interest explodes—innocent people could get caught in the killer’s revenge.
Los Angeles therapist Gwyn Sanders keeps her ugly family history to herself. More than twenty years ago, when she was still a teen, her violent stepfather died a grisly, mysterious death. Gwyn knows all the secrets but she’s not talking about the past—she’s too busy trying to change the future by breaking the cycle of domestic violence. The men she counsels aren’t saints, but maybe she can change the mindset that makes their lives—and the lives of the people closest to them—so miserable.
But when someone starts killing her controversial clients, Gwyn becomes LAPD’s primary suspect. After all, there’s the unsolved mystery of her stepfather’s bizarre death. Maybe Gwyn has a hidden desire for justice that’s far from therapeutic.
Dr. Howard “Hark” Harken says he believes her. The forensic psychiatrist is an expert on serial killers, but a questionable death lingers in his own past—of a woman who bears an uncanny resemblance to Gwyn.
Praise For The Thrillers Of Mark Nykanen
“Primitive captures the raw and rugged high alpine environment, a powerful, emblematic setting for this furiously-paced thriller about a mother and daughter, and the radical environmentalists who want to use them to deliver a desperate message to the world.”
—Christopher Van Tilburg, author of Mountain Rescue Doctor
“[The Bone Parade is] the creepiest page turner since The Silence of the Lambs.”
—US Weekly
“An irresistible suspense thriller . . . ”
—Kirkus Reviews (starred)
“[The Bone] Parade goes down easy. Really easy.”
—Entertainment Weekly
“You won’t be able to stop reading.”
—Salem Statesman Journal
“The novel is deeply unsettling and exciting—a testament to the author’s skill as a storyteller.”
—Booklist
“A thrilling page-turner.”
—The Oregonian, about Search Angel
“The outcome of this book—besides wanting to sleep with the light on—will be you’ll never let someone ‘just come in and have a quick look around… my old house.’”
—Portland Oregonian
“Artful and well-written.”
—Ridley Pearson, New York Times best-selling author
“Fans of [Thomas] Harris and other dark thriller writers may eat this one up.”
—Publishers Weekly
“. . . one of the most disturbing villains since Hannibal Lector.”
—The Vancouver Sun
“Nykanen—a former Emmy-winning NBC news reporter—knows how to spin a compelling thriller.”
—The Province (Vancouver, British Columbia)
“Emmy and Edgar-winning journalist Nykanen uncovers his characters’ psyches with wit, complexity, and originality…”
Publishers Weekly.
“. . .impossible to put this book down…This well-written novel is highly recommended.”
—Library Journal.
“Hush is profound and ingenious and still a thriller that would keep Stephen King up nights.”
—King Features.
“[The villain in Hush] makes Hannibal Lector seem like a nice guy with an eating disorder.”
—St. Louis Post-Dispatch.
Striking Back
Mark Nykanen
Bell Bridge Books
Copyrights
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons (living or dead,) events or locations is entirely coincidental.
Bell Bridge Books
PO BOX 300921
Memphis, TN 38130
Print ISBN: 978-1-61194-016-9
Bell Bridge Books is an Imprint of BelleBooks, Inc.
Copyright © 2011 by Mark Nykanen
Printed and bound in the United States of America.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without permission in writing from the publisher, except by a reviewer, who may quote brief passages in a review.
We at BelleBooks enjoy hearing from readers.
Visit our websites—www.BelleBooks.com and www.BellBridgeBooks.com.
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2
Cover design: Debra Dixon
Interior design: Hank Smith
Photo credits:
Girl (manipulated): © Arman Zhenikeyev | Dreamstime.com
Background: © Brian Rinaldi | Dreamstime.com
:Mbs:01:
Dedication:
For Kim Nykanen,
and the memory of Renata Augenstein.
Prologue
Gwyn heard about Alfred on the radio— “. . . gun to his wife’s head.” —as she drove to a Whole Foods to pick up groceries. A Saturday afternoon, normally a day off from murderous impulses. Twenty minutes later she faced the crowd by the police cordon
She tried to sneak past the pack of camera crews and reporters, but a woman from a cable channel recognized her from a feature on battered wives and yelled her name. The crews rushed her, questions screamed like rockets through the air, a war cry in all its bald insanity.
Her own voice repeated, “I’m Gwyn Sanders, I’m Gwyn Sanders, let me through,” until a detective in a dark blazer reached out and rescued her from the mad grip of the media, and swept her into the surreal standoff a hundred feet away.
“We’re not letting you talk to him,” the detective snapped. “He’s got his finger on the trigger and we’re a split second away from having him blow her head off. But the negotiator wants a quick briefing from you. Fill him in on what you can about this asshole, and do it fast.”
She saw the sharpshooters on the rooftops, and then spotted Alfred in the pool, water up to his thighs. Sharon was naked and shaking as she knelt next to him.
He’d jammed the muzzle of his shotgun into her mouth and wrapped duct tape around the barrel and his wife’s head.
Alfred said something—Gwyn couldn’t hear him—and then the detective whispered, “Oh, shit, he knows you’re here.” His eyes darted to the crews and reporters staring at them.
Now she could hear Alfred. “I know that bitch is back there. I’m talkin’ to her or this one’s dead.”
Two uniformed officers rushed the negotiator up to her. “Are you willing to talk to him?”
“Yes.”
“Whatever you do, if Croce wants to exchange his wife for you, don’t go playing hero. You hear me? You never trade lives with these guys. You don’t give them that power.”
She nodded as one of the uniforms threw a flak jacket on her. The negotiator led her to an armored barricade.
Alfred smiled at her. “How you doin’?”
“I’v
e been better, Alfred. How about you?”
“Doin’ better than she is.” He laughed. “What do you think? Think I can do her?”
“I think you have the strength to let Sharon go. That’s the mother of your kids you’ve got there. In your accountability letter, you said you loved Sharon.”
“Good job,” the negotiator whispered to her from below the barricade.
“She’s a shitty mom. Aren’t you, Shar?” He jerked the shotgun up and down to force her nod.
“See, she knows she’s a shitty mom. House is a mess. She’s a mess. Always arguin’, fuckin’ around. She’s not fuckin’ around on me now, are you, Shar?”
Again the forced head gesture.
“Ask him to let her talk,” the negotiator said softly.
“You say Shar’s screwin’ around, Alfred, so let me talk to her, let me ask her about that.”
“Good-good.” The negotiator.
“I don’t think so, Sanders, ’cause that would mean I’d have to cut the tape, and I’m not doin’ that.”
“But you’d still have the gun right there. She’s not going anywhere.”
Alfred shook his head. Gwyn saw he was shielded from the sharpshooters by the edge of the pool, a cabana, diving board. Christ, she wanted him shot. Now.
“Sure you can. Let her talk.”
“Nope. Not doin’ that. So you gonna flunk me?”
“Group’s not a pass or fail kind of thing, Alfred.”
“Sure it is. Everything is, and you just fucking failed.”
These words were a curse, an incantation—license for his finger. An explosion ripped through the neighborhood as his wife’s head exploded and Alfred turned the shotgun, no longer taped to a mouth that has been vaporized, toward Gwyn.
But in the seconds that followed, more than thirty bullets slammed him into the side of the pool, ripped him open like invisible zippers had been hiding all the blood and bone from his brains to his belly.
He slumped, eyes still open, below the surface, disappearing into billowing crimson clouds.
Chapter 1
The concrete path felt seamless and sure, wide and straight and fast before suddenly curving into the heart of the UCLA campus.
From the look of her rollerblading through the milling students, Gwyn Sanders could have been eighteen, twenty tops; but nimbleness alone would have proved a poor measure of her thirty-nine years. Definitely the downhill side of the fourth decade, she’d decided over her third glass of shiraz at her birthday dinner last month. But with her long brown pony tail now swinging side to side with every stride, and her long bare legs soaking up yards of concrete with every glide, she gave the distinct appearance of youth, vitality, and even exuberance.
And she felt all of that as long as she remained in motion, but for the past two months whenever her Blades rolled to a standstill, or her surfboard carved up the last of a wave, a flood of horrifying memories could overwhelm her.
She had no reason to hope for anything different as her wheels whipped her past buildings she hadn’t entered since taking her masters in counseling in ’94—“the OJ year,” as she couldn’t help thinking of it, the conflation of her studies and his grisly crimes an unnerving constant for her. Back then she’d wanted to help people understand themselves. Now she needed to understand herself.
She whizzed past a cyclist and wove through the slow stream of students as a series of wrenching images hovered in the wake of her awareness.
That’s why you’re here. You’re doing something about it. This guy might have some answers.
“This guy” was Doctor Howard Harken. How many psychopathic killers has he studied? she wondered as she executed a quick step-turn around two dreamy undergrads.
Six men that she knew of, every one of them from southern California. She couldn’t remember all of their names, but her mind had the unfortunate quality of recalling their crimes with indelible clarity.
Dr. Harken was offering a quickie course—three sessions on succeeding Wednesday afternoons—called Psychopathy, Normalcy, and the Violence Index. Glad she’d signed up early because the slots had filled up quickly.
“UNDERSTANDING AND INSIGHT.” Keep it in caps, she’d told herself as she wrote in her journal last night. Doesn’t matter how silly it seems, those are the two things you need the most, and have for a long, long time, though she’d been loath to recognize this.
But Alfred Croce’s murder of his wife had forced Gwyn to face her needs. That’s what savagery does to you, exhumes dead or dormant feelings and flies them right into your face. She’d worked hard cases—as inevitable as bad weather when you ran counseling groups for spousal abusers—but a full decade of challenging batterers hadn’t prepared her for Croce’s violence.
She edged her skates around an old and familiar fountain, embarrassed by the flash of herself as a fifteen-year-old in a tiny tube top making out with her boyfriend on the marble ledge, his hands busier than a busker on Venice Beach.
Right there. In full view. What was I thinking?
But remembering her awkward and needy adolescence felt almost benign compared to her recent hauntings.
She rolled up to Latimore Hall, zigzagging through a broad demographic of attendees, none of whom had to be students. Doctor Harken’s lectures were part of the university’s community outreach program.
She sat on a concrete bench to pull off her blades and slip on her espadrilles. Within moments she was scaling the stone steps of Latimore, arriving early enough to find the amphitheater only a third filled. She spotted a seat in the second row, self-conscious as she walked down the aisle in her running shorts and sleeveless top, though a good look at the younger women standing and chatting would have proved her persuasively modest. Most were dressed in low-slung skirts and jeans that revealed a titillating variety of thongs, whose seagull shapes flew above greatly compromised and well-tanned buns. And with starburst tattoos appearing on every other tailbone, it was as if nature herself had put on this gaudy display—to show that the sun really does shine down there.
She had to ease past three guys in fraternity tees to get to the empty seat, brushing past their bare legs while framing her fanny before each of their faces. One of them snorted, “A niner.”
Slob. Some things never changed.
She settled in, organizing her space: blades in her pack by her feet, water bottle on the floor within easy reach, pen and spiral notebook on her lap. Just like in the days of yore. Except this was all about trying to understand Alfred Croce.
And yourself, a gentle reminder that issued from the cheap seats of her mind.
As the top of the hour drew near, the amphitheater filled quickly. The response to Harken’s lectures had undoubtedly been fueled by a lengthy piece in the Los Angeles Times Calendar section that included a photograph of the handsome forensic psychiatrist.
Though it was greatly unflattering to her sex, Gwyn wondered how many of the young women in the hall had signed up for the lectures precisely because of his appearance, and the reporter’s brief note that Harken’s young wife had died in a “tragic accident” (yes, the scribe had actually used that tired phrase) when he was in med school. His wife’s death hadn’t gone unnoted by Gwyn either, though she’d fill with self-loathing if she thought for even a second that a professor’s painful loss had actually precipitated her return to campus after all these years. With the exposure she’d had to the men in her groups—and the savagery they’d directed toward their mates—a man’s marital status had come to mean next to nothing to her.
Applause, hearty and sustained, greeted Dr. Harken as he walked to the podium. A single footlight lit him from below, casting menacing shadows from his chin to his brow. The effect made her think of all those vampire fans who run around on Halloween with waxy fangs and flashlights pointing up at their faces.
As if sharing her thoughts, Harken waved away the footlight with a laugh. It disappeared, replaced a moment later by lights from above that made his golden hair glow an
d eased the memory of those silly shadows.
“Well,” he began, a smile as warm and soft as those overheads, “I see a little publicity goes a long way.”
Gwyn heard traces of a refined British accent, but the greatly attenuated Brit-speak of a man who long ago had tried to cast aside his most obvious ties to the Isles.
He pointed to the first few rows, “I see two, three, no, wait, there’s another one, four empty seats right up here amongst all these handsome people, so if you’re single,” he said with another quick smile, “come up front. Maybe you can ‘meet cute’ right here in Latimore.
“The rest of you are welcome to join us in the aisles or down there,” gesturing to the floor in front of the first row. “Unless, of course, the fire marshal’s in the building. In which case, I never said that!” More levity for the amusement of his instant fans.
Gwyn also found herself smiling, noticing without noticing that he was tall, taller than she at five-eleven (since she was fourteen). That meant he had some height, maybe six-two, three. Lean, too, probably from surfing, another tidbit taken from the L.A. Times piece.
Now that item had snagged her attention, the description of the “gleam in his eye” as he headed out every morning to surf a break by his beach house. Gwyn had spent a great deal of her southern California childhood on various lengths and shapes of fiberglass-wrapped Styrofoam. Even with a high center of balance, she had the style and skill rewarded by gravity sports and, in her late teens and early twenties, by sponsors.
When she looked back up, she could have sworn he’d just glanced away from her. She watched him closely, saw him eyeing the crowd—maybe that’s all it was—then twisted her head for a peek over each shoulder.
“I have no illusions about why you’re all here,” he said. “It’s to hear me speak about the normalcy in the title of this course.”
Hugh Grant, that’s who he sounds like, she realized as he raised titters from the crowd again, this time by toying with their expectations. But Hugh Grant acting as an American.
