Praise for Richard B. Schwartz
Proof of Purchase
It’s like this guy is just channeling Raymond Chandler on every page. . . . The ending . . . would make Mike Hammer proud.
— Jochem Steen, Sons of Spade
In this engaging hard-boiled mystery, one of three in Schwartz’s Jack Grant series (Frozen Stare; The Last Voice You Hear), the seasoned California PI looks into the disappearance of an ex-girlfriend at the request of the woman’s husband. When her mutilated body turns up in the woods, Grant makes it his mission to track down her murderer. With the assistance of Lt. Diana Craig, an attractive fast-riser in the San Bernardino police department, Grant follows leads that point to his client, as well as to a consortium of underworld bosses who are branching out into a mega-real estate project. The pair find time, between car chases and gun battles, to begin a relationship. . . . Fans of Robert Parker will enjoy encountering Grant . . . .
— Publishers Weekly
The Last Voice You Hear
It’s not often that an author’s second book is as good as the first, and even less frequent are the instances when an author . . . top[s] it with an extraordinary second . . . deliver[ing] a walloping good tale as well. Richard B. Schwartz has done just that. In The Last Voice You Hear, Mr. Schwartz places himself on par with our finest contemporary murder-mystery writers. This is a book you won’t want to miss. . . .
— Alan Paul Curtis in Who Dunnit
The author . . . writes vividly, putting the reader right into the scene. Schwartz explores the meaning of right and wrong, crime and justice.
— Mary Helen Becker in Mystery News
The story rockets along . . . a fast-moving, well-told story with a surprising conclusion that blurs the line between crime and justice.
— Joseph Scarpato, Jr. in Mystery Scene
Jack Grant, the Vietnam vet and Pasadena-based PI who debuted in Frozen Stare (1989), returns in this engrossing sequel by Schwartz, author of several scholarly studies of Samuel Johnson. Schwartz knows his London, but surprisingly he evokes California with equal ease, mainly with vividly etched strokes. An apparently maniacal killer is on the loose in London, someone strong and very practiced at impalement. So far, so nasty. But when a victim is dispatched in similar fashion in Disneyland, of all places, Jack Grant is called in. He discovers the killer’s identity, but there’s a problem: there’s a method to the killer’s madness. Moreover, Grant has an ethical problem of his own: he’s plagued by his conscience, since he understands and even sympathizes with the murderer’s cause. The cinematic climax takes place high above the floor of the California desert, and Schwartz squeezes every last drop of suspense from his setting. . . . The result is a high-tension thriller awash in sanguinary detail. Paper towels, anyone?
— Publishers Weekly
Frozen Stare
I welcome Richard Schwartz to the club. It’s been a long time since I’ve seen two more engaging characters entering the series scene.
— Sandra Scoppettone
Grant and White play nicely off each other and the switch-on-a-switch works well.
— Kirkus Reviews
This tale, in the California private eye tradition, has a rousing finish and is an enjoyable read.
— Publishers Weekly
A new author devoted to the hard-boiled tradition. . . . Schwartz has the hard-boiled formula down pat. . . . Schwartz does not break any rules in Frozen Stare. . . . He writes crisply. The narrative moves at a slam-bang pace as bodies pile up. . . . As a dedicated student of the hard-boiled school of detective fiction [Schwartz] has learned his lessons well.
— The Washington Post Book World
Gives a whole new meaning to the phrase ‘cold-blooded murder’. . . . This is a quick read with plenty of action. Schwartz’s first novel is a winner!
— Sarasota, FL Herald Tribune
This is a delightful tale, full of amusing touches, and the relationship between Grant and his good cop friend, black Frank White, is a joy. I hope that Schwartz can keep this standard up for a long time to come.
— The Armchair Detective
Nice and Noir: Contemporary American Crime Fiction
Opinionated but always fascinating, shrewd and smart, but always readable. . . .
— The Thrilling Detective
Books by Richard B. Schwartz
Fiction
The Jack Grant Novels
Frozen Stare
The Last Voice You Hear
Proof of Purchase
The Tom Deaton Novels
Into the Dark
Criticism
Samuel Johnson and the New Science
Samuel Johnson and the Problem of Evil
Boswell’s Johnson: A Preface to the Life
Daily Life in Johnson’s London
After the Death of Literature
Nice and Noir: Contemporary American Crime Fiction
The Wounds that Heal: Heroism and Human Development
(with Judith A. Schwartz)
ed. The Plays of Arthur Murphy, 4 vols.
ed. Theory and Tradition in Eighteenth-Century Studies
Memoirs
The Biggest City in America: A Fifties Boyhood in Ohio
Accidental Soldier: A Reserve Officer at West Point in the Vietnam Era
Postwar Higher Education in America: Just Yesterday
Ebook
Is a College Education Still Worth the Price? A Dean’s Sobering Perspective
INTO THE DARK
Published by Dark Harbor Books
Revised Edition 2021
Copyright © 2021 by Richard B. Schwartz
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or utilized in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher. Inquiries should be addressed to the author.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
Cover design: Jana Rade.
Photo of horses on cover copyright © Claude Valette, used under Creative Commons license unmodified https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nd/2.0/legalcode
https://flickr.com/photos/cvalette/31236434055/
ISBN: 978-1-7374748-1-4 Paperback Edition
978-1-7374748-2-1 Hardcover Edition
978-1-7374748-0-7 Digital Edition
Library of Congress Control Number: 2021912929
Author services by Pedernales Publishing, LLC
www.pedernalespublishing.com
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2
Printed in the United States of America
xx-v6
for Judith Alexis
always the light in the dark
And these are the gems of the Human Soul
The rubies & pearls of a lovesick eye
The countless gold of the akeing heart
The martyrs groan & the lovers sigh
William Blake
If all the world were just, there would be no need
of valour.
Plutarch
I
DEAD SO SOON
Chapter One
Laguna Canyon Road
Sunday, 3:00 a.m.
Death and grief on a canyon road, the re
ports breaking the silence.
“I’m here about ten minutes now, Chief. Best guess is that it was self-inflicted. Nautical rope. Expensive. Nobody seems to know where it came from. Simple loop. Over the chin and into the air. Long fall. Quick snap. A shudder or two and it was over. Good muscles; everything held. Probably been here a day or a little less, but that’s just a guess. Streaked and purply but no Mr. Potato Head yet. Except for the rope, everything else standard issue. Nothing odd or out of place. No hands or fingers caught in the rope. Body fully clothed; feet and ankles free to kick around. Your basic slump. Head off to the side, like it doesn’t belong to the rest of him anymore.”
Carl Albers. Officer, Laguna Beach PD. Tall and straight, with a closely-cropped, flat stand of salt-and-pepper hair. Expecting a quiet eight-hour watch, but instead parked beside a canyon wall, lit by flashing roof lights from black-and-whites beached in the burn at odd angles, standing beside the dusty front fender of his cruiser, balancing the radio mike on a cramping shoulder and watching rubberneckers crawl through the strobing lights.
“Who, when, and how, Carl?”
Chris Dietrich, Chief of Police, LBPD. Shaking off sleep. Standing in the kitchen of his Laguna Hills condo, an internal unit. Still barely affordable. Facing the gray night sky, looking over the hazy glow of lights flickering along the coast.
“Chippies catching the Canyon Road from the 5 to the PCH, Chief. Making their usual rounds. Cloudy night, even this close to the coast. There’s a lot of dust and wind coming down the canyon. They keep tooling along. Suddenly, they see a woman’s silhouette in their headlights—standing in the grit on the northbound shoulder, shifting from foot to foot, waving her arms. Fully dressed, but distraught. They stop; she takes them inside. At first they think it’s a rape or assault, because she isn’t saying anything, just choking and shaking. Then she points toward the ceiling and they see the body.”
“How long ago, Carl?”
“Around 1:30. They called the duty sergeant; he called me.”
“Anxious to hand it off.”
“Probably. They said the guy’s famous, Chief. They thought we’d want to gear up for the media response. His name is David Bennett.”
“Rings a faint bell.”
“He’s a painter, Chief. Artist-type. Very heavy rep; very heavy price tags. The woman is his sister.”
“Oh yes, that’s right. I didn’t know he had a sister.”
“Yes. Slightly younger.”
“You said she was out on the Canyon Road waving her arms. Why didn’t she just call it in?”
“No connectivity.”
“A guy that big and he didn’t have a landline? I’d figure him for a beeper, a cell, an indoor/outdoor portable for his landline, a new iPad and a couple of stray computers.”
“Apparently not, Chief. This is where he went to get away from phones and everything else but his work and an occasional big-time buyer. He used the building as his studio. The place is a former antique furniture store. Some mahogany and cherry, mostly oak and pine. Downstairs was the retail space and upstairs was the refinishing shop. Probably five, maybe six thousand square feet. Nice place for a painter. Close to the deep pockets and galleries along the south coast. He worked upstairs. It’s all been remodeled, with a catwalk connecting two sides of the second floor. The sister found him hanging from a handrail, just under the skylights. He was dangling four or five feet above eye-level on the first floor. When I first saw him he looked like a stuffed dummy—you know, some kind of fraternity mascot or bonfire (what do you call it?) effigy. There was so much art stuff sitting around on the floor I blinked and thought he might be a weird decoration or human mobile. Like an ornament that was supposed to make some kind of statement. When I got a little closer it was clear that it was a young man or what was left of one.”
“What’s happening now?”
“Lieutenant Brighton’s inside with a team of our techs. As far as I can tell they haven’t found anything worth talking about. They’re getting ready to cut him down and take a closer look. I described the situation to the Duty Sergeant; he called the M.E., who should be here in a few minutes.”
“Is the sister still there?”
“Yes. She refused to leave. They offered to drive her back home, but she just shook her head. Still in shock and denial. The last time I saw her she was sitting in a chair in the corner, listening and watching without moving.”
“Any idea where she lives?”
“No. She hasn’t said anything since I got here.”
“The press’ll be on it soon. I’ll warn the PR’s downtown. Get the M.E. inside as soon as he arrives and when the media get there tell them we’ll report whatever we can as soon as possible. Impress on them that the investigation is just beginning. Keep them at a distance from the building.”
“Will do, Chief . . . here’s the M.E., just pulling up now.” Albers put his hand over the speaker.
“Good morning, Doctor. They’re expecting you inside.”
“Thanks, Officer.”
Dr. Leonard Barnes, Laguna Beach Medical Examiner and surgeon in private practice. Removing his bag from the passenger seat of his Avalon, locking the door, checking the traffic on the highway, and walking through the dust, fog, and flashing lights to the death scene.
Rooting around in his jacket pockets now . . . finding some cellophane-wrapped antacids, taking two in his mouth and chewing them while he returned the wrappers to his pocket, keeping the scene clear of stray paper.
He stopped at the entrance and looked up at David Bennett’s studio: two stories, three gables; moonlight reflecting off the windows and porch door; cedar siding and a shake roof; flower planters both on the porch and at the edge of the parking lot: Orange County alpine. Climbing the grass-and-railroad tie steps, he slipped a used tissue out of his back pocket, wiped off his lower lip, and returned it to his pocket. There was a sawed barrel half next to the door which the techs had already been through. It had a musty wine smell cut by the scent of earth. In the faint light the flowers inside looked like fresh marigolds.
Four men were easing the body onto a plywood table: ¾” on oversized sawhorses. The head tech, a man named Sloat, put a small recorder next to the outstretched right arm of the corpse and hit the record button. Dr. Barnes walked toward them slowly, then paused, standing off to the side, leaning on the top of a gnarled, pressed-back oak chair with a mismatched pine seat, a remnant from earlier days. Functional, not for sale.
The smells of the escaping body gases were mixing with the hints of paint and glue and thinner. Some of the younger techs were shifting their weight from foot to foot, trying their best to look as if they were glad to be there. The wind had slowed outside and the single-pane windows had stopped rattling. The room was suddenly silent.
“The decedent is a male caucasian, approximately forty years of age,” Sloat said. “He is five feet eleven inches in height and approximately one hundred sixty-five pounds in weight. His body was discovered at one thirty-five a.m. at his studio on Laguna Canyon Road. His sister, who found the body, has positively identified him as David Charles Bennett of Laguna Hills and Topanga, California. The body was found suspended by the neck from an iron handrail on the second level of the building. The cervical vertebra was severed in the fall; death appears to have been instantaneous. We are poly-bagging the decedent’s hands and we are combing his head and vacuuming his clothing for possible hair and fiber evidence.”
Sloat paused until his assistants were finished. He moved back and forth, changing position as three younger men worked on the body. “We are now removing his clothing. With the exception of the usual discoloration of necrotic tissue, the body appears to be in normal condition.”
Barnes looked at Bennett’s sister, seated in the shadows in the corner of the room. Her head was turned away. She was wearing dark slacks and a jacket in a soft fabric and black leather
shoes with short heels. In her left hand was a wadded kleenex which she was squeezing hard.
“We are combing the genital area, which, again, appears to be in normal condition. [Here, help them lift him up.] We are swabbing the anal region. That area of the decedent’s body is—on visual inspection—free of any trauma. There are no abnormal markings around the ankles or wrists, no evidence of blows to the skin, no entry or exit wounds of any kind. The decedent’s teeth are all intact. Any materials trapped beneath the fingernails will be collected and analyzed later, but the nails appear to be clean. Initial visual inspection confirms the tentative conclusion of investigating officers that the decedent’s death was self-inflicted.”
It started as a whisper. “He . . . didn’t . . . kill . . . himself.”
The second time it grew louder, a mixture of pain and rage. A wounded animal sound. Short, threatening. “He didn’t kill himself.”
The dead man’s sister was walking toward the makeshift examining table, her head locked, her mind and senses refusing to turn away from the facts of her brother’s lifeless body.
“Miss Bennett . . .” Sloat said.
She looked over at her brother’s naked body, stained and distorted, swollen and marked with pooled blood. His mouth was open, his head fallen to the side. The even, purplish-red line around his torn throat was flaked at the center, like the back of some dried reptile. It lightened as it found its way to the back of his neck, as if it had attached itself to its host and then melded with his tissue.
She turned and stared into Sloat’s eyes but didn’t speak. Barnes approached her and put his hand on her arm. “Why don’t you sit down again for a little while and let me look at your brother’s body,” he said.
She didn’t move at first, but looked down at her brother and up at Sloat and his now-silent assistants. Then she turned and walked back toward her chair. Barnes put his left hand at her right shoulder—supporting rather than urging. Lieutenant Brighton had been standing in a distant corner, working his cell phone. When Diana Bennett returned to her seat with the M.E. he pocketed his cell and joined her, sitting quietly at her side.
INTO THE DARK : A TOM DEATON NOVEL Page 1
