Body Language
Page 32
“Hold it right there, young lady. You wouldn’t be the first female I had to shoot dead.”
“Lieutenant Collins? Look at me. It’s J. D. Flint. The kid you found in the bathroom closet.” His voice had the quiet dreaminess of a snake charmer.
Lawton stepped back and stared at him.
“Sure, I remember you fine, kid. Nothing wrong with my memory. We had a conversation a long time ago, brief and to the point. I told you to keep your mouth shut and you did. And that’s all there is to that story.”
Junior moved closer and pointed down at Jason with the blade of glass.
“That’s right,” Junior said. “That’s exactly right, Officer Collins. And do you know who this is, sir? This man on your living room floor?”
Lawton’s eyes drifted down to Jason Patterson.
“This, Lieutenant, is the wretched fiend who raped your daughter.”
“What?”
Lawton stared at Jason.
“He’s lying, Dad. He’s trying to fool you. Don’t listen to him.”
Lawton’s head bobbed up and he focused the pistol on Alexandra. Then he swung it back to Jason.
“Is that right, son? You molested my daughter, did you?”
Jason groaned a “No.”
“Yes, sir, he did. I witnessed the whole disgusting episode. This vile man trapped her in the playhouse, Lieutenant Collins. You remember that playhouse, don’t you, sir?”
“Yes.” His eyes stared blankly across the years.
“This man threw your daughter down on the plywood floor and he ripped off her underwear and he forced himself inside her flesh.”
Lawton’s eyes were drifting. His hand tightened on the .38.
“I knew something happened. She was so morose, so quiet. I knew, but I couldn’t bring myself to ask her.”
“I hate to be the one to tell you, sir. But here he is, the foul bastard who molested your daughter.”
Lawton’s pistol was wavering. He glared down at Jason, swallowing and swallowing again.
Alexandra angled out of Junior’s line of sight, looking for her moment.
“Your beautiful young daughter fought this monster. She writhed and struggled; she bit this boy’s finger deep to the bone and she drew blood. But this monster kept on raping her, Lieutenant Collins, plunging into her flesh, plunging and plunging. This twisted, depraved son of a bitch destroyed your daughter’s childhood.”
Junior gestured his silver blade at Jason.
“Pretty Alexandra, your fragile flower, bit this man’s finger, and when he was finished raping her, the bastard walked across the lawn and all the way back into the house, and at every step he left behind a trail of his poisonous blood.”
Lawton aimed the pistol down at Jason.
“You goddamn rotten son of a bitch.”
“No, Dad, don’t!”
But she was too late. Lawton’s hand clenched and he clicked the trigger on an empty cylinder. And on another.
Junior laughed. “Fucking thing isn’t even loaded.”
He drew back his blade and took a swipe at the old man’s throat.
Lawton managed a quick side step out of range.
And Alex, despite her years of training in the orderly science of kicks and strikes and smashes, the cool, dispassionate art of self-defense, in that mad second abandoned everything she knew and threw herself onto Junior’s back and snaked her arm beneath his chin, hard against his throat, and with her free hand she shattered the goblet against his cheek, ground the ragged edges in, held on as the man screamed and whirled and slashed at her with his blade. She felt the numb throbs as his blade gashed her flesh, but she held on.
Choking him with one arm, she jabbed and speared with the wineglass, broke all but the stem away; then as he howled and danced and tried to swing her off his back, she crammed that slender stalk of glass deep into Junior’s ear.
And before he could slap it away, she made a fist and hammered the glass hard, drove it home through the tissues of his inner ear, deep into the doughy edges of his cranium, her own crude lobotomy, and rode the man’s frenzy, his bucking, staggering steps, rode him with a throttling arm against his throat until Justin David Flint sank to his knees, wailing out his pain, and wilted, face-down, on the floor.
She lay atop his back, holding on until his breathing quieted; then finally, with a shudder, it tapered away to nothing.
When she got to her feet, Lawton was sitting on the couch, staring idly at the pistol that lay before him on the coffee table. Alexandra retrieved the paring knife from the bedroom floor, knelt beside Jason, and slashed the strips of yellow cloth binding his hands.
“Is he dead?” Jason asked.
“Guys like that don’t die. They just change shapes and come back at you later from a different angle.”
She helped Jason to his feet.
“I’d feel better if we checked.”
So Alex bent and held Junior’s wrist and moved her fingers around until she felt the dull, soundless pulse of the dead.
“You need more work,” Jason said, breath coming hard. “Rotten technique on that wineglass thing.”
“We’ll have to practice,” she said.
She helped him to the bathroom and washed the cut on his chin and patted him dry. Jason helped her clean the gashes on her forearm. One near her elbow was going to need stitches. He rounded up Band-Aids and covered the worst cuts, then got ice from the freezer, and the two of them limped to the couch and eased down beside Lawton. Jason pressed the washrag full of cubes to his swollen jaw while Alex put her arm around her father’s shoulder and drew him close.
They sat in silence for a while, Alex listening to the cries of distant gulls, a ball bouncing rhythmically in the street. She looked out a transom window at the moving sky, and when she brought her eyes back down to Jason’s, his lips crinkled into a painful smile.
“You thought I was that guy. The Bloody Rapist?”
“I did,” she said. “I’m sorry.”
“Well, next time if you have a problem with me, please, let’s try talking it through before you try to break my jaw.”
“It’s a deal.”
Lawton slumped against her.
“I’m going to need a higher dose of those herbs,” he said. “I still got a long way to go with this memory situation.”
“It’s going to be fine, Dad. Grace is going to help. She’ll steer you the right way.”
“I like that woman,” Lawton said. “Lady’s got spunk. I wonder what she sees in a broken-down old fool like me.”
Alex hugged him close, lay her head on his shoulder.
“She probably sees what I see, Dad.”
“Yeah, and what’s that?”
“A warm, beautiful man. A treasure.”
He studied the palms of his large hands, turning them to the light as if he were reading his difficult future.
“Maybe she’d like to take a little trip up north,” he said. “Have a look at all those golden leaves, red and orange. I’ve heard Ohio’s very pretty this time of year.”
OTHER NOVELS BY JAMES W. HALL
Blackwater Sound (2002)
Rough Draft (2001)
Red Sky at Night (1997)
Buzz Cut (1996)
Gone Wild (1995)
Mean High Tide (1994)
Hard Aground (1993)
Bones of Coral (1992)
Tropical Freeze (1990)
Under Cover of Daylight (1987)
EXTRAORDINARY PRAISE FOR JAMES W. HALL
AND BODY LANGUAGE
“A sizzling tale of sex, blood, and obsession. James Hall just gets better and better.”
—Stephen Coonts, bestselling author of
Fortunes of War and Cuba
“[James W. Hall] scores big with his villains, who have the delusional capacity of poetry, philosophers and maniacs.”
—Marilyn Stasio, New York Times Book Review
“Like top-drawer Dutch Leonard turned inside out … smart,
observant, richly grotesque.”
—James Ellroy
“Hall nails you to the page until the suspense-laden climax.”
—Clive Cussler
“This Florida-based thriller gives mystery readers a new heroine—a methodical, nurturing and tenacious Alexandra Rafferty. She is one character with whom you will be pleased to become acquainted …”
—The Oakland Press
“A well-plotted mystery … Past hurts and current passions come into play in a riveting way that simply won’t allow you to put the book down …We can only hope that … this won’t be the last we see of Alexandra Rafferty.”
—The Tampa Tribune Times
“A strangely exhilarating delicacy … It’s almost a disappointment to get to the end of the book.”
—Milwaukee Journal Sentinel
“In his latest southern Florida thriller, we’re introduced to some of Hall’s best creations.”
—Rocky Mountain News
“A bang-up ending.”
—Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine
“A double-barreled actioner set apart from the pack by Hall’s virtuoso control of tone, which can shift you from giggles to gasps with a single well-trimmed phrase.”
—Kirkus Reviews
“Suspense and forensic detail with a near-flawless grasp of character.”
—Booklist
“Hall is back in top form … A high-priority purchase for thriller fans.”
—Library Journal
“Hall fans will be more than reimbursed by his poetic imagery in the landscapes and love scenes. Alex is a heroine with enough endearing attributes to sustain yet another long-running character series.”
—Publishers Weekly (starred review)
“A gorgeous and compelling novel.”
—Robert Crais, bestselling author
of L.A. Requiem and Demolition Angel
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JAMES W. HALL
It came out of nowhere—an airliner silently dropping from the sky into the torpid shallows of Florida’s Blackwater Sound. Thorn witnesses the crash and pulls the survivors to safety, soon finding himself thrust into the media spotlight as a reluctant hero—and consumed by an elaborate conspiracy born out of the psychotic fantasies of a prominent Florida family But their link to the doomed Rio-bound flight only touches the surface of a private world of murder, power, and revenge. And it’s luring Thorn and crime-scene photographer Alexandra Rafferty. dangerously close to a harrowing family secret that should have perished in the flames …
“Hall keeps the tension high and the surprises coming.”
—People (A People Page-turner of the Week)
“Hall keeps you turning pages.”
—Denver Post
“Terrific:”
—Scott Turow, author of
Presumed Innocent and The Burden of Proof
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ROUGH DRAFT
JAMES W. HALL
After the brutal murders of her parents, mystery novelist Hannah Keller quit the Miami P.D. to devote more time to writing, and to her eleven-year-old son Randall—still haunted by the discovery of his grandparents’ bodies five years ago. But just when life seems to be calming down for Hannah, she finds a copy of one of her books, with cryptic notes scribbled in its margins. Hannah, immediately sensing the connection to her parents’ deaths, is soon plunged into a harrowing search for answers—one that will draw her and her son closer to danger … to a reclusive millionaire who may hold all the answers …to two villains—one out for revenge and the other for blood …and to a real-life mystery more shocking than anything she could have penned.
“A thoroughly satisfying thriller …Strong and engaging characters.”
—The Washington Post Book World
“It’s Hall’s villains who mesmerize us …As grimly comical as anything concocted by Carl Hiassen or Elmore Leonard.”
—Los Angeles Times
“James Hall is a master of suspense.”
—The NewYork Times
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BODY LANGUAGE
Copyright © 1998 by James W. Hall.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews. For information address St. Martin’s Press, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, N.Y 10010.
eISBN 9781429904995
First eBook Edition : December 2011
St. Martin’s Press hardcover edition/September 1998
St. Martin’s Paperbacks edition/August 1999