David Wolf series Box Set
Page 1
David Wolf Mystery Thriller Series Box Set
Books 1 - 4 of the David Wolf Series
Jeff Carson
Cross Atlantic Publishing
Contents
The David Wolf Series
Foreign Deceit
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
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
Chapter 38
Chapter 39
Chapter 40
Chapter 41
Chapter 42
Chapter 43
Chapter 44
Chapter 45
Chapter 46
Chapter 47
Chapter 48
Chapter 49
Chapter 50
Chapter 51
Chapter 52
The Silversmith
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
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
Chapter 38
Chapter 39
Chapter 40
Chapter 41
Chapter 42
Chapter 43
Chapter 44
Chapter 45
Chapter 46
Alive and Killing
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
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
Chapter 38
Chapter 39
Chapter 40
Chapter 41
Chapter 42
Chapter 43
Chapter 44
Chapter 45
Chapter 46
Chapter 47
Chapter 48
Chapter 49
Chapter 50
Chapter 51
Chapter 52
Chapter 53
Chapter 54
Chapter 55
Deadly Conditions
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
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Acknowledgments
Preview of Cold Lake (David Wolf Book 5)
David Wolf Novels in Order
The David Wolf Series
Gut Decision (A David Wolf Short Story)– Sign up for the new release newsletter at http://www.jeffcarson.co/p/newsletter.html and receive a complimentary copy.
Foreign Deceit (David Wolf Book 1)
The Silversmith (David Wolf Book 2)
Alive and Killing (David Wolf Book 3)
Deadly Conditions (David Wolf Book 4)
Cold Lake (David Wolf Book 5)
Smoked Out (David Wolf Book 6)
To the Bone (David Wolf Book 7)
Dire (David Wolf Book 8)
Signature (David Wolf Book 9)
Dark Mountain (David Wolf Book 10)
Rain (David Wolf Book 11)
CLICK HERE to instantly add the audible version of this ENTIRE BOX SET, read by Sean Patrick Hopkins, and keep the story going wherever you are.
Foreign Deceit
David Wolf Book 1
Chapter 1
“I don’t know where the hell she is.” The woman’s tone suggested a mother would be the last person to know where her teenage child was. “Julie don’t spend much time here. I assume she’s off with Jerry doing something.” She waved a dismissive hand to the forest behind the two sheriff’s deputies standing in front of her.
Sergeant David Wolf shifted his weight and the wood of the front porch deck creaked underneath his boot. Wide spaces yawned between cracked and warped boards, which were jam-packed with tubular spider webs. They must have been well fed by the cloud of flies that swarmed the stinking place.
The siding of the house was brown, though Wolf suspected at one time it had been white.
“Jerry’s parents reported him missing this morning, Vicky,” Wolf said. “Been missing for two days. That’s why we’re here. We know they’ve been spending a lot of time together lately. We understand they’re dating.”
Vicky Mulroy stared with half-closed eyes.
Deputy Tom Rachette huffed, seeming to come to the same realization as Wolf that she was completely stoned. “Do your daughter and Jerry Wheatman often go to a specific place, ma’am?” Rachette puffed his chest and hooked his thumb conspicuously near his pistol, trying to wake her up to the fact that two deputies of the Sluice County Sheriff’s Department were on her doorstep.
Vicky seemed to snap out of her daze and smile
d appraisingly at Rachette, revealing brown teeth and black windows where teeth used to be. “I ain’t seen Julie in at least three days.” She paused and squinted at Rachette’s name badge. “I don’t think I’ve ever seen you before, Deputy … Ra-shay.” She flourished her hand.
Wolf sighed. Rachette hated that pronunciation. The young deputy preferred his last name to rhyme with the sharp handheld chopping tool, not, as Rachette had once put it, some la-de-da French lord’s namesake. Wolf had seen this exchange between Rachette and other people before, usually ending in Rachette losing his temper.
Wolf put a hand on Rachette’s shoulder before he could speak and stared expectantly at Vicky.
Her smile faded and she turned to Wolf. She studied him up and down with hunger in her eyes and not a hint of shame about it. “You still lookin’ good,” she said.
Wolf didn’t blink. He may have been looking good to her, but Vicky Mulroy looked like shit.
Wolf knew she must be thirty-eight years old, give or take a year or two, because they’d been in the same classes throughout school. But she looked older than her years.
During the raid of her house a year ago, he had been shocked at the sight of her and just what the drugs had done to her once pretty face. Now she looked even worse. Her body was bone thin. Pocked with open sores, her sunken face now looked like someone had flung a meat chili at her and she hadn’t yet bothered to wipe it off. Her dark-brown hair was stringy, slick with grease and sweat, clinging to her forehead. Her eyelids drooped like they were made of lead, and it was taking all her strength to keep her pale-blue, bloodshot eyes open.
Then there was the smell. Wolf moved over, hoping to sidestep the cat-urine stench of crystal meth mixed with the musky scent of humans who had given up on hygiene billowing out the door.
Rachette turned his head and put his sleeve to his mouth, apparently taking the same onslaught to his senses.
“Jerry Wheatman’s parents are pretty worried. Aren’t you worried that Julie hasn’t been home for days?” Wolf asked.
Vickie’s eyes darkened. “I guess that’s why she stays over there so much. Those Wheatmans sure are a nice, loving bunch of people. That family of fairies turned my girl vegetarian, you know. Pansies.”
“How about Bill?” Wolf asked with growing impatience. “Has he seen Julie lately?”
“I don’t know.”
“Is he working at the station right now?” Wolf, just like everyone in town, knew that Bill Mulroy was a lifelong employee of the Mackery gas station at the end of Main Street.
“Far as I know,” she said.
Wolf suspected they weren’t going to get anything more from this lead other than sick to their stomach. “Please let us know immediately if you see or hear from either one of them. It may be normal for Julie to be gone for days, but Jerry’s folks are pretty spooked. And …” Wolf paused. He wanted to tell her to shape up and quit smoking the meth. That he was going to come arrest her and Bill if they kept it up. That she wasn’t being a good mother to her daughter. That she needed to pull her head out of her ass, and how he remembered her as the cute girl he’d kissed in sixth grade. But Wolf had been intimately close to people on drugs and had witnessed the effect of drugs on them. And speeches never worked. So, instead, he said, “Take care, Vicky.”
She eyed Wolf up and down once more, her eyes turning dark again. “Sure thing, honey. Say hi to Sarah for me, okay?”
Wolf blinked.
Vicky Mulroy read his expression and looked satisfied. Then she laughed and turned back into the darkness, the screen door slapping shut.
Rachette wasted no time getting off the porch, leaping down all three of the rotted steps. As Rachette landed on the gravel, he sucked in a breath and coughed. “Good Lord, something’s dead in that house.”
“Just a steady diet of meth and alcohol,” Wolf said, walking down the steps after him, “and all the fun stuff that brings.”
An uncomfortable silence enveloped them as they walked back to the road. It was no secret—both men were thinking about Vicky’s mention of Wolf’s ex-wife.
It was common knowledge around town, as juicy tidbits about people’s personal lives often were in such a small population, that Sarah Wolf was a pill-popper, and that she had recently completed yet another attempt at kicking the habit. In fact, Sarah Wolf would be back today from her stay at the Whispering Pines rehab facility in Vail.
Since Vicky Mulroy had been aware of this fact, her words were laden with meaning. Wolf was trying to figure out what that meaning was. Say hi to Sarah for me. Was that to say that this meth-head, Vicky, had a recent relationship of some sort with his ex-wife?
Wolf was pretty sure his Sarah hadn’t ventured into trying any harder drugs than Oxycontin. Wolf had seen the distant look in Sarah’s eyes, dilated pupils, lethargy, aggressive language and slurred speech. But he hadn’t seen any sign of her doing any of the hard stuff—the smoke, snort, or injection kind of stuff.
Maybe Vicky was just trying to say, Worry about the drug addicts in your own life and get off my case. Wolf hoped that’s what she meant. Suddenly, he was keener to see Sarah than ever. He needed to look in her eyes. He hoped it would be different this time around. Maybe the fourth time was the charm.
“Well, looks like we’ve got two missing kids now.” Rachette looked back at the tiny run-down shack in the pines. “Do you think Jerry and Julie just ran away? I know I would if I lived there. Jesus.”
They reached the Ford Explorer and got in. Wolf buckled his seatbelt and stared out of the dusty windshield toward the couple of hundred square foot building where Vicky Mulroy and her husband confined themselves in a hazy vat of noxious chemicals for most of the day.
The shame was that the piece of land their house stood on was a perfect place to raise a family. It was hugged on all sides by virgin forest. There was an open grass field to the south. Just a few miles from town, but in the boonies—far enough so you could feel like you were really roughing it.
But this place was too rough, Wolf thought. Too rough for sixteen-year-old Julie, that’s for sure. Too rough for a kid of any age.
“I don’t know, but it definitely looks like Jerry and Julie are together, wherever they are,” Wolf said.
It was common knowledge around town that Jerry Wheatman and Julie Mulroy were sweethearts as of the past year or so. They were attached at the hip, figuratively, and probably literally, being as they were sixteen years old. Had Jerry and Julie come up with a plan to up and leave? To run away to a better place?
For Julie Mulroy, that theory would make perfect sense. How could anyone live in this godforsaken place and not either fall into a life of drugs or make serious, actionable plans to leave? Word was around town that the coming-of-age daughter was kind of a rebel, but didn’t do drugs. If that was true, how could she bring herself to stay here?
Jerry Wheatman’s life was a different story altogether. Like Julie, he wasn’t known around town as someone who experimented with drugs, but the similarity ended there. He wasn’t considered rebellious in any way. He came from a loving family environment. He came from a stable home, with stable parents, who had stable jobs, which earned stable incomes.
Wolf knew the Wheatmans well, and he thought Jerry wasn’t the type of kid who would run away. Jerry Wheatman was more the type of kid who would simply ask his parents to let Julie live with them. He would probably explain her hard situation, and they would take pity on her and open their home to a teenage girl in need.
No. Wheatman and Julie weren’t on the run. Running away would have been a big deal for Jerry, Wolf thought. Not a realistic decision he would have made. All indications from the Wheatman family had been that everything was perfectly fine. There were no fights at home with either of his sisters or with his mother and father. In fact, his parents reported that Jerry had been in a very happy mood as of late.