Gravewriter

  ISBN 0-312-33596-2 $23.95/$31.95 Can.

  HIGHLY PRAISED BY BOTH REVIEWERS and mystery writers, Mark Arsenault introduces a stunning new suspense series with his courtroom drama Gravewriter.

  Billy Povich used to be a journalist. He lost his wife because of his gambling habit, and then she died in a car crash. Now he finds himself writing obituaries and living with his elderly father and seven-year-old son, Bo.

  “EVEN BETTER THAN

  HIS SHAMUS-FINALIST

  DEBUT, SPIKED.”

  —Publishers Weekly (starred review)

  on Speak Ill of the Living

  Billy plans to kill the man who was at the wheel the night of his wife’s death. But then a summons to jury duty for a murder trial delays Billy’s agenda. As the trial heats up, Billy finds that his little boy spots danger faster than he does, and a frantic and deadly chase begins with Billy as the prey.

  Gravewriter

  Also by Mark Arsenault

  Spiked

  Speak Ill of the Living

  Gravewriter

  Mark Arsenault

  This is a work of fiction. All of the characters, organizations, and events portrayed in this novel are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.

  THOMAS DUNNE BOOKS.

  An imprint of St. Martin’s Press.

  GRAVEWRITER. Copyright © 2006 by Mark Arsenault. All rights reserved. Printed in the United States of America. 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.

  www.thomasdunnebooks.com

  www.minotaurbooks.com

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Arsenault, Mark.

  Gravewriter / Mark Arsenault.—1st ed.

  p. cm.

  ISBN-13: 978-0-312-33596-0

  ISBN-10: 0-512-33596-2

  1. Gamblers—Rhode Island—Fiction. 2. Revenge—Fiction. I. Title.

  PS3601.R75 G73 2006

  813’.6-dc22 2006042920

  10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2

  For Joseph P. Arsenault,

  my father

  Gravewriter

  content

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  one

  Providence, Rhode Island

  5:50 a.m., September 1

  That ain’t piss down my pants, thought the old convict. That’s blood.

  He reached a hand around, fingered the wet tear in his shirttail, stuck a pinkie in the hot, sopping sinkhole in his lower back, gasped at the pain.

  He ran on, cradling the package, wrapped in a garbage bag and a newspaper, like a football in his left arm.

  I ain’t been shot for twenty years.

  Garrett had been shot two times before, and shot at two dozen times. None of those bullets had brought him down. He doubted that the small-bore pistol that had drilled this new peephole onto his kidneys would take him down, either. Nobody was going to snuff Garrett Nickel—the outlaw the papers liked to call “Nickel-Plated”—with a single pop of a .22-caliber Ruger.

  Garrett grinned as he ran, impressed with the double-crossing son of a bitch who had taken Garrett’s own gun and shot him when his back was turned.

  Garrett’s first whiff of the betrayal had been the gunpowder. That son of a bitch had colder blood than Garrett had ever figured. To conceal a killer’s soul from Garrett Nickel was a trick; Garrett usually recognized a kinsman the moment he looked into his eyes.

  He ran along a deserted street in a failing industrial park, toward the pink horizon to the east, and the flickering yellow glimmer of the harbor.

  Garrett ran with a loping stride, still graceful after nine years in an eleven-by-seven cell. He ran on toes that lightly tapped the asphalt. He had been starving himself by necessity the past two months, yet he felt no fatigue as he ran. Garrett was juiced on adrenaline and two lines of coke. He switched the package to his other arm and pumped his legs harder.

  To his left, a thin railing of iron pipe ran between the street and a narrow canal of swamp water flowing from a bog, toward the bay. Straight ahead, single-story manufacturing buildings, dark and shuttered at this hour, were silhouetted black against the sunrise. He heard the distant groan of heavy machinery at the docks, where the work of unloading cargo ships took no notice of night or day. To his right, a sagging chain fence surrounded a construction site on three sides. The side that fronted the road was open. Dusty tire tracks curled from the site into the street.

  Garrett needed a place to hide, to regroup, to stuff a wad of cloth in the hole in his back, and to plot his revenge. Garrett’s vengeance would be slow and bloody.

  His spiteful side, which was most of him, wanted to run to the police station, bust through the front door, and spike the package, like a running back in the end zone, right on the blue-and-gold Rhode Island state seal embedded in the floor. That would teach the son of a bitch to double-cross him. He chuckled at the fantasy. Visiting the cops would not be in Garrett’s best interest, and Garrett Nickel was a slave to that which was best for Garrett.

  He heard a car.

  He dived left, toward a billowing bush on the side of the street, at the base of a utility pole. He tucked up against a newspaper vending box, flinched at the wave of pain, gritted his teeth, and held his breath as the worst of the agony passed. He panted. Burning vomit rose in his throat to the back of his tongue. He choked it back down.

  The car sped away.

  The bullet hole felt like somebody was slowly turning a hot screw into Garrett’s back.

  Hiding beside the vending box, he rested. The telephone pole smelled like tar.

  On the front page, in the newspaper machine’s window, Garrett saw his own face and laughed aloud.

  “Lookie there. They printed a late-night extra—just for me,” he said out loud.

  The picture was a courtroom photo from before he got his life bid, before his hairline had started its retreat. Even after nine years in max, Garrett was still a front-page headline:

  “NICKEL-PLATED” OUTLAW ESCAPES

  Killer of three, Garrett Nickel,

  in prison break with 2 armed robbers

  Killer of three? If they only knew …

  Garrett was impressed he had made that day’s paper; they had only been free for one night.

  Beneath Garrett’s photo, the paper had printed police mugs of two other convicts: a scarred street thug with a bulging Adam’s apple, and a kid, half Garrett’s age—big-eyed, sunken-cheeked, smooth-skinned. They call him an armed robber? A junkie punk, that’s what he was. The kid had tried to look tough in the picture—eyes narrow, head cocked to the side, lips in a half pucker—but to Garrett, he looked l
ike a frightened bunny. Garrett hacked up phlegm from the back of his throat and spat on the image.

  The goop that oozed down the glass was dark brown.

  Motherfuck.

  Must have been blood in his vomit—the bullet had reached deeper than Garrett had thought.

  Fear passed over him like a cold breeze, and he felt his bladder release.

  “Goddamn it,” he cursed, wiping the front of his pants. Even after a lifetime as a predator, and nine years locked up with men eager to jam a pencil in your neck for spitting in the shower, the Nickel-Plated Outlaw was still afraid to die.

  He had rested long enough; the double-crosser would be looking for him. They would meet again, Garrett swore, as soon as Garrett found a weapon. He also decided to find a doctor, for a house call—at the doctor’s house. Garrett would do the calling; the doctor would do the healing at the point of a gun.

  But first—the package; it was slowing him down and he had to stash it.

  Garrett tugged the door of the vending box. Locked. He didn’t have four bits. The stream? No. The package was his insurance.

  Across the road, at the construction site, a wall of cinder blocks climbed a squared-off steel frame. New offices, probably. Maybe a bank. Garrett peeked around the vending box, saw nobody, pulled himself up with a groan and a grimace, and jogged across the street.

  The artists of the night had tagged the unfinished walls of the construction site with graffiti and cast their empty paint cans to the ground. Over a background of baby blue, a twisting green snake spelled out “Isaiah” in script.

  Isaiah? I know Isaiah.

  On impulse, Garrett picked up a spray can and shook it. The shaker ball clacked inside. This can still had a little color in it.

  The can hissed at the wall.

  Garrett smiled at his own cleverness as he sprayed two-foot-high balloon letters in ruby red, spelling out a fragment of Scripture he had committed to memory, to remind himself of where he had hidden the package.

  He stood back, admired his work, and tossed the can aside.

  Behind him, somebody cocked a gun.

  Garrett froze.

  “Quoting the Old Testament?” the double-crosser said. “The line I like best is, ‘Eye for eye, tooth for tooth, hand for hand, foot for foot.’“

  Garrett smirked. He continued the verse: “ ‘Burning for burning, wound for wound, stripe for stripe.’ ”

  “Turn around, Garrett.”

  Hot piss dribbled down Garrett’s right leg. He bit his bottom lip in anger. “Why don’t you shoot me in the back again?”

  “You’re empty-handed, I see. Where is it?”

  “Fuck you.”

  “I want it,” the double-crosser said. “I want the picture back, too.”

  Garrett said nothing.

  The double-crosser clicked his tongue. “Turn around, Garrett.”

  Garrett bent at the knees and rose up on the balls of his feet. He rolled his head lazily around his shoulders.

  “Did you hear me?” the double-crosser barked. “I said, Turn around.”

  Garrett lit fire to his rage and exploded at the double-crosser in a sudden bull rush—mouth open, teeth bared, his huge hands clenched into claws, Garrett hissed like a wildcat and sprayed a dragon’s breath of bloody drool at the son of a bitch who had shot him.

  The double-crosser reared back in shock and raised an arm on instinct as Garrett pounced.

  The gun fired once.

  Garrett wheezed. His chest tightened, as if all the air in the world had been suddenly sucked out into the vacuum of space.

  Son of a bitch knocked the wind out of me.

  He staggered past the double-crosser, toward the street. Garrett couldn’t inhale; he felt like he was breathing through a pillow. His right palm pounded his own chest to loosen whatever had gotten stuck in there. The thump against his chest echoed through him.

  His hand came away smeared red.

  The gun fired twice more. It sounded far away.

  Garrett made for the river. It came unsteadily toward him.

  He reached for the railing at the river’s edge to brace himself, and then heard the gunfire again; it sounded muffled to Garrett, like it was underwater. He heard the crack of splintering bone, and then suddenly Garrett went blind and deaf, as if deep beneath a silent black sea. Don’t be afraid of the water, he told himself. He remembered his Scripture.

  What manner of man is this, that even the winds and the sea obey him?

  He felt himself roll over the rail.

  Fearing nothing, Garrett plunged into the river.

  two

  “If you’re going to get me killed, at least you can let me watch.”

  Billy Povich smacked the twelve-inch television. The silverware on the table jumped. The TV’s vertical hold snapped awake, grabbed the picture and held it steady, though for some reason every object on the field was now being shadowed by an identical twin. Billy had forty-four players and two footballs to worry about.

  “Who’s getting killed, Billy?” asked Bo brightly. He was seven.

  “Eat your cereal.”

  “I don’t like this kinda milk,” Bo said. “Who’s getting killed?”

  “Michigan State, by the looks of it,” sniped the old man. “What kind of line did you get, boy?”

  Billy reached both arms to the TV. His fingertips lightly touched the sides of the television as if it were a lover’s face. He gazed into the screen. Down by eleven with four minutes to play, this was no time for a lecture from his father.

  Billy lied: “Seven points.”

  The Las Vegas line in the paper had been seven; Billy’s bookie had offered only six and a half, and Billy had taken the bet.

  “Christ Almighty, boy,” the old man scoffed. “Just seven goddamn points?”

  “Don’t swear in front of Bo.”

  “State’s defense is banged up—they ain’t stopped nobody in a month. How much is riding on these seven points?”

  “Two hundred,” Billy said, lying again.

  “Billy!” cried Bo. “The milk is gone bad.” He whapped his spoon three times on his milk-logged Count Chocula. And then he pointed his toy pistol at the bowl. “Pow! Pow!”

  “What do you think you are?” the old man asked. “A cereal killer?”

  Billy was too busy to commit parenting. “Pa?” he said, passing the buck.

  “It ain’t spoiled,” the old man gently informed his grandson. “It’s skim—it’s just a different kind of milk. They took the fat out.”

  “Can we put it back in?” Bo asked.

  “Huh,” the old man said. “I don’t see why not. Add some butter if you don’t like it.”

  “Jesus Christ!” Billy screamed. He clutched his head in disbelief. “That pass was right in your hands!”

  “Jesus Christ!” Bo echoed happily as he crunched a breakfast carrot and stirred a tablespoon of margarine into his cereal.

  “Hush that language, boy,” the old man said sharply. “Save it for church.”

  Bo drew an invisible zipper over his mouth. The kid respected his grandfather. On rare occasions, it seemed like the old man could raise the boy, if Billy wasn’t around.

  State’s offense trotted off the field as the kicker trotted on.

  Billy closed his eyes, exhaled some stress. Then he looked at the old man.

  His father had parked his wheelchair at a short side of the rectangular kitchen table. Billy watched the old man peering over his glasses as his quaking hand reached a knife to the margarine. The glasses had heavy black frames, as they did in Billy’s childhood recollections of his father. He remembered his father wearing those glasses at parties—there had always been a party when William Povich, Sr., visited the Providence flat where Billy grew up. Only in adulthood did Billy realize his father had come only on the holidays.

  Now, the old man reminded Billy of a dehydrated version of himself—sunken chest, shriveled cheeks. The muscles over his shoulders had long ago evaporated
to the bone. What was left of his hair was oily and limp. He wore three days’ worth of white whiskers.

  How does he shave without slicing off his wrinkles?

  His coffee-stained teeth had drifted slightly apart. He had a bulbous, swollen, old-man nose with immense dark pores, and oversized ears, through which the sunlight shone red. He was just seventy-one, but the stroke had aged him. His worthless legs were like bone china wrapped in rice paper; he could walk on his own no more than a step or two.

  The old man looked ancient all over—except his eyes, still a pellucid pale blue on immaculate white. Back when William Povich, Sr., was a young man, the women who peered into those eyes would see their reflections undressing for him.

  Billy’s mother had been one of those women, though not nearly the last.

  The old man’s mind was younger than his body, though his attitudes had not aged at all; his worldview was forty years out of date.

  Could the old man raise Bo?

  If he had to?

  Michigan State had too many men on the field and called time-out.

  Billy smacked the TV again to clear up the picture—and to punish State for wasting their last time-out. The blow knocked out the color, and Billy stopped hitting before he made it worse. The network went to a commercial.

  Billy grabbed an open bottle of aspirin from the table and shook four tablets into his mouth. He chewed them like candy. Billy liked the taste of aspirin. He didn’t mind the smell of skunks and was never bothered by fingernails on a blackboard.

  He grabbed a breakfast carrot from the table and crunched it. Then he rested his head lightly on the TV screen, chewed the carrot, and looked at his son.

  For thirteen months, the boy had been living in Providence with Billy and the old man. The kid still mystified Billy.

  Why does he like me so much?

  Bo’s birth certificate said that he was legally William Roger Povich III, though Billy wasn’t sure if the kid even knew his full name. He had been born with thick brown hair, like monkey fur, which a nurse had tied atop his head with a little green bow, so that he had looked like an onion.