1
THE AUDITORIUM HAD the strong perfume scent of too many roses, like the hospital room of an accident victim. That sweet, not entirely healthy air. It smells so good you just know something terrible has happened.
It's funny how the imaginary life you conjure up for your child is invariably nothing like the real thing. It's actually not that different from being a cop, except that the longer I'm a cop, the less surprised I am by the things I see. And the longer I'm a mother . . . well, I don't really need to finish that, do I?
I was watching my daughter compete in a beauty pageant. The Rose Parade Queen no less. How can you prepare for a moment like that?
How the hell did this happen?
I should be happy my daughter is on that stage, right? She's beautiful, smart. It's just that I always imagined beauty queens as girls from Texas with a missionary glow in their eyes as if they were selling a peculiar brand of faith. And I always imagined they were someone else's daughters.
Maybe it's because I'm a cop that I don't buy any of it. Look at the girls on that stage. From left to right: Kimberley, Rebecca, Kellie, Grace, Caitlin. They're all hiding something—no escaping it. Doesn't take a cop's eyes to see it. Kellie had her nose done, Grace her teeth, Caitlin lips . . . God only knows what Kimberley had done. And Rebecca . . . Rebecca I think has done it all.
What isn't perfect can be hidden. Beauty queens cling to that like some ultimate, unshakable truth.
My own daughter lied on her application for the pageant about two piercings. Bet the judges wouldn't be happy about that: I know I wasn't. I only know about them because I found the disinfectant in her bathroom.
Nothing is ever completely hidden—ever. A cop's one and only unshakable truth.
I looked at my daughter and wondered how she'd become a stranger to me. I didn't know. It just crept up like the change of seasons.
A pageant official in a white suit started walking from judge to judge collecting the final tally sheets. I looked around for the other contestants' parents seated in the auditorium. They were easy to pick out. They all appeared to belong to a lost tribe of perfectly proportioned people. It's no mistake that their daughters are on that stage. Some have been in pageants since they were five years old. But why Lacy? I couldn't let it go. Six months ago her wardrobe didn't extend beyond jeans, T-shirts, and work boots. What is she doing in taffeta and heels?
I glanced at two of our SWAT officers wearing dark suits at the entrance to the auditorium. In the weeks before the pageant there had been whispers of the unthinkable happening. But those voices are everywhere now. In every civic gathering, in every speck of unattended white powder, in everyone's imagination. The auditorium had been made as safe as we could make it. The fact that a cop's daughter was one of the contestants seemed to give everyone involved an even greater sense of security, except me.
The master of ceremonies, a former TV actor who vaguely resembled his younger self, walked up to the mike.
"Ladies and gentlemen, it's time to crown our new queen."
The auditorium fell silent. I looked at Lacy and began to wonder if I'd survive being a mother. She had a rope around every nerve in my body and was yanking it tight. And it never changes, not from the moment the doctor places her on your chest, to the moment you find the nipple ring and the diaphragm in the sock drawer.
My pager started vibrating and the woman next to me gave me a look like I had just crawled out of a Dumpster. I pulled my jacket back just enough so she could see the gun on my waist. She stared at it with that blank look of fear that always accompanies the sudden sight of a weapon by a civilian.
"My daughter's the second on the right," I whispered. "Isn't she beautiful?"
The woman smiled nervously and looked quickly away, not wanting to disagree with a mother packing heat.
I glanced down at my pager—my partner's cell number. I'd left word with him that I wasn't to be disturbed unless there was a body, so evidently somewhere in Pasadena, someone had died violently.
I tried to focus on the stage, but my mind drifted to the distant crime scene. I imagined the position of the body and started to work backward. I could hear the dull sound of the victim hitting the ground. The crack of a gunshot. The sound of a scuffle. Fabric tearing. Individual voices raised in anger as events spun out of control.
Copyright © 2005 by Scott Frost
)
A detective faces a horrifying choice between love and duty in this hair-raising debut. Reminiscent of the best in today's suspense--from Jeffery Deaver's roller-coaster twists to James Patterson's cinematic pacing--Run the Risk introduces a blazing new talent in Scott Frost. As one of the writers behind Twin Peaks, he knows something about creating eerie and atmospheric tension. In this brilliant novel, he gives us a heroine who faces a challenge no one can ever be completely prepared for and a story as urgently and viscerally told as any in recent memory. Los Angeles homicide detective Alex Delillo works a case that chills her from the start: one with too much ambiguity and far too many surprises. None of the evidence--and yet all of it-seems relevant. A small-time shopkeeper is shot to death. Then a rare, untraceable explosive ignites in a bungalow, hurling the front door across the yard. Finally, a teenaged girl goes missing, her car window smashed, her keys still in the ignition. Even before they tell her, Detective Delillo knows that this girl is her daughter. Delillo tracks her quarry on a trail of escalating terror toward a fiery showdown that will test her wisdom, her will, and her every skill.
