Brutality
Authors: Ingrid Thoft
Tags: #Literature & Fiction, #United States, #Mystery; Thriller & Suspense, #Mystery, #Private Investigators, #Women Sleuths, #Thrillers & Suspense, #Crime, #Crime Fiction, #Thrillers
G. P. PUTNAM’S SONS
Publishers Since 1838
An imprint of Penguin Random House LLC
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New York, New York 10014
Copyright © 2015 by Ingrid Thoft
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Thoft, Ingrid. Brutality / Ingrid Thoft.
p. cm. — (A Fina Ludlow novel ; 3)
ISBN 978-0-698-16455-0
1. Women private investigators—Fiction. 2. Women—Crimes against—Fiction. 3. Criminal investigation—Fiction. I. Title.
PS3620.H58B78 2015 2015002565
813'.6—dc23
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
Version_1
For Doug Berrett and Judith Stone Thoft and in loving memory of Richard A. Thoft, M.D.
CONTENTS
PROLOGUE
Liz Barone had come to the conclusion that if her illness didn’t kill her, the medical and legal bills just might. She tore open the latest invoice from her attorney and unfolded the piece of paper inside. Compared to the lawyers in downtown Boston, his fees were reasonable, but reasonable didn’t mean cheap. She smoothed the latest onto a stack with the others and rested her head in her hands. Where was she going to find an extra thirty-seven hundred dollars? There was also the three-hundred-dollar bill for lab tests that the insurance company was refusing to pay. Add to that their usual expenses, and Liz felt they were rolling downhill without brakes, picking up speed with each passing moment.
The day had started badly: She’d woken with a dull, heavy ache in her head, and it had only intensified. It was too soon to take another pill, but if she didn’t, there was no way she’d get through her to-do list: cook dinner, bathe children, pack lunches, review the reports from work, gather materials for the lawyer, choose a birthday gift for her mother. It was a list that any parent could relate to, but Liz had to do it all while contending with what felt like a vise on her skull.
Her options were either to cry or soldier on. She’d never been one to cry
and
soldier on, so she pushed her chair back from the table and went to the cabinet above the stove. She took down a bottle of Tylenol, fished out two pills, and filled a glass at the sink to wash them down. The January sun had already set, and the backyard was cloaked in darkness, the window providing an unwelcome mirror.
How had she gotten here? Of all the futures Liz had imagined for herself, she’d never imagined this one. She sighed. That’s how life works: You worried about a hundred different scenarios and outcomes, but it was the one you never imagined that was your downfall. Life didn’t just exceed your wildest dreams; it also exceeded your wildest nightmares.
Liz detected movement on the other side of the window and took a step just as there was a knock on the back door. Jamie and the kids weren’t due home for at least another hour, and she really wasn’t in the mood for a visitor, but whoever it was had already seen her. Too late to pretend she wasn’t home.
She unlocked and opened the door.
“This is a surprise,” she said. Liz opened the door wider, letting in her visitor and a blast of frigid air.
She was puzzled, but once again, her imagination failed her.
She never could have predicted that ten minutes later she would be lying on her kitchen floor in a pool of blood.
1.
“I can’t believe Haley is missing this,” Fina Ludlow said, crumpled in a ball in a snowbank. “You all right, buddy?” she asked her youngest nephew, Chandler, as he burrowed out from underneath her.
“That was awesome! Let’s go again!” He grabbed her hand as she struggled to her feet. A chunk of snow had wormed its way up her parka and into the small of her back. Fina looped the rope attached to the toboggan around her free wrist and struggled to fish the snow out. Some had already melted and was making a cold, wet trail down her butt. She was having fun, moving into the hot and cold sweaty phase that marked any good sledding excursion.
Back at the top of the hill, her brothers Scotty and Matthew were prepping for another run. Scotty had his middle son tucked between his legs. Matthew was lying chest-down on the sled, headfirst. Scotty’s eldest son was lying on top of him in the same position.
“You’re going to allow that?” Fina asked Scotty. “Patty would not approve.” Scotty’s wife had married into the Ludlow family, thereby rendering her the rare voice of reason. Patty had opted to stay home with their niece, Haley.
“She won’t know,” Scotty said.
“Not until you call her from the ER,” Fina commented. “Did you guys bring any business cards? There must be a market for sledding-related lawsuits.”
Her brothers grinned.
“Don’t spoil our fun,” Matthew said, pushing off, his nephew clinging to his back like a tortoise’s shell.
It was a rare day that the Ludlows had a couple of free hours together, when the demands of the family firm, Ludlow and Associates, didn’t take priority. Winter had been a bitch so far, dumping snow and caking ice on every surface, prompting the governor to close down government offices and delay court business for days. Fina’s father, Carl, had grumbled about the loss of billable hours, but his children and grandchildren were happy to have a brief reprieve from the daily grind.
Fina sat down behind Chandler and shoved off the icy surface and over the crest of the hill. Their ride was fast and bumpy, the boy hollering all the way down. As they approached the bottom of the hill, Fina tipped to the side; rather than let the ride peter out, they rolled over and off the sled in a dramatic wipeout. Chandler was elated.
Fina was cleaning snow out of her boot laces when her phone rang from the inner pocket of her parka. If she were in a different line of work she might ignore the call, but as a private investigator, she never knew who might be on the other end of the line. Fina had to welcome every potential job and every potential lead, even if nine times out of ten it was a telemarketer trying to sell her aluminum siding.
“Fina Ludlow,” she said, wiping at her runny nose. She listened to the caller and made a few comments before hanging up.
The reprieve was over.
—
A
lthough most of Fina’s cases came through Ludlow and Associates, she didn’t have a dedicated space at the firm. She used conference rooms and empty offices on the premises as needed, but she preferred to meet clients—especially potential clients—on their own turf or at least a turf of their choosing. She learned a lot about people from their environments and how they interacted with them. That’s why she was happy to meet her caller from the day before at Mass General Hospital, despite her general dislike of hospitals.
At the ICU reception desk, she encountered an administrator who could have blocked for the Patriots, so advanced were her skills.
“Who are you here to see?” She peered at Fina.
“Liz Barone.” That wasn’t strictly the truth, but oh, well.
“Are you family?”
“I’m her cousin.” That definitely wasn’t the truth.
The receptionist printed out an ID badge, which Fina affixed to her jacket. She gave Fina a stern lecture that cell phone use was not allowed and pointed her to a small waiting room.