The Sentry

Table of Contents

 

 

 

 

 

ALSO BY ROBERT CRAIS

G. P. PUTNAM’S SONS

Published by the Penguin Group

Penguin Group (USA) Inc., 375 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014, USA • Penguin Group (Canada), 90 Eglinton Avenue East, Suite 700, Toronto, Ontario M4P 2Y3, Canada (a division of Pearson Penguin Canada Inc.) • Penguin Books Ltd, 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England • Penguin Ireland, 25 St Stephen’s Green, Dublin 2, Ireland (a division of Penguin Books Ltd) • Penguin Group (Australia), 250 Camberwell Road, Camberwell, Victoria 3124, Australia (a division of Pearson Australia Group Pty Ltd) • Penguin Books India Pvt Ltd, 11 Community Centre, Panchsheel Park, New Delhi-110 017, India • Penguin Group (NZ), 67 Apollo Drive, Rosedale, North Shore 0632, New Zealand (a division of Pearson New Zealand Ltd) • Penguin Books (South Africa) (Pty) Ltd, 24 Sturdee Avenue, Rosebank, Johannesburg 2196, South Africa

Penguin Books Ltd, Registered Offices: 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England

Copyright © 2011 by Robert Crais

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, scanned, or distributed in any printed or electronic form without permission. Please do not participate in or encourage piracy of copyrighted materials in violation of the author’s rights. Purchase only authorized editions. Published simultaneously in Canada

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Crais, Robert.
The sentry / by Robert Crais.
p. cm.

eISBN : 978-1-101-48609-2

1. Pike, Joe (Fictitious character)—Fiction. 2. Cole, Elvis (fictitious character)—Fiction.
3. Private investigators—California—Los Angeles—Fiction. I. Title.

PS3553.R264S

813’.54—dc22

 

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.

 

While the author has made every effort to provide accurate telephone numbers and Internet addresses at the time of publication, neither the publisher nor the author assumes any responsibility for errors, or for changes that occur after publication. Further, the publisher does not have any control over and does not assume any responsibility for author or third-party websites or their content.

FOR

 

 

 

 

 

 

Writing is solitary, but bringing a book to life requires a team. The author would like to thank Patricia Crais for her hard work and long hours improving the manuscript, and Lauren Crais for legal research and information.

Additional thanks go to Steve Brown for sharing his knowledge of the Venice Canals, as well as for providing guided tours and contributions to the story.

Marilyn Ducksworth, Michael Barson, and Matthew Venzon proved themselves to be the best in the business. Their efforts and innovative ideas were not only outstanding, but inspirational. Thank you.

Dittos to Kate Stark and Lydia Hirt for pushing the author and his work into emerging realms, and to Ivan Held and Neil Nyren for their belief and commitment.

In the UK, thanks go to Tim Healy Hutchinson, Jon Wood, Juliet Ewers, Helen Richardson, Susan Lamb, and Malcolm Edwards.

Also, thanks and respect to Aaron Priest and his team at the Aaron Priest Literary Agency—Lucy Childs, Nicole James, John Richmond, and Lisa Vance—for building it bigger and making it happen.

And for my friend, David Thompson, a book and a margarita.

M
onday, 4:28 A.M., the narrow French Quarter room was smoky with cheap candles that smelled of honey. Daniel stared through broken shutters and shivering glass up the length of the alley, catching a thin slice of Jackson Square through curtains of gale-force rain that swirled through New Orleans like mad bats riding the storm. Daniel had never seen rain fall up before.

Daniel loved these damned hurricanes. He folded back the shutters, then opened the window. Rain hit him good. It tasted of salt and smelled of dead fish and weeds. The cat-five wind clawed through New Orleans at better than a hundred miles an hour, but back here in the alley—in a cheap one-room apartment over a po’boy shop—the wind was no stronger than an arrogant breeze.

The power in this part of the Quarter had gone out almost an hour ago; hence, the candles Daniel found in the manager’s office. Emergency lighting fed by battery packs lit a few nearby buildings, giving a creepy blue glow to the shimmering walls. Most everyone in the surrounding buildings had gone. Not everyone, but most. The stubborn, the helpless, and the stupid had stayed.

Like Daniel’s friend, Tolley.

Tolley had stayed.

Stupid.

And now here they were in an empty building surrounded by empty buildings in an outrageous storm that had forced more than a million people out of the city, but Daniel kinda dug it. All this noise and all this emptiness, no one to hear Tolley scream.

Daniel turned from the window, arching his eyebrows.

“You smell that? That’s what zombies smell like, brought up from the death with an unnatural life. You get to see a zombie?”

Tolley was between answers right now, being tied to the bed with thirty feet of nylon cord. His head just kinda hung there, all swollen and broken, though he was still breathing. Every once in a while he would lurch and shiver. Daniel didn’t let Tolley’s lack of responsiveness stop him.

Daniel sauntered over to the bed. Cleo and Tobey shuffled out of the way, letting him pass.

Daniel had a syringe pack in his bag, along with some poppers, meth, and other choice pharmaceuticals. He took out the kit, shot up Tolley with some crystal, then waited for it to take effect. Outside, something exploded with a muffled
whump
that wasn’t quite lost in the wind. Power transformer, probably, giving up the ghost, or maybe a wall falling over.

Tolley’s eyes flickered amid a sudden fury of blinks, then dialed into focus. He tried to pull away when he saw Daniel, but, really, where could he go?

Daniel said, all serious, “I asked you, you seen a zombie? They got’m here in this place, I know for a fact.”

Tolley shook his head, which kinda pissed Daniel off. On his way to New Orleans six days earlier, having been sent to find Tolley based upon an absolutely spot-on lead, Daniel decided this was his one pure and good chance to see a zombie. Daniel could not abide a zombie, and found their existence offensive. The dead should stay dead, and not rise to walk again, all shamblin’ and vile and slack. He didn’t care for vampires, either, but zombies just rubbed him the wrong way. Daniel had it on good authority that New Orleans held quite a few zombies, and maybe a vampire or two.

“Don’t be like that, Tolliver. New Orleans is supposed to have zombies, don’t it, what with all this hoodoo and shit you got here, them zombies from Haiti? You musta seen something?”

Tolley’s eyes were bright with meth, the one eye, the left, a glossy red ball what with the burst veins.

Daniel wiped the rain from his face, and felt all tired.

“Where is she?”

“I swear I doan know.”

“You kill her? That what you been tryin’ to say?”

“No!”

“She tell you where they goin’?”

“I don’t know nuthin’ about—”

Daniel hammered his fist straight down on Tolley’s chest, and scooped up the Asp. The Asp was a collapsible steel rod almost two feet long. Daniel brought it down hard, lashing Tolley’s chest, belly, thighs, and shins with a furious beating. Tolley screamed and jerked at his binds, but no one was left to hear. Daniel let him have it for a long time, then tossed aside the Asp and returned to the window. Tobey and Cleo scrambled out of his way.

“I wanna see a goddamned zombie. A zombie, vampire,
something
to make this fuckin’ trip worthwhile.”

The rain blew in hard, hot and salty as blood. Daniel didn’t care. Here he was, come all this way, and not a zombie to be found. Anything was good, Daniel missed out. A life of miserable disappointments.