Authors: Kate Flora
Playing God (50 page)
Excerpt from
The Angel of Knowlton Park
A Joe Burgess Mystery
Book Two
by
Kate Flora
Award-winning Author
THE ANGEL OF KNOWLTON PARK
Reviews & Accolades
"Flora's thought-provoking second police procedural marks her as one of the best in the genre."
~Library Journal Starred Review
"The added levels of tone, description, insight and dialogue gives us a novel well worth reading."
~The Portland Press Herald
The fat, blue-black fly circled lazily in the July heat before landing in the child's open eye. Burgess stifled his instinctive impulse to brush it away. He'd just started working this scene, and he wasn't letting anything muck up his chances of learning everything it had to say about what had happened to this small dead boy.
Forty minutes ago, he'd been on vacation, a packed suitcase by the door and a borrowed canoe waiting on the roof of his car. Asleep until Vince Melia, heading of CID for the Portland, Maine police department, called.
"Hate to do this to you, Joe, but we've got a bad one. Half my staff's on vacation or out sick, and I can't find Kyle." An uncharacteristic hesitation, then Melia said, "It's a kid, Joe. Name's Timothy Watts."
The body had been left in a city park, wrapped in a soft blue blanket so new it was still creased from the package, the blue over the torso stained purple by blood. Only the boy's head was visible, a pale, elfin face with a sprinkle of freckles, tangled pale hair, and, where the lips parted, teeth that cried out for orthodontia. It didn't matter now.
Was he seeing too much in the careful tucking of the blanket, covers drawn up to the chin like a mother settling her child for sleep, the edges tucked in to guard against the damp night air? What was it telling him? The body had not been dumped, it had been arranged. But was the arrangement love or hate? Remorse? A kind of "in your face" defiance or a deliberate attempt to confuse the investigation?
The two evidence techs, Rudy Carr and Wink Devlin, shifted in the heat, impatient to start their pictures, but Burgess lingered, taking the time to study the scene. Sure, after they released the body, there'd be the pictures, but pictures were only that. Pictures. They couldn't duplicate the feeling of this time and place, where the body had been placed, the layout of the park and surrounding streets, whether houses overlooked this spot.
This was the moment when he usually made his promise of justice to his victim, but this time, it was Kyle's promise to make. As soon as Kyle showed up, this was going to be his case. Burgess turned away, closing his eyes against images already imbedding themselves in his brain, then opened them again, looking downhill toward the crime scene van. The bright orange canoe looked ridiculous parked next to the yellow crime scene tape. Where in hell was Kyle? This was not supposed to be Burgess's scene, his body, his problem. Not his kid.
The Angel of Knowlton Park
A Joe Burgess Mystery
Book Two
by
Kate Flora
~
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The Angel of Knowlton Park
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Kate Flora first developed her fascination with people's criminal tendencies as a lawyer in the Maine attorney general's office. Deadbeat dads, people who beat and neglected their kids, and employers hateful acts of discrimination led to a deep curiosity about human psychology that's led to twelve books including seven "strong woman" Thea Kozak mysteries and three gritty police procedurals in her star-reviewed Joe Burgess series. Her first true crime, Finding Amy, has been optioned for a movie. Her second, Death Dealer, will be published in September 2014.
When she's not writing, or teaching writing at Grub Street in Boston, she's usually found in her garden, where she wages a constant battle against critters, pests, and her husband's lawnmower. She's been married for 35 years to a man who can still make her laugh. She has two wonderful sons, a movie editor and a scientist, two lovely daughters-in-law, and four rescue "granddogs," Frances, Otis, Harvey, and Daisy.
Table of Contents
Excerpt from THE ANGEL OF KNOWLTON PARK (A Joe Burgess Mystery, Book 2)