The dead of jerusalem ri.., p.1
The Dead of Jerusalem Ridge, page 1
The Dead of Jerusalem Ridge
A Piper Blackwell Mystery
Jean Rabe
Praise for The Dead of Winter
Mystery just got a little less cozy in THE DEAD OF WINTER.
— New York Times and USA Today bestselling author Steven Savile
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Jean Rabe delivers a suspenseful morsel that not only celebrates the Yuletide season, but also keeps you up at night with a well-crafted mystery. THE DEAD OF WINTER is chilling indeed!
— Raymond Benson, New York Times bestselling author
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THE DEAD OF WINTER was a blast—lots of fun to read! Jean Rabe’s characters come to life through the written word, and it takes a real writing talent to accomplish this feat.
— Denise Dietz, USA Today bestselling author
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Praise for The Dead of Night
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Jean Rabe always manages to surprise and never fails to deliver the goods! THE DEAD OF NIGHT has plenty of twists and turns. Highly recommended!
— Jonathan Maberry, New York Times bestselling author
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Jean Rabe writes the perfect mystery! I was kept guessing about everything to the very last word. Great characters. The girl can write!
— New York Times bestselling author Faith Hunter, writing as Gwen Hunter
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In THE DEAD OF NIGHT, Jean Rabe gives us another compelling Piper Blackwell mystery. After a clandestine meeting with a grizzled WWII veteran “Mark the Shark,” also known as “Mr. Conspiracy,” Piper stumbles, literally, over the bones of a child. Rabe weaves Piper’s investigations of this long-cold case and the high-tech theft of an old man’s earnings into a thoroughly satisfying and complex novel with deeply realized characters and beautifully vivid writing.
— Jaden Terrell, Shamus Award nominee and internationally published author of the Jared McKean Mysteries
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Praise for The Dead of Summer
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Just when you think you’ve read the best from author Jean Rabe, she throws the thrill ride of a lifetime into her latest mystery. THE DEAD OF SUMMER starts with a bang, a scrunch, a twist, and screams…lots and lots of screams. The book hooks you from the start.
— Mary Cunningham, author of the Andi Anna Jones Mysteries
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Jean Rabe immerses you in the sights, sounds, and smells of summer in rural Indiana, as she subtly weaves characters, clues, and high-speed action into a satisfying criminal confection worthy of a blue ribbon as Best Summer Mystery. Not quite a cozy, but a helluva whodunnit.
— Donald J. Bingle, author of the Dick Thornby Spy Thriller series
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Sheriff Piper Blackwell’s third outing has her getting on the wrong side of some very bad dudes in a murder investigation. The best thing about Rabe’s series is not only her ability to spin a good yarn, but to write such believable and interesting characters that her books are like visiting old friends. They’re all back in this newest one, and it’ll keep you turning the pages far past your bedtime. Don’t miss it.
— Michael A. Black, author of Blood Trails, Legends of the West, and Dying Art and Stealth Assassins in the Executioner series (as Don Pendleton)
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The Dead of Jerusalem Ridge
A Piper Blackwell Mystery
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Jean Rabe
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Boone Street Press
Illinois
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This book is a work of fiction. The names, characters, and incidents are of the author’s imagination. The places are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, places, entities, facilities, or persons is coincidental.
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© 2020 by Jean Rabe
Cover design by Juan Villar Padron
Interior design by John G. Hartness
Editing by Christine Verstraete and Janet Deaver-Pack
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Scanning, uploading, and distribution of this book without permission is a theft of the author’s intellectual property. If you would like permission to use material from the book—other than for review purposes—please contact: jeanerabe@gmail.com. Thank you for supporting the author’s rights.
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Boone Street Press
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First Boone Street Press Edition: 2020
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Name: Rabe, Jean, author
Title: The Dead of Jerusalem Ridge, a Piper Blackwell Mystery / Jean Rabe
Description: First Edition. Boone Street Press
Identifiers: ISBN 13: 978-1-7325267-2-3
LCCN: 2020908852
Printed in the United States of America
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For the Marys
Zalapi
Konczyk
Bamford
Contents
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Acknowledgments
Spencer County, Indiana
About the Author
Other Boone Street Press novels by Jean Rabe
Chapter One
3 p.m. Saturday, September 5th
The rain felt good, but it complicated things by erasing the tracks she’d been following. Coming down in a syncopated pat-a-pat-a-pat, soaking through to her skin, it pleasantly cooled her. The temperature was in the low nineties, and before this deluge blossomed she’d been sweating under all her gear.
Piper crawled through the spurge, coming to a swath of mud that stretched toward a row of beech trees with silver-gray bark that matched the color of the sky.
Pat-a-pat-a-pat-a-pat.
Shit, Piper thought. She’d have to risk cutting across open ground, making herself a visible target. Shit and two is four and four is eight.
She sucked in a breath, the fragrance of goldenrod making her stifle a sneeze. The raindrops were large, dimpling the mud in front of her.
Listening.
Nothing but the rain and the shush of small branches rubbing together in the wind.
One more breath and she skittered forward, staying low, the mud plastering the front of her khakis and long-sleeved tee, feeling the ooze slip past the collars of her favorite L.L. Bean hiking boots to invade her socks.
The tunnel of beech leaves on the other side welcomed her.
Listening.
She thought she heard something—a heavy footfall maybe, a splash. Her imagination? She pictured the map nestled in plastic in her backpack, recalled its details. There was a creek nearby. How close? Something, someone had splashed in the creek. Her quarry?
A rifle rode on top of her pack, its stock touching the back of her neck. Piper reached for it, and then froze, listening more intently.
A Hercules beetle crawled across the back of her hand. Green and tan with black spots, an ugly long thing she wanted to fling away, but she didn’t dare move.
Listening.
There! Another splash. Definitely someone in the creek. Followed by the sound of something bumping against something else.
Was her quarry careless? Or was he deliberately making noise to lure her in?
The beetle moved on and disappeared in a patch of moss. Smaller beetles scurried nearby and black ants worried at a rotting piece of bark, mindless of the weather. Gnats formed a miniature cloud under an umbrella leaf. The mosquitoes had vanished with the rain ... a good thing, she noted, as she’d not brought repellent. The scent of the loam was heavy here.
Piper held her breath and inched forward.
To her right she spotted an empty can, old and rusty, discarded a long while ago. Shame to leave trash in the woods. Just beyond it was a heel impression in the mud; the rain hadn’t quite taken it. Recent and deep, from a big man. Piper saw another print and crawled faster as she unslung the rifle, rose to her knees, and peered through a break in the ferns.
Pat-a-pat-a-pat-a-pat-a-pat.
The creek was just past the tree line and down a short rise, a wide gray ribbon cut by rocks. Piper watched the rain attack its surface, spitting water back up, the near bank a smooth band of mud disturbed by fresh boot prints.
Her heart thumped. He had to be on the other side of the creek, probably hunkering down behind the foliage, waiting for her. The landscape was a smear of greens and browns shadowed by the dome of clouds and the storm. She couldn’t see him.
But if he was indeed on the other side, he’d see her if she broke for the creek.
Shit, she thought. No good option. No good way to circle around.
Piper could wait it out right here, a reasonable spot, concealed by tall sawgrass and trumpet honeysuckle. The rain swirled the color s, darkened what had started out as a bright day, made it difficult to peer through with all the water running in her eyes. I should’ve worn a hat, something with a brim, she thought. Should’ve taken that precaution. Maybe her quarry had a hat. At least the downpour kept her cool, gave her patience. If she was lucky her quarry wouldn’t be as patient. Maybe he’d—
A silhouette separated from the miasma of green on the other side of the creek. An expert shot, Piper could get him, but her maximum range was one hundred feet, and the target was beyond that. Too, the rain and wind would alter the trajectory.
She needed to be closer.
Piper’s index finger teased the trigger.
Her walkie-talkie crackled softly; she’d turned the volume down as low as it would go. A voice came through the earbud: “Christmas! What’s your position?”
She didn’t know her position, not exactly. The map in plastic was out of reach. The area was wholly unfamiliar to her.
“Near the creek,” she whispered. “Target on the other side.”
“Only one target, Christmas?”
“Roger, Spaceman, just one. Eyes on him now.”
“Me and Renegade are following two, and that leaves one unaccounted for. Hemi is—”
“On the fourth,” came another voice. Hemi, Piper recognized his rasp. “I’m dogging him. I’m near the creek, too. All the mud. What an awesome day we picked for this.” A pause: “Where near the creek are you, Christmas?”
I don’t know, Piper thought. Somewhere along the damn creek.
“My target’s moving,” she whispered. “I’m following to get in range.”
She thumbed off the walkie-talkie, not needing the distraction of her teammates’ chatter, and shimmied out of the brush, sliding on her belly down the rise, and jumping to her feet at the edge of the creek. The silhouette had moved farther away, hopefully didn’t know where she was. The hint of success tugged at her thoughts.
Couldn’t tell how deep the water was, not clear enough to see the bottom. But she spotted what was left of his boot prints in the mud at the edge. If he’d crossed here, so could she. Piper stepped in, then slogged across carefully, the water above her knees at the deepest part, the bed slippery and threatening her balance. On the other side she let out the breath she’d been holding and searched for his tracks. The mud had been disturbed here by something. Maybe an animal, or … there, another heel imprint and a partial indent from the tread. A wide foot. And a dropped candy bar wrapper. She snapped it up and stuck it in her pocket, hated seeing garbage in the woods.
There were winterberry shrubs and milkweed on this rise, and she scrambled up the rocky ground and stayed low behind the bushes, turned on the walkie-talkie again and heard Spaceman arguing with Renegade, clicked it off once more and edged around the thickest clump.
Pat-a-pat-a-pat-a-pat.
No sign of the shape, just the dizzying blotches of greens and browns and more rain.
Shit and two is four.
“Christmas!” The shout came from behind her, Hemi. “Look out!”
Piper spied movement to her right, and she spun, nearly skidding back down the rise. Digging in her heels, she brought up the rifle and squeezed off four shots—three misses, but one nailed him dead center.
“Argh!” her target hollered, his own weapon falling as he dropped to his knees and slipped down the bank, landing splayed on his back at the edge of the creek, the blossom of dayglow yellow paint on his chest instantly diluted by rain.
Then a shot came her way, and a second. Both were near misses, the blobs of blue paint sailing over her head and bursting against a trunk. She turned toward the new source and lunged, leading with her gun, firing without really aiming, balls of yellow paint racing out of the barrel of her Splatterking.
Other guns opened up around her, the sound not unlike real weapon fire. The blue and yellow paintballs came from different angles, and Piper tried to mentally triangulate them. The blue paint was from the enemy. Someone was firing from behind an oak, and another—one of her comrades—was directly to the north under cover of some winterberries. Three rounds came at her from the west, one striking her leg and turning the muddy khaki a bright royal blue. The other shots missed and she stepped into a bush, ignoring the jabs of the branches, wanting the concealment it offered.
“Christmas! I’m hit.” Hemi made a gurgling sound and through a gap in the leaves she watched him theatrically flop into the creek. Must have been a kill shot he’d suffered.
One down on her side, one down on theirs. Three more on each side remaining. She flicked on her walkie-talkie. “Spaceman,” she whispered. “Renegade. Where are—” She didn’t get the rest of the words out, interrupted by crashing, rustling, feet slapping the mud.
Piper stood and fired in that direction, two balls striking her target in the chest—both kill shots, but leaving herself open. She felt the impact of paintballs slamming into her back. One. Two. Three.
Kill shots in return, all of them.
Piper let the Splatterking drop, then she fell to the ground, a confirmed loss.
“I shot the sheriff,” someone started singing loudly and off-key.
Chapter Two
4 p.m. Saturday
Chief Deputy Oren Rosenberg was thinking about roast beef as he drove. His wife had put one in the crockpot this morning, a nice big sirloin tip, set it on low, and threw in carrots and a packet of onion soup mix. She would make the juice into gravy for mashed potatoes, and it would be ready at five-thirty. Oren was fond of roast, and when his wife cooked one it barely fit in the pot, even though it was for just the two of them. She said that way there would be plenty of leftovers for lunches the following week. His stomach rumbled in anticipation.
Oren got off work in an hour. Maybe they’d have a glass of wine with dinner, watch a movie on that big screen television—sixty-five-inch flat panel ultra HD—they’d bought on sale at the Owensboro Walmart a week ago. Then he’d work on one of his jigsaw puzzles in the den while she read a few chapters of a romance book before they turned in. Saturday evening was not exciting for the Rosenbergs, but it was a comfortable routine he looked forward to. Couldn’t stay up late as he had to work tomorrow, too—his one weekend on this month.
Oren would turn sixty-six next week.
His wife had reminded him of that upcoming milestone over breakfast. He didn’t need the reminder; he damn well knew his own age. One year older than her. They’d attended high school together, but he was in the class ahead and he hadn’t known her back then. They’d met after his military stint, set up on a blind date by a friend. They clicked, going out only four months before getting married. He kept a small photograph from their wedding in his wallet, not a touch of gray in their hair then, and no hint of wrinkles.
He was still taller than six feet. And now with a curly mass of steely hair and skin weathered by his time outdoors, Oren considered himself a young senior citizen, fit, and in better shape than a few of the deputies more than a decade younger. Hell, he even jogged once a week.
She’d probably mention retirement again at dinner.
Or if not tonight, then on his birthday. He hoped she wasn’t planning a party with a big cake. He didn’t want a fuss made.
