Jeffery Deaver - Triangle

The Blue Nowhere

Speaking in Tongues

The Empty Chair

The Devils Teardrop

The Coffin Dancer

The Bone Collector

A Maidens Grave

Praying for Sleep

The Lesson of Her Death

Mistress of Justice

Hard News

Death of a Blue Movie Star

Manhattan Is My Beat

Bloody River Blues

Shallow Graves

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This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are products of the authors imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

Copyright 2001 by Jeffery Deaver
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ISBN 0-7432-2960-6

M aybe Ill go to Baltimore.

You mean She looked at him. To see

Doug, he answered.

Really? Mo Anderson asked and looked carefully at her fingernails, which she was painting bright red. He didnt like the color but he didnt say anything about it. She wouldnt listen to him anyway.

I think itd be fun, he continued.

Oh, it would be, she said quickly. Dougs a fun guy.

Sure is, Pete Anderson said. He sat across from Mo on the front porch of their split-level house in suburban Westchester County. The month was June and the air was thick with the smell of the jasmine that Mo had planted earlier in the spring. Pete used to like that smell. Now, though, it made him sick to his stomach.

Mo inspected her nails for streaks and pretended to be sort of bored with the idea of him going to see her friend Doug. But she was a lousy actor; Pete could tell she was really excited by the idea and he knew why. But he just watched the lightning bugs and kept quiet. Unlike Mo, he could act.

When would you go? she asked.

This weekend, I guess. Saturday.

They were silent and sipped their drinks, the ice clunking dully on the plastic glasses. It was the first day of summer and the sky wasnt completely dark yet even though it was nearly nine oclock in the evening. There mustve been a thousand lightning bugs in their front yard.

I know I kinda said Id help you clean up the garage, he said, wincing a little, looking guilty.

No, I think you should go. I think itd be a good idea, she said.

I know you think itd be a good idea, Pete thought. But he didnt say this to her. Lately hed been thinking a lot of things and not saying them.

Pete was sweatingmore from the excitement than from the heatand he wiped the sweat off his face and his round buzz-cut blond hair with his napkin.

The phone rang and Mo went to answer it.

She came back and said, Its your father, in that sour voice of hers that Pete hated. She sat back down and didnt say anything else, just picked up her drink and examined her nails again.

Pete got up and went into the kitchen. His father lived in Wisconsin, not far from Lake Michigan. He loved the man and wished they lived closer together. Mo, though, didnt like him one bit and always raised a stink when Pete wanted to go visit. She never went with him. Pete was never exactly sure what the problem was between Mo and his dad. But it made him mad that she treated the man so badly and would never talk to Pete about it.

And he was mad too that Mo seemed to put him in the middle of things. Sometimes Pete even felt guilty he had a father.

He had a nice talk but hung up after only ten minutes because he felt Mo didnt want him to be on the phone.

Pete walked back out onto the porch.

Saturday, Mo said. I think Saturdayd be fine.

Fine

Then she looked at her watch and said, Its getting late. Time for bed.

And when Mo said it was time for bed, it was definitely time for bed.

Later that night, when Mo was asleep, Pete walked downstairs into the office. He reached behind a row of books resting on the built-in bookshelves and pulled out a large, sealed envelope.

He carried it down to his workshop in the basement. He opened the envelope and took out a book. It was called Triangle and Pete had found it in the true-crime section of a local used-book shop after flipping through nearly twenty books about real-life murders.

Pete had never before ripped off anything, but that day hed looked around the store and slipped the book inside his windbreaker, then strolled casually out the door. Hed had to steal it; he was afraid thatif everything went as hed plannedthe clerk might remember him buying the book and the police would use it as evidence.

Triangle was the story of a couple in Colorado Springs. The wife was married to a man named Roy. But she was also seeing another manHanka local carpenter. Roy found out and waited until Hank was out hiking on a mountain path, then he snuck up beside him and pushed him over the cliff. Hank grabbed onto a tree root but lost his gripor Roy smashed his hands, it wasnt clearand Hank fell a hundred feet to his death on the rocks in the valley. Roy went back home and had a drink with his wife just to watch her reaction when the call came that Hank was dead.

Pete didnt know squat about crimes. All he knew was what he d seen on TV and in the movies. None of the criminals in those shows seemed very smart and they were always getting caught by the good guys, even though they didn t really seem much smarter than the bad guys. But that crime in Colorado was a smart crime. Because there were no murder weapons and very few clues. The only reason Roy got caught was that he d forgotten to look for witnesses.

If the killer had only taken the time to look around him, he would have seen the witnesses: A couple of campers had a perfect view of Hank Gibson plummeting to his bloody death, screaming as he fell, and of Roy standing on the cliff, watching him.

Triangle became Petes bible. He read it from cover to coverto see how Roy had planned the crime and to find out how the police had investigated it.

Tonight, with Mo asleep and his electronic airline ticket to Baltimore bought and paid for, Pete read Triangle once again, paying particular attention to the parts hed underlined. Then he walked back upstairs, packed the book in the bottom of his knapsack, and lay on the couch in the office, looking out the window at the hazy summer stars and thinking about his trip from every angle.

Because he wanted to make sure he got away with the crime. He didnt want to go to jail for lifelike Roy.

Oh, sure, there were risks. Pete knew that. But nothing was going to stop him.

Doug had to die.

Pete realized hed been thinking about the idea, in the back of his mind, for months, not long after Mo met Doug.

She worked part-time for a drug company in Westchesterthe same company Doug was a salesman for, assigned to the Baltimore office. They met when he came to the headquarters for a sales conference. Mo had told Pete that she was having dinner with somebody from the company, but she didnt say who. Pete didnt think anything of it until he overheard her telling one of her girlfriends on the phone about this interesting guy shed met. But then she realized Pete was standing near enough to hear and she changed the subject.