Rick Reed - The Cruelest Cut

Highest Praise for

THE CRUELEST CUT

As authentic and scary as crime thrillers get, written as only a cop can writeA verygood and fast read.

Nelson DeMille

A tornado of dramayou wont stop spinning till youve been spit out the other end. Rick Reeds writing crackles with authenticity.

Shane Gericke

Put this one on your must-read list. The Cruelest Cut is a cant-put-down adventure. Readers will definitely want to see more of Jack Murphy.

John Lutz

A jaw-dropping thriller that dares you to turn the page.

Gregg Olsen

T HE C RUELEST C UT

RICK REED

PINNACLE BOOKS

Kensington Publishing Corp.

www.kensingtonbooks.com

All copyrighted material within is Attributor Protected.

To the memory of my mother,

Ruth (Tootsie) Reed,
who was always my biggest fan.

This ones for you, mom.

Contents

P ROLOGUE

The late-May rain came down hard as the Evansville PD detectives, uniformed officers, and SWAT team staked out the downtown alley behind Turleys Jewelers. Thanks to a tip from a reliable informant, today they would take down the Solazzo gang, armed robbers who had done a Godzilla on the downtown small businesses recently.

Bobby Solazzo had recruited the team carefully, finding only the most vicious and psychotic bastards and leaving the ones with an ounce of compassion in them to join Kiwanis or Civitan. Solazzos crew were the kind of guys that said, Give me the money and Ill kill you.

Solazzo and company had already eluded authorities in a high-speed chase and a shoot-out at a liquor store that left two employees dead in a pool of blood, and had been lying low for the past ten days, but now they were ready for their next heist.

Detective Jack Murphy was in charge of the stakeout. He was crouched uncomfortably behind a Dumpster, wiping rain from his eyes, while the deputy chief of detectives was on the stores rooftop, along with one of the SWAT snipers and a reporter from the local rag who was pressing for the perfect shot for their headline: SOLAZZO GANG GOES DOWN . Other sharpshooters were strategically located in vantage points overlooking the alley, already designated the kill zone. They didnt have to wait long.

An older black Suburban with darkened windows slid into the mouth of the narrow alley and eased along, coming to a stop directly behind Turleys Jewelers. The next two minutes seemed to run in slow motion, beginning with the doors of the Suburban flying open and four large and well-armed men emerging.

One man approached the back door of Turleys and pointed a sawed-off shotgun at the doors lock. The shotgun blast that shattered the lock on the door spooked one of the cops, who had his pistol pointed into the alleyway, and some reflex caused him to yank the trigger. Jack half-stood and looked around, thinking, Must be the deputy chief. Leave it to him to screw things up.

The shot went wild, but the reaction of the four men below was that of a well-trained military squad, as two men rushed into the back entrance of Turleys, and the remaining two returned fire at the rooftop snipers position and back down the alleyway. Although the original orders to all of the ground team were that no one fired except the SWAT snipers, the air was suddenly filled with deadly projectiles. A bullet zinged into a nearby quad of electrical transformers high up on a telephone pole just above the west half of the stakeout team, sending a shower of fiery debris down on them. The uniformed cops positioned above the kill zone continued their barrage of gunfire, effectively immobilizing their team members on the ground.

Murphy had been waiting for the Suburban to come to a stop before giving the order to the SWAT commander to move in when hed heard the single gunshot and then all hell breaking loose. Now he was in the middle of a goddamned war, and he was fucked no matter which way he ran. He could flee into the raging fire at the west end of the alley where there were some backup officers at least. Or he could chase the asshole he saw take off east down the alley when the shooting started. Staying put was not an option.

He bolted from his hole and chased the lone runner. The good news was that hed gotten a pretty good look at this character and was pretty sure it was the leader of the pack, Bobby Solazzo. The bad news was that it was Bobby Solazzo, and Bobby had a sawed-off shotgun and liked to use it.

What kind of moron chases a guy whos got a shotgun? Murphy thought. But he plowed ahead through cascading rain, the smooth soles of his dress loafers slipping on the wet brick-worked street surface, the smell of sewage from the overflowing storm sewers barely registering.

He gripped the polymer handle of his Glock .45 standard police issue semiautomatic and slowed his pacelistening, watching for any movement or lack of movement. The alley was so narrow that a shotgun blast down the middle would take out anyone standing there. Not Jacks idea of a fun time. With the damn rain coming down in waves he could only see a few feet in any direction. For all Jack knew, Bobby was ten feet away, just waiting for him to come into view.

Murphys Law says, Never take a pistol to a shotgun fight. But, then, he wasnt supposed to be taking on Bobbys gang alone, was he? He was a detective. He was supposed to be directing the stakeout at a safe distance, watching the action as the uniformed officers and SWAT team took these assholes down. And that reminded him that Murphys Law also says, Anything that can go wrong, will always fuck you sideways.

He took a deep breath, let it out, and then moved forward again. Bobbys got to be close now, he thought, as he neared the end of the alley where it turned to the right. He stopped and, blading his body against the concrete-block wall, he glanced around the corner and spotted a shotgun lying on a pile of trash.

Hes unarmed! Jack thought, as lightning flashed overhead. The resultant thunderclap was immediate and deafening in the tight alleyway, and it couldnt have come at a worse time. He had just moved out from cover when another flash caught his eye. This one close. Too close. Moving at him with the speed of lightning. But not lightning. A blade, he thought, then, too late, and tried to turn away, but he felt the point of the blade cut into his face and scrape downward, gouging a path through flesh and bone.

He lifted his .45 toward the direction of the attack

C HAPTER O NE

Dr. Anne Lewis stood in the doorway of her garage and looked toward the back door of her house. The television weatherman had it wrong again. Partly cloudy with a ten percent chance of rain had turned into a raging thunderstorm. If I wait it will stop soon. It cant rain this hard for long, can it? she wondered.

Then she heard the phone ringing inside the house.

She muttered an expletive and ran. She was thoroughly soaked when she got inside and, of course, the phone had stopped ringing.

Probably just a telemarketer, she said out loud, a little put out that her husband, Don, had not answered the phone. Since his retirement last year, all he had done was lie around the house, read the newspapers, watch sports, and make a mess.

She sighed and straightened a picture frame near the back door on her way into the bathroom for a towel. At the sink she dried herself and looked in the mirror. Her hair had turned prematurely gray in collegemany years agobut still had a shine to it that made it remarkable. Not that Don noticed anymore.

But she wasnt really being fair to him. After all, they had been married forty-three years. Both of them had been driven by careers, so they had never found time for children. Also not his fault, but still she wondered sometimes what her life would have been like if theyd had kids.