Dead Time Read online

  Praise for the Novels

  of Stephen White

  Dead Time

  “Gregory’s (aka White’s) use of his therapist skills to question witnesses and gather facts becomes almost hypnotically absorbing.”

  —The Orlando Sentinel

  “Deeply layered…beautifully orchestrated.”

  —Booklist

  “An exhilarating, action-packed tale…. Although the plot moves at light speed, it is the strong characterizations that make this a special read.”

  —Midwest Book Review

  “A well-paced thriller with plenty of action.”

  —The Miami Herald

  “An intellectual mystery…[it] succeeds on many levels. Dead Time is up to White’s usual standards.”

  —The Boulder Daily Camera

  “This is a good action thriller with strong characters and a fast-moving plot. It will keep you guessing throughout.”

  —The Daily American (Somerset, PA)

  “Stephen White, on the strength of Dead Time, should be a literary household name on the order of King, Rowling, and whoever else you might care to mention. He is that good.”

  —Bookreporter.com

  Dry Ice

  “Guaranteed to keep readers glued to their seats.”

  —The Denver Post

  “Entertaining and suspenseful.”

  —Chicago Sun-Times

  “Gripping.”

  —Entertainment Weekly

  “Full of unnerving action and psychological tension.”

  —The Miami Herald

  “Even more twists and turns than readers are accustomed to from [White].”

  —The Associated Press

  “If one enjoys great thriller writing, Dry Ice must be read.”

  —The Roanoke Times (VA)

  “Contemporary cerebral thrillers don’t get much better than [Dry Ice]…a Hitchcockian nightmare.”

  —Publishers Weekly (starred review)

  “A twist or turn in nearly every chapter.”

  —The Boulder Daily Camera

  “Fascinating…suspenseful and fast-paced…an astonishing ending.”

  —Daily American

  Kill Me

  “A thinking person’s thriller.”

  —Jeffery Deaver

  “Big, provocative, and downright gripping.”

  —Michael Connelly

  “Thriller aficionados should pick this up on a Friday evening when they have no other plans for the weekend.”

  —The Denver Post

  Missing Persons

  “A psychological thriller that will capture readers’ interest until the very end.”

  —Rocky Mountain News

  “One doozy of a whodunit.”

  —Booklist

  Remote Control

  “Dark and fascinating…. Stephen White writes thrillers of the first order.”

  —Nelson DeMille

  “Psychological suspense at its best.”

  —Jeffery Deaver

  Private Practices

  “A near-flawless web of evil…fast as a downhill slalom.”

  —Publishers Weekly

  “Intriguing…and believable…will keep you guessing to the end.”

  —Phillip Margolin

  Privileged Information

  “The action zooms along.”

  —Rocky Mountain News

  “A dazzling new talent.”

  —Tony Hillerman

  Cold Case

  “Entertaining, insightful, and enlightening.”

  —The Denver Post

  “Elegantly plotted, with brilliant characterizations.”

  —The Cleveland Plain Dealer

  Manner of Death

  “Pulls readers along like a steam train…. Don’t crack this thing unless there’s nothing else to do, because once you get started nothing else is going to get done.”

  —The Denver Post

  “Chilling…. The invigorating twists and turns…[will leave readers] gasping.”

  —Publishers Weekly (starred review)

  Critical Conditions

  “A superior psychological thriller.”

  —Chicago Tribune

  “Spine-tingling…another compulsive read.”

  —Library Journal

  Harm’s Way

  “Gripping.”

  —The New York Times Book Review

  “Taut, tightly spooled storytelling…difficult to put down.”

  —Rocky Mountain News

  Higher Authority

  “Sinister and scary.”

  —The New York Times Book Review

  “A dazzler.”

  —The Cleveland Plain Dealer

  ALSO BY STEPHEN WHITE

  Dry Ice

  Kill Me

  Missing Persons

  Blinded

  The Best Revenge

  Warning Signs

  The Program

  Cold Case

  Manner of Death

  Critical Conditions

  Remote Control

  Harm’s Way

  Higher Authority

  Private Practices

  Privileged Information

  STEPHEN

  WHITE

  DEAD

  TIME

  A SIGNET BOOK

  SIGNET

  Published by New American Library, a division of

  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.)

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  Australia (a division of Pearson Australia Group Pty. Ltd.)

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  Penguin Group (NZ), 67 Apollo Drive, Rosedale, North Shore 0632,

  New Zealand (a division of Pearson New Zealand Ltd.)

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  Rosebank, Johannesburg 2196, South Africa

  Penguin Books Ltd., Registered Offices:

  80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England

  Published by Signet, an imprint of New American Library, a division of Penguin Group (USA) Inc. Previously published in a Dutton edition.

  First Signet Printing, August 2009

  10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

  Copyright © Stephen W. White, 2008

  Excerpt from The Siege copyright © Stephen W. White, 2009

  All rights reserved

  ISBN: 978-1-101-21180-9

  REGISTERED TRADEMARK—MARCA REGISTRADA

  Printed in the United States of America

  Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form, or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photo-copying, recording, or otherwise), without the prior written permission of both the copyright owner and the above publisher of this book.

  PUBLISHER’S NOTE

  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, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  The publisher does not have any control over and does not assume any responsibility for author or third-party Web sites or their content.

  If
you purchased this book without a cover you should be aware that this book is stolen property. It was reported as “unsold and destroyed” to the publisher and neither the author nor the publisher has received any payment for this “stripped book.”

  The scanning, uploading, and distribution of this book via the Internet or via any other means without the permission of the publisher is illegal and punishable by law. Please purchase only authorized electronic editions, and do not participate in or encourage electronic piracy of copyrighted materials. Your support of the author’s rights is appreciated.

  to Brian Tart

  Brothers and sisters I have none,

  but this man’s father is my father’s son.

  —Anonymous

  DEAD

  TIME

  Table of Contents

  One

  Two

  Three

  Four

  Five

  Six

  Seven

  Eight

  Nine

  Ten

  Eleven

  Twelve

  Thirteen

  Fourteen

  Fifteen

  Sixteen

  Seventeen

  Eighteen

  Nineteen

  Twenty

  Twenty-One

  Twenty-Two

  Twenty-Three

  Twenty-Four

  Twenty-Five

  Twenty-Six

  Twenty-Seven

  Twenty-Eight

  Twenty-Nine

  Thirty

  Thirty-One

  Thirty-Two

  Thirty-Three

  Thirty-Four

  Thirty-Five

  Thirty-Six

  Thirty-Seven

  Thirty-Eight

  Thirty-Nine

  Forty

  Forty-One

  Forty-Two

  Forty-Three

  Forty-Four

  Forty-Five

  Forty-Six

  Forty-Seven

  Forty-Eight

  Forty-Nine

  Fifty

  Fifty-One

  Fifty-Two

  Fifty-Three

  Fifty-Four

  Fifty-Five

  Fifty-Six

  Fifty-Seven

  Fifty-Eight

  Fifty-Nine

  Sixty

  Sixty-One

  Sixty-Two

  Sixty-Three

  Sixty-Four

  Sixty-Five

  Sixty-Six

  Sixty-Seven

  Acknowledgments

  The Siege

  ONE

  The Canyon

  She disappeared into a crack in the earth.

  Locals had nicknamed the culprit the “polygamist high.”

  Even lifetime residents of the rim—people who bragged under their breath that they’d seen it all, twice—were complaining about the heat.

  For the four days since a ridge of high pressure had stalled on a line that ended above the Utah–Arizona border just a little bit west of Colorado City and Hildale, the Grand Canyon had been cooking. With the atmospheric barrier in place, the natural inclination of the monsoonal flow to migrate up from the southern gulfs was bowing to the laws of physics and veering to the northwest.

  The arid farmlands in California’s Central Valley welcomed the bounty. But the coveted clouds and refreshing rain avoided western Arizona and the twin visitors’ centers on the north and south rims of the Grand Canyon like relatives trying to steer clear of an alcoholic aunt during a family picnic.

  Even the most silver-haired of the canyon old-timers stared at thermometers in awe. They’d tap at the instruments with their fingertips, as though they expected to jar loose the indicator arrows and change the readings that were causing them to blink and rub their dry eyes in disbelief.

  The heat mocked them. Throaty sighs became their theme song.

  Anything above 110 is pathetically hot. Near 120? At the rim of the Grand Canyon? Every day?

  Thermal sedation.

  What to do? Shake your head and pray the motion generates a breeze. Remind yourself that for your neighbor’s kid in Baghdad, 118 is just an average summer day.

  National Park staff had set up betting pools to predict the next time a daytime high would sink below 110 degrees and the next time that overnight lows would drop below the century mark.

  The optimists were losing money.

  Advice was free, and anyone planning a descent to the canyon floor and the banks of the Colorado River that August got plenty.

  “Don’t. Ain’t worth it.”

  “Reschedule. Come back in October.”

  “You kidding me?”

  There were empty beds at Phantom Ranch on the canyon floor. Hikers who were scheduled to go down to the river during the heat wave on the Bright Angel Trail—that’s the one without fresh water available for hikers—were backing out. Most had been sitting on their treasured reservations—rustic cabin or dormitory beds, 4,000 feet below the rim, a pleasant walk from the Colorado River—for an entire year.

  No one could remember the last time there had been so many cancellations.

  On the Friday morning that marked six days in the grip of the obstinate high, a group of vacationers were leaving their cabin and preparing to climb to the north rim. One part of the group was a couple from Santa Monica in their midtwenties. The other part was comprised of four single friends—two women and a man who attended Occidental College in Los Angeles, and the guy’s high school friend from their hometown in Orange County.

  The two groups had hiked down to the river as strangers on successive days earlier in the week.

  The couple’s arrival in northern Arizona had coincided with the advent of the high pressure. The four singles hiked down from the rim to the floor a day later, during the first blush of the infernal heat. Once the six had arrived at the bottom of the canyon and discovered that because of a reservation mix-up they were sharing an eight-bunk cabin, they began connecting as friends. After a hot holiday spent swimming and hiking and swimming and eating and partying and swimming together, they were preparing to hike back to the rim together.

  All were packed and fed and hydrated and as ready as they could be to hit the daunting North Kaibab Trail back out of the canyon the moment that breakfast was done and first light yawned that Friday morning. During the previous evening’s supper they’d agreed to leave as early as possible in an attempt to minimize their exposure to the solar salamander that promised to broil them as soon as the sun arced overhead. Had there been sufficient moonlight that night—and had the lodge been willing to provide a middle-of-the-night meal—the hikers would have tried to get an even earlier start by initiating their traverse of the initial switchbacks off the canyon floor while daybreak was still a dream. And while temperatures in the canyon hovered near their overnight lows of one hundred degrees.

  But the lunar phase wasn’t cooperating. The moon hung in the black sky like a bent sliver of tarnished chrome, its form not even visible from the bottom of the canyon, its light inconsequential on the floor-to-rim trails.

  A shirtless man approached the group of hikers as they made final equipment adjustments before their ascent. The intruder wasn’t a big man—he was no more than five feet nine, but he had a chiseled chest, swimmer’s shoulders, and the kind of abs that make other men’s eyes still and their jaws tighten involuntarily, the kind of abs that motivate the competition to do at least a couple of weeks’ worth of crunches.

  The shirtless man wasn’t a complete stranger—the group had met him the day before. He and the woman he was with had been part of the smaller-than-usual cluster of hikers that reached the canyon floor during the apogee of the previous day’s vicious heat.

  The new couple had exchanged brief pleasantries with some of the other campers before splitting off and pitching a tent in the campsite nearest the cabins. They didn’t have cabin beds reserved and had chosen not to claim any of the bunks left vacant from no-shows caused by the heat w
ave.

  The woman of the pair was friendly, even vivacious. She didn’t seem depleted at all by the descent in the unforgiving heat. But the man she was with—the shirtless man—herded her away to seek shade, and he had chosen to keep to himself since arriving.

  He seemed to want to be left alone.

  The Grand Canyon could be a good place for that.

  The shirtless man lifted his left hand in a sheepish, halfhearted greeting as he shuffled up to the group in the predawn, stopping a few feet outside their perimeter. Light from a solitary lantern washed across his torso. “Hey,” he said. “Mornin’.”

  He had the group’s attention. His voice had a pleasant timbre and soft edges. The men were focusing on him because he was a half-naked intruder walking into their midst from the darkness. The women were focusing, well, because of his chest and his shoulders. And those abs.

  “The, uh, girl I was with yesterday? Remember her? We met…right? When we got down here? We talked to some of you? You guys seen her…around?”

  The visitor’s facial features were vaguely Asian. His dark hair was mussed and the lid of his left eye was dusted with pebbles of matter. He hadn’t shaved for a few days, a fat sleep crease crossed one cheek like a scar from a knife fight, and he had a crusty booger curling like a tiny leech around the outer rim of his right nostril. His dusty jeans fit loosely at his waist and hung low on his hips, exposing the rise of his pelvic bones and an avenue of fine hair that trailed south from his navel. It wasn’t at all clear that his ensemble included underwear.

  Based on nothing but his appearance and his manner, he seemed like the kind of too-handsome guy who caught women’s eyes during last call, the kind of guy those same women might regret waking up beside the morning after they’d ignored their girlfriends’ pointed advice about it not really being a good idea to go someplace with “someone like him” for one more drink.

  “Today?” said one of the male hikers in reply to the question. Jack was one of the students from Oxy College. “Have we seen her this morning? That’s what you’re asking?” He spoke because no one else had. Jack was polite. It was one of his many endearing traits. But he looked away from the man the instant he identified the dark curl on the stranger’s nostril as snot, reflexively rubbing at the tip of his own nose as he bowed his head toward the sand. Jack had a thing about hygiene.

  The shirtless man didn’t respond right away. His eyes were moving from person to person in the group. His stare wasn’t intended to be challenging—it was as though he was looking for something, some sign of recognition in someone’s eyes.