LITMIR.BIZ

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a lost parent. It all comes to a climactic clash when Sam discovers the killer’s hideout. He’s right, and the engagement is explosive.--Publisher.

      1. Reeves, Sam (Fictitious character)--Fiction. 2. Police shootings--Psychological aspects--Fiction. 3. Firearms--Psychological aspects--Fiction. 4. Hate crimes--Oregon--Portland--Fiction. 5. Hate groups--Oregon--Portland--Fiction. 6. Gangs--Oregon--Portland--Fiction. 7. Post-traumatic stress disorder--Fiction. 8. Police psychology--Fiction. 9. Martial arts fiction. 10. Mystery fiction. I. Title.

      PS3603.H73 D858 2014 2014937531

      813/.6--dc23 1406

      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, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

       Editorial Note: Dukkha: a Pali term that corresponds to such English words as pain, discontent, unhappiness, sorrow, affliction, anxiety, discomfort, anguish, stress, misery, and frustration.

       This ebook contains Vietnamese terms that may not display properly on all ereader devices. You may need to adjust your Publisher Font Default setting.

      To my parents

      Thank you for reading my short stories when I was a kid and for laughing at the “funny” stuff and trembling in fear at the “scary” parts. I will always hold dear the memory of the pride on your faces when I began selling magazine articles and penning nonfiction books. I wish you could have read my

       fiction—the tamer parts, anyway.

      PROLOGUE

      A rush of wind sent debris skittering along the empty sidewalks, filthy gutters, and streets long in need of repair. Though few vehicles passed through the darkened skid row intersection of Northwest Third and Couch at three a.m., its lone traffic signal, swaying in the wind, continued to cycle its colors, casting hues off the sides of old buildings and the cracked windshield of a decaying station wagon propped up on four rusted wheels.

      A lone dog, a white mutt with protruding ribs, a broken ear, and a two-inch stub for a right rear leg, hobbled along the sidewalk, sniffing at a wino’s puke and startling on every noise. On an especially dark southwest corner of the intersection, it stopped and looked up one of the city’s few remaining turn-of-the-century lampposts, a fifteen-foot high, paint-chipped black column crowned with four skeletal arms reaching outward in cardinal directions, as if holding court over the sad, decaying streets.

      A rope, one end looped over one of the lamp’s arms, the other end around the neck of an old man, rubbed and creaked against the flaking metal with each gust of wind that lurched the body. Red, amber, and green played on the bloody, black face.

      The three-legged dog emitted a low growl, and backed up two or three irregular steps, sniffed right, left, and looked back up at the limp figure silhouetted against the night sky. He cowered against the building wall and began a trembling whine.

      About a quarter of the way down the block, two sets of eyes peered around the edge of a graffiti-covered alcove of a long, empty building, watching and smiling as the body slow danced in the wind.

      CHAPTER ONE

      “Where to, weary traveler?” the black man asks, as he stuffs my two pieces of luggage into the back of his green cab. He’s in his sixties, bald, big happy face, and a monstrous belly. I give him my home address. “Won’t be a problem,” he says, slamming the trunk. “No sir.” He opens the backdoor for me. “Where you flyin’ in from?”

      Oh, good, he’s a gregarious sort—just what I need with a jet-lagged brain, hairy and mushy from the twenty-six-hour flight. “Saigon,” I say. “Vietnam.”

      “Oh goodness!” he laughs, his big shoulders shaking. “Saigon. Know it well. Beaucoup. Number ten. Our hot day here probably don’t mean nothin’ to you right now, right? When I was there in the war, we used to say ‘If you can’t take the heat we shouldn’t have tickled the dragon.’ Get it? Land of the dragon and we tickled it? ‘Course they tickled us right back and some.” He guffaws, which makes his big belly shake and quake. He shuts my door and calls a loud greeting to the cabdriver in line behind us.

      I retrieve my cell, tap in Mark’s number for the fourth or fifth time, and listen to it ring and ring. Where is he? We chatted for a couple minutes when I was boarding the plane in Saigon, and he confirmed he would pick me up at five p.m. in the new Lexus he bought a couple days ago as a retirement gift to himself. I told him he sounded as giddy as a cheerleader.

      “I am, indeed, Sam,” he laughed. “Lots to be giddy about. I bought my dream car, I decided to take the PD’s early retirement offer, David is thinking about retiring too, and you’re coming home. Life is good.”

      Mark and I have been friends for most of the fifteen years I’ve been a cop and for the three years I’ve worked the Burglary Unit in Detectives, he’s been my boss. We’ve been through lots together, especially these last few months with all my shootings and the horrific aftermath. He’s been a wonderful friend; me, not so much, and I desperately want to change that.

      The driver, laughing at something the other cabbie said, struggles to squeeze his bulk behind the steering wheel. “Yes, sir, spent eighteen months in Saigon back in nineteen sixty-eight and sixty-nine,” he says, as if our conversation hadn’t had a two-minute break. He turns up the fan. “It’s hot here, eh? Eighty-six today. Thinking of changing my policy to ‘No shirt, no pants, no problem.’ So hot I saw a funeral procession stop at a Dairy Queen for ice cream. But hey,” he laughs, “don’t mean nothin’ compared to Vietnam’s heat. They probably don’t say ‘don’t mean nothin’’ over there. No, probably don’t. But the heat over there, it was somethin’ for sure.” He shakes his head, and guides the car around the long line of cabs and takes the ramp out of the airport pick-up area. “Tet is their New Year celebration, you know. When New Years happened in nineteen sixty-eight, it was one crazy-ass time. VC hit us so damn hard from so many directions we didn’t know if we was comin’ or goin’. Crazy-ass time, for sure.”

      “Thanks for your service,” I say. “It’s a beautiful city today. Most of the population now weren’t alive during the war.” I see a folded newspaper on his dash. “Is that today’s paper?”

      “No, sir,” he says, retrieving it, though he can barely reach it because his belly is already pressed to the max against the steering wheel. “It’s two days old, but I’ve been savin’ it ‘cause of what happened. You been gone for a spell, right?”

      “About two weeks.”

      “Crazy-ass thing happened right here in Portland—my hometown, no less. Sadness for sure, right there on the front page. Never thought I’d see such a thing again. No, sir. Didn’t think I’d see it again. Not in my hometown.”

      I unfold the paper. The large font headline reads: AFRICAN AMERICAN FOUND LYNCHED.

      An elderly African American man was found hanging from a rope tied to a light post at NW Third and Couch Street early this morning, according to Portland Police Spokesperson Darryl Anderson. An early morning jogger found the body. Anderson says foul play is suspected in the hanging. There are no suspects at this time, and the name of the victim is being withheld until notification of next of kin.

      It must have happened right at press time because the piece is short but definitely not sweet.

      “What have the follow-up stories said,” I ask.

      “The po-lice aren’t sayin’ much. Must be gettin’ their ducks in a row or somethin’. Yesterday they didn’t say his name, only they thought he was in his seventies. Po-lice got no suspects, or least they aren’t sayin’. I think it’s ‘cause it’s sensitive, you know. Some folks had a rally outside the downtown po-lice station last night demanding to know what’s goin’ on.”

      I refold the paper. This is going to be

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