The Errand Boy

by Bredes, Don

• ISBN13: 9780307237439
• ISBN10: 0307237435
• Edition: 1st
• Format: Trade Paper
• Copyright: 2009-09-22
• Publisher: Three Rivers Press

Summary

Every small town has its secrets. Onetime Boston homicide detective Hector Bellevance is married now and settled on the family farm with his pregnant wife, Wilma, and their strong-willed eleven-year-old daughter, Myra, happily spending his days raising vegetables for the farmers' market and serving, when needed, as the town's constable. But Hector's fair-weather days suddenly darken when a reckless driver leaves Wilma in a coma, and later, after the unrepentant driver turns up brutally murdered, Hector finds himself a natural suspect in the homicide. When the victim's father offers to pay Wilma's medical bills if Hector will find his son's killer, Hector takes the casemore out of compassion than a desire to clear his own name. Yet the murder quickly proves more vexing and the motives more twisted than even a town constable could have foreseen. Hector discovers an unsavory secret behind every door, and he is soon caught in a web of sex offenders, backwoods meth addicts, undercover federal agents, Hells Angels, and an international drug cartel. Just when he's ready to abandon his sputtering investigationas the police have angrily demandedMyra disappears from the hospital while visiting her mother, and Hector knows he cannot rest until he has found her. Everything he loves and lives for is at stake.

Author Biography

DON BREDES is the author of four other novels, including the two previous Hector Bellevance literary suspense novels Cold Comfort and The Fifth Season. He lives in northern Vermont with his wife and daughter.

Excerpts

ONE


Weeks later, on a hot, still Saturday in mid-July, the second day of the Allenburg downtown merchants' Sizzling Sidewalk Super Sale, Wilma and I were headed for Main Street Beverage and Redemption to order the wine for our wedding party. Heavy thunder was rumbling to the north of town. Myra had spent the morning up that way with Hugh Gebbie, a family friend, and because of the way the sky looked in that direction, our thoughts were on the two of them.

With the wedding more than a month away, our mission might have waited, but we'd been up since five, and we wanted an excuse to stretch our legs. We had left the truck and the van at the county fairgrounds, where the farmers' market set up each weekend, and made our way down through Greenleaf Cemetery, crossed the river on the defunct railroad bridge, and turned up the steep, root-buckled sidewalk along Crevecoeur Hill toward Main.

We were happy. We'd sold out of everything, green and wax beans, beet greens, zucchini, broccoli rabe, all our lettuce, peas, salad turnips, onions, raspberries, rhubarb, and herbs. We'd also sold two dozen jars of my sister-in-law's strawberry jam, forty-five pounds of Lance Henault's wildflower honey, and $130 worth of my own fancy garlic, a first this season.

From the top of Crevecoeur where it bisects Main Street, on clear days you could see into Quebec through a gap in the hills, but not today. A leaden curtain of weather hung in between. "They're right in the teeth of it," Wilma was saying as we stepped into the crosswalk.

"They're fine. They're indoors--" eating ice cream and raspberries, I was about to say, because that had been the plan--feed the alpacas, pick the berries, swim in the pond, and make the ice cream--but I never got the words out.

A revving engine had me twisting the other way to catch a looming, yellow blur. My left hand went to Wilma's chest, and I shoved her back as I pivoted to my right.

My rump glanced hard off the car's fender, though I managed to tuck my head to the side and somersault from my shoulder to my feet again all in one motion.

The yellow car skidded and slammed backward into the tail end of a camper angled into the curb. It crashed against the bumpers of two more cars before coming to a stop.

Someone was screaming.

Wilma lay still, splayed out in the street. Three blue postal boxes stood on the corner behind her, bolted to concrete slabs. Somebody behind us who'd seen the whole thing later told police Wilma's head had struck the edge of one of those slabs.

She was unconscious, her freckles already faded and her lips gray, her eyelashes gold filaments in the unnatural brightness of the air. I touched her. She was bleeding at the back of her head.
A woman leaned over me and said, "I'm a nurse."

"We'll need a spine board," I said without looking up.

"Are you a doctor?"

"I'm a cop."

"Anybody have a phone?" the woman asked.

"Rescue Squad's on the way," somebody said. And already we could hear the siren.

The nurse dropped to her knee beside me and opened Wilma's eyelid. She felt her chest and her stomach. "She's breathing," she said, "but we'll want to support her jaw--keep her airway open."

"She's four months pregnant," I said.

The woman glanced at me. She had a tan and short white hair. "I wouldn't worry too much. Nature protects the fetus."

Behind her I could see the flashing lights of the ambulance.

"Take charge here, will you?" I said. "While I check out the driver?"

"Of course. Go."

It was a canary yellow BMW M3 coupe with temporary plates--brand-new. The driver had run the stop sign and swerved hard at the sight of us in the crosswalk, sending the car into a one-eighty.
Two onlookers, an Asia

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Excerpted from The Errand Boy: A Novel by Don Bredes
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