Thriller – Crime – Mystery by Joseph Lewis
I was happily busy this past week. My youngest daughter, Emily, got married this past Saturday. It was such a joyous weekend. Understandably, I didn’t have the time to post this until today. They are driving back from their honeymoon as I write this, and because it was a special weekend, I wanted to give you a special treat.
I’m giving you two snippets of two books based upon my work as a counselor, and from my volunteer work with the Wetterling Foundation for Stranger Abducted and Sexually Exploited Children. My job was to present to parents, educators, and caring adults what they can do to protect children and how to spot something questionable with regards to a child. The second task I performed was just as, if not more important: help children protect themselves from adults who might harm them.
The first snippet is from Taking Lives, Prequel to the Lives Trilogy. It hit #3 on Amazon in several categories. This is actually the second book I ever wrote, but the first book that was published. My previous publisher, who is no longer in the business, wanted me to write a prequel to introduce the reader to the Lives Trilogy. That’s exactly what Taking Lives is.
Set approximately two years before Stolen Lives, it introduces you to the series, but more importantly, it introduces you to four important characters that are in most every book I’ve written. The other interesting thing is that it ends on a cliffhanger. There is no easy or neat ending, but it leads directly into the first book of the trilogy, Stolen Lives. Here is a snippet from Taking Lives, Prequel to the Lives Trilogy.
Chapter Thirty-Six
When Chet arrived at the Hoover Building that morning, Pete and Summer were already waiting for him at his cubicle. Summer sat on his chair, while Pete leaned up against the desk with his arms folded across his chest.
Pete stood up straight and smiled when he saw him. “Chet, I think we have an idea.”
Summer stood up, looked out over the top of the cubicles at the rest of the bullpen, knowing that there wouldn’t be a lot of privacy. She said, “Why don’t you bring your laptop and we’ll go to the conference room, okay?”
Chet had a leather computer bag hung over his shoulder as usual, and didn’t bother to take it off. He dropped his car keys into his top drawer and followed the two of them out of the bullpen area. The three of them never said a word, choosing to walk in silence.
When they arrived at the conference room, they entered and Summer shut the door behind them. Chet noticed a map of the continental United States with colored push pins, marking the places where the four boys had been found, with one end of a piece of colored string attached to the pushpin, and the other attached to a pin under the picture of the boy who was found there.
“Someone’s been busy,” Chet said as he sat down and fired up his laptop. He reached into his bag and brought out another.
“Why two?” Summer asked.
“In case I have to switch between two sites. It’s faster and easier for me if I do it this way.”
Chet also pulled out two thumb drives and plugged one into the USB port in each of the computers.
“Okay, I’m ready.”
Pete looked at Summer and then back at Chet. “Here’s what I’d like you to do. For each dump site… the location where we found a body, I want you to look for any statewide Amber Alerts for boys whose ages were eleven to thirteen, either ten days previous to the body being found, to ten days after the projected time. Do this for each boy we found.”
Stunned, Chet opened his mouth, eyes wide. “Jesus! That’s brilliant, Pete. Why didn’t we think of that sooner?” And before either Pete or Summer had an opportunity to answer, Chet’s fingers flew over the keys.
“Okay, I found an alert for a boy… a Marcus Caleb Delroy, age eleven from Las Vegas, Nevada, four days after we found Brian Mullaney; still missing, listed as suspicious circumstances.”
“What race?” Pete asked.
“Caucasian,” he paused at the keyboard and looked up, “Because pedophiles mostly stay within their same race, right?”
Summer nodded. “Usually, and because the other boys are Caucasian, it might mean our same perverts.”
Pete went to the map and placed a different colored pushpin in the map marking the city, and then went to the whiteboard and wrote in marker the information Chet had just given them.
“Is that the only Amber Alert you found for Nevada?” Summer asked.
“Yes, at least within that time frame, and that matches our boys,” Chet said, not looking up from the keyboard, fingers still flying.
He worked the laptop a while longer and said, “That’s it.”
Pete sighed, as did Summer.
“But wait. I found something interesting if you’re looking for patterns,” Chet said absentmindedly.
“What?” Summer asked.
“Okay. We found Robert Monroe in White Cloud, Michigan, but he was from Terre Haute, Indiana and that’s only one state away. We found Gary Haynes in Coal Run, Ohio and he was from Michigan; again, one state away. We found Richard Clarke in Victorville, California and he was from Arizona.”
“One state away,” Summer finished for him.
“And we found Brian Mullaney in Nevada, and he’s from California.”
“All boys were found one state away from where they were taken,” Summer said.
“So, it could be that they dump a kid in one state and pick up a kid in a neighboring state. Maybe,” Chet said tentatively, not sure if his detective work was in the same league as Pete’s or Summer’s.
“Whoever is doing this…” he trailed off as he thought about it, and then said, “Possibly, they dump a body in one state and pick up a kid in a different state, like Chet said.”
Pete said with his back to Summer and Chet. “Or, they dump a kid in the same state where they pick a boy up,” he paused, “Maybe. As nearly as we can tell.”
“Maybe, as nearly as we can tell,” Summer echoed.
“We might have something, Guys. We might have something,” Pete said.
“So, when do we want to run this theory by Musgrave and Rawson?” Chet asked.
Neither Pete nor Summer answered him.
—
Taking Lives, Prequel to the Lives Trilogy
Available in both Kindle and Paperback
Total Strangers, One Man and Two Boys, each hold a piece of a deadly puzzle and they don’t know it.
The bodies of six boys are found in remote areas in different states with startling characteristics. FBI Agent Pete Kelliher and his team from the Crimes Against Children Unit investigate and discover a curious pattern that his superiors refuse to believe. Unfortunately for Pete, there are no other leads and nothing else to go on, and no proof to verify his theory.
The second snippet is from Stolen Lives, Book One of the Lives Trilogy. It hit #2 on Amazon in several categories, and was selected as a Finalist in the BestThriller Book Awards competition, and won a Gold Book Award from Literary Titan.
George, a fourteen-year-old Navajo boy, is sitting on the back steps of Jeremy Evans’s house. He was placed with Jeremy by FBI Agent Pete Kelliher, because Kelliher wanted George safely hidden from those seeking him in Arizona. George identified two suspects in the human trafficking ring.
He woke up in the dead of night from a troubling dream. In the Navajo culture, dreams are recognized as spirits offering messages to the individual. In this case, the subject of the dream was George’s grandfather, who had mentored and helped raise George from little on. Grandfather Tokay is important to George, and George often sought advice from his grandfather. Here is the snippet from Stolen Lives, Book One of the Lives Trilogy.
Chapter Thirty-Five
… He put his arm around George’s bare shoulders and George moved closer to Jeremy, allowing himself to be held. He liked Jeremy, found him to be sensitive and caring. There was goodness about him. His grandfather had taught him to look for those qualities in others and then to surround himself with the people who had possessed these qualities. He liked both Randy and Billy and thought that in another time, in another place, they would be good friends. George didn’t know many biligaana, but George understood that his grandfather would have liked this little family. He flashed back to a discussion with his grandfather years ago about biligaana with hearts of the Dine’.
“George, I can’t imagine what you’re going through,” Jeremy said softly, almost in a whisper. “I’m so sorry.”
A rabbit hopped out of the hedge line on the left side of the yard, separating the Evan’s house from the Schuster house, a family he had not yet met.
George lowered his head, weeping again.
Jeremy hugged him closer and kissed the top of his head.
George was as tall as the twins, maybe a bit shorter, and lankier. He wasn’t as solidly built, but that wasn’t to say he wasn’t strongly built. Jeremy had coached for years and knew an athlete by a certain look, a certain walk. George had both.
“The boys and I have been talking and we’d like you to consider living with us.”
Jeremy stopped at that. The boy had just lost his family and they knew nothing of one another. Yet, Jeremy had a gut feeling about George, much as he had about Randy when he had first met him. In so many ways, he had the twin’s sensitivity, Randy’s seriousness, and Billy’s athleticism. Again, it was only a hunch, but Jeremy rarely missed on people.
Yet, they had only known each other for less than a day and George had to be reeling from the loss of everything in his life, including all of those who had meant so much to him. He couldn’t imagine the loss this boy experienced.
Even in his grief, his sadness, George caught a scent of cologne, different from the deodorant he or Jeremy used. It was faint, but present. At first he thought it was the lilacs at the corner of the house, but it wasn’t. He had recognized it as being similar to the cologne or aftershave various male tourists wore when they visited or drove through the reservation.
Jeremy noticed that George had said nothing and was staring off into backyard. Perhaps he should have waited until morning to have had this talk. Real morning and not the middle of the night morning.
“I hope you consider the offer. We’d love to have you.” Jeremy said sincerely. It didn’t even seem like George had heard a word.
“Mr. Jeremy, I’m tired,” George said with a yawn and stretching. “Let’s go back inside and go to bed.”
They stood on the porch facing each other and Jeremy held George’s face gently and said, “It might not seem like it right now, George, but things have a way of working out. You’ll be okay.”
George embraced him, and then without another word, George opened the door and waited for Jeremy to enter. He did and before George followed, he took one last look at the backyard and then shut the door behind him, taking care to lock the dead bolt and the chain.
Jeremy turned to say something, but George put a hand on Jeremy’s chest and said very calmly, “Mr. Evans, there’s someone in the backyard.”
Stolen Lives, Book One of the Lives Trilogy
Available in Audio, Kindle and Paperback
Three fourteen-year-old boys are inextricably linked by abduction and murder.
Two of them were just abducted off a safe suburban street. Kelliher and his team of FBI agents have 24 hours to find them or they’ll end up like all the others… dead! They have no leads, no clues, and nothing to go on. And the possibility exists that one of his team members might be involved. A fourth boy, George Tokay, a Navajo, holds a key piece to this puzzle and doesn’t realize it.
Kelliher and his team have been on this case for two years. There isn’t much to go on, and each time he gets a break, potential witnesses are found dead. The stories of these boys are like loose threads on a sweater: pull the wrong one and it unravels completely. Slowly, Kelliher realizes that there may be one or more members of his team behind it all.
2021 Finalist, The Best Thriller Book Awards on BestThrillers.com
2021 Literary Titan Gold Award Winner
“Mr. Lewis’ characterization and descriptive powers are great. He writes his people with enormous warmth. However, he never goes down the road of over-sentimentalizing when it comes to the victims. This is hard and gritty, and he keeps it that way.” -Best Book Editors
“Stolen Lives represents an exciting probe of abduction and unusual connections between fourteen-year-old victims, and is recommended reading for thriller and intrigue fans …” -Diane Donovan, Midwest Book Review
“A harrowing and unforgettable FBI thriller.” –BestThrillers.com
“A riveting murder mystery that slowly unravels a puzzling crime that will have readers furiously flipping pages.” –Literary Titan
I hope you enjoyed this post. I’d like to hear your thoughts, so please use the comment section below. As always, thank you for following along on my writing journey. Until next time …
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