The girl inside the wall.., p.1
The Girl Inside the Wall (Book #1 of Demons Among Us), page 1
THE GIRL INSIDE THE WALL
(Book #1 of DEMONS AMONG US)
by
Patrick Quinlan
Praise for Patrick Quinlan’s novels:
"Best of Crime Fiction 2006"
-- January Magazine
"Tarantino-esque first novel about the past catching up with an ex-criminal turned children’s toymaker, and by extension with his young girlfriend Lola. Lots of villains and violent deaths plus likeable characters and some quirky humour. The first chapter – in which Lola busts her way out of a thoroughly nasty rape scenario with karate-kicking panache – would hook anyone."
-- The Bookseller (UK)
"Graphic action and exhilarating chases ensue as Quinlan's characters play cat-and-mouse through Portland,...makes one hope that Smoke hasn't quit the life entirely. Lola is a fierce delight." -- Publishers Weekly
"A fast and furious debut thriller notable for a vintage collection of really rotten bad guys. Characters to care about, even the no-goods. Readers… may be bearing early witness to the arrival of a major talent."
-- Kirkus Reviews
"SMOKED should absorb any fan of Bruckheimer blockbusters and everything else that goes boom."
-- Entertainment Weekly
"A fast-paced thriller...the story moves at warp speed, capped by a cinematic chase...before ending in spectacular fashion."
-- Los Angeles Times
"Watch out for [SMOKED]. A superb debut. A great crime novel. Brilliant is the word."
-- The Independent on Sunday (UK)
"With a limping middle-aged hero and a Kill Bill-style indomitable heroine, plus a wonderful gallery of grotesque baddies straight out of B-movie casting school, this debut is a pleasurable romp with strong echoes of early Elmore Leonard. A plethora of fights, knives, guns, explosions and every form of mayhem the author can summon from his sadistic imagination punctuate a non-stop narrative tempered by a strong dose of humour." -- The Guardian on Sunday (UK)
"A sizzling crime caper paced at NASCAR-style velocity, SMOKED features a shillelagh toting bomb-maker on the run, an alluring martial arts vixen and a setting as exotic and unexpected as Portland, Maine. A turbo-charged tour de force."
-- Port City Life
"This first novel is wonderful! What makes [SMOKED] so wonderful is an author who can write great prose, great set-ups, great dialogue, and create characters that jump off the page. Can’t recommend this enough for those of you who like your thrillers on the very dark side." -- Bookaholic
"SMOKED is one cool read. Tough, suspenseful, gritty and raw. I enjoyed the hell out of it."
--Victor Gischler, Edgar-nominated author of GUN MONKEYS and SUICIDE SQUEEZE
"A tight and compelling novel. You will not be able to put SMOKED down. My shaking hand was turning pages. What a debut. Patrick Quinlan is a wonderful new writer."
-- Carolyn Chute, New York Times bestselling author of THE BEANS OF EGYPT, MAINE
"Explosive hardboiled Irish-US debut in the Elmore Leonard mold. Great characters and dialogue and well worth more than a detour."
-- Murder One
"SMOKED is a compulsively readable, confidently cool tale of criminal shenanigans that should satisfy those in need of a fix between novels by the likes of Elmore Leonard or Charlie Stella." -- Crime Spree Magazine
"[A] breathless sequence of abduction, car chases and con jobs. Just what the doctor ordered for a Hollywood flick."
-- The Calcutta Telegraph (India)
“SMOKED is a first novel rich in characters lovingly drawn and mercilessly executed. Often literally. Gives the whole expression "character assassination" a brand new meaning." "Admirers of James Ellroy or the films of Quentin Tarantino should find much to enjoy in Patrick Quinlan's debut, which is as fast-paced, and as bloody as either...."
-- The Times of London (UK)
"[A] strong cross between Elmore Leonard and Quentin Tarantino doing Elmore Leonard. The result is tightly plotted, confidently written and very hip."
-- The Sunday Observer (UK)
"The breathlessly violent farce that follows is an unabashed cut-and-shut job, cobbled from the debris of a collision between an Elmore Leonard novel and a Tarantino screenplay. Patrick Quinlan claims no originality. He's transparent about imitating the masters of hard-boiled irony and pays homage with style and gusto."
-- The Daily Telegraph (UK)
"Patrick Quinlan writes with such panache and skill that it's hard to believe this is his first novel...the ending reminds me of Elmore Leonard at his best."
--The Mail on Sunday (UK)
"An engrossing thriller that takes an aging bomb-maker on the lam, a couple of very dangerous hit men, some small-time crooks and a girl who was paying attention in self-defense class, and weaves a can’t miss sizzler of a story."
-- James Seigel, New York Times bestselling author of DERAILED (recently a hit movie) and DETOUR
"Quinlan's prose is as smooth as his character's dialogue and when the action hots up, its hard not to find yourself grinning with pure joy. Quinlan… does it with an infectious enthusiasm and a confidence that makes SMOKED a pleasure to read."
-- Crime Scene Scotland
"One hell of an exhilarating ride. Certainly one of the better debut thrillers I’ve read this year."
-- Shotsmag (UK)
"Despite its seeming simplicity, this is not easy fiction to write successfully. Patrick Quinlan has delivered a terrific new addition to the genre with his first novel. We may well be looking at a name for the future."
- - The Courier Mail (Australia)
"Hitmen, heists and high speed chases ensue in this absorbing debut. Quinlan has created an endearing cast of characters. In a word: Explosive!"
- - The Herald Sun (Australia)
"Smoked is a shocking, violent read jam-packed with action and a cast of incredible characters who are so much more than they first appear. Smoked is written in a Pulp Fiction sort of style where all the disconnected characters circle around each other's lives with devastating consequences. It's one of those gripping books that will take you to another world, far removed from any safety net. It's also a book you'll probably want to read slowly because you won't want it to end. Amazingly, it's also author Patrick Quinlan's first novel." 4½ stars out of 5
- - AAP Newswire (Australia)
"Cue kidnappings, explosions, beatings, murders and car chases aplenty. Pacey, Punchy and raw, this is one self-assured debut." - - In the Air – inflight magazine of Qantas Airlines (Australia)
"[A] thrilling ride that will keep you hanging on the edge of your seat. It will make you curse the fact that you need sleep."
-- Bullz-Eye.com
"The story combines vicious villainy with threadbare morality to produce a bang that movie producers and script-writers would be sorry to miss. Once you've picked it up, it's hard to put it down." -- Channel NewsAsia (Singapore)
“THIS is the stuff – violent, pacy, stylish and funny.”
-- The Daily Mirror
“Quinlan delights in wrong-footing the reader. A fast-moving, hugely entertaining thriller.”
-- The Observer on Sunday
“[A] Leonardesque thriller. For this top-notch noir entertainment, think Coen Brothers (Blood Simple) in print.”
-- Mystery Scene Magazine
“Quinlan brings to glorious life several offbeat, deviant characters from roads less traveled. [THE FALLING MAN] hurtles along like an express train to its smashing climax.”
-- Publisher’s Weekly
About the Author
Patrick Quinlan was the youngest child in a big, noisy, New York Irish-American family. Ten minutes late to dinner and the food was all gone.
Other kids in the neighborhood wanted to become cops, or firemen, or crime kingpins. He wanted to become Jimi Hendrix.
He has been a journalist, a political operative, a copywriter, and now a novelist.
He is the author of four other novels: SMOKED, THE FALLING MAN, THE HIT and THE DROP-OFF. He is also the co-author, with Blade Runner star Rutger Hauer, of Hauer’s memoir, ALL THOSE MOMENTS.
Quinlan lives on the coast of Maine.
Books by Patrick Quinlan
SMOKED
(Book 1 of the Stolen Millions series)
THE DROP OFF
(Book 2 of the Stolen Millions series)
THE HIT
THE FALLING MAN
Copyright © 2012 by Patrick Quinlan
All rights reserved. Except as permitted under the U.S. Copyright Act of 1976, no part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed or transmitted in any form or by any means, or stored in a database or retrieval system, without the prior permission of the author.
This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return it and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, organizations, places, events, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictionally. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
Evil is easy, and has infinite
- Blaise Pascal
PROLOGUE
The girl was young, and wearing a white dress. It was such a nice dress. She was a pretty little girl, but she was sad because she was alone and deep in darkness. She had been down here a very long time.
Once, the girl had played outside in the afternoon sun. She had sung a song to herself, and kneeled in the garden at the side of the house, and dreamed of things she could not remember now. She could hear her mother inside the house, through an open window, making dinner. Cooking sounds came to the girl, and good cooking smells. Then a dark shape crossed the sunlight, and the girl looked up.
“Daddy?”
But it wasn’t her daddy. It was the man with no face, the man who lived in shadow.
CHAPTER 1
Earlier that day, Jessica James played hooky from school. In the evening, Neil came home and tried to bash her brains in.
It was a Friday, a warm day, unseasonably warm for the start of October in Portland, Maine. Jessica – everybody called her Jessie – had gone downtown to the Old Port, the tourist area along the city’s waterfront, to see if she could make some money. She came home with a little over twenty dollars, even after buying herself two sweet Italian sausages and a Coke at the hot dog stand. A slow day, but better than school anytime.
She was eleven years old and still in the fourth grade. She had long, curly red hair, and a smattering of freckles across the bridge of her nose. She was cute, even pretty, and she knew it. She was almost a head taller than everyone else in her grade. The teachers thought she was dumb, and bound to get in trouble sooner or later. She overheard them talking about her sometimes. Her mother has a drinking problem. She has no father. She can’t keep up in school.
Almost none of what they said was true. She did too have a father. His name was Stephen James. He was the one who named her Jessie, after the famous bank robber. She loved her father, she thought about him every day, but she hadn’t seen him in a long time.
She wasn’t dumb, either. She was smarter than the teachers. She just hated school. The only part she liked, even a little, was the sports. She was the most athletic person she knew. She was the only girl on the boy’s basketball team. She could do summersaults and backflips. She could juggle, and jump over huge piles of stuff on her unicycle, even over small kids lying side by side. The Old Port tourists would laugh and clap and tell her she was wonderful. She was smart enough to let them give her their money.
Actually, there was one other thing she liked about school – learning about medieval knights. She liked to know anything about knights, especially King Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table. Jessie wasn’t a very good reader, so mostly she just watched movies about Arthur, and about Robin Hood. She had watched every movie they had about King Arthur and Robin Hood at the school library and at the small public library near her home. She had watched them all ten times each.
One time, her mom, whose name was Gail, had asked Jessie if she watched the King Arthur stories because she wanted to be like Lady Guinevere. It was a funny question. Before then, Jessie had never given Guinevere much thought at all. No, she didn’t want to be like Guinevere. She wanted to be like Sir Gawain or Sir Lancelot. She wanted to be like Robin Hood, for sure. She might want to rescue somebody like Guinevere one day, but she didn’t want to be like her.
“Jessie, you little whore.”
Neil was home now. He was Gail’s boyfriend. He had just come in the door. It was six o’clock and full dark outside. Jessie had come home at four, and had waited with a sinking feeling in her stomach the whole time. Sometimes her stomach sank so low during those two hours that she thought she might throw up.
Neil always seemed to know when she skipped school. He knew because he was mostly just a stew bum and a loser. He knew a lot of the other losers and stew bums in town, and they told him what Jessie did out there. There were eyes everywhere on the street.
Jessie was on the living room rug, lying on her stomach. She looked up from her school notebook, where until a moment ago, she had been doodling some pictures. She kept one three-subject notebook for all her classes, and it was mostly filled with her drawings.
Neil stood in the doorway to the living room, tall, gangly, disheveled in workpants and a dark blue windbreaker jacket over a denim work shirt, unruly brown hair, big hands, red nose, angry burst veins in his face. His eyes were blood red. From this angle, he looked very big.
Neil worked day laborer jobs. The motto of the company that hired him out was Work Today, Paid Today. Neil’s motto was Paid Today, Drunk Today. When he was very drunk, he could get a wild, dangerous light in his eyes – like now. Things got broken when Neil had that look in his eyes. Like lamps and dishes. Like Jessie’s arm one time. She had to lie about it to her teachers and say she fell off a swing.
He had spanked Jessie before – pulled down her pants and spanked her bare ass. More than once. Jessie could remember the hurt and helpless anger, the sting of his rough palm against her flesh. He shouldn’t pull her pants down, shouldn’t be allowed to do it, but Gail was the only one who could help her and she had done nothing to stop him.
Neil had slapped Gail before, even gave her a black eye once. Gail had gotten him arrested before. In fact, she had an order from the judge against him right now, but somehow he was still here. One more time, Gail told him, one more time and he was out. It went around in circles like that. Around and around and around. But he never seemed to leave.
“Neil?” Gail said from where she sat on the couch. “Honey?”
Jessie’s mom Gail was still beautiful. Maybe a little bit lined from all the worry, but still pretty with blonde hair. Before Neil came in, Gail had been watching the news on TV, while smoking a cigarette and having a glass of wine. Now, Jessie glanced at her mother, and saw the fear flash in her eyes like lightning. She was as scared of Neil as Jessie was.
“We need the money he brings in,” she often said to Jessie, by way of explaining things. But it wasn’t true. They didn’t need his money – he didn’t bring any money in. He worked all right, but he drank all the money they paid him before he ever made it home. Young as she was, Jessie brought home more money than he did.
The truth was Gail was afraid. She had enough money from her waitress job. It was her name on the lease. She had the order from the judge. But she was afraid what Neil would do if she finally tried to throw him out. Jessie didn’t need to be a grown up to know that. And things were complicated. Jessie knew that, too. When Neil wasn’t drunk, he could be nice. Her mom liked having him around during those times.
But now wasn’t one of those times. Neil pointed down at Jessie. His eyes were wide, huge. His face was haggard and blotched with red. He accused her like a preacher from the pulpit, condemning her to the eternal fire.
“This little girl of yours skipped school again today. A little bird came down and told me. She was in the Old Port, hanging around with boys twice her age. Men, really.” His voice rose, full of meaning. It became almost a shout. “Girl, what are you doing down there with those men? You let them touch you?”
Jessie’s whole body tensed. Her heart pounded in her chest, and her body coiled like a spring. There was something strange about Neil tonight. It was like a twig in his mind had snapped. He had it all wrong, of course, but that didn’t matter. Neil knew what he knew, or thought he knew, and there was no way to tell him different. His face darkened, like a thunderstorm rolling in.
