Title: The Black Song Inside
Author: Carlyle Clark
Publisher: Thomas & Mercer
Pages: 435
Language: English
Genre: Mystery/Thriller
Format: Paperback, Kindle, Audiobook
Purchase at AMAZON
Atticus Wynn and Rosemary Sanchez, newly engaged private
investigators, have seen the dark and violent side of life. Nothing, though,
has prepared them for an explosive murder investigation that threatens to tear
their relationship apart as they struggle to solve a case that could leave them
in prison or dead.
Atticus’s
manipulative ex-girlfriend bursts back into their lives wielding a secret about
Rosemary’s family that she exploits to force the couple into investigating the
execution-style slaying of her lover. The case thrusts Atticus and Rosemary
headlong into the world of human trafficking and drug smuggling, while
rendering them pawns in Tijuana Cartel captain Armando Villanueva’s bloody bid
to take over the cartel.
The Black Song
Inside is a vivid crime thriller rife with murder and madness, melded
with gallows humor and the heroism of two flawed and compelling protagonists
who, if they can save themselves, may learn the nature of redemption and the
ability to forgive.
First Chapter:
Chapter 1
ATTICUS WYNN’S GAZE locked on the
distorted twin reflections of himself in Detective Meadows’s sunglasses as he
prepared to spur himself toward an action that had, for countless people, led
to immediate and violent death.
The two men stood
in Atticus’s driveway, facing each other a body length apart. Bloated clouds
riddled with darkness, threatening to add to San Diego ’s record summer rainfall, bunched
and rolled across the noon
sky as though something large and better unseen moved restlessly inside them.
The moisture and heat conspired to transform the air into the breath of a
beast.
Detective Meadows
stood spread-legged in a pair of khakis, his palms upturned, fingers hooked.
His gray golf shirt bulged across his waist, but his arms and shoulders were
humped with muscle. His smile was as unnatural as his gel-spiked hair. “Are you
going to help us out or not” he asked. “We’re just looking for some
professional courtesy here.”
Atticus, back to
the wall of his Spanish-style stucco home, hands jammed beneath his armpits
with the thumbs skyward, narrowed his eyes. Professional courtesy? That meant
Meadows knew Atticus was a private investigator. The subtext was also
clear--tell us what you know or lose your license. What had Claire gotten him
into? No way to know but to go with Meadows. Before he did however, there was
one ploy he could try. It was risky, perhaps fatal. Like every other
African-American man, Atticus’s elders had jack-hammered into him the need to
never surprise a cop, and he never had, until now.
Atticus lunged
into Detective Meadows’s personal space, his face wrangled into a grin. His
hand darted up to clutch and squeeze the tall man’s shoulder as he said, “I’d
be glad to help.”
The detective
flinched, shoulder flexing under Atticus’s palm, fair-skinned cheeks roaring
with redness. Atticus stepped back, hands dangling at his sides. He gauged
Meadows’s reaction, expecting threats, a tirade, a freckled fist crashing into
his jaw--anything but a conciliatory nod and a thin-lipped grin like a slit in
an overripe peach.
The black-veined
clouds felt very close then, their shadows obscuring the rules of the world
Atticus knew. In his experience, men like Meadows considered every encounter a
confrontation and would have it no other way. What could motivate him to meet
Atticus with such a commitment to faux friendliness?
The detective
stepped over to his gray, unmarked cruiser; its buggy whip antenna, fastened
into an arc like a scorpion’s tail, quivered with the opening of the door. The
back door.
“What happened to
professional courtesy?” Atticus said.
Meadows held the
smile, the tendons in his neck as taut with potential as the power lines
overhead. “Regulations”.
“Of course,”
Atticus said, walking toward the cruiser. “What other reason could there be?”
An hour later in
police headquarters, Atticus had spent forty-five minutes alone in an
interrogation room that reeked of ammonia and fear, with no idea whether his
wait was to last seconds or hours. He expected that. It’s part of how they
break you. The waiting and wondering make you feel powerless even when you know
that’s what it’s supposed to do. If it were important, they’d talk to you
immediately, right? So it’s probably no big deal. No need to keep your guard
up. By the time they finally come for you, you’re desperate to talk yourself
out of your situation. And getting you anxious and talking is what
interrogation is all about.
In the age of the
smartphone, the isolation ploy doesn’t work as well with a cooperative witness
like Atticus. But smartphones create problems too. Like trying to explain why
you didn’t call your fiancee, who’s also your partner in your PI business, the
moment you had a chance. Pondering Rosemary’s reaction, Atticus shook his head.
No way could he
actually talk to her. She’d hear the stress in his voice before he finished his
first sentence. And what could he say? “Why am I stressed, honey? Well, the
cops are questioning me. Why you ask? Well, it’s like this. Remember Claire?
That’s right--my ex, Claire. You know, the sister of your former fiance who
killed himself after you dumped him? The one who despises you, swore she’d
never forgive you. Well, funny thing, hon. Guess what! She’s blackmailing me
into helping her beat a murder charge. What has she got on me, you ask? What
could she possibly blackmail me with? Oh nothing. Nothing at all. Actually, the
person she’s got something on is you.”
He compromised and
texted Rosemary, asking her to shoot him as much info as she could on Meadows
ASAP.
Meadows shoved the
door open and marched in with a man he introduced as Detective Morales, his
partner. Morales stood behind Meadows, thumbs hooked in his belt, and smiled
vaguely at Atticus. He seemed to be trying for harmless, but stocky and clad in
a bright-banded shirt, his dark-skinned face spattered with nodules and
pockmarked, black-pebble eyes measuringly cold, and a bald head, he looked like
a Gila monster eyeing a wounded rabbit.
Meadows sat at the
head of the table and plunked down a tape recorder. “We’re going to play a 911
call. Please tell us if you recognize the voice of the caller or have any idea
what she’s talking about.”
Atticus nodded,
suspecting the real reason they wanted to play it for him without a hint of
what it was about was to keep him from having the chance to guard his reaction.
That didn’t worry him. His childhood had trained him to hide his feelings well.
The question was how was he going to glean more information than he gave?
“911, what’s your
emergency?” the dispatcher said.
“There’s a girl,”
a woman said, choking back tears. “She needs help.”
“Is she there with
you?”
“No, no, oh God
help me. I left her out there.”
“Left here where,
ma’am?”
“In the desert.
She was dying and I . . .I just left her there. You have to understand! She was
already dying. There was nothing I could have done. It was hours ago. She’s
dead by now anyway.”
Meadows leaned
toward Atticus. Morales seemed to stop breathing, but who can tell with a Gila
monster?
Then came the
sound of five quick thwacks that sounded like the receiver was being banged
against something while the woman repeated “f**k” over and over.
“Listen, ma’am,”
the dispatcher said, “you need to calm down and tell me who you are, where you
are, and where the girl is. We can send people to give you whatever help you
need.”
The woman was
suddenly back, her voice tight and venomous. “You can send me whatever help I
need? That’s so wonderful. Can you send someone who can tell me how to get my
soul back?”
“Ma’am, I--“
“It’s a very
simple f**king question! Can you send me someone who can help me get my f**king
soul back, or can't you?”
“Ma’am, you need
to calm--“
“GOD HELP ME!” the
woman shrieked.
There was banging
again, but this sounded different, not something hard against something hard,
but soft against hard. The woman’s crying grew fainter, along with the sound of
footsteps walking away, and then came the roar of a car engine and the squeal
of tires. The tape ended.
“What was that at
the end there?” Atticus asked. He hadn’t recognized the voice or had a clue
what was going on, which was good, for him at least. For that woman and that
girl, the moon was closer than good.
Morales and
Meadows glanced at each other. Morales shrugged. Meadows said, “She was calling
from one of those three-quarter phone booths. We’ve got a witness who said she
went crazy at the end, banging the plastic with her fists, palms, elbows, her
head, everything. Then she staggered away crying, got into a car, and drove
away.”
“Was she alone?”
“Yes.”
“Do you know what
girl she was talking about?”
“The question is,
Atticus, do you?”
“Not a clue.”
“When was the last
time you saw Clarice Rousseau?”
Atticus blinked,
paused, blurted too late, “About two hours ago.”
Morales tilted his
head, his brow furrowing, a caricature of confusion.
Meadows leaned
forward and said, “Took you awhile to remember. Weird, isn’t it?”
So much for not
giving anything away, Atticus thought. Damn. He had been foolish to think he
could spring a trap laid by professionals, snatch the bait, and spring away
unscathed. Now they had him on the ropes, and the way to get off them was by
swinging. “I wasn’t remembering. Just found it quite a coincidence that you
would ask about her right after the first time I’ve seen her in years. You were
following her, huh? Then you followed me. The timing’s about right. You ran my
license, pulled my files, and then decided to drag me in here. But you came to
see me alone, Detective. Isn’t that a break with your beloved regulations?”
Meadows’s blue
eyes were almost as unreadable as his sunglasses were. “Was your meeting with
Claire planned?”
“My lawyer said
she wanted to see me. I met her there.”
“Why did she want
to see you so bad?”
“Claire didn’t
really want to see me,” Atticus said, skating the rim of a lie. “She was just
hoping I would clean up her mess like I used to.”
“Mess?” Meadows
asked.
“She said you guys
think she killed her boyfriend, and the Tijuana Cartel thinks she has the drug
money her boyfriend supposedly had.”
When the
detectives heard “drug money”, their gazes sharpened. Atticus couldn’t tell if
he had surprised them or confirmed something they suspected.
“How much money?”
Meadows asked.
“You guys don’t
know?” Silent stone cop faces was the reply, so Atticus said, “Don’t know. Way
she talked, it sounded like a lot.”
“Why come to you?”
“We dated in
college. Maybe she thought I was still carrying a torch for her and would be
eager to help her out.”
“Will you?”
Meadows was poking around, feeling out whether Atticus was a broken-hearted
puppet awaiting the return of his puppeteer, a pathetic man who would murder on
command for a lover who’d scorned him.
Atticus shook his
head. “Seeing her was the best thing that could have happened to me. Now I know
I’ve moved on. I don’t wish her any ill, but she’s on her own.”
Meadows’s
expression told Atticus that the last line sold it--the jilted lover taking a
smidgen of pleasure in his ex’s pain, but not enough to be suspected of being
the cause of it. Pettiness can be useful.
“Do you know a
Steven Delacroix from Morgan City ,
Louisiana
“No, but I know
he’s the victim,” Atticus said. Claire was from Morgan City , but she had never mentioned
Delacroix back when she and Atticus were together.
Meadows and
Morales eyed him expectantly. When you’re innocent, they expect you to proclaim
it loudly and passionately, to anyone who will listen, but to Atticus that felt
like begging, and begging he would never, ever do. But show emotion? That he
could do, just by cracking open the bottle he kept it in. Instead, he stared
into the space between the detectives, keeping his face pleasant and quizzical,
knowing that few could bear a charged silence like the detectives had created.
Atticus let the moment stretch.
What were the
detectives really up to? Too many things from the moment Meadows stopped him in
his driveway didn’t make sense. They were too loose with information without
knowing what he knew. Like they needed him to know certain things. Could the
interrogation be a ruse? If so, why? What did the girl and woman on the tape
have to do with the murder of Claire’s boyfriend and the missing drug money?
Atticus knew that
despite what primetime TV might say, cops never turn to civilians looking for
Sherlock Holmesian feats of investigation. They use civilians as informants,
willing or unwilling, knowing or unknowing, pawns pushed into battle with
knights, bishops, rooks, and queens. As for the fate of the pawn, that’s on
him. It’s a blame-the-victim world.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
My Review:
It is hard to believe that I could laugh while dealing with such important issues, including war related PTSD. I thought that I would be upset through at this book, and then be relieved by the ending. This author has a fantastic writing style, and is very skilled. I was able to laugh at the characters, or at least at how they were described, and then immediately worry about Rosemary. The characters slowly made their way into my head, so much so that I was vested in their futures. The author is also very vivid in descriptions, and other writing. At times it was if I was looking at pictures, or seeing a movie. The mystery was also a great addition to the story, and I liked the ending, however I definitely want to read more about these characters. I am giving this book a 5/5. I was given a copy to review, however all opinions are my own.
Pump Up Your Book & Carlyle Clark are giving away a $100 Amazon Gift Card!
- By entering the giveaway, you are confirming you are at least 18 years old.
- One winner will be chosen via Rafflecopter to receive the Accelerate Your Power Grand Prize.
- This giveaway begins December 2 and ends February 28.
- Winner will
be contacted via email on
- Winner has 48 hours to reply.
Good luck everyone!
Wow, a five!!! Thanks so much, Vicky!
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