Five Knives by D.F. Bailey - Book Tour + Giveaway
Five Knives
A Will Finch Mystery Thriller Prequel
by D.F. Bailey
Genre:
Crime Thriller
Crime Thriller
One Reporter.
Three Dead.
Five Knives.
FIVE KNIVES welds the intensity of Jack Bauer’s “24” to the
scorching heat of THE GIRL WHO KICKED THE HORNET’S NEST.
scorching heat of THE GIRL WHO KICKED THE HORNET’S NEST.
“The author is a great talent.” — Aaron C. Brown, Amazon Top 1000 Reviewer
When a man plummets to his death from an apartment tower, Will Finch’s
shock soon becomes a nightmare. As he studies the open windows above
the corpse, Finch notices a lamp blinking erratically behind a drawn
curtain on the eleventh floor.
shock soon becomes a nightmare. As he studies the open windows above
the corpse, Finch notices a lamp blinking erratically behind a drawn
curtain on the eleventh floor.
When he investigates the distress signal, Finch discovers a woman
handcuffed to a bedpost. Over the following week, he uncovers a
conspiracy that ties the murder to a series of bombshells. The
victim’s bankruptcy. A global stock fraud. A murder spree that
began in Baghdad and is now haunting the citizens of San Francisco.
Is this the work of a serial killer, a copycat — or both?
handcuffed to a bedpost. Over the following week, he uncovers a
conspiracy that ties the murder to a series of bombshells. The
victim’s bankruptcy. A global stock fraud. A murder spree that
began in Baghdad and is now haunting the citizens of San Francisco.
Is this the work of a serial killer, a copycat — or both?
But before he can file his report for The San Francisco Post, Finch’s
leads evaporate. Within days, three victims are dead. Does a pattern
of five knife wounds provide a clue? Can he unravel the mystery
before he — and his fiancée — are caught up in the web of murder?
leads evaporate. Within days, three victims are dead. Does a pattern
of five knife wounds provide a clue? Can he unravel the mystery
before he — and his fiancée — are caught up in the web of murder?
Five Knives is the prequel thriller in the Will Finch crime series — a
novel that opens on the first day of Will Finch’s journalism
career. Everything that Finch learns about crime reporting begins
with Five Knives.
novel that opens on the first day of Will Finch’s journalism
career. Everything that Finch learns about crime reporting begins
with Five Knives.
Goodreads * Amazon
CHAPTER ONE
SAN FRANCISCO. FALL, 2007.
Will
Finch saw the corpse less than a minute after he heard the horrible noise. He
never imagined that death could sound so leaden. And yet, so wet. The punch of
a heavy body splatting onto flat concrete. A splash punctuated by a gasp. Then
a faint wheeze as the lungs released a final breath into the city night.
At
first, he couldn’t see the body. Four people stood on the sidewalk blocking his
view. Their heads tipped down at an angle as they absorbed the catastrophe that
sprawled next to their feet.
“What
happened?” Finch pushed forward and stepped around the blonde girl. She held a
hand to her mouth and let out a cry.
“I
don’t know.” The boy next to her glanced at the building above them. “He fell,”
he offered with a stony expression. Finch studied them a moment. Two couples in
their midteens, white, vibrant, all well-bred and dressed for dinner at an
upscale restaurant in nearby Jackson Square. Probably making their way down to
the Embarcadero where they could catch a street car or train back to their
suburban homes. He checked his watch. 11:18. These kids were probably trying to
beat their midnight curfews.
But
now he observed the change coming over them. The reality seeping in. One by
one, the cold hand of death caressed their faces and forced them to look again
at the bloody pulp on the ground. Turn
and watch. This is what I can do.
“Did
you see him fall?” Finch studied their shocked expressions.
Two
girls and two boys, standing stock-still. They all shrugged and glanced away
from the corpse. One of the boys lurched to the sidewalk curb and vomited into
the gutter.
“Yeah.
I did.” The blonde rubbed a hand over her mouth, her trance now broken. “Just
in the last second.”
“Do
you have a phone?”
“What?”
She glanced at him for the first time. Her eyes swept over his face as if she
were memorizing the features of his eyes, nose, mouth.
“To
call 9-1-1.”
Her
look suggested some uncertainty. Then she rummaged through a small purse that
hung from her shoulder by a chain strap.
“Here.”
She offered Finch her Nokia.
He
made a mental note of her number on the flash screen, then placed the call. The
dispatcher advised him that a response team would be by as soon as possible.
Meanwhile, he should remain on the line and not leave the scene. As he waited,
he leaned his buttocks on the door of a parked car, pressed his ear
to
the cellphone and stared at the building. He counted fourteen stories which
rose above the Bank of America outlet on the corner of Stockton and Washington
Streets. He tried to determine how many apartments had open windows. Maybe six.
His eyes swept from room to room, scanned for fluttering curtains or someone
above who might be peering back at him. Nothing.
Then
he detected something unusual. Behind the curtains in an apartment on the
eleventh floor a lamp clicked on, then off. On and off. As the pattern
continued Finch tried to time the periods of each interval. Five seconds,
seven, ten. Then the apartment blinked into darkness. And lit up again.
Finch
made another calculation: the intermittent flashes came from the sixth window
along the left side of the building. He guessed that each apartment had two
windows facing the street. The third apartment in from the north side on the
eleventh floor had one window open, one closed. The room behind the closed
window was the source of the flashing light.
He
took the phone from his ear and passed it to the blonde.
“What’s
your name?
“Alice.”
“Alice?”
“Winkler,”
she added.
“All
right, Alice. My name’s Will Finch. The 9-1-1 dispatch said someone should be
here soon. They want you to stay here and stay on the line.” He gave her a
serious look. “Now I think I saw something up there, so I'm going to see what
happened.”
“Okay.”
She said this as if she were making a polite concession and then held the phone
to her ear and nodded. She turned to her friends. Both were tending to the boy
who’d lost his dinner.
Will
walked along Washington Street past the bank and approached the glass doors
that led into the apartment building. He tugged on the handles. Both doors were
locked. He stepped to the curb and turned his attention back to Alice and her
friends. Three pedestrians had come to their aid, and then an
older
couple coaxing a Shiatsu on a leash paused to provide more support. Another
minute passed, and Finch saw a couple approaching the apartment doorway from
the interior elevator bay. He stepped up to the door. When it opened, he smiled
at the two women strolling past him and said, “Thanks. I don’t
seem
to have a key.”
He
rode the elevator alone up to the eleventh floor and wondered if he’d counted
everything correctly. The car door opened onto a hallway illuminated by covered
fluorescent ceiling lights. The carpets bore a floral pattern of braided roses
that stretched from one end of the empty corridor to the other. As he eased
toward the north side of the tower, he detected the flat odors of fried food.
Years of fried chicken and beef dinners had added their heavy flavors to the
stale air. He guessed that the building was about thirty years old. Perhaps it
had once been an impressive residential tower, but years of wear and disrepair
had tarnished its pedigree.
He
stepped along the passageway counting off the numbers on the street-side
apartments. 1110, 1108, 1106. He approached 1104, the third door from the end
of the hallway. Like all the others, it was closed. He knocked once, twice —
and again.
Nothing.
He pressed an ear to the wood panel. From the apartment’s interior, he could
make out a quiet mewling. The sound of a puppy whimpering? In the distance, he
heard the wail of approaching sirens.
He
hesitated for a moment and wondered what he was doing. What business is it of
yours? Good question, he decided and made a bargain with himself. He would try
the door handle, and if it were locked, he’d go back to the street and tell the
emergency responders what he’d discovered. On the other
hand,
if the door were unlocked, he’d go in. He turned the handle. The door opened.
※
He
stepped onto the beige carpet and closed the door behind him. He paused a
moment to assure himself that he was making the right move. Who could know? The
apartment appeared to have a standard one-bedroom layout. To his right stood a
galley kitchen with an eating nook that faced into the living room. On the
left, a bathroom. Adjacent to the bathroom a closed door — which Finch assumed
led into the bedroom.
Directly
in front of him, he could see the living room window had been pulled open. The
sheer drapes, drawn tight to the side window frames, lofted slightly in the
breeze coming off the bay. Finch sniffed the air. It smelled fresh, full of
life. He heard the emergency vehicles stop on the street as the blare
from
their sirens wound down. The whimpering noise he’d heard from the corridor was
detectable again.
He
walked to the open window and stood to the left of the window frame. From there
he peered onto the street. Directly below him lay the corpse, which from eleven
floors up, appeared to be little more than a sack of flattened pulp leaking a
dark stream of blood that slipped toward the curb. A crowd of
fifteen
or twenty people made way for the ambulance crew. A fire truck pulled up behind the ambulance.
One of the attendants approached Alice, who still held the phone to her ear.
They
began to talk and she slipped the phone into a pocket. Her friends moved to the
corner across the street. One of the boys waved to her, a gesture to let her
know they were still present, if not at her side.
The
trucks left their flashers on alert. The silence surprised Finch, and for a
moment he tried to grasp the conversation of
the ambulance crew as they attended to the body. He could make out a few
words, some standard commands, he guessed, but no complete sentences.
Then
he heard the mewling again. He turned from the window and approached the
bedroom door.
“Hello?”
He tapped the door panel with a knuckle and said, “There’s been an accident.
I’m here to check on you.”
The
whimpering now turned into something more human.
A
gasp of surprise.
“What?
See-See, is that you?” A woman’s voice, rigid with fear.
Finch
eased the door open. The bedroom was half the size of the living room. The
curtains were pulled tight across the window. With her left hand, the woman
clutched the bedpost opposite the door. Her left leg was poised on the floor as
if she was about to stand. The right calf was curled under her thigh
and
resting on the bed. She wore a bra and panties. Nothing else. Her almond-blonde
hair was disheveled. It appeared as if she’d just showered but hadn’t had time
to dry and brush her hair. From where he stood Will thought that she could be
leaning on the post to support herself.
“Jeez.
Who are you?”
Her
question came out with another whimper. Finch felt confident she was the source
of the cries he’d heard from the hall.
“Do
you need some help?”
“Help?”
A startled frown crossed her face, then a rising awareness that something had
changed. “Get me that key,” she demanded and shook her wrist against the
bedpost. She flicked her free hand toward the bureau in the corner.
Finch
now saw the handcuff that clamped her left wrist to the post. He moved to the
bureau and examined a standard handcuff key that sat in a glass ashtray on top
of the bureau. Will almost picked up the key, then thought again. He turned to
face her.
“Who
busted you?”
“Busted
me?” A flash of panic gripped her face. “No one busted me. This is all a setup
for some psycho with a rape fantasy.”
A
stick lamp stood on the bedside table next to her. He assumed that she’d been
able to reach the light with her free hand.
“Was
that you clicking the lamp on and off?”
“Yes,
damn it!” Her panic shifted to exasperation. “Now get the key so we can both
get out of here before it’s too late.”
She
tipped her head back toward the bureau.
“Before
what?”
“Before
we both get thrown out the fucking window!”
The
panic in her voice sent a chill through him and he knew he had to take her
seriously. At the same time, his doubts and uncertainties multiplied. He didn’t
understand what was going on. Not half of it. But he had to make a decision.
Will grabbed the key from the ashtray and approached the woman.
“What’s
your name?”
“Jojo.”
She shifted her right leg off the bed.
“Jojo
who?”
“Joanne
Joleena. Jojo.
Get it?”
“Hey,
look — I don’t need the attitude.” He examined the key and the handcuff
fastened to the bedpost. It took a moment to determine how they fit together.
“All
right. Just unlock me,” she pleaded with another gasp of exasperation.
“Please.”
Finch
unlocked the cuff from the post and took it in his left hand.
“What
are you doing?”
He
noticed that she had two script tattoos on her forearms. One read Forever
Young. The
other, Love
Now.
“Where are your clothes?”
“In
the bathroom.”
He
locked the free cuff around his right wrist and slipped the key into the half
pocket in his jeans. “Okay, let’s get you dressed.”
“What
the fu—”
“Come
on.” He yanked on the cuff and pulled her toward the bathroom. “Let’s get going
before it’s too late.”
An Amazon bestselling author, D.F. Bailey is a W.H. Smith First Novel
Award and a Whistler Independent Book Award finalist.
Award and a Whistler Independent Book Award finalist.
In 2015 D.F. Bailey published The Finch Trilogy — Bone Maker, Stone
Eater, and Lone Hunter — three novels narrated from the
point-of-view of a crime reporter in San Francisco. Second Life
(2017) is the first in a series of stand-alone books that follows the
characters established in the trilogy. The series prequel, Five
Knives, came out in 2018.
Eater, and Lone Hunter — three novels narrated from the
point-of-view of a crime reporter in San Francisco. Second Life
(2017) is the first in a series of stand-alone books that follows the
characters established in the trilogy. The series prequel, Five
Knives, came out in 2018.
His first novel, Fire Eyes, was optioned for film. His second novel,
Healing the Dead, was translated into German as Todliche Ahnungen.
The Good Lie, another psychological thriller, was recorded as an
audiobook. A fourth novel, Exit from America, made its debut as an
e-book in 2013.
Healing the Dead, was translated into German as Todliche Ahnungen.
The Good Lie, another psychological thriller, was recorded as an
audiobook. A fourth novel, Exit from America, made its debut as an
e-book in 2013.
Following his birth in Montreal, D.F. Bailey's family moved around North
America from rural Ontario to New York City to McComb, Mississippi to
Cape May, New Jersey. He finally "landed on his feet" on
Vancouver Island — where he lives next to the Salish Sea in the city of Victoria.
America from rural Ontario to New York City to McComb, Mississippi to
Cape May, New Jersey. He finally "landed on his feet" on
Vancouver Island — where he lives next to the Salish Sea in the city of Victoria.
For twenty-two years D.F. Bailey worked at the University of Victoria
where he taught creative writing and journalism and coordinated the
Professional Writing Cooperative Education Program — which he
co-founded. From time to time he also freelanced as a business writer
and journalist. In the fall of 2010 he left the university so that he
could turn "his pre-occupation with writing into a full-blown obsession."
where he taught creative writing and journalism and coordinated the
Professional Writing Cooperative Education Program — which he
co-founded. From time to time he also freelanced as a business writer
and journalist. In the fall of 2010 he left the university so that he
could turn "his pre-occupation with writing into a full-blown obsession."
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