Die a Stranger: An Alex McKnight Novel Read online

  Someday I’ll try him out. I think I’d actually like to see how much he means it. But for now, I can’t afford the trouble. I can’t afford to take my eyes off Vinnie LeBlanc for one minute. Not yet. Not until I’m sure that Corvo isn’t on his way up from Chicago.

  I have a gun now. I have a well-earned hatred of the things, and my last gun had ended up on the bottom of Lake Superior, but I went down to the gun shop and picked up a Glock G21. I’m a former cop and I still carry a PI license, even if I seldom use it. So I had no problem getting a carry permit. I wear it in a shoulder holster during the day, whether I’m tacking plastic onto the windows of the cabins, or splitting firewood, or sitting by the fireplace at the Glasgow.

  At night I keep it close to my bed. I watch the road and I listen.

  That’s the part that Henry Carrick doesn’t get. Henry Carrick and Mary LeBlanc and Regina LeBlanc and every other member of the tribe, they just don’t understand that Vinnie doesn’t live on their reservation anymore.

  He lives on mine.

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  Thanks as always to the “usual suspects,” new and old—Bill Keller and Frank Hayes, Peter Joseph and everyone at Minotaur Books, Bill Massey and everyone at Orion, Jane Chelius, Euan Thorneycroft, Maggie Griffin, Mary Alice Kier and Anna Cottle, MWA, Bob Randisi and PWA, Bob Kozak and everyone at IBM, Nick Childs, David White, Elizabeth Cosin, Jeff Allen, Rob Brenner, Jan Long, Phil and Dennise Hoffman, Taylor and Liz Brugman, Larry Queipo, former chief of police, Town of Kingston, New York, and Dr. Glenn Hamilton from the Department of Emergency Medicine, Wright State University.

  Also, to the memory of Ruth Cavin.

  And as always, to Julia, my best friend more than ever; to Nicholas, who has the biggest heart of anyone I know; and to Antonia, who amazes me every single day.

  Also by Steve Hamilton

  Misery Bay

  The Lock Artist

  Night Work

  A Stolen Season

  Ice Run

  Blood Is the Sky

  North of Nowhere

  The Hunting Wind

  Winter of the Wolf Moon

  A Cold Day in Paradise

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  STEVE HAMILTON’s first novel, A Cold Day in Paradise, won the Private Eye Writers of America/St. Martin’s Press Best First Private Eye Novel Contest before becoming a USA Today bestseller and winning both an Edgar and a Shamus Award for Best First Novel. His stand-alone novel, The Lock Artist, was named a New York Times Notable Crime Book, received an Alex Award from the American Library Association, and then went on to win the Edgar Award for Best Novel, making him only the second author (after Ross Thomas) to win Edgars for both Best First Novel and Best Novel. He attended the University of Michigan, where he won the prestigious Hopwood Award for writing, and now lives in Cottekill, New York, with his wife and their two children.

  This is a work of fiction. All of the characters, organizations and events portrayed in this novel are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.

  DIE A STRANGER. Copyright © 2012 by Steve Hamilton. All rights reserved. For information, address St. Martin’s Press, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10010.

  www.thomasdunnebooks.com

  www.minotaurbooks.com

  Cover design by David Baldeosingh Rotstein

  Cover photograph of road © rattanapatphoto/shutterstock.com

  Cover illustration of tire marks © Robert Adrian Hillman/shutterstock.com

  The Library of Congress has cataloged the print edition as follows:

  Hamilton, Steve.

  Die a stranger : an Alex McKnight novel / Steve Hamilton.

  p. cm.

  ISBN 978-0-312-64021-7 (hardcover)

  ISBN 978-1-25001319-4 (e-book)

  1. McKnight, Alex (Fictitious character)—Fiction. 2. Private investigators—Michigan—Upper Peninsula—Fiction. 3. Missing persons—Fiction. 4. Upper Peninsula (Mich.)—Fiction. I. Title.

  PS3558.A44363D54 2012

  813’.54—dc23

  2012010695

  eISBN 9781250013194

  First Edition: July 2012