Secrets of the Dead

By John Luciew

In the streets of Harrisburg, a man is killed in what appears to be a straightforward hit-and-run - until the victim turns out to have no identity whatsoever. Obituary writer Lenny Holcomb's ability to glimpse the secrets of his column's subjects leads him to suspect that his old friend, ex-congressman George Packard, may have had a hand in the "accident." But if so, why do all the clues point to Packard's slick political rival?

With the help of ambitious reporter Jacquelyn "Jack" Towers, Lenny follows a trail of political spin and corruption to the highest levels of Pennsylvania government - where the right influence can make any problem disappear. Unfortunately, some very powerful people think Lenny Holcomb has just become a problem ...

In his sequel to Fatal Dead Lines, John Luciew doubles the action and triples the suspense. And the odds against Lenny Holcomb ever finding the truth couldn't be higher. It's a rip-roaring political yarn with an authentic, torn-from-the-headlines feel. You won't be able to put it down.

• Language: English
• Publisher: John Luciew
• Release date: Feb 8, 2013
• ISBN: 9781301325658

John Luciew

BREAKING NEWS!! All five of my full-length mystery/thrillers are coming soon in unabridged audio form. ZERO TOLERANCE and KILL THE STORY are already out for 2013 from Audible.com. SECRETS OF THE DEAD is up for full sound-recording treatment next, followed by FATAL DEAD LINES and my newest mystery, LAST CASE. I hope you will check them out. Some serious voice talent has been brought to bear to turn my best ripped-from-the-headlines page-turners into a can't-stop-listening, white-knuckle audio mystery experiences. Now, a little more about me and my books: Journalist John Luciew is the author of numerous ripped-from-the-headlines fictional thrillers that mix politics, corporate power and pulse-pounding suspense, including: KILL THE STORY, ZERO TOLERANCE, SECRETS OF THE DEAD, FATAL DEAD LINES, CORPORATE CUNNING, and now, LAST CASE. His non-fiction titles include the true-crime account, SUSPECT/VICTIM, and the real-life medical thriller, "CATASTROPHIC." FROM THE AUTHOR: If Hollywood was ever going to make a movie of one of my books, KILL THE STORY would be the one. It has everything -- a high concept, a deepening mystery rooted in actual events and more off-beat but convincingly real characters than you can count. This is journalism as I saw it -- both from the outside looking in and the inside out. It says nearly everything I have to say about the state of media today -- all without slowing the non-stop action one little bit. I hope you enjoy reading it as much as I loved writing it. Lenny Holcomb, my first literary character, spoke to me in much the same way the dead people of his obituaries speak to him. But after my first book, FATAL DEAD LINES, I found out Lenny and the dead people from his obits had more to say. Much more. SECRETS OF THE DEAD, a specially updated sequel, completes Lenny Holcomb's intriguing saga, finally presenting his incredible story in full. I hope you enjoy it, discovering the many narrative arcs that bridge both books and come to a full and satisfying resolution by the final page. ZERO TOLERANCE Is probably my most unique and unconventional book -- a thriller set in the cloaked, cloistered world of juvenile justice. Namely, a youth reform camp set in the outskirts of Pittsburgh, Pa. It also stands as my most researched novel to date. As a journalist, I spent years covering the Pennsylvania juvenile justice system at a time when the penalties and punishments for young offenders were being ratcheted up. All that authenticity is here -- along with a highly original plot that will have you guessing until the very last page. LAST CASE, my newest thriller, is set in 1978, just as acclaimed horror director George A. Romero is gearing up to shoot his zombie cult classic "Dawn of the Dead" in the Monroeville Mall, just outside Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. I was a bit too young back in 1978 to offer my able body as one of Romero's delightfully desiccated corpses in "Dawn of the Dead." But I will never, ever forget watching the Monroeville Mall - a place where I shopped for school clothes and cruised for girls - turned into a splatter-filled shopping fest for the undead. I guess you could say it's haunted me all these years. --jcl, Feb./2013

Book preview

PART I:

LEFT FOR DEAD

Chapter 1

NOVEMBER – ELECTION DAY

These shrimp taste funny, declared Maddie, my wife, right in the middle of the election-eve party of an old friend.

Try one, Leonard. See what you think. She dangled a limp, translucent article of seafood in front of my face, then looked disappointed when I pursed my lips and turned my head.

I’m not here to be a food critic, I muttered, then raised a glass of Yuengling Lager to my mouth, so she wouldn’t try to force-feed me anything else.

I’m just sayin’, the shrimp’s not fresh, she snorted, then took another bite, just to be sure. Guess wintering in Florida these last few years has spoiled me for the seafood up here.

I was about to inform Maddie that her blessed winters in Orlando had spoiled me, as well, but I thought better of it. The last thing I needed was to start another argument and cause a scene in front of George and Grace Ann. They had enough problems of their own right then, judging by the lop-sided vote totals coming in from Harrisburg and beyond. George Packard, thought to be invincible as the capital city’s Republican voice in the U.S. Congress for going on two decades, was getting his ass kicked by some Democrat-come-lately that pundits had dismissed as the Hershey Kid.

To say that the outcome had cast a pall over the proceedings would’ve been a gross understatement. The banquet hall had all the solemnity of a funeral. I wasn’t about to disturb it by quarrelling with my wife. Besides, I had once dated Grace Ann in what seemed like a lifetime ago. I badly wanted Maddie and me to project the illusion of domestic tranquility. I should have known that no one is that good of a magician.

There was no denying that I had gotten far too accustomed to the freedom afforded by Maddie’s extended stays down south. Each year, her returns to Harrisburg had become more and more difficult, an annual dose of heavy stress and cut-it-with-a knife tension. There were her usual gripes about the slipshod way I kept house. And, of course, there were the constant digs about my drinking, and more recently, the time I liked to spend with Jacquelyn Towers at the old reporters’ bar, the Passway Café. But more than anything, it was Maddie’s insistence upon dusting off and putting out all the old photos of Jesse, our only child. The daughter who ran away from us at fourteen.

Each year, those pictures of our daughter frozen at age fourteen looked sadder and sadder, as if she were the ghost of my mistakes, stalking me to the end. I’d put up with it for those months in the summer and fall when Maddie was home. But sometimes, when the face of my daughter would catch me in an unguarded moment, my stomach would ache with loss, emptiness and regret. It was as if that old photo had just knocked the wind, and everything else, right out of me.

Come each winter, when Maddie finally left for Florida, I put all those pictures away. Well, not all the pictures. All these years, I’ve kept one picture of Jesse in my wallet, like any father would. The plastic covering is yellow and dirty now, and the picture itself is faded. But I have never had the strength to pluck it from my wallet.

By the time Maddie and I attended George Packard’s election night party that fall, I was already counting down the days to when she’d be departing for warmer climes, just after New Years’. I was in the home stretch, at least. It was early November. I just had to make it through Thanksgiving and Christmas, then I’d have our row home to myself again. I may complain long and loud about what that Orlando condo was costing us, but, by damned, it was worth every penny in peace of mind.

My wife discarded the offending piece of seafood after her second, unpleasant bite. She wrapped the half-eaten shrimp in a red, white and blue paper napkin and slipped it back onto the serving table.

I gestured toward a man in a chef’s hat carving meat further down the buffet line. Why don’t you try the prime rib, I said. Looks nice ‘n bloody, just how you like it.

I think I will, she said curtly. Least they know how to do cow up here.

That they do, I said. One thing about ol’ George, he goes first class. Got the shrimp on ice, the prime rib under the hot lamp and the Yuengling on tap. Helluva a party, I’ll give ‘em that. I’m gonna miss it.

Points off for the shrimp, Maddie corrected.

But party wasn’t the right word for the occasion. A wake was more like it. It was early on that election night, but the race was over. And so was my friend George Packard’s political career. From the looks of it, he was taking it pretty hard. He and Grace Ann had just emerged from their hotel suite, where they had been watching the grim, early returns, and were now making their way through the vast ballroom, accepting condolences. I could see the tumbler of Scotch in George’s liver-spotted hand. It looked like a double.

These affairs were typically big draws, regular as clockwork in the two-year election cycle. That George, the heavily favored Republican, would win was a given. And all the VIPs of Harrisburg would turn out to congratulate him. There’d be the local politicians, the county officials, the top donors and the successful businessman -- all gland-handing him and bending his ear.

I didn’t fit into such a mix, of course. But George and I went way back to when he was a first-termer on the Harrisburg School Board and I was the young hack assigned to the beat. I watched as he defused a looming teacher’s strike without giving a king’s ransom to the union and knew right away that he was going places. I chronicled his political rise, and he never forgot me. Come his every election -- be it for city council, then county commissioner, state house and then finally ten terms in the U.S. Congress -- he graciously invited Maddie and I to all his parties. For one night, we’d rub elbows with the high-rollers, and Maddie would complain about the shrimp. Or criticize the ladies’ gowns. Or point out which men were alcoholics. Or spot which set of eyes, tits and thighs had gone under the plastic surgeon’s knife. I guess you could say it was fun. Anyway, I could drink the top-shelf booze for free, and it felt good just being invited to something by someone.

That night, however, the room was half-empty. The whole place stunk of defeat, an odor detected instinctively by political animals. Even the red, white, and blue Packard For You balloons were drooping. Many people, even some of George’s most loyal supporters and high-dollar contributors, had already turned tail. Perhaps, it wasn’t too late to hitch their wagons to the winning campaign of the young, handsome Jayce Montgomery. He was the conquering hero from Hershey. The fair-haired boy. The orphan who made good. The man who had saved the venerable Hershey Foods Company, maker of chocolate bars and peanut butter cups, from the corporate raiders.

To do it, Montgomery had used the high-priced education that had been afforded him at the orphan’s school so generously endowed by dead chocolate magnet Milton S. Hershey. Then, Montgomery employed all those smarts and savvy paid for by chocolate to preserve the town’s birthright as The Sweetest Place on Earth. He led an army of Hershey school alumni -- once orphans and disadvantaged youth, but now educated, politically-connected and powerful in their own right. And together, they crushed the corporate numbers crunchers, asset sellers and equity vultures who were out to raid the company. Montgomery had won one for the little guy, the small shareholder, the average citizen. He had beaten those big, fat CEOs, CFOs and goddamn UFOs. It was a hell of a victory. The timing couldn’t have been better, amid all the news of corporate scandals, shrinking pension funds and falling stock prices.

The people would not forget. The company of Hershey would stay in the town of Hershey. All those tourism dollars would be preserved, and the owners of all that valuable Hershey real estate, including those big, fancy homes on millionaire’s row, could rest easy. Their property values were safe. Hershey was saved.

That was how Jayce Montgomery, a three-term Democrat in the state house with an unremarkable political career and a quiet, little law practice, would be elected to the U.S. Congress. To make his political feat all the more amazing, he was winning on a night when Democrats across the country were being swept asunder by the political tide of a popular, wartime Republican president.

All in all, it was quite the story. Irresistible really. More to the point, it was Jacquelyn Towers’s story. The young, pretty reporter who I was once proud to call my partner was there to cover it all.

Jack was a rising star at The Harrisburg Herald. She was fresh from wiping the marbled halls of the Capitol with the tattered reputation of Gov. Lowell Winters, he of the terrible scandal involving his own dead press secretary. So happened, I had a little something to do with that story, as well. Me and my special talent, my reporter’s instinct, the mysterious way the secrets of the dead came to me in some of the obituaries I wrote. But in the end, I gave the story to Jack, and she rode it to lofty heights.

Now, with the inside account of Jayce Montgomery’s feel-good victory for the people, Jack had achieved a one-two journalistic punch that was sure to have all the big boys salivating.

Even the dying newspaper industry recognized talent. Word had it that The Baltimore Sun and The Boston Globe were interested in her. But Jack was after bigger things. She seldom discussed her career with me. It must have made her uncomfortable telling me about all the doors that were opening to her on account of the information I had given her. The fact that my own fortunes at the newspaper were once again on the downswing made the situation between us all the more delicate. Another round of layoffs loomed, and obituary writers were expendable, very expendable.

All I knew was that Jack would be leaving me soon, just as my friend and colleague Eddie Moore had left years before. Then, I’d be all alone again. And I’d hate my job all the more.

What I wasn’t about to do. What I was determined not to let happen, was to regret passing those tapes to Jack and handing her a career that I could only dream about.

She had never told me, but newsroom scuttlebutt had it that The Washington Post was interested, too. There were whispers that even the Gray Lady, herself, The New York Times, was checking Jack’s references and reading her clips.

***

I looked for Jack on that election night. From the hotel ballroom of Packard’s party, I waltzed up to a television monitor, beer in hand, and I watched local coverage of the much livelier festivities at Montgomery headquarters. The place was packed. Ticker tape and balloons were cascading down. The band was striking up Happy Days Are Here Again. Montgomery was making his way into the ballroom. And maybe, just maybe, I saw the shine of Jack’s hair, the glint of her emerald eyes, the flash of her smile in the adoring crowd surrounding the new congressman.

But I had other matters to attend to just then. I had to offer condolences to an old friend, fresh from his rambling concession speech to a nearly empty ballroom. And I would have to try and act happy in front of an old girlfriend.

I found Maddie by the desert table and led her by the arm toward the bar. George’s fleshy jowls were drooping as he leaned over a glass of Scotch. Grace Ann was there, too, regal as ever, even in the face of defeat. They were loyal friends, and I felt bad for them.

As Maddie and I neared the bar, I caught George’s tired eyes. He offered me a pained smile that I couldn’t bring myself to return. I hadn’t the slightest inkling of it then, but in little more than twenty-four hours I would be accusing this good, old friend of murder.

Chapter 2

George, I don’t know what to say. My hand found the congressman’s shoulder and gave it a squeeze. Hi, Gracie. How are you holding up?

She shrugged, and I fake-kissed her rouged cheek. It was funny, but when I looked at her, I still saw the young woman of my youth, not the elegant, older one of today. She returned a warm smile, but before she could speak, her husband interrupted.

Sit down, Lenny. Have a drink George’s face was red, his eyes glassy from the alcohol that I was sure had been flowing since the first trickle of those depressing election returns had come in. Hell, he had probably needed a few stiff belts up in the suite just to muster the courage to come down here and accept all that empty sympathy from the few supporters who remained.

After all the money we shelled out on this campaign, least don’t let the booze go to waste, George went on. You were never one to turn your nose up at a little snort. You too, Madelyn. What’ll it be?

Scotch is fine for me, I said, taking the stool next to George.

I just feel so bad, Maddie gushed theatrically. I can’t believe you lost.

George patted my wife’s hand, and I rolled my eyes. A minute ago, her biggest concern was the lousy shrimp.

And you, my dear. Maddie turned to Grace Ann. You poor thing. I bet that’s a new dress, too. You’ll never be able to wear it again without thinking of tonight.

Oh Christ, I thought. Vodka cranberry for her. I jerked my head toward my wife. Make it a double. Maybe it’ll calm her down. She seems to be taking it worse than you two.

Lenny! Maddie admonished.

George raised his hand, instantly attracting the bartender’s attention. It made me wish that I could command that kind of respect, especially in a bar. In minutes, we all had fresh drinks. Even George, who didn’t need another one.

Our women huddled together, while I sat quietly next to George and he contemplated his Scotch. I tried not to listen and willed myself not to cringe as Maddie let fly one undisguised dart after another about how much Gracie had paid for this piece of jewelry or that bag. My wife was easily wowed by costly price tags and designer labels, and I could see that it was making Grace Ann uncomfortable. I was about to excuse the both of us, when George grabbed my arm.

I don’t know what’s worse. His face was a study of concerted seriousness exaggerated by drunkenness.

How do you mean, George?

I can’t make up my mind which of us has it worse, he repeated. See, everything has always come to me, Lenny. It’s all come so easy. Grace Ann came to me. Hate to say it, buddy, but you weren’t much competition, not even then.

He clapped me hard on the back and twisted a shit-eating grin onto his alcohol-numbed face. He had me there, the prick.

All the elections came easy, too. he said, waving his hand in the air as if trying to grasp those now-remote triumphs. The votes, the speeches, the promises -- easy. Gets the point you come to expect it. You expect to win. I expected to win. Then, one day, it doesn’t happen.

He dropped his head and looked at his Scotch. Then, he snatched it off the bar and drained the glass.

When that happens, you don’t know what to do. Because you have no reference point for it, no experience with it. His voice was breathy and he stunk of alcohol and sour, nervous sweat. It’s a real kick in the teeth. Shakes you to the core. But I still don’t know what’s worse.

He turned to me and poked a finger into the center of my chest. Then there’s you, Lenny. You’re the opposite, see? You don’t have much experience with things coming easy. But at least you’ve never had the expectations, either. So, you’re not disappointed. See what I mean? It has to be easier that way. Has too.

I should have been offended. Deep down, maybe I was. But I let it pass. George Packard was deep into Scotch-bottle philosophy. He was trying to rationalize having just gotten his ass kicked.

Timing, I said without much conviction. It was just bad timing, George. The kid had this whole Hershey thing going. He rode the backlash against corporate America, all that shit. You ran into a buzz saw, George.

The party’s going to blame me, he said, jerking a thumb toward himself. They’ll say I got weak. Got lazy, lost my edge. They’ll say I shoulda never have lost the district, not during a war on terror when a Republican president’s approval ratings are through the roof. Not in this district, damn it. This is GOP bedrock.

Just then, the ten o’clock news came on. The TV over the bar was trumpeting George’s defeat and Jayce Montgomery’s triumph.

Barkeep, I shouted. Can we get another channel on that thing.

No, No. George shook his head and pointed to the screen. Leave it go. We all know the score of this one. Let’s see what that little Hershey squirt has to say. Turn it up, will you?

The female TV reporter had just finished with the recap, and they were cutting to Montgomery’s victory party at the Hershey Lodge and Convention Center. The packed house was going nuts. Montgomery, his wife and their three-year-old son were basking in applause on stage. I remembered Jack telling me, back when Montgomery was still a long shot in the race, that the guy had the right stuff. He didn’t drink. Didn’t smoke. And the man who was an orphan had insisted upon adopting a son. But I wondered what Montgomery’s too-thin wife with her labored good looks had thought of that, what with her own ovaries withering away as she neared forty.

The crowd was in a real lather now. The packed house was chanting something that sounded like, Jayce for Justice. Montgomery was loving it. He stepped to the podium and raised his arms, gesturing for quiet. He wanted to get his perfect sound bite on the news.

From the beginning, this race was about you, he said, pointing with Kennedyesque flair to the crowd, and by implication, the folks at home. We know what we need to do, don’t we? We know we have to rebalance our priorities. We know we have to take the important decisions out of corporate boardrooms and put them back into the town halls. We got off to a good start here in Hershey. Now I’m going to take your message to Washington.

The cheers were at fever pitch now, but Montgomery wasn’t done.

Like I said all along in this campaign, they can take the kid out of Hershey, but they can’t take Hershey out of this guy right here. Say it with me now. With that, the crowd joined the congressman-elect for his now-famous campaign slogan. I’m Hershey bred, Montgomery shouted, hundreds of other voices echoing him. I’m Hershey fed. And one of these days, I’m gonna be Hershey dead. The whole room burst into applause. Then he added, But not anytime soon, I hope.

Okay, I heard enough, George snapped at the bartender, just as the Hershey-colored brown and silver balloons cascaded down on the joyous crowd. And get me another drink.

Grace Ann shot her husband a cold look. George, she said, but stopped herself.

He turned to her with fight in his eyes. It was fight he didn’t have for Jayce Montgomery, but he was ready to uncork it now if his wife uttered one more word about his drinking.

Would you mind very much if I went home early? Grace Ann asked him. I’m not feeling well. I think I’m going to say my good-byes and get a ride, if that’s all right. I’ll leave you to finish up here.

That’s fine, Grace, George said, giving her his back. Don’t wait up.

It was a cold exchange, and Grace Ann made short work of excusing herself. As she left, Grace Ann passed a large poster of her husband. George was smiling and looking supremely confident in the full-color campaign image. Grace stopped there and turned, looking across the ballroom at the tired, old man hunched over the bar. She exhaled and her shoulders dropped, then walked out of the room.

I could tell Maddie was getting restless, too. But George had other ideas. I wasn’t one to tell anybody how to drink, but I felt the need to offer my friend a word of caution. Don’tcha think you should take it a little easy there, George?

He turned to me, his face contorted with disapproval and perhaps even shock that such words had come from me.

Shut up and drink, he said.

Chapter 3

I don’t know what time it was when Maddie finally dragged me away from that bar, led me to the car and drove us home. And I don’t remember what other self-pitying remarks George may have uttered after we broke the seal on a fresh bottle of single malt. I just hoped for his sake that he didn’t feel half as shitty as I did the next day.

Harsh sunlight shining through our bedroom window woke me. Maddie was snoring away next to me. She was sprawled comfortably on two-thirds of the bed, blissfully shielded from the morning light by her eyeshades. I was more than a little rocky, and for some reason, I felt chilled. I lifted the covers and peeked underneath. To my utter shock, I was bare-ass naked.

I couldn’t remember getting into the car last night, much less getting into bed. But I had a sinking feeling in the pit of my still-queasy stomach. I lifted the covers again, this time to peek at my slumbering wife. She was naked, too. At least her skin still held some of the color that had been seared into it by the Florida sun. Mercifully, it masked some of the more profound imperfections of her aging body.

Shit, I thought, we had done it. Or done something, at least. I didn’t know whether to curse the alcohol, or to bless it for its mind-erasing qualities. Then, I thought that whatever had happened, maybe it wasn’t that bad of a thing. Despite the hangover, I felt pretty good. Even us old farts needed our ashes hauled once in a while. I just hoped Maddie wouldn’t mention it. She had a way of talking the life out of everything.

I slipped from under the covers, tip-toed over the cold hardwood of the hallway, and slipped into the shower. It didn’t help much, so I brewed myself an extra-strong cup of coffee. Finally, I made sure I had a full flask for my car’s glove compartment, just in case my hangover intensified and required a little hair of the dog.

A half-hour later, I was at my desk at The Harrisburg Herald. I skimmed Jack Tower’s front-page story on Jayce Montgomery’s impressive win, then sifted through the morning obits. Sure enough, Charles Budd’s obit was near the top of the pile.

It was just yesterday morning that I had watched him die:

I stood in the corner of a darkened room that had been decorated and furnished a bit too determinedly to appear as an ordinary bedroom. It wasn’t. I was standing in the shadows of Suite No. 7 at Sunset Hospice.

It won’t be long now, Laverna Cheatum, the night nurse, whispered to me. She nodded at the bed where Charles Budd lay, surrounded by his wife and daughter.

It’s okay, Dad, said the younger woman huddled nearest to the bed. You can let go now. It’s all right.

The older woman put a fist to her mouth as she watched her daughter lean over the bed and plant a kiss on her father’s sunken cheek. The younger woman’s warm, salty tears fell silently on Charles Budd’s face. Then came the wet sobs and the stifling of tears. The daughter turned away, seeking comfort in her mother’s bosom. The two embraced, and the wife looked down at her husband, bathed in a soft light.

From the pictures on the nightstand, Charles Budd had been a six-four, gentle-giant of a man, just two years away from retirement at the Enola railroad works. Until the cancer caught up with him.

He was blissfully oblivious to it all now. His once-hulking frame had withered to the spindly, fragile collection of bones before me. Whatever the cancer didn’t take, the chemo and the radiation had. His brain was nearly gone now, eaten away. It was just waiting for his tiring heart and exhausted lungs to catch up. Those madly dividing cells had consumed his personality, just as surely as

Reviews for Secrets of the Dead

[virginiamclaurin · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

This is the first book (kindle edition) I have read by John Luciew. It was stimulating and a page turner. I found the story different for other books I have read therefore it was rewarding with a new twist. The characters, as in many books, were not perfect, they were human beings with flaws living everyday lives.