Threads, a Blaine Horney Mystery

By Kris Karrel

A personal favor for an unidentified friend of his captain sends Blaine Horney, Texas Ranger with a paranormal gift, north to Morrison, Montana, to the scene of a grisly double homicide with no apparent motive.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Jigsaw Press
• Release date: Apr 4, 2009
• ISBN: 9781934340257

Kris Karrel

Grew up in Seattle with the rest of my multiple personalities. All of us left the rain for the sunny beaches of California long before Bill Gates founded Microsoft, only to discover to our disappointment that most Californians might be even more schizo than we are. After all that rain in Seattle, and California being a wash, we naturally migrated to southern Florida, which to our way of thinking, might be the East Coast retirement version of California, just a little less schizo. Maybe. Twelve years in Florida was enough for us. After a long stint in the Texas Panhandle taught us the true meaning of wind, we high-tailed it north and west, glad to be back where mountains are typically more than six hundred feet above sea level. We hate to inform our Florida and Texas panhandle brethren of this but a highway overpass is not technically a hill. No, really. Do some research. You're the only people in the world who think so. Even Californians know better, having the Sierras in their backyard. I came to writing early on, sidetracked when the world beckoned. I dropped out of high school in my junior year, but like a friend of mine insists (or could be another personality, I'm not sure at this point), I earned a BS Degree from the School of Hard Knocks. Montana is the perfect hide out, if you like the seasons and the wildlife, the solitude. What more could a writer ask for? Just don't tell anyone. We like being the only state in the Union to have more cows than people. That's a fact, according to the Farm Bureau at any rate. You can't make this stuff up. Moo.

Book preview

THREADS

a Blaine Horney Mystery

by

Kris Karrel

Jigsaw Press

Sun River, Montana

THREADS, A Blaine Horney Mystery, © copyright 2007 by Kris Karrel. All rights reserved.

No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever, stored in any retrieval system, or transmitted by any means—including, but not limited to, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, audio or video—without express written consent by the copyright owner, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews.

For information address: Editor, Jigsaw Press, P.O. Box 136, Sun River, Montana, 59483.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any similarities to actual events, locales, or persons, either living or dead, is purely coincidental.

ISBN: 978-1-934340-25-7

Library of Congress Control Number: 2007935047

Smashwords Edition

Jigsaw Press

Sun River, Montana

For the missing pieces of your reading puzzle

www.jigsawpress.com

Smashwords Edition, License Notes

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For Bob and Connie—

May the sun always shine on your parade.

Chapter One

The plate of fried eggs and crisp bacon, hash browns and side of wheat bound for the cowboy seated at the counter left Doreen Miller’s hand the very instant Shane Seidel’s dead wife strolled right out of the grave and into the Morrison Café, a sandy-haired boy of seven or eight in tow.

Dillon Travers spun his stool lazily about to gape at the reason his breakfast was now a puddle of grease and broken china at Doreen’s feet. The cook and third owner of the place in thirty years, Merle Vestry, waddled through the swinging kitchen doors, cut off in mid-gripe about waste and slack service by the unbelievable.

The four regulars sharing the corner booth—retired cowboys and ranchers in for their morning dose of coffee and gossip—were tight-lipped staring to a man. The atmosphere reeked of a creepy reverence, a quiet equaled only by the county morgue where Doreen had, years earlier, identified the mangled body of her late husband.

Shane’s resurrected wife appeared oblivious to the silent uproar created by her entry, focused as she was on the boy.

Scramble, he said, looking up at her.

Kevin, sit down for Mommy? She guided him to the center booth of five running the length of the picture window overlooking Main Street, then slid next to him on the orange bench seat, their backs to the door.

Scramble, Kevin insisted, his voice rising. Small fists battered the tabletop, rocking the condiments clustered at the end of the table nearest the window. "Scramble, scramble, scramble."

Impossible, had to be. The woman was dead, her daughter, too. No one presently living in or around the small town of Morrison, Montana, knew that with as much certainty as Doreen, except perhaps Shane, who’d discovered them, or Ross Hedley, county sheriff and first officer to arrive on the grisly scene.

Dillon left his seat, damn near running out the door, breakfast apparently forgotten. Or maybe he’d lost his appetite.

Doreen wished she’d followed not a second later when the woman turned her blonde head, ostensibly looking for the waitress, and she simply unable to make her feet move until Merle jabbed her in the back.

***

On the first anniversary of his total devastation, Shane Seidel toasted his late wife and daughter with a shot or ten of the best scotch money could buy, then failed to quit bending his arm. Sinking beyond his usual stupor, he managed to crawl on all fours across the hand-finished hardwood floor to the new king-sized bed where he slept for the very first time. Even this righteous a wasting couldn’t prevent the visit to his personal Hell. But on this night, unlike any previous, his wife’s spirit rose out of the midst of the gore, their ten-year-old child at her side.

Susan reached out to him, as if she might bridge the gap between living and dead, yet before he could surmount his disbelief to take her hand, she and daughter, Kory, vanished like smoke dissipated by a hostile, unforgiving wind.

He roused to escape this anguish, stared long minutes through the sheer curtains at a full moon, then cried himself back to sleep.

Shane opened his swollen, scratchy eyes to sunrise and one hell of a headache, woozy and sick to his stomach, compelled by the incessant pounding on the front door to drag his worthless ass out of bed.

***

Sunrise capping the distant snow-covered peaks in shades of dusky rose, the Texas Ranger dumped his brown suitcase into the carpeted trunk of the leased Jaguar, thinking the worn out old thing looked ridiculous lying there. Thrift store trash in a fifty-thousand dollar wrapper. He slammed the trunk, the expensive whomp immediately swallowed by the noise of idling tractors and a gusting wind at the truck stop on the outskirts of Great Falls.

Ten large under the table, plus expenses, had put him on the road out of San Antone, that and his captain’s handshake guarantee of two extra weeks leave upon his return from Morrison, a Montana town so small it didn’t rate a dot on a map, any map he could find. Half the cash languished in a safety deposit box already.

He settled behind the padded steering wheel, then touched the breast pocket of the tailored suit to make sure the photo was still there.

Why the ethics of this little side job had begun to nag as the miles passed under the tires, he didn’t have a clue. Wasn’t like he was changing sides in the war on crime or anything. A personal favor for an unidentified friend of his captain wouldn’t exactly hurt his career. Certainly. Not like he’d be stepping on any influential toes either. Hell, the case itself was cold enough, a year old yesterday. And out of his or any Ranger’s usual jurisdiction, way out, whole states out.

Ten large simply to discover what he could, finger the bad guy if at all possible—with or without enough evidence to convict.

Should be cut-and-dried easy.

Especially for a Ranger with a psychic gift, one that in the blink of his mind’s eye crisscrossed the world in threads. The Earth webbed in a gossamer gauze, the ectoplasmic trails of people past and present, the residue of their daily lives, any moment of which he might experience simply by crossing their paths.

Might. When it worked.

Place memory an article had called it; events stored in the environment. No mention of how a Ranger able to vividly sense the memory stored in a specific place might actually end up reliving some of those events cached in ye olde environment. That much he’d learned the hard way, on vacation no less, a murder scene over five years old at the time he’d stumbled across it.

No mention in that or any other article he’d collected over the years of the damn threads leading into and away from these so-called events, threads his mind simply colored to life, oftentimes when least expected.

No reference whatsoever to the whispers that sometimes haunted the threads themselves—like the plans made by those two murderers at the remote scene outside of Austin on the trot to their getaway car and Dallas.

Not a word about two threads his mind had colored shit yellow and puke green trailing a host of devious thoughts through an assortment of apartments and seedy hotel rooms across three Texas cities that eventually led not only to the discovery and apprehension of the serial perps themselves, but a murder weapon complete with prints that was used in the deaths of nine other women, every case up to that time unsolved.

He wasn’t about to contact any researcher or writer just to update them on a subconscious mental process he could only liken to a bloodhound sifting myriad scents in choosing the right one to track.

Wouldn’t he be a laughing stock then? Or worse yet, a target for those less than desirable elements of society that might consider him a threat?

Still, when it worked, when anxiety, anger, even stress or fear didn’t cloud his inner vision, the psychic gift was a perfect tool for a Texas Ranger, one that had earned him a fair amount of respect within certain circles, not to mention a coveted spot with the unsolved crimes investigative team. A mental quirk, a hitch in his giddy up that he’d be the first to admit to family and friends, the smattering of other Rangers solidly in the know that he understood even less than he might control.

Always a downside to everything. Like a hangover chases good whiskey, or a high-class escort expects to be paid, or his father’s harping insistence that he strike out on his own.

The name on some mythical office quashed all consideration of leaving the Rangers. Every single time.

Horney Investigations.

Beat Blaine Horney, PI, or B. Horney, Private Investigator, but not by much.

What kind of clients could he expect to draw with a name like that? Crackpots, deviates, or worse.

Surely.

Jokes were never-ending as it was. A steady paycheck had a lot more appeal, for now anyway.

Side jobs notwithstanding.

***

Goddamn it, Shane. Open this door. Ain’t you up yet?

Sweat pasting his unruly dark hair about his pulsing temples, Shane whipped open the front door to silence Dillon’s pounding fist and cried, What the fuck’s your fire?

The lean, lanky pain in the ass, and best hand in these or any parts, was visibly pale, a wild look in his brown eyes. Black hat askew, hair the color of fresh mud bristled like a wire brush gone crazy about his ears. His aged red Ford pickup idled at the base of the stairs, the driver’s door hanging wide open.

Suddenly, as if he thought better of knocking, Dillon grimaced, straightened his hat with a furious swipe of his hand and pivoted on his boot heel to start back down the steps.

Just hold on there now, Dill, Shane said. You come beating on my door like hell’s broke loose, then don’t have a word to say?

Right hand waving at the blue sky, Dillon continued his descent, muttering, Nuh-uh, nuh-uh.

Nuh-uh, what? Shane asked and stepped over the threshold, the concrete chilling his bare feet.

Just as Dillon made the landing, his jiggling truck inched back, then abruptly sped up, cutting a tight semi-circle in reverse to broadside the passenger door of Shane’s late-model Silverado at better than ten miles per hour.

Well, hell, Shane said, shaking his head until the pain insisted he stop that nonsense.

Dillon glanced up at Shane, back to the T-boned trucks, and then studied his boots, hand patting his shirt pocket for the cigarettes he’d most likely left on the dash.

Might want to just shut her down there, Dill, Shane said.

He sprang to the task, behind the wheel in seconds, gears grinding, engine revving, separating the two trucks to the screeching protest of late-model running board yielding to older, heavier rusty bumper.

What’d upset Dillon so badly, Shane couldn’t begin to fathom. He buckled his belt about his waist, glad of the cool morning air over his bare chest. His mouth pasty and rank, his nose announcing a shower was an absolute must, right now coffee seemed the quickest antidote to everything that ailed—physically.

***

Doreen turned to Merle and murmured, She’s dead, dammit. That can’t be—.

Get her goddamn order, he snapped in a hoarse whisper, then gestured at the floor. And get this fucking mess cleaned up before someone goes out of their way to slip and sue. He hurried back into the kitchen, muttering to himself, the swinging doors whapshushing behind him.

Chills traveled Doreen’s spine on pin-needled feet, goosepimpling the bare flesh of her arms. No amount of denial, no pointing out the fact that Susan Seidel had never once styled her hair nor carried a Gucci handbag to match the fashionable sandals on her pedicured feet could convince Doreen’s stony heart that her eyes were simply lying to her mind.

There she sat, Susan Seidel, the naturally blonde beauty dressed in designer jeans and a white silk shirt giving Doreen a fierce eye, as if mad about being dead for a year. And that little boy beside her, he’d looked normal enough when first he’d trailed a living ghost through the door, now growing more and more agitated, acting off somehow, retarded maybe, making faces and gesturing with his hands.

Scramble, he wailed, writhing on the bench seat to free himself from his mother’s tight arm. Doreen fished her uniform pocket for a pen and order pad, prepared to march across the black and white checkered linoleum to take the stunning bitch’s order, stopped by a sickening realization.

Once Shane saw this woman, if she and that boy weren’t simply passing through like phantom reminders of sins past, no other woman would be a blip on his radar. Not that Doreen had ever been anything more to him than just a girl in class, or a one-night stand at high school graduation, so drunk he didn’t know who or what he’d fucked and cared even less. Lord, how she wanted to be…more. Not for love; no, never anything as paltry and diminishing as that.

The rumors of the house he’d built on that fine ranch of his ran along the lines of a small palace inside. Not that she’d ever seen any more of the place than various stages of completion, and that only at some distance, set off as it was from the dirt road running past the newly-graveled drive. And the one time he’d almost stumbled upon her sneaking along the banks of Old Woman Crick, dodging the cottonwoods, trying for a close-up view…she shivered anew at the recall. The closest she’d ever managed was a look inside that two-story barn his father’d built years ago, a major disappointment, nothing spectacular there.

As one, the four old men left the end booth, tossing dollar bills on the table, acknowledging the spitting image of Susan Seidel with polite smiles and nods, touches to the brims of their hats, altogether failing to hide their collective stupefaction. Weren’t they all gray as death now?

Are you on some kind of a break? the woman demanded, her arms about the struggling boy, muffling his repetitious demand for scramble, scramble, scramble.

Doreen pasted a phony smile over her indignation. Be right there, she said with the calculated warmth of an ice cube. Want a menu?

No, the woman retorted, every bit as cold. Two eggs scrambled for each, sides of bacon—soft—wheat toast for me, lightly buttered. A cup of coffee, glass of orange juice…for god’s sake, Kevin—.

The boy twisted free of her, screeching unintelligibly, kicking the wall below the window, shaking the table, tumbling the condiments, the sugar dispenser striking the vinyl seat opposite, rolling to rest on its side in the crack.

What about some milk for the kid? Doreen asked.

"He’s a child, not a kid, and if I wanted milk, don’t you think I’d order it?"

Doreen whirled angrily about, ripping the order ticket free of the pad, scowling at Merle’s slit-eyed scrutiny through the order window cut in the stainless steel wall.

I got it, he said tersely, his moon face contorted in an angry grimace she’d seen all too often lately. Get off your ass, Doreen.

Fuck you, she whispered under her breath. The empty coffee cup in her shaking hand chattered in the saucer, the boy quieting by slow degrees at his mother’s indecipherable murmurs.

Bitch, that fucking bitch, nothing like Susan, sweet little Susan Seidel, all her sappy goodness ended in a gurgling rush of blood.

Chapter Two

Shane took a seat at the head of the dining room table, puzzled yet by Dillon standing just inside the front door, shifting in his boots, ready to run like a rabbit at the yap of a dog.

Will you sit the fuck down? Shane said. Ain’t mad, if that’s what you’re worrying over.

The man’s hesitation mystified until a black thought girdled Shane’s nausea in stark terror. Had there been another murder? Another victim or two bathed in their own blood and left for their kin to discover?

Old bitch jumped into gear again, Dillon muttered, a furtive glance at Shane.

Figured as much.

One last look out the open door and Dillon abruptly strode to the table, jerked an adjacent chair out and away, legs scraping the hardwood floor.

Well, spit it out, dammit, Shane said, massaging his temples. Not in the mood for a mystery this morning. Had enough of mystery, burned by one, branded forever more like the crop of new calves by the time this day ended.

Behind him on the kitchen counter, the coffee maker groaned to a finish in the intervening silence.

Well, I…I could’ve sworn I just seen your…your wife, Dillon said, eyes fixed on the simple, yet elegant light fixture hanging from the bare wood beam that Susan had once declared her favorite.

Shane’s fists clenched instinctively, fingernails digging deep into callused palms, unable to make more than the tiniest dent in skin tough as tanned cowhide. Don’t fuck with me, Dill. His voice flat-out astonished, a meanness never intended, the warning growl of an injured bear.

Shane, you know I wouldn’t go near the subject normally but… Dillon dropped his gaze to the table. In the café…this woman… he winced, shuddered and hunched, Doreen dropped my breakfast…even Merle…the old guys…but then on the way out here, I got to thinking and—.

The chair flipped over backward when Shane shot to his feet. You want to piss me off, quit, get yourself fired maybe? The hangover minor issue to his mushrooming rancor, he snatched the chair to rights and marched into the kitchen, to the cupboard above the coffee pot for a clean cup.

Dillon rose from the table and blocked the arched entry between the two spacious rooms. Unless you’re firing me this minute, you just hear me out. On the way over here I—.

She’s dead, goddamn it, he cried, firing the mug into the stainless steel sink, shards of glass exploding in all directions. He bit his lip to keep his eyes dry, gripped the sun-soft yellow lip of the Formica counter, the pain in his head nothing to the torment coursing fresh through his soul. Tasting blood, smelling the gore, staring out the window to the Front Range of the Rockies, yet seeing only that sticky knife handle protruding from his daughter’s bare chest, his wife’s slit throat, their impossibly lifeless stares.

Dillon advanced a step to claim the bottle of scotch lying on its side atop the stainless steel stove, the dregs swallowed in a single gulp.

Aunt mentioned a twin sister, he said after wiping his mouth on the back of his hand.

Shane shoved Dillon aside to exit the kitchen, threading the dining and living rooms, striding past the stone fireplace and down the hallway to the master bedroom. Forget the fucking shower, a shirt he needed, socks and boots, then off to meet the others for the annual spring branding.

Still, Dillon’s remark haunted like the ghosts of his personal nightmare—did Susan have a twin? He cursed his pickled memory, buttoned the cuffs of his white shirt. The outrage dissipating like air escapes a slow leaking tire, his thoughts flattened by the frustrating inability to answer with any surety this most rudimentary of questions.

Shirttails tucked into his jeans, he sat on the edge of the bed to pull on his socks, then stood up, stamping his feet into his boots, troubled more by what he abruptly realized he didn’t know about his late wife than of that which he was certain.

The only kin she’d ever contacted through the years was the aunt he’d never laid eyes on until the day of the funeral, an old woman to whom he’d never so much as said hello until he’d had to call her on the phone.

Etta Walker, who’d made herself right at home amid that fucked-up blur of days he’d put his beloved wife and only child, his heart and soul into the cold, hard Montana ground. He’d drank himself comatose at the wake, coming to the next morning in a straw-packed stall, horse shit for a pillow, wondering what the fuck he was going to do now. Rather, how he was going to finish what he should’ve began the very instant he’d found them.

With that one notable exception, the mourners had all been from his side, from Morrison and the surrounding area, friends he’d grown up with who’d become more Susan’s than his the very day he’d brought her home to the double-wide house trailer on twenty acres he sold a few years later, after both his parents had died, to Dillon.

And that sharp old lady, Etta, she’d taken it upon herself to collect all his weapons, hadn’t she? As if she knew what he planned to do. Once the yellow police tape had been removed, it was Etta who’d headed the clean-up crew, volunteers all, and previous to the funerals even, ordered his truck cleaned out as well. Revolver, hunting rifle, shotgun, even butcher and utility knives disappeared for a time. Surprisingly enough, she’d stayed on longer than anyone expected or planned, sleeping in that spare bedroom wholly untouched by death night after night. Refusing a room in the motel, living right there in the house for the month it took Shane to realize he would never step foot in the place again unless he was blind drunk and didn’t care where he might be stepping. Dillon and Ed at her beck and call, Etta waited to leave until he’d sobered up enough to make a place for himself in the barn at the ranch, until he’d ordered some of the materials to build the new house from the plans he and Susan had commissioned six months before the tragedy—actions that served to convince everyone concerned that for Shane the worst had passed.

But the worst hadn’t really passed, had it? Pain fresh as the moment of discovery had merely called a truce of sorts for the time being. And of its inevitable return, he was more than afraid.

Yet now, for the first time since he’d met his wife in that Billings bookstore almost eleven years ago—amazed when such a prize of a gal agreed to dinner, fully astonished when she wouldn’t let him leave for a week after the rodeo had ended, his father laughing long distance at his bewilderment instead of demanding his immediate return—now his curiosity overwhelmed him.

He’d never wondered much about Susan’s past, content to leave it as undisturbed as she appeared to want it, as if by pressing her for details monsters might rise out of murky depths to threaten their happiness. The rings on her finger, the birth of his daughter had not been enough (no, never enough) to ease the fear that one day she’d wake up to the fact she’d married nothing but a low-life cowboy. Even after both his mother and father passed, leaving not only the house in town and the 5500 acres of prime Montana grass he’d worked all his life, but a surprising half million dollars in investments to their only son, the feeling of inadequacy never quite went away.

He had Susan’s phone book, and in it the old lady’s number, but was she yet alive? Shane clapped his black Stetson on his head and headed out the front door.

You remember anything specific about this sister? he asked upon joining Dillon, who was inspecting the damage to his old Ford and Shane’s Silverado.

Mentioned her being a twin, I thought, he said gruffly, hands jammed in his front pockets now.

Let’s give Etta a call.

Dillon’s footsteps trailed Shane up the stairs and back inside.

If his wife had a twin sister, God forbid, how the hell would he ever face her? Like trying to beg forgiveness of a living ghost, something Shane would never grant that ghoul in the mirror whose face he shaved every morning, sorely tempted at each pass of the razor just to cut the sorry bastard’s throat.

***

The kid unnerved Doreen more than most, though she’d be loath to admit anything of the sort—to herself or anyone else. When she’d set breakfast down in front of him and his mother, the knowing look in his steel gray eyes made her skin crawl, as if he saw past her conscious thoughts, through the stone walls guarding her ulterior motives to the secrets buried deep in her soul.

Keen to protect her interests, she’d been intent not a moment before on inquiring after the snotty bitch’s name, perhaps mention in passing that she was the spitting image of Shane Seidel’s late wife, simply to gauge the reaction, if any, and what she might learn as a result. Scheming stopped cold by the boy’s intense smirking scrutiny and a troubling whisper centered solely in her mind.

Just one little word, gelid and distinct, like bullets fired from a gun.

Dead, dead, dead.

She’d fled the table, and the boy’s unwavering stare, to clean the grease from the floor. Glancing his way periodically to quell her mounting trepidation, restore her flagging self-confidence, convince herself she was just imagining things, she found his eyes waiting nearly every time, the egg-encrusted corners of his mouth perpetually upturned.

How could this stupid little boy know anything? The planning and execution flawless, the risk almost nil, every step plotted in much the same exhaustive manner as the brakes on her late husband’s—.

Hear, hear, hearme…

You?

She raised her eyes to meet the uncompromising gaze of the boy yet again.

Kevin, are you finished? his mother asked, diverting his attention, but not before his eyes flared ever so slightly, the smirk deepening to what looked for a fleeting instant like a grin of cognition. He slammed his fork to his empty plate, turning his head and upper torso aside in a futile effort to escape the napkin in his mother’s hand.

He couldn’t know…could he?

Fear hollowed Doreen’s stomach, shortening her breaths. Perhaps they were just passing through, gone forever once the bill was settled. Maybe that old wives’ tale was true and each person had a twin somewhere in the world, this very small world indeed.

Impossible, that child whispering in her head…wasn’t it?

Doreen whipped the guest check free of her pocket, in a hurry now to rid herself of this bitch and her oh-so-creepy little boy, send the apprehension packing with their departure, rush the paranoia back to sleep, lay to rest the foggy memory threatening again to surface.

For days and weeks immediately after the dirty deed, mind-numbing terror startled to life at each ring of the telephone, each dreaded knock upon the door, every suspect glance of a stranger, all of which had proved to be nothing in the end.

He’d never explained his reasons. Not that she remembered many of the details, much less cared to know why.

No one in town had figured the brakes with any certainty, even less so the murders, the law left with almost no leads. Her husband’s death ruled an accident, the killings of Susan Seidel and her daughter, Kory, generally assumed to be a random act perpetrated by an unknown, possibly a drifter passing through. The authorities had given up the search for suspects months ago, relegating the dismal blemish on Morrison’s lackluster reputation to the ranks of the unsolved, the case buried now in files gathering dust that no one would revisit. Bedding that asshole sheriff had kept Doreen abreast of any developments.

She slapped the check on the table, her flight to relative safety behind the counter stopped in mid-stride by the woman asking in a haughty tone, Excuse me, but do you know where I might find Shane Seidel?

Words failed Doreen for the mortification. She pivoted on her serviceable heel to face the booth, relieved that little Kevin was staring not at her, but out the window to the intersection, the amber traffic light blinking incessantly beyond the gray-haired old woman in the flower print dress zeroing in on the cafe’s front door. Doreen clamped her jaw so hard her teeth clacked.

Damn if that wasn’t Harriett Moseler, fat slug of a retired librarian with her pudgy arthritic finger presumably on Morrison’s weakening pulse, her claim to fame the binoculars trained on her tiny realm of a neighborhood seemingly at all hours of the day and

Reviews for Threads, a Blaine Horney Mystery

[novelator · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Granted, I'm biased being the editor, but I have to say that even the most jaded of my reading friends, the most difficult to please readers, loved this book. The plot is tight as a virgin's knees. The main character, Blaine Horney, Texas Ranger with a paranormal gift, is a whiskey drinking, cigar smoking, woman chaser of a humorous rogue. In this debut for both author and series, the Texas Ranger with the paranormal gift heads north to Montana, to the scene of a grisly double homicide with no apparent motive.Can't wait to see what else Kris Karrel has in store for Blaine...