Dear Max: Jack Barnaby, #0

By Tyler Craig

Retired Washington D.C. Metropolitan Police Department homicide detective Jack Barnaby thought his days of chasing down killers were over. That is, until Horace Embry resurfaces and pulls him right back into the fray.

 

Determined to find the closure the victim's familiesso so desperately deserve, he sets out on a cross country manhunt. It quickly becomes clear that Embry is a man who will stop at nothing to ensure his freedom.

 

As the miles pass, Jack's relentless pursuit of justice brings him face to face with the ghosts of his past as he wonders if the chase is even worth it in the end. Has he done enough in his fifty-year career to justify calling off the chase as the toll of the road nearly brings him to the brink?

 

Pick up the first installment of the Jack Barnaby PI series today to find out.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Prince Harles Publishing
• Release date: Mar 25, 2024
• ISBN: 9798224147731

Book preview

Part 1

Dear Max, 

If I thought I was lonely back at home after Nettie passed, then I definitely had another thing coming. I long for those long, quiet, winter nights in front of the fire with my Hercule Poirot novels. Nothing in this world would beat that right now. 

There are no words that I can think of to describe this utter feeling of solitude that I have felt out here on the road. Especially at nighttime when I’m in some dingy roadside motel in a town that I’ve never been to before. That is what I have found to be the absolute definition of the word loneliness. That’s when it hits me the hardest. That’s when I have the hardest of times keeping my eyes dry as I lie down and try to fall asleep each night. 

During the daytime, it’s a bit better, but it’s still just me, the steering wheel, and the blinking white lines of the road zipping past me as I drive down these empty highways that make up our fair country. Half the time the radio doesn’t even work when I’m so far out in the boonies that I don’t see another car for hours on end, so I’ve taken to having conversations with myself. Mainly about what I’m gonna say whenever I finally catch up with Horace Embry. That guy seems to be more elusive than Santa Claus on Christmas Eve.  

I sure miss the good old days when you’d give me a call and ask me for help or advice. I would pay top dollar for a familiar voice right about now. I call back to the office once a day to check in and see how the boys are holding up with me gone and to get my daily reports, but it ain’t the same. That’s business. I wish I would have had more time to show them the ropes before I took off, but duty calls. Just like it always does. Will you stop by and check in on them from time to time? That sure would mean a lot to all of us. Hopefully we don’t get any calls for anything serious. I don’t know that either of them could handle it. But I digress. 

If it’s not one thing, it’s another out here. I’m either three days late arriving at a hitch or there ain’t no witnesses left to talk to when I finally pull into town. Some of the local sheriffs have been very helpful with setting up a phone tree for me to call and get daily updates on the bastard, but for the most part, nobody wants an old kook like me digging into the private affairs of their locals. And I don’t know that I blame them. Remember how pissed we would get when outsiders tried to elbow their way in? 

On another note, I’m not sure my old Ford is gonna keep up with this chase. She started spurtin’ oil out the other day, which cost me a pretty penny to mend. Not to mention the mess that it left all over the motel’s parking lot that I had to clean up. Thank God I have a steady stream of cheddar coming in from the Daniels family. But I think I’m gonna take a look on a lot the next city I pass through. Which should be Greensboro, if I’m lucky enough to make it that far. I’ll probably be riding pretty high by the time you get this. Don’t worry, I’ll give you all the details in my next letter. 

Anyway, I won’t hold you up. Not when I’m still on the chase. Hope all is well and you’re still putting up the good fight. Talk soon. 

Your brother in Blue,

Jack

Chapter 1

I’ve been out on the road for over a week now. Driving aimlessly through small town after small town, heading ever so slowly south and to the west, it seems. Destination unknown on the trail of one of the most elusive men I’ve ever come across in my fifty-plus years on the job. Well, I don’t know if you could still call it the job anymore. Not since I retired, at least. But it’s all the same to me. Sure beats tracking down lost pups or kitty cats, which is about all I was up to after I handed in my shield. But I still got bills to pay. That’s the one thing that never seems to end, no matter how old I get. 

Ever since the news of the murder at the service station in Virginia made its way back to the District, I knew it was our man immediately. The proximity to Great Falls was too much of a coincidence for it not to be. Though it was a gunshot to the head that killed the bird in the store, I knew it in my bones that it was Horace Embry and got to work immediately. Since I wasn’t officially invited onto the case yet, I had to do my work from afar. But I knew in my heart of hearts that the man who took that dame’s life was the same man that had slipped through our fingers a week prior. 

The beauty in finally knowing his name was that it gave me the ability to really dig into his background, which was something I didn’t have the luxury to do when my old partner, Max Denver, first asked me to aid in his pursuit back in Washington. I was able to finally learn who this man was and what made him tick. I learned that Embry was in the war before he went into teaching. He specialized in paramilitary training, becoming one of the top paratroopers in his unit before they realized how much of a ruthless killer he really was. It was then that they loaded him up with rifles and rounds and stuck him on the front lines where he perfected his ability to kill without having any remorse for doing so.

There’s no telling how many more of them are out there like him. Men who just needed that nudge. A little bit of positive reinforcement from their sergeants to push them over the edge. That one ounce of encouragement to show them how easy it was to take another person’s life away from them. 

God help us all if this practice becomes the norm in our society. One Horace Embry is enough for any copper’s lifetime. With the ability to kill for the sake of killing, it seemed, I knew he needed to be brought to justice as quickly as possible. Five families—so far—would probably agree. I couldn’t imagine spending an entire career chasing whack jobs like that,