Spiral [Mass Market Paperback]

Boston private investigator John Cuddy is reeling from the death of his love, Nancy Meagher, in an airline disaster. He can barely cope with the present, and the future seems bleak when his past comes calling. A fellow Vietnam vet enlists Cuddy's investigative skills on behalf of their old commander, Nicolas Helides, whose 13-year-old granddaughter was murdered during a party at the Helides' Florida estate. Cuddy arrives to find Helides confined to a wheelchair by a stroke, remarried to a gold digger, and surrounded by a coterie of sycophants. Though just 13, the victim had the singing voice of a woman, and her father intended to exploit her in order to launch the comeback of his old rock group. The thirteenth Cuddy caper, one of the darkest in the series, packs an emotional wallop as it exposes the basest of human emotions--greed, jealousy, lust, and unbridled ambition. Another strong entry in a fine series. Wes Lukowsky --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

Still reeling from the loss of his lover in a plane crash, Boston p.i. John Cuddy is barely hanging in when he takes a call from Florida. It's from old friend and comrade-in-arms Justo Vega. Vega and Cuddy served together in Viet Nam as lieutenants in the MP's under Colonel Nicolas (the Skipper) Helides, an officer they both lovedand to whom both owe a lot. Now Helides seeks their help, Vega tells Cuddy. Though filthy rich as the result of years of brilliant investing, the Skipper has recently been rendered virtually helplessfelled by a stroke that, however, hasnt lessened his driving need for vengeance. Someone has brutally murdered his 12-year-old granddaughter, and the Skipper, confident that Cuddy can succeed where the Ft. Lauderdale police have failed, wants him to take over the investigation. In no shape to investigate anything except his own pain, Cuddy nevertheless says yes simply because he can't find a way to refuse. The result? He encounters hostility from the local police, suspicion and general nastiness from the highly dysfunctional Helides family, a couple of savage beatings, and a near successful attempt on his own life. He also has a bizarre tte-...-tte with a singularly depraved sociopath while tied to what might be fairly described as a man-eating tree. Still, he manages to justify the Skipper's faith in him. Crime-solving being the chancy thing it is, though, the Skipper has less reason to be grateful than he'd hoped to have. Standard whodunit, slowed and mercilessly attenuated by endless talk between Cuddy and a long list of suspects. The series (The Only Good Lawyer, 1998, etc.) has had finer moments. -- Copyright ©1999, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved. --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

The Plain Dealer (Cleveland) Takes Cuddy to another level....Healy handles the large cast with aplomb and precision.

Chicago Tribune Moves at a fast clip, with surprises and twists to keep the reader off balance.

San Antonio Express-News Healy's writing is vivid and the assortment of believable characters is fascinating.

Booklist Packs an emotional wallop as it exposes the basest of human emotions -- greed, jealousy, lust, and unbridled ambition. Another strong entry in a fine series.

Pittsburgh Post-Gazette Hidden motives surface as this very compelling tale unfolds....[Features] one of the more ingenious murder methods I've read about in real life or fiction.

Lincoln Journal Star (NE) As usual -- in the modern bestselling mode -- Healy populates his novel with strong and interesting characters...Healy fans will enjoy Spiral.

Boston Herald With a sound ear for dialogue, Healy lets his characters speak for themselves, revealing more than they realize in their own words.

St Petersburg Times (FL) A scintillating saga. --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

The creator of "exciting, thoughtful, wily fiction" (The Washington Post), Jeremiah Healy has won critical raves for his John Francis Cuddy novels, "a superior series" (The New York Times Book Review). Now Healy pushes the envelope of mystery writing with a soul-searching tale that plunges Cuddy into his own private nightmare.

Some mysteries have no answers -- like why an airplane falls out of the sky, and why the woman you love was onboard that flight. When unfathomable tragedy strikes Boston private investigator John Francis Cuddy, all he can do is begin to grieve. There's no revenge. No perp. And no cure except time.

But when Cuddy is jarred by a call for help from an old Vietnam-era comrade, time is a luxury he can't afford. Cuddy goes because he has to. And what he finds in Fort Lauderdale is a tragedy that rivals his own: a proud vet brought down by a stroke, searching for his granddaughter's killer.

The girl was found dead in Colonel Nicolas Helides' heavily guarded mansion on the Intracoastal Waterway. Thirteen years old and far from innocent, Veronica Helides was hardly protected by her family's wealth. Used by her own father to revive his music career and the fortunes of a band named Spiral, Veronica had been molded into a sexually provocative rock starlet. By the time someone drowned her at her grandfather's birthday party, murder was merely the last crime committed against her.

Now Cuddy is picking apart a cast of players in the life of Colonel Helides and the granddaughter everyone called "Very." From Helides' younger, depressive son to former groupies; from a mysterious spiritual advisor to the woman who married the colonel for his money and the license it would buy her, Cuddy is seeing the worst of human nature at a time when his own heart is broken in two. If that were not enough, the killing of a precocious victim may not have been the isolated act it first appeared.

In a powerful and mesmerizing novel of uncontrollable love, rage, and loyalty among families and friends, John Francis Cuddy isn't just trying to catch a killer -- he's trying to stop himself from free-falling into the ultimate human darkness. --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

Jeremiah Healy is a graduate of Harvard Law School. He won the Shamus Award for The Staked Goat, and has been nominated five additional times for Best Novel and five times for Best Short Story. Spiral is the thirteenth book in his acclaimed series featuring John Francis Cuddy. --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

Chapter One

From the passenger's seat, Nancy Meagher said, "Ted Williams used to play some sport, right?"

Behind the wheel of the Honda Civic, I didn't glance at her or the white-on-green traffic sign as I turned us into the new tunnel to Boston's Logan Airport. "Sacrilege, Nance."

"Because I insulted a public-works project?"

Even without looking, I could feel the playful smile, like a model on a postcard from County Kerry, as she needled me oh-so-subtly about the difference in our ages.

Traffic in the Ted was light, the reason we'd taken Nancy's car instead of mine on that cold Wednesday evening in early January. A prosecutor in downtown, she lived in my old neighborhood of South Boston, and the political deal on the tunnel project was that Southie residents could get a windshield decal that let them use the new route when it was otherwise restricted to commercial vehicles. Which made driving to the airport -- usually an unpredictable nightmare -- into a milk-run of no more than ten minutes.

Nancy said. "John?," the playful smile still in her voice.

"What?"

"It's not as much fun to needle you if I don't get timely responses."

"Ted Williams was the best outfielder the Red Sox ever had, and -- "

"Better even than that Bill Russell guy?"

The Hall-of-Fame basketball center for the Celtics. "I'm beginning to understand what teachers mean by 'not educable.'"

Nancy shifted in her seat, but didn't change her tone. "You're just jealous."

"Of what?"

"My going to San Francisco."

An educational conference for prosecutors was being held there, and Nancy had been chosen by her boss to be the assistant district attorney attending from Suffolk County, a genuine feather in her professional cap. But I'd promised another private investigator named George-Ann Izzo that I'd help her with an industrial surveillance, and she was estimating a solid week for the job. Frankly, George-Ann would probably --

"John?," now a different tone in Nancy's voice.

This time I did turn my head toward her. "Only half right."

"About...?"

"About your going to San Francisco. The part that makes me jealous is I won't be there with you."

Nancy brought her left hand up to the back of my neck, very gently drawing her thumb and forefinger along the strands of hair at my collar. "Me, too."

"Of course," I said, "there's a good chance this 'El Niño' thing will wreck the weather out there for you."

"Funny, I heard the warm currents were actually reaching the beaches, almost like Los Angeles."

"The TV news said those same warm currents were also bringing sharks up from the south."

"John?"

"What?"

"The sharks won't get me lying in the sun on the sand."

"Then again," I said, "you'll more likely be spending your days taking copious notes in some conference room."

Nancy tugged a little on a couple of my neck hairs. "I was thinking more of how I'd like to be spending my nights."

"But I promised George-Ann, and -- "

" -- a promise is a promise."

"Always," I said.

Nancy started grazing my skin at the nape ever-so-lightly with her fingernails. "John Francis Cuddy, consistency is not always a virtue."

I leaned my head back against her hand. "You keep doing that, and the concept of virtue will probably fly off our agenda."

The nails dug a little deeper. "Imagine, making love in a tunnel named after a famous hockey player."

"Nance?"

"Yes?"

"You sure know how to kill a mood."

She slid her hand out from behind me, but she was laughing softly doing it.

"This is the final boarding call for Flight Number One-thirty-three to San Francisco."

In the brightly lit departure lounge, Nancy and I watched the airline's gate agent put down his microphone. The flight seemed only about half-full, so the boarding process had gone quickly.

A little too quickly for me.

Nancy said, "You'll call me about the decision on your apartment, right?"

Around the time we'd met, I started renting a condominium in Boston's neighborhood of Back Bay from a doctor leaving for a residency in Chicago. The doctor had called me the prior week, saying she was going to extend another year and asking if I wanted to stay on as a tenant. Nancy was the first woman I'd cared anything about since my wife, Beth, had died young from brain cancer. Nancy and I had been through a lot, and we'd finally begun talking about living together. She was renting the top floor of a three-decker from a Boston Police family named Lynch, several generations of whom lived on the first two floors. But Nancy wasn't sure the older Mrs. Lynch would swing for a "living-in-sin" arrangement in her house, and I wasn't sure the doctor's one-bedroom condo would be big enough for us and Nancy's cat. Her pet went by "Renfield," after the madman in Dracula who ate small mammals, but he'd --

"John?"

"Sorry."

"I really worry when you zone out on me like that."

"I'll call you about the condo."

Nancy slipped both her hands up under my arms, her palms firmly planted on my shoulder blades as we hugged each other. "The Lynches will feed Renfield, but he might like you to come play with him once or twice."

"I'll stop at the pet store first, pick up a couple of canaries."

The gate agent looked at us rather pointedly as he reached for his microphone again. "All passengers should now be..."

I put my lips close to Nancy's right ear. "I'm going to miss you, kid."

"What, you aren't already?"

Kissing the lobe above her earring, I got a whiff of her shampoo and perfume, but even more a scent that was so specifically, definably Nancy that I thought I could find her by sense of smell the way a momma dog can identify one of her puppies in the dark.

Turning to go, Nancy said over her shoulder, "Call me at my hotel."

"I will."

"But don't forget about the time-zone difference."

"I won't."

A last smile just before the gate agent closed the jetway door behind her.

I turned and began walking back toward the main terminal, an emptiness welling up inside me. Nancy and I had been together a lot over the holiday season. Just before Christmas, we attended the Chorus Pro Musica concert at the Old South Church on Boylston Street. We celebrated New Year's Eve by going to three First Night events: medieval carols at the First Lutheran on Marlborough, a saxophone tribute to Duke Ellington at the First Baptist on Commonwealth, and a salsa show at the Church of the Covenant on Newbury.

Nancy had called it "a very yuppie-scum evening."

Reaching her Civic in the Logan parking garage, I realized there was another reason for my emptiness. Because of Nancy's trial duties as a prosecutor, usually she was the one staying in Boston while I traveled somewhere. It was a different feeling, her leaving me behind.

A feeling I'd had years ago, with someone else I loved.

Shaking that off, I turned the key in the ignition.

When I got home, the little window in my telephone tape machine was glowing a red "1," meaning I had a message. Playing it, I heard George-Ann Izzo's voice tell me that our job for the next day had been cancelled, but that the client had called her only "a few minutes ago. Then the machine's atonal voice recited the time George Ann had called me. Four-ten, or a good fifteen minutes before Nancy and I had left her apartment for the airport.

In other words, if I'd just checked my messages by remote from Southie -- or even from the gate at Logan itself -- I could have gotten a ticket on that half-empty flight and spent the long weekend with Nancy in San Fran'.

Picking up the phone, I tried her hotel out there. The desk clerk I drew told me he indeed had a reservation for a "Ms. Meagher, assuming that's 'Nancy Eugenia,' sir." I laughed silently that she'd use her middle name for the hotel when she never did usually, then realized that probably the District Attorney's office would have made the reservation for her. The desk clerk also said Ms. Meagher hadn't checked in yet, which didn't surprise me, since I figured her flight would still be hours east of the city. I left a message for Nancy that I might be able to join her after all and would call back at a reasonable hour in the morning.

I remember going to bed that night feeling pretty good. For the last time in a long time.

Nancy's boss had bought her plane ticket in addition to making her hotel reservation, so the airline called the D.A.'s office first. A secretary there who knew about us reached me at 6:50 A.M. Eastern Time on Thursday morning, just before I would have awakened to the clock radio.

And the frantic bulletins about Flight #133, en route from Boston to San Francisco.

Trying to look back on it with some objectivity, the people at the airline were pretty good about handling what had to be their worst nightmare, too. They made every effort to contact each passenger's family/friends/lovers and shepherd us to a ballroom in one of Boston's bigger hotels. They set up bottomless urns of coffee and laid out a buffet for every meal. And all the while, they marched a rotating cast of experts to the podium on a raised stage "for the purpose of providing information as it becomes available."

The exact sequence of the next twenty-four hours is still pretty hazy. And for someone who supposedly makes his living by being observant, I have almost no memory -- almost no inkling, in fact -- of the other stunned and grieving people sitting or standing with me in that ballroom. All I remember doing is watching the experts ascend the platform, each contributing one more piece to a puzzle that couldn't be solved.

Somebody told us that bizarre wind and rain conditions caused by El Niño made the San Francisco control tower ask incoming flights to stay aloft a while longer, finally forcing many to circle over the ocean off the peninsula. Somebody else said the problem for Nancy's plane was almost certainly caused by El Niño as well, perhaps in a parallel way to the incredible turbulence that had rocked a Japanese airliner only weeks before, even killi... --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.