Chapter One
Death was driving an emerald-green Lexus. It pulled off the street, passed the
four self-service pumps, and stopped in one of the two full-service lanes.
Standing in front of the station, Jack McGarvey noticed the car but not the
driver. Even under a bruised and swollen sky that hid the sun, the Lexus gleamed
like a jewel, a sleek and lustrous machine. The windows were darkly tinted, so
he couldn't have seen the driver clearly even if he had tried.
As a thirty-two-year-old cop with a wife, a child, and a big mortgage, Jack had
no prospects of buying an expensive luxury car, but he didn't envy the owner of
the Lexus. He often remembered his dad's admonition that envy was mental theft.
If you coveted another man's possessions, Dad said, then you should be willing
to take on his responsibilities, heartaches, and troubles along with his money.
He stared at the car for a moment, admiring it as he might a priceless painting
at the Getty Museum or a first edition of a James M. Cain novel in a pristine
dust jacket — with no strong desire to possess it, taking pleasure merely from
the fact of its existence.
In a society that often seemed to be spinning toward anarchy, where ugliness and
decay made new inroads every ... read full excerpt from Winter Moon ebook
