Free Cold Vengeance by Douglas Preston, Lincoln Child

Mr. Draper?” Jennie Prothero asked.
    “Oh, nothing.” Esterhazy drained his pint.
    “Would you care for another, then?” the barkeep asked.
    “No, thank you. But please let me set one up for yourself and Mrs. Prothero.”
    “I’ll do that, sir, and thank you most kindly.”
    Esterhazy nodded, but he didn’t glance toward the barkeep. His eyes were trained on the circular window in the pub door, and the cream-colored office of Dr. Roscommon that lay across the street.

C HAPTER 14

    Malfourche, Mississippi
    N ED B ETTERTON PULLED UP BEFORE THE GRIMY plate-glass storefront of the Ideal Café, stepped into the bacon- and onion-perfumed interior, and ordered himself a cup of coffee, sweet and light. The Ideal wasn’t much of a café, but then Malfourche wasn’t much of a town: dirt-poor and half deserted, its fabric slowly crumbling into ruin. The kids with any talent obviously got their asses out of town just as fast as they could, running for bigger and more exciting cities, leaving the losers behind. Four generations of that and look what you got, a town like Malfourche. Hell, he’d grown up in a place just like it. Problem was, he hadn’t run far enough. Scratch that: he was still running, running like hell, but getting nowhere.
    At least the coffee was halfway decent and once inside, it felt like home. He had to admit, he liked hardscrabble joints like this, with the gut-solid waitresses, truckers bellying up to the counters, greasy burgers, orders conveyed full throat, and strong fresh coffee.
    He was the first in his family to graduate high school, not to mention college. A small and scrappy child, he’d been raised by his mother, just the two of them, his father doing time for robbing a Coca-Cola bottling plant. Twenty years, thanks to a careerist prosecutor and pitiless judge. His father died of cancer in the slammer, and Betterton knew it was despair that caused the cancer that killed him. And in turn, his father’s death had killed his mother.
    As a result, Betterton was inclined to assume that anyone in a position of authority was a lying, self-interested son of a bitch. For that reason he’d gravitated toward journalism, where he figured he could fight those people with real weapons. Problem was, with his state college degree in communications all he could land was a job at the Ezerville Bee , and he’d been there for the past five years, trying to move up to a bigger paper. The Bee was a throwaway, an excuse for advertising mailed free to all residents and stacked a foot high at gas stations and supermarkets. The owner, editor, and publisher, Zeke Kranston, was mortally afraid of offending anyone if there was even a microscopic chance of hustling them for ad space. So: no investigative stories, no exposés, no hard-hitting political pieces. “The job of the Ezerville Bee is to sell advertising,” Kranston would say, after removing the sodden toothpick that always seemed to be hanging from his lower lip. “Don’t try to dig up another Watergate. You’ll only alienate readers—and businesses.” As a result, Betterton’s clipping book looked like something out of Woman’s World : all service pieces, rescued dogs, and reports from church bake sales, high-school football games, and ice-cream socials. With a book like that, no wonder he couldn’t get an interview at a real newspaper.
    Betterton shook his head. He sure as hell wasn’t going to stay in Ezerville the rest of his life, and the only way to get out of Ezerville was to find that scoop. It didn’t matter if it was crime, a public interest story, or aliens with ray guns. One story with legs—that’s all he needed.
    He drained his cup, paid, then stepped out into the morning sunlight. There was a breeze coming in off the Black Brake swamp, uncomfortably warm and malodorous. Betterton got into the car and started the engine, putting the A/C on full blast. But he didn’t go anywhere—not yet. Before he got into this story, he wanted