Doing Hard Time
Authors: Stuart Woods
BOOKS BY STUART WOODS
F I C T I O N
Unintended Consequences
†
Collateral Damage
†
Severe Clear
†
Unnatural Acts
†
DC Dead
†
Son of Stone
†
Bel-Air Dead
†
Lucid Intervals
†
Strategic Moves
†
Santa Fe Edge
§
Kisser
†
Hothouse Orchid*
Loitering with Intent
†
Mounting Fears
‡
Hot Mahogany
†
Santa Fe Dead
§
Beverly Hills Dead
Shoot Him If He Runs
†
Fresh Disasters
†
Short Straw
§
Dark Harbor
†
Iron Orchid*
Two-Dollar Bill
†
The Prince of Beverly Hills Reckless Abandon
†
Capital Crimes
‡
Dirty Work
†
Blood Orchid*
The Short Forever
†
Orchid Blues*
Cold Paradise
†
L.A. Dead
†
The Run
‡
Worst Fears Realized
†
Orchid Beach*
Swimming to Catalina
†
Dead in the Water
†
Dirt
†
Choke
Imperfect Strangers
Heat
Dead Eyes
L.A. Times
Santa Fe Rules
§
New York Dead
†
Palindrome
Grass Roots
‡
White Cargo
Deep Lie
‡
Under the Lake
Run Before the Wind
‡
Chiefs
‡
T R A V E L
A Romantic’s Guide to the Country Inns of Britain and Ireland
(1979)
M E M O I R
Blue Water, Green Skipper
*A Holly Barker Novel
†
A Stone Barrington Novel
‡
A Will Lee Novel
§
An Ed Eagle Novel
G. P. PUTNAM’S SONS
Publishers Since 1838
Published by the Penguin Group Penguin Group (USA), 375 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014, USA
USA • Canada • UK • Ireland • Australia • New Zealand • India • South Africa • China Penguin Books Ltd, Registered Offices: 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England For more information about the Penguin Group visit penguin.com Copyright © 2013 by Stuart Woods All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, scanned, or distributed in any printed or electronic form without permission. Please do not participate in or encourage piracy of copyrighted materials in violation of the author’s rights. Purchase only authorized editions. Published simultaneously in Canada Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Woods, Stuart.
Doing hard time / Stuart Woods.
p. cm.—(Stone Barrington series) ISBN 978-1-10161586-7
1. Barrington, Stone (Fictitious character)—Fiction. 2. Private investigators—Fiction. 3. Bel Air (Los Angeles, Calif.)—Fiction. I. Title.
PS3573.O642D65 2013 2013015375
813'.54—dc23
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
Contents
Teddy Fay didn’t like the way the man was looking at him. He pushed his cart around a bend, then trotted halfway down the next aisle in the supermarket and stopped. The man appeared behind him and glanced at Teddy in what he perceived to be a furtive manner. Teddy didn’t like it. He especially didn’t like that the man was uniformed as a deputy sheriff.
Teddy didn’t think of himself as an unnaturally paranoid person; still, after years as a fugitive, albeit now a forgotten one, his sense of self-preservation had become honed to a fine point, and he could not ignore that. He ducked around the next corner, abandoned his shopping cart, and moved quickly toward the rear exit of the big store. He passed through a stockroom and out into the alley behind the store, then he broke into a trot. Before the deputy had had time to miss him and start looking, Teddy had arrived back in the parking lot in front of the store, started his car, and driven away.
He drove away from the store in the opposite direction from his house, then started to work a pattern of turns that took him in a circle, back to his neighborhood, always checking his rearview mirror and occasionally stopping for a minute or so to see if a sheriff’s cruiser would pass him. He took forty minutes to make the ten-minute trip to his house, and he had the garage door open with the remote as he turned into the driveway, so that he didn’t have to slow down until the car was inside and the door down. He had enjoyed living in the North Carolina mountain town, but the time had come to move on.
Once inside, Teddy checked the living room window to be sure he had not been followed, then he went to his laptop, entered the eighteen-digit password, found his departure checklist, and printed it. He went to the kitchen, looked under the sink and found the box of surgical gloves he kept there. He donned a pair then went to his bedroom and packed his two duffels with the clothing and belongings he did not want to leave behind. That done, he put all his remaining clothing into a big plastic leaf bag, then vacuumed the house and furniture thoroughly and put the vacuum bag into another leaf bag, followed by every remaining item that he owned, including the used sheets and towels and everything in the refrigerator and freezer. The house had now taken on a bare look, containing only the furnishings that had come with the rental.
When he was satisfied that he had packed everything he was going to take with him he put his belongings and the two leaf bags into the back of the old station wagon he had been driving for the past ten months, then he returned to the house, found a spray bottle of alcohol-based window cleaning fluid, and spent nearly four hours wiping down every door and door handle, piece of furniture, kitchen cabinet, and surface in the house that could retain a fingerprint.