The Sin Eater Read online

  PRAISE FOR THE SIN EATER

  Lee McIntyre’s riveting debut novel harnesses the raw emotional power of a father searching for his daughter to fuel a gripping thrill-ride through two very different worlds: a harsh and lawless biker subculture and an equally harsh and lawless state bureaucracy. The relationship at the story’s heart—a male friendship forged in violence, secrecy, and honor—becomes the key to unlocking both treacherous worlds as the mystery deepens, twists, and finally explodes in a climax you won’t see coming. Ingenious plot, crystal clear prose, and motorcycles blowing across the Pacific Northwest. Who could ask for more?

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  ELISABETH ELO, author of FINDING KATARINA M. and NORTH OF BOSTON

  Buckle up and prepare for a wild and unexpected ride. This unique and exciting road-trip thriller, with a twist around every corner, tests a loving father’s determination and pushes family devotion to the limit. At once both gritty and heartbreaking, this page turner will surprise you — and has important things to say not only about corruption and greed, but the price of loyalty, and what it means to be a family.

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  HANK PHILLIPPI RYAN, Nationally best selling and award-winning author of THE MURDER LIST

  Lee McIntyre’s THE SIN EATER is compulsively readable. Think: EASY RIDER meets THE FUGITIVE, with more than a few utterly original twists and a mind-bending take on sin and culpability.

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  HALLIE EPHRON, New York Times bestselling author of CAREFUL WHAT YOU WISH FOR

  A terrific debut! McIntyre ratchets up the suspense and takes us on a thrill ride that plumbs the depths of the human soul. How far would you go to protect your child? A smart, sophisticated thriller that will engage your brain even as it scares the hell out of you.

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  GARY BRAVER, Bestselling and award-winning author of ELIXIR and TUNNEL VISION.

  Lee McIntyre deftly navigates the gray areas between justice and the law. Hard-charging, harrowing, and ultimately hopeful, THE SIN EATER is a powerful debut.

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  JOSEPH FINDER, New York Times bestselling author of JUDGMENT

  A stunning debut. I couldn’t put it down. You’re going to wish you had a Tugg Morgan in your life.

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  CHRIS MOONEY, International Bestselling Author of THE MISSING and the Darby McCormick series

  Whip-crack pacing, an ingenious premise, and memorable characters are expertly interwoven in Lee McIntyre’s propulsive debut thriller. THE SIN EATER takes the reader on a hair-raising journey into the darkest heart of terror and mines the depths of the human condition in a way only a trained philosopher like McIntyre can bring to the page. Lee is a writer to watch!

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  DANIEL PALMER, USA Today bestselling author of TRAUMA and THE FIRST FAMILY

  No one ever said life was fair—a lesson Adam Grammaticus and his lifelong buddy Tugg Morgan learned early and violently. In his debut novel, philosopher Lee McIntyre poses a series of questions that command our attention. If, like Adam, the powers that be maneuvered to take our good name, (legally) seize our child, jeopardize our marriage, ruin our job prospects and turn us into an outlaw, would we fight to preserve what we love? With Tugg’s help, Grammaticus does and McIntyre straps us in for a wild ride. A page turner! I read it in two sittings.

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  LEN ROSEN, Award-winning author of the Hénri Poincare novels and THE KORTELISY ESCAPE

  THE SIN EATER rockets us from the idyllic world of Lake Oswego suburban bliss to a rollicking fever dream of skinheads, bikers, and social workers. Lee McIntyre’s unbridled storytelling is mesmerizing as is his use of the full range of Oregon’s geography and culture.

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  RAY DANIEL, awarding-winning author of the Tucker mysteries

  A high octane roller coaster ride that will keep you guessing until the very end.

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  WALT GRAGG, Best Book Award-winning author of THE RED LINE and THE CHOSEN ONE

  THE SIN EATER

  Copyright © 2019 by Lee McIntyre

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced by any means, graphic, electronic, or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, taping or by any information storage retrieval system without the written permission of the author or publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

  Braveship Books

  www.braveshipbooks.com

  Aura Libertatis Spirat

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places or incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events or locales is entirely coincidental and beyond the intent of either the author or the publisher.

  Cover Design by The Cover Collection

  Book layout by Alexandru Diaconescu

  www.steadfast-typesetting.eu

  ISBN-13: 978-1-64062-089-6

  For G.B.

  Who knows why

  Acknowledgements

  There are so many people over the years who have helped me pursue my dream of writing fiction that I couldn’t possibly name them all. Here I’d like to mention only a few without whom this particular book never would have happened.

  To my friends (and beta readers) Peter Bahls and Lia Oppedisano, thank you so much for your excellent comments. I have so many friends through Mystery Writers of America that I’m afraid to begin listing them, for fear of leaving someone out; no other group has been so generous to me as a writer. Other friends, whom I met at Thrillerfest, convinced me that sometimes people who write about crime and mayhem are the nicest people in the world. Special thanks go to Leila Philip, who gave me the title for this book twenty years ago, without probably realizing it. Special thanks also to my writing teacher, Chris Mooney, whose extraordinary patience let me find my voice in an earlier manuscript. And to my friends Donna Bagdasarian, Jon Cullen, and Jess Dawson thank you for all of your wonderful support and advice over the years.

  My penultimate debt for this book goes to my talented editor, Clair Lamb, who helped me in ways too numerous to mention. And to G.B. … above all.

  Table of Contents

  Portland, Oregon. August 1992

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Chapter 39

  Chapter 40

  Chapter 41

  Chapter 42

  Chapter 43

  Chapter 44

  Chapter 45

  Chapter 46

  Chapter 47

  Chapter 48

  Chapter 49

  Chapter 50

  Chapter 51

  Chapter 52

  Chapter 53

  Chapter 54

  Chapter 55

  Chapter 56

  Chapter 5
7

  Chapter 58

  Chapter 59

  Chapter 60

  Chapter 61

  Chapter 62

  Chapter 63

  Chapter 64

  Chapter 65

  Chapter 66

  Chapter 67

  Chapter 68

  Chapter 69

  Chapter 70

  Chapter 71

  Chapter 72

  Chapter 73

  Chapter 74

  Chapter 75

  Chapter 76

  Chapter 77

  Chapter 78

  Chapter 79

  Chapter 80

  Chapter 81

  Chapter 82

  Chapter 83

  Chapter 84

  Lake Oswego, Oregon. Six Months Later

  I give easement and rest now to thee, dear man.

  Come not down the lanes or in our meadows.

  And for thy peace I pawn my own soul.

  Prayer of the last sin-eater

  A social wasp will sacrifice itself when its colony is threatened.

  A solitary wasp relies on its venom to hunt.

  Biotropica

  Portland, Oregon

  August 1992

  Adam Grammaticus saw the gang of teenagers coming down the sidewalk toward him and his best friend Tugg Morgan, but they were still too far away to know how much older they might be or even how many of them there were. Or if they were trouble.

  “One.”

  “What was that?” Tugg said.

  “I said ‘one,’ don’t you remember?” Adam replied. “What’s the sense of having a system if we’re not going to use it?”

  “There’s a lot more of them than one, pal.”

  “Threat level one,” Adam said. “Not one guy. Do you think I’m stupid?”

  “I think you worry too much,” Tugg said.

  Easy for him to say. Although Adam was a year older, Tugg was built like a house and had in fact been skipped a grade because he had so completely demoralized every bully, jock and meathead in 7th grade that the school board thought he might find a little humility in high school. But after making friends with stick-thin Adam on the first day, Tugg had proceeded to cut a swath through all the assholes in 9th and 10th grade. Now sophomores, Adam had filled out only a little, but Tugg had just kept on growing. Adam supposed that there were worse things than having your own personal bodyguard at a tough school like Jefferson. But now Adam felt sick, because he counted four guys headed toward them, all at least seventeen or eighteen.

  And they were skinheads.

  “What’s in the bag, boy?”

  Tugg took the backpack from Adam and stepped out front, moving his body between Adam and the punks. He slung the pack over his shoulder and gave a neat little grin.

  “I guess you’ll just have to take it and find out.”

  The head guy’s eyes flashed joyously. At least Adam thought he was the head guy. With their shaved skulls, ballpoint tattoos and uniform of black leather jackets, torn jeans, and Doc Martens steel-toed boots, they all looked the same. L.A. had Crips and Bloods, but in Portland, Oregon, they had Vietnamese gangs and skinheads. And right now he and Tugg were standing in the no-man’s-land neighborhood right between them.

  “I’m really going to enjoy fucking you up,” said a guy in back. While the skinheads laughed at this little piece of wisdom, Adam flinched to see Tugg throw the bag at the head guy’s face and follow up with a murderous punch directly under his jaw. Lights out. The guy fell like a redwood. They all stood stunned as his head bounced off the sidewalk.

  “Get ’em!” one of the skinheads yelled.

  Tugg grabbed the bag and tore out Adam’s track spikes, which he put on each hand.

  “Adam, I want you to run.”

  Two of the skinheads launched at Tugg, but he made them pay with a series of slashes from the hard metal cleats.

  “I can’t leave you.”

  “NOW!” Tugg screamed.

  When the third skinhead moved in his direction, Adam took off.

  Feet flying, hurdling over trashcans filled with branches and grass clippings, Adam saw the yards as a blur. He couldn’t remember ever moving this fast, even with his coach screaming at him in the last leg of the 440. The big boots clomped behind him like a sledgehammer. Track was one thing; now he was running for his life.

  The boots stopped, but Adam kept going.

  Tugg is one tough shit. He’ll be all right.

  Adam slowed and wheeled around. Down the street, his friend straddled one of the punks on the ground, punching him in the face, with the other guy kicking Tugg in the back. The third guy hadn’t reached them yet.

  “Fuck him up! Fuck him up!” yelled the guy on the ground.

  One of the kicks caught Tugg in the side of the head and he rolled onto the ground, just as the third skinhead arrived.

  Adam’s feet felt encased in cement as he watched the flurry of kicks.

  He’ll die if I don’t go back there. And I’ll die if I do. No—

  Adam took off.

  Back over the garbage cans, Adam grabbed a long tree branch and ran full power at the scrum.

  Adam didn’t remember screaming, but he must have, because all three skinheads stopped kicking and turned in his direction at the last second.

  The branch didn’t look that sharp. Maybe it was about speed or momentum or one of those things he’d learn in physics next year, but Adam watched the branch enter one ear and explode out the other from a perfectly shaved head.

  Oh my God. It’s not real. It’s not real.

  Adam smelled the leaves and coppery blood in the air as he snapped the branch and started whaling on the other two.

  Adam.…

  He heard his name from somewhere far off as he swung the branch wildly, jabbing repeatedly at a bloody stomach. When the guy fell to his knees, the last skinhead ran.

  “You! Wait!” Adam screamed.

  Adam held the branch like a javelin and made his approach.

  One, two, three, launch!

  The stick wobbled a bit in the air, but sailed directly at the big white head as if it were a cue ball, bringing the guy crashing to his knees. Adam rushed over, grabbed the stick and pointed it at the guy’s neck.

  Adam!

  He looked up the sidewalk at Tugg, who was getting up, bodies motionless all around him.

  Adam! Siren!

  He saw Tugg’s mouth moving and heard his voice, but Adam couldn’t quite put them together, like a hammer pounding a nail 100 yards away, out of sync.

  Adam dropped the stick and ran back to Tugg. He picked up the gym bag.

  “Adam, what the fuck did you do?” Tugg croaked. “You killed them.”

  “Only two.” Adam’s hands were shaking.

  The siren grew louder.

  “Only two?”

  “What about the other guys?” Adam spit out.

  “They’re done.”

  “Are you sure we should leave them?”

  “They’re done!” Tugg yelled. “We’ve got to get out of here. Now!” Tugg grabbed Adam by the shoulder and pulled him along as they broke into a run down 15th Avenue, away from home. “Let’s get to the park, then double back along Fremont,” Tugg said. “We need to book.”

  The yards flew by again as Adam’s feet fell into a rhythmic pattern. Tugg jagged right and Adam followed, down the cross street toward Irving Park.

  Tugg didn’t run track, but he was damn fast when he had to be. Adam breathed through his nose and exhaled from his mouth as he paced himself to keep up.

  “Almost there,” Tugg said over his shoulder. “What the fuck were you thinking?”

  Three blocks away. The sirens had stopped. The cops must have found the bodies.

  Tugg pulled Adam flat against a fence and crouched down. “Give me a second,” Tugg said, wheezing. “Wind.”

  “One more block, shouldn’t we just go?”

  “I said, give me a second. We’re going to make it, okay? I’m not
going to let anything happen to you.” Tugg’s breath grew even and he nodded his head toward the park.

  “I think we should just walk from here. Less suspicious,” said Adam.

  “Good idea.” After half a block Tugg looked over. “You hurt?”

  “No, I don’t think so. You?”

  Tugg shook his head. “Nothing I can’t live with. But it sure could have been. Thanks.”

  “No problem.”

  “No, seriously man. I owe you. That was about to go sideways.”

  “It looked like it already had. But you’d have done the same for me. In fact, you already did. Four guys?”

  No longer out of breath, Tugg still hesitated. “I was trying, man. You know? I thought I had it handled.”

  They were on the path to the park. Deep shade from the towering fir trees made it seem later than it was, but dusk was approaching.

  “We’ll wait by the slides. After dark we can cut through the backyards and we’re home. My mom won’t be home till eight.”

  “My stepdad probably won’t be home at all,” Adam said.

  “Stay over again then.”

  “Sure,” Adam said. He hesitated, then continued. “Four guys is too many, Tugg. No one could do that. Everybody needs backup.”

  “I sure as shit did today.”

  The light shifted to a silver grey. Tugg bent down under the slides and sat cross-legged on the wood chips. He looked at his watch.

  Adam sat next to him. His hands had calmed somewhat, but he was still shivering.

  Tugg looked at him. “Can I ask you something?”

  “Sure.”

  “Why did you do it? What made you go apeshit?”

  Adam swallowed dryly.

  “I couldn’t run forever,” Adam said. “I didn’t plan it. It’s just when I saw you, I had no choice. I owe you more than that.”

  “You don’t owe me shit. Never have.”

  “Not sure about that,” Adam smiled. “But that goes both ways, then.”

  “Not hardly even close.”

  “Cut that shit out. We’re in this together. Nobody owes anybody then. I mean it.”

  Tugg looked at his watch again. “It’ll be dark in another ten minutes. Get ready to go.”

  Adam stood up in a crouch because they were still under the slides. He peeked out to make sure no one was coming.