DUNGEON OF HORRORS

 

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The bank’s newest Trust Officer Terri Stanley prepares the requested department’s internal audit. Finding puzzling inconsistencies and a jumble of misappropriations and unexplained offshore accounts, she follows protocol and immediately punches in the listed number for the Executor-Trustee, Craige Ingram.

Wealthy land owner/parttime PI Craige Ingram reaches the file back to homicide Lt. Grayson MacGerald after finishing a quick read-through of the preliminary forensic report from Coroner Fred Dinkins on the unexpected death of bank President Royce Sedgewicke. Dinkins’ meticulous autopsy findings verify that a massive apparent heart attack was not from natural causes, confirming what these longtime SEAL buddies suspected.

When Ingram gets a call from Terri Stanley, the bank’s attractive, newly-hired Trust Officer, wanting to discuss in confidence possible account irregularities discovered during her audit, he never imagines the twisted world of money and greed that would involve a psychopath’s trail of bloody body parts strewn along Ingram's river property, or that Terri and her son would disappear.

Confronted by a race against time, Ingram fears that Terri might become one more on the list of dead who crossed a twisted mind bent on thrill-kills and retribution.

Read an Excerpt

A testy Barry Jamison Peters sat at his desk in the bank, nervously folding and refolding a once immaculate handkerchief. At forty-two, Barry looked haggard way beyond his years—the prep school and college gridiron hunk with a perpetual chip on his shoulder long gone to flabby chunkiness, a once pleasant face now drawn. Like he’d done all his life, he waited, listening as the workday ended. The ebony-glass high rise became still and quiet as the five o’clock hired help scurried to the suburban parkway. Breaking routine attracted attention, and he sure didn’t want that.

Math whiz nerd Barry liked numbers. “You can trust numbers,” he once told a new teller. Barry didn’t mind working late; the solitude was warm and familiar. He glanced at his Carrara marble clock that graced his orderly desk. “Thirty more minutes,” he murmured.

At breakfast that morning, he played with a slice of dry scorched toast. His puffy eyes in a sagging face buried in the morning paper hardly glanced in the direction of his frumpy wife when he said, “I have to work late again.”

She tugged at the waist of her soiled sloppy nightgown. In more ways than looks, she matched him dull for dull. “What’s so different?” she said grumpily. “When you’re around, we never talk.”

In that moment his look glittered into the hate-side of disgust. She’d served him divorce papers three times, stopping when her checking account bottomed out. She never paid any of her lawyers, and the last one lost the papers in the bank’s parking deck where the idle-talk crowd found them.

At the half hour, on the mark, Barry took the elevator to the main floor. His steps quickened through the red marble foyer with its malachite green columns and tall, ornate clock beneath the enormous oil painting of the Steamship Company’s first steam locomotive. The duplicate master keys seared his sweaty palm. He unlocked the steel-barred grill into the safety deposit vault, inserted both slender keys and turned them at the same time. He pulled out the long, flat box, raised the lid, pocketed the small velvet satchel from inside, replaced the box, removed the keys and made sure the grill locked behind him. His heart drubbed faster… anxious to get to Royce’s secret place and the vintage collection of Cabernets in the cellar beneath the street. He took the elevator to the fourth floor, then the parking garage connector and the fire stairs down to the street. He scuttled across McIntosh, turned down the narrow alley with its unused railroad siding, brushed beneath the tangle of overgrown Woodbine Creeper and slipped the new key into his new lock. Once inside, he made sure the door locked behind him. The stale, dank air closed in around him. He was safe. No one could find him there.

About the Author

Internationally acclaimed author and public speaker, Hawk MacKinney began writing mysteries for his school newspapers. Following graduation, he served in the US Navy for over 20 years. While serving as a Navy Commander, he also had a career as a full-time faculty member at several major state medical facilities. He earned two postgraduate degrees with studies in languages and history and has taught postgraduate courses in both the United States and Jerusalem, Israel.

In addition to professional articles and texts on fetal and adult anatomy, Hawk has authored several novels that have received national and international recognition. Moccasin Trace, a historical novel, was nominated for the prestigious Michael Shaara Award for Excellence in Civil War Fiction and the Writers Notes Book Award.

Known for his terrifying suspense and unique “Southron” dialog, Hawk has published five novels in the Moccasin Hollow Mysteries: Hidden Chamber of Death, Westobou Gold, Curse of the Ancients, Dead Gold, and Blood of the Dragonfly.

In a change of direction, Hawk has also published three books in The Cairns of Sainctuarie science fiction series: The Bleikovat Event, Volume I; The Missing Planets, Volume II; and The Inanna Phantom, Volume III.

His latest work is a series called the Moccasin Trace Mysteries. Dungeon of Horrors is the first book in the series, and the second book – Blood in the Shadows – is in development.

Website: https://www.hawkmackinneyauthor.com/
Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/Dungeon-Horrors-Hawk-MacKinney-ebook/dp/B0D6BP1Y27/ref=sr_1_1

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