Melissa Connor, Associate Professor and Forensic Science Program Director at Nebraska Wesleyan University, along with her students: Jeff Rathman, Kimberly Van Den Akker, Nikki Brophy, Amanda Ruzicka, Leron West, and Kody Connelly. They took an entire afternoon out of their busy schedules to help film a video at NWU’s Crime Scene House for my Web site. And Melissa, thanks also for giving me some ideas on how to process a crime scene outdoors as well as some insight into the Nebraska coroner system. Our conversations are always so morbidly enlightening.
Gary Plank, Assistant Professor at Nebraska Wesleyan University and retired criminal investigator and behavior profiler for the Nebraska State Patrol Investigative Services Division, for answering my questions about the State Patrol and crime scene jurisdictions.
Annie Belatti, whose vast experiences as a trauma nurse and nurse anesthetist provided invaluable information about electrocution and what it might be like to get wrapped up in barbed wire.
Leigh Ann Retelsdorf, Nebraska District Court Judge and retired Douglas County prosecutor, who usually helps me murder my victims, this time was able to access her incredible resume that includes biologist. Thanks for sharing some interesting tidbits about the Nebraska National Forest’s diverse wildlife.
The real Mary Ellen Wychulis for her generous donation to the National MS Society and for allowing me to concoct a fictional character in her name. The real Mary Ellen has never, to my knowledge, worked for the USDA, and any resemblance would be a matter of coincidence.
My amazing team at Doubleday, headed by my editor, Phyllis Grann. Special thanks also to Judy Jacoby for your endless attention to detail and caring for each book as if it were your only one. Also the crew at Little Brown UK: Catherine Burke and David Shelley.
Ray Kunze, again, for lending his name to Maggie’s new boss. Ray had no idea what he was getting into when he asked to be in a novel. And again for the record, the real Ray Kunze is a gentleman and all-around great guy who would never send Maggie to the Nebraska Sandhills to investigate cattle mutilations.
The booksellers, book buyers, librarians, reviewers, and bloggers across the country for mentioning and recommending my novels.
My apologies to the residents of the Nebraska Sandhills and North Platte for my taking some liberty with geography and places such as the Great Plains Regional Medical Center, which, to my knowledge, does not include near as many floors and stairwells as Maggie maneuvered down.
Last, thank you to the ranchers, farmers, and food producers of this nation, who not only do an amazing job of feeding us but of making sure our food is safe. After the spinach recall in 2006, growers and producers got together and developed a safer, more efficient and effective system to curtail future contaminations. They did this on their own and long before the federal government had finished its official investigation.
As I finished the edits to this novel in December 2010, Congress was passing a new food safety bill in response to the egg recall of August/September. Ironically, this massive overhaul of FDA regulations does not extend to the USDA, which oversees beef, poultry, and, yes, eggs.
ALSO BY
ALEX KAVA
WWW.ALEXKAVA.COM
New York Times bestselling author Alex Kava returns in a blaze of glory with a gripping, action-packed thriller featuring special agent Maggie O’Dell, who is leading the search for a serial arsonist. As the acts of arson become more brazen, Maggie’s professional and personal worlds begin to collide dangerously. The killer may be closer than she imagines.
And don’t miss Damaged, also available in paperback from Anchor.
An excerpt from the forthcoming
Fireproof
by Alex Kava
Available from Doubleday July 2012
An excerpt from the forthcoming
Fireproof
by Alex Kava
Available from Doubleday July 2012
Chapter 1
Washington, D.C.
Cornell Stamoran slid his chipped thumbnail through the crisp seal of Jack Daniel’s. He stared at the bottle and swallowed hard. His throat felt cotton-dry. His tongue licked chapped lips. All involuntary reactions, easily triggered.
Back in the days when he was a partner in one of the District’s top accounting firms, his drink had been Jack and Coke. Little by little the Coke disappeared long before he started keeping a bottle of whiskey in his desk’s bottom drawer and by then it didn’t even need to be Jack or Jim or Johnnie.