Less than Dead

Tim Downs

Chapters (50)

COVER PAGE

less
than
DEad

OTHER NOVELS BY TIM DOWNS

First the Dead
Head Game
Plague Maker
Chop Shop
Shoofly Pie

TITLE PAGE

less
than
DEad

TIM DOWNS

COPYRIGHT PAGE

All rights reserved. No portion of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means—electronic, mechanical, photocopy, recording, scanning, or other—except for brief quotations in critical reviews or articles, without the prior written permission of the publisher.

Published in Nashville, Tennessee, by Thomas Nelson. Thomas Nelson is a registered trademark of Thomas Nelson, Inc.

Author is represented by the literary agency of Alive Communications, Inc., 7680 Goddard Street, Suite 200, Colorado Springs, CO 80920, www.alivecommunications.com.

Thomas Nelson books may be purchased in bulk for educational, business, fund-raising, or sales promotional use. For information, please e-mail [email protected].

Publisher’s Note: This novel is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either products of the author’s imagination or used fictitiously. All characters are fictional, and any similarity to people living or dead is purely coincidental.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Downs, Tim.
Less than dead / Tim Downs.
p. cm.
ISBN 978-1-59554-307-3
1. Polchak, Nick (Fictitious character)—Fiction. 2. Forensic entomology—Fiction. 3. Entomologists—Fiction. 4. Murder—Investigation—Fiction. 5. Virginia—Fiction. I. Title.
PS3604.O954L47 2008
813'.6—dc22

2008019840

Printed in the United States of America
08 09 10 11 12 QW 6 5 4 3 2 1

DEDICATION

For my beautiful Joy,
My sunrise, my sunset, my shining light each day

When Saul saw the vast Philistine army, he became frantic with fear. He asked the Lord what he should do, but the Lord refused to answer him, either by dreams or by sacred lots or by the prophets. Saul then said to his advisers, “Find a woman who is a medium, so I can go and ask her what to do.”

His advisers replied, “There is a medium at Endor.” (1 Samuel 28:5–7)

CONTENTS

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

1

Northern Virginia, 1998

The sheriff looked out over the crowded backyard. People were frantically searching everywhere: sheriff’s deputies, crime scene technicians, even file clerks and secretaries from the Warren County sheriff’s Department whose hearts had been touched by the news. Everyone wanted to help: friends, neighbors, church members, even total strangers from as far away as Front Royal who had heard about the missing three-year-old boy and had driven over to lend a hand with the search.

But there was no sign of the boy anywhere.

It was late now, well after midnight, and the sheriff was privately beginning to lose hope. He kept up a bold front for the sake of the frantic mother, but he had worked kidnappings and child abductions before, and he knew that the first twenty-four hours were critical. Unfortunately, this was the second day of the search, and the boy’s odds of survival were diminishing fast.