Locked Doors

Blake Crouch

Chapters (0)

LOCKED DOORS

By Blake Crouch

LOCKED DOORS is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, organizations, places, events, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

“Locked Doors,” from The Awful Rowing Toward God by Anne Sexton. Copyright © 1975 by Loring Conant, Jr., Executor of the Estate of Anne Sexton. Reprinted by permission of Houghton Mifflin Company. All rights reserved.

For Rebecca, LOMFL

Acknowledgments

BEFORE we get started, I need to thank some wonderful people. My wife, Rebecca, has been there for me in every way possible—much love to the Becca. Linda Allen, Marcia Markland, Anna Cottle, and Mary Alice Kier are some of the savviest readers and kindest people I’ve ever known. My writers group—Shannon Richardson, Dinah Leavitt, Suzanne Tyrpak, Doug Walker, and Richard Koch—provided me with invaluable feedback and helped make this book readable for those who haven’t encountered Desert Places. Goddess of website design, Beth Tendall, conjured my internet presence with elegance and humor. Sandi Greene (how many mother-in-laws show up in the acknowledgements?) should be my North Carolina publicist. Andy Smith and Anne Walker gave me wonderful feedback. Bill Smith was kind enough to explain hypnosis to me and in the process damn near put me under. A double nod for the wonderful writer and inventor-extraordinaire, Doug Walker, who showed me how to build a homemade electric chair. My climbing buddy and master photographer, Paul Pennington, took some killer author photos. A standing ovation for the brilliant Detective Art Holland who walked me through the realities of crime scene investigation and inadvertently helped to unravel a crucial plot point. My brother, Jordan, inspired me immensely, particularly through the last hundred pages. And finally, a grateful bow to everyone at Maria’s Bookshop in Durango, Colorado.

L U T H E R

For the angels who inhabit this town,

although their shape constantly changes,

each night we leave some cold potatoes

and a bowl of milk on the windowsill.

Usually they inhabit heaven where,

by the way, no tears are allowed.

They push the moon around like

a boiled yam.

The Milky Way is their hen

with her many children.

When it is night the cows lie down

but the moon, that big bull, stands up.

—Anne Sexton, “Locked Doors”

THE headline on the Arts and Leisure page read: “Publisher to Reissue Five Thrillers by Alleged Murderer, Andrew Z. Thomas.”

All it took was seeing his name.

Karen Prescott dropped The New York Times and walked over to the window.