A Good Man
He wants to remember. He’ll wish he could forget
Decades after a brutal childhood trauma, a famous novelist finds his life shattered once again, in this unsettling psychological mystery thriller. Brooks Anderson should now be enjoying life, but the persistent nightmares and sleepwalking still haunt him. As hard as he’s tried, he can’t run away from the defining event of his life: the senseless murders of his mother and brother during a vacation in Montauk, which left the eight-year-old Brooks the sole survivor of the carnage and in a catatonic state. He buried his pain and eventually overcame his demons. But now an unscrupulous journalist is threatening to twist the truth by digging up the past. To prove his innocence and exorcise his demons, Brooks must dig into his own psyche and the events of that fateful summer. His pursuit of the truth soon leads Brooks down a slippery slope that challenges everything—and will bring him face-to-face with the real monster of Montauk . . .
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A GOOD MAN EXCERPT
Warning: Language
In writing parlance, this is the part authors call the “all is lost” moment. And for Brooks Anderson, the main character in my contemporary adult psych killer thriller, he’s been knocked down about as badly as a man can be. He awakens in the hospital with no memory of how he got there or why. Worse, the answers Brooks gets from his trusted friend/confidante/lawyer, Dalton Crane, send him further down a dark path.
“Woozy and disoriented in the mother of all brain fog, I open my eyes. The early morning sun filters through the curtains. My body aches as if I’ve been hit by a backhoe and run over by a tractor-trailer. My mouth is dry and the back of my throat is on fire. I clear my mind long enough to realize that I’m hooked up to all kinds of machines that burp, beep, blink, hum, and whir at will. What the fuck?
“No sudden movements, Mr. Anderson. Let me get your doctor.” The female voice is filtered and hazy. I catch a glimpse of white as she darts away.
No sudden movements? Fuck that shit. I abruptly sit up as my veins throb. I feel a tug. Something has come undone from my arm or my penis—or maybe both. I nearly pass out, but I force myself to come back from the gray. I focus and take stock of my surroundings. I’m in a hospital, that much is clear.
What the hell happened? I sort through the possibilities. A heart attack? Mugging? Hit by a car? Stroke? Fell into a manhole? Abducted by aliens? The Bermuda Triangle?
“Mr. Anderson, nice to meet you now that you’re awake. I’ve been a big fan for years.” A man in a white lab coat saunters up. He offers me his chubby hand, his fingers thick like sausage links. “I’m Dr. Nealon.”
I stretch my legs. Something pops. “I have to call my wife. She’ll be worried sick. I have to let her know where I am. Which is where exactly?”
The nurse from before returns and tries to ease me back onto the bed. I brush her off like a cockroach.
“Mr. Anderson, you’re at Mt. Sinai. Your wife was here earlier. Your father is here. Would you like to see him?” Dr. Nealon makes a move to reattach the IV.
I pull my arm away. “No need for that, I’m not staying.” I lurch out of bed. The room whirls a bit, but nothing I can’t handle. I’m a fucking vampire.
“Doctor—” the nurse says.
“It’s fine, I’ll handle it.”
The nurse scurries off.
“Mr. Anderson, what you’re experiencing is perfectly normal. The grogginess, the disorientation—”
Fuck these hospital gowns. How can you have an intelligent conversation while your bare cheeks hang in the breeze? “Where are my clothes?” I’ve already concluded that Dr. Nealon’s a dipshit.
“Do you know why you’re here, Mr. Anderson? Or even how long you’ve been in the hospital?” Dr. Nealon sounds like he’s talking to a petulant toddler: If you eat your fucking broccoli, you’ll get a treat, my boy.
The hell with my butt. I rummage around for my pants or my cell. I’m not fussy, whichever comes first. “To be honest, I don’t have a fucking clue.” I suddenly realize that my voice is raspy. I sound like I’ve swallowed a glass.
“A week.”
“A week, what?” What the hell is this fool jabbering about?
“Maybe I should get your father to explain—”
“I don’t want my fucking father!” I roar.
The door opens. It’s Dalton Crane. “Doctor, can I please speak to my client alone?”
Client? Oooh, this sounds foreboding. The last thing I remember is hailing a fucking taxi and now I need a lawyer. How did I get from there to here?
Dr. Nealon throws up his hands like a waiter who has given up trying to collect the dinner check. He slams the door behind him so hard a machine sputters like Wall-E. I think this is against hospital policy.
“Brooks, what in the hell do you think you’re doing?” Dalton sounds tired.
I pull another thing out of my arm and shuffle over to the closet. “I’m going home to my wife, what do you think?” I’m not at one hundred percent yet, but I’m getting there. My knees quiver like a virgin at the drive-in. I plop myself down on a nearby chair and look for my shoes. “That idiot doctor said something about me being here for a week. What the fuck did that mean?”
“Brooks, you really don’t know? Yes, you’ve been in the hospital for a week.”
A week? A whole fucking week? Still not convinced, I stroke my chin. Fuck, I had stubble, all right. “Was I hit by a bus or something? Because that’s what it feels like.”
“What do you remember?”
There’s something in Dalton’s tone that sets off alarms. “Are you asking me as my lawyer or my friend?”
“Both.”
“The last thing I remember is leaving my therapist’s office. Nicole—I mean, Dr. Richter. I wasn’t happy with the way our sessions were going and I told her I wouldn’t be coming anymore. And that was it.” Where is Dalton going with this?
“And Dr. Richter was alive when you left?”
I twist my face. “No, she was on her desk doing a—”
“Brooks, can you be goddamn serious for once in your fucking life,” Dalton snaps.
“All right. Dr. Richter was alive and breathing. She wasn’t thrilled about me leaving but otherwise—” I can’t find my shoes. Fuck my shoes.
“Nothing else?”
“I hailed a taxi.”
“Yeah, but did you get in it?”
My stomach knots. “I don’t know.” I suddenly feel dread; I mean, hard, cold, debilitating dread. Where is Cassie? I want my wife.
“Brooks, think hard. You don’t remember anything?”
I shake my head, confused.
“You vanished. I mean, fucking vaporized into thin air. No one knew where you were. Cassie and Bernard were frantic. I’m calling every goddamn hospital and morgue in a four-state radius. Finally, after three days, the police found you in an abandoned warehouse in Staten Island, wasted out of your goddamn mind. There was enough ketamine, fentanyl, and heroin in you to kill ten men. Your heart stopped twice in the ambulance.”
I manage a weak, painful chuckle as my lungs wheeze like bellows. “Good one, Dalton. Did I jump off the Empire State Building, too? Or stop a speeding train?” Then I realize he’s serious. “Come on, man, that’s fucking insane.”
“There are pictures. And video. It’s all over the fucking Internet. It’s not pretty.” He gives me this pitiful look.
An army of sledgehammers pounds my head. “I don’t care if they have pictures of me fucking the Four Horses of the Apocalypse at the Met Gala. It’s a goddamn set-up.”
PJ McIlvaine is a prolific best-selling Amazon author, screenwriter, and journalist. Also, her Showtime film with Mimi Rogers, Karen Allen, and Eric Stoltz was nominated for an Emmy. She’s been published in Crime Reads, Writer’s Digest, The New York Times, and numerous outlets. She lives in Eastern Long Island with her family and pampered fur baby.
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