Two Snippets: Caught in a Web and Black Yéʼii (The Evil One)
I was on vacation with my family this past week for a much needed getaway. As a new grandpa, I spent time with my new grandson off and on babysitting. I love that little guy, and I am enjoying my new role as grandpa.
I want to give you an update on my new book, Black Yéʼii (The Evil One) and share with you the first chapter. This book delves into the spirituality of the Navajo culture- remember two of my characters are full-blooded Navajo, and Black Yéʼii (The Evil One) is more of the thriller-crime novel than most of my other books. Yes, it still has a coming-of-age thread embedded within, but not as strong as some others.
Black Yéʼii (The Evil One) is a police procedural novel in some ways, and it has its roots anchored snuggly with a former book of mine, Caught in a Web. In fact, you could consider Black Yéʼii (The Evil One) a sort of sequel to Caught in a Web, but I’ve written it in a way that it wouldn’t be necessary to read Web before you read Black Yéʼii (The Evil One).
Here is the tag line and synopsis of Black Yéʼii (The Evil One):
The secret of how four members of MS-13 died was supposed to keep them safe. That is, if no one spoke of it. But someone did, and now people are dying.
Synopsis
The police fabricated a story about the night four members of MS-13 died in a tiny home on a quiet street almost two years previous. George Tokay and his friends were not supposed to share the secret about what really happened that night. No one was supposed to know the truth. But someone talked, and now MS-13, ruthless and wanting revenge, is back in town, and people are dying.
Can Detectives Graff, O’Connor, and Eiselmann find the killers and put a stop to the killing before anyone else dies?
—
Caught in a Web came out in 2018 and is a PenCraft Literary Award Winner, and BestThrillers named it “… one of the best crime fiction novels of 2018.” It has gone on to be one of the best sellers in my published works. Here is a snippet from it:
CHAPTER 4
Graff drove around to the back of the strip mall, spotted flashing blues mixed with flashing reds and a small huddle of cops with little clouds of breath coming out of their mouths as they spoke to one another. They stood around stamping their feet to keep them from freezing and turning into cement blocks.
He rolled to a stop just outside the yellow tape and decided to leave his squad car running to keep it warm. He grabbed his traveler cup of hot coffee and got out, shutting the door behind him with a metallic clunk that didn’t echo in the dark night. It was that cold.
He spotted the ME, turned up his collar with his free hand and hunched his shoulders as he walked in that direction.
“Ike,” he said with a nod.
Mike Eisenhower, whom everyone called, Ike, was in his sixties and bald except for a fringe of snow white hair that ran around the sides and back of his head like a misplaced halo. He was short and a little stooped, but his mind was clear and sharp.
“I will never understand the attraction, Jamie. I don’t get it.”
“What do we have?”
The older man shook his head and said, “A middle school kid, maybe eleven or twelve. On his back, head to the side in a puddle of frozen puke with snot frozen to his face. That’s what we have. What the hell is the attraction of drugs when it ends like this?”
“Cause of death?” Graff caught the old man’s frown and corrected himself. “Tentative cause of death?”
“OD. Some sort. Not sure what, though.”
“Time of death?”
The old man shrugged and said, “The kid is frozen stiff. I’d say four or five hours ago at least, but because of this damn cold, I can’t pinpoint it for you until I get him back to the office.”
“Do you have a guess as to what drug it was?”
He shook his head and said, “I’ll do a tox screen and be able to tell you for sure.”
Eisenhower’s office was in the basement of Waukesha Memorial Hospital, a five or ten minute drive away.
Graff squatted down next to the boy. Blond. Skinny. Wearing only a red hooded sweatshirt. No hat, no gloves, no boots. A pair of Jordans on his feet. His upper lip and cheek coated in icy snot. The pavement under his head was frosted in yellowish or brownish puke, depending upon how the light hit it. The boy’s eyes and mouth were partially open. A lovely picture of another dead kid added to the collection of dead kid pictures Jamie had stored away in his head. Not that he had wanted to hold on to any of them. Ever. No fucking way!
“Thanks, Ike. You have my number,” Graff said as he strolled toward the huddle of cops.
He recognized most of them and said, “Guys, anyone catch any radio chatter on missing kids? Kids who didn’t show up after dinner or who might have snuck out at night?”
They stamped their feet and shook their heads and muttered, “No.”
“Okay. I need all the dumpsters checked for anything that might fit the crime. Look for anything out of the ordinary, anything that doesn’t quite fit. I’ll need pictures of boot or shoe marks and any tire treads. Again, look on the ground for anything that might fit with the crime, anything out of the ordinary. Later this morning, I’ll need some of you to canvas the neighborhoods in a three or four block radius from here. Ike said the kid might be a middle school kid, eleven or twelve-years-old. I’m guessing unless this is a dump site, he’d live close by because he isn’t exactly dressed for a long hike. Not in this weather, anyway.”
As he walked away, he said, “Whoever decides to canvas the neighborhood can go home. Start about eight in the morning. That will give you a couple of hours sleep.”
Jamie poured the coffee out of his traveler cup onto the frozen pavement, no longer thirsty and sure as hell not hungry.
—
Graff has been in all of my books, beginning with Stolen Lives, Book One of the Lives Trilogy. If you’ve read my books and the author notes within them, you know while Jamie Graff is a fictional character in my books, in real life, Jamie is a police chief in a small city in Wisconsin and a friend of mine who has helped with tactical and police procedure throughout my catalog.
As a treat for you, here is the opening chapter of Black Yéʼii (The Evil One) that will be published January 2, 2025. I will have author copies well before the Christmas holidays for anyone looking for a signed copy, either for yourself or for a loved one. Just let me know.
Chapter One
Waukesha, Wisconsin
The doorbell rang, and Carmen Benevides opened the door to three kids she didn’t recognize. She assumed they were friends of Angel. Actually, she knew they weren’t kids, but at her age, anyone younger than she was a kid. And when they stormed into the house and the two boys threw her on the couch, she realized they weren’t friends of her son, either.
Shocked, bewildered, and frightened, Carmen cowered as far away from them as she could.
The fat boy with ugly tattoos up and down his arms and around his neck hovered over her. He had the black, soulless eyes of a shark and a shaved, round, bullet head. His lips were pulled back in a sneer. The boy was Manny’s age, maybe a little older. He wore what looked like a sword on his hip, but in a scabbard. It wasn’t as long as a real sword, but it was longer than a knife.
The other boy, the skinny, jittery one, had small, beady black eyes and a full head of thick black wavy hair. He didn’t have tattoos, at least none that she could see. She would have described him as a handsome young man, but he had a nasty scar on the left side of his face running along his jaw, like someone had cut it with something sharp. Despite that blemish, the boy was handsome, much like her Angel. However, Angel would never have treated anyone, much less an old lady, like he and the other boy did.
“Where is that bendejo, Puta?” the ugly fat boy asked.
Carmen’s glare was her answer, and the only answer he would get.
He slapped her. Her ear rang, and from the coppery taste, she knew the inside of her mouth was bleeding.
“Juan, that’s no way to treat this lady.”
Content for the moment to watch and listen, these were the first words the girl had spoken.
She was on the small, skinny side, with long black hair falling past her shoulders, and had large dark eyes, and a beautiful smile. Under any other circumstances, Carmen would have thought she was beautiful. The type of girl she had hoped Angel would come home with one day. But Carmen understood that while she looked beautiful, under all that beauty was the ugliness of sin and Satan.
The girl sat down on the couch, but turned to gaze at Carmen.
“I apologize for Juan. He can be rude when he wants something badly.”
Her voice was light and musical.
“About a year ago, a friend of ours was killed in your house. His name was Ricardo Fuentes. There were other boys killed too, including your son, Manny. We would like to speak to your son, Angel, about this.”
Carmen blinked and turned ashen. No one was supposed to know this. The details. She shivered and hugged herself.
The girl smiled sweetly, but Carmen wasn’t fooled.
“Angel had nothing to do with that,” Carmen growled. “Manny killed those boys, and he got himself killed.”
The fat boy, Juan, stepped forward and pulled his hand back for another slap, but the girl held out her hand and stopped him.
“If you tell us where Angel is, we could speak to him and find out his side of the story, and then we’ll leave.”
“There is no other side to the story,” Carmen said, her eyes darting from the mean boy to the girl.
“There are always sides to a story, Mother. Sometimes there is the truth. Sometimes a lie.” The girl raised her eyebrows and smiled as Carmen turned her head from her. “Sometimes there are shades of truth.”
That startled Carmen. First, she wondered who had broken their promise. Second, if it was like everything else in her long life, the promise made that ugly, awful night was only an illusion. No one was supposed to know what had happened. The three cops had assured her, Angel, and the two other boys that if no one spoke of it, all of them would be safe. It had been at least a year, perhaps more, and she had just begun to relax, believing in the lie’s safety.
She shook her head sadly. Like any mother would do, she would do her best to keep Angel safe. The other two boys and the three cops were on their own.
“Manny killed them and Manny got killed. That is all there is to know.”
“Mother, we would like to know where Angel is so we can speak to him. We drove a long way from Chicago, and we would like to go back yet tonight. It is getting late.”
“There is nothing more to say.”
The girl stood up and walked back to the kitchen. There were clean dishes on one side of the sink, and the other side was filled with soapy water. The girl picked up a cell phone from the counter. The woman must have been doing dishes and set it aside so it wouldn’t get wet, but near enough if someone called.
She walked back into the living room carrying the phone. There wasn’t a lock screen, and it wasn’t password protected. She flipped through contacts and popped Angel’s contact information up on the screen.
The girl sat back down and handed the cell to the woman.
“Please call Angel and tell him he has a visitor who would like to speak with him. He’ll want to know who, so just tell him it is an acquaintance from Chicago.”
Carmen held the phone to her breast.
“There is nothing more to tell you. I already told you Manny shot those boys and was killed that night.”
“That may be true, but we want to hear that from Angel. Now. Please call him and tell him to come home.”
Carmen said nothing, but she was scared. Not so much for herself, but for Angel.
“Mother, I am losing my patience. We have a long drive ahead, and we need to speak with Angel. Call him and tell him to come home. Do it now!”
“No.”
The girl snatched the phone away from her, and then nodded to the fat boy with tattoos.
Without taking his eyes off of Carmen, he dragged the short sword out of the scabbard slowly, and for show. He wanted the maximum effect.
When the three of them entered her little house, it didn’t take long for Carmen to understand how it was going to end. She wasn’t sorry for herself, but wanted to spare Angel. He was a good boy and didn’t deserve what was going to happen.
“Last chance. Will you call Angel and tell him to come home? Or will Juan have to hurt you with his cuchillo largo?”
“There is nothing more to say. Besides, I’m going to die tonight, anyway.”
The girl sighed dramatically, and said, “It didn’t have to be this way, Mother.”
The girl nodded at Juan, who, with a sly, sick grin, plunged the long knife into Carmen’s stomach.
Carmen grunted, eyes bulged, and she bent over slightly. Juan pulled his long knife out and grabbed Carmen by her hair, forcing her to stare up at him.
He said, “I look forward to doing this to your bendejo son. Only more slowly and with more pain, Puta.” Then plunged it in again, this time higher, aiming for just below her breastbone.
He pulled out his knife and wiped it clean on Carmen’s dress as she pitched to the side, dead.
—
I hope you enjoyed both the snippet from Caught in a Web and the snippet from Black Yéʼii (The Evil One). I’ve included the description and the purchase link to Caught in a Web below for your convenience in case any of you would like to read it before Black Yéʼii (The Evil One) comes out. Of course, you can find all my books, their descriptions and purchase links on my website at www.jrlewisauthor.com
“This important, nail-biting crime thriller about MS-13 sets the bar very high. One of the year’s best thrillers.” –Best Thrillers
The bodies of high school and middle school kids are found dead from an overdose of heroin and fentanyl. The drug trade along the I-94 and I-43 corridors and the Milwaukee Metro area is controlled by MS-13, a violent gang originating from El Salvador. Ricardo Fuentes is sent from Chicago to Waukesha to find out who is cutting in on their business, shut it down and teach them a lesson. But he has an ulterior motive: find and kill a fifteen-year-old boy, George Tokay, who had killed his cousin the previous summer.
Detectives Jamie Graff, Pat O’Connor and Paul Eiselmann race to find the source of the drugs, shut down the ring, and find Fuentes before he kills anyone else, especially George or members of his family.
I would like to know your thoughts. Please use the comment section below. Always, thank you for following along on my writing journey. Until next time …
