Portnoy King – former husband, former father, and former police detective. He is a man now utterly defeated by a series of personal tragedies, whose final case was the mysterious murder of a teenage girl under his protection. When the FBI shows up a decade later suggesting that she may still be alive, a terrifying conspiracy begins to unfold that threatens not only King’s sanity and his life, but also the future of the world as we know it.
Excerpt from The
Brightman Oracle by MIT Brickman
©2016 All
rights reserved
This book
is the first in a connected series of novels called The Great and the Terrible; an epic story of love, loss, intrigue,
and the quest for redemption.
Populated by unforgettable characters and unlikely heroes, it is a tale that
spans decades, and promises to hold you mercilessly until the very last page.
“She had blamed Portnoy for Annalisa dying; had continued blaming Portnoy for it. Oh the guilt over that misplaced
blame had been great and debilitating, but she had allowed it to grow in her,
to harden her, to fester in her
breast because a hatred of Port was so much more tangible and satisfying than a
fist shaken towards an open, silent sky. And she had watched with pained
satisfaction as he broke down and bled out right there in the middle of his
life. Losing their daughter—having her die in his helpless arms—made him need her and she had, out of necessity,
shunned him cruelly and completely.
And then, with the death of the Chamberlain girl—once again, right
in his arms—Bella had watched the last cables tethering her husband to his own
heart simply snap and disappear. His eyes grew dim, his muscles softened and
got fat, he began drinking and raging and hallucinating and dying right in
front of her. And she had wanted to reach out to him, to hold him close, to
kiss him and wrap him up in her arms and legs and tell him you are my savior
Port
She thought crazily that it was like
the joke that her grandfather used to tell about two campers trapped in a tent
by a grizzly. One noticed the other lacing up his boots and said, “Don’t be stupid!
You can’t possibly think you can
outrun a bear!” To which the other replied, “I don’t have to outrun the bear. I
just have to outrun you.”
She had definitely outrun Port—had
watched his pleading eyes staring after her as he got mauled and killed by the
hulking reality of their loss—and the guilt and sadness over it was crushing
her now as she drove him to that field by the river. Ironic in that it would
all happen within sight of the Sangre de Cristo Basin, which would drive a nail
right into the realization that she had never truly made it out of that slimy,
back-stabbing shithole of a neighborhood. Not really.
“Oh
Port,” her tight throat reduced the words to a squeaky whisper; tears now
falling freely from her chin, and her nose ran like two shiny ribbons. “Oh God I’m so, so sorry.”
She sobbed loudly as she drove,
clearing her eyes and nose with shaky swipes of the back of her hand as Port
just sat and stared straight ahead. He considered jumping from the moving car
at the next opportunity and running off into the crowded streets of the city,
or perhaps lunging for her gun and holding her hostage until…until what? They would eventually find him and
if he provoked them they would kill him; in a city fat with cops who believed
that he had murdered two FBI agents…they wouldn’t need much provoking.
So Portnoy King settled back into the seat, careful not to spill the
drink, and watched his ex-wife’s body convulse, tears and snot and saliva
pouring out of her as they hurtled back toward the place where they had begun
so many, many years before.
And all he could think about now was
how beautiful she was—how beautiful she had
always been.”
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