I slip through the newsroom, hoping to reach my desk unnoticed, but I know my editor will be looking for me. I am on deadline for a story about a guy who hid a woman’s body for years in his basement freezer. He wouldn’t talk to the cops after his arrest, and he pleaded guilty to her murder, but after four months in prison, he wanted to tell me why he did it. He wanted to tell Lisa Jamison from the Sun Times, he told his lawyer, and his lawyer called me.

It is the kind of story that gets my adrenaline flowing, not because it’s so gruesome, but because I love diving into people’s minds like that. I believe most criminals are no different than the rest of us, deep down. What intrigues me is figuring out what causes that shift. What is it about human nature that makes us capable of loving and protecting some people, and then hurting or killing others? What pushes people over that edge?

But my mind is not on my story. I just left the police station, where I read a report that shook me. Martin Delano was fatally shot earlier in the day on a downtown street. No witnesses and the cops found meth in his jacket pocket. Nothing strange except that he shares a name and a birthday with my ex-boyfriend, the father of my daughter. I have not seen Marty since I was pregnant at fifteen years old, but I know he would never do drugs, and I know something was going on with him. After sixteen years of silence, he emailed me last month, wanting to meet our daughter. I said I needed more time, that I had to explain to Bridget why I hadn’t brought him into our lives sooner, and he agreed.

Now he is dead, and the cops believe it was a drug killing. We had talked about drugs back then when we were young, before the horrific incident that tore us apart. Marty got stoned sometimes and he drank now and then, but he didn’t do hard drugs. He knew about my parents and their drug habits. He knew why I ran away from home and, later, landed in foster care. As far as I know, he had a good job managing some convenience stores and a good life. There were no signs that he was using or selling meth. I need to find out who killed him and why for Bridget, for Marty and for me. That is, if the dead guy really is Marty.

“Lisa.” Here comes my editor, walking out of the conference room and weaving through the cubicles, heading toward my desk. “I need your story yesterday. Why aren’t you writing? Where have you been? Did you turn your phone off again?”

I wave with my notebook in my hand.

“I am almost done. You’ll have it in an hour,” I shout across the room, hoping she will turn in another direction. “My phone died. Sorry.”

“I am not buying that excuse again.” She is right and someday I am going to get in serious trouble for turning it off whenever I want to do my own thing. She is almost to my desk. I am thinking I am screwed when Jacob jumps up and stands in her way, trying hard to pitch his own story for the lead. I sit in my chair, hunched over my laptop, hoping she will decide to leave me alone when she is done with Jacob.

It works. As soon as my editor walks away, I pick up the phone to call my friend Alex, the medical examiner. I know Alex will let me in the morgue after hours. I need to see that body. I need to know for sure that the dead guy is him, the father of my daughter.

A Dead Man’s Eyes, A Lisa Jamison Mystery #1
Genre: Suspense
Release: April 2021
Purchase Link

Lisa Jamison has done well for a single mom who got pregnant at fifteen.

She’s a reporter at a well-respected newspaper and her teenage daughter is both an athlete and honors student. Though their relationship is rocky these days, Lisa has accomplished what she set out to do. She has given her daughter the kind of life she never had. But all that changes when Lisa sees her daughter in the eyes of a dead man.

The cops call it a drug killing, but Lisa doesn’t believe it. She knows her ex-boyfriend was no drug dealer even though she hadn’t seen him in sixteen years. Lisa ignores warnings from her medical-examiner friend. She fails to heed barely veiled threats from the sheriff of a neighboring county. Instead, she risks her life and the lives of her daughter and their closest friend on a dangerous quest for answers.

The investigation leaves Lisa fighting for her family in a morbid, black market world she never knew existed. She learns that trust is complicated and that she, despite her cynical nature, has been blind. She trusted the wrong people and now she might have to pay with her life.

Meet the Author
Lori Duffy Foster is a former crime reporter who writes from the hills of Northern Pennsylvania, where she lives with her husband and four children. She was born and raised in the Adirondack Mountains of New York State, where a part of her heart remains. Her short fiction has appeared in the journal Aethlon, and in the anthologies Short Story America and Childhood Regained. Her nonfiction has appeared in Healthy Living, Running Times, Literary Mama, Crimespree and Mountain Home magazines. A Dead Man’s Eyes, the first in the Lisa Jamison mystery/suspense series, is her debut novel. Look for book two in the series, Never Broken, in April of 2022. She is also author of Raising Identical Twins: The Unique Challenges and Joys of the Early Years. Her first standalone thriller, Never Let Go, releases from Level Best Books in December of 2022. Lori is a member of Mystery Writers of America, Sisters in Crime, The Historical Novel Society and Pennwriters She also sits on the board of the Knoxville (PA) Public Library. Visit Lori online at loriduffyfoster.com or on Facebook, on Instagram at @lori.duffy.foster, or on Twitter at @loriduffyfoster.

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