By Aletheia and Douglas Preston

What happens when an author interviews their own protagonist? In their book PARADOX, Douglas and Aletheia Preston return with Agent Frankie Cash, the Colorado Bureau of Investigation detective at the center of the infamous Shrouder murder investigation. If you haven’t met Cash yet, this is a fine place to start — though she may not make it easy.

Doug: Agent Cash, thanks for meeting with us today. As we mentioned on the phone, we’re interested in writing a book about your last case—the so-called Shrouder killings.

Cash: Good luck with that.

Doug: We’re hoping you’ll cooperate and give us an inside look into the case.

Cash: Well, it was certainly the strangest and… weirdest… case of my career. But I gotta tell you up front: there are some details I’m not going to share with you, details not known even to my fellow investigators. If I have my way, those facts will never be known.

Aletheia: Now my curiosity really is piqued, but I won’t pry. Please, tell us about the case.

Cash: It all began in Italy. There’s a church in Rome that houses one of the holiest relics in Christendom—part of the severed head of St. John the Baptist. St. John, as you probably know, baptized the young Jesus Christ in the River Jordan and was later beheaded by King Herod. Anyway, back in May, someone broke into the church and stole a tiny piece of St. John’s skull, no bigger than your little fingernail.

Aletheia: What’s the Colorado connection—and how did you get involved?

Cash: Sheriff Jim Colcord and I were pulled in when a crazy old prospector named Willy Grooms was found dead in a squatter’s cabin up by Solitary Lake in the Flat Tops Wilderness. We investigated and discovered he’d been murdered in a grotesque way—by being embalmed alive.

Aletheia: What did that have to do with the skull of St. John the Baptist?

Cash: Everything, it turns out. The Vatican investigated and learned the skull fragment had been stolen by an exobiologist and spirited off to San Francisco for, shall we say, some highly esoteric scientific testing. But then the exobiologist was murdered and dismembered, his body parts stuffed in three suitcases and thrown into a lake in the Colorado mountains. You remember the awful video that went viral, taken by some kids who were swimming in the lake when the body parts resurfaced?

Aletheia: Yeah, we saw the video—along with everyone else in the world.

Cash: That threw a monkey wrench into our investigation, for sure.

Doug: What sort of testing was done to St. John’s skull, and what did it prove?

Cash: (Long silence.) That was the crux of the case. Those details are known only to me, Sheriff Colcord, and a third party—and I can tell you that none of us are ever going to reveal them, for your book or any other reason. I’m taking that one to the grave.

Aletheia: If that’s the crux of the case, we would need to know it for the book.

Cash: You want some friendly advice? Forget your damn book. The Shrouder case is a story with a shocking and frightening end, and no good will come of telling it.

Doug: Well, putting that aside, Aletheia and I would love to get a little backstory on you, Agent Cash. How’d you get into police work?

Cash: My grandad and dad were police officers—Portland, Maine, CID—and I caught the bug. Dad used to take me fishing. I hated fishing—an endlessly frustrating sport with no action. But standing there by the river, waiting for the line to jump, Dad told me stories about cases he’d solved—and the big one he hadn’t. That was the so-called China Scrambler, a serial killer who terrorized China, Maine, taking a weedwhacker to people’s guts. Never caught the guy… or gal. I wanted to be just like my Dad, who put his life on the line every day to keep people safe. But more than that: I wanted to be the one to unmask the China Scrambler. Haven’t done that—yet—and the case is still open. Anyway, that’s how I fell in love with policework: my Dad and I, fishing by the river. 

Agent Cash may not be giving up the case’s secrets anytime soon — but Douglas and Aletheia Preston already have. PARADOX is available now. Find out what Cash won’t tell you.