Kristine Kathryn Rusch

She looks innocent—a bride in a frilly white dress on her way to her wedding. Until she curses out a parking meter, and heads, angrily, into the courthouse.   One jaded defense attorney notices her, but only as a curiosity. He saw brides every day in Las Vegas. He has no idea that, in the next few hours, this bride will change his life. Forever.

“The Bride Case” is available for one week on this site. The ebook is available on all retail stores, as well as here.

 

The Bride Case By Kristine Kathryn Rusch

I first saw her on my way to work, and I thought nothing of it. Well, not nothing. I noticed her, because how can you miss a middle-aged white woman in a frilly wedding dress, cursing at a parking meter?

But I truly thought nothing of it, because I live in Las Vegas, the city with a wedding chapel on every corner, particularly downtown, where the Justice Center is.

The Justice Center, which I must visit weekly, whether I want to or not.

It was one of those rare gray Mondays where the mood of the sky matched the mood of everyone who had to show up in court that day. I lived in a condo in one of the nearby downtown high rises. I bought the place when I was newly single and not thinking, back when I believed I could walk to work, even when the temperature was 115 degrees.

I regret the decision, particularly since my office is a half mile south, in the pretty little neighborhood some wag dubbed Lawyer Row. I can park down there. I can park in my condo building. But I can’t find on-street parking at the Justice Center unless I show up super early, which means—yes, indeed—that I must walk to work.

Past all the people lucky enough to find a parking space, but so stressed that they can’t figure out the touchless parking meters that the City of Las Vegas installed during the height of the pandemic.

What this means is that those of us in our summer suits, sweating as we lug our required briefcases filled with laptops and actual paperwork because Justice doesn’t believe in the paperless office, schlep past the frustrated soon-to-be late folks at the parking meters.

Even if I had been inclined to stop, I wouldn’t have, not for this woman, because she was cursing, and shoving the meter with the flat of her hand. At the time, I didn’t blame her. Apparently, she had opted for an early morning wedding, and she was going to be late.

I did wonder why she was there alone—no bridesmaids, no kids, no friends—but I’ve seen stranger things near the wedding chapels. Actual fights, men pacing and smoking as if their partner wasn’t going to show up, people so drunk that I wasn’t sure they even knew each other.

I wondered about her…and then I walked past, and noted all of the TV live remote vans. Every single local news channel was represented.

The savvy morning crews knew that they had to arrive before seven to get the prime parking spots. Each van had its favorite place, so generally, I only noticed them if they had to park elsewhere. Only one did, not too far from the angry bride.

I didn’t see any reporters though, just camera crew. Which wasn’t that unusual this time of the morning. The reporters often got dropped off about an hour before whatever court appearance they were covering. No sense having the talent wait around.

Although I doubted there’d be much waiting that day. The case they wanted to see was mine, and it was particularly made-for-TV. A five-year-old cold murder case had been supposedly resolved when Metro arrested a former city treasurer.

I’m not even sure this would’ve been news back when Vegas was mobbed up. There was an assumption that everyone was corrupt in those days.

But now the city prided itself on being squeaky clean, and this treasurer—who had been fired for cause three years ago—had already proven himself a bit too shady to fit the city’s new image.

The problem wasn’t that he was shady. The problem was that he wasn’t a criminal, at least as far as I could tell. Granted, I’m a defense attorney, not a mind-reader.

But this guy—Derek Hiess—had no extra money in his bank accounts. He had no extra bank accounts. I work for a large law firm, famous in the area for handling only the biggest and most difficult cases. This means we have in-house detectives and more computer techs than I want to think about and all kinds of associates who have to do the grunt work.

They all grunted through a lot of work and found nothing that implicated Hiess in anything besides being viciously unpleasant.  Yeah, sure, he was divorced—aren’t we all?—but he made his child support payments, sometimes by the skin of his teeth. He let the ex and the kids get the house; he lived in a small apartment not too far from me, in the newly revitalized Arts District.

Without the child support, his bills were miniscule. With the child support, they were crushing.

That was the only damning detail.

That and the fact that the murder victim, Maise Krause, had been his lover at the time of her death. And the only reason we know their connection is because a city employee stumbled on some video footage of the Helldorado Parade downtown that showed him kissing her. The police hadn’t had that information before, and like a doofus, he hadn’t told anyone he was the last person who had seen her alive.

Which, by the way, was not a crime.

It just seemed criminal, especially since the police had been trying to solve this murder for years now.

I had a number of problems with this case, the first being I really didn’t like Hiess. Even when he was being nice, he had an air of smarm about him. He clearly thought he was smarter than everyone else, including his lawyer, but fortunately for me, he was scared, so he didn’t contradict everything I did.

He only questioned it.

The senior partners at my law firm wanted this case for the publicity. One of them had already spoken to a Dateline producer behind the scenes, sending footage and talking about how this was truly perfect for their brand of true crime. Even if we lost, the theory went, we’d still make bank with all the new clients who would come through the door to have a famous law firm represent them.

That didn’t mean I had to like it. One of the reasons I caught the case is that I have a made-for-TV face. I’m not a good-looking man in person, but the camera does something to my bone structure that makes me look debonair and Cary Grant-ish on screen. If I hadn’t seen the effect myself, I would have thought that this particular case came to me because someone wanted me to lose.

Of course, I hadn’t told Hiess any of this. I gave him the standard defense lawyer speech—come clean with me because we’re better off ahead of the bad news—you know, all that stuff the client never does.

I’d been thinking about that as I headed into one of the side doors at the courthouse, where the reporters couldn’t go. The only bad thing about that door was it was near the 24-hour Marriage License Bureau, and all of those people who were lined up (already! On a Monday!) reminded me of lost hopes and dreams.

I was sure—hell, I knew—that none of them were thinking about the inevitable end of the relationship, which was either death, estrangement, or divorce.

Yeah, I was in a foul mood, but handling a not-guilty for a guy everyone had already pre-convicted never made me feel good.  I could be an in-your-face kinda lawyer and I could be scary when I was doing it, because even though I had a Cary Grant-ish face on camera, in person I still had the muscular beefiness of my football days.

I went through the metal detectors, barely registering the ritual, except to note that on this door, anyway, the line wasn’t too long. At the main entrance, the line sometimes snaked halfway around the block, especially when there was a big jury trial or some high-profile case that allowed a gallery.

Mine wouldn’t have much of a gallery because we were still in preliminary motions. We were of interest, but not enough to attract an incredibly huge crowd…yet.

I wended my way through the hallways. Like most buildings in Las Vegas, this one is full of light, and someone decided that the entry needed some trees. The public areas are some version of the reddish brown that colors the Justice Center’s exterior. Apparently, some designer believed that reddish brown was a lot more cheerful than industrial gray.

Maybe they were right, but something about the design always made me think of a university building rather than a place where half the decisions were about life or death.

The main hallways were filling up with the pre-eight o’clock crowd—the clerks, the bailiffs, the worried-looking new attorneys, and the judges who wanted to get in an early-hour review.

I nodded at the judges, none of whom were robed up yet, so they just looked like ordinary people. I said hi to bailiffs, clerks, and anyone else I ran into weekly, and tried not to grin at the worried-looking new attorneys. I had been them once.

I no longer worried. There was no point. I’d lost cases that were slam-dunks because of some juror who got a bee up their butt, and I’d won cases that no one should have believed because some juror led the charge to convict.

And yeah, that means I think jury trials are iffy propositions.

Like most defense attorneys, I try to avoid them. Like many defense attorneys who are good at oral arguments, I usually end up with a jury anyway.

That’s because, deep down, I’m a performer and the entire legal community probably knows it. Certainly, the partners in my firm do. That’s another reason I end up with assignments like Hiess’s.

Of course, if I wanted to, I could have busted myself down to family law, which meant divorces and child custody and almost no juries. Hell, much of it got settled by arbitration or one-on-one with a judge—if it ever got that far.

The problem I had with family law was simple: Everyone involved believes they’re the good guy. They’re all deserving, and the other side is filled with assholes.

No one thinks about the kids, no one thinks about the truth, no one thinks that hey, if I’m just a tiny bit more reasonable, I might actually walk away from this thing with my ego and my wallet intact.

Of course, for most of these folk, the fight isn’t about the ego or the wallet. It’s about the fight. Which is the flipside of all that good sexual tension. You don’t have to like someone to have sex with them. And when the attraction wears off, you then figure out that you don’t like them, but you had something, and that something was always drama, drama, drama.

I was there for the drama before my own hearing since I had already done my prep. I’d promised I’d check in on Lucinda Elbe, who had become a project of mine. She’d moved from commercial and business law to family law because she wanted to make a difference, and I had been the idiot who told her that if she wanted to make a difference, she should quit law altogether and join some nonprofit somewhere.

To my surprise, she had laughed at me and told me that there was room in every profession for a difference, and that was when I got just a little scared.

Here’s the thing about me: I don’t get scared often, but one thing that will set off my inner white knight is an innocent who is about to have that innocence rudely and predictably stripped away.

Elbe would have hated being described as an innocent. She had been a ferocious champion for her commercial clients, but there was a difference between being an attack dog for some business interest, and watching a kid get stripped away from the only parent who loved them because the other parent saw the kid as a trophy to be won over by constant litigation.

At some point, Elbe would get nailed, and it would most likely destroy her, and I wanted to be there to minimize the damage, however I could.

Something about this morning’s case, the final gavel on a divorce, bothered me. I couldn’t put my finger on it, but I knew, if anything was going to slap Elbe alongside the head, it would be today.

I slipped into the back of Judge Aranza Castillo’s courtroom. It was one of the smaller courtrooms in the very center of the building, which meant it had no windows. Its setup was what I considered backwards, with the jury box on the judge’s right. The courtrooms I trained in always had the jury on the judge’s left. So whenever I walk into these rooms, I feel a little discombobulated.

The bench was directly in front of me, with Nevada’s blue Battle-Born flag on one side of the judge’s chair and the U.S. flag on the other side. Some judges kept a round clock above their chair, but Castillo preferred the state seal.

Her chair was empty, the bench tidy. The attorneys were in place, with Bruce Laymon on the right, and Lucinda on the left. Lucinda sat calmly, back straight. Unlike most female attorneys, she wore a navy suit with a skirt instead of trousers, and paired it with heels. Her black hair was pulled into a perfect knot at the top of her head, her hands folded over the folders in front of her. A laptop rested to one side of her, and at least two yellow legal pads on the other.

Her client, an older man with badly dyed black hair, mirrored her posture, but not as effectively. He couldn’t sit straight, whether that was because of the extra weight he carried or because he never normally sat that way. His folded hands held a pen and rested on top of yet another legal pad.

Everything here told me that those two expected a fight, but with who I had no idea.

Laymon was a good enough divorce attorney, but certainly not the best. He lost as many cases as he won, and some of the ones he lost were the kind that shouldn’t have been lost at all.

He was the one who looked nervous, and maybe he should have, because his client wasn’t beside him. He clutched a phone in his hand, peering at it repeatedly as if he expected something from it. Then he would look at the door to the judge’s chambers, probably worried that she would emerge while his phone was still visible.

The entire courtroom seemed to be holding its breath.

We stayed that way for ten minutes.

I was about to touch Lucinda on the shoulder and tell her to break a leg, when the court reporter came in. She saw Laymon’s phone and gave him a warning side-eye. A bailiff took his spot near the back, nodded at me, and then turned his attention to the front.

If I wanted to talk to Lucinda, now was the time.

And then it was too late. The door to the judge’s chamber opened, and Judge Castillo swept in. She seemed tall, but that was the robe combined with her athletic thinness. She wore heels so high that I couldn’t imagine how she stayed balanced.

She put folders on her desk, sat down, gaveled the court into session, and then said to Laymon, “Counsellor, where is your client?”

“She said she’s here,” he said.

“Clearly she is not,” the judge said. She shoved her papers to one side and asked, “Did you tell her that you can represent her without her appearing?”

That was a strange question, one judges rarely asked unless there was some kind of problem.

“I did, Your Honor.” Laymon’s voice actually shook. I wasn’t sure I’d ever heard him sound nervous, even when he let his nervous tics get the best of him.

“And…?” the judge asked.

“And she insisted she needed to be here.”

“Great,” said Lucinda’s client, and he didn’t mean that it was great at all. He sounded concerned.

Lucinda put a hand on his, probably to shut him up.

“Ms. Elbe, make sure your client knows that you speak for him here,” the judge said, without looking at her.

“Yes, Your Honor,” Lucinda said.

Everyone was on edge. Maybe this was the vibe I had gotten from Lucinda at the office earlier. Not that there was some innocence-shattering event about to happen, but that this divorce hearing had gotten so contentious, even the judge was surly.

If that was the case, I really didn’t need to be here. I could get a lot more done prepping one of my other cases before I went into court with Hiess.

I stood up and eased toward the door, hoping the judge didn’t see me. But of course she did. She raised her eyebrows at me, silently asking why I was here. I shrugged, declining to answer. With luck, she wouldn’t ask me anything out loud.

And that luck held. I made it to the door, pulled it open, and nearly got bowled over by the bride I had seen earlier. She smelled faintly of mothballs mixed with very old Chanel No. 5.

She clutched a bouquet of dried flowers, and stalked down the aisle like a demented bridezilla.

“Douglas!” she called at the top of her voice.

The man beside Lucinda shrank into himself, as if he could make himself disappear. Lucinda sat even straighter, but did not turn around.

“Mr. Laymon, get ahold of your client,” the judge said with great irritation.

That was Laymon’s client? That woman who looked enough like the illustrations of Dickens’ Miss Havisham that I was nervous all over again.

“Get ahold of me?” the bride shrieked. “Get ahold of me? He doesn’t want to hold me, and look! I still fit into the dress.”

One of the bailiffs moved forward, but the judge made a surreptitious move with her left hand, stopping him. He stood, hand poised near his weapon, watching the bride.

“Mrs. Monroe,” the judge said. “Please sit down, and let your attorney speak for you.”

“In other words, get ahold of myself,” the bride said viciously. She flounced, and the ruffles on her dress bounced in unison. “I will not put up with this any longer.”

She walked down the aisle toward the lawyers’ tables, her wide skirt brushing both sides of the ineffectual little barriers that separated the attorney tables from the public seating. For a moment, it seemed like she was going to join Laymon, but then she spun and faced Lucinda’s client—who was most likely Mr. Monroe.

“Look at me,” the bride said, running her hands in front of her gown. It had a beaded bodice that looked stiff and uncomfortable, and it trailed into a point on that full skirt.

The dried flowers rustled as she moved. Dead leaves and petals marked where she had already walked. She wore pearl-drop earrings and a pearl necklace that ended in a sedate cross around her neck.

Everyone in the courtroom was looking at her. None of us could take our eyes off her—except her soon-to-be former husband.

“Look at me,” she repeated, with emphasis.

He brought his head up just a little. The second bailiff had moved slightly in front of the judge, who once again waggled her fingers, indicating that he should move away from her. Clearly, she wanted to see this.

Lucinda still seemed preternaturally calm. I’d never seen her like this. Maybe this was what she looked like when she was terrified.

“I know I’m not as pretty as the new girlfriend,” the bride said to the soon-to-be ex, “but you thought I was pretty once.”

My heart sank. I knew that Lucinda had been going through something with this case, but I thought it was normal divorce stuff, not a stunt like this.

“There is no new girlfriend,” the soon-to-be ex muttered.

The bride didn’t seem to hear him.

“The last time I wore this dress, you and I vowed till death do us part,” she said, and shifted the dried flowers.

I caught a glimpse of something conical, and I felt a half second of confusion even as my brain was playing those last words. Till death…

I launched myself forward like I would have done at the snap in a football game. That half second of movement, which didn’t quite count as a false start but probably should have—I had perfected that.

I didn’t see any other movement, but then, I wasn’t trying. My gaze was on those dried flowers, one part of my brain arguing with the other. Because of those metal detectors, what I thought I saw was impossible, right?

But the flowers had lost most of their petals and the leaves had formed a circle on the floor, and the soon-to-be ex was cringing so badly that he was turning into a gigantic ball of terror.

My forward movement was causing the bailiffs to move toward the bride (or maybe me, I don’t know) and I couldn’t find my voice even though I wanted to scream at Lucinda to get down or move aside or duck or something. Part of me was afraid to mention Lucinda’s name at all, because right now, the bride was focused on the soon-to-be ex and mentioning the attorney invited unwanted attention.

As I got close, the bride raised her head ever so slightly. Her gaze met mine.

I’d seen flat eyes like that before. Half the people I defended had eyes like that—emotionless, empty, and somehow calculating.

She dropped the flowers from her left hand, and in her right was a white pistol. I’d never seen a white pistol before. It matched the damn dress.

I was still a yard or so away, but I leapt across the divide, figuring if I could grab the dress, I could bring her down. The bailiffs were close as well, and Lucinda started to turn sideways, so I figured she hadn’t seen the gun at all.

Something banged as I wrapped my arms around a mountain of pearl-encrusted tulle. My shoulder hit against something hard, and then I landed, unable to catch my breath. A lazy thought The air must’ve been knocked out of me reverberated in my head as I stared at a somewhat dirty white pump, abandoned beside me. A foot in white stockings was being dragged backwards and there was another pump being dragged with the white-stockinged foot, and I was sliding along, and I couldn’t quite grab purchase on anything, plus the tulle was covering my face, making everything seem like I was seeing it through white gauze.

Lucinda was shouting my name, some guy was screaming, and the judge’s gavel was banging, banging, banging, and I was beginning to wonder if I’d swallowed some tulle, because I truly couldn’t breathe and then there were people, yelling, and I closed my eyes and…

***

…didn’t open them for three days. So much for my high-profile case. Apparently I had just become a lot more high-profile than my case.

The headlines were nuts. The staid version was a variation on Attorney Shot In Las Vegas Courtroom, but the rest treated what happened that morning like a joke: Divorce, American Style; Angry Bride Shoots The Wrong Lawyer; Former Defensive End Turned Defense Attorney Takes Out Crazed Bride, and so much more.

I would’ve stopped looking, but people were sharing with me, somehow thinking it all cheered me up.

Cheering me up wasn’t possible. I was on my back in a private hospital room (thanks to the power of one of the biggest law firms in town), feeling like someone had taken a chainsaw to my chest. I went from being a man dealing with what he thought was a major irritation (a media circus court case) to a man in the midst of a media circus because he’d—apparently—saved some lives.

I guess I ended up being the unintended victim. The bride had turned toward me at the last second, which meant the gun was pointed at me while I was in the air, and the gun’s only bullet hit me damn near point-blank.

Apparently, it was touch and go for the first day, and less touch and more go on the second, and by the third, they figured I’d live, even though I’d lost part of a lung and had shattered ribs. Breathing was no fun, the press was no fun, and I felt this amorphous anger at everything—while my brain kept replaying that slow-motion sprint with a full-on regret voice-over.

Maybe if I had shouted. Maybe if I had grabbed Lucinda instead. Maybe if I’d yelled for the bailiff. Maybe if I’d screamed, “Gun!”

Maybe, maybe, maybe…

If I managed to silence some of the voices with logic, other ones rise up, revamping the scenario all over again. I needed distraction, but wasn’t sure how to get it.

It’s hard to be distracted when you’re doped up in a hospital bed with only the TV and your thoughts for company.

Obviously, the bride was arrested on the spot. The media somehow got images of that perfect-fitting wedding dress, now bloodstained, and had all kinds of commentary I tried hard not to follow.

The divorce, surprisingly enough, was on hold because the no-longer-soon-to-be ex wanted to renegotiate a lot of things, especially the money, so that he wasn’t paying for the defense of a woman intent on killing him. If I had been healthy, I might’ve helped with that. That case sounded interesting to me—the only interesting part of this whole thing.

I wanted to talk to Lucinda about it, but apparently, she didn’t want to talk to me. She hadn’t shown up at the hospital at all. I didn’t even get flowers from her, and my entire room was filled with flowers, now that I was out of the ICU. Get-Well flowers from friends, Thank-You flowers from some of the people I had (in theory) saved, a big spray of Look-At-How-Rich-The-Sender-Is flowers from the law firm, and an even bigger spray of flowers from one of the TV networks.

I hadn’t read that card yet, but if it was anything like the booking shark who had shown up when everyone thought I was going to die, wondering if I would gasp an interview before I croaked, I suspected that the card wasn’t worth reading after all.

By day four, I was feeling sorry for myself, not just because I was in unbelievable pain and the doctors didn’t prescribe enough painkillers. It didn’t matter how many times I tapped the little button on my drug remote, the pain level remained 350,000 on a scale of one to ten, ten being high.

I toggled between wondering who I could threaten with some kind of lawsuit to get me more drugs and wondering why the hell I hadn’t remarried when I had the chance. At least a wife would have been obligated to sit by my bedside and go through this hell with me, right?

You’re not a hero, a little voice in my head kept repeating, borrowing the long nasal vowels of my Midwestern first (and only) wife. If you had stayed out of the way, one of the bailiffs would have tackled her and no one would have gotten hurt.

That vocal little representative of my former life had it wrong. Someone would have gotten hurt. It just wouldn’t have been me.

Everyone in that courtroom thought they were safe because of the metal detectors and, well, because Mrs. Monroe (whose first name was, I learned through the news reports, Ellen) was batshit crazy, which meant no one thought she had the wherewithal to buy a 3D printer and make a ghost gun that could actually work.

Turned out that Mrs. Ellen Monroe was only batshit crazy when it came to Mr. Douglas Monroe.  In all other parts of her life, she was quite competent. The more I heard about that tortured relationship, the more I suspected that Mr. Douglas Monroe was terrified that his wife would try something—and that she would pull it off.

Lucinda hadn’t said anything about any of this to me or to anyone else I talked with from the firm. Either she thought the kind of cuckoo allegations that Mrs. Ellen Monroe made against her husband were normal angry about-to-be-divorced spouse allegations or maybe Lucinda didn’t want anyone to know that she had ventured into a violent (and eventually quite bloody) version of the Twilight Zone.

Finally, on day six, after the doctors had decided that I needed to sprint across the hospital, which actually meant that my IV and I needed to be escorted around the nurses station by an actual nurse, I finally saw Lucinda.

She missed the heroic walk around my floor, but not the aftermath, me on the bed, gasping like a dying fish at the bottom of a boat. The gasping was, I’d been told, perfectly normal. If I healed properly and worked on my lung function, I would graduate to a more sedate wheeze.

The door to my room was open, but Lucinda peered around the frame as if she expected someone to deny her entry. Or maybe she was seeing if I was actually there, and not dead, or not there and dead, or maybe just sleeping, so she could leave the card she had brought and claim credit for a long and meaningful visit.

When she heard my fish-gasps, she looked like a startled rabbit. Her gaze met mine, and she asked from her perch at the door frame, “Do you need a nurse?”

“Nn-ah-o,” I managed, wanting to tell Lucinda this was normal right now, but not really sure I should say something like that. After all, it might make her feel guilty.

But then, why shouldn’t she feel guilty? I had taken a bullet for her, after all.

I beckoned for Lucinda to come in, and she did, walking like a person on the way to a firing squad. She looked over her shoulder more than once, maybe hoping that someone in authority would tell her I was too sick to talk to visitors.

I made myself smile at her, and she gave me one of those full lip movements that meant the person was trying to smile and failing miserably. She was dressed in a blousy dress shirt, black yoga pants that ended at her calves, and athletic shoes with enough foam to mean business.

I had been mistaken in my gasping first impression. She wasn’t carrying a card or flowers or a book or any token at all. Her nails were bitten down, her hair was pulled back, and she had circles under her eyes so deep that someone could have stored golf balls in them.

She grabbed one of the side chairs, pulled it over, and sat down on my non-IV side. Then she grabbed the remote and shut off the TV. I hadn’t had the sound on, but the images had been comforting. I hadn’t shut the thing off since I woke up in the room, so her movement left me feeling a tad bereft.

“You okay for a talk?” she asked. “They said you were, but you’re gray, and —”

I waved a hand, silencing her. I didn’t want to talk about whether or not I was up for a talk. I wanted the talk or I wanted my TV. Really, I wanted to get the hell out of here and never ever ever come back.

She bit her lower lip, watching me use the tricks my brand-new physical therapist had taught me just to get my breathing under control. The physical therapist had come to my room two days ago and given me breathing exercises to prepare me for the day when I could actually go to the physical therapy department.

Lucinda plucked at my arm, focusing my attention. “You don’t look well,” she said, and in that statement was buried an excuse to get the hell out of my room.

Well, I would have said if my breathing had been under control and if I could ever relearn how to say more than three words without inserting a gasp between them, I did nearly die a week ago. So I’m doing okay, considering.

Instead I managed to say, “Ah…m…faahnnn.”

That was me post-surgery. Lots of breathiness, lots of consonants. I sounded like someone from the Deep South, even though I’d never made it past the Mason-Dixon line.

“Okay,” Lucinda said, “but, oh God, I didn’t expect you to look this bad. I mean, you were shot and everything, and I knew it was bad, but somehow I thought since it was a ghost gun, it’d have a ghost bullet or something, and—”

She shook her head, looking young and twisted and sad.

“God, I’m an idiot, aren’t I? I mean, I thought how can a ghost bullet nearly kill someone? I should’ve known.”

Yeah, you should’ve, I would’ve said if I could’ve said it. Instead, I nodded somewhat sagely and let her talk.

My gasping had reduced itself to the occasional much-too-big-for-a-normal-person breath.

“I just—I wanted you to be the first to know.” She was twisting her hands together, something I’d never seen an actual person do with such sincerity. It looked like she was trying to wring water out of them.

I eyed her warily, doing my best to keep my gaze off her twisting fingers.

“I’m—um—quitting the law.” She winced as she looked at me. Her left hand was actually turning white where the fingers of her right were digging in.

I wasn’t surprised. I kinda expected this. I’d seen lesser crises force lawyers to jump from the profession.

Here, she’d seen a friend—or at least a colleague—shot right in front of her because her client had a crazy wife. Lucinda was probably second-guessing herself, and maybe my words about family law were reverberating in her head.

They were certainly reverberating in mine. I had been afraid family law would shatter her. I just hadn’t expected this kind of shattering.

Lucinda stared at me, her bottom lip trembling.

I couldn’t tell if she was going to talk more. If she was, I didn’t want to start, because speaking still took way too much effort.

“I’ve disappointed you, haven’t I?” she asked.

It’s not about me, I would’ve said, if I could have spoken quickly. I was trying to figure out how to dance around all of this, without sounding like an idiot with southern-fried marbles in his mouth, when she added more.

“I mean, you warned me that this was nothing like real estate, and Jesus, what I wouldn’t give for a shady bastard skirting the thin edge of the law right now. I thought they were evil assholes, but this—what she did—she could have killed you.”

Lucinda’s voice had grown softer with each sentence, and I had to strain to hear that last part.

So much of this had probably gone over and over and over in her head, and I was just getting to hear the ruminations. I moved my hand—the one without the IV needle jammed just above the wrist—and I took her hand, squeezing tight.

She raised her head, surprised at me. I’d never touched her before, not in all of our conversations. She probably hadn’t known that a part of me had always wanted to touch her, but hadn’t had the courage. Besides, she was a colleague, and the firm frowned on fraternizing.

And if I had been honest with myself, then I would have known that for the excuse it had been. I too had been damaged by family law, but the family the law had pertained to was mine—those families were mine, really, since the first divorce I went through had been my parents, which had destroyed my mother (and taken away any hope she had of making a decent living while caring for us kids), and the second divorce had been my own—the one I had walked away from, leaving my ex with all the money and the furniture and the house, because I wasn’t going to be like my father.

Lucinda was staring at me, and she was probably thinking that I was thinking about her, which I was, but not in the way that she was probably thinking about it.

“And,” she said, looking down at our hands. “If I missed that, what else did I miss? I mean, her husband did say he was scared of her.”

I almost nodded, but nodding would’ve been the wrong thing to do. I wished I had a voice—a real one—so that we could have a conversation, a real one, but it was going to be hard.

“He wants me to keep handling the divorce, but I don’t want to. I don’t want to go in a courtroom again.”

I didn’t blame her. Time to get counseling, I would have said if I could have. But I didn’t, and weirdly, she got me thinking about returning to the courtroom. I hadn’t given it much thought, but it didn’t terrify me. I wasn’t scared of anything right now, except maybe not being able to breathe properly again.

“And you were right about family law,” she said. “It’s heartbreaking. It’s awful. Oh, God, I keep thinking, what if a child had been involved? What then?”

I squeezed her hand, and managed to say, “Loo…sin…dah.”

She stopped talking and looked at me expectantly.

I held up a finger on my IV hand. It was easier than saying Give me a minute.

“Wha…t…hah…pen…d,” I managed. “Nah…ttt…you…rrrr…fah…l…tt.”

“But it was,” she said. “I—”

“No,” I said, and that word came out clearly, as if I actually could get enough air. “No. The law…”

I had to pause and breathe for a moment. But the words were coming easier. Maybe it was like the physical therapist said. Maybe if I didn’t think about it, I could settle into a breathing routine.

I banished that thought right away, hoping it wouldn’t contaminate the lung capacity I had left.

“…tea…ches…us…that…pee…pl…ahrrr…assholes.”

She let out a whoop of laughter and looked at me in surprise. “The only word you can say clearly is ‘asshole’!”

She laughed like a kid who, for the first time, had heard an adult tell a potty joke.

“Nah…tt…trooo…” I managed. “…sah…ddd…law…too.”

She nodded. “You did,” she said. “You did.”

At that point, I gave up trying to talk. It was too hard. Instead I waved my IV hand at the table across from me, and pointed at the laptop my assistant had brought from the office, even though I hadn’t requested it.

“Cah…nnnn….tt…tt…ahl…kkk,” I said as she handed it to me. I opened it and turned the screen toward her. Then I opened the message program and typed:

What happened is 100% on that evil bride. She made the gun, she brought the gun, she used the gun. If her husband had seen that coming, he didn’t tell you, because clients don’t tell us everything.

As for you leaving the law, that’s a personal choice. I never had the sense that you loved the law the way that some…

I almost typed “some of us” but stopped myself. No need to go for the full reveal.

…do, which means this isn’t a calling for you. So, do what you must.

BUT, and this is important, see a counselor. You’re not sleeping (clearly) and you need to talk to someone who can actually talk back. I’m here to listen, though, and maybe type a message or two.

I barely resisted the urge to add an emoji, which made me realize just how doped up I was because I am not an emoji guy.

I sent the much-too-long text because I wanted her to have it on her phone, even though she had watched me type the whole thing.

Her eyes filled with tears.

“You don’t hate me?” she asked.

I could never hate you, I typed.  I think you’re an amazing woman.

Her cheeks flushed, and one of the tears fell, and she stood up. She said, “I’ll come see you later,” in a tone that made me believe she never would.

And sure enough, I was right.

I never saw her again—even though she texted me and pretended to worry about me and claimed she wanted to make sure I was okay.

I wasn’t okay, but I lied and said I was. Because what else could I do? I reminded her of the worst day of her life, a day she clearly didn’t want to deal with, and I was too sick to put a lot of effort into taking care of her as well as taking care of me.

By the time I finally got out of the hospital, she had quit the firm.

By the time I was home long enough for the home health care aide who visited twice a day to stop visiting at all, Lucinda had taken a new job.

By the time I had my first hey-that-didn’t-hurt-as-much-as-usual physical therapy appointment, I learned that Lucinda’s new job had taken her all the way across the country.

Apparently, she hadn’t thought that detail was worth telling me.

And that was when I sank onto my much-too-comfortable couch and started to shake. I’d been holding it together until then. But the woman I had been trying to help hadn’t seen it worth her time to even let me know the smallest detail about her, and that made me feel like an idiot.

I don’t like feeling like an idiot.

So I did what any good defense lawyer does when someone in the human race disappoints them. I sucked it up and moved on, adding just a bit more cynicism to the suit of armor I had built out of an entire lifetime of cynicism.

By the time I was ready to return to the world full-time, I was a lot more guarded, a lot more snide, and a lot less compassionate for everyone—including me.

Which made me a hell of a difficult witness at the bride’s homicide trial.

***

Yeah, good old Mrs. Ellen Monroe had decided that plea deals were for babies. Apparently, she had told her defense attorneys to fill the jury with women who had gone through a messy divorce because Mrs. Ellen Monroe thought they would understand. Apparently, she had dreams of jury nullification or acquittal by cause or some other such nonsense.

I wasn’t supposed to talk with anyone except the prosecutor, and I couldn’t sit in on the trial because I was a witness. I hadn’t been ordered to stay away from the news on the case, which part of me figured was an oversight and another part—the defense attorney part—hoped that the lack of an order was a careless practice endemic to the District Attorney’s Office.

If it was, I would use it in future cases because, at that moment, future cases were all I had to look forward to. I was currently showing up in the office for a few hours of every day, subjecting myself to over solicitation from my legal secretary and frowns of worry from everyone else, biding my time until I got the medical all-clear for a full-on return to work.

That plastic bullet had done a lot more damage than anyone thought possible, and my recovery was taking more time than my insurance company liked. Fortunately, they were scared of my law firm, since we had successfully sued them more than once for failing to uphold the terms of their policies.

Everyone was worried about me testifying in what the media was calling The Bride Case, but no one could prevent it because—whether we liked it or not—I was the victim. I had a narrative to tell, and sympathy to gain, and I knew I had better do it right.

Knowing and practicing are two different things. My brain knew I had to do everything right, but my heart wanted to see how the case was going. Fortunately, the case wasn’t live-streamed anywhere. The judge hadn’t banned cameras from the courtroom, but she had banned gavel-to-gavel coverage, so the news I gathered was mostly tidbits, the kind of juicy stuff that television stations and online rags used to intrigue their paying customers rather than inform the rest of the public.

Which meant I was more than a little surprised by my surroundings when I was called to the witness stand on Day Two of the trial.

Day Two, 9 a.m., shortly after the court started its session, just like Dan Abrimowitz—the prosecutor—had predicted. He’d said one day for opening arguments and stupid, baseless motions, and the actual meaty part of the trial would start on Day Two.

I hadn’t really figured it would happen that way, because I’d never seen a trial that had gone according to plan. But Abrimowitz seemed to have his finger on this one’s pulse.

I knew that when I walked through the double doors, girding my loins for the inevitable PTSD reaction that Lucinda had mentioned, caused by being shot in my place of employment—a reaction, it turned out, that I didn’t have.

The courtroom was bigger than the one I had been shot in. It was one of the largest courtrooms in the Justice Center, even though it looked like the other one, with the Nevada Battle Born flag and the U.S. flag flanking the judge, a seal over her seat, jury on the wrong side, and large desks for the attorneys. The gallery had more seats, and every single one of them was full.

Reporters sat in the back, cameras were to the side, and my heart sank when I saw cameras from the major national TV networks. That meant this case, with its funky opening, would be on at least one true crime show, and I would get to see myself over and over again, giving whatever testimony was necessary.

Hell, there was probably footage of me being carted out of the Justice Center on a stretcher, considering all the media that had been present that day.

My name had been called before the bailiff opened the doors for me, so people had turned in their seats to watch me walk toward the witness stand. I knew better than to smile at anyone. I kept my gaze on the judge—Carol Siddalli, who had graduated from law school one year ahead of me. She looked older now, her hair cropped like a cap around her head. Her features had hardened, and she had learned how to keep her face expressionless.

There was very little of the woman I had known from late nights at the law review, and I had thought she had looked old then.

As I walked, though, I noted that Mrs. Ellen Monroe had not gotten her jury. It was 60% male, and a goodly portion of those men looked like they did manual labor. The women were evenly divided between twenty-somethings and fifty-somethings, and only one of them was white. She wore a brownish suit coat so old that it was pilled, and a pair of matching pants that were too short for her stick-thin legs.

She was probably not the ideal juror that Mrs. Ellen Monroe had had in mind.

I swore an oath to tell the truth so help me God, hand on the Bible, and expression as sincere as I could make it, and then I sat in the witness box and felt like a fraud.

Unlike most of my colleagues, I’d never sat in a witness box—not to test it out, not as a lark, not even at the bidding of one of my professors back in the day. The chair was surprisingly comfortable, the mic a tad too far away, and the perspective just plain odd.

I could see the entire courtroom, just like the judge could, only from a much lower perspective.

The gaze of everyone in the courtroom was on me, from the jurors to the gallery to the defendant herself. She stared at me as if I had surprised her. I know that we didn’t know each other, but she seemed stunned that I even existed.

Abrimowitz had prepped me pretty well. Just enough so that I knew where he was going, but not enough to make me sound rehearsed.

Even so, he startled me with his first question.

“How’s your health?” he asked as he got up from the prosecutor’s table.

I’m the kinda guy who normally lies and says I’m fine even when I’m not, but he wanted a true answer here, not the macho one.

“I’m still having breathing issues,” I said, “and moving sideways often sends a jolt of pain through me. There was a lot of damage.”

I didn’t look at Mrs. Ellen Monroe when I said that, but even I could hear the fury in my voice.

Abrimowitz had me describe each wound in detail, how it felt to deal with those, and then he asked me to establish my baseline now.

The jury seemed fascinated by all of this. I did my best not to squirm in my chair. Had I been running the defense, I would not have allowed such a detailed and thorough description of the health issues.

Any defense I had run would have stipulated to those points, just to keep the descriptions to a minimum. Descriptions of pain and suffering usually inspire juries to side with the injured party, so long as that person doesn’t whine.

I made sure I wasn’t whining, mostly by not looking at the defendant at all.

“All right,” Abrimowitz said. “You weren’t supposed to be in the courtroom that morning, correct?”

“That is correct,” I said, making eye contact with the jury.

This was the meat of the testimony, at least as Abrimowitz saw it. I figured it could play for either side, if we weren’t careful.

Letting the jury see me, letting them know that I saw them, would keep them on our side, I hoped.

“Didn’t you have a big case of your own that morning?” he asked.

“I did,” I said.

“Why weren’t you prepping for that?” Abrimowitz asked.

“I had finished my prep,” I said. “I had an hour or so before court, and I couldn’t be with my client.”

“Still, you could’ve gotten coffee or prepped another case. Instead, you came to watch Mrs. Monroe’s divorce case. Is there a reason for that?” Abrimowitz was covering the bases, trying to make sure he asked the tough questions before the defense did.

“Her lawyer, Lucinda Elbe, worked in our firm. It was one of her first family law cases, and I wanted to let her know that she would do just fine.” I wanted to explain more, but I didn’t. It was essential for a witness to only answer the question asked.

For the first time, though, I was seeing just how hard that could be.

“Do you usually cheer on your colleagues?” Abrimowitz asked.

“In the office, sure,” I said. “But this was the first time I had visited one in court.”

“What made this different?” Abrimowitz asked.

“Ms. Elbe had just made the transition from commercial law to family practice. I was worried about her. Family practice can be emotionally difficult for everyone, even the attorneys involved.”

I tried not to pause in the middle of that, but I couldn’t help shifting my shoulders just a little. Abrimowitz and I had discussed this: We expected a series of objections here.

Had I been Mrs. Monroe’s attorney, I’d’ve objected to me as a witness, objected to everything I said about the courtroom, and definitely objected to the description of the emotions around family law cases.

I might not have won the objections, but I would have screwed up Abrimowitz’s rhythm, and I would have confused the jury. It’s hard to keep track of questions when the opposing counsel constantly interrupts. Sometimes there’s a gap of ten minutes or more between the question and the answer itself.

But there had been no objections, not yet anyway. I resisted the urge to look at Mrs. Monroe’s attorney to see why she wasn’t doing anything at all.

“Please explain emotionally difficult,” Abrimowitz said, all but daring the opposing counsel to object.

He pointedly did not look at the defense table. And it took all of my strength to keep my gaze away too.

So I looked at the jury. Their gazes were firmly on me, as if they couldn’t get enough.

I needed to pretend that I was trying this case—without getting too deep in that pretense, because that might make me screw up as a witness.

Still, I assumed my best talk to the jury voice.

“Family law deals with divorces,” I said. “By the time a couple gets divorced, the arguments are old and the anger is deep. Often, there are children involved and even more often, the situation with the children is dire. The choices that get made in family court can rip your heart out.”

Abrimowitz let that sentence hang. His gaze met mine. He was surprised. He shouldn’t have asked the question in that manner and I certainly shouldn’t have been allowed to opine like that.

“Were there children involved in this case?” he asked.

“I have no idea,” I said. “Ms. Elbe and I didn’t discuss the details. All I knew was that the case was bothering her more than usual, and I figured she needed some moral support.”

“She didn’t tell you about the clients?” Abrimowitz asked.

“No,” I said. “She barely confided in me.”

“Yet you showed up.” He moved slightly, a signal that he wanted me to focus.

“I did show up,” I said. “I was going to tell her I was in the building, and she could find me if she needed advice or support.”

“You’re not a family law attorney, though, are you?”

“I’m not.”

“I still don’t see your interest here.” Abrimowitz was really pushing this. I wasn’t quite sure why.

“I liked Ms. Elbe. I didn’t think she belonged in family law. I thought it would destroy her, and it did. She’s not practicing anymore. She moved out of state.”

“Ms. Raylin?” The judge’s voice startled me. She was looking at the defense attorney. And that’s when I understood what was going on. This was judicial nudging, basically trying to tell opposing counsel to object.

I stopped talking and waited. Most witnesses probably would have proceeded. For that reason, Abrimowitz made a small movement with his hand, cautioning me to remain quiet.

Raylin, the defense attorney, was a mouse of a woman, with brown hair cut too short, a brown suit coat that was too big on her, brown pants that didn’t quite match, and low-slung black heels that clearly didn’t go.

Her trial bag had accordion files and at least two laptops, and at that moment I realized what she was.

Either she was the cheapest lawyer Mrs. Ellen Monroe could find, or, more likely, Raylin was a public defender.

“Yes, Your Honor?” Raylin sounded surprised that she was addressed at all.

“Do you plan to object?” the judge asked. So much for the nudging.

“No, Your Honor. I told you earlier, I have no objections to this witness.”

Mrs. Monroe looked at the judge with wide eyes, then back at Raylin. Raylin’s head was down, her arm over a yellow legal pad. She seemed to be writing something or maybe she was just doodling.

She didn’t seem to care much, that was for certain.

Which, I must say, pissed me off. Not for Mrs. Monroe, who was clearly guilty, but for my entire profession.

Everyone is entitled to a defense. I believe that like a religious precept. There are ways to defend guilty people. There are ways to protect both them and society.

What Raylin was doing was not one of those ways.

Apparently the judge agreed. “Just because you have no objections to the witness doesn’t mean—”

“Your Honor.” Abrimowitz spoke softly but with some force. That took balls. He was, essentially, reprimanding the judge.

I shook my head, just a little, hoping Abrimowitz saw me.

“Yes, counselor?” the judge asked in a tone so frosty that I had to check my arms to see if I had been coated in ice.

“May I continue?” That clearly hadn’t been what he was trying to say.

“No, you may not,” the judge said. “I need to caution you that some of your witness’s answers are not allowed under the rules. I will not strike those answers, but I do want you both to watch yourselves. Both of you should know better.”

I was used to a judge reprimanding me, and so, apparently, was Abrimowitz because he didn’t look fazed at all.

Mrs. Monroe seemed even more startled than she had a moment ago. The jury was squirming just a bit—each and every one of them—and Raylin, well, she had finally looked up from her legal pad, as if she didn’t quite understand what was going on or what her role was in any of this.

Which was probably true.

“Now you may continue,” the judge said to Abrimowitz.

He took a deep breath, probably to cover for the fact that he too had lost his train of thought. I hadn’t. I had just opined that Mrs. Monroe’s actions, however indirectly, had destroyed Lucinda, something I didn’t know as a fact. That was what the judge objected to, and that was the direction that Abrimowitz could no longer take.

“Are you involved with Ms. Elbe?” Abrimowitz asked.

I was expecting that question. He’d asked it in prep too many times. He clearly did not believe my answer which had been the same then as it was now.

“No,” I said.

“Did you want to be?” Abrimowitz asked.

“No,” I said, aware that was a slight lie. She had caught my attention from the start. When I offered her advice, I had been hoping she’d see me as someone she could rely on. But I hadn’t taken it any farther than that.

“Yet you seem interested in her,” Abrimowitz said.

“I take an interest in a number of my colleagues,” I said. “Male and female.”

“Yet you’ve never come to court before,” Abrimowitz said.

“That is true,” I said. “I’ve never come to court before to watch an attorney I was worried about. And I’ve regretted it in a number of cases.”

“So you were turning over a new leaf,” Abrimowitz said with a tight smile.

“I wouldn’t call it that,” I said. “I just had a feeling that something was going deeply wrong with this case, and I worried that someone was going to get hurt.”

“Ms. Raylin?” the judge asked, nudging again.

Raylin lifted her head. “Um, objection?”

“Based on what?” the judge asked, as a prompt.

“Um…his answer?”

Laughter rippled through the courtroom, including the jury box.

“What part of his answer?” the judge prompted.

“Um…all of it?”

The judge sighed softly. She had tried to make her point and failed. If she continued to prompt, she would be risking a bias allegation on the side of the defense. Right now, the transcript did not show her concern, but if she commented anymore, she could be in trouble. And since Raylin hadn’t cited a reason for the objection, the judge’s response was immediate and logical.

“Overruled,” she said with great disgust. “Continue, Mr. Abrimowitz, but do remember my warning from earlier.”

“Yes, your honor,” Abrimowitz said. He looked at me. “Please confine your answers to what you know as a fact.”

“Sorry, yeah, okay,” I said, trying all the answers because that was safer, especially considering my growing irritation at the damn defense attorney.

I loathed Mrs. Monroe, and yet I was half tempted to leap across the courtroom, sit at the defense table, and take over for the incompetent Ms. Raylin.

Remember, I told you. I have white knight tendencies. In this case, the damsel in distress wasn’t Mrs. Monroe, but the law herself and, in particular, my little corner of it.

“What happened after you got to court?” Abrimowitz asked me.

“It was a strange set-up,” I said.

Abrimowitz walked me through the “strangeness,” constantly referring to my experience in courtrooms as a baseline.

Raylin should have objected.

Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Judge Siddalli shift more and more as my testimony continued. Yes, we both knew that I hadn’t just stepped up to the line, but I’d crossed several.

Abrimowitz seemed more and more confident as the questioning went on. Mrs. Monroe sank into her chair. She understood that we were harming her, but her lawyer just kept doodling or making notes or whatever it was that she was doing instead of objecting.

The jury was watching me closely, unaware of the drama going on between the judge and the defense.

“Did you see a gun?” Abrimowitz was asking me.

“Yes,” I said.

“When?” he asked.

“The bouquet of dead flowers was falling apart,” I said, “and I saw the white barrel. Only I’d never seen a white gun before, and it wasn’t until she reminded her husband that they had promised to be together until death that I understood what was going on.”

“Before the bailiffs did,” Abrimowitz said. It should have been a question.

“I was watching from a different angle,” I said. “I launched myself—”

“We’ve shown the video,” Abrimowitz said, cutting me off. “The jury knows what you did, and I’m sure everyone around you was grateful.”

“Mr. Abrimowitz,” the judge said, not even waiting for the defense to screw up an objection.

“Sorry, Your Honor,” Abrimowitz said, and focused on me.  “It would seem to me that you and not Ms. Elbe would be the traumatized one from this entire situation. Are you having difficulties?”

I blinked at him. I wasn’t sure what he was driving at since we hadn’t discussed this part.

“Other than my brand-new physical limitations, no,” I said. And then, because I couldn’t help it, because someone really needed to put up a defense, if only for the sake of the law, I added, “But I am left with a question.”

Abrimowitz’s eyes narrowed. He must have heard something in my tone.

“And what is that?” he asked, with a caution in his voice.

“Because I’m considered to be the victim in this case,” I said, “a lot of people have sent me the press coverage of the incident or have talked to me about it.”

The judge had stiffened again. Mrs. Monroe sat very still. Raylin finally lifted her head, frowning at me. I wondered if she was finally forming an objection.

“And I have seen no one ask what I consider to be a salient question,” I said, allowing time for someone to stop me.

Abrimowitz did.

“I’m sure we’ll get to your question eventually,” he said. “Right now, though, I think we’ve covered everything. I have no further questions.”

Then he pivoted and returned to the prosecutor’s table.

“Ms. Raylin, do you have any questions?” The judge asked. Something in her tone led me (and probably half the courtroom) to believe that Raylin was going to decline to cross-examine me.

“Actually, your honor,” she said, “I do.”

Raylin sounded as surprised as I was. But she wasn’t interested enough to stand up. She just leaned forward.

“Mr…um…” She had to look at her notes to find my last name, even though it had been used several times in the past fifteen minutes, and I was the victim. She should have known my name like the back of her hand.

She turned a page, and finally Mrs. Monroe pointed at something on the paper. Raylin nodded, and continued.

“Um… you said you had an unanswered question. What is it?”

I felt a jolt. A defense attorney should never ask a question she didn’t know the answer to. Not ever.

But, in for a penny, in for a pound.

“I’ve been wondering why a woman as obviously competent as Mrs. Monroe would bring a gun to court with the intention of shooting her husband. What had he done to deserve that?”

“Objection!” Abrimowitz yelled so loudly that his voice echoed around the room.

Raylin was waving her hands at me as if she couldn’t believe I had said that.

Judge Siddalli glared at me. “You know quite well that there are no good reasons for killing someone.”

I looked over at her, surprised she had said that. Apparently, her disgust at Raylin had removed half of her judicial filters.

“It would seem, Your Honor, that the State disagrees with you, since many states have kept the death penalty. According to our laws, then, there are many legal reasons for taking someone’s life.”

Her eyes narrowed. I remembered that look from law school. We’d had a lot of late-night law review arguments, she and I. She always quit before I did because she refused to go to the mat on the logical inconsistencies that exist in almost every human-designed system.

“It’s not relevant,” Abrimowitz said. “I want that answer stricken.”

“Um…” a tentative voice said. It took me a moment to realize that voice belonged to Raylin. “I actually…um…think it might be relevant. I mean, if my client had a good reason—”

“It means nothing,” Abrimowitz said. “She shot an innocent man, who for some reason is defending her.”

“Oh, hell,” I said, deciding to undo the damage I had just done. “I’m not defending her. She shot me with an illegal firearm that she brought with the intent to kill her husband. I think I’m within my rights to wonder why she thought the man deserved to die, rather than, say, have all his possessions removed from him in a fairly ugly divorce.”

The jury was staring at all of his. Reporters were checking their phones and notes to make sure they were getting all of this.

And then Mrs. Monroe stood up.

“Because, you imbecile,” she said in that strident voice that still haunts my nightmares, “my husband and I made a vow before God to stay together until death parted us. I didn’t want to be with him anymore than he wanted to be with me, but divorce is a sin. So I figured I’d do God’s bidding—”

At this point, Raylin was shouting incoherently, the judge was pounding her gavel, calling on Raylin to get her client under control, and Abrimowitz was shaking his head as he frowned at me.

I had just guaranteed a conviction for him, taught a young lawyer that she either didn’t belong in this game and/or that she really needed to learn how to advocate for her clients—even the obviously guilty ones.

I shrugged at him, and he glared at me.

The bailiffs swarmed Mrs. Monroe, Raylin finally objected, and the judge loudly informed her that her client could watch from outside the room. Then the courtroom got blissfully quiet, and everyone turned to me, apparently remembering I was still—technically—testifying.

“I want the lawyers in my chambers. Now,” the judge said. “Court is adjourned until nine tomorrow morning.”

Everyone stood and started talking, including the jury, which was a bad sign. I remained in the witness chair as Abrimowitz and Raylin trailed after the judge.

For the first time in a long time, I was happy I wasn’t trying this case. Those two were probably going to be shredded by the judge, and justifiably so.

After the courtroom emptied, I got up, feeling that now-familiar stretching pain in my chest. I managed to get halfway down the aisle when Abrimowitz slammed out of the judge’s chambers.

“That doesn’t look good,” I said.

“Oh, it’s fine,” he said. “We’re going to have a plea, which we should have had from the beginning. And the judge is tearing that baby defense attorney a new asshole. I’d get out of here, though, if I were you, and you better hope you never get into Judge Siddalli’s courtroom again. She’s really mad. At me, at you, and she’s hoping that no one takes this to the judicial review board, because she’s going to look very bad.”

“She should,” I said. “And that defense attorney—”

“—is none of your damn business!” Abrimowitz took a step toward me, right hand closed into a fist. “What the hell were you thinking?”

I opened my mouth to answer but he held up that hand, palm open now.

“No, don’t tell me,” he said, then shook his head. “Because it makes no sense. She shot you, for god’s sake. What the hell?”

I didn’t think he wanted to hear the white knight speech, the I love the law corollary, and the someone had to do it justification. So I shrugged.

“Justice is blind,” I said.

“Not when it lost half a lung and spent six months recovering,” he snapped.

He was breathing hard, and we were staring at each other. His face was red, and I was remarkably calm.

“I’m the one who was shot,” I said.

“And that should piss you off,” he said.

“It did,” I said. “It does.”

His eyes narrowed. “But…?”

“But a bad, lazy defense pisses me off more,” I said.

“You want her to go to jail, don’t you?” he asked.

I paused, then thought about it. As I did, I suddenly became aware of my breath. It didn’t work the way it used to. My lung capacity was down by one quarter, and my ribs would never entirely heal right. Any exercise took more effort than it did before I got shot.

Not to mention the nightmares and the pain—Christ, the pain, especially on those nights alone, when there was no one to distract me.

I read legal history those nights. Stupidly enough, I believe in this system. I think it’s the best one I’ve read about, and for it to work, someone has to defend the Ellen Monroes of the world.

Not doodle on a legal pad and say um too many times, but to actually defend her. To find the best solution for all involved, whether that was a plea or a good attempt at jury nullification or just a straight conviction with the death penalty off the table.

“I don’t care if she goes to jail,” I said, surprising even myself.

“What?” Abrimowitz brought his head back so hard I thought I heard his neck creak.

“It’s not going to change anything for me. She shot me. I nearly died. I have a shit-ton of scars and I’ll never be able to breathe easily again.” I sounded a little breathy as I said this. “Lucinda lost her ability to practice law because she’s terrified of the courtroom. Last I heard, Judge Castillo is on leave. I have no idea what happened to the husband—”

“He moved, after the divorce was final,” Abrimowitz said.

“—so everything is different for him too,” I said. “Those are facts. What happens to Ellen Monroe means nothing to us. It does mean something to the future, though. With luck, she won’t shoot another man again or make another gun. She’ll be off the streets, and with even more luck, she won’t be in a cell with someone who’ll get out and refine her techniques for getting a ghost gun into the courthouse.”

Abrimowitz frowned at me, then slowly shook his head. “You’re a piece of work, you know that?”

I shrugged again. Maybe I was, maybe I wasn’t. But that didn’t matter either.

“Law’s not a job for me,” I said.

“Don’t give me that ‘it’s a calling’ bullshit,” Abrimowitz said.

“All right,” I said. “I won’t.”

Then I turned my back on him and walked out of the courtroom.

Law wasn’t a calling for me. Isn’t a calling for me. It’s a framework, a way of understanding the world. It is logical (for the most part), built on other pieces, and fastidiously guarded by a precious few.

If I had to compare it to anything, I would call it a religion. Not the wave a Bible and thump your chest, filled with emotion and the holy spirit kind of religion.

The studious kind, the kind that tries to figure out the place of humanity in the world, in a vain attempt to make sense of our existence.

I smiled at myself as I hit the main hallway that led to the front doors. To walk this way, I had to pass the courtroom where I got shot.

Lives changed in courtrooms, sometimes dramatically, like mine did, and sometimes in the routine administration of justice.

That is how it should be, in my world anyway.

It puts logic on chaos, a way of making the inexplicable seem important.

But only because it needs to be done right. And this one hadn’t been.

What happened if Ellen Monroe’s husband deserved to die for the things he did? We would never know. And Ellen Monroe wasn’t talking about them, not in ways we understood.

He should’ve been called as a witness. He should’ve been part of her defense—not financing it, not even as moral support, but as a small fact to cast doubt.

What kind of woman dresses up in her wedding dress on the day of her divorce? What leads her to that? And why don’t more women do it? Or more men, for that matter?

What caused Ellen Monroe to snap when hundreds of thousands of others never do?

Those questions fascinate me, and they don’t get answered in the wrong kind of criminal proceeding.

But there’s no one I can tell this to, no one else whom I know who will understand.

My somewhat monastic servitude to the law has become more devoted in the time since the shooting than it was before the shooting—and I think on that servitude often, especially as I look at the courthouse where it all happened.

The constructs we build. The choices we make. The vows we break.

In the grand scheme of things, they mean nothing.

Most of what we do means nothing.

But looking at the grand scheme of things is as futile as retrying Ellen Monroe.

It’s the little things that matter, the tipping points, the moments that might send us all over the edge.

We’re waiting there, in our metaphorical wedding dresses, cursing parking meters, and wondering how we got there—and knowing, deep down, that we got there step by step, building blocks the same way the law builds precedent, one small choice at a time.

I don’t think about Ellen Monroe when I breathe. I think about the law.

I think about the people who die for their religion each and every day. I took a bullet for mine, and I would do so again if the opportunity arises.

I would absolutely do so again.

___________________________________________

“The Bride Case” is available for one week on this site. The ebook is available on all retail stores, as well as here.

The Bride Case

First appeared in Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine, September/October 2024
Copyright © 2025 by Kristine Kathryn Rusch
Published by WMG Publishing
Cover and layout © copyright 2025 by WMG Publishing
Cover design by WMG Publishing
Cover art © copyright Canva

This book is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. All rights reserved. This is a work of fiction. All characters and events portrayed in this book are fictional, and any resemblance to real people or incidents is purely coincidental. This book, or parts thereof, may not be reproduced in any form without permission.

For Amelia’s second marriage, Gram gives her a visit to a wedding counselor. Not a marriage counselor, but someone who will advise how to achieve a perfect marriage through the perfect ceremony.

Superstitious nonsense, Amelia thinks, although she doesn’t want to offend Gram. But as the meeting progresses, Amelia realizes what the perfect wedding means—and why Gram wants her to have one.

“Something Blue” is available for one week on this site. The ebook is available on all retail stores, as well as here.

 

Something Blue By Kristine Kathryn Rusch

 

“Gram,” Amelia said for the fifteenth time. She was hunched in the passenger seat of her grandmother’s 1968 Cadillac, elbow catching on the armrest’s silver ashtray. “I don’t need a marriage counselor.”

“Wedding,” Gram said, perching her right wrist on the top of the steering wheel while she pushed up her glasses with her left forefinger. “Wedding counselor. And you do, girl. You didn’t listen to me that last time.”

Amelia sighed. Her grandmother would never let her forget the divorce, not because Gram disapproved—she’d been through three husbands herself—but because Gram said that Amelia had made a fatal mistake.

She had looked behind her as she walked up the aisle.

Gram had said that meant Amelia would regret her wedding day for the rest of her life. And Amelia did regret that day, more than she could ever state to her improper and fun-loving grandmother.

Gram fishtailed around a corner, honked at a ten-year-old boy on the side of the tree-lined country road, and waved. The kid, looking startled, waved back.

“You know him?” Amelia asked.

“Should I?” Gram said.

Amelia shook her head. All her life, she had lived in awe of Gram. When Amelia was a little girl, Gram ironed the curls out of her still-black hair, and wore mini-skirts showing off legs that were better than those of most teenagers. When Amelia was a teenager, Gram wore hip-huggers and floral print shirts, but eschewed granny dresses because she’d already worn them in a previous incarnation. When Amelia got married the first time, Gram had shown up at the wedding with six pierced earring holes in each ear, and new diamond studs in each.

Now Gram wore her gray curls in an above-the-ear bob and was talking about getting her eyebrows pierced. She was dating two different men: a real estate broker twenty years her junior, and a retired pilot ten years her senior. Neither man knew of the other, and Gram had hilarious stories about sending one man out the back door as the other man came in the front. Gram had nothing against extra-marital sex, even in these days of AIDS, but she did take marriage seriously.

Very seriously.

Too seriously.

First she tried to talk Amelia out of this second wedding, but since Amelia couldn’t be talked, Gram was determined to make her do it right.

“Where are we going?” Amelia asked, as she peered out the window. When she had finally agreed to come along with Gram, she hadn’t expected to leave Beaver Dam, let alone find herself in the middle of the Horicon Marsh. She had memories of the Marsh that dated back to when she was a little girl. Gram had been on husband #2 then, and they had lived in Theresa, just north and east of the Marsh. Whenever Amelia’s folks took her there, they always stopped on the side of the road, hoping to see wild birds in the reed-filled water. Sometimes they did. Usually they didn’t.

“You’ll see,” Gram said.

“Gram, if we go much farther, I’m going to insist on driving.”

“And who, I want to know, is missing points from her license?” Gram snapped. “Certainly not the elderly woman driving the car.”

Amelia sighed and sank lower in the front seat. Yes but, she thought and didn’t say, who has twenty-twenty vision? Who’s not wearing bifocals that constantly slip to the edge of her nose? Who drives with both hands on the wheel? Certainly not the elderly woman driving the car.

Maybe that was the problem. Gram said whatever she thought, but Amelia never spoke back to her grandmother. And Amelia was three years away from forty. It was time she spoke up.

Besides, she was beginning to get carsick from the pine-scented air fresher hanging from the rearview mirror.

“Gram,” Amelia said. “If this wedding counselor is so good, how come you didn’t use her?”

“I did,” Gram said. “With Willard.”

Willard. Well, there was no arguing that then. Willard had been Gram’s third and last husband. The love of her life. Willard had been three hundred pounds of extremely nice male who had treated Gram with the respect—and caution—that any wild animal deserved. Willard had stayed with her for five years, then died of heart failure in his sleep one cold November night.

Gram never remarried.

Even though she’d had regular “visitors” from that December on.

“I want you to have what Willard and I had,” Gram said into Amelia’s silence.

“I do,” Amelia said. “Scott’s wonderful. He’s the nicest man I know.”

“He’s the nicest man you know now,” Gram said. “But you used those exact same words about Whatshisname.”

“Ralph,” Amelia said.

“Ralph.” Gram shook her head. “You know, you should pay attention to names. They’re a sign. How could you fall in love with someone named Ralph? The name is slang for—”

“I know,” Amelia said. That joke had ceased being funny in the first month she dated Ralph. “And he was the nicest man I knew. Then. Scotty’s nicer.”

“Ralph was not nice,” Gram said. “Ralph only pretended to be nice.”

“If he only pretended to be nice,” Amelia said, “why’d you let me marry him?”

“Who could stop you? Besides, you knew.”

“I knew what?”

“That it was a mistake. Otherwise, you wouldn’t have looked back.”

Amelia sighed. Gram had a superstitious streak that was a bit surprising given her practical and adventurous nature. When she played gin, she never touched the cards until the last one was dealt, thinking that to peek beforehand would ruin her luck. When one famous person died, she always expected two more in related fields to go because, she said, famous people died in threes. And she never went into New Age stores that carried crystals because, she said, too many crystals in one place affected her psychic energy. Amelia had always thought that meant Gram shouldn’t go into jewelry stores either—and she should stay away from the salt and sugar aisles in the grocery store, but Gram never quite got the connection.

“Gram, I looked back,” Amelia said, “because of you.”

“Don’t go into that again,” Gram said.

“I did,” Amelia said, “because you whispered that my train was wrapped around my heels.”

“I was in front of you at the time. I didn’t expect you to believe me.”

“Gram,” Amelia said. “My train was not wrapped around my heels.”

Gram shrugged, then turned the wheel slightly with her wrist, following the curve of the road. “So my eyesight ain’t what it used to be.”

“Gram, that was fifteen years ago. Is your eyesight worse now?”

“No,” Gram said. “It got better. The miracles of modern science.”

Amelia tilted her head back in the seat. “Gram, I’m beginning to think you did that on purpose.”

“So what if I did?” Gram said. “You shouldn’t’ve married a Ralph.”

“I loved him.”

“You only thought you loved him, dear,” Gram said. “Trust me, I know.”

Amelia closed her eyes and gave up. She loved her grandmother dearly but sometimes there was no arguing with her. Especially when Gram’s mind was made up, as it had been from the first day she met Ralph.

Not good enough for you, Gram had said.

He’s the CEO of a software company, Gram, and that’s a burgeoning industry. We’ll be rich by the time I’m thirty.

Rich isn’t everything, my girl, Gram had said. Besides, you’ve got twice the intelligence he does.

So?

So, you’ll get bored. And I’ll bet he’s not good in bed.

Gram!

Believe me, I can tell which ones are, my girl. He’ll be finished before you’ve started.

Gram!

Think I don’t know about such things? Your grandfather—

I don’t want to know, Gram.

You should listen, honey.

No, Gram. I really don’t want to know.

But Gram had been right. The software company went belly-up, Ralph was a poor conversationalist, and he approached sex like it was a one-minute mile. But how was Amelia supposed to know? He’d looked good on paper, and she’d been good herself. She’d been the only girl she knew who’d been a virgin when she got married.

The first time, anyway. This time, she test-drove the model before she decided to live with it. Scott was six-foot-seven with gentle brown eyes and a smile that softened his already round face. He was not graceful, and during the first hour she knew him, he’d hit his head on the doorway into the restaurant to which they went on a blind date, shattered the crystal chandelier, and accidentally kicked over another diner’s chair—two tables away. After that debacle, they decided that Scott was not meant for fancy restaurants. He was more at home—well, at home—where the doorways were high enough, the light fixtures were made of plastic, and the other diners, when invited, were used to Scott kicking them under the table.

He was not athletic, except in bed, and he was at least as smart as she was. She’d compared their IQs. And he was a successful geneticist at the University of Wisconsin—a good researcher and one of the best teachers in the department.

He was also shy, which she saw as a good point; it had prevented him from asking other women out. She wouldn’t have met him at all if a mutual friend hadn’t forced them to see each other.

A mutual friend.

Not Gram.

Gram was still skeptical. She didn’t see any fireworks, she said. No spark. He was smart, yes, but how was he going to use those smarts? And he lacked people skills. Always a failing, she said.

A serious failing.

But he’s good in bed, Amelia had said.

I don’t want to know, Gram had said with a familiar tone of distaste.

You wanted to know about Ralph.

I wanted to warn you about Ralph, Gram had said. That one was obvious.

Well, Scott should be obvious too.

Gram had shrugged. If the size of his hands are any indication, she said, of course he’s—

Gram, Amelia had said. Don’t go there.

You’re the one who mentioned it, Gram had said.

And Amelia had given up.

Gram pulled into a driveway and stopped.

Amelia had been so caught up in thoughts of Scott that she hadn’t been paying attention. Now she looked at her surroundings. They were still on the highway, but just past the marsh. They hadn’t reached a town yet, or if they had, she couldn’t tell. The driveway Gram had pulled into was more like a gravel yard. It extended three car lengths in the front, and at least two car widths. At the far end of the driveway was a brown ranch house that badly needed paint. Two flower boxes sat outside, with dead flowers wilting over the sides. A rusted tricycle lay on its side beneath the only tree, a weeping willow that looked as if it too were on its last legs.

Gram shut off the car.

“This can’t be it,” Amelia said.

Gram gave her a withering look. Amelia had cringed from that look her whole life. It meant I certainly hope you’re not going to make comments like that when we’re inside.

Amelia ducked her head and mumbled, hoping Gram would take that for an apology. Actually, Amelia felt that Gram owed her an apology for wasting her day and forcing her to go to a place she had no desire to go. She could have stayed home and caught up on her soaps. Her new job in the research area of the Department of Natural Resources gave her bank holidays off, and she felt as if she were only working half as hard as the rest of the population.

She was enjoying that.

Gram opened her car door and got out, her tennis shoes crunching on the gravel. Amelia had worn suede boots, an obvious mistake in this environment. The boots had no real sole and were designed for city walking—pavement, carpeting, with plenty of rests in between.

She felt each stone in the gravel as clearly as if she’d been barefoot.

“No dawdling,” Gram said as she scurried for the front door.

Amelia suppressed a sigh. She wanted to dawdle. She wanted to get back in the car, and head for the marsh. Even that would be more interesting than this place.

She picked her way across the gravel. By the time she reached the stoop, the door was already open. A middle-aged woman with light brown hair was smiling at Gram.

“Mrs. Sparks,” the woman said, and Amelia was surprised to hear, not the flat vowels of the Midwest, but the clipped tones of an upper class British accent. “And I suppose this is your granddaughter.”

“Yes,” Gram said. She held out a hand, as if Amelia’s slow approach to the porch had been intentional. “Amelia, say hello to Sophie Danner.”

Amelia smiled and said hello just as her grandmother had asked. Sophie Danner was not what Amelia had expected. She had thought to see a woman of her grandmother’s age and of the temperament common to most women of that generation—most women but Gram.

Sophie Danner had to be Amelia’s age.

Or younger.

Sophie stood away from the door, and Gram went in, as if she had done so a hundred times. Amelia followed, wincing at the stale smell of boiled cabbage and garlic. Sophie herself smelled faintly of sweat as if she’d been cleaning house or sitting in the sun, and hadn’t had time to shower yet. She wore a faded gold t-shirt with a logo Amelia had never seen before, and blue jeans one size too small. Her feet were bare, and her toenails were painted a vivid green.

“Do make yourself comfortable,” Sophie said. She cleared some papers off the red and black plaid couch, and tossed them on the floor. They covered a gray carpet that was so thin that Amelia could see the wood underneath. Sophie took more papers off the matching easy chair, and sat down.

Amelia sat too.

Gram was thumbing through a pile of pictures scattered on the dining room table. “Your latest project?” Gram asked.

“No, no. It was an unsuccessful. The wife wants me to see what went wrong, to see if the problem was in the ceremony or the man.”

“What do you think?” Gram asked.

“Upside down flowers, no wedding cake, and no rings,” Sophie said. “Of course they weren’t going to last the year.”

Amelia suppressed the urge to groan, and then wondered how she had gotten in the habit of suppressing all her reactions around Gram.

“My granddaughter,” Gram said, “doesn’t believe in this.”

“Wedding counseling?” Sophie looked shocked. “Your grandmother told me about your turning to look at the back of the church at your last wedding. Of course it failed.”

“Of course,” Amelia mumbled.

“It’s good you divorced him. Regret is a terrible thing to stare at day in and day out.”

“I was young,” Amelia said.

Sophie smiled and clapped her hands together. “Of course you were,” she said. “It’s amazing what we learn as we age. It’s rather difficult to admit we don’t control our universe, but once you’ve made that admission, you can slip right over it, and control the things you can control. Right?”

“Right,” Amelia said, not understanding a word Sophie had just said.

“Good.” Sophie leaned forward. “Let’s discuss your plans.”

Gram was holding a picture and peering over its edge at Amelia. In a moment of weakness, Amelia had blabbed all the plans to Gram. Amelia couldn’t well lie about them now.

Not without Gram correcting her.

And Amelia had never been fast on her feet, at lying in any rate.

“I suppose you want to hear the unusual parts first,” she said, looking at Sophie.

Sophie pursed her lips together. “Actually,” she said, “Let’s talk intent. Church wedding or civil ceremony?”

“I hardly see how that’s relevant,” Amelia said.

“You’d be surprised,” Sophie said. “The church often counteracts superstition.”

“So you recommend a civil ceremony?” Amelia asked.

“Of course not,” Sophie snapped. “I prefer church. It makes my job so much easier.”

“Counteracts, Amelia,” Gram said as if that clarified the matter.

“Oh,” Amelia said, sounding as dumb as she felt. “Church. Scott’s parents insisted.”

“His parents are still alive. Good,” Sophie said.

Amelia frowned. She wasn’t that old, was she? Old enough to make the groom’s parents survival suspect?

“Look,” Amelia said, wanting the experience over with, “why don’t you just tell me what you need to know and I’ll tell you what Scott and I decided. How’s that?”

“Charming,” Sophie said. “It’ll work best for all concerned.”

Gram humphed and set the pictures down. She stayed in the dining room, though, as if she expected her presence to be a distraction.

It was.

No one could ignore Gram for long.

“Tell me about your dress,” Sophie said. “I do hope you didn’t chose white. You were married before, and therefore you’re not a virgin, are you?”

“Damn close,” Gram said.

“Gram!” Amelia felt her face flush. “No, I’m not a virgin—” and her flush grew deeper as she wondered how many secrets of her life she was willing to tell this woman “—and my dress is not white, although I’m not sure how that matters.”

“In this country, white is for virgin brides. But if you’re not a virgin, and you wear white, someone will die before the year’s out.” Sophie spoke of the impending event with unearthly calm.

“Someone? Who someone?” Amelia said. “The wife? The husband?”

“Yes,” Sophie said. “Generally the husband. You know that white is the color of mourning in China, don’t you?”

“How is that relevant?” Amelia asked.

“She just told you,” Gram said.

Amelia clasped her hands tightly in her lap. She was doing this for Gram, she reminded herself. It was one short afternoon out of her life. She was doing it for Gram.

“My dress is blue,” Amelia said. “It’s real simple with—”

“Blue?” Sophie said. She shook her head. “That won’t do, young lady.”

Now Amelia was a young lady? This from a woman about her own age. This time she did look at Gram, and let all her annoyance show. Gram shrugged and picked up one of the discarded pictures, feigning interest.

“What’s wrong with blue?” Amelia asked, knowing she was opening a door that should have remained closed.

“Blue,” Sophie said. “It’s a sign that your lover has been untrue.”

“Oh, come on,” Amelia said. “How can that be? What about something borrowed, something blue?”

“Something old and something new.” Sophie leaned back on the couch. “Yes, I can see how you’d perceive that as a conflict. All those things are required for the perfect ceremony, but they’re generally small, you know, like a ribbon of blue through a garter. It’s rather like Jimmy Carter; it gives the husband permission to have lust in his heart, but not anywhere else. An entire dress, however, an entire dress is another matter. Has Scott been unfaithful to you, my dear?”

Scott? Gentle, gawky Scott who couldn’t talk to a woman he was attracted to without accidentally breaking half the objects in the room around him? Scott, who confessed the night he fell into bed with her (literally fell; he got tangled in his pants) that he’d only slept with one other women in all his forty years, and he hoped she wouldn’t think him too inexperienced? That Scott?

“Of course not,” Amelia snapped.

“Fiancées are often the last to know,” Sophie said.

“Why in God’s name would a man get married if he were having an affair when he was engaged?” Amelia asked.

“Peer pressure?” Gram said.

Amelia ignored her.

Sophie just stared at her. “There is no understanding men, is there?”

“No.” Amelia stood. “There’s no understanding you. Why would what color I wear at my wedding affect the rest of my life?”

“Amelia—” Gram said in her sternest voice.

“Don’t lecture me,” Amelia said, rather surprised at her own forcefulness. “I have a right to know. What does it matter?”

“Your wedding day is the most important day of your life,” Sophie said, “and that plays a part in the power of the superstitions attached. They work. You’ll see. I can even point to one in your life—”

“Yes, yes, the infamous looking back down the aisle, as if I believe that,” Amelia said.

“No, although that is a good example,” Sophie said. “I suspect another one influenced you even more. Did they throw rice or bird seed at you and your first husband as you left the ceremony?”

“Rice,” Amelia said, feeling rooted to the spot. Why couldn’t she get away from this place of perverse craziness?

“Long grain, brown, or instant?”

“I don’t know, probably instant knowing our friends,” Amelia said.

“Well then,” Sophie said. “There you have it.”

“Have what?”

“Why you don’t have children.”

“How do you know I don’t have children?”

“Because your guests threw Minute Rice,” Sophie said.

“Probably explains other things as well,” Gram said.

“Gram,” Amelia growled, startled to hear the same tone in her own voice as the one Gram often took with her.

Gram shut up.

“That’s not proof of anything,” Amelia said. “We used birth control. We didn’t have a lot of sex after a while. All of those were factors.”

“All of those were results,” Sophie said.

“Of instant rice?” Amelia asked.

“Of course,” Sophie said. “The tradition is bird seed to promote fertility. Many children which was the point of marriage, at least when the tradition was developed. That got converted to rice, which was less effective, and so many people throw that chemically treated stuff, which is not effective at all.”

“My god,” Amelia said. “Gram, are you paying this woman for this nonsense?”

“That’s none of your business,” Gram said. “This is a present.”

“Some present,” Amelia said, out loud. Then she realized what she had done, and the realization scared her. Apparently the days of stifling her responses to Gram were gone. “Do you actually believe this crap? If I wear white, my husband will die. If I wear blue, he’ll have an affair. If I fail to provide my guests with bird seed, I won’t have children, as if the tubal ligation I had three years ago will have nothing to do with it.”

“Amelia,” Gram said.

“No,” Amelia said, not willing to stop, even though she knew that was what Gram wanted. “I can’t believe you’re perpetrating this—this—this—garbage. Marriage is about choice. It’s about choices made every day, by people with guts. People make mistakes, and they live through them. Not because they wore blue at their wedding, but because they chose to. They decided to work on the marriage, they decided to stay together, they decided to continue loving each other.”

“It is not that simple,” Sophie said, holding up a hand.

“Is what I’m saying simple?” Amelia asked. “It sounds a lot harder than trying to make one day of your life perfect. I’m sorry to insult you ladies, but do you really expect me to believe I have no control over my life? That everything is governed by superstition and the simple things we do to ward off the evil eye?”

“Yes,” Sophie said.

“Are you even married?” Amelia asked her. The sarcasm that came out of Amelia’s mouth was an unfamiliar, at least around Gram. Amelia only used that tone at work, and then she used it with microbes that didn’t belong in people’s water supplies, things that she didn’t expect to appear in her electron microscope.

“I’m divorced,” Sophie said, head down.

“Oh, for godsake,” Amelia said.

“It’s not what you think,” Sophie said.

Amelia looked at Gram who was standing straight as a post, the photographs bending in her hand.

“What do I think?” Amelia asked.

“That these things didn’t work for me,” Sophie said. “But I discovered Wedding Counseling after my divorce.”

“So why didn’t you marry again?”

“Because it’s more likely for a woman my age to be killed by terrorists—”

“I hate that statistic,” Amelia said. “Every single woman over thirty recites it like it’s the damn Bible, and no one remembers that that study was disproved. The methodology was faulty.”

She had yelled the last. Her words echoed in the small living room. The flush she had felt earlier returned to her face.

“I’m sorry about your gift, Gram.” Then she bowed slightly to Sophie. “And I’m sorry if I insulted you. But this just isn’t for me.”

“It should be,” Sophie said. “I haven’t had a failure yet, not in 152 consultations.”

Amelia sighed. The reasons for that could be a hundred fold. It might simply be that Sophie’s group of clients were self-selecting for the desire to make their marriages work. It might be that they were a statistical anomaly.

It might even be that the superstitions and her wardings worked.

Amelia didn’t care. She wasn’t going to follow dumb superstitions, and she wasn’t going to listen to a woman who hadn’t made a good marriage herself.

“I’d like to leave, Gram,” she said, and headed for the door. When she reached it, she turned and saw Gram give Sophie an envelope. Gram was apologizing for Amelia’s rudeness as Amelia left.

Amelia went down the cracked stoop to the gravel drive. Birds flying overhead, going to the Horicon Marsh, cawed. A slight breeze blew over her, and it blew away the stale air from the interior of the house. She had never acted like that around Gram before. In fact, she rarely lost her temper at all. But she didn’t like the pap this woman had been serving, and she couldn’t remain silent about it.

Somehow, the silence made her feel as if she were perpetuating the beliefs.

And she couldn’t. She couldn’t change her plans no matter how much Gram wanted it. This was Amelia’s wedding, the one she was planning with Scott. And it was her marriage, with Scott. And it was up to them to make it work. If they failed, she didn’t want to hire Sophie to scan their wedding pictures. Amelia wanted a real human accounting, a way of knowing where she and Scott had gone wrong.

The door closed behind her. She cringed, then turned. Gram was walking alone down the short sidewalk. She was clutching her purse to her chest. “I’d like you to drive,” she said.

“I’m sorry, Gram,” Amelia said as she started across the gravel.

“Don’t be,” Gram said. “This had the desired effect.”

Amelia stopped. “What do you mean?”

“You won’t talk to me,” Gram said. “You let me blather, and you smile and say, ‘Yes Gram’ as if I’ve already gone senile. Well, I haven’t. And you made a terrible marriage the last time, even though you’re not willing to admit it, and I didn’t want you to make a terrible marriage this time.”

“Sophie’s ideas are not what I need,” Amelia said.

“I know, and thank God for that,” Gram said.

The breeze blew Amelia’s hair in her face. She brushed it back with her left hand. “I thought you believed Sophie.”

“Oh, I think she has a valuable talent. I think she has the ability to make people see their future marriages clearly. I think if I had brought you here when you were going to marry Ralph, you would have decided to call off the wedding.”

“So you don’t buy this blue thing, this bird seed stuff.”

“No,” Gram said. “I wore black when I married Willard, or don’t you remember?”

“I remember,” Amelia said. “But I don’t know what it means.”

“It means,” Gram said, “that you’re sad about the wedding, maybe even that you’re doing it against your will.”

“But you loved Willard.”

“Of course I loved Willard.”

“And you were the happiest I ever saw you that day.”

“Of course I was,” Gram said.

“Then that just proves that Sophie’s wrong.”

“No,” Gram said.

“No?” Amelia asked.

“No,” Gram repeated. “It means that when I came to see Sophie and we discussed the wedding, I realized how much I wanted my marriage to be successful, and how hard I was willing to work to make it go that way. Which, if you’ll recall that little speech you gave us in there, is exactly what you said about Scott.”

Amelia turned slightly so that her hair wouldn’t keep blowing in her face. “You could have just asked me.”

“I did,” Gram said. “You always told me that he was a nice man and I shouldn’t worry, which is exactly what you said about whatshisname.”

“Ralph.”

“Ralph,” Gram said and shook her head. “How you could marry a name like that, I’ll never know.”

“Don’t start, Gram.”

Gram shrugged and walked to the car. Amelia hurried behind her. Gram climbed into the passenger seat and stuck the keys in the ignition. Amelia slid into the driver’s side.

“You mean you went through this whole charade just to learn if I loved Scott and would work on our marriage?”

“Yes,” Gram said.

“Why?”

“You mean besides the fact that I love you and want only the best for you?”

“That goes without saying, Gram,” Amelia said. She pushed the seat back so that her knees weren’t crammed into the steering wheel.

“Well,” Gram said, “it’s because you’re nearly forty. If I had married Willard when I was forty—and I knew him then—we would have had thirty wonderful years together instead of five. Five simply wasn’t enough. Thirty wouldn’t have been either, but it would have been better—”

Her voice broke. Amelia put her arm around Gram’s shoulder and pulled her close. “All I wanted,” Gram said against Amelia’s collarbone, “is to make sure you have a Willard in your life. Every girl deserves at least one.”

“I do, Gram,” Amelia said softly.

“I know that now,” Gram said. She pushed away and dabbed at her eyes with her thumb. “Will you drive? I have bridge club at seven.”

“Sure, Gram,” Amelia said.

She turned the key and the car started, its motor humming. She took a deep breath.

“Gram,” she said. “Thanks. No one has ever given me a gift like this.”

“What gift?” Gram asked.

Amelia turned slightly in her seat. “I thought you said this was a present.”

“The visit was and you didn’t want it.”

“But you gave it to me anyway.”

“You shouldn’t thank me for something you didn’t want.”

Amelia frowned. “But it turned out all right.”

“Well, it did, but that’s no reason to thank me.” Gram pushed a button on the door, and her window came down, letting in that errant breeze.

“Why not?”

“It worked because of you, my girl,” Gram said. She leaned her head back and closed her eyes.

Amelia stared at her for a moment, still uncertain about what to make of her Grandmother, even though they’d been close her entire life.

“I suppose you and Scott will want to visit me,” Gram said, eyes still closed.

“Of course,” Amelia said.

“Regularly,” Gram said.

“Yes,” Amelia said.

Gram sighed. “Then I’ll have to move.”

“Why?”

“Or raise my chandelier. Which will be cheaper, do you think?”

Amelia put the car into reverse. “Raising your chandelier.”

“Good,” Gram said. “I rather like the house.” She opened her eyes. “I think you should let me drive.”

“No, Gram,” Amelia said.

“Then get us out on the highway, my girl,” Gram said. “Time’s wasting. You young people never understand how important these small moments are.”

Amelia grinned. “I think we do, Gram,” she said. “I think we do.”

 

___________________________________________

“Something Blue” is available for one week on this site. The ebook is available on all retail stores, as well as here.

Something Blue

Copyright © 2018 by Kristine Kathryn Rusch
First published in Black Cats and Broken Mirrors, edited by Martin H. Greenberg and John Helfers, DAW, June, 1998
Published by WMG Publishing
Cover and layout copyright © 2018 by WMG Publishing
Cover art copyright © inarik | Depositphotos

This book is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. All rights reserved. This is a work of fiction. All characters and events portrayed in this book are fictional, and any resemblance to real people or incidents is purely coincidental. This book, or parts thereof, may not be reproduced in any form without permission.

I’m having a blast working on book trailers when WMG does Kickstarters. I just completed this book trailer for Dean’s Kickstarter, which launched today. I hope you enjoy the video and I hope it inspires you to look at the Kickstarter! Lots of cool stuff there. (Click here for the Kickstarter)

https://kriswrites.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/06/Mary-Jo-Assassin-Book-Trailer-Low-Res.mp4

Portia Meadows runs one of the few pet stores that sells familiars to the magical. Familiars—delicate, moody creatures—keep magic clean and pure. To lose a familiar means losing magic. And on a bright afternoon, Portia’s assistant discovers that something essential has disappeared, threatening not just the magical within the store, but throughout the world.

“The Poop Thief” is available for one week on this site. The ebook is available on all retail stores, as well as here.

 

The Poop Thief By Kristine Kathryn Rusch

“Okay, this is just weird.”

The voice came from the back of the store. It belonged to my Tuesday/Thursday assistant, Carmen. High school student, daughter of two mages, Carmen had no real talent herself, but she was earnest, and she loved creatures, and I loved her enthusiasm.

“I mean it, Miss Meadows, this is weird.”

Oddly enough, weird is not a word people often use in Enchantment Place. Employees expect weird. Customers demand it. What’s weird here is normal everywhere else—or so I thought until that Tuesday in late May.

“Miss Meadows….”

“Hold on, Carmen,” I said. “I’m with a client.”

The client was a repeat whom I did not like. I’m duty bound at Familiar Faces to provide mages with the proper familiars—the ones that will help them augment their talents and help them remain on the right path (doing no harm, avoiding evil, remaining true to the cause, all that crap). I do my best, but some people try my patience.

People like Zhakeline Jones. She was a zaftig woman who wore flowing green scarves, carried a cigarette in a cigarette holder, and called everyone “darling.” Even me.

I called her Jackie, and ignored the “It’s Zhakeline, dahling.” Actually, it was Jacqueline back when we were in high school and then only from the teachers. The rest of us called her Jackie, and her friends—what few she had—called her Jack.

Whenever she came in, I cringed. I knew the store would smell like cigarettes and Emerude perfume for days afterwards. I didn’t let her smoke in here—Enchantment Place, for all its oddities, was regulated by the City of Chicago and the City of Chicago had banned smoking in all public places—but that didn’t stop the smell from radiating off her.

Most of my creatures vacated the front of the store when she arrived. Only the lioness remained at my feet, curled around my ankles as if I were a tree and Zhakeline was her prey. A few of the mice looked down on Zhakeline from a shelf (sitting next to the books on specialty cheeses that I’d ordered just for them), and a couple of the birds sat like fat and sassy gargoyles in the room’s corners.

Nothing wanted to go home with Zhakeline, and I didn’t blame them. She’d brought back the last three familiars because the creatures had the audacity to sneeze when they entered her house (and silly me, I had thought that cobras couldn’t sneeze, but apparently they do—especially when they don’t want to stay in a place where the air is purple). We were going to have to find her something appropriate and tolerant, something I was beginning to believe impossible to do.

On the wall beside me, lights shimmered from all over the spectrum, then Carmen appeared. Actually, she’d stepped through the portal from the back room to the shop’s front, but I’d specifically designed the magical effect to impress the civilians.

Sometimes it impressed me.

Carmen was a slender girl who hadn’t yet grown into her looks. One day, her dramatic bone structure would accent her African heritage. But right now, it made her look like someone had glued an adult’s cheekbones onto a child’s face.

“Miss Meadows, really, my parents say you shouldn’t ignore a magical problem and I think this is a magical problem, even though I don’t know for sure, but I’m pretty certain, and I’m sorry to bother you, but jeez, I think you have to look at this.”

All spoken in a breathless rush, with her gaze on Zhakeline instead of on me.

Zhakeline smiled sympathetically and waved a hand in dismissal. Bangles that had been stuck to her skin loosened and clanked discordantly.

“This hasn’t really been working, Portia.” Zhakeline said with a tilt of the head. She probably meant that as sympathy too. “I’ve been thinking of going to that London store—what do they call it?”

“The Olde Familiar.” I spoke with enough sarcasm to sound disapproving. Actually, my heart was pounding. I would love it if Zhakeline went elsewhere. Then the unhappy familiar—whoever the poor creature might be—wouldn’t be my responsibility.

“Yes, the Olde Familiar.” She smiled and put that cigarette holder between her teeth. She bit the damn thing like a feral F.D.R. “I think that would be best, don’t you?”

I couldn’t say yes, because I wasn’t supposed to turn down mage business and I could get reported. But I didn’t want to say no because I would love to lose Zhakeline’s business.

So I said, “You might try that store in Johannesburg too, Unfamiliar Familiars. You can see all kinds of exotics. But remember, importing can be a problem.”

“I’m sure you’ll help with that,” she said.

“Legally I can’t. But you’re always welcome here if their wares don’t work out.”

The mice chittered above me, probably at the word “wares.” They weren’t wares and they weren’t animals. They were sentient beings with magic of their own, subject only to the whims of the magical gods when it came to pairings.

The whims of the magical gods and Zhakeline’s eccentricities.

“I’ll do that,” she said. Then she turned to Carmen. “I hope you settle your weirdness, darling. And for the record, your parents are right. The sooner you focus on a magical problem, the less trouble it can be.”

With that, she swept out of the store. Two chimpanzees crawled through the cat doors on either side of the portal holding identical cans of Febreze.

“No,” I said. “The last time you did that we had to vacate the premises. Or don’t you remember?”

They sighed in unison and vanished into the back. I didn’t blame them. The smell was awful. But Febreze interacted with the Emerude, leading me to believe that what Zhakeline wore wasn’t the stuff sold over the counter, but something she mixed on her own.

Without a familiar, which was probably why the stupid stuff lingered for days.

“Miss Meadows.” Carmen tugged on my sleeve. “Please?”

I waved an arm so that the store fans turned on high. I also uttered an incantation for fresh ocean breezes. (I’d learned not to ask for wind off Lake Michigan; that nearly chilled us out of the store one afternoon). Then I followed Carmen into the back.

Walking through the portal is a bit disconcerting, especially the first time you do it. You are walking into another dimension. I explain to civilian friends that the back room is my Tardis. Those friends who don’t watch Doctor Who look at me like I’m crazy; the rest laugh and nod.

My back room should be a windowless 10×20 storage area. Instead, it’s the size of Madison Square Garden. Or two Madison Square Gardens. Or three, depending on what I need.

Most of my wannabe familiars live here, most of them in their own personal habitats. The habitats have a maximum requirement, all mandated by the mage gods and tailored to a particular species. Each bee has a football-sized habitat; each tiger has about a half an acre. Most creatures may not be housed with others of their kind, unless they’re a socially needy type like herding dogs or alpha male cats. The creatures have to learn how to live with their mage counterparts—not always an easy thing to do—and its best not to let them interact too much with other members of their species.

Theoretically, I get the creatures after they complete five years of familiar training (and yes, you’re right; very few familiars live their normal lifespan. Insects get what to them seems like millions of years and dogs get an extra two decades; only elephants, parrots, and a few other exceptionally long-lived species live a normal span).

That day, I had too many monkeys of various varieties, one parrot return who’d managed to learn every foul word in every language known to man (and I mean that) during his aborted tenure with his new owner, several large predatory cats, twenty-seven butterflies, five gazelle, sixteen North American deer, eight white wolves, one black bear, one grizzly return, one-hundred domestic cats, five-hundred-sixty-five dogs, and dozens of other creatures I generally forgot when I made a mental list.

Not every animal was for sale. Some were flawed returns—meaning they couldn’t remember spells or they misquoted incantations or they weren’t temperamentally suited to such a high-stress job. Some were whim returns, brought back by the mage who either bought on a whim or returned on a whim. And the rest were protest returns. These creatures left their mage in protest, either of their treatment or their living conditions.

All three of Zhakeline’s returns had been protest returns although she tried to pass the first off as a flaw return and the other two as whim returns. It gets hard for a mage after a few rejections. Eventually she gets a reputation as a familiarly challenged individual, and might never get a magical companion.

And if she goes without for too long, she’ll have her powers suspended until she goes through some kind of rehab.

Fortunately, that’s never my decision. I’d seen too many mages fight to save their powers just before a suspension: I never want all that angry magic directed at me.

Carmen was standing on the edge of the habitats. They extended as far as the eye could see. My high school assistants didn’t tend the habitats the way that civilian high school assistants would tend cages at, say, a vet’s office. Instead, they made sure that the attendants that I hired from various parts of the globe (at great expense) actually did their jobs.

Each attendant had to log in stats: food consumed, creature health readings, and how often each habitat was entered, inspected, and cleaned. Then they’d log in the video footage for the past day—after inspecting it, of course, for magical incursions, failed spells, or escape attempts.

Carmen had called up our stats on the clear computer screen I’d overlaid over the habitat viewing area. She zoomed in on one stat—product for resale.

I frowned at the numbers. They were broken down by category. The whim returns and most of the protest returns were listed, of course, along with byproduct—methane from the cows (to be used in various potions); shed peacock feathers (for quills); and honey from the bees that had convinced the mage gods to make them hive familiars, not individual familiars.

Those bees only went to special clients—those who could prove they weren’t allergic and who could handle several personality types all speaking through their fearless leader, the sluggish queen.

“See?” Carmen asked, waving a hand at the numbers. “This week’s just weird.”

I didn’t see. But I didn’t have as much experience with the numbers as she did. And, truth be told, I didn’t think her powers were in spell-casting. I believed they were in numerology—not as powerful a magic, but a useful one.

“I’m sorry,” I said, feeling dense, like I often did when staring at rows of facts and figures. “What am I supposed to see?”

She poked her finger at one of the columns. The lighted numbers vanished, then reappeared in red.

“Available fertilizer,” she said. “See?”

I stared at the category. Available Fertilizer. Our biggest seller because we undercut the competition, mostly so we could get rid of the crap quickly and easily.

“There’s no number there,” I said.

“Zero is a number,” Carmen said with dripping disdain that only a teenager could muster.

“E…yeah…okay.” I knew I was stammering, but the big honking nothingness made no sense. “The assistants haven’t been cleaning the habitats?”

She pressed the screen, drawing down the earlier statistics. Cleanings had gone on as usual.

“So what happened to the fertilizer?”

“I have no idea where the fertilizer went,” she said. “I’m not even sure it came out of the cages. I mean, habitats.”

I had planned to give her a tour of the back, but I hadn’t yet. So she always made the “cages/habitat” mistake, something she’d never say if she actually saw the piece of the Serengeti plain that Fiona, the lioness who liked to sleep under my cash register and Roy, the lion who supposedly headed her pride, had conjured up to remind themselves of home.

Cleaning the habitats was a major job, especially for the larger animals, and usually required extra labor. Entire families came in for an hour or two a night to clean grizzly’s mountainside, especially during blackberry season.

I moved Carmen aside, pressed some keys only visible to me, and looked at several of the previous day’s vids in fast motion. Habitat cleaning happened in all of them.

Habitat cleaners weren’t required to log in what they cleaned unless the item was marketable which poop generally was. Animal poop that is. There’s never a big market for insect poop.

Animal poop (ground up into a product called Familiar Fertilizer) had a wide variety of uses. Mages bought it for their herb gardens. In addition to being the Miracle Grow of the magical world, it also made sure that wolf’s bane and all the other herbal ingredients of a really good potion, magical spell, or “natural” remedy was extra-powerful. Some mages vowed that anything fertilized with familiar poop could be safely sold with a money-back guarantee—especially (oddly enough) love spells.

“Must be a computer glitch,” I said and stabbed a few more buttons.

“Let me.” Carmen got to the correct screens quicker, without me even asking. She knew I wanted to check all that basic stuff—how many pounds of poop got ground into fertilizer at the nearby processing plant, how many pounds of fertilizer got shipped, and how many of our magical feed-and-seed brethren paid for shipments that arrived this week.

Each category had a big fat zero in the poundage column.

“I don’t like this,” I said. “You just noticed this?”

I tried to keep the accusation out of my voice. It wasn’t her job to keep track of my shipments and my various product lines. She was a high school student working two days a week part-time after school.

I was the person in charge.

“I was going over the manifests like you taught,” she said. “I let you know the minute I saw it.”

Which was—I checked the digital readout on the see-through computer screen—half an hour ago, one hour after Carmen arrived.

Pretty dang fast, considering.

“I mean, everything was fine on Thursday.”

Thursday. The last day she worked.

My lunch—an indulgent slice of Chicago pan-style pizza—turned into a gelatinous ball in my stomach. “Can you quickly check the previous four days?”

“Already on it.” She pressed a few keys.

I watched numbers flash in front of my eyes—too quickly for my number-challenged brain to follow. I could have spelled the whole thing, looked for patterns, but I had Carmen. She was better than any magical incantation.

“Wow,” she said after a few minutes. “Those animals haven’t pooped since Friday.”

The gelatinous ball became concrete. I reached for the screen to look at health history, then stopped. A few of those creatures would have died if they hadn’t pooped in three days. Some internal systems were less efficiently designed than others.

Still, I had her double-check the health records just to make sure.

“Okay,” she said after looking at health records from Thursday to Tuesday. “So they all have normal bowel readings. What does this mean?”

“It means that your parents are right,” I said.

“Huh?” She looked at me sideways, all teenager again. She hated hearing that Mom and Dad were right.

“Magical problems become bigger when they are allowed to fester.”

“This is a magical problem?” she asked.

“The worst,” I said.

She continued to stare at me in confusion, so I clarified.

“We have a poop thief.”

***

You find poop thieves throughout magical literature. Heck, you even find them in fairy tales.

Of course, they’re never called poop thieves. They’re “tricksters” who steal their victims’ “essence.” They’re evil wizards who rob their enemies of their “life force.”

Most scholars believe that these references are to sperm, which simply tells me that magical scholarship has been dominated too long by males. (Those inept male scholars don’t seem to be able to read either; a lot of the victims are women who are, of course, spermless creatures one and all.)

The scholars are right in that “life force” and “essence” are often composed of bodily fluids. Some (female) scholars have assumed that this essence is blood, but blood is a lot harder to obtain than the simplest of bodily fluids—pee.

Pee, though, is like all other water. It seeps into the ground. It’s difficult to get unless someone pees into a cup or a bottle or a box. (Or unless you’ve magicked the chamber pot—and there are a few of those stories as well [Those Brothers Grimm didn’t like the chamber pot stories, and so kept them out of the official compilation.])

Poop, on the other hand…

Poop, actually, on either hand is a lot easier to obtain.

Poop, like pee, blood, and yes, sperm, is a life essence. Even in its nonmagical form it has magical powers. It gets discarded only to be spread on a fallow field. The nutrients in the waste material break down, enriching the soil which is often used to grow plants—plants which later become food. The food nourishes the person who eats it. The person’s body processes the food into energy and vitamins and all sorts of other good stuff, and the leftovers become waste yet again.

Most of the non-magical have no idea the power held in a single turd.

Hell, most of the magical didn’t either.

But the ones who did, well, they were all damn dangerous.

And I’d already lost too much time.

***

It seemed odd to call Mall Security at a time like this, but that was the first thing I did. Mine wasn’t the only store with magical creatures.

If someone was stealing from me, then maybe he was stealing from the pet store down the way, the organ grinder monkey show just outside the food court, and the various holiday setups with their real Easter bunnies and Christmas reindeer and Halloween bats. Not to mention all the working familiars accompanying every single mage who walked into the place.

I let Carmen talk to Security. She was young enough and naïve enough to think they were sexy. She had no idea that most of them were failed magical enforcers or inept warlocks who’d been demoted from city-wide security patrol to Enchantment Place.

I stayed in the back room, bending a few rules because this was an emergency. Anyone who took that much poop had a plan. A big plan—or a need for a lot of power.

At first, I figured this thief simply wanted the magical support of a familiar without actually getting a familiar. Magical crime blotters were full of minor poop thieves who stole rather than get a new familiar of their own. They’d mine someone else’s familiar, using the poop as a tool with which to obtain the magic, and no one would notice until that familiar got sick from putting out too much magical energy.

Maybe what we had here was a more sophisticated version of the neighborhood poop snatcher.

Which made Zhakeline a prime suspect.

But Zhakeline’s magic had always been shaky at best, even when she had a familiar. That was why she looked so exotic and had so many affectations.

She had to appeal to the civilians who think we’re all weird. She mostly sold her small magic services to them. If she predicted the future and was wrong or if she made a love potion that didn’t work, the civilian would simply shrug and think to himself Ah, well, magic doesn’t really work after all.

But the magical, we know when someone can’t perform all of the spells in the year-one playbook. Zhakeline barely passed year one (charity on the part of the instructor) and shouldn’t have passed from that point on. But that happened during the years when telling a kid that she had failed was tantamount to murdering her (or so the parents thought) and Zhakeline got pushed from instructor to instructor without learning anything.

Which was one of the many reasons I didn’t want to give her another familiar.

And that was beside the point.

The point was that Zhakeline, and mages like her—the ones who needed the magical power of familiar poop—didn’t have the ability to conduct a theft on this massive scale, at least not alone.

And even if they tried, they’d be better off going to the back yard of a mage with a canine familiar. There was always a constant poop supply, and it provided enough power—consistent power (from the same source)—so that the thief might become a slightly less inept mage, for a while, anyway.

Next I investigated my assistants. Most had no magical powers of their own, but had come from magical families. They knew that magic existed—and not in that hopeful I wish it were so way that a civilian had, but in a this is a business way that led them to peripheral jobs in the magical field.

They worked hard, most had a love of animals, insects or reptiles, and they often had a specialty—whether it was cooking the right kind of pet food or calming a petulant hyena.

I couldn’t believe any of the assistants would be doing something like this because they would have to be working for someone else.

The nonmagical don’t gain magic just by wishing on a powerful piece of poop.

I scanned records and employment histories. I scanned bank accounts (yes, that’s illegal, but remember—emergency. A few rules needed to be bent), cash stashes and (embarrassingly) the last 48 hours of their lives. (Which, viewed at the speed of an hour per every ten seconds, looked like silent movies watched at double fast-forward.)

I saw nothing suspicious. And believe me, I knew what to look for.

Although I wished I didn’t.

***

You see, I got this job, not because I have a particular affinity with animals or I’m altruistic and love pairing the right mage with the right familiar.

I got it because I have experience.

I know how to look for mages heading dark or mages who should retire or mages who mistreat their magic (and hence their familiars). I know how to take care of these mages quietly, efficiently, and with a minimum of fuss.

It didn’t used to be this way. In the past, places like Familiar Faces existed on side streets and had just a handful of creatures, few of them exotic. Only in the last few years have the mega stores come into existence at high-end malls like Enchantment Place.

And even though we’re supervised by the rules of the mage gods like all other familiar stores, we’re run and subsidized by Homeland Security—Magical Branch.

(Not everyone knows there’s a Homeland Security—Magical Branch, including the so-called “head” of Homeland Security. Hell, I even doubt the president knows. Why tell the person who’s going to be out in four or eight years one of the world’s most important secrets. Knowing this crew, they’d probably try to co-opt the Magical Branch into something dark. Better to keep quiet and protect us all.

(Which I do. Most of the time.)

My job here is to watch for exactly this kind of incursion. Technically, I’m supposed to report it, and then wait for the guys with badges to show up.

But I didn’t wait for the guys with badges. I doubted we would have time.

(And, truth be told, I did want the glory. I was demoted to this position [you guessed that already, right?] for asking too many questions and for the classic corporate mistake, proving that the boss was an idiot in front of his employees. I’m a government employee and as such can’t be fired without lots and lots of red tape [even in the magical world], so I was sent here, to Chicago where I grew up, to Enchantment Place where I have to put up with the likes of Zhakeline with a smile and a shrug and a rather pointed [and sometimes magically directed] suggestion.)

I toyed with rewinding time in all of the habitats—another no-no, but it would have been protected under the Patriot Act, like most no-nos these days. But rewinding time takes time, time I didn’t really want to waste looking at creatures moping in their personal space.

Instead, I did some old-fashioned police work.

I went back out front where Carmen was still flirting with some generic security guard (and the mice were leaning over so far to watch that I was afraid one of them would fall down the poor man’s ill-fitting shirt) and beckoned the lioness, Fiona.

She frowned at me, then rose slowly, stretched in that boneless way common to all cats, and padded through the portal ahead of me.

When I got back to the back, she was sitting on her haunches and cleaning her ears, as if she had meant to join me all along.

“We have a poop thief,” I said, “and I think you know who it is.”

She methodically washed her left ear, then she started to lick her left paw in preparation for cleaning her right ear.

“Fiona,” I said, “if I don’t solve this, something bad will happen. You might not get a home of any kind and none of the other familiars will be of use to anyone. You might all have to be put down.”

I usually don’t use euphemisms, and Fiona knew it. But she didn’t know the reason that I used it this time.

I couldn’t face killing all these wannabe familiars. And it would be my job to do so. I’d get blamed for the theft(s), and I’d have to put down the creatures affected. It was the only way to negate the power of their poop.

She put her newly cleaned paw down on the concrete floor. “You couldn’t ‘put us down.’” She used great sarcasm on the phrase. “It would set the magical world back more than a hundred years. There wouldn’t be enough of us to help your precious mages perform their silly little spells.”

“Which might be the point of this attack,” I said. “So tell me what you saw the last few days.”

And why you never said a word, I almost added, but didn’t.

“I’m not supposed to tell you anything. I’m not even supposed to talk with you.”

Technically true. Familiars are only supposed to talk to their personal mages. But I get to hear and every one of them speak when they come into the store to make sure they really are familiars and not just plain old unmagical creatures looking for a free hand-out.

But Fiona had spoken to me before, mostly sarcastic comments about the store patrons. I’d tried pairing her up with a few, but she always had an under-the-breath comment that convinced me she and that mage wouldn’t be a good match.

“I haven’t seen anything,” she said.

“What have you heard, then?” I asked.

“Nothing,” she said. “The system is working just fine.”

That sarcasm again, which lead me to believe she was leaving out a detail or two deliberately, hoping I would catch it.

Damn lions. They’re just giant cats. They toy with everything.

And at that moment, Fiona was toying with me.

“But something’s bothering you,” I said.

“Not me so much.” She picked up that clean right paw, turned it over, and examined the claws. “Roy.”

Roy was the lion to her lioness. He wasn’t head of the pride because there was no pride. We knew better than to get an entire pride of lions into that small habitat. No one would ever be able to see their individual natures—and no mage was tough enough to get that many catly familiars.

“What’s bothering Roy?” I asked.

“Ask him.”

“Fiona…”

She nibbled on one of the claws, then set her paw down again. “There was—oh, let me see if I can find the phrase in your language—an overpowering scent of ammonia.”

“Ammonia?”

“And a very bright light.”

“An explosion?” I asked. Fertilizer mixed with the right chemicals, including ammonia, created the same thing in both the magical and the non-magical world.

A bomb.

Only the magical bomb made of this kind of fertilizer didn’t just destroy lives and property, it also cut through dimensions.

“It’s not an explosion yet,” she said. “He claims he has a sixth sense about things. Or did he say he can see the future? I forget exactly. But it was something like that.”

“Or maybe he just knows something,” I snapped.

“Or maybe he just knows something.” She sounded bored. “He does say that because he’s king of the jungle, the wannabes tell him things.”

Which was the most annoying thing about Roy. He really believed that king of the jungle crap. Too much Kipling as a cub—or maybe too many viewings of the Lion King.

“I should really send you back to the habitat until this is resolved,” I said to Fiona.

She hacked like she had a hairball, a sound she (sort of) learned from me. She thought it was the equivalent of my very Chicago, very dismissive “ach.”

“I’d rather be out front, watching the floor show,” she said.

And I sent her back out there because I had a soft spot for Fiona. Technically, I don’t need a familiar. I have more than a thousand of them.

But if I did need one, I’d pick Fiona.

She knew it and she played on it all the damn time.

I waited until she was through that little curtain of light before I stepped through the hidden door into the habitat area.

It was always surprisingly quiet inside the habitat area. The first time I went in, I expected chirping birds and chittering monkeys and barking dogs—a cacophony of creature voices expressing displeasure or loneliness or sheer cussedness.

Instead, the area was so quiet that I could hear myself breathe.

It also had no smell—unless you counted that dry scent of air conditioning. The animal smells—from the pungent odor of penguins to the rancid scent of coyote—existed only in the individual habitat.

Just like the noises did.

If I went through the membrane on my left (and only I could go through those membranes—or someone I had approved, like the assistants), I would find myself in a cold dark cave that smelled of rodent and musty water. If I looked up, I’d see the twenty-seven bats currently in inventory.

We were always understocked on bats. Mages, particularly young ones raised in Goth culture, wanted bats first, wolves second, and cats a distant third. I’d given up trying to tell those kids to get some imagination.

I’d given up trying to tell the kids anything.

If I went through the membrane on my right, I’d slide on polar ice. Here the ice caps weren’t melting. Here, my six polar bears happily fished and scampered and did all those things polar bears do—except that they didn’t attack me. They didn’t even bare their fangs at me.

I stopped between the two membranes and frowned. Whoever took the poop hadn’t taken it from inside the habitats. It was simply too dangerous for the unapproved guest.

Hell, it was often dangerous for the assistants. I’d had more than one assistant mauled by a creature that didn’t like the way he was looking at it.

And the poop was not registered as collected either. So whoever had taken it had spelled it out between gathering and delivery into the outside system.

I walked between dozens of habitats, trying to ignore the curious faces watching me.

I did feel for the wannabes. They were like children in an old-fashioned orphans’ home. They hoped that someone would come to adopt them. They prayed that someone would come to adopt them. They were afraid that someone had come to adopt them.

And the only way they would know was if I brought them out of the habitat to the front of the store. (Except in the case of the dangerous exotics or the biting/stinging insects. In those cases, the mage had to enter the habitat without fear. That rarely happened either.)

Finally I got to the Serengeti Plain.

Or what passed for it in Roy and Fiona’s habitat. It was kind of an amalgam of the best parts of a lion’s world minus the worst part. Lots of water, lots of space to run, lots of space to hide. A great deal of sunshine and never, ever any rain.

I slipped through the membrane and, because of my past experience, paused.

The first step into Roy’s world was overwhelming. The heat (about twenty degrees higher than I ever liked, even in the summer), the smell (giant cat mixed with dry grass and rotting meat from the latest kill), and the sunlight (so bright that my best sunglasses were no match for it—and as usual, I had forgotten any sunglasses) all made for a heady first step into this habitat.

More than one assistant had been so disoriented by the first step that Roy was able to tackle, stand on, and threaten the assistant in the first few seconds. After you’ve had several hundred pounds of lion standing on your chest, with his face inches from yours—so close you could see the pieces of raw meat still hanging from his fangs—you’d never want to go back into that habitat either.

Unless you’re me, of course. I expected Roy to scare me that first time.

I didn’t expect him to catch me off guard.

So when he did, I congratulated him, told him he was quite impressive, and warned him that if he hurt a human he’d never graduate from wannabe to familiar.

And from that point on, he never jumped on me again.

But he always snuck up on me.

On this day, he wrapped his giant mouth around my calf. His teeth scraped against my skin, his hot breath moist and redolent of cat vomit. He’d been eating grass again. We were going to have change his diet.

“Hey, Roy,” I said. “I hear you have a sixth sense.”

He tightened his jaw just enough that the edges of those sharp teeth would leave dents in my flesh—not quite bites, not quite bruises—for days. Then he licked the injured area—probably an apology, or maybe just a taste for salt (I was instant sweat any time I came into this place).

Finally, he circled around me and climbed a nearby rock so that he would tower over me. If I weren’t so used to his power games, he’d make me nervous.

“It’s not a sixth sense,” he said in an upper-class British accent. That accent had startled me when we were introduced. “So much as a finely honed sense of the possible.”

“I see,” I said, because I wasn’t sure how to respond. I hadn’t even been certain he would talk to me, and he’d done so almost immediately.

Which led me to believe the king of the jungle was more terrified than he wanted to admit.

“You realize I am only speaking to you,” he said with an uncanny ability to read my mind (or maybe it was just that finely honed sense of what I might possibly be thinking), “because great evil is afoot, and I have no magical counterpart with which to fight it.”

I almost said, It’s not your job to fight it, but I didn’t. I didn’t want to insult the poor beast. Instead, I said, “That’s precisely why I’m here. I figured you know what was going on.”

“Bosh,” he said. “Fiona told you. She has a thing for you, you know.”

“A thing?” I asked.

“She wants to be your familiar.” He opened his mouth in a cat-grin. “She doesn’t understand—or perhaps she doesn’t believe—that you have hundreds of us and as such do not need her.”

I nodded because I wasn’t sure what else to do. And because I was already thirsty. I’d forgotten not just my sunglasses but my bottle of water as well.

“Well,” I said, “you do know what’s happening, right?”

“Oh, bomb-making, dimension hopping, familiar murder—all the various possibilities.” He laid down and crossed his front paws as if none of that bothered him. “And just you here because you seem to believe that you can save the world all by your own small self.”

“With the help of your finely honed sense of the possible.”

“That too.” He tilted his massive head and looked at me through those slanted brown eyes.

My heart rate increased. Occasionally I still did feel like prey around him.

“Well?” I asked.

“Have you ever thought that your culprit isn’t human?”

“No,” I said. “Demons don’t care about familiars. Only mages do.”

“Really.” He extended the word as if it were four. “Humans generally ignore scat, don’t they?”

“Generally,” I said. “We try not to think about it.”

“And yet those of us in the animal kingdom find within it a wealth of information.”

“Yes,” I said. “But the amount of power it would take to complete this spell tends to rule out anything that isn’t human.”

He made the same hairball sound that Fiona did. They were closer than they liked to admit.

“You humans are such speciest creatures. It doesn’t help that the mage gods allow you the choices and we have to wait until you make them. It leads me to believe that the mage gods are human—or were, at one point.”

I wasn’t there to discuss religion. “You’re telling me, then, that your finely honed sense of the possible leads you to the conclusion that a familiar has done this.”

“I didn’t say that.”

“A creature then. A magical creature of some kind.”

He slitted his eyes, the feline equivalent of yes.

“But you have no evidence,” I said.

“I have plenty of evidence. Consider the timeline. It took you forever to discover this theft, and yet no bomb has exploded. No one has made threats, and no mage has suddenly gained unwarranted power.”

“That’s not evidence. That’s supposition.”

He lifted his majestic head. “Is it?”

“So who do you suppose has stolen the poop—and why?”

He rested his head on his paws and continued to stare at me. “That’s for you to work out.”

“In other words, you don’t know.”

“That’s correct. I don’t really know.”

“But you’re not worried.”

“Why should I worry? From my perspective, removing the scat is a prudent thing to do.”

I hadn’t expected him to say that. “What do you mean?”

He heaved a heavy, smelly sigh. “I’m a cat who lives in the wild. Think it through.”

Then he jumped and I cringed as he headed right toward me. He landed beside me, chuckled and vanished through the tall grass.

He’d gotten me again. He loved that. He’d probably been planning to jump near me through the entire conversation, his back feet tucked beneath him and poised, even though his front half looked relaxed.

He wasn’t going to give me any more. He felt he didn’t need to.

Cats in the wild.

Cat poop in the wild.

Hell, cat poop in the house. Cats were all the same.

They buried their poop so no one could track them.

The problem wasn’t the poop thief.

The poop thief was protecting the wannabes from something else. Something that tracked through scat.

Something that wasn’t human.

I swore and bolted out of the habitat.

I needed my research computer, and I needed it now.

***

Very few things targeted familiars—or perhaps I should say very few non-human things. And I’d never heard of anything that targeted wannabes, because a wannabe’s power, while considerable, wasn’t really honed.

Wannabes were, for lack of a better term, the virgins of the familiar world.

And nothing targeted virgins (not even those stupid civilian terrorists. They got virgins as a reward).

So when I got out of the habitat, I had the computer search for strange creatures or things that targeted virgins. I got nothing.

Except the search engine, asking me a pointed electronic question:

Do you mean things that prefer virgins?

And I, on a frustrated whim, typed yes.

What I got was unicorns. Unicorns preferred virgins. In fact, unicorns would only appear to virgins. In fact, unicorns drew their magic from virgins.

But the magic was pure and sweet and hearts and flowers and Hello Kitty and anything else treacly that you could think of.

Except if the unicorn had become rabid.

I clicked on the link, found several scholarly articles on rabies in unicorns. Rabid unicorns were slightly crazed. But more than that, they had no powers because no virgin (no matter how stupid) was going to go near a horse-sized creature that shouted obscenities and foamed at the mouth.

That was stage one of the rabies. Unlike rabies in non-magical creatures, rabies in unicorns (and centaurs and minotaurs and any other magical animal) manifested in temporary insanity, followed by darkness and pure evil.

The craziness, in other words, went away, leaving nastiness in its wake.

Minotaurs, centaurs, and other such creatures attacked each other. They stole from the nearest mage—or enthralled him, stealing his magic before they killed him.

But unicorns…

Unicorns still needed virgins.

And the only solution was to steal the powers of wannabe familiars.

Provided, of course, that the unicorn could find them.

And unicorns, like most other animals, hunted by scat.

***

I wish I could say I got my giant unicorn-killing musket out of mothballs and carried it through an enchanted forest, hunting a brilliant yet evil unicorn that wanted to devour the untamed magic of wannabe familiars.

I wish I could say I was the one who shot that unicorn with a bullet of pure silver and then got photographed with one foot on its side and the other on the ground, leaning on my musket like hunters of old.

I wish I could say I was the one who cut off its horn, then snapped the thing in half, watching the dark magic dissipate as if it never was.

But I can’t.

Technically, I’m not allowed to leave the store.

So I had to call in the Homeland Security—Magical Branch anyway. I could have called the local mage police, but I wasn’t sure where this unicorn was operating, and HS-MB had contacts worldwide.

They found four rabid unicorns all in the same forest, somewhere in Russia, along with a few rabid squirrels (probably the source of the infection) and a rabid magical faun that was going around murdering all the bears for sport.

The unicorns died along with the squirrels and that faun. The poop reappeared in my computer system, and went back through the normal channels. That week, we made double our money on magical fertilizer, which was good since we’d made none the week before.

All seemed right with the magical world.

Except one thing.

I dragged Fiona to her habitat so I could confront both her and Roy.

They usually didn’t spend much time together. They blamed it on not really having a pride, but I knew the problem was Fiona. She hated having to hunt for him, then watch him eat the best parts.

She hated most things about feline life and once muttered, as yet another well adjusted young mage took a domestic cat as her familiar, that she wished she were small and cute and cuddly.

She had to fetch Roy. He wasn’t going to come. He hadn’t even attacked me as I entered the habitat—probably because Fiona was with me.

I waited as he climbed to the top of his rock, then assumed the same position he’d been in before he jumped at me. Only this time I was prepared. I had my sunglasses and my water bottle.

I also stood a few feet to the right of my previous position, a place he couldn’t get to from the top of that rock.

Fiona sat at the base of the rock, beneath the outcropping, in the only stretch of shade in this part of the plain.

“You want to tell me how you did it?” I asked when Roy finally got comfortable. He sent me an annoyed look when he realized that I had stationed myself outside of his range. “You knew that there was a rabid unicorn after wannabes, and you somehow got the entire group at Familiar Faces to cooperate with you, all without leaving your habitat.”

Then I looked at Fiona. She had left the habitat. She left it every single day.

The tip of her tail twitched, and she tilted her head ever so slightly, her eyes twinkling. But she said nothing.

Roy preened. He licked a paw, then wiped his face. Finally he looked at me, the hairs of his mane in place, looking as majestic as a lion should.

“I am king of the jungle,” he said.

This is a plain, I wanted to point out, but I didn’t for fear of silencing him. Instead I said, “Yet some of the other familiars don’t live in habitats like yours. The snakes, for example.”

He yawned. “The unicorn wasn’t after them.”

“But the animals?” I asked.

He closed his great mouth, then leaned his head downward, so that his gaze met mine. “The Russian Blues are refugees. You didn’t know that, did you?”

I got two domestic cats—purebred Russian Blues. Most purebred cats aren’t familiars—they have the magic bred out of them with all the other mixed genes—but these Blues were amazing. And pretty. And not that willing to talk, even when they knew it was the price of gaining a mage.

“Refugees?” I said. “They were adopted before?”

“Their mages murdered by the new secret police for being terrorists. I thought you checked all of this out.”

I tried to, but I never could. Animal histories weren’t always that easy to find.

“They’d heard rumors about something rabid getting into an enchanted forest somewhere in deepest darkest Russia. Then some young familiars—what you call wannabes—withered and died as their powers were sucked from them over a period of months.”

He tilted his head, as if I could finish his thought.

And I could.

“So the Blues suspected unicorns,” I said.

“There were always rumors of unicorns in that forest,” he said, “but of course, none of us had ever seen them. For normal unicorns, you need virginal humans. None of us had encountered abnormal unicorns before.”

I did the math. The Blues had arrived last Thursday, which was the last day Carmen had worked before Tuesday, when she discovered the problem.

“You went into protect mode immediately,” I said.

“It is my pride, whether you admit it or not.”

I didn’t admit it, but I understood how he thought so. He needed a tribe to rule, so he invented one.

“I still don’t understand what happened. You don’t have the magic to make other animals’ poop disappear.”

“But they do,” he said.

“I know that.” I tried not to sound annoyed. He was toying with me again. I hated being a victim of cat playfulness.

“So how did you tell them what to do?”

He opened his mouth slightly, in that cat-grin of his. Then he got up, shook his mane, and walked back down the rock. He vanished in the tall grass, disappearing against its brownness as if he had never been.

“He could tell me,” I said.

“No, he can’t.” Fiona hadn’t moved.

I let out a small sigh. He hadn’t been toying with me. She had.

“You did it,” I said.

“Me and the bees,” she said. “They’re creating quite a little communications network with those hive minds of theirs. They send little scouts into the other habitats every single time you go from one to the other. The ants too. You really should be more careful.”

I felt a little frisson of worry. I had had no idea. I didn’t want the bees to get delusions of grandeur. I already had to deal with Roy.

“You told them to spread the word.”

She nodded.

“And you told them how the animals could hide their poop.”

She inclined her head as regally—more regally—than Roy ever could.

“Why?” I asked. “You had no guarantee of a threat.”

“This is the biggest gathering of the Hopeful on the globe,” she said. “Of course we are a target.”

She was right. I sighed, took a sip from my water bottle, and frowned. This entire event had opened my eyes to a lot of scary possibilities, things I had never considered.

We were going to have to rethink the way we handled waste. We were going to have to protect the poop somehow, and I didn’t want to consult HS-MB about that. They’d have to hold hearings, and the wrong someone could be sitting in.

I didn’t want us to become a magical terrorism target, nor did I want us to be a target for every rabid unicorn in the world.

I would have to set up the systems myself.

“You need me,” Fiona said, “whether you like it or not. You can’t have pretend familiars. You need a real one.”

She was making a pitch. Cats never did that. Or they only did so if they believed something was important.

“Why here?” I asked. “I’ve found you some pretty spectacular possible mage partners, and you’ve turned them down.”

She wrapped her tail around her paws and stared at me. For a moment, I thought she wasn’t going to answer.

Then she said, “This is my pride. Roy might think it his, but he’s a typical lion. He thinks he’s in charge, when I do all the work.”

She raised her chin. That tuft of hair that all lionesses had beneath looked more like a mane in the shade than it ever had. It made her look regal.

“Well,” she added, “I’m not a typical lioness, content to hunt for her man and to feel happy when he fathers a litter of kittens on her only to run them out when they threaten his little kingdom. I don’t want children. And I want to eat first.”

“You can do that with other mages,” I said.

“But I won’t have a pride. Don’t you see? I’m the one who spoke to the Blues. I’m the one who keeps track of those silly mice—even though I want to eat them—and I’m the one who calms the elephant whenever she has the vapors. No one credits me for it, of course, but it’s time they should.”

No one, meaning me. I hadn’t noticed, and Fiona was bitter. Or maybe she just felt that I wasn’t holding up my end of the bargain.

“Besides,” she said, “it’s hot in here. Can we go back to the air conditioning?”

I laughed and stepped out of the habitat. She followed.

“I’ll petition the mage gods,” I said.

“I already did.” She was walking beside me as we headed toward the front room. “They said yes. I put their response under the cash register.”

We went through the portal. The mice were having a party on top of the cheese books. One of the snakes was dancing too, trying to come out of its basket like a charmed snake from the movies. The dance was a bit pathetic, since the snake was the wrong kind. It was the tiniest of my garden snakes.

They all stopped when they saw me. I looked toward the mall’s interior. The customer door was closed and locked and the main lights were off. The closed sign sat in the window.

Carmen had gone home long ago.

I went to the cash register and felt underneath it. Some dust, some old gum—and yes, a response from the mage gods, dated months ago.

“You took a long time to tell me this,” I said to Fiona.

She wrapped herself around the counter. “You should clean more.”

Come to think of it, a few months before was when she really started muttering her protests out loud. In English. She was doing everything felinely possible except blurting it out that she was now my familiar.

I had never heard of a familiar picking a mage.

Although that wasn’t really true. The familiars always made their preferences known. I knew how to read the signs. For everyone, it seemed, but me.

“Do you regret this?” Fiona asked quietly.

“Hell, no,” I said. “Your brilliance averted a major international incident and saved the lives of hundreds of familiars.”

“Don’t you think that makes me deserving of some salmon?”

I almost said I think that makes you deserving of anything you damn well please, and then I remembered that I was talking to a cat. A large, independent-minded, magical cat, but a cat all the same.

“Salmon it is,” I said and snapped a finger. A plate appeared with the thickest, juiciest salmon steak I could conjure.

I set it down next to her.

“Next time,” she said, “you’re taking me out.”

“Restaurants don’t allow animals,” I said. “At least, not in Chicago.”

“I wasn’t talking about a restaurant,” she said. “I meant a salmon fishery or perhaps one of those spawning grounds in the wild. I heard there’s a species of lion who hunts those grounds.”

“Sea lions,” I said. “You’re not related.”

She chuckled, then wrapped her tail around my legs, nearly knocking me over. Affection from my lioness.

From my familiar.

However I had expected my day to end, it hadn’t been like this.

Carmen was right. This day had been weird.

But good.

“So are you going to promise to take me to a fishery after the next time I save lives?” Fiona asked.

“I suppose,” I said, wondering what I had gotten myself into.

Fiona licked her lips and closed her eyes. The mice started dancing all over again, and chimpanzees came out of the back to see what the commotion was.

After a weird day, a normal night.

And I found, to my surprise, that I preferred normal to weird.

Maybe I was getting soft.

Maybe I was getting older.

Or maybe I had just realized that I was a mage with a familiar, a powerful smart familiar, one I could appreciate.

One who would keep me and my animals safe.

One who would rule her pride with efficiency and not a little playfulness.

I could live with that.

I had a hunch she could too.

 

___________________________________________

“The Poop Thief” is available for one week on this site. The ebook is available on all retail stores, as well as here.

The Poop Thief

Copyright © 2016 by Kristine Kathryn Rusch
First published in Enchantment Place, edited by Denise Little, Daw Books, 2008
Published by WMG Publishing
Cover and layout copyright © 2016 by WMG Publishing
Cover design by Allyson Longueira/WMG Publishing
Cover art copyright © Kodo34/Dreamstime

 

This book is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. All rights reserved. This is a work of fiction. All characters and events portrayed in this book are fictional, and any resemblance to real people or incidents is purely coincidental. This book, or parts thereof, may not be reproduced in any form without permission.

I mentioned in January’s list that I had fewer books to recommend in February and March. I read a lot but didn’t finish some of the books, and the ones I did finish, I didn’t really like well enough to recommend. As I tell my writing students, you have to stick the landing. And some of those landings really missed. A few of the others just bored me. I faded out as I went along and realized I didn’t want to read the book anymore. (I do that by grabbing other books, starting those, and realizing that I’d rather be reading them.)

I have stories here from 2 different Best American Mystery & Suspense, but I’m not recommending either volume, since I didn’t read a lot of them. The stories seemed child-cruelty heavy or animal abuse heavy, and I’m not really into either of those things. And there’s some I’m not fond of the kind of noir in either of them. So it’s up to you if you get these two volumes. 

So here’s what I liked back in February…

 

February 2025

Bernier, Ashley-Ruth M., “Ripen,” The Best American Mystery and Suspense 2023,  edited by Lisa Unger, Mariner Books, 2023. When editors are lazy with the Best Americans and do not put the stories in any kind of reading order, the opening story is a real crapshoot. I’m always braced for something that does not give me any ideas as to the way the volume will go. As a result, I approach the first story with trepidation, and usually that trepidation is justified.

In this volume, though, the first story, “Ripen,” is well written, powerful, and memorable. I was happily surprised by the entire thing. The setting is rich, the characters vivid, and the story itself strong. Read this one.

Cho, Winston, “AI: The Ghost in Hollywood’s Machine,” The Hollywood Reporter, December 13, 2024. (This story online has a different title.) Fascinating piece that could have been written about any emerging technology, really. AI will change how business gets done all over the planet (is changing?), and Hollywood is no different. It will make some things easier to “film” such as massive crowd scenes (already is, in fact) but it might cost a lot of jobs. As in a lot of jobs. And the kind that normally don’t get taken by technological change…as in the jobs of creatives. I think we’ll see a lot of these articles in the future as we try to figure out how to live with this newest thing in our lives.

Cobo, Leila, “Guarding Celia Cruz’s Legacy,” Billboard January 11, 2025. Fascinating interview with Omer Pardillo, who manages the Celia Cruz estate. It’s about how he got the job, how he goes about maintaining the estate, and the heart of the estate. He lists where the revenue comes from. He says it’s mostly from recording royalties and brand partnerships. It’s really fun to see his joy at all of the success the estate’s been having. At one point, he states that it’s not bad for an artist who’s been dead for 21 years.

Cole, Alyssa, “Just a Girl,” The Best American Mystery and Suspense 2024, edited by S.A. Cosby, Mariner Books, 2024. This story, written as a series of online TikTok posts, DMs, texts, emails, and online articles, is devastating and heartbreaking and extremely powerful. Tiana, her first year in college during Covid, starts posting updates on TikTok, and gaining a following. She tries a dating app, encounters a gross guy, and calls his yuckiness out on her TikTok…and then he and his friends start going after her. Everything spirals after that. What’s amazing about this story is that you can see the joy leaching from this young woman as she realizes how terrible the world can be—and how dangerous it is for young beautiful women. Highly recommended.

Freimor, Jacqueline, “Forward,” The Best American Mystery and Suspense 2023,  edited by Lisa Unger, Mariner Books, 2023. Normally, I wouldn’t read a story that looked dense and difficult, but the format (and the footnotes) are the point of the story. It’s an amazing work of fiction, with a great reveal. Yes, it takes concentration to read it, but it’s really worthwhile.

McClintock, Pamela, “Ryan Reynolds Multitasks Like a Mofo,” The Hollywood Reporter,  December 13, 2024. There’s a lot of fascinating quotes in this interview with Ryan Reynolds, whom The Hollywood Reporter dubbed their Producer of the Year. He does a variety of things besides act, and seems to enjoy all of them. The quote I like the most is at the end:

…it’s all an emotional investment. If you can create emotional investment in anything, any brand, it creates a moat around that brand that really, I think, facilitates the resilience and allows it to weather the storms in the bad times. And yes, that’s the part I love.

I think I love it too, although not as much as actual writing and making things up. Still, lots of good stuff to think about in this interview.

Zeitchik, Steven,“The Other Rebuild,” The Hollywood Reporter, January 17, 2025. 2025 has been such a shitshow already it’s hard to remember that the LA Fires happened only a few months ago. We seem to be moving from tragedy to tragedy, heartbreak to heartbreak, every single day, and we lose track of what others have gone through. A number of my friends went through the fires and fortunately, in this round of the climate change blues, very few of them lost their homes. (I can’t say that about previous California fires.) But everyone’s mental health took a nosedive. Many moved to different digs in the same town while others are leaving their LA h

All serious runners know about snot rockets. At least in pre-pandemic times, they did.

But one particularly talented runner relishes snot rockets more than others.

When he turns up dead, the list of potential murderers runs longer than the list of medals he collected over the years.

But when an investigative journalist sees the true crime potential of the case, what she uncovers surprises even her. 

“The Demise of Snot Rocket“ is available for one week on this site. The ebook is available on all retail stores, as well as here.

 

The Demise of Snot Rocket By Kristine Kathryn Rusch

 

Let’s be honest: It was gross even before the pandemic shut everything down and made us aware of just how dirty the world—and our habits—were.

Runners, especially distance runners, didn’t have time to blow their noses, so they would press one nostril closed, and forcibly exhale whatever was in the other nostril, while moving on a trail. Sometimes that exhalation worked, and sometimes it didn’t. If it didn’t, the runner wiped his sleeve (and yeah, “his.” It was usually a guy) across his face.

Anything to prevent stopping. Anything to preclude carrying tissue or wipes, which you couldn’t dispose of anyway on a trail. Sometimes you could toss the tissue into an open garbage can on a run in a neighborhood or an urban area, but that meant carrying the wet slimy thing for blocks or more, and no one did that.

Instead, they sent snot flying out their noses, and hoped no one would see it.

This happened so often that it had a name: The Snot Rocket.

Fun, right?

Not possible while wearing a mask. And afterwards—who knows? No one is confessing now. If snot rockets have returned, no one will admit to it, when they all laughed about it before.

This story takes place before.

Sometimes I wonder what would have happened if it had happened after. Would Snot Rocket have changed? Would he have coped? Would he have become even more obnoxious?

We will never know.

****

To clarify a few things: Yes, I knew a guy named Snot Rocket. Not named by his parents. Named by all of us in the city who raced (reluctantly) at his side. A few of us tried to have him banned from local races, but we couldn’t for two reasons.

1. He was good. As in always finished in the top five good.

And…

2. Everyone did it. Even the people who lied and said they didn’t do it.

I did it on one particularly long trail run when I was in the woods in the rain by myself and my nose wasn’t having it. My choice was a leaf or a snot rocket and, dear readers, I chose the rocket. The leaf could’ve given me poison ivy or poison oak or bugs or something. The snot rocket itself was a one and done.

It did leave me feeling…curiously elated.

I’m a woman of a certain age, raised by an OCD mother in a time before anyone knew what that was. I follow (most of) the rules, and that includes not expelling snot into the wild. (It also includes not discussing snot, but I think we’re beyond that in this post-2020 world, right? We discuss fluids and filth all the time now. All. The. Damn. Time.)

All those years of running track in junior high (yes, I’m old enough not to call it middle school), high school, and college—thank you very much—before Title IX funding amounted to much of anything. I wasn’t good enough to go on to regional and national competitions, where you actually got a bit of money.

But, in the early days of running, I was good enough to compete in local races with the men, often as one of the few women. Early on, I was in the top ten, but age eventually moved me to the top twenty and then the top thirty, and finally I became Queen of my Age Group, always smoking the other women in my age range by a significant, noticeable amount.

I can’t tell you when Snot Rocket joined our merry band of local runners. One day he was there, and the next day (probably) we were all discussing how disgusting he was.

It wasn’t just that he expelled goobers loudly and with great enthusiasm, it was also that he seemed to have an endless supply of them. It got so none of us ever wanted to run near him. Either side was a danger zone, and in front of him, well, sometimes you didn’t know you were hit until you got home and peeled off your sweaty race shirt.

He’d probably be arrested now. Arrested and charged with assault.

Back in the day, we discussed it—those of us who had to share the road with him. Half of us thought he used it as a race strategy to keep path clear.

When I ran past him (and I didn’t do it as frequently as I would have liked; he was faster than me), I would make sure I was at least a yard away from him—off trail, on the sidewalk, wherever I could go and still be on the path for the race, so I wouldn’t get disqualified.

Social distancing before we ever heard the term.

Of course, that zigging and zagging added a tiny bit of distance to my run, which I resented, and so did everyone else who used that same strategy. Some of the men claimed they didn’t care. They claimed they would run past him, and not worry, because they were already sweat-covered and dirty.

But I saw them in real time: they’d pass as far from him as possible, and if they were ahead of him, they had to expend extra energy just to keep the distance.

No one wanted to get too close. And I think that extra energy cost some of Snot Rocket’s competitors the race. They didn’t have anything left in the tank when they got close to the finish line, and he would zoom right past them.

There was no proving it, of course.

But Snot Rocket’s personal habits and his consistent wins did not endear him to the local runners. Particularly when he would brag to anyone who could stomach listening about how great he really was.

He had—he said—thousands of finisher medals. Some in boxes, and the best ones—the “coolest” ones hanging from hooks on his walls.

He died, with three of those medals around his neck, and no other medal in the house.

But I get ahead of myself.

***

I’m an investigative journalist. Not the kind you’re thinking of—the old-fashioned Woodward and Bernstein model, supported by a sympathetic paper filled with heroic and compassionate leaders who really didn’t care about the bottom line (and yes, that was fiction, but it was a fiction we all bought). I did work for the Gray Lady once upon a time, until her D.C. rival poached me. I stayed there until I’d had enough of the insularity and constant political doublethink. Then came the rabid nightmarish shock that was the first few months of the Trump era.

My marriage of long-standing broke up over (among other things) politics—his were red, mine weren’t. So, I quit the day job and moved west, heading to yet another storied newspaper just in time for it to get sold and close.

I landed on my feet more or less, and became part of an online collective that partners with media outlets all over the world. We do the research and some of us also do the writing, and both organizations get the credit.

It pays less than I made in D.C., but the work is more flexible, and the cost of living here is lower.

I ran back east, so it was only natural to join running organizations here. I signed up for every race I possibly could and as a result met the other slightly obsessive runners in the community, some of whom were fast like Snot Rocket and some of whom were nice, like the bulk of the folks running the show.

I didn’t get involved with anyone—wasn’t that interested, really—but had a pretty fulfilling life. Research, writing, and running, plus living in a place where I didn’t have to talk politics 24/7, made life a lot more pleasant than it had ever been before.

I also had the freedom to set my own schedule, which actually allowed me to run as many races as I could find. I preferred 10K because it was just long enough to challenge me, but short enough to allow me to have the rest of the day to do something else if I so chose.

It also meant that I got to meet a lot of elite runners, because 10Ks were usually attached to the big races. We had only three Boston Qualifiers in this city, but that was three more than most places.

I’d run Boston half a dozen times, including the year of the bombing. But Boston lost its allure for me, partly because I was on the team that ended up reporting the bombing. I heard stories of loss and heartache, heroism and strength, and pretended for those few years that it hadn’t had an impact on me.

But after I moved, and qualified in my age group, I couldn’t bring myself to go. It wasn’t an east-west thing either, or the idea that I had to travel long distances. My stomach knotted and my mouth went dry even thinking about it.

Every year, the Boston Qualifiers were fraught. Runners shoved their way into separate starting corrals, yelled at volunteers, and sometimes tried to shoehorn their way into a pace group they hadn’t signed up for.

I tried to stay out of their way, but that year, the year Snot Rocket died, I failed at keeping my distance.

That particular race had a new director who was a bit clueless. The corrals snaked through an industrial park, doubling back on themselves. Unlike most large races, the corrals didn’t have makeshift barriers to keep runners from sliding into another grouping. The director apparently expected people to police themselves.

My corral for the 10K was across a narrow strip of parking lot away from the lead-off runners for the actual marathon. My corral was quiet. Most people in a 10K maybe cared about a personal best, but they really weren’t there for a make-it-or-break-it chance to run the race of their dreams.

Those in the marathon line were there to win, or to PR and get in the race of their dreams, particularly those in that first corral. Like so many big races of its type, this one offered hefty prize money for the finishers. The qualifiers went down by age group, but the actual runners—the ones who traveled from city to city collecting trophies and prizes—well, they needed to focus on their race rather than some kind of squabble about times and spots in line.

I was just trying to focus on my race when I noticed Snot Rocket was in the middle of the shoving match.

I started watching like a kid drawn to a school fight. I actually had a dog in the hunt or skin in the game or whatever cliché you wanted to drum up. Not because I wanted Snot Rocket to win, but because I was curious about what he was up to.

He was screaming at one of the runners, spraying visible spittle all over him, just from the force of his verbal outburst. The runner—a tall skinny White guy, who looked like he ran professionally—screamed back.

I couldn’t make out the words, but these guys were serious. They were furious at each other.

Snot Rocket shoved the other guy first, right into the crowd of elite runners. They paid attention for the first time, glaring at the two of them. One of the exceptionally tall and thin runners, a man who looked vaguely familiar, raised his hand, and waved it—not to get the attention of Snot Rocket and the other guy, but to get the attention of the volunteers.

One of the volunteers responded immediately, which told me that the vague familiarity I felt actually meant something. The runner really was one of the elites, and more than that, one of the people the race was honored to have in its lineup.

That volunteer disappeared into the crowd, and I couldn’t follow his yellow jersey to see where he went, because I’m not exceptionally tall or tall in any way, shape or form.

Snot Rocket and his squabbling buddy didn’t even seem to notice. The squabbling buddy shoved Snot Rocket. Snot Rocket tripped backwards, and probably would have fallen if he hadn’t been in such good physical shape.

No one tried to break them up. No one wanted to get involved. Or maybe, no one wanted to get injured just before a race.

Finally, a couple of people wearing yellow security jerseys waded into the crowd. One of them grabbed Snot Rocket by the arm. He shook them off, and turned toward them, utterly furious. I was finally able to see his face.

“Get your fucking hands off me,” he said loud enough for me to hear.

The security official said something in response, and reached toward Snot Rocket’s bib. Snot Rocket stepped backwards again, only this time he backed into another security official.

Two more security officials were talking with Snot Rocket’s opponent. The opponent shook them off and tried to move forward in the crowd, but the crowd closed around him. No one let him get to the front of the line.

Snot Rocket wasn’t watching any of that. He was arguing with security now, only softer, so I couldn’t hear.

“Never seen that before,” said the woman next to me. She was thin and slight and wore the race T-shirt with an additional tech shirt underneath. It promised to be cool for this run, but I never wore the extra shirt. I always got too hot at races.

“Me, either,” I said and turned away, so that I could see the rest of the fight. Only the fight was done now. Snot Rocket was being led down that strip of unmarked parking lot, walking between two security officials, his head down.

I couldn’t see Snot Rocket’s opponent anymore, but the crowd had closed back up, and they were all facing forward, going through their pre-race rituals while they waited for their corral’s starting gun.

“I wonder what that was all about,” the woman next to me said.

I could have told her about Snot Rocket, about how unpleasant he was and had always been. I could have engaged in polite speculation, since we had to wait another thirty minutes before we started moving—provided the 10K went off on time. That would depend on the full and half marathoners.

Technically, we started on a different block from the full and half folks, and went a completely different direction to stay out of their way. We’d join each other nine miles into their race—and then our group would veer off, and head toward the finish line via a different route again.

I didn’t expect to see Snot Rocket again, because he was a marathoner and, I thought, had just managed to get himself disqualified from the race.

But I did see him, just before I joined the marathoners at mile marker nine (the race used the marathon numbers, not numbers for the rest of us). He was loping like he always did, making it look easy. His hair flowed backwards, his arms were relaxed at his side, and he had a half-smile on his face.

He looked nothing like the man who had been shouting so loudly that spit came out of his mouth. He actually looked content.

I watched him run as the road I was on headed toward the road he was on, and I envied his perfect stride. I didn’t register anything else except a mild curiosity about how he managed to stay in the race after that egotistical display and why he was looking so content with himself.

I had been a bit unsettled from his fight; I would have expected him to be more than a bit unsettled. I would have expected him to be deeply disturbed, maybe running a bit too fast to get rid of the adrenaline from the fight itself.

And then I joined the crowd and didn’t think about him at all. I concentrated on finding my lane, where I could keep a steady pace and stay out of the way of the full and half marathoners who didn’t need some pokey 10K runner to screw up their PR.

That’s the thing about running. People are polite, generally. And if they have conflicts, they leave them off the course. This isn’t one of those confrontational sports like hockey or football. It’s something most people do for themselves, including the elites. Yeah, there’s money involved, but mostly, there’s bragging rights. And bragging rights mean even more.

And that was all the thought I gave him that morning. Maybe I didn’t even go that far. I enjoyed my race, got my finisher medal, noted that I had won my age group, and waited for the 10K medal ceremony, which was taking place long before any of the full marathoners even thought of crossing the finish line.

Then I went home, finished up an article on the impact of California fuel regulations (sometimes my job is not fun), and poured myself a glass of California chardonnay to celebrate a good day well lived.

The next day, the authorities found Snot Rocket dead. Strangled in the living room of his own house.

***

Of course, I didn’t find out for nearly a week. I didn’t know Snot Rocket’s real name; I never had the desire to ferret it out. So when people talked about Dave dying, I didn’t know that Dave—he of the very ordinary and forgettable name—was Snot Rocket.

I didn’t learn that until the running group met at our favorite park for our 7 a.m. weekend run, and we were greeted by an exhausted-looking detective.

He was sitting on a concrete picnic table—on the table itself, feet on the concrete bench. He clutched an extra-large to-go cup of coffee like a lifeline. He actually wore a suit, although it was cheap and baggy, as if he had lost weight due to a serious health condition. His hair was thin, and his face was thinner. The suit called attention to him—who wore a suit to a park at this time of the morning?

We all shot him nervous looks as we mingled and talked. And when zero hour arrived—7 a.m. on the nose—he stood up and ambled over to us.

I cringed. I always do when a non-runner stranger decides to talk with our group. That person usually wants to know what running is like or if we’re racing or how he can actually get into the daily habit without doing any of the work.

Only this guy flashed a badge, introduced himself as Detective Conners, and said he was looking into the death of Dave Pyron. Most of us glanced at each other in confusion, and probably would’ve told Conners that we didn’t know any Pyron, until Roscoe Carter raised his extremely thin eyebrows and said, “You mean Snot Rocket, right?”

We all whipped our heads toward him, and a few of us expressed incredulity that Snot Rocket was named Dave. Finally, Conners hauled out a photograph—fortunately one taken from Snot Rocket’s house, not the photo of him strangled—and we had to agree: yep, Dave and Snot Rocket were one.

None of us wanted to give up our morning run, so we invited Conners to join us, which he declined. Instead, he offered to interview us one by one as we returned. Apparently, he too thought this was a race, not a group venture. A few people normally would have sprinted out, but no one did this time, because no one wanted to be first to talk with the detective.

We left in a mass and returned in a mass. I hung back. I wanted to watch this guy work. My reporter’s instinct had flared up and I found myself wondering if there was a story here I could use.

Conners got to hear stories about snot going awry, about Snot Rocket’s interminable arrogance, and about his winning ways. Conners asked a few questions, mostly about Snot Rocket’s relationships, which most of us knew nothing about.

Roscoe said Snot Rocket (or rather, Dave. Roscoe called him Dave) had had two live-in girlfriends over the course of the past ten years. All of the relationships had ended badly (what a surprise). And when the last one cratered three years ago, Snot Rocket swore off relationships forever—and, according to Roscoe anyway, seemed to live up to that vow.

I had taken a seat on a nearby picnic table, nursing a Gatorade that I had brought with me, as I listened to the questions. I had learned the fine art of eavesdropping as a young reporter, and it had never failed me.

Some of the questions Conners asked were routine—Who are you? How well did you know the victim? When did you last see him?

But one question got a snort or a half-laugh from every single person he asked it to. Do you know anyone who disliked Dave?

The answers seemed planned, because they were the same, almost with the same wording: Everyone disliked Dave.

Everyone.

Which was how I would have answered the question, given a chance.

But Conners got halfway through the scrum of runners before looking at me.

“Learn anything from your eavesdropping?” he asked.

I knew better than to be surprised at the observation powers of investigators. Much as I complain about the politics in D.C., I met a lot of career folk who saw everything. Many of those people were inspectors general or worked in the various inspectors general offices. They didn’t miss a trick.

“The only thing I’ve learned today is Snot Rocket’s real name,” I said.

“Not a fan?” Conners asked, waving me over, so that I would sit near him, like all the other people he had interviewed had.

“No,” I said.

“So I don’t suppose you ever saw his house,” Conners said.

“I didn’t know he had a house until someone said he died in it,” I said.

Conners nodded. He wasn’t taking notes, but he had his iPhone on his knee. Even though the screen was dark, I would wager the thing was recording.

“What’s your interest in all of this?” he asked.

“Curious, I guess,” I said.

“Eavesdroppers are usually more than curious,” he said. “So, again, what’s your interest?”

“I’m not sure I have one,” I said.

“Not sure,” he repeated, as if he didn’t understand that. “How come?”

“I’m a reporter,” I said. “I have credentials in my car if you want to see them.”

“When we’re done,” he said. “You doing a story on Dave?”

“I wasn’t planning to,” I said. “But there might be something here. True crime is a big beat, and this has some interesting angles.”

“True crime,” he said, as if I had pissed all over his salad.

“I’m always looking for stories that will help our company continue its award-winning investigative journalism,” I said.

“This isn’t an award-winning scoop,” Conners said. “Just a squalid murder of an apparently unpleasant man.”

“I wasn’t thinking of it as award-winning,” I said. “We have to pay the bills. True crime can do that.”

“Even if you’re a suspect?” he asked.

I smiled at him, condescendingly. I had perfected that smile over decades, starting during my young, perky and cute decade. Then the smile let my interview subject know all those questions I had asked him—those hard-hitting ones?—they hadn’t come from my bosses; those questions had come from me.

Later, that smile got me through doors that would have been closed to anyone else. I had become old enough to seem like someone, and I had that kind of face—the kind that looked like it had once been famous but was no longer.

Now, I had aged into the strong mother figure and that condescending look shamed more than one person into cooperating with me, even though they never should have.

“I’m not a suspect,” I said.

“I’m the one who makes that determination,” he said, maybe a tad defensively.

“I’ve heard enough to know your timeline,” I said. “I was working—at the office—during that ten-hour window. I had been busy the day before and the day after, and once again, I never knew Snot Ro—I mean Dave—even had a house.”

Conners’ eyes narrowed. He didn’t like my tone. I didn’t really care.

“You know I’ll check, right?” he said.

“Yep,” I said.

Conners took a deep breath and let it out slowly, as if he were trying to control his annoyance. “So what can you tell me about your friend Dave?”

“First of all,” I said, “he wasn’t my friend Dave. Secondly, I can tell you the man was a pig.”

“To you?”

“To everyone,” I said. “You know the derivation of his nickname, right?”

“Actually, no,” Conners said.

Non-runners. They weren’t up on the slang. The nickname would have told him a lot had he been part of the community.

So I explained it all to him—the nickname, the behavior, the possible advantages it gave Snot Rocket in a race.

“Yet you let him join the group here,” Conners said.

“If he was a member of this group, it predates me,” I said. Then I had to give Conners my personal history. He got more and more tense as he heard my CV, particularly when I mentioned which papers I had worked for.

Yeah, he’d check on me, but he was also savvy enough to know I wouldn’t lie about that. Which meant I was a lot more impressive than I looked. And a lot more of a threat to his investigation. If I was going to write a story about it, I wasn’t just some hack threatening to make sure he handled the case right; I was going to write something that would be read.

“This group run was a recurring event in his computer calendar,” Conners said.

“Sounds like maybe he hadn’t updated the calendar in a while,” I said.

“Sounds like,” Conners said, as if he agreed with me. But his tone was distracted. He was watching the rest of the group, most of whom were fidgeting. We had all budgeted time for the run and maybe breakfast afterwards, but after that we wanted to get on with our day.

He looked back at me. “When was the last time you saw Dave?”

I wanted to be obnoxious and say I never saw Dave, I didn’t know a Dave, I would never socialize with a Dave, but I didn’t say any of that, because that was when I remembered the Boston Qualifier.

I got that image of Snot Rocket’s perfect form, the way he glided down the road, weaving his way in and out of the other runners as if he was gifted and they were mere mortals.

I would never see that again. And that, of all things, made me just a little bit sad.

“Well?” Conners asked.

“Last Sunday,” I said. And then I told him, not about seeing Snot Rocket run, but about that fight in the corral, and security dragging him off. And then I mentioned that Snot Rocket ended up running the race after all.

I finished with this. “No, I don’t know who he was fighting with. No, I don’t know what they were fighting about. I could tell they were really mad at each other, and their behavior was really out of bounds for any race I’d ever been part of. I have no idea what the security arrangements were at that race. I do know it had a new director, and that most people working the race were volunteers. I know they have records of everyone’s times, and a lot of photographs. In fact, all of these races are well documented because not only are there official shots, but participants take a lot of pictures as well.”

I stopped at that point, because I had nothing to add except speculation and while speculation was fun, it wasn’t really productive, not with a detective, except maybe to indict me in a way I couldn’t have anticipated.

He had a few more questions for me, none of which I considered relevant or important, and then he moved on to the remaining few. I listened to the questions, heard the same or similar answers, and started packing up to leave.

He never did ask anyone if they had been to Snot Rocket’s house or if they’d seen his medals or even if they had seen him be violent. It was as if the story I had told about the Sunday before hadn’t registered in Conners’ brain.

Or maybe he didn’t want to influence anyone.

I found it curious though, and I worried that he had mentally dismissed me because of my age, my gender, or maybe even my status as a reporter.

He never looked at me again, even as he wrapped up and headed to his car. I gathered my Gatorade bottle so I could toss it, and as I did, Roscoe joined me.

“What did you make of that?” he asked.

He knew some of my history, knew that I was a reporter, and probably surmised that I had some experience with the police that he didn’t have.

“I don’t know what to make of it,” I said, “except that they’re investigating.”

“He didn’t seem all that invested, though, did he?”

People who read and watch a lot of television expect police detectives to work on one case at a time. Instead, they work on dozens, and never give any case much time. Except the high-profile ones. That Conners spent this morning here, waiting for us, but didn’t seem all that interested told me that Snot Rocket’s murder was a weird death, but not significant enough for the brass to pay attention.

Conners would want to close the case to get his closure rate up, but that was all. It was going to be hard for anyone to care about Snot Rocket. He wasn’t the most charming of men alive, and there was no family that I knew of to clamor over solving his death.

“He spent a lot of time with us,” I said, not liking being in the position to defend Conners.

“Yeah.” Roscoe frowned. “I just get the sense this one is going to just slide into the unsolved pile.”

I nodded. “I suspect you’re right.”

***

I didn’t ask Roscoe why he cared. At that point, I wasn’t sure I did either. But as time went on, I found the murder niggling at me. The fight. The medals. The pointed message of the strangulation.

It wasn’t that I cared about Snot Rocket as much as I cared about something else: Someone had murdered a person I knew.

I’d met a lot of people connected to murders over the years, but only after the fact. I never knew the victim. I was never involved in the early stages. I only got involved later on, when the death became a story.

My reporter brain was noodling this one. We were always being admonished to take initiative, to look for something that might make the company money as well as something that would cost the company money.

All of us, the investigative reporters, were good at spending money so we could chase the best stories, the kind that won Pulitzers and Edward R. Murrow awards. But I noted that the reporters who stayed with the company weren’t just the award winners. Unemployed award winners were thick on the ground these days.

The company held onto the reporters who could do both—win awards and make money. I hadn’t had a moneymaker in a while.

I figured this story might do the trick.

***

I pitched it that Monday with the title “Death of a Weekend Warrior,” about a lonely guy with no social skills who spent all his time running and collecting medals, a guy who ended up dying horribly. I told my boss that this might be an Unsolved Mysteries kind of thing, and he reminded me that we were in early days. Maybe it would end up being a series.

In that conversation, I learned he was also flirting with a new podcast, one that would capitalize on the true crime podcasts that were getting turned into books and films and cultural conversations at the time.

My boss also pointed out, in that cold dispassionate way journalists had of discussing uncomfortable (and often unsaid) things, that Snot Rocket didn’t have any family to object to his portrayal. My boss reminded me to document, document, document, but he also told me that speculation was possible in this instance—and he said so in a way that encouraged it.

I wasn’t comfortable with that, at least not at the time, but apparently I can be persuaded. The deeper I got into the case, the more I found my way to the dark side.

***

I started, like I always do, with what the internet could tell me. Snot Rocket did not have a public-facing Facebook account. He didn’t seem to be on Twitter or Instagram or any other social media site that I could find. He did have several professional accounts with places like LinkedIn, but those looked corporate, as if his bosses had mandated them and he had to follow a template.

From them, I learned that he worked in some engineering field with a technical specialty that I didn’t really understand. The corporation he worked for spanned the globe, doing all kinds of building and other projects. On none of these sites was it clear what kind of work he did—whether it was building something or backup work or design. He didn’t seem to travel for the job, which made some kind of sense, because this city is big enough to have all sorts of engineering and construction work, enough to keep an entire flood of people busy for years.

I looked up his ex-girlfriends, but they didn’t have much of a social media presence either. The one who did keep her photographs current seemed to delete her past with regularity. If I wanted to track her relationship with Snot Rocket—or, um, Dave—I could do so, but that would require a lot of digging into the Wayback Machine Internet Archives or other places that kept track of the world as we once knew it.

I nearly gave up there. I mean, why write a story about a man that no one liked, a man who had filthy personal habits, and did his best to shove people away from him, a man who was murdered for his efforts?

And every time I got to that last bit, I realized that was why. Snot Rocket had pissed off a whole slew of people. This was rather like a game of Clue. Who hated him enough to finally off him—and in the most personal way possible?

I sat at my desk with a yellow legal pad after doing my preliminary search, and doodled what I did know, not just about Snot Rocket, but about the killer as well.

I knew that the killer knew Snot Rocket. The killer clearly hated Snot Rocket. The killer used Snot Rocket’s most treasured possessions (I assumed) to actually kill Snot Rocket. Then, the detective thought, the killer stole those possessions, except for the ones that had strangled the life out of Snot Rocket.

I also figured that the killer was tall—at least as tall as Snot Rocket. I couldn’t imagine someone short standing on a chair, with his (her?) hands clutching a ribbon around a medal and pulling that ribbon tight enough to strangle Snot Rocket. I figure that the killer had to be strong as well, because Snot Rocket—well, anyone, really—would have fought like hell to avoid being strangled like that.

Unless he was unconscious. Since I did not, at the moment anyway, have any access to Snot Rocket’s autopsy report, I did not know if he was drugged or unconscious when that medal (those medals?) got wrapped around his neck.

I would need that information eventually, but first, I was going to work on who Snot Rocket was.

I was about to give up on the internet side of Snot Rocket’s life when I realized I hadn’t even gone near the entire treasure trove of internet research that would give me everything there was to know about Snot Rocket. Not Dave the Engineer, but Snot Rocket, the runner.

As I had told Detective Conners, most of racing had gone online in the last 20 years. From race results to photographs to vanity selfies (with other people in the background), the internet held a virtual wealth of information about runners, racing, and more.

Hell, I’d been in Boston after the bombing, and between the video surveillance from stores and official cameras, and the cell phone photos and videos of the race, the authorities were able to track down the bombers in record time. I had contributed a handful of photos to the authorities at their request—after the suspects were caught, but as the prosecution was putting their case together.

Even though I was a reporter, I had been in the race, and had no trouble parting with what could have been key evidence, something I might not have been able to do had I actually been a reporter on the story.

I learned though. I learned the value of other people’s moments, the way that those moments captured one whole hell of a lot more than the photographer realized.

It took three full days of work, searching for races with Snot Rocket’s real name in them. Some of those races weren’t easily searchable—especially later races. Early on in the century, the internet was a lot cruder than it is now. If a race wanted to post results, they did so on a page on their website.

Sometime around 2010, those pages became private. You had to be part of the race or someone who knew how to get into those private pages to see them. Fortunately, I’d hacked a number of them, not because I was trying to get a story but, for one reason or another, my own listing in a race didn’t give me access to those pages. So I learned how to get access without waiting for one of the organizers to give me permission.

Now the race pages were on some dedicated site, one that you only learned if you actually paid for the race. Those would have been tough to find except that innovation had only come about in the last few years, and in the last few years, I had met Snot Rocket, and we were often in the same race together.

I worked from those backwards, developing a system: I looked up Snot Rocket—Dave—by name to find out where he finished. His finisher spot—almost always near the front—then provided his bib number. In the more recent races, I could search official photos by bib number, catching a glimpse of Snot Rocket throughout the race.

The later photos usually showed a man running alone. One of the photos actually caught him launching a snot rocket, and I marked it. I wanted Detective Conners to see it. There was no one else in the frame, though, so I doubt that particular loogie was heading toward anyone else.

Photos of these races showed him at the starting line, usually standing by himself, sometimes holding one of his ankles as he stretched. The photos at the end of the race showed him grabbing his medal from the volunteer handing them out—no graceful bow of the head so the medal could go around his neck, no smile. Just a gimme that now kinda yank.

Then Snot Rocket would walk away, usually out of the frame. Some photos at various races caught him on the way to the parking lot, medal clutched in his fist. A few showed him in the crowd. Often, it seemed, he went to the timer’s tent to see where he placed. If he was first, second or third, the spot that would give him an award, he would grab that early so that he could leave.

He almost never climbed on the podium—if, indeed, there was a podium. He always walked to his car, medals clutched in his hand as if he had stolen them.

He didn’t seem to get any joy out of collecting those medals. He had the same grim look of determination on his face that he had had at the start of the race, as if whatever prompted him to run hadn’t been satisfied by the simple act of completing the race.

The photos started to change four years back. He looked less Snot Rocket and more Dave. His hair was lighter, trimmer, and once in a while, he grinned as he crossed the finish line, pumping a fist or slapping someone else—a guy I didn’t recognize—on the back.

A closer look at some of the finisher photos showed Snot-Dave talking with people as he got a bottle of water out of the ice chest or waited to get on the finisher podium.

Eventually, I started to recognize the people around him. A dark-haired thin-faced woman, who was not wearing racing clothes, and another couple, both of whom seemed to be runners. They had bibs, usually wore the race’s T-shirt, and often wore compression pants. They talked and laughed with the thin-faced woman, who didn’t seem to smile all that much.

Indeed, her eyes had a wary, tired look, but I couldn’t see the source until I went farther back.

Farther back, she too wore racing clothes and an extra twenty to thirty pounds. That weight looked good on her. She smiled more, and that made her pretty. Often, she looked up at Snot—well, Dave. He looked more like a Dave here—with something like love and affection.

He usually had an arm around her, pulling her close. They would share water bottles, pose with their finisher medals, holding them up to the camera or mug with them on their foreheads or wrapped around their arms like matching bracelets.

Even farther back, there were the photos of young love, the meet-cute that every rom-com has, only here, the couple would have that awkward leaning into each other stance that people who were attracted but hadn’t yet committed to anything often had.

Before that—about ten years back—Dave ran with a group of young men, none of whom looked familiar. And before that, he would show up at races with a young woman (who had to be his age) who would stand at the sidelines, arms wrapped around herself, mouth a thin displeased line, as if she didn’t want to be anywhere near sweaty runners so damn early in the morning.

Roscoe had said Snot Rocket had two girlfriends. I wagered I had seen them both. Only one had been serious, and the other had been a flirtation, something that young people got into before they knew themselves well enough to know in the space of a conversation or two or three that the attractive person they were talking with wasn’t really right for them.

I made a list of all the people he seemed to socialize with, and if they had a bib number, I wrote those down too. Then I worked recent to less recent, trying to figure out who his associates were.

They weren’t as good at running as he was, that was for certain. They were recreational runners who usually ended up in the middle of the pack. Except for the final woman, the woman with the thin face, who lost twenty to thirty pounds. She did well in her age group, often placing first by a long distance.

Her name was Noelani Kahale, and, as her name suggested, she was originally from Hawaii. She had a huge social media presence, but it confused me. Her photographs were full of Dave. Noelani and Dave, running on the beach. Noelani and Dave, laughing before their sunrise run. Noelani and Dave, entwining their matching finisher’s medals at the end of races.

It wasn’t until I looked at the dates that I realized the posts I was seeing on all her platforms were five years old

There was nothing new.

Some people vanished because they closed or abandoned their online accounts. Others watched their lives to go hell and didn’t want to chronicle that.

I suspected something else though. Noelani had gone from a healthy tanned woman to a too-thin rail of a person who did not participate in runs.

I searched for her on the internet, and found the obituary almost right away.

Noelani Kahale, dead of lung cancer at 35. The obituary mentioned that she hadn’t been a smoker, and there was no obvious cause of the disease. It urged everyone to give to various cancer organizations and research foundations that were searching for causes of lung cancer in nonsmokers.

She had no children, and was not married. Her parents had brought her back to Oahu, and buried her there.

There was no mention of Dave or running or anything personal about her.

The friends had a big social media presence as well, and, it seemed, they had moved onto triathlons. They did not seem to participate in any of the local runs.

But I had found them, and I knew they might be helpful.

So I called, and left messages, asking for an interview, not mentioning Dave. Three of them never returned my call.

The fourth, the woman in the shot with Dave and Noelani and another friend, called, and set up a meet at a local coffee shop for the following day.

She assumed I was interested in her recent triathlon finish which was good enough to qualify for one of the bigger races in the fall. I let her hold that assumption. It was always easier to talk with people when they were unprepared, instead of prepared.

I also set up an appointment with Detective Conners—only I told him that I was officially covering the story, and that I would want whatever information he could give me. I would, I said, let him know what I had discovered as well.

He hadn’t sounded happy, but he hadn’t told me to stop investigating either. My sense that he was overwhelmed and not that interested in this case persisted, just in the ways that he addressed me or seemed to need reminding about the case itself.

I put my annoyance at him aside, and focused on the first interview. My subject, Jenna Wasserman, also had a large social media presence, with lots of friends and lots of activities. The man she had been with in those photos with Dave had vanished from her social media pages a few years back, so I assumed a breakup.

But I made notes, just in case.

I wrote those on paper, because I planned to use my phone to record the interview, just like I had done for more than a decade.

If she didn’t like that, I would record anyway, and call it all deep background.

***

The early morning meeting came after both of our runs. We were both rosy cheeked and bright-eyed, but we had both changed into business casual—khakis and somewhat dressy shirts.

She was on her way to the bank where she worked in the loan department, and I would go back home to make notes after the interview was over.

The coffee shop we met in was a wannabe Starbucks not far from my place. The baked goods were sinful and delicious, but the coffee was always watery and unimpressive. I liked the blueberry muffins, and had learned to order an iced tea with them.

Jenna ordered her standard coffee drink, took one sip, made a face, and set it aside. She said nothing about the quality, though, for which I gave her silent props.

She looked even more fit in person, and she had that glow that distance athletes often had, that sense of comfortable athleticism that gave her a grace with every single movement.

I asked if I could record, and told her I would take notes by hand as well. She had no problem with that. And because she was so cheerful and pleased about an interview, I did ask her about her athletic career—her recent success at triathlons, and the upcoming big race. I liked her enthusiasm.

I was sorry that I was going to have to squash it.

“I’m not just here about the triathlon,” I said to her. “I assume you heard about Dave Pyron.”

“No,” she said, with a slight frown. “What did he do now?”

Whatever I had expected her to say, it wasn’t that.

“He died three weeks ago,” I said. “I thought you would have heard.”

“Died?” Her frown grew. “No, I hadn’t heard. Why did you think I would?”

I decided to save the well, he was murdered. It was all over the news for a little later. Instead, I said, “Because I saw photos. I thought you were friends.”

She shook her head ever so slightly. “We were never friends,” she said. “He was friends with my ex-boyfriend, Calvin.”

“You didn’t like him?” I asked.

“Calvin?” she said, deliberately misunderstanding me.

“Dave,” I said.

Her lips thinned. “I liked him a lot that first year. He took great care of Noelani.”

“When she was so ill,” I said, guessing.

Jenna nodded. “He did everything for her. He made sure she had everything she needed, he worked with home health care, he even paid for hospice when she lost her medical insurance.”

That was not the man I had expected. “But…?” I asked.

“Her parents,” Jenna said. “I blame them.”

“For what?” I asked.

“They did nothing.” There was anger in her voice, and her eyes flashed. “Nothing. They wouldn’t help financially, they didn’t come out for her surgeries, and when she was dying, they didn’t come to visit.”

I felt that tingle I both loved and hated, the journalist moment—the one that says, This is a great story, and I loved great stories. But I also knew that this was someone’s life we were discussing, and someone’s pain, and for that reason, the tingle irritated me.

“Then,” Jenna said, her voice getting louder, “they commandeered her body, and they could. Because she didn’t have a will or anything, and they were her next of kin.”

I nodded. I didn’t want to interrupt the flow.

“They took her to Hawaii and buried her there, even though she wanted to be cremated. Dave told them—hell, we all told them she wanted to be cremated, but they didn’t listen. They didn’t even acknowledge Dave. He went out for the funeral only to find out that they didn’t even hold one. Just some ceremony at the grave site that she didn’t want.”

Jenna leaned back, and let out a small “whew,” then gave me a tiny smile.

“Sorry,” she said. “I guess I’m still mad about it all.”

She sipped the coffee and winced.

“I’ll wager Dave was too,” I said.

“He was livid. And not just at them. At everything.” She shook her head. “Everything was unpleasant with him. Everything. We would go to races, and he got viciously mean. Noelani had made him promise he would keep going. They were collecting medals from races all over, especially the ones you had to qualify for.”

“Like Boston,” I said quietly.

“Yeah, like Boston, which they did, and New York, which has some weird system that they couldn’t get through. And they were going to hit every Rock ‘n’ Roll Marathon around the world, so now he was assigned to do that, and he just got angrier and angrier.” She wrapped her hands around that coffee cup, and then seemed to recall that she didn’t like it, and shoved the cup aside.

“So the medals were…?”

“Theirs,” Jenna said, threading her hands together on top of the table. “I kinda got the sense he resented it all, but he couldn’t get out of it.” She shrugged. “We all tried. We talked to him, and that didn’t do any good. It just made him madder. We suggested that he quit running for a while, and that really infuriated him. We suggested therapy—or I did—and jeez, I’ve never had anyone yell at me like that in my entire life. It was awful and scary, and for a minute, I actually thought he would hit me.”

That did not surprise me, given the level of anger I had seen at the Boston qualifier. It had seemed as if Snot Rocket had a deep well of anger that looked like it was infinite.

“That was the last time I saw him,” Jenna was saying. “I refused to go to runs if he was there, and that pretty much destroyed my relationship with Calvin.”

“He continued to go to the runs?” I asked.

“For a while,” she said. “Then he even gave up. I think I could’ve handled that, but he told me that I overreacted to Dave, that Dave wouldn’t hurt anyone, and I disagreed. I hate it when people tell you you’re overreacting and they weren’t even there.”

“He was nowhere around when Dave challenged you?” I asked.

“We were at a run, so Calvin was there, but he wasn’t right next to me. He couldn’t hear anything. And later, after we broke up, he called to apologize. I didn’t take the call but here…you can hear it for yourself.”

She took out her phone, opened it, and scrolled through the screen with her thumb. I didn’t say anything, not even to comment on the fact that she had saved a message from someone she ostensibly was no longer interested in.

“Here it is.” She set the phone between us, and clicked on a voicemail message.

Hey, Jenn, it’s me. I owe you a major apology. You said Dave was scary, and I told you that was an overreaction, but I was wrong. I should’ve listened to you. I just wanted to say that I’m really sorry.

Then there was some phone noise, as if he half-expected her to respond. And finally, he hung up.

“Did you call him back?” I asked.

She shook her head. “I learned long ago that guys like that think they’ve wised up, but they never do. He’d make the same mistake. He did make it a few times earlier, usually on smaller stuff. This was one that made me scared, and he dismissed it, and I decided that he wasn’t for me.”

I made some sympathetic noises, which were not fake. I was sympathetic, just not as interested in that part of her story.

“Would you mind giving me Calvin’s number?” I asked, just in case it was different from the one I had.

“It doesn’t matter,” she said. “He moved out of state nearly a year ago. He wouldn’t know what happened to Dave any more than I do.”

“But Calvin can give me some background,” I said.

Her lips thinned. “I suppose. Just don’t tell him you got the number from me. I don’t want him to think I hung onto it or anything.”

I almost said, But you did hang onto it, and then I changed my mind. It was her business, and it had nothing to do with the story I was working on.

I thanked her, and ended the meeting. Then I got into my car and checked my notes on my laptop. The number I had for Calvin was the same one that Jenna had given me. He hadn’t answered before, and I doubted he would answer now. But I called and left another message.

Then I drove home. I had two hours before my meeting with Detective Conners. I needed some think time. Something about my meeting with Jenna bothered me.

I had just lugged my laptop and purse into the kitchen when my cell rang, with the ringtone I reserved for people I don’t know. I set everything on my already overcrowded table, and then found the phone inside my purse, barely managing to answer before the call went to voicemail.

“Hey,” said an unfamiliar voice. “This is Calvin.”

I sank into a nearby chair. I hadn’t expected him to call. I thanked him for his call, then asked if I could record our conversation.

He paused for just a moment, then said, “Ah, what the hell.”

So I hit the record button and put the phone on speaker. He asked a few questions about Dave’s death, which I answered, and then he confirmed Jenna’s information, almost verbatim.

“So, here’s the weird thing,” Calvin said. “I don’t talk to him for years—I mean, we’re in separate towns, you know? Then he calls me out of the blue.”

Calvin was using present tense. Dave’s death hadn’t registered with him yet, even though he had known about it before he called.

“I’m all like green,” Calvin said. I wasn’t sure I understood him, and was about to say so, when he added, “I mean, I even work in the industry. We’re both engineers but on different sides of the environmental divide, if you get me.”

I finally did. I made an affirmative noise.

“So, he says, you always wanted me to get rid of the medals, melt them down. Can you give me the name of the company that does that? So I do.” Calvin sounded reflective. “I thought it was weird, you know. But I also figured he was finally moving on from Noelani. And maybe it was time, since he’d been so angry for so long.”

“Did you ask him about that?” I asked.

“Naw,” Calvin said. “We’re not that kind of friends, never really were. And besides, he hung up right after. It felt…I don’t know…abrupt, weird, off somehow.”

“When was this?” I asked.

“About a month ago,” Calvin said.

Not long before Snot Rocket died. That seemed odd.

“Can you give me the name of the company?” I asked.

“Yep,” Calvin said. “That’s the only reason I called. I was looking online at the stories about the murder and they mentioned that someone stole his medals. No one stole them. He’d gotten rid of them.”

“How do you know that for sure?” I asked.

“I got a friend who works there,” Calvin said. “I asked him to watch out for them.”

“Because you wanted to keep track of the medals?” I asked.

“Because I didn’t believe Dave would go through with it,” Calvin said. “But he did. It was one of the bigger hauls of medals that the company ever got.”

We talked a bit more, and then we ended the conversation. The medals weren’t stolen. They had been melted down. Snot Rocket was redesigning his life—whatever that meant.

I called Detective Connors and told him what I learned about the medals. He was already ahead of me on that. They’d found a receipt in Snot Rocket’s office for the medals, sent by the company shortly after they arrived.

“Still leaves us at square one, though,” Detective Conners said.

“Not really,” I said. “Let’s still meet in an hour. Bring me photos of the medals that strangled him.”

“They weren’t used to strangle him,” Conners said. “They were just hung around his neck.”

The way someone did when they finished a race.

“Bring them anyway,” I said. “I’ll bring my computer.”

“And what good will that do?” Conners asked.

“You’ll see,” I said.

***

We met at a different coffee shop, one he had chosen that wasn’t far from the precinct. The coffee shop was a lot more utilitarian. It clearly predated Starbucks. There was a menu for specialty coffees, but the menu itself seemed to discourage trying them. I got a bottle of water, which seemed safest, considering the filthy state of the yellow walls and linoleum floor.

I found one table that didn’t have crumbs, but I still wiped it off before I sat there. I put a napkin underneath my laptop. I’m not usually that fastidious, but some places just inspire extra precautions.

Conners came in, ordered “the usual,” and sat down across from me without picking up anything from the counter, clearly expecting someone to bring his order.

He slapped some pictures at me. They had been printed on a high-quality printer, showing the medals front and back. One medal was a finisher medal, the kind everyone got. The other was a third-place medal from the same race. And the third wasn’t from any race at all. It just looked like a race medal. Someone had engraved World’s Biggest Asshole on the back.

That detail hadn’t made the news, and I could see why.

I raised my gaze to Conners.

“We figure they’re all fake,” he said.

“They’re not,” I said. I recognized the first two. They were from a Boston qualifier nearly a year ago. I had the same finisher medal on my wall. I’d actually fingered the age group medals before the race, hoping I’d make my time, because those medals were pretty.

These weren’t medals you could find easily, and I knew, because I had researched it, that Snot Rocket hadn’t received any age group medals in that race at all—which was odd. He’d been placing well in other races at that point.

I looked up third place in all the male age groups first, just on a hunch, but I didn’t recognize anyone.

Then I stopped. “How did Dave die?” I asked. “I thought you said he was strangled with the medals.”

“That’s what the officers who answered the call thought. We let it stand, figuring we’d release cause of death when we had our suspect in hand.”

I nodded. “You haven’t answered my question,” I said.

“Blunt force trauma to the side of the head,” Conners said. “He fell or was pushed and banged his temple on a table. Whoever was there didn’t call for help—which might’ve actually saved him. Instead, they propped him up, put the medals around his neck, and left. He wasn’t found for three days.”

“You’re saying he was alive when that person left?” I asked.

Conners nodded. “Probably not conscious though. The ME thinks he lived another five, six hours or more.”

I couldn’t help myself. I shuddered.

“So,” I said, thinking about all that calculation I had done for strength and height, “it could’ve been a woman, then.”

“Hmmm,” Conners said non-committally. Which was a confirmation, in its own way.

I spun the laptop around and went through the podium photos, showing him the third-place finishers in all of the age groups. He stopped me after I had shown him the forty-to-forty-five age groupers.

“Can you email me the link to all of this?” he asked.

“Sure,” I said, and did it as we were sitting there. “You know who did it.”

“Maybe,” he said, slapped down a five for his non-existent “usual,” and left.

I studied the pictures. I didn’t recognize anyone. But I went through the names, and scanned social media, just because I was feeling a tad off. What I had thought I knew, I hadn’t known, and what I hadn’t known turned out to be important.

I found her in the thirty-five to thirty-nine age group. McKenna Granchester. She mentioned on several of her sites that she’d discovered someone new, that he was kinder than the other men she had known, and he was a runner.

And the real tell? She said she was helping him overcome a big loss. She tried to convince him to get rid of the past—to Marie Kondo it, in other words, get rid of all the clutter, stop hanging onto the loss, and move forward. He refused.

She wrote on Facebook: Some people just need to be pushed. He found the service that would recycle his stuff. I just mailed it all off one afternoon. He’d said he was going to do it; now he’s mad that I did. That’s weird, right?

People weighed in. They always did. And I didn’t care what they said.

I was just imagining the conversation. She’d gotten rid of his possessions, his memories of Noelani, the one thing Noelani had made him promise to continue.

He had a terrible temper, one that had scared Jenna, one that had upset the entire running group, and half the people who raced with him.

I couldn’t imagine what he would have done when he discovered that McKenna had sent his memories to be recycled.

The argument was for the cops to figure out, if they could. Had Snot Rocket pushed her first? Or just screamed in her face, like he had done with Jenna? Had McKenna pushed him away, which was what people seemed to do with him.

He probably tripped, fell sideways, and hit his head. And if she had called 911 right there, everything would’ve been all right.

But she had to put the medals on him—her medals, as a kind of fuck-you. And then she left him to die.

I got up, brought Conners’ five to the cash register, and left, feeling vaguely sick to my stomach.

I knew how to write this, once I got the information I needed from Conners, once she got arrested and the case started wending its way toward trial.

An angry man fell in love, lost the woman he loved, tried to rebuild but got angrier and angrier. Met another woman, thought maybe she was the one, and instead, she proved how very wrong he was.

He’d been trying to move forward—and that attempt failed.

***

Which is how I wrote the story. Without a mention of his nickname, although I did mention the snot rockets. I had interviews with a number of people, including the guy who pushed him at that last race. They’d gotten into a fight over starting position. Snot Rocket believed the guy had cheated and moved up several slots.

After I talked to him, I believed the guy had too.

That didn’t make Snot Rocket likeable. He had been an arrogant asshole, and he remained one. I empathized with a lot—the loss of medals, the loss of control—but not the way he responded.

And the anger, the anger was problematic.

I wrote the story. McKenna not only got arrested and immediately pled to manslaughter (from Murder 2), and she went away, and the story caused enough of a blip that I was able to keep my job through the next round of layoffs.

All of that, a month or two before the pandemic shut down everything, including racing. Everything except the media company I worked for. Suddenly, I had more to do than I had ever planned—none of it weird click-bait homicide stories.

With so much death in the U.S., no one really cared about strange little murders anymore. We were all trying to survive.

And yet…I find myself thinking about him. Snot Rocket. Not who he really was, but who he presented as at the races.

That filthy habit of his, the one that brought his nickname, has become something else in this post-COVID world. People are getting arrested for spitting on others.

And had races resumed, and had he not reformed, and had he been murdered then, think of all the people who would have had motive. He might have made them sick. He might have killed their loved ones.

And the way his grief had taken him, he might not have cared.

Not that it matters, because he died in the pre-COVID world. Along with his filthy habit.

The demise of the snot rocket came after the death of Snot Rocket. But not long after.

And neither, I must report, caused not a ripple in the world we find ourselves in. No one misses them. I get the sense that no one thinks of them, besides me.

We actually lived that way—with free-floating snot rockets and spittle and petty jealousies and shoving matches over medals. We lived that way, and saw nothing wrong with it.

In a world we no longer recognize as our own. In a land so far away it feels like another century.

I can’t say as I miss it.

But I think about it.

All the damn time.

 

___________________________________________

“The Demise of Snot Rocket“ is available for one week on this site. The ebook is available on all retail stores, as well as here.

The Demise of Snot Rocket

Copyright © 2025 by Kristine Kathryn Rusch
First published in Collectibles, edited by Lawrence Block, Subterranean Press 2021
Published by WMG Publishing
Cover and Layout copyright © 2025 by WMG Publishing
Cover design by WMG Publishing
Cover art copyright © Americanspirit/Dreamstime

This book is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. All rights reserved. This is a work of fiction. All characters and events portrayed in this book are fictional, and any resemblance to real people or incidents is purely coincidental. This book, or parts thereof, may not be reproduced in any form without permission.

Crime scene investigator Pamela Kinney hears the bad guys outside her house and smells smoke, but only realizes the next morning the crime they committed—burning the flag that had covered her daughter’s casket.

Her police colleagues call it a small crime, but she disagrees. She must solve it, and she must solve it now.

Chosen as one of the best mystery stories of the year, “Patriotic Gestures” explores the fine lines that run through American culture, and sometimes through Americans themselves.

“Patriotic Gestures“ is available for one week on this site. The ebook is available on all retail stores, as well as here.

 

Patriotic Gestures By Kristine Kathryn Rusch  

Pamela Kinney heard the noise in her sleep—giggles, followed by the crunching of leaves. Later, she smelled smoke, faint and acrid, and realized that her neighbors were burning garbage in their fireplace again. She got up long enough to close the window and silently curse them; she hated it when they did illegal burning.

She forgot about it until the next morning. She stepped out her back door into the crisp fall morning, and found charred remains of her flag in the middle of her driveway. There’d been no wind during the night, fortunately, or all the evidence would have been gone.

Instead, there was a pile of burned fabric and a burn stain on the pavement. There were even footprints outlined in leaves.

She noted all of that with a professional’s detachment—she’d eyeballed more than a thousand crime scenes—before the fabric itself caught her attention. Then the pain was sudden and swift, right above her heart, echoing through the breastbone and down her back.

Anyone else would have thought she was having a heart attack. But she wasn’t, and she knew it. She’d had this feeling twice before, first when the officers came to her house and then when the chaplain handed her the folded flag which just a moment before had draped over her daughter’s coffin.

Pamela had clung to that flag like she’d seen so many other military mothers do, and she suspected she had looked as lost as they had. Then, when she stood, that pain ran through her, dropping her back to the chair.

Her sons took her arms, and when she mentioned the pain, they dragged her to the emergency room. She had been late for her own daughter’s wake, her chest sticky with adhesive from the cardiac machines and her hair smelling faintly of disinfectant.

And the feeling came back now, as she stared at the massacre before her. The flag, Jenny’s flag, had been ripped from the front door and burned in her driveway.

Pamela made herself breathe. Then she rubbed that spot above her left breast, felt the pain spread throughout her body, burning her eyes and forming a lump in the back of her throat. But she held the tears back. She wouldn’t give whoever had done this awful thing the satisfaction.

Finally she reached inside her purse for her cell, called Neil—she had trouble thinking of him as the sheriff after all the years she’d known him— and then she protected the scene until he arrived.

***

It only took him five minutes. Halleysburg was still a small town, no matter how many Portlanders sprawled into the community, willing to make the one and a half hour one-way daily commute to the city’s edge. Pamela had told the dispatch to make sure that Neil parked across the street so that any wind from his vehicle wouldn’t move the leaves.

And she had asked for a second scene-of-the-crime kit because she didn’t want to go inside and get hers. She didn’t want to risk losing the crime scene with a moment of inattention.

Neil pulled onto the street. His car was an unwieldy Olds with a souped up engine and a reinforced frame. It could take a lot of punishment, and often did.

As a result, the paint covering the car’s sides was fresh and clean, while the hood, roof and trunk looked like they were covered in dirt.

The sheriff was the same. Neil Karlyn was in his late fifties, balding, with a face that had seen too much sun. But his uniform was always new, always pristine, and never wrinkled. He’d been that way since college, a precise man with precise opinions about a difficult world.

He got out of the Olds and did not reach around back for a scene-of-the-crime kit. Annoyance threaded through her.

“Where’s my kit?” she asked.

“Pam,” he said gently, “it’s a low-level property crime. It’ll never go to trial and you know it.”

“It’s arson with malicious intent,” she snapped. “That’s a felony.”

He sighed and studied her for a moment. He clearly recognized her tone. She’d used it often enough on him when they were students at the University of Oregon. When they were lovers on different sides of the political fence, and constantly on the verge of splitting up.

When they finally did, it had taken years for them to settle into a friendship. But settle they did. They hardly even fought any more.

He went back to the car, opened the back seat and removed the kit she’d requested. She crossed her arms, waiting as he walked toward her. He stopped at the edge of the curb, holding the kit tight against his leg.

“Even if you somehow get the D.A. to agree that this is a cockamamie felony, you know that processing the scene yourself taints the evidence.”

“Why do you care so much?” she asked, hearing an edge in her voice that usually wasn’t there. The challenge, unspoken: It’s my daughter’s flag. It’s like murdering her all over again.

To his credit, Neil didn’t try to soothe her with a platitude.

“It’s the eighth flag this morning,” he said. “It’s not personal, Pam.”

Her chin jutted out. “It is to me.”

Neil looked down, his cheek moving. He was clenching his jaw, trying not to speak.

He didn’t have to.

She understood the irony of the statement. Somewhere in her pile of college paraphernalia was a badly framed newspaper clipping that had once been the front page of the Portland Oregonian. She’d framed the clipping so that a photo dominated, a photo of a much-younger Pamela with long hair and a tie-dye t-shirt, front and center in a group of students, holding an American flag by a stick, watching as it burned.

God, she could still remember how that felt, to hold a flag up so that the wind caught it. How fabric had its own acrid odor, and how frightened she’d been at the desecration, even though she’d been the one to light the flag on fire.

She had been protesting the Vietnam War. It was that photo and the resulting brouhaha it caused, both on campus and in the State of Oregon itself, that had led to the final break-up with Neil.

He couldn’t believe what she had done. Sometimes she couldn’t either. But she felt her country was worth fighting for. So had he. He joined up not two months later.

To his credit, Neil didn’t say anything about her own flag-burning as he handed her the kit. Instead he watched as she took photographs of the scene, scooped up the charred bits of fabric, and made a sketch of the footprint she found in the leaves.

She found another print in the yard, and that one she made a cast of. Then she dusted her front door for prints, trying not to cry as she did so.

“A flag is a flag is a flag,” she used to say.

Until it draped over her daughter’s coffin.

Until it became all she had left.

***

“I called the local VFW, Mom,” her son Stephen said over dinner that night. Stephen was her oldest and had been her support for thirty years, since the day his father walked out, never to return. “They’re bringing another flag.”

She stirred the mashed potatoes into the creamed corn on her plate. The meal had come from KFC: her sons had brought a bucket with her favorite sides, and told her not to argue with them about the fast food meal.

She wasn’t arguing, but she didn’t have much of an appetite.

They sat in the dining room, at the table that had once held four of them. Pamela had slid the fake rose centerpiece in front of Jenny’s place, so she wouldn’t have to think about her daughter.

It wasn’t working.

“Another flag isn’t the same, dumbass,” Travis said. At thirty, he was the youngest, unmarried, still finding himself, a phrase she had come to hate.

The hell of it was, Travis was right. It wasn’t the same. That flag these people had burned, that flag had comforted her. She had clung to it on the worst afternoon of her life, her fingers holding it tight, even at the emergency room, when the doctors wanted to pry it from her hands.

It had taken almost a week for her to let it go. Stephen had come over, Stephen and his pretty wife Elaine and their teenage daughters, Mandy and Liv. They’d brought KFC then, too, and talked about everything but the war.

Until it came time to take the flag away from Pamela.

Stephen had talked to her like she was a five-year-old who wanted to take her blankie to kindergarten. In the end, she’d handed the flag over. He’d been the one to find the old flagpole, the one she’d taken down when she bought the house, and he’d been the one to place the pole in the hanger outside the front door.

“The VFW says they replace flags all the time,” Stephen said to his brother.

“Because some idiot burned one?” Travis asked.

Pamela’s cheeks flushed.

“Because people lose them. Or moths eat them. Or sometimes, they get stolen,” Stephen said.

“But not burned,” Travis persisted.

Pamela swallowed. Travis didn’t remember the newspaper photo, but Stephen probably did. It had hung over the console stereo she had gotten when her mother died, and it had been a teacher—Neil’s first grade teacher? Pamela couldn’t remember—who had seen it at a party and asked if she really wanted her children to see that before they could understand what it meant.

“I don’t want another one,” Pamela said.

“Mom….” Stephen started in his most reasonable voice.

She shook her head. “It’s been a year. I need to move on.”

“You don’t move on from that kind of loss,” Travis said, and she wondered how he knew. He didn’t have children.

Then she looked at him, a large broad-shouldered man with tears in his eyes, and remembered that Jenny had been the one who walked him to school, who bathed him at night, who usually tucked him in. Jenny had done all that because Stephen at thirteen was already working to help his mom make ends meet, and Pamela was working two jobs herself, as well as attending community college to get her degree in forensic science and criminology. A pseudoscience degree, one of her almost-boyfriends had said. But it wasn’t. She used science every day. She needed science like she needed air.

Like she needed to find out who had destroyed her daughter’s flag.

“You don’t move on,” Pamela said.

Her boys watched her. Sometimes she could see the babies they had been in the lines of their mouths and the shape of their eyes. She still marveled at the way they had grown into men, large men who could carry her the way she used to carry them.

“But,” she added, “you don’t have to dwell on it, every moment of every day.”

And yet she was dwelling. She couldn’t stop. She never told her sons or anyone else, not even Neil who had become a closer friend in the year since Jenny had died. Neil, a widower now, a man who understood death the way that Pamela did. Neil, whose grandson had enlisted after 9/11 and had somehow made it back.

She was dwelling and there was only one way to stop. She had to use science to solve this. She couldn’t think about it emotionally. She had to think about it clinically.

She had her evidence and she needed even more.

The next morning, the local paper ran an article on the burnings, and listed the addresses in the police log section. So Pamela visited the other crime scenes with her kit and her camera, identifying herself as an employee of the State Crime Lab.

Since CSI debuted on television, that identification opened doors for her. She didn’t have to tell the other victims that she had been a victim too.

She took pictures of scorch marks on pavement and flag holders wrenched loose of their sockets. She removed flag bits from garbage cans, and studied footprints in the leaf-covered grass to see if they looked similar to the ones on her lawn.

And late that afternoon, as she stepped back to photograph yet another twisted flag holder beside a front door, she saw the glint of a camera hiding in a cobwebby corner of the door frame. The house was a starter, maybe 1200 square feet total. She wouldn’t have expected a camera here.

“Do you have a security system?” she asked the homeowner, a woman Travis’s age who looked like she hadn’t slept in weeks. Her name was Becky something. Pamela hadn’t really heard her last name in the introduction.

“My husband put it up,” Becky said, her voice shaking a little. “I have no idea how it works.”

“When will he be back?” Pamela asked.

Becky shrugged. “When they cancel stop-loss, I guess.”

Pamela felt her breath slide out of her body. “He’s in Iraq?”

Becky nodded. “I put the flag up for him, you know? And I haven’t told him what happened to it. I’ve gotta find someone to fix the holder, and I have to get another flag.”

Pamela looked at the house more closely. It needed paint. The bushes in front were overgrown. There were cobwebs all over the windows, and dry rot on the sills. Obviously the couple had purchased it expecting someone to work on it.

Either the money wasn’t there, or the husband had planned to do the work himself.

“I can fix the holder,” Pamela said. “If you have a few tools.”

“My husband does,” Becky said. “I can show them to you.”

“I have a few things to finish, and then you can show me,” Pamela said.

She dusted for prints, and then, for comparison, took Becky’s and some off the husband’s comb, which hadn’t been touched since he left. Then Pamela went into his workroom, which also hadn’t been touched, and took a hammer, some screws, and a screwdriver.

It took only ten minutes to repair the flag holder. But in that time, she’d made a friend.

“How’d you learn how to do that?” Becky asked.

“Raised three kids alone,” Pamela said. “You realize there’s not much you can’t do, if you just try.”

Becky nodded.

Pamela glanced at the camera. Untended since the husband left. It was probably in the same state of disrepair as the rest of the house.

“Can I see the security system?” she asked.

“It’s not really a system,” Becky said. “Just the cameras, and some motion sensors that’re supposed to alert us when someone’s on the property. But they clearly don’t work any more.”

“Let me see anyway,” Pamela said.

Becky took her past the workroom, into a small closet filled with electronics. The closet was warm from the heat the panels gave off. Lights still blinked.

Pamela stared at it all, then touched the rewind button on the digital recorder. On the television monitor, she watched an image of herself fixing the flag holder.

“It looks like the camera’s still working,” she said. “Mind if I rewind farther?”

“Go ahead.”

Backwards, she watched darkness turn to day. Saw Neil inspect the hanger. Saw Becky crying, then the tears evaporate into a stare of disbelief before she backed off the porch and away from the scene.

Back to the previous night. No porch light. Just images blurred in the darkness. Faces, not quite real, mostly turned away from the camera.

“Got a recordable DVD?” Pamela asked.

“Somewhere.” Becky vanished into the house. Pamela studied the system, hoping that she wouldn’t erase the information as she tried to record it.

She rewound again. Studied the faces, the half turned heads. She saw crew cuts and piercings and hoodies. Slouchy clothes worn by half the young people in Halleysburg.

Nothing to identify them. Nothing to separate them from everyone else in their age group.

Like her, her hair long, her jeans torn, as she stood front and center at the U of O, a burning flag before her.

She made herself study the machine, and figured out how to save the images to the disk’s hard drive so that they wouldn’t be erased. Then she inspected the buttons near the machine’s DVD slot.

“Here,” Becky said, thrusting a packet at her.

DVD-Rs, unopened, dust-covered. Pamela used a fingernail to break the seal, then pulled one out, and inserted it in the slot. She managed to record, but had no way to test. So she made a few more copies, feeling somewhat reassured that she could come back and try to download the images from the hard drive again.

“Will this catch them?” Becky asked while she watched the process.

“I don’t know,” Pamela said. “I hope so.”

“It’s just, they got so close, you know.” Becky’s voice shook. “I didn’t know anyone could get that close.”

It took Pamela a moment to understand what she meant. Becky meant that they had gotten close to the house. Close to her. The burning hadn’t just upset her, it had frightened her, and made her feel vulnerable.

Odd. All it had done to Pamela was make her angry.

“Just lock up at night,” Pamela said after a minute. “Locks deter ninety-percent of all thieves.”

“And the remaining ten percent?”

They get in, Pamela almost said, but thought the better of it.

“They don’t usually come to places like Halleysburg,” she said. “Why would they? We all know each other here.”

Becky nodded, seemingly reassured. Or maybe she just wanted to abandon an uncomfortable topic.

Pamela certainly did. She wanted to play with the images, see what she could find.

She wanted a solid image of the culprits, one that she could bring to Neil.

Maybe then, he would stop complaining that this was a petty property crime. Maybe then he might understand how important this really was.

***

But it was her own words that replayed in her head later that night as she sat in front of her computer.

They don’t usually come to places like Halleysburg…. We all know each other here.

She had lied to make Becky feel better, but the words hadn’t felt like a lie. Thieves really didn’t come here. There was no need. There was richer pickings in Portland or Salem or the nearby bedroom communities.

Besides, it was hard to commit a crime here without someone seeing you.

Except under cover of darkness.

Her home office was quiet. It overlooked the back yard, and she had never installed curtains on the window, preferring the view of the year-round flower garden she had planted. At the moment, her garden was full of browns and oranges, fall plants blooming despite the winter ahead. She had little lights beneath the plants, lights she usually kept off because they spiked her energy bill.

But she had them on now. She would probably have them on for some time to come.

Maybe Becky wasn’t the only one who felt vulnerable.

Pamela put one of the DVDs in her computer, and opened the images. They played, much to her relief, so she copied the images to her hard drive and removed the DVD.

Her computer at home wasn’t as good as her computer at work. But it would have to do.

She didn’t want to do any work on this case at the State Crime Lab if she could help it. The lab was so understaffed and so overworked that it usually took four months to get something tested. When she last checked, more than 600 cases were backlogged, some of them dating back more than nine months.

Those cases were bigger than hers. The backlogs were semen samples from possible rapists and blood droplets from the scene of a multiple murder case.

She couldn’t, in good conscience, bring something personal and private to the lab. She would work here as long as she could. Then if she couldn’t finish here, she might be able to convince herself that the time she took at the lab would go toward an arson case—a serious one, not a petty property crime, as Neil had called it.

Petty property crime.

Funny that they would be on opposite sides of this issue too.

Pamela went through the images frame by frame, looking for clear faces. Her computer didn’t have the face recognition software that one of the computers at the lab had, but she had installed a home version of image sharpening software. She used it to clean out the fuzz and to lighten the darkness, trying to find more than a chin or the corner of an ear.

Finally she got a small face just behind the flag, a serious white face with a frown—of disapproval? She couldn’t tell—and a bit of an elongated chin. Enough to see the wisp of a beard—a boy’s beard, more a wish of a beard than the real thing—and a tattooed hand coming up to catch the flag as the person almost blocking the camera yanked the pole out of the holder.

She blew up the image, softened it, fixed it, and then felt tears prick her eyes.

They don’t usually come to places like Halleysburg.

No. They grew up here. And worked at the grocery store down the street to pay for their football uniforms at the underfunded high school. They collected coins in a can on Sunday afternoons for Boosters, and they smiled when they saw her and respectfully called her Mrs. Kinney and asked, with a little too much interest, how her granddaughters were doing.

“Jeremy Stallings,” she whispered. “What the hell were you thinking?”

And she hoped she knew.

***

Neil wouldn’t let her sit in while he questioned Jeremy Stallings. He was appalled she’d even asked.

“That sort of thing belongs on TV and you know it,” he’d said.

But she also knew he probably wouldn’t do much more than slap the boy on the wrist, so what would be the harm? She hadn’t made that argument, though.

Instead, she waited on the bench chair outside the sheriff’s office conference room, which doubled as an interview room on days like this, and watched the parade of parents and lawyers as they trooped past.

No one acknowledged her. No one so much as looked at her. Not Reg Stallings, whose brother had sold her the house, or his wife June, who had taken over the PTA just before Travis got out of high school. No one mentioned the friendly exchanges at the high school football games or the hellos at the diner behind the movie theater. It was easier to forget all that and pretend they weren’t neighbors than it was to acknowledge what was going on inside that room.

Then, finally, Jeremy came out. He was wearing his baggy pants with a Halo t-shirt hanging nearly to his knees. He wore that same frown he’d had as he took the flag off from Becky’s front door.

He glanced at Pamela, then looked away, a blush working its way up the spider tattoo on his neck into his crew cut.

His parents and the lawyers led him away, as Neil reminded all of them to be in court the following morning.

Neil waited until they went through the front doors before coming over to Pamela.

She stood, her knees creaky from sitting so long. “He confess?”

Neil nodded. “And gave me the names of his buddies.”

Pamela bit her lower lip. “Funny,” she said, “he didn’t strike me as the type to be a war protestor.”

Neil rubbed his hands on his pristine shirt. “Is that what you thought?”

“Of course,” Pamela said. “Every house he hit, we’re all military families.”

“Who happened to be flying flags, even at night.” There was a bit of judgment in Neil’s voice.

She knew what he was thinking. People who knew how to handle flags took them down at dusk. But she couldn’t bear to touch hers. She hadn’t asked Becky why hers remained up, but she would wager the reason was similar.

And it probably was for every other family Jeremy and his friends had targeted.

“That’s the important factor?” she asked. “Night?”

“And beer,” Neil said. “They lost a football game, went out and drank, and that fueled their anger. So they decided to act out.”

“By burning flags?” Her voice rose.

“A few weeks before, they knocked down mailboxes. I’m going to hate to charge them. There won’t be much left of the football team.”

“That’s all right,” Pamela said bitterly. “Petty property crimes shouldn’t take them off the roster long.”

“It’s going to be more than that,” Neil said. “They’re showing a destructive pattern. This one isn’t going to be fun.”

“For any of us,” Pamela said.

***

Her hands were shaking as she left. She had wanted the crime to mean something. The flag had meant something to her. It should have meant something to them too.

God, Mom, for an old hippie, you’re such a prude. Jenny’s voice, so close that Pamela actually looked around, expecting to see her daughter’s face.

“I’m not a prude,” she whispered, and then realized she was reliving an old argument between them.

Sure you are. Judgmental and dried up. I thought you protested so that people could do what they wanted.

Pamela sat in the car, her creaky knees no longer holding her.

No, I protested so that people wouldn’t have to die in another senseless war, she had said to her daughter on that May afternoon.

What year was that?

It had to be 1990, just before Jenny graduated from high school.

I’m not going to die in a stupid war, Jenny had said with such conviction that Pamela almost believed her. We don’t do wars any more. I’m going to get an education. That way, you don’t have to struggle to pay for Travis. I know how hard it’s been with Steve.

Jenny, taking care of things. Jenny, who wasn’t going to let her cash-strapped mother pay for her education. Jenny, being so sure of herself, so sure that the peace she’d known most of her life would continue.

To Jenny, going into the military to get a free education hadn’t been a gamble at all.

Things’ll change, honey, Pamela had said. They always do.

And by then I’ll be out. I’ll be educated, and moving on with my life.

Only Jenny hadn’t moved on. She’d liked the military. After the First Gulf War, she’d gone to officer training, one of the first women to do it.

I’m a feminist, Mom, just like you, she’d said when she told Pamela.

Pamela had smiled, keeping her response to herself. She hadn’t been that kind of feminist. She wouldn’t have stayed in the military. She wasn’t sure she believed in the military—not then.

And now? She wasn’t sure what she believed. All she knew was that she had become a military mother, one who cried when a flag was burned.

Not just a flag.

Jenny’s flag.

And that’s when Pamela knew.

She wanted the crime to mean something, so she would make sure that it did.

***

She brought her memories to court. Not just the scrapbooks she’d kept for Jenny, like she had for all three kids, but the pictures from her own past, including the badly framed front page of the Oregonian.

Five burly boys had destroyed Jenny’s flag. They stood in a row, their lawyers beside them, and pled to misdemeanors. Their parents sat on the blond bench seats in the 1970s courtroom. A reporter from the local paper took notes in the back. The judge listened to the pleadings.

Otherwise, the room was empty. No one cheered when the judge gave the boys six months of counseling. No one complained at the nine months of community service and even though a few of them winced when the judge announced the huge fines that they (and not their parents) had to pay, no one said a word.

Until Pamela asked if she could speak.

The judge—primed by Neil—let her.

Only she really didn’t speak. She showed them Jenny. From the baby pictures to the dress uniform. From the brave eleven-year-old walking her brother to school to the dust-covered woman who had smiled with some Iraqi children in Baghdad.

Then Pamela showed them her Oregonian cover.

“I thought you were protesting,” she said to the boys. “I thought you trying to let someone know that you don’t approve of what your country is doing.”

Her voice was shaking.

“I thought you were being patriotic.” She shook her head. “And instead you were just being stupid.”

To their credit, they watched her. They listened. She couldn’t tell if they understood. If they knew how her heart ached—not that sharp pain she’d felt when she found the flag, but just an ache for everything she’d lost.

Including the idealism of the girl in the picture. And the idealism of the girl she’d raised.

When she finished, she sat down. And she didn’t move as the judge gaveled the session closed. She didn’t look up as some of the boys tried to apologize. And she didn’t watch as their parents hustled them out of court.

Finally, Neil sat beside her. He picked up the framed Oregonian photograph in his big, scarred hands.

“Do you regret it?” he asked.

She touched the edge of the frame.

“No,” she said.

“Because it was a protest?”

She shook her head. She couldn’t articulate it. The anger, the rage, the fear she had felt then. Which had been nothing like the fear she had felt every day her daughter had been overseas.

The fear she felt now when she looked at Stephen’s daughters and wondered what they’d chose in this never-ending war.

“If I hadn’t burned that flag,” she said, “I wouldn’t have had Jenny.”

Because she might have married Neil. And even if they had made babies, none of those babies would have been Jenny or Stephen or Travis. There would have been other babies who would have grown into other people.

Neil wasn’t insulted. They had known each other too long for insults. Instead, he put his hand over hers. It felt warm and good and familiar. She put her head on his shoulder.

And they sat like that, until the court reconvened an hour later, for another crime, another upset family, and another broken heart.

___________________________________________

“Patriotic Gestures“ is available for one week on this site. The ebook is available on all retail stores, as well as here.

Patriotic Gestures

Copyright © 2016 by Kristine Kathryn Rusch
First published published in Scene of The Crime, edited by Dana Stabenow, Running Press, 2008
Published by WMG Publishing
Cover and Layout copyright © 2016 by WMG Publishing
Cover design by WMG Publishing
Cover art copyright © Americanspirit/Dreamstime

This book is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. All rights reserved. This is a work of fiction. All characters and events portrayed in this book are fictional, and any resemblance to real people or incidents is purely coincidental. This book, or parts thereof, may not be reproduced in any form without permission.

Graduation Day at Barack Obama High School. The day the Red Letters arrive. The day that students get a glimpse into their own future.

But a handful never get a letter, and no one knows why. One teacher comes up with an idea though: a teacher who never got a Red Letter herself, a teacher finally finds the answers to her own fate.

Called “a fresh, solid, entertaining take on time travel” by Tangent Online, “Red Letter Day” was chosen as the best short story by the readers of Analog Magazine.

“Red Letter Day“ is available for one week on this site. The ebook is available on all retail stores, as well as here.

 

Red Letter Day By Kristine Kathryn Rusch  

Graduation rehearsal—middle of the afternoon on the final Monday of the final week of school. The graduating seniors at Barack Obama High School gather in the gymnasium, get the wrapped packages with their robes (ordered long ago), their mortarboards, and their blue and white tassels. The tassels attract the most attention—everyone wants to know which side of the mortarboard to wear it on, and which side to move it to.

The future hovers, less than a week away, filled with possibilities.

Possibilities about to be limited, because it’s also Red Letter Day.

I stand on the platform, near the steps, not too far from the exit. I’m wearing my best business casual skirt today and a blouse that I no longer care about. I learned to wear something I didn’t like years ago; too many kids will cry on me by the end of the day, covering the blouse with slobber and makeup and aftershave.

My heart pounds. I’m a slender woman, although I’m told I’m formidable. Coaches need to be formidable. And while I still coach the basketball teams, I no longer teach gym classes because the folks in charge decided I’d be a better counselor than gym teacher. They made that decision on my first Red Letter Day at BOHS, more than twenty years ago.

I’m the only adult in this school who truly understands how horrible Red Letter Day can be. I think it’s cruel that Red Letter Day happens at all, but I think the cruelty gets compounded by the fact that it’s held in school.

Red Letter Day should be a holiday, so that kids are at home with their parents when the letters arrive.

Or don’t arrive, as the case may be.

And the problem is that we can’t even properly prepare for Red Letter Day. We can’t read the letters ahead of time: privacy laws prevent it.

So do the strict time travel rules. One contact—only one—through an emissary, who arrives shortly before rehearsal, stashes the envelopes in the practice binders, and then disappears again. The emissary carries actual letters from the future. The letters themselves are the old-fashioned paper kind, the kind people wrote 150 years ago, but write rarely now. Only the real letters, handwritten, on special paper get through. Real letters, so that the signatures can be verified, the paper guaranteed, the envelopes certified.

Apparently, even in the future, no one wants to make a mistake.

The binders have names written across them so the letter doesn’t go to the wrong person. And the letters are supposed to be deliberately vague.

I don’t deal with the kids who get letters. Others are here for that, some professional bullshitters—at least in my opinion. For a small fee, they’ll examine the writing, the signature, and try to clear up the letter’s deliberate vagueness, make a guess at the socio-economic status of the writer, the writer’s health, or mood.

I think that part of Red Letter Day makes it all a scam. But the schools go along with it, because the counselors (read: me) are busy with the kids who get no letter at all.

And we can’t predict whose letter won’t arrive. We don’t know until the kid stops mid-stride, opens the binder, and looks up with complete and utter shock.

Either there’s a red envelope inside or there’s nothing.

And we don’t even have time to check which binder is which.

***

I had my Red Letter Day thirty-two years ago, in the chapel of Sister Mary of Mercy High School in Shaker Heights, Ohio. Sister Mary of Mercy was a small co-ed Catholic High School, closed now, but very influential in its day. The best private school in Ohio according to some polls—controversial only because of its conservative politics and its willingness to indoctrinate its students.

I never noticed the indoctrination. I played basketball so well that I already had three full-ride scholarship offers from UCLA, UNLV, and Ohio State (home of the Buckeyes!). A pro scout promised I’d be a fifth round draft choice if only I went pro straight out of high school, but I wanted an education.

“You can get an education later,” he told me. “Any good school will let you in after you’ve made your money and had your fame.”

But I was brainy. I had studied athletes who went to the Bigs straight out of high school. Often they got injured, lost their contracts and their money, and never played again. Usually they had to take some crap job to pay for their college education—if, indeed, they went to college at all, which most of them never did.

Those who survived lost most of their earnings to managers, agents, and other hangers’ on. I knew what I didn’t know. I knew I was an ignorant kid with some great ball-handling ability. I knew that I was trusting and naïve and undereducated. And I knew that life extended well beyond thirty-five, when even the most gifted female athletes lost some of their edge.

I thought a lot about my future. I wondered about life past thirty-five. My future self, I knew, would write me a letter fifteen years after thirty-five. My future self, I believed, would tell me which path to follow, what decision to make.

I thought it all boiled down to college or the pros.

I had no idea there would be—there could be—anything else.

You see, anyone who wants to—anyone who feels so inclined—can write one single letter to their former self. The letter gets delivered just before high school graduation, when most teenagers are (theoretically) adults, but still under the protection of a school.

The recommendations on writing are that the letter should be inspiring. Or it should warn that former self away from a single person, a single event, or a one single choice.

Just one.

The statistics say that most folks don’t warn. They like their lives as lived. The folks motivated to write the letters wouldn’t change much, if anything.

It’s only those who’ve made a tragic mistake—one drunken night that led to a catastrophic accident, one bad decision that cost a best friend a life, one horrible sexual encounter that led to a lifetime of heartache—who write the explicit letter.

And the explicit letter leads to alternate universes. Lives veer off in all kinds of different paths. The adult who sends the letter hopes their former self will take their advice. If the former self does take the advice, then the kid who receives the letter from an adult they will never be. The kid, if smart, will become a different adult, the adult who somehow avoided that drunken night. That new adult will write a different letter to their former self, warning about another possibility or committing bland, vague prose about a glorious future.

There’re all kinds of scientific studies about this, all manner of debate about the consequences. All types of mandates, all sorts of rules.

And all of them lead back to that moment, that heart stopping moment that I experienced in the chapel of Sister Mary of Mercy High School, all those years ago.

We weren’t practicing graduation like the kids at Barack Obama High School. I don’t recall when we practiced graduation, although I’m sure we had a practice later in the week.

At Sister Mary of Mercy High School, we spent our Red Letter Day in prayer. All the students started their school days with Mass. But on Red Letter Day, the graduating seniors had to stay for a special service, marked by requests for God’s forgiveness and exhortations about the unnaturalness of what the law required Sister Mary of Mercy to do.

Sister Mary of Mercy High School loathed Red Letter Day. In fact, Sister Mary of Mercy High School, as an offshoot of the Catholic Church, opposed time travel altogether. Back in the dark ages (in other words, decades before I was born), the Catholic Church declared time travel an abomination, antithetical to God’s will.

You know the arguments: If God had wanted us to travel through time, the devout claim, he would have given us the ability to do so. If God had wanted us to travel through time, the scientists say, he would have given us the ability to understand time travel—and oh! Look! He’s done that.

Even now, the arguments devolve from there.

But time travel has become a fact of life for the rich and the powerful and the well-connected. The creation of alternate universes scares them less than the rest of us, I guess. Or maybe the rich really don’t care—they being different from you and I, as renowned (but little read) 20th Century American author F. Scott Fitzgerald so famously said.

The rest of us—the non-different ones—realized nearly a century ago that time travel for all was a dicey proposition, but this being America, we couldn’t deny people the opportunity of time travel.

Eventually time travel for everyone became a rallying cry. The liberals wanted government to fund it, and the conservatives felt only those who could afford it would be allowed to have it.

Then something bad happened—something not quite expunged from the history books, but something not taught in schools either (or at least the schools I went to), and the federal government came up with a compromise.

Everyone would get one free opportunity for time travel—not that they could actually go back and see the crucifixion or the Battle of Gettysburg—but that they could travel back in their own lives.

The possibility for massive change was so great, however, that the time travel had to be strictly controlled. All the regulations in the world wouldn’t stop someone who stood in Freedom Hall in July of 1776 from telling the Founding Fathers what they had wrought.

So the compromise got narrower and narrower (with the subtext being that the masses couldn’t be trusted with something as powerful as the ability to travel through time), and it finally became Red Letter Day, with all its rules and regulations. You’d have the ability to touch your own life without ever really leaving it. You’d reach back into your own past and reassure yourself, or put something right.

Which still seemed unnatural to the Catholics, the Southern Baptists, the Libertarians, and the Stuck in Time League (always my favorite, because they never did seem to understand the irony of their own name). For years after the law passed, places like Sister Mary of Mercy High School tried not to comply with it. They protested. They sued. They got sued.

Eventually, when the dust settled, they still had to comply.

But they didn’t have to like it.

So they tortured all of us, the poor hopeful graduating seniors, awaiting our future, awaiting our letters, awaiting our fate.

I remember the prayers. I remember kneeling for what seemed like hours. I remember the humidity of that late spring day, and the growing heat, because the chapel (a historical building) wasn’t allowed to have anything as unnatural as air conditioning.

Martha Sue Groening passed out, followed by Warren Iverson, the star quarterback. I spent much of that morning with my forehead braced against the pew in front of me, my stomach in knots.

My whole life, I had waited for this moment.

And then, finally, it came. We went alphabetically, which stuck me in the middle, like usual. I hated being in the middle. I was tall, geeky, uncoordinated, except on the basketball court, and not very developed—important in high school. And I wasn’t formidable yet.

That came later.

Nope. Just a tall awkward girl, walking behind boys shorter than I was. Trying to be inconspicuous.

I got to the aisle, watching as my friends stepped in front of the altar, below the stairs where we knelt when we went up for the sacrament of communion.

Father Broussard handed out the binders. He was tall but not as tall as me. He was tending to fat, with most of it around his middle. He held the binders by the corner, as if the binders themselves were cursed, and he said a blessing over each and every one of us as we reached out for our futures.

We weren’t supposed to say anything, but a few of the boys muttered, “Sweet!” and some of the girls clutched their binders to their chests as if they’d received a love letter.

I got mine—cool and plastic against my fingers—and held it tightly. I didn’t open it, not near the stairs, because I knew the kids who hadn’t gotten theirs yet would watch me.

So I walked all the way to the doors, stepped into the hallway, and leaned against the wall.

Then I opened my binder.

And saw nothing.

My breath caught.

I peered back into the chapel. The rest of the kids were still in line, getting their binders. No red envelopes had landed on the carpet. No binders were tossed aside.

Nothing. I stopped three of the kids, asking them if they saw me drop anything or if they’d gotten mine.

Then Sister Mary Catherine caught my arm, and dragged me away from the steps. Her fingers pinched into the nerve above my elbow, sending a shooting pain down to my hand.

“You’re not to interrupt the others,” she said.

“But I must have dropped my letter.”

She peered at me, then let go of my arm. A look of satisfaction crossed her fat face, then she patted my cheek.

The pat was surprisingly tender.

“Then you are blessed,” she said.

I didn’t feel blessed. I was about to tell her that, when she motioned Father Broussard over.

“She received no letter,” Sister Mary Catherine said.

“God has smiled on you, my child,” he said warmly. He hadn’t noticed me before, but this time, he put his hand on my shoulder. “You must come with me to discuss your future.”

I let him lead me to his office. The other nuns—the ones without a class that hour—gathered with him. They talked to me about how God wanted me to make my own choices, how He had blessed me by giving me back my future, how He saw me as without sin.

I was shaking. I had looked forward to this day all my life—at least the life I could remember—and then this. Nothing. No future. No answers.

Nothing.

I wanted to cry, but not in front of Father Broussard. He had already segued into a discussion of the meaning of the blessing. I could serve the church. Anyone who failed to get a letter got free admission into a variety of colleges and universities, all Catholic, some well known. If I wanted to become a nun, he was certain the church could accommodate me.

“I want to play basketball, Father,” I said.

He nodded. “You can do that at any of these schools.”

“Professional basketball,” I said.

And he looked at me as if I were the spawn of Satan.

“But, my child,” he said with a less reasonable tone than before, “you have received a sign from God. He thinks you Blessed. He wants you in his service.”

“I don’t think so,” I said, my voice thick with unshed tears. “I think you made a mistake.”

Then I flounced out of his office, and off school grounds.

My mother made me go back for the last four days of class. She made me graduate. She said I would regret it if I didn’t.

I remember that much.

But the rest of the summer was a blur. I mourned my known future, worried I would make the wrong choices, and actually considered the Catholic colleges. My mother rousted me enough to get me to choose before the draft. And I did.

The University of Nevada in Las Vegas, as far from the Catholic Church as I could get.

I took my full ride, and destroyed my knee in my very first game. God’s punishment, Father Broussard said when I came home for Thanksgiving.

And God forgive me, I actually believed him.

But I didn’t transfer—and I didn’t become Job, either. I didn’t fight with God or curse God. I abandoned Him because, as I saw it, He had abandoned me.

***

Thirty-two years later, I watch the faces. Some flush. Some look terrified. Some burst into tears.

But some just look blank, as if they’ve received a great shock.

Those students are mine.

I make them stand beside me, even before I ask them what they got in their binder. I haven’t made a mistake yet, not even last year, when I didn’t pull anyone aside.

Last year, everyone got a letter. That happens every five years or so. All the students get Red Letters, and I don’t have to deal with anything.

This year, I have three. Not the most ever. The most ever was thirty, and within five years it became clear why. A stupid little war in a stupid little country no one had ever heard of. Twenty-nine of my students died within the decade. Twenty-nine.

The thirtieth was like me, someone who has not a clue why her future self failed to write her a letter.

I think about that, as I always do on Red Letter Day.

I’m the kind of person who would write a letter. I have always been that person. I believe in communication, even vague communication. I know how important it is to open that binder and see that bright red envelope.

I would never abandon my past self.

I’ve already composed drafts of my letter. In two weeks—on my fiftieth birthday—some government employee will show up at my house to set up an appointment to watch me write the letter.

I won’t be able to touch the paper, the red envelope or the special pen until I agree to be watched. When I finish, the employee will fold the letter, tuck it in the envelope and earmark it for Sister Mary of Mercy High School in Shaker Heights, Ohio, thirty-two years ago.

I have plans. I know what I’ll say.

But I still wonder why I didn’t say it to my previous self. What went wrong? What prevented me? Am I in an alternate universe already and I just don’t know it?

Of course, I’ll never be able to find out.

But I set that thought aside. The fact that I did not receive a letter means nothing. It doesn’t mean that I’m blessed by God any more than it means I’ll fail to live to fifty.

It is a trick, a legal sleight of hand, so that people like me can’t travel to the historical bright spots or even visit the highlights of their own past life.

I continue to watch faces, all the way to the bitter end. But I get no more than three. Two boys and a girl.

Carla Nelson. A tall, thin, white-haired blonde who ran cross-country and stayed away from basketball, no matter how much I begged her to join the team. We needed height and we needed athletic ability.

She has both, but she told me, she isn’t a team player. She wanted to run and run alone. She hated relying on anyone else.

Not that I blame her.

But from the devastation on her angular face, I can see that she relied on her future self. She believed she wouldn’t let herself down.

Not ever.

Over the years, I’ve watched other counselors use platitudes. I’m sure it’s nothing. Perhaps your future self felt that you’re on the right track. I’m sure you’ll be fine.

I was bitter the first time I watched the high school kids go through this ritual. I never said a word, which was probably a smart decision on my part, because I silently twisted my colleagues’ platitudes into something negative, something awful, inside my own head.

It’s something. We all know it’s something. Your future self hates you or maybe—probably—you’re dead.

I have thought all those things over the years, depending on my life. Through a checkered college career, an education degree, a marriage, two children, a divorce, one brand new grandchild. I have believed all kinds of different things.

At thirty-five, when my hopeful young self thought I’d be retiring from pro ball, I stopped being a gym teacher and became a full time counselor. A full time counselor and occasional coach.

I told myself I didn’t mind.

I even wondered what would I write if I had the chance to play in the Bigs? Stay the course? That seems to be the most common letter in those red envelopes. It might be longer than that, but it always boils down to those three words.

Stay the course.

Only I hated the course. I wonder: would I have blown my knee out in the Bigs? Would I have made the Bigs? Would I have received the kind of expensive nanosurgery that would have kept my career alive? Or would I have washed out worse than I ever had?

Dreams are tricky things.

Tricky and delicate and easily destroyed.

And now I faced three shattered dreamers, standing beside me on the edge of the podium.

“To my office,” I say to the three of them.

They’re so shell-shocked that they comply.

I try to remember what I know about the boys. Esteban Rellier and J.J. Feniman. J.J. stands for…Jason Jacob. I remembered only because the names were so very old-fashioned, and J.J. was the epitome of modern cool.

If you had to choose which students would succeed based on personality and charm, not on Red Letters and opportunity, you would choose J.J.

You would choose Esteban with a caveat. He would have to apply himself.

If you had to pick anyone in class who wouldn’t write a letter to herself, you would pick Carla. Too much of a loner. Too prickly. Too difficult. I shouldn’t have been surprised that she’s coming with me.

But I am.

Because it’s never the ones you suspect who fail to get a letter.

It’s always the ones you believe in, the ones you have hopes for.

And somehow—now—it’s my job to keep those hopes alive.

***

I am prepared for this moment. I’m not a fan of interactive technology—feeds scrolling across the eye, scans on the palm of the hand—but I use it on Red Letter Day more than any other time during the year.

As we walk down the wide hallway to the administrative offices, I learn everything the school knows about all three students which, honestly, isn’t much.

Psych evaluations—including modified IQ tests—from grade school on. Addresses. Parental income and employment. Extracurriculars. Grades. Troubles (if any reported). Detentions. Citations. Awards.

I already know a lot about J.J. already. Homecoming king, quarterback, would’ve been class president if he hadn’t turned the role down. So handsome he even has his own stalker, a girl named Lizbet Cholene, whom I’ve had to discipline twice before sending to a special psych unit for evaluation.

I have to check on Esteban. He’s above average, but only in the subjects that interest him. His IQ tested high on both the old exam and the new. He has unrealized potential, and has never really been challenged, partly because he doesn’t seem to be the academic type.

It’s Carla who is still the enigma. IQ higher than either boy’s. Grades lower. No detentions, citations, or academic awards. Only the postings in cross country—continual wins, all state three years in a row, potential offers from colleges, if she brought her grades up, which she never did. Nothing on the parents. Address in a middle-class neighborhood, smack in the center of town.

I cannot figure her out in a three-minute walk, even though I try.

I usher them into my office. It’s large and comfortable. Big desk, upholstered chairs, real plants, and a view of the track—which probably isn’t the best thing right now, at least for Carla.

I have a speech that I give. I try not to make it sound canned.

“Your binders were empty, weren’t they?” I say.

To my surprise, Carla’s lower lip quivers. I thought she’d tough it out, but the tears are close to the surface. Esteban’s nose turns red and he bows his head. Carla’s distress makes it hard for him to control his.

J.J. leans against the wall, arms folded. His handsome face is a mask. I realize then how often I’d seen that look on his face. Not quite blank—a little pleasant—but detached, far away. He braces one foot on the wall, which is going to leave a mark, but I don’t call him on that. I just let him lean.

“On my Red Letter Day,” I say, “I didn’t get a letter either.”

They look at me in surprise. Adults aren’t supposed to discuss their letters with kids. Or their lack of letters. Even if I had been able to discuss it, I wouldn’t have.

I’ve learned over the years that this moment is the crucial one, the moment when they realize that you will survive the lack of a letter.

“Do you know why?” Carla asks, her voice raspy.

I shake my head. “Believe me, I’ve wondered. I’ve made up every scenario in my head—maybe I died before it was time to write the letter—”

“But you’re older than that now, right?” J.J. asks, with something of an angry edge. “You wrote the letter this time, right?”

“I’m eligible to write the letter in two weeks,” I say. “I plan to do it.”

His cheeks redden, and for the first time, I see how vulnerable he is beneath the surface. He’s as devastated—maybe more devastated—than Carla and Esteban. Like me, J.J. believed he would get the letter he deserved—something that told him about his wonderful, successful, very rich life.

“So you could still die before you write it,” he said, and this time, I’m certain he meant the comment to hurt.

It did. But I don’t let that emotion show on my face. “I could,” I say. “But I’ve lived for thirty-two years without a letter. Thirty-two years without a clue about what my future holds. Like people used to live before time travel. Before Red Letter Day.”

I have their attention now.

“I think we’re the lucky ones,” I say, and because I’ve established that I’m part of their group, I don’t sound patronizing. I’ve given this speech for nearly two decades, and previous students have told me that this part of the speech is the most important part.

Carla’s gaze meets mine, sad, frightened and hopeful. Esteban keeps his head down. J.J.’s eyes have narrowed. I can feel his anger now, as if it’s my fault that he didn’t get a letter.

“Lucky?” he asks in the same tone that he used when he reminded me I could still die.

“Lucky,” I say. “We’re not locked into a future.”

Esteban looks up now, a frown creasing his forehead.

“Out in the gym,” I say, “some of the counselors are dealing with students who’re getting two different kinds of tough letters. The first tough one is the one that warns you not to do something on such and so date or you’ll screw up your life forever.”

“People actually get those?” Esteban asks, breathlessly.

“Every year,” I say.

“What’s the other tough letter?” Carla’s voice trembles. She speaks so softly I had to strain to hear her.

“The one that says You can do better than I did, but won’t—can’t really—explain exactly what went wrong. We’re limited to one event, and if what went wrong was a cascading series of bad choices, we can’t explain that. We just have to hope that our past selves—you guys, in other words—will make the right choices, with a warning.”

J.J.’s frowning too. “What do you mean?”

“Imagine,” I say, “instead of getting no letter, you get a letter that tells you that none of your dreams come true. The letter tells you simply that you’ll have to accept what’s coming because there’s no changing it.”

“I wouldn’t believe it,” he says.

And I agree: he wouldn’t believe it. Not at first. But those wormy little bits of doubt would burrow in and affect every single thing he does from this moment on.

“Really?” I say. “Are you the kind of person who would lie to yourself in an attempt to destroy who you are now? Trying to destroy every bit of hope that you possess?”

His flush grows deeper. Of course he isn’t. He lies to himself—we all do—but he lies to himself about how great he is, how few flaws he has. When Lizbet started following him around, I brought him into my office and asked him not to pay attention to her.

It leads her on, I say.

I don’t think it does, he says. She knows I’m not interested.

He knew he wasn’t interested. Poor Lizbet had no idea at all.

I can see her outside now, hovering in the hallway, waiting for him, wanting to know what his letter said. She’s holding her red envelope in one hand, the other lost in the pocket of her baggy skirt. She looks prettier than usual, as if she’s dressed up for this day, maybe for the inevitable party.

Every year, some idiot plans a Red Letter Day party even though the school—the culture—recommends against it. Every year, the kids who get good letters go. And the other kids beg off, or go for a short time, and lie about what they received.

Lizbet probably wants to know if he’s going to go.

I wonder what he’ll say to her.

“Maybe you wouldn’t send a letter if the truth hurt too much,” Esteban says.

And so it begins, the doubts, the fears.

“Or,” I say, “if your successes are beyond your wild imaginings. Why let yourself expect that? Everything you do might freeze you, might lead you to wonder if you’re going to screw that up.”

They’re all looking at me again.

“Believe me,” I say. “I’ve thought of every single possibility, and they’re all wrong.”

The door to my office opens and I curse silently. I want them to concentrate on what I just said, not on someone barging in on us.

I turn.

Lizbet has come in. She looks like she’s on edge, but then she’s always on edge around J.J.

“I want to talk to you, J.J.” Her voice shakes.

“Not now,” he says. “In a minute.”

“Now,” she says. I’ve never heard this tone from her. Strong and scary at the same time.

“Lizbet,” J.J. says, and it’s clear he’s tired, he’s overwhelmed, he’s had enough of this day, this event, this girl, this school—he’s not built to cope with something he considers a failure. “I’m busy.”

“You’re not going to marry me,” she says.

“Of course not,” he snaps—and that’s when I know it. Why all four of us don’t get letters, why I didn’t get a letter, even though I’m two weeks shy from my fiftieth birthday and fully intend to send something to my poor past self.

Lizbet holds her envelope in one hand, and a small plastic automatic in the other. An illegal gun, one that no one should be able to get—not a student, not an adult. No one.

“Get down!” I shout as I launch myself toward Lizbet.

She’s already firing, but not at me. At J.J. who hasn’t gotten down.

But Esteban deliberately drops and Carla—Carla’s half a step behind me, launching herself as well.

Together we tackle Lizbet, and I pry the pistol from her hands. Carla and I hold her as people come running from all directions, some adults, some kids holding letters.

Everyone gathers. We have no handcuffs, but someone finds rope. Someone else has contacted emergency services, using the emergency link that we all have, that we all should have used, that I should have used, that I probably had used in another life, in another universe, one in which I didn’t write a letter. I probably contacted emergency services and said something placating to Lizbet, and she probably shot all four of us, instead of poor J.J.

J.J., who is motionless on the floor, his blood slowly pooling around him. The football coach is trying to stop the bleeding and someone I don’t recognize is helping and there’s nothing I can do, not at the moment, they’re doing it all while we wait for emergency services.

The security guard ties up Lizbet and sets the gun on the desk and we all stare at it, and Annie Sanderson, the English teacher, says to the guard, “You’re supposed to check everyone, today of all days. That’s why we hired you.”

And the principal admonishes her, tiredly, and she shuts up. Because we know that sometimes Red Letter Day causes this, that’s why it’s held in school, to stop family annihilations and shootings of best friends and employers. Schools, we’re told, can control weaponry and violence, even though they can’t, and someone, somewhere, will use this as a reason to repeal Red Letter Day, but all those people who got good letters or letters warning them about their horrible drunken mistake will prevent any change, and everyone—the pundits, the politicians, the parents—will say that’s good.

Except J.J.’s parents, who have no idea their son had no future. When did he lose it? The day he met Lizbet? The day he didn’t listen to me about how crazy she was? A few moments ago, when he didn’t dive for the floor?

I will never know.

But I do something I would never normally do. I grab Lizbet’s envelope, and I open it.

The handwriting is spidery, shaky.

Give it up. J.J. doesn’t love you. He’ll never love you. Just walk away and pretend that he doesn’t exist. Live a better life than I have. Throw the gun away.

Throw the gun away.

She did this before, just like I thought.

And I wonder: was the letter different this time? And if it was, how different? Throw the gun away. Is that line new or old? Has she ignored this sentence before?

My brain hurts. My head hurts.

My heart hurts.

I was angry at J.J. just a few moments ago, and now he’s dead.

He’s dead and I’m not.

Carla isn’t either.

Neither is Esteban.

I touch them both and motion them close. Carla seems calmer, but Esteban is blank—shock, I think. A spray of blood covers the left side of his face and shirt.

I show them the letter, even though I’m not supposed to.

“Maybe this is why we never got our letters,” I say. “Maybe today is different than it was before. We survived, after all.”

I don’t know if they understand. I’m not sure I care if they understand.

I’m not even sure if I understand.

I sit in my office and watch the emergency services people flow in, declare J.J. dead, take Lizbet away, set the rest of us aside for interrogation. I hand someone—one of the police officers—Lizbet’s red envelope, but I don’t tell him we looked.

I have a hunch he knows we did.

The events wash past me, and I think that maybe this is my last Red Letter Day at Barack Obama High School, even if I survive the next two weeks and turn fifty.

And I find myself wondering, as I sit on my desk waiting to make my statement, whether I’ll write my own red letter after all.

What can I say that I’ll listen to? Words are so very easy to misunderstand. Or misread.

I suspect Lizbet only read the first few lines. Her brain shut off long before she got to Walk away and Throw away the gun.

Maybe she didn’t write that the first time. Or maybe she’s been writing it, hopelessly, to herself in a continual loop, lifetime after lifetime after lifetime.

I don’t know.

I’ll never know.

None of us will know.

That’s what makes Red Letter Day such a joke. Is it the letter that keeps us on the straight and narrow? Or the lack of a letter that gives us our edge?

Do I write a letter, warning myself to make sure Lizbet gets help when I meet her? Or do I tell myself to go to the draft no matter what? Will that prevent this afternoon?

I don’t know.

I’ll never know.

Maybe Father Broussard was right; maybe God designed us to be ignorant of the future. Maybe He wants us to move forward in time, unaware of what’s ahead, so that we follow our instincts, make our first, best—and only—choice.

Maybe.

Or maybe the letters mean nothing at all. Maybe all this focus on a single day and a single note from a future self is as meaningless as this year’s celebration of the Fourth of July. Just a day like any other, only we add a ceremony and call it important.

I don’t know.

I’ll never know.

Not if I live two more weeks or two more years.

Either way, J.J. will still be dead and Lizbet will be alive, and my future—whatever it is—will be the mystery it always was.

The mystery it should be.

The mystery it will always be.

 

___________________________________________

“Red Letter Day“ is available for one week on this site. The ebook is available on all retail stores, as well as here.

Red Letter Day

Copyright © 2021 by Kristine Kathryn Rusch
First published in Analog Science Fiction and Fact Magazine, September, 2010
Published by WMG Publishing
Cover and Layout copyright © 2021 by WMG Publishing
Cover design by WMG Publishing
Cover art copyright © Szefei/Dreamstime, Ingvar Bjork/Dreamstime

This book is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. All rights reserved. This is a work of fiction. All characters and events portrayed in this book are fictional, and any resemblance to real people or incidents is purely coincidental. This book, or parts thereof, may not be reproduced in any form without permission.

I tend to write a lot of mystery novellas. They’re too long for traditional publishers, which makes them perfect for WMG. We can put the novellas in book form.

Over the last year, a number of you have asked how to get my Derringer-award winning novella, “Catherine The Great,” and while you can get it in last year’s Holiday Spectacular compilation, that’s only available in ebook. Many of you want paper…and I get it. I do too.

So, we decided to put it into paper. And by the time we got to that project, I had also written three other mystery/crime novellas. One is a thriller (Kizzie) and two are more straightforward mysteries. We put all four in a Kickstarter that launches today.

Here’s the video for the Kickstarter. Over the next week, I’ll also share the book trailers with you for the novellas. However, if you’d like to see them now, head to the Kickstarter. They’re all on it, along with a lot of other goodies.

As you can tell, this is one of my favorite things to write. I hope you end up getting the books.

https://kriswrites.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/05/4-Mystery-Novellas-Low-Res.mp4

George has lived a full life as a decorated WWII veteran, high-end attorney, family man.  But the incident that haunts him only took five minutes—five minutes when he shared a Coke with a woman on her way to California, a woman who would die hours later. Murdered. Maybe even by George.

Winner of Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine’s Readers’ Choice Award.

“Details“ is available for one week on this site. The ebook is available on all retail stores, as well as here.

 

Details By Kristine Kathryn Rusch 

No more alcohol, no more steak. In the end, it’s the little things that go, and you miss them like you miss a lover at odd times, at comfort times, at times when you need something small that means a whole lot more.

I’ve been thinking about the little things a lot since my granddaughter drove me to the glass-and-chrome hospital they built on the south side of town. Maybe it was the look the doctor gave me, the one that meant you should’ve listened to me, George. Maybe it was the sight of Flaherty’s, all made over into a diner.

Or maybe it’s the fact that I’m seventy-seven years old and not getting any younger. Every second becomes a detail then. An important one, and I can hear the details ticking away quicker than I would like.

It gets a man to thinking, all those details. I mentioned it to Sarah on the way back, and she said, in that dry way of hers, “Maybe you should write some of those details down.”

So I am.

* * *

I know Sarah wanted me to start with what she considers the beginning: my courting—and winning—of her grandmother. Then she’d want me to cover the early marriage, and of course the politics, all the way to the White House years.

But Flaherty’s got me thinking—details again—and Flaherty’s got me remembering.

They don’t make gas stations like that no more. You know the kind: the round-headed pumps, the Coke machine outside—the kind that dispenses bottles and has a bottle opener built in—and the concrete floor covered with gum and cigarette butts and oil so old it looks like it come out of the ground.

But Flaherty’s hasn’t been a gas station for a long time. For years it was closed up, the pumps gone, plywood over the windows. Then just last summer some kids from Vegas came in, bought the land, filled the pits, and made the place into a diner. For old folks like me, it looks strange—kinda like people being invited to eat in a service station—but everyone else thinks it looks authentic.

It isn’t.

The authentic Flaherty’s exists only in my mind now, and it won’t leave me alone. It never has. And so I’m starting with my most important memory of Flaherty’s—maybe my most important memory period—not because it’s the prettiest or even the best, but because it’s the one my brain sticks on, the one I see when I close my eyes at night and when I wake bleary eyed in the morning. It’s the one I mull over on sunny mornings, or catch myself daydreaming about as I take those walks the doctor has talked me into.

You’d think instead I’d focus on the look in Sally Anne’s eyes the first time I kissed her, or the way that pimply faced German boy moaned when he sank to his knees with my knife in his belly outside of Argentan.

But I don’t.

Instead, I think about Flaherty’s in the summer of 1946, and me fresh home from the war.

* * *

I got home from the war later than most.

Part of that was because of my age, and part of it was that I’d signed up for a second tour of duty, World War II being that kinda war, the kind where a man was expected to fight until the death, not like that police action in Korea, that strange mire we called Vietnam, or that video war them little boys fought in the Gulf.

I came back to McCardle in my uniform. I’d left a scrawny teenager, allowed to sign up because old Doc Elliot wanted to go himself and didn’t want to deny anyone anything, and I’d come back a twenty-five year old who’d killed his share of men, had his share of drunken nights, and slept with women who didn’t even know his name let alone speak his language. I’d seen Europe, even if much of it’d been bombed, and I knew how its food tasted, its people smelled, and its women smiled.

I was somebody different and I wanted the whole world to know.

The whole world, in those days, was McCardle, Nevada. My grandfather’d come west for the Comstock Load, but made his money selling dry goods, and when the Load petered, came to McCardle. He survived the resulting depression, and when the boom hit again around the turn of the century, he doubled his money. My father got into government early on, using the family fortune to control the town, and expected me to do the same.

When I came home, I wasn’t about to spend my whole life in Nevada. I had the GI Bill and a promise of a future, a future I planned on taking.

I had the summer free, and then in September, I’d be allowed to go East. I’d got accepted to Harvard, but I’d met some of those boys, and decided a pricey snobby school like that wasn’t a place for me. Instead, I went to Boston College because I’d heard of it and because it wasn’t as snobby and because it was far away.

It turned out to be an okay choice, but not the one I’d dreamed of. Nothing ever quite turns out like you dream.

I should’ve known that the day I drove into McCardle in ’46, but I didn’t. For years, I’d imagined myself coming back all spit-polished and shiny, the conquering hero. Instead I was covered in the dust that rolled into the windows of my ancient Ford truck, and the sweat that made my uniform cling to my skinny shoulders. The distance from Reno to McCardle seemed twice as long as it should have, and when I hit Clark County, I realized those short European distances had worked their way into my soul.

Back then, Clark County was so different as to be another country. Gambling had been legal since I was a boy, but it hadn’t become the business it is now. Bugsy Siegel’s dream in the desert, the Flamingo, wouldn’t be completed for another year, and while Vegas was going through a population boom the likes of which Nevadans hadn’t seen since the turn of the century, it wasn’t nowhere near Nevada’s biggest city.

McCardle got its share of soldiers and drifters and cons looking for a great break. Since gambling was in the hands of local and regional folks, its effects were different around the state. McCardle’s powers that be, including my father, took one look at Siegel and his ilk and knew them for what they were. Those boys couldn’t buy land, they couldn’t even get no one to talk to them, and they moved on to Vegas, which was farther from California, but much more willing to be bought. Years later, my father would brag that he stared down gangsters, but the truth of it was that the gangsters were looking for a quick buck and they knew that they’d be fighting unfriendlies in McCardle for generations when Vegas would have them for a song.

Nope. We had our casino, but our biggest business was divorces. For a short period after the war, McCardle was the divorce capitol of the US of A.

You sure could recognize the divorce folks. They’d come into town in their fancy cars, wearing too many or too few clothes, and then they’d go to McCardle’s only hotel, built by my grandfather’s dry goods money long about 1902, and they’d cart in enough luggage to last most people a year. Then they’d visit the casino, look for the local watering holes, and attempt to chat up a local or two for the requisite two weeks, and then they’d drive off, marriage irretrievably broken. Some would go back to Reno where they’d sign a new marriage license. Others would go about their business, never to be thought of again.

In those days, Flaherty’s was on the northern-eastern side of town, just at the edge of the buildings where the highway started its long trek toward forever. Now, Flaherty’s is dead center. But in those days, it was the first sign you were coming into civilization, that and the way the city spread before you like a vision. You had about five minutes of steady driving after you left Flaherty’s before you hit the main part of McCardle, and I decided, on that hot afternoon, that five minutes was five too many.

I pulled into Flaherty’s and used one thin dime to buy myself an ice-cold Coca-Cola.

I remember it as if it happened an hour ago: getting out of that Ford, my uniform sticking to my legs, the sweat pouring down my chest and back, the grit of sand in my eyes. I walked past several cars to get to the concrete slab they’d built Flaherty’s on. A bell ting-tinged near me as someone’s tank got filled, and in the cool darkness of the station proper, a little bell pinged before the cash register popped open. Flaherty himself stood behind the register in those days, although like as not by ’46, you’d find him drunk.

The place smelled of gasoline and motor oil. A greasy Philco perched on a metal filing cabinet near the cash register, and it was broadcasting teen idol Frankie Sinatra live, a pack of screaming girls ruining the song. In the bay, a green car was half disassembled, the legs of some poor kid sticking out from under its side as he worked underneath. Another mechanic, a guy named Jed, a tough who’d been a few years behind me in school, leaned into the hood. I remembered Jed real well. Rumor had it he’d knifed an Indian near a roadside stand. I’d stopped him from hitting one of the girls in my class when she’d laughed at him for asking her on a date. After that, Jed and I avoided each other when we could and were coldly polite when we couldn’t.

The Coke bottle—one of the small ones that they don’t make any more—popped out of the machine. I grabbed its cold wet sides, and used the built-in bottle opener to pop the lid. Brown fizz streamed out the top, and I bent to catch as much of it as I could without getting it on my uniform.

The Coke was ice-cold and delicious, even if I was drinking foam. In those days, Coke was sweet and lemony and just about the best non-alcoholic drink money could buy. I finished the bottle in several long gulps, then dug in my pocket for another dime. I hadn’t realized how thirsty I was or how tired; being this close to home brought out every little ache, even the ones I had no idea that I had. I stuck the dime in the machine, and took my second bottle, this time waiting until the contents settled before opening it.

“Hey, soldier. Mind if I have a sip?”

The voice was sultry and sexy and very female. I jumped just a little at the sound. I hadn’t seen anyone besides Flaherty and the grease monkeys inside, even though I had known, on some level, that other folks were around me. I kept a two-fingered grip on the chilly bottle as I looked up.

A woman was leaning against the building. She wore a checked blouse tied beneath her breasts, tight pants that gathered around her calves, and Keds. She finished off an unfiltered cigarette and flicked it with her thumb and forefinger into the sand on the building’s far side. Her hair was a brownish red, her skin so dark it made me wonder if she were a devotee of that crazy new fad that had women lying in the sun all hours trying to get tan. Her eyes were coal-black but her features were delicate, almost as if someone had taken the image from a Dresden doll and changed its coloring to something else entirely.

“Well?” she said. “I’m outta dimes.”

I opened the bottle and handed it to her. She put its mouth between those lips and sucked. I felt a shiver run down my back. For a moment, it felt as if I hadn’t left Italy.

Then she pulled the bottle down, handed it back to me, and wiped the condensation on her thighs. “Thanks,” she said. “I was getting thirsty.”

“That your car in there?” I managed.

She nodded. “It made lots of pretty blue smoke and a helluva groan when I tried to start it up. And here I thought it only needed gas.”

Her laugh was deep and self-deprecating, but beneath it I thought I heard fear.

“How long they been working on it?”

“Most of the day,” she said. “God knows how much it’s going to cost.”

“Have you asked?”

“Sure.” She held out her hand, and I gave the bottle back to her, even though I hadn’t yet taken a drink. “They don’t know either.”

She tipped the bottle back and took another swig. I watched her drink and so did most of the men in the place. Jed was leaning on the car, his face half hidden in the shadows. I could sense rather than see his expression. It was that same flatness I’d seen just before he lit into the girl outside school. I didn’t know if I was causing the look just by being there, or if he’d already made a pass at this woman, and failed.

“You’re not from McCardle,” I said.

She wiped her mouth with the back of her hand, and gave the bottle back to me. “Does it show?” she asked, grinning.

The grin transformed all her strange features, making her into one of the most beautiful women I’d ever seen. I took a sip from the bottle simply to buy myself some time, and tasted her on the glass rim. Suddenly it seemed as if the heat of the day had grown more intense. I drank more than I intended, and pulled the bottle away only when my body threatened to burp the liquid back up.

“You just visiting?” I asked which was the only way I could get the answer I really wanted. She wasn’t wearing a ring; I suspected she was here for a quickie divorce.

“Taking in the sights, starting with Flaherty’s here,” she said. “Anything else I shouldn’t miss?”

I almost answered her seriously before I caught that grin again. “There’s not much to the place,” I said.

“Except a soldier boy, going home,” she said.

“Does it show?” I asked and we both laughed. Then I finished the second bottle, put it in the wooden crate with the first, and flipped her a dime.

“The next one’s on me,” I said, as I made my way back to the Ford.

“You’re the first hospitable person I’ve met here,” she said and I should’ve heard it then, that plea, that subtle request for help.

Instead, I smiled. “I’m sure you’ll meet others,” I said and left.

* * *

Kinda strange I can remember it detail for detail, word for word. If I close my eyes and concentrate, the taste of her mingled with Coke comes back as if I had just experienced it; the way her laugh rasped and the sultry warmth of her voice are just outside my earshot.

Only now the memory has layers: the way I felt it, the way I remembered it at various times in my life, and the understanding I have now.

None of it changes anything.

It can’t.

No matter what, she’s still dead.

* * *

I was asleep when Sheriff Conner showed up at the door at ten a.m. two mornings later. I was usually up with the dawn, but after two nights in my childhood bed, I’d finally found a way to be comfortable. Seems the bed was child-sized, and I had grown several inches in my four years away. The bed was a sign to me that I didn’t have long in my parents’ home, and I knew it. I didn’t belong here anyway. I was an adult full grown, a man who’d spent his time away from home. Trying to fit in around these people was like trying to sleep in my old bed: every time I moved I realized I had grown beyond them.

When Sheriff Conner arrived, my mother woke me with a sharp shake of the shoulder. She frowned at me, as if I had embarrassed her, and then she vanished from my room. I pulled on a pair of khakis that were wrinkled from my overnight case, and combed my hair with my fingers. I grabbed a shirt as I wandered barefoot into the living room.

Sheriff Conner was a big man with skin that turned beet-red in the Nevada sun. His blond hair was cropped so short that the top of his head sunburned. He hadn’t changed since I was a boy. He was still too large for his uniform, and his watch dug red lines into the flesh of his wrist. I always wondered how he could be comfortable in those tight clothes in that heat, but, except for the dots of perspiration around his face, he never seemed to notice.

“You grew some,” he said as the screen door slammed behind my mother.

“Yep,” I said.

“Your folks say you saw action.”

“A bit.”

He grunted and his bright blue eyes skittered away from mine. In that moment, I realized he had been too young for World War I, and too old for this war, and he was one of those men who wanted to serve, no matter what the cause. I wasn’t that kind of man, only I learned it later when I contemplated Korea and the mess we were making there.

“I guess you just got to town,” he said.

“Two days ago.”

“And when you drove in, you stopped at Flaherty’s first, but didn’t get no gas.” His tone had gotten sharper. He was easing into the questions he felt he needed to ask me.

“I was thirsty. It’s a long drive across that desert.”

He smiled then, revealing a missing tooth on his upper left side. “You bought a soda.”

“Two,” I said.

“And shared one.”

So that was it. Something to do with the girl. I stiffened, waiting. Sometimes girls who came onto a man like that didn’t like the rejection. I hadn’t gone looking for her over to the hotel. Maybe she had taken offense and told a lie or two about me. Or maybe her soon-to-be ex-husband had finally arrived and had taken an instant dislike to me. Maybe Sheriff Conner had come to warn me about that.

“You make it your policy to share your drinks with a nigra?”

“Excuse me?” I asked. I could lie now and say I was shocked at his word choice, but this was 1946, long before political correctness came into vogue, almost a decade before the official start of the Civil Rights movement, although the seeds of it were in the air.

No. I wasn’t shocked because of his language. I was shocked at myself. I was shocked that I had shared a drink with a black woman—although in those days, I probably would have called her colored not to give too much offense.

“A whole buncha people saw you talk to her, share a Coke with her, and buy her another one. A few said it looked like there was an attraction. Couple others coulda sworn you was flirting.”

I had been flirting. I hadn’t seen her as black—and yes, back then, it would have made a difference to me. I’ve learned a lot about racial tolerance since, and a lot more about intolerance. I wasn’t an offensive racist in those days, just a passive one. A man who kept to his own side of the street and didn’t mingle, just as he was supposed to do.

I would never have flirted if I had known. No matter how beautiful she was. But that hair, those features all belied what I had been taught. I had thought the darkness of her skin due to tanning not to heredity.

I had seen what I had wanted to see.

Sheriff Conner was watching me think. God knows what kind of expressions had crossed my face, but whatever they were, they weren’t good.

“Well?” he asked.

“Is it against the law now to buy a woman a drink on a hot summer day?” I asked.

“Might be,” he said, “if that woman shows up dead the next day.”

“Dead?” I whispered.

He nodded.

“I never saw her before,” I said.

“So you usually just go up and share a drink with a nigra woman you never met.”

“I didn’t know she was colored,” I said.

He raised his eyebrows at me.

“She was in the shade,” I said and realized how weak that sounded.

The Sheriff laughed. “And all pussy’s the same in the dark, ain’t it?” he said, and slapped my leg. I’d heard worse, much worse, in the army but it didn’t shock me like he just had. I’d never heard Sheriff Conner be crude, although my father always said he was. Apparently the Sheriff was only crude to adults. To children he was the model of decorum.

I wasn’t a child any longer.

“How’d she die?” I asked.

“Blow to the head.”

“At the station?”

“In the desert. Her pants was gone, and that scrap of fabric that passed for a blouse was underneath her.”

The desert. Someone had to take her there. I felt myself go cold.

“I didn’t know her,” I said, and if she had been a white woman, he might have believed me. But in McCardle, in those years and before, a man like me didn’t flirt with—hell, a man like me didn’t talk to—a woman like her.

“Then what was she doing here?” he asked.

“Getting a divorce?”

“Girls like her don’t get a divorce.”

That rankled me, even then. “So what do they do?”

He didn’t answer. “She wasn’t here for no divorce.”

“Have you investigated it?”

“Hell, no. Can’t even find her purse.”‘

“Well, did you trace the license on the car?”

He frowned at me then. “What car?”

“The ones the guys were fixing, the green car. They had it nearly taken apart.”

“And it was hers?”

“That’s what she said.” At least, that was what I thought she said. I suddenly couldn’t remember her exact words, although they would come to me later.

The whole scene would come to me later, like it was something I made up, like a dream that was only half there upon waking and then came, full-blown and unbidden, into the mind.

That your car? I said to her, and she didn’t answer, at least not directly. She didn’t say yes or no.

“Did you check with the boys at the station?” I asked.

“They didn’t say nothing about a car.”

“Did you ask Jed?”

The sheriff frowned at me. I’d forgotten until then that he and Jed were drinking buddies. “Yeah, of course I did.”

“Well, I can’t be the only one to remember it,” I said. “They had it torn apart.”

“Izzat so?” he asked, stroking his chin. “You think that’s important?”

“If it tells you who she is, it is,” I said, a bit stunned at his denseness.

“Maybe,” he said, but he didn’t seem to be thinking of that. He seemed focused on something else altogether. The look that crossed his face was half sad, half worried. Then he heaved himself out of the chair, and left without even a good-bye.

I sat on the sofa, wondering what, exactly, that all meant. I was still shaken by my own blindness, and by the Sheriff’s willingness to accuse me of a crime that seemed impossible to me.

It seemed impossible that a woman that vibrant could be dead.

It seemed impossible that a woman that vibrant had been black.

It seemed impossible, but there it was. It startled me.

I was more shocked at her color than at her death.

And that was the hell of it.

* * *

I tried not to think of it.

I’d learned how to do that during the war—it’s what helped me survive Normandy—and it had been effective during my tour.

But it stopped working about a week later when her family showed up.

They came for the body, and they seemed a lot more out of place than she had. Her father was a big man, the kind most folks in McCardle would have crossed the street to avoid or would have bullied out of fear. Her mother was delicate, with the same Dresden features as her daughter but on much darker skin. The auburn hair didn’t seem to come from either of them.

And with them was her husband. He wore a uniform, like I did, and his eyes were red as if he’d been crying for a long, long time. I saw them come out of the mortuary, the parents with their arms around each other, the husband walking alone.

The husband threw me, and made me even more uncomfortable than I had already been.

I thought she had flirted with me.

I usually didn’t mistake those things.

But, it seemed, I made a whole lot of mistakes in that short half hour I had known her.

They drove out that night with her body in the back of their truck. I knew that because my conscience forced me over to the hotel to talk to them, to ask them about the green car, and to tell them I was sorry.

When I got there, I learned that the only hotel in McCardle—my family’s hotel—didn’t take their kind. Maybe that, more than an assumption, explained the Sheriff’s remark: Girls like her didn’t get a divorce.

Maybe they didn’t, at least not in McCardle, because the town made sure they couldn’t, unless they had some place to stay.

And there weren’t blacks in McCardle then. The blacks didn’t start arriving for another year.

* * *

The next day, I moved, over my mother’s protests, into my own apartment. It was a single room with a hot plate and a small icebox over the town’s only restaurant. I shared a bathroom with three other tenants, and counted myself fortunate to have two windows. The place came furnished, and the Murphy bed was long enough for me, although even with fans I had trouble sleeping. The building kept the heat of the day, and not even the temperature drop after sunset could ease it. On those unbearable summer nights, I lay in tangled sheets, the smell of greasy hamburgers and chicken-fried steak carried on the breeze. I counted it better than being at home.

Especially after the nightmares started.

Strangely they weren’t about her. Nor were they about the war. I didn’t have nightmares about that war for twenty years, not until I started seeing images from Vietnam on television. Then a different set of nightmares came, and I went to the VA where I was diagnosed with a delayed stress reaction and given a whole passel of drugs that I eventually pitched.

No. Those early nightmares were about him. Her husband. The man with the olive green uniform and the red eyes. I knew guys like him. They walked with their backs straight, their faces impassive. They didn’t move unless they had to, and they never talked back, and if they showed emotion, it was because they thought guys like me weren’t looking.

He hadn’t cared about hiding any more. His emotion had been too deep.

And once Sheriff Conner figured out I had nothing to do with it, he’d declared the case closed. Over dinner the night before I left, my father speculated that Conner’d just shown up to show my father who was boss. Mother’d ventured that Conner hoped I was guilty, so it’d bring down the whole power structure of the town.

Instead, I think, it just brought Conner down. He was out of office by the following year, and the year after that he was dead, a victim of a slow-speed single vehicle drunken car crash in the days before seat belts.

I think no one would have known what happened if it hadn’t been for those nightmares. I’d dream in that dry, dry heat of him just standing there, looking at me, eyes red, face impassive. Her body was in the green car beside us, and he would stare at me, as if I knew something, as if I were keeping something from him.

But how could I have known anything? I’d shared a Coke with her and gone on.

I hadn’t even bothered to learn her name.

* * *

In the sixties they called what I was feeling white liberal guilt. Not that I had done anything wrong, mind you, but if I had known what she was—who she was—I would have acted differently. I knew it, and it bothered me.

It almost bothered me more than the fact she was dead.

Although that bothered me too. That, and the dreams. And the green car.

I went to Flaherty’s soon after the dreams started and filled up my tank. I got myself another Coke and I stared at the spot where I had seen her. The shadows were dark there, but not that dark. The air was cool but not that cool, and only someone who was waiting for a car would choose to wait in that spot, on that day, with a real town nearby. She must have been real thirsty to ask me for a drink.

Real thirsty and real scared.

And maybe she took one look at my uniform, and thought I’d be able to help her.

She even tried to ask.

You’re the first hospitable person I’ve met here, she’d said.

I’m sure you’ll meet others.

What she must have thought of that sentence.

How wrong I’d been.

I took my Coke and walked around the place, seeing lots of cars half finished, and even more car parts, but nothing of that particular shade of green.

Her family had taken her home in a truck.

The car was missing.

And as I leaned on the back of that brick building, the bottle cold in my hand, I wondered. Had the mechanics started working on the car because they too hadn’t realized who she was? Had she gotten all the way to Nevada traveling white highways and hiding her darker-than-expected skin under a trail of moxie?

I went into the mechanic’s bay, and Jed was there, putting oil into a 1937 Ford truck that had seen better days. A younger man stood beside him, and I wagered from the cut of his pants and the constant movement of his feet, that he’d been the guy under the car that day.

I leaned against the wall, sipping my Coke, and watched them.

They got quiet when they saw me. I grinned at them. I wasn’t wearing my uniform that day, just a pair of grimy dungarees and a t-shirt. Even so, I was hot and miserable, and probably looked it.

I tilted my bottle toward them in a kinda salute. The younger man, the one I didn’t recognize, nodded back.

“You seen that girl the other day?” I asked. I might have said more. I try not to remember. I can’t believe the language we used then: Japs and niggers and wops; the way we got gypped or jewed down; laughing at the pansies and whistling at the dames. And we didn’t think nothing of it, at least I didn’t. Each word had to be unlearned, just as—I guess—it had to be learned.

Jed put a hand on his friend’s arm, a small subtle movement I almost didn’t see. “Why’re you askin’?” And I could feel it, that old antipathy between us. Every word we’d ever exchanged, every look we had was buried in those words.

He wouldn’t talk to me, not really. He wouldn’t tell me what I needed to know. But his friend might. I had to play that at least.

“I was wondering if she’s living around here.” I said with an intentional leer.

“You don’t know?” the younger asked.

My heart triple-hammered. I knew then that the sheriff hadn’t told anyone he’d come after me. “Know what?”

“They found her in the desert with her face bashed in.”

“Jesus,” I said softly, then whistled for good measure. “What happened?”

“Dunno,” Jed said, his hand squeezing the other boy’s arm. Jed saw my gaze drop to his fingers, and then go back to his face. He grinned, like we were sharing a secret. And I didn’t like what I was thinking.

It seemed simple. Too simple. Impossibly simple. A man couldn’t just sense that another man had done something wrong. He needed proof.

“Too damn bad,” I said, taking another swig of my Coke. “I woulda liked a piece of that.”

“You and half the town,” the younger one said, and laughed nervously.

Jed didn’t laugh with him, but stared at me with narrowed green eyes. “I can’t believe you didn’t hear of it,” he said. “The whole town’s been talking.”

I shrugged. “Maybe I wasn’t listening.” I set the Coke down beside the radio and scanned the bay. “What’re they gonna do with that car of hers? Sell it?”

“Ain’t no one found it,” the younger boy said.

“She drove it outta here?” I asked. “She said it seemed hopeless.”

Finally Jed grinned. He actually looked merry, as if we were talking about the weather instead of a murder. “Women always say that.”

I didn’t smile back. “What was wrong with it?”

“You name it,” the younger one said. “She’d driven that thing to death.”

I knew one more question would be too many, but I couldn’t stop myself. “She say why?”

“You gotta reason for all this interest, George?” Jed asked. “You can’t get nothing from her now.”

“Guess not,” I said. “Just seems curious somehow. Woman comes here, to this town, and ends up dead.”

“Don’t seem curious to me,” Jed said. “She didn’t belong here.”

I stared at him a moment. “People don’t belong a lotta places but that don’t mean they need to die.”

He shrugged and turned away, ending the conversation. I picked up my Coke bottle. It had gotten warm already. I took another sip, letting the sweet lemony taste and the carbonation make up for the lack of coolness.

Then I went outside.

What did I want with all this? To get rid of some guilt? To make the dreams go away?

I didn’t know, and it angered me.

“Hey.” It was the younger one. He’d come out into the sun, ostensibly to smoke. He lit up a Chesterfield and offered me one. I took it to be companionable, and we lit off the same match.

Jed peeked out of the bay and watched for a moment, then disappeared, apparently satisfied that nothing was going to be said, probably thinking he had the kid under his thumb. Only Jed was wrong.

The younger one spoke softly, so softly I had to strain to hear, and I was standing next to him. “She said she was driving from Mississippi to California to join her husband. Said he’d got back from Europe and got a job in some plant in Los Angeles. Said they’d make good money there, but they didn’t have it now, and could we do as little as possible on the car, so that it’d be cheap.”

“Did you?” I asked. And when he looked confused, I added for clarification, “Keep it cheap?”

He took a long drag off the cigarette, and let the smoke out his nose. “We didn’t finish,” he said.

I felt that triple-hammer again. A little bit of adrenaline, something to let me know that I was going somewhere. “So where’s the car?”

“We left it in the bay. Next morning, we come back and it’s gone. Jed, there, he cusses her out, says all them people are like that, you can’t trust ’em for nothing, and that was that. Till the sheriff showed up, saying she was dead.”

The car I saw couldn’t have been driven, and the woman I saw couldn’t have fixed it. She would not have stopped here if she could.

“You left the car in pieces?” I asked. “And it was gone the next day? Someone drove it out of here?”

He shrugged. “Guess they finished it.”

“That would’ve taken some know-how, wouldn’t it?”

“Some,” he said. He flicked his cigarette butt onto the sandy gravel. I glanced up. Jed was staring us from the bay. I felt the hair on the back of my neck rise.

I took another drag off my cigarette and watched a heat shimmer work its way down the highway. The boy started walking away from me.

“Where was she?” I asked. “When you left? Where was she?”

And I think he knew then that my interest wasn’t really casual. Up until that point, he could have pretended it was. But at that moment, he knew.

“I dunno,” he said, and his voice was flat.

“Sure you do,” I said. I spoke softly so Jed couldn’t overhear me.

The man looked at my face. His had turned bright red, and beads of sweat I hadn’t noticed earlier were dotting his skin. “I—left her outside. Near the Coke machine.”

With a car that didn’t run, and no place to take her in for the night.

“Did you offer to give her a lift somewhere?”

He shook his head.

“Was the station still open when you left?”

“For another hour,” he said.

“Did you tell the sheriff this?”

He shook his head again.

“Why not?”

He glanced at Jed, who had crossed his arms and was leaning against the bay doors. “I didn’t think it was none of his business,” the boy whispered.

“You didn’t think, or Jed there, he didn’t think.”

“Neither of us,” the boy said. “Jed told her she could sleep in there by the car. But it woulda been an oven, even during the night. I think she knew that.”

“Is that where she slept?”

“I dunno.” This time the boy did not meet my gaze. Sweat ran off his forehead, onto his chin, and dripped on his shirt. He didn’t know, and he was sorry.

And so was I.

If I was going to pursue this logically, then I had to think logically. And it seemed to me that whoever killed the girl had known about the car. I couldn’t believe she would have talked to anyone else—I suspected she only spoke to me because I was in uniform. And if I made that assumption, then the only other people who would have known about her, about the car, about the entire business were the people who worked the station.

“Who was working that night?” I asked.

“Mr. Flaherty,” he said.

Mr. Flaherty. Mac Flaherty, whom I’d known since I was a boy. He was a hard decent man who expected work out of his employees, payment from his customers, and good money for a job well done. I’d seen Mac Flaherty in his station, at church, and at school getting his son, and I couldn’t believe he had killed someone.

But then, I had. I had killed a lot of boys overseas, and I would have killed more if Hitler hadn’t proved he was a coward and did the world a favor by dying by his own hand.

And the Mac Flaherty who ran the station now wasn’t the same man as the one I’d known. I’d learned that much in my few short days in McCardle.

A shiver ran down my back. Then I headed inside, looking for Mac Flaherty, and finding him.

* * *

Mac Flaherty was drunk. Not falling down, noticeable drunk, but his daily drunk, the kind that made a man a bit blurry around the edges, kept him from feeling the pain of day-to-day living, and kept him working a job he no longer liked.

Once Flaherty’d loved his work. It had been obvious in the booming way he’d greet new customers, in the smile he wore every day whether going or coming from work.

But then he left for the war, like I did, only he came back in ’43 minus three fingers on his left hand to find his wife shacking up with the local undertaker, and a half-sibling for his son baking in the oven. The wife, not him, took advantage of the McCardle’s divorce laws, and Flaherty was never the same. She and the undertaker left that week, and apparently, Flaherty never saw his kid again.

I went inside the service station’s main area, and the smell of beer mixed with the stench of gasoline. Flaherty was clutching a can, staring at me.

“You harassing the kid?” he asked.

“No,” I said, even though I felt that wasn’t entirely true. “I was just curious about the woman who died.”

“She something to you?” Flaherty asked.

“Only met her the once,” I said.

“Then what’s the interest?”

“I don’t know,” I said, and we both seemed surprised by my honesty. “Your boy says he left her sitting outside. That true?”

Flaherty shrugged. “I never saw her. Not when I locked up.”

“What about her car?”

“Her car,” he repeated dully. “Her car. I had it towed.”

“At night?”

“That morning,” he said. “When it became clear she skipped out on me.”

“Towed where?” I asked.

“My place,” he said. “For parts.”

And those parts had probably already been taken, along with anything incriminating. I didn’t say that aloud, though.

“You have any idea who killed her?” I asked.

“What do you care?” he asked, gaze suddenly back on me, and sharper than I would have expected.

I thought of Jed then, Jed as I’d seen him that day, staring at me, that flat look on his face. “If Jed killed her—”

“I didn’t see Jed touch nobody,” Flaherty said. “And I wouldn’t say if I did.”

I froze. “Why not?”

Flaherty frowned, his eyes small and bloodshot. “He’s the best mechanic I got.”

“But if he killed someone—”

“He didn’t kill no one.”

“How can you be so sure?”

“What happened, happened,” Flaherty said. “Let’s not go wrecking more lives.” Then he grabbed the bottle of beer he’d been nursing, and took a sip, his crippled hand looking unbalanced in the grimy afternoon light.

* * *

By the time I got back with the sheriff, Jed was gone. Not that it mattered. The case went down on the books as unsolved. What else could it have been with the other kid denying he’d even talked to me, and Mac Flaherty swearing that the girl’d been fine when he drove by at midnight, fine and unwilling to leave her post near the Coke machine. He’d winked at the sheriff when he’d told that story, and the sheriff seemed to accept it all.

I went to Jed’s apartment, and found the door open, all his clothes missing, and a neighbor who said that Jed had run in, not even bothering to change, and packed a bag, took some money from a jam jar he’d had under his bed, and disappeared down the highway, never to be seen again.

He’d been driving one of Flaherty’s rebuilds.

When I found out, I told the sheriff, and the sheriff’d been unimpressed. “Man can leave town if’n he wants,” the sheriff said. “Don’t mean he killed nobody.”

No, I suppose it didn’t. But it seemed like a huge coincidence to me, the girl getting beaten to death, Jed watching us talk, and then, when he knew I’d left for the law, disappearing like he did.

It was just the sheriff saw no percentage in pursing the case. It’d been interesting when he could come after me because of my family, because of the power we had, but it soon lost its appeal when the girl’s family took her away. Took her away, and pointed the finger at a good local boy, a mechanic who could down some beers and tell great jokes, who’d gone off to serve his country same as the rest of us. Jed had had worth to the sheriff; the girl had had none.

* * *

I don’t know why he killed her. We’ll never know now. Jed disappeared but good, and wasn’t heard from until five years ago, when what was left of his family got an obituary mailed to them from somewhere in Canada. He’d died not saying a word—

* * *

Sorry. Got interrupted there. Was going to come back to it this afternoon, but things changed this morning.

About nine a.m., I walked into my front room, buttoning one of my best shirts in preparation for yet another meeting with that pretty doctor down at the glass-and-chrome White Elephant, when I saw Sarah sitting in my best chair, feet on the footstool my granny hand-stitched, and all forty hand-written pages of this memory in her hands. She was reading raptly which I found flattering for the half second it took to realize what she was doing. I didn’t want any one to read this stuff until I was dead, and here was my granddaughter staring at the pages as if they were something outta Stephen King.

She looked up at me, her heart-shaped face so like Sally Anne’s at that age that it made my breath catch, and said, “So you think you’re some bad guy for failing this woman.”

I shook my head, but the movement didn’t stop her.

“You,” she says, “who’ve done more for people—black, white or purple—than anyone else in this town. You, who went and opened that civil rights law practice back east, who fought every racist law and every racist politician you could find. For godssake, Gramps, you marched with Dr. King, and you were a presidential advisor on Civil Rights. You’re the kinda man who shows the rest of us how to live our lives, and you’re feeling like this? You’re being silly.”

“You don’t understand,” I said.

“Damn straight,” she said, and I winced, as I always do, at the sailor language she uses. “You shouldn’t be mulling over this any more. You did what you could, and more, it seems, than anyone else.”

“And even that wasn’t enough.”

“Sometimes,” she said, “that happens, Gramps. You know that. Hell, you taught it to me.”

Seems I did. But that wasn’t the point either, and I didn’t know how to tell her. So I didn’t. I took the papers from her, put them back on my desk where they belonged, and let her drive me to the doctor so that they both could feel useful.

And all the way there and all the way back, I thought about how to make my point so that girls like her would understand. You see, the world is so different now, and yet it’s still the same. Just the faces change, and a few of the rules.

These days, Jed would’ve been arrested, or the sheriff would’ve been bounced out of office, or the press’d make some huge scandal over the whole thing.

But it wouldn’t be that simple, because pretty women don’t approach strange men any more, especially if the strange men are in uniform, and pretty women certainly don’t wait alone in gas stations while their cars are being repaired.

But they’re still dying, because they’re women or because they’re black or because they’re in the wrong place at the wrong time, and there’s so damn many of them we just shrug and move on, shaking our heads as we go.

But that isn’t my point. My point is this:

I wouldn’t have marched with Dr. King if it weren’t for that poor girl, and I wouldn’t have made it my life’s work to stamp out all the things that cause the condition I found myself in that hot afternoon, the condition that would have led me to ignore a girl if I’d noticed the true color of her skin.

Because I think I know why she died that day. I think she died because she’d flirted with me.

And that just wasn’t done between girls like her and men like me.

Jed wouldn’t have taken her to the desert if she were white. He would’ve thought she had family, she had someone who missed her. He might have roughed her up for talking to me. He might have had a few words with me.

But he didn’t. I did something unspeakable to people of our generation, and he saw a way to get back at me. If I’d talked to her, then I’d want to do what was probably done to her before she died. And if she’d fought, then I’d have bashed her. That’s what the sheriff was thinking. That’s what Jed wanted him to think.

And all because of who she was, and who I was, and who Jed was.

The sad irony is that if I’d kept my place, she’d be alive, and because I didn’t, she was dead. That had bothered me then, and bothers me now. Seems a man—any man—should be able to talk to whomever he wants. But what bothered me worse was the fact that when I learned, on the same morning, that she was black and that she was dead, it bothered me more that she was black and that I had talked to her.

It just wasn’t done.

And I was more worried about my own blindness than I was about one woman’s life.

Since that day, hers is the face I see every morning when I wake up, and every night when I doze. And, if God gave me the chance to relive any day in my life, it’d be that one, not, strangely, the day I enlisted or the day I deliberately misunderstood that German kid asking for clemency, but the day I inadvertently led a pretty girl to her death.

White liberal guilt maybe.

Or maybe it was the last straw, somehow.

Or maybe it was the fact that I had so much trouble learning her name.

Learning her name was harder than learning the identity of the man who killed her. It took me three more weeks and a bribe to the twelve-year-old son of the owner of the funeral home.

Not that her name really mattered. To me or to anyone else.

But it mattered to her, and to that man in uniform with the red, red eyes. Because it was the only bit of her that couldn’t be sold for parts. The only bit she could call completely hers.

Lucille Johnson.

Not quite as exotic as I would have thought, or as fitting to a woman as beautiful as she was. But it was hers. And in the end, it was all she had.

It was a detail.

An important detail.

And one I’ll never forget.

 

___________________________________________

“Details“ is available for one week on this site. The ebook is available on all retail stores, as well as here.

Details

Copyright © 2018 by Kristine Kathryn Rusch
First published in Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine, December 1998
Published by WMG Publishing
Cover and Layout copyright © 2018 by WMG Publishing
Cover design by WMG Publishing
Cover art copyright © Amuzica/Dreamstime

This book is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. All rights reserved. This is a work of fiction. All characters and events portrayed in this book are fictional, and any resemblance to real people or incidents is purely coincidental. This book, or parts thereof, may not be reproduced in any form without permission.

You’ve probably noticed that we really upped our design game at WMG Publishing in the past year. Some of that is due to the new designers we’ve brought on board, but some of it is because Stephanie Writt has a lot of design experience using modern tools like Canva.

In combination with Dean, whose done more book covers than anyone I know, they’re working together to come up with really pretty books.

Every Friday, they do a seminar together called Writer Direct, which helps writers go directly to the readers, through indie publishing and marketing. (It’s open to anyone for a monthly fee.) For the past six months, the writers who attend have asked Dean and Steph to do a workshop on covers.

Once they started brainstorming, they realized they could do workshops on covers and interiors and Kickstarter.

These courses are designed to take a writer who has never designed anything and have them making gorgeous books by the end of the class. I’m their guinea pig. (Dyslexic girl. If they can get me to do it, anyone can do it.)

The nice thing about these, though, is that there are design tricks in the new programs that long-time designers don’t know. So there’s an entire section for people who have been making covers and designing books for years.

The classes won’t start for a few weeks, but we’re offering an early bird sale on these, which is buy two and get the third free. (In other words, save $500.) Or just buy one and save $100 off the price. Find out more information here.

When you follow that link, you’ll see another class from me. I’m doing short classes on techniques that I can teach quickly. After finishing the difficult senses—smell and taste (which I taught together)—those who came to the webinar asked for similar classes on the remaining three senses.

So, I’m going from hardest to easiest. The next one is on touch. It starts right after I finish the in-person Gothic workshop next week.

Finally, Dean and I are finishing up the next installment in The Kris & Dean Show Goes To the Movies. We’re doing Ocean’s 11 (the 2001 version). I’m the one who picked that because I’ve been meaning to examine that film very closely.

Turns out it’s even more useful than I thought it would be. This class will teach you all about how to feed information to a reader so that they don’t notice the important stuff until you want them to. It’ll also show you how to establish characters quickly, and how to handle an extremely complicated storyline with verve and clarity.

We’re having a great time doing this one, and it’ll go live next week.

So take a look and see if there’s a class for you.

Like to read? Like to knit? Like socks? Like fantasy?

Then this is the Kickstarter project for you.

Here, in a nutshell, is what it is:

Socks & Sorcery will have four themed collector’s boxes, each delivered three times over the course of a year. Every box contains:

•  A Surprise fantasy novel in the format of your choice (ebook, paperback or audiobook)
•  100g skein of exclusively dyed fingering weight yarn inspired by something from the book
• A 20g contrasting mini skein perfect for crafting heels and toes
• Delightful surprises to enhance your reading and crafting journey. 

Mix and match any of the four themes—Dragons, Familiars, Witches and Vampires, or Faeries—or get them all for a box delivered each month for a year!

There are lots of great writers contributing books to this project including T. Thorn Coyle, Anthea Sharp, Leslie Claire Walker, and Thomas K. Carpenter. The first book in my Fey series, Sacrifice, is also a part of the project.

This project is a lot of fun, and I’m pleased to take part in it. I hope you join us!

I do most of my business writing on Patreon these days, but roughly once per month, I’ll put a post for free on this website. This post initially went live on my Patreon page on March 30, 2025.  If you go to Patreon, you’ll find other posts like this one.

Putting Yourself Out There

I’m gearing back up to return to the university in the fall. After a heck of a couple of years, I’m resuming my very slow attempt to get a few extra college degrees. Mostly, it’s an excuse to listen to people much younger than myself learn cool stuff, and an excuse to listen to people somewhat younger than myself share their expertise.

I get inspired by all of that.

I’m searching class schedules and realizing that my Spanish has gotten rusty again, so there is probably a summertime online refresher in the complicated tenses on the horizon. Even though, really, using the proper tense is not my problem so much as finding the correct vocabulary word. As in any word that might suit in that circumstance. The vocabulary was the first thing to flee my brain in the hiatus.

The thing that fascinates me the most, though, is watching the theater kids, particularly those who are (at 18, 19, or 20) convinced they’re going to be Actors! (and yes, the exclamation point is there for a reason). Most won’t be, not because they’re not good enough, but because they don’t listen well and they already think they’re God’s gift to the profession.

Mostly, I watch the ones who are insecurely secure in their dreams. These kids know exactly what they want in their lives, but they’re not sure they’re good enough to get there, so they work extra hard to figure out where they should be.

Sometimes it is not where they expect to be. In the theater department in particular, they have to take courses in all aspects of theater, and they sometimes learn that they love a part of theater that they hadn’t expected to like at all.

Surprisingly enough to my younger self, the one who didn’t have the courage to follow her musical abilities into a music degree or to even walk into the theater department at the University of Wisconsin, there are a lot of introverts in theater. Some of those introverts are writers, yes, but many go onstage and perform. Most, in fact, because they like being someone else in front of a group. It’s safer for them.

I get safe. It makes sense. I also get the fear of doing something revealing in front of a crowd. Mostly, that fear is gone for me now. Years of public speaking and talking on panels at sf conventions eased my mind.

Still, I was pretty shocked when I learned that a lot of actors and musicians suffer severe stage fright—people you’ve all heard of. If they have to go onstage, they sit in the dressing room and shake, or, in some cases, puke, because they’re so scared.

Had I known that…well, I doubt I would have done it, because puking is not something I voluntarily do, even for art…but it certainly would have eased my mind about what for me is relatively minor stage fright (in comparison to what these folks have).

Really, though, it’s what they are willing to do for their dreams and their art. They put themselves out there. More importantly, they figure out how to put themselves out there.

Every year, I have a conversation with at least one of my writing students who is terrified for some reason I never probe of putting their work in front of an audience. It always boils down to the fact that they’re afraid of being seen.

Sidebar from a nearly 65-year-old person who has worked in the arts her entire life: You are never seen. Not in your entirety. You may reveal all of your secrets and no one will care. Or they’ll comment on the portrayal of something minor, like the cat, and kvetch about that. It’s disappointing…and freeing.

 

However, the fear of being seen is a real and crippling fear, stopping a lot of prose writers and poets from following their dreams. Writers, unlike actors and musicians, can hide from the world. You can use a pen name, set up a legal entity that doesn’t use your real name (in an obvious manner), and never let your picture out into the world.

You can hide and publish your work. That’s the great thing about being a writer.

Usually when a writer figures out their own personal workaround, they put their work on the market, whatever it means for them.

I had one of those discussions this past week with a couple of different writers, some in person, one online, and when I photo-bombed the Writers’ Block webinar on Wednesday.

After that moment on the webinar, I spent a few hours thinking about how universal that fear is among writers. I’ve been in this business almost fifty years now, and I’ve seen it every year.

Then Dean and I watched a little bit of The Voice. We often watch something to rest our poor brains, usually at dinner. We’ve moved away from news (since there’s no way that will relax anyone), and gone to documentaries and The Voice.

We usually watch a segment or two and then go back to whatever we were doing. It will take us days to watch an entire 2-hour episode.

So that Wednesday night, we watched two members of Michael Bublé’s team duet on a song he wrote, called “Home.” Most of you know it as a super hit for Blake Shelton, but Bublé wrote the song and released it first.

Before the battle, Bublé talked a bit about writing the song. I can’t find the clip for that (mostly because I’m lazy, but also because it’s not that relevant), but I did find the one that caught my attention.

It got me thinking, and I went up to my office and made a list.

Most people who work in the arts realize that their work has to be put out into the world.

• People who write music must perform that music to sell that song/sonata/whatever. They may be terrible singers. They might be shy as hell. But they need to make, at minimum, a demo tape.

Often they perform their own work, in some kind of concert, and it is that work that ends up catapulting them into whatever level of fame they will reach.

And then, partly because of the vagaries of the (exceedingly complex) music copyright laws, they may hear someone else cover their song. They might be like John Legend, who has said on The Voice that he cannot listen to a cover of one of his songs fairly. Or they might be like Bublé who not only assigned the song, but was honored by the way the singers performed it.

• People who write plays write them with production in mind. What is the point of writing a play if it’s just going to languish on your desk? The problem, though, with writing a play is that when it is performed, there will be an area that the performers cannot do or cannot say.

In early drafts of a play, the playwright will have to be nearby to do some kind of work to smooth out that section. Sometimes it’s because the star is a doofus and can’t say a word with more than two syllables, but mostly it’s because that section of the show, when performed in previews, did not work. Neil Simon deals with this a lot in his autobiography Rewrites.

• People who write screenplays know that they’re writing something that will be performed as well. I had a very famous writer friend who wrote the wordiest damn screenplays ever and had, in his contract, a clause that said not a word could be touched.

After his early years in Hollywood (when he didn’t have enough clout to have that stupid contract), he rarely sold a screenplay and when he did, it was a charity sale from a friend who would buy the screenplay so that the writer could retain his Writers Guild membership. (And then the charity friend would do a shooting script.)

• Artists know that their paintings or photographs will be displayed or used on covers or put on t-shirts and prints and everything else.

Even the lowest of the low, graffiti “artists,” the ones who deface buildings, understand that their art needs to be seen. (I’m grumpy about graffiti these days since Vegas has a lot of wall murals all over the city—and the freakin’ graffiti “artists” will deface them. Grrr. I hate people who deface other people’s art.)

• Even young poets these days understand that they might have to get up in front of a crowd at a poetry slam and declaim their poem.
• And let’s not talk about comedians, who are also writers, who get in front of a crowd, and risk bombing night after night after night. Dean and I saw one of George Carlin’s shows in his last years, and Carlin was testing material so new that he was holding paper torn from a notepad.

Some of it was funny. Much of it was not.

Fiction writers—people who write novels and short stories—are the only artists I know who expect someone else to publish their work. Fiction writers, particularly those who are traditionally published, believe that all they have to do is write it, and everyone will flock to their feet.

That’s an ingrained attitude, and a hard one to fight. Heck, a lot of these writers are worried when they decide to give a copy of their manuscript to an editor at a book publishing house or (worse) an agent.

Writers do not expect to have their work in the public view, and often fear it.

I’m not sure why this is. I think it’s just part of the culture.

There are movies that show writers at work, and someone else dragging that “brilliant” manuscript off the writer’s desk. Or the writer “gets discovered” in an English class (never happened when I was in school). Or someone else mailed off their manuscript.

That myth goes hand in hand with the idea that writing should be hard and writers should suffer while doing it. That myth also goes with the idea that anything written fast is terrible and anything labored over is brilliant. And that myth goes with the idea that being prolific is a sin. (Tell that to Charles Dickens and William Shakespeare.)

Indie writers have a similar problem, but it’s couched in other terms. I don’t want to learn how to publish. That’s going to be hard. It’ll take too much money or I can’t do covers or…or…

Okay, I want to reply, whatever roadblocks you want to set up for your work, go ahead.

But real artists—be they musicians or painters or (yes) writers—need to have their work seen. They need to figure out how to get on that stage despite their stage fright and put their art in front of an audience.

Otherwise the art will be destroyed when they die, tossed out with the trash or deleted off their computers.

Oh…and let’s talk “covers” for a minute. Blake Shelton’s version of “Home” is very different from Bublé’s version, which is different from the duet that aired on The Voice this past week.

If you’re lucky as a writer, and if you put yourself out there, at some point, someone will want to do make another piece of art using yours as inspiration. Maybe a movie, maybe a TV show, maybe a dramatic reading or an audio book.

That’s a “cover” for lack of a better term. (It really is a derivative work, and it does fall in a different place in the copyright law, but go with me on this for a minute.) Instead of being all protective and saying that you must control all things, say yes…if the contract terms are good.

That’s all.

A singer doesn’t have to get permission to cover a song. I can sing “Home” badly in front of an audience if I want to, but if I get paid for it, I need to let the songwriter know that I’m going to be covering the song. The songwriter cannot say no.

It gets complicated after that. (Okay, it’s already complicated.) But implied in all of this is that the music needs to get in front of an audience. The play will be performed. The screenplay will become the basis for a movie. The painting will hang on a gallery wall.

What makes writer-artists any different? Why should we fight so hard to create something and then be afraid to put it in front of an audience. Particularly since we’ll never see that audience. We don’t have to hear from them either, if we keep our email private and don’t go on social media and don’t read reviews.

What makes fiction writers so dang delicate? Every artist has fears. All of us do. If we want to make a living at our art, we learn to overcome the fear.

It may take a dozen workarounds. It might mean the writing equivalent of puking in the bathroom before stepping on the stage. But if you value your own work and your own dreams, you learn how to get past whatever is stopping you.

Just like other performers do.

“Putting Yourself Out There,” copyright © 2025 by Kristine Kathryn Rusch. Picture of Gavin is there because, despite appearances, he’s terrified of putting himself out there.

 

After receiving a great shock, Grace, a CPA who always lived a cautious life, decides to sell her business and move west, not realizing that the man who bought her business deceived her. Her departure looks like guilt, and suddenly Grace, who only wants peace and quiet, finds herself with a price on her head.

Included in the World’s Finest Mystery and Crime Stories, “Cowboy Grace,” also received an Edgar Award nomination for Best Short Story of the year.

“Cowboy Grace“ is available for one week on this site. The ebook is available on all retail stores, as well as here.

 

Cowboy Grace By Kristine Kathryn Rusch 

“Every woman tolerates misogyny,” Alex said. She slid her empty beer glass across the bar, and tucked a strand of her auburn hair behind her ear. “How much depends on how old she is. The older she is the less she notices it. The more she expects it.”

“Bullshit.” Carole took a drag on her Virginia Slim, crossed her legs, and adjusted her skirt. “I don’t tolerate misogyny.”

“Maybe we should define the word,” Grace said, moving to the other side of Carole. She wished her friend would realize how much the smoking irritated her. In fact, the entire night was beginning to irritate her. They were all avoiding the topic du jour: the tiny wound on Grace’s left breast, stitches gone now, but the skin still raw and sore.

“Mis-ah-jenny.” Carole said, as if Grace were stupid. “Hatred of women.”

“From the Greek,” Alex said. “Misos or hatred and gyne or women.”

“Not,” Carole said, waving her cigarette as if it were a baton, “misogamy, which is also from the Greek. Hatred of marriage. Hmm. Two male misos wrapped in one.”

The bartender, a diminutive woman dressed wearing a red and white cowgirl outfit, complete with fringe and gold buttons, snickered. She set down a napkin in front of Alex and gave her another beer.

“Compliments,” she said, “of the men at the booth near the phone.”

Alex looked. She always looked. She was tall, busty, and leggy, with a crooked nose thanks to an errant pitch Grace had thrown in the 9th grade, a long chin and eyes the color of wine. Men couldn’t get enough of her. When Alex rebuffed them, they slept with Carole and then talked to Grace.

The men in the booth near the phone looked like corporate types on a junket. Matching gray suits, different ties—all in a complimentary shade of pink, red, or cranberry—matching haircuts (long on top, styled on the sides), and differing goofy grins.

“This is a girl bar,” Alex said, shoving the glass back at the bartender. “We come here to diss men, not to meet them.”

“Good call,” Carole said, exhaling smoke into Grace’s face. Grace agreed, not with the smoke or the rejection, but because she wanted time with her friends. Without male intervention of any kind.

“Maybe we should take a table,” Grace said.

“Maybe.” Carole crossed her legs again. Her mini was leather, which meant that night she felt like being on display. “Or maybe we should send drinks to the cutest men we see.”

They scanned the bar. Happy Hour at the Oh Kaye Corral didn’t change much from Friday to Friday. A jukebox in the corner, playing Patty Loveless. Cocktail waitresses in short skirts and ankle boots with big heels. Tin stars and Wild West art on the walls, unstained wood and checkered tablecloths adding to the effect. One day, when Grace had Alex’s courage and Carole’s gravely voice, she wanted to walk in, belly up to the bar, slap her hand on its polished surface, and order whiskey straight up. She wanted someone to challenge her. She wanted to pull her six-gun and have a stare-down, then and there. Cowboy Grace, fastest gun in the West. Or at least in Racine on a rainy Friday night.

“I don’t see cute,” Alex said. “I see married, married, divorced, desperate, single, single, never-been-laid, and married.”

Grace watched her make her assessment. Alex’s expression never changed. Carole was looking at the men, apparently seeing whether or not she agreed.

Typically, she didn’t.

“I dunno,” she said, pulling on her cigarette. “Never-Been-Laid’s kinda cute.”

“So try him,” Alex said. “But you’ll have your own faithful puppy dog by this time next week, and a proposal of marriage within the month.”

Carole grinned and slid off the stool. “Proposal of marriage in two weeks,” she said. “I’m that good.”

She stubbed out her cigarette, grabbed the tiny leather purse that matched the skirt, adjusted her silk blouse and sashayed her way toward a table in the middle.

Grace finally saw Never-Been-Laid. He had soft brown eyes, and hair that needed trimming. He wore a shirt that accented his narrow shoulders, and he had a laptop open on the round table. He was alone. He had his feet tucked under the chair, crossed at the ankles. He wore dirty tennis shoes with his Gap khakis.

“Cute?” Grace said.

“Shhh,” Alex said. “It’s a door into the mind of Carole.”

“One that should remain closed.” Grace moved to Carole’s stool. It was still warm. Grace shoved Carole’s drink out of her way, grabbed her glass of wine, and coughed. The air still smelled of cigarette smoke.

Carole was leaning over the extra chair, giving Never-Been-Laid a view of her cleavage, and the guys at the booth by the phone a nice look at her ass, which they seemed to appreciate.

“Where the hell did that misogyny comment come from?” Grace asked.

Alex looked at her. “You want to get a booth?”

“Sure. Think Carole can find us?”

“I think Carole’s going to be deflowering a computer geek and not caring what we’re doing.” Alex grabbed her drink, stood, and walked to a booth on the other side of the Corral. Dirty glasses from the last occupants were piled in the center, and the red-and-white checked vinyl tablecloth was sticky.

They moved the glasses on the edge of the table and didn’t touch the dollar tip, which had been pressed into a puddle of beer.

Grace set her wine down and slid onto her side. Alex did the same on the other side. Somehow they managed not to touch the tabletop at all.

“You remember my boss?” Alex asked as she adjusted the tiny fake gas lamp that hung on the wall beside the booth.

“Beanie Boy?”

She grinned. “Yeah.”

“Never met him.”

“Aren’t you lucky.”

Grace already knew that. She’d heard stories about Beanie Boy for the last year. They had started shortly after he was hired. Alex went to the company Halloween party and was startled to find her boss dressed as one of the Lollipop Kids from the Wizard of Oz, complete with striped shirt, oversized lollipop and propeller beanie.

“Now what did he do?” Grace asked.

“Called me honey.”

“Yeah?” Grace asked.

“And sweetie, and doll-face, and sugar.”

“Hasn’t he been doing that for the last year?”

Alex glared at Grace. “It’s getting worse.”

“What’s he doing, patting you on the butt?”

“If he did, I’d get him for harassment, and he knows it.”

She had lowered her voice. Grace could barely hear her over Shania Twain.

“This morning one of our clients came in praising the last report. I wrote it.”

“Didn’t Beanie Boy give you credit?”

“Of course he did. He said, ‘Our little Miss Rogers wrote it. Isn’t she a doll?’”

Grace clutched her drink tighter. This didn’t matter to her. Her biopsy was benign. She had called Alex and Carole and told them. They’d suggested coming here. So why weren’t they offering a toast to her life? Why weren’t they celebrating, really celebrating, instead of rerunning the same old conversation in the same old bar in the same old way? “What did the client do?”

“He agreed, of course.”

“And?”

“And what?”

“Is that it? Didn’t you speak up?”

“How could I? He was praising me, for godssake.”

Grace sighed and sipped her beer. Shania Twain’s comment was that didn’t impress her much. It didn’t impress Grace much either, but she knew better than to say anything to Alex.

Grace looked toward the middle of the restaurant. Carole was standing behind Never-Been-Laid, her breasts pressed against his back, her ass on view to the world, her head over his shoulder peering at his computer screen.

Alex didn’t follow her gaze like Grace had hoped. “If I were ten years younger, I’d tell Beanie Boy to shove it.”

“If you were ten years younger, you wouldn’t have a mortgage and a Mazda.”

“Dignity shouldn’t be cheaper than a paycheck,” she said.

“So confront him.”

“He doesn’t think he’s doing anything wrong. He treats all the women like that.”

Grace sighed. They’d walked this road before. Job after job, boyfriend after boyfriend. Alex, for all her looks, was like Joe McCarthy protecting the world from the Red Menace: she saw anti-female everywhere, and most of it, she was convinced, was directed at her.

“You don’t seem very sympathetic,” Alex said.

She wasn’t. She never had been. And with all she had been through in the last month, alone because her two best friends couldn’t bear to talk about the Big C, the lock that was usually on Grace’s mouth wasn’t working.

“I’m not sympathetic,” Grace said. “I’m beginning to think you’re a victim in search of a victimizer.”

“That’s not fair, Grace,” Alex said. “We tolerate this stuff because we were raised in an anti-woman society. It’s gotten better, but it’s not perfect. You tell those Xers stuff like this and they shake their heads. Or the new ones. What’re they calling themselves now? Generation Y? They were raised on Title IX. Hell, they pull off their shirts after winning soccer games. Imagine us doing that.”

“My cousin got arrested in 1977 in Milwaukee on the day Elvis Presley died for playing volleyball,” Grace said. Carole was actually rubbing herself on Never-Been-Laid. His face was the color of the red checks in the tablecloth.

“What?”

Grace turned to Alex. “My cousin. You know, Barbie? She got arrested playing volleyball.”

“They didn’t let girls play volleyball in Milwaukee?”

“It was 90 degrees, and she was playing with a group of guys. They pulled off their shirts because they were hot and sweating, so she did the same. She got arrested for indecent exposure.”

“God,” Alex said. “Did she go to jail?”

“Didn’t even get her day in court.”

“Everyone gets a day in court.”

Grace shook her head. “The judge took one look at Barbie, who was really butch in those days, and said, ‘I’m sick of you girls coming in here and arguing that you should have equal treatment for things that are clearly unequal. I do not establish Public Decency laws. You may show a bit of breast if you’re feeding a child, otherwise you are in violation of—some damn code.’ Barbie used to quote the thing chapter and verse.”

“Then what?” Alex asked.

“Then she got married, had a kid, and started wearing nail polish. She said it wasn’t as much fun to show her breasts legally.”

“See?” Alex said. “Misogyny.”

Grace shrugged. “Society, Alex. Get used to it.”

“That’s the point of your story? We’ve been oppressed for a thousand years and you say, ‘Get used to it’?”

“I say Brandi Chastain pulls off her shirt in front of millions—”

“Showing a sports bra.”

“—and she doesn’t get arrested. I say women head companies all the time. I say things are better now than they were when I was growing up, and I say the only ones who oppress us are ourselves.”

“I say you’re drunk.”

Grace pointed at Carole, who was wet-kissing Never-Been-Laid, her arms wrapped around his neck and her legs wrapped around his waist. “She’s drunk. I’m just speaking out.”

“You never speak out.”

Grace sighed. No one had picked up the glasses and she was tired of looking at that poor drowning dollar bill. There wasn’t going to be any celebration. Everything was the same as it always was—at least to Alex and Carole. But Grace wanted something different.

She got up, threw a five next to the dollar, and picked up her purse.

“Tell me if Carole gets laid,” Grace said, and left.

Outside Grace stopped and took a deep breath of the humid, exhaust-filled air. She could hear the clang of glasses even in the parking lot and the rhythm of Mary Chapin Carpenter praising passionate kisses. Grace had had only one glass of wine and a lousy time, and she wondered why people said old friends were the best friends. They were supposed to raise toasts to her future, now restored. She’d even said the “b” word and Alex hadn’t noticed. It was as if the cancer scare had happened to someone they didn’t even know.

Grace was going to be forty years old in three weeks. Her two best friends were probably planning a version of the same party they had held for her when she turned thirty. A male stripper whose sweaty body repulsed her more than aroused her, too many black balloons, and aging jokes that hadn’t been original the first time around.

Forty years old, an accountant with her own firm, no close family, no boyfriend, and a resident of the same town her whole life. The only time she left was to visit cousins out east, and for what? Obligation?

There was no joy left, if there’d ever been any joy at all.

She got into her sensible Ford Taurus, bought at a used car lot for well under Blue Book, and drove west.

***

It wasn’t until she reached Janesville that she started to call herself crazy, and it wasn’t until she drove into Dubuque that she realized how little tied her to her hometown.

An apartment without even a cat to cozy up to, a business no more successful than a dozen others, and people who still saw her as a teenager wearing granny glasses, braces and hair too long for her face. Grace, who was always there. Grace the steady, Grace the smart. Grace, who helped her friends out of their financial binds, who gave them a shoulder to cry on, and a degree of comfort because their lives weren’t as empty as her own.

When she had told Alex and Carole that her mammogram had come back suspicious, they had looked away. When she told them that she had found a lump, they had looked frightened.

I can’t imagine life without you, Gracie, Carole had whispered.

Imagine it now, Grace thought.

The dawn was breaking when she reached Cedar Rapids, and she wasn’t really tired. But she was practical, had always been practical, and habits of a lifetime didn’t change just because she had run away from home at the age of 39.

She got a hotel room and slept for eight hours, got up, had dinner in a nice steak place, went back to the room and slept some more. When she woke up Sunday morning to bells from the Presbyterian Church across the street, she lay on her back and listened for a good minute before she realized they were playing “What a Friend We Have in Jesus.” And she smiled then, because Jesus had been a better friend to her in recent years than Alex and Carole ever had.

At least Jesus didn’t tell her his problems when she was praying about hers. If Jesus was self-absorbed he wasn’t obvious about it. And he didn’t seem to care that she hadn’t been inside a church since August of 1978.

The room was chintz, the wallpaper and the bedspread matched, and the painting on the wall was chosen for its color not for its technique. Grace sat up and wondered what she was doing here, and thought about going home.

To nothing.

So she got in her car and followed the Interstate, through Des Moines, and Lincoln and Cheyenne, places she had only read about, places she had never seen. How could a woman live for forty years and not see the country of her birth? How could a woman do nothing except what she was supposed to from the day she was born until the day she died?

In Salt Lake City, she stared at the Mormon Tabernacle, all white against an azure sky. She sat in her car and watched a groundskeeper maintain the flowers, and remembered how it felt to take her doctor’s call.

A lot of women have irregular mammograms, particularly at your age. The breast tissue is thicker, and often we get clouds.

Clouds.

There were fluffy clouds in the dry desert sky, but they were white and benign. Just like her lump had turned out to be. But for a hellish month, she had thought about that lump, feeling it when she woke out of a sound sleep, wondering if it presaged the beginning of the end. She had never felt her mortality like this before, not even when her mother, the only parent she had known, had died. Not even when she realized there was no one remaining of the generation that had once stood between her and death.

No one talked about these things. No one let her talk about them either. Not just Alex and Carole, but Michael, her second-in-command at work, or even her doctor, who kept assuring her that she was young and the odds were in her favor.

Young didn’t matter if the cancer had spread through the lymph nodes. When she went in for the lumpectomy almost two weeks ago now, she had felt a curious kind of relief, as if the doctor had removed a tick that had burrowed under her skin. When he had called with the news that the lump was benign, she had thanked him calmly and continued with her day, filing corporate tax returns for a consulting firm.

No one had known the way she felt. Not relieved. No. It was more like she had received a reprieve.

The clouds above the Tabernacle helped calm her. She plugged in her cell phone for the first time in days and listened to the voice mail messages, most of them from Michael, growing increasingly worried about where she was.

Have you forgotten the meeting with Boyd’s? he’d asked on Monday.

Do you want me to file Charlie’s extension? he’d demanded on Tuesday.

Where the hell are you? he cried on Wednesday and she knew, then, that it was okay to call him, that not even the business could bring her home.

Amazing how her training had prepared her for moments like these and she hadn’t even known it. She had savings, lots of them, because she hadn’t bought a house even though it had been prudent to do so. She had been waiting, apparently, for Mr. Right, or the family her mother had always wanted for her, the family that would never come. Her money was invested properly, and she could live off the interest if she so chose. She had just never chosen to before.

And if she didn’t want to be found, she didn’t have to be. She knew how to have the interest paid through offshore accounts so that no one could track it. She even knew a quick and almost legal way to change her name. Traceable, but she hadn’t committed a crime. She didn’t need to hide well, just well enough that a casual search wouldn’t produce her.

Not that anyone would start a casual search. Once she sold the business, Michael would forget her and Alex and Carole, even though they would gossip about her at Oh Kaye’s every Friday night for the rest of their lives, wouldn’t summon the energy to search.

She could almost hear them now: She met some guy, Carole would say. And he killed her, Alex would add, and then they would argue until last call, unless Carole found some man to entertain her, and Alex someone else to complain to. They would miss Grace only when they screwed up, when they needed a shoulder, when they couldn’t stand being on their own. And even then, they probably wouldn’t realize what it was they had lost.

***

Because it amused her, she had driven north to Boise, land of the white collar, to make her cell call to Michael. Her offer to him was simple: cash her out of the business and call it his own. She named a price, he dickered half-heartedly, she refused to negotiate. Within two days, he had wired the money to a blind money market account that she had often stored cash in for the firm.

She let the money sit there while she decided what to do with it. Then she went to Reno to change her name.

Reno had been a surprise. A beautiful city set between mountains like none she had ever seen. The air was dry, the downtown tacky, the people friendly. There were bookstores and slot machines and good restaurants. There were cheap houses and all-night casinos and lots of strange places. There was even history, of the Wild West kind.

For the first time in her life, Grace fell in love.

And to celebrate the occasion, she snuck into a quickie wedding chapel, found the marriage licenses, took one, copied down the name of the chapel, its permit number, and all the other pertinent information, and then returned to her car. There she checked the boxes, saying she had seen the driver’s licenses and birth certificates of the people involved, including a fictitious man named Nathan Reinhart, and viola! she was married. She had a new name, a document the credit card companies would accept, and a new beginning all at the same time.

***

Using some of her personal savings, she bought a house with lots of windows and a view of the Sierras. In the mornings, light bathed her kitchen, and in the evenings, it caressed her living room. She had never seen light like this—clean and pure and crisp. She was beginning to understand why artists moved west to paint, why people used to exclaim about the way light changed everything.

The lack of humidity, of dense air pollution, made the air clearer. The elevation brought her closer to the sun.

She felt as if she were seeing everything for the very first time.

And hearing it, too. The house was silent, much more silent than an apartment, and the silence soothed her. She could listen to her television without worrying about the people in the apartment below, or play her stereo full blast without concern about a visit from the super.

There was a freedom to having her own space that she hadn’t realized before, a freedom to living the way she wanted to live, without the rules of the past or the expectations she had grown up with.

And among those expectations was the idea that she had to be the strong one, the good one, the one on whose shoulder everyone else cried. She had no friends here, no one who needed her shoulder, and she had no one who expected her to be good.

Only herself.

Of course, in some things she was good. Habits of a lifetime died hard. She began researching the best way to invest Michael’s lump sum payment—and while she researched, she left the money alone. She kept her house clean and her lawn, such as it was in this high desert, immaculate. She got a new car and made sure it was spotless.

No one would find fault with her appearances, inside or out.

Not that she had anyone who was looking. She didn’t have a boyfriend or a job or a hobby. She didn’t have anything except herself.

***

She found herself drawn to the casinos, with their clinking slot machines, musical come-ons, and bright lights. No matter how high tech the places had become, no matter how clean, how “family-oriented,” they still had a shady feel.

Or perhaps that was her upbringing, in a state where gambling had been illegal until she was 25, a state where her father used to play a friendly game of poker—even with his friends—with the curtains drawn.

Sin—no matter how sanitized—still had appeal in the brand-new century.

Of course, she was too sensible to gamble away her savings. The slots lost their appeal quickly, and when she sat down at the blackjack tables, she couldn’t get past the feeling that she was frittering her money away for nothing.

But she liked the way the cards fell and how people concentrated—as if their very lives depended on this place—and she was good with numbers. One of the pit bosses mentioned that they were always short of poker dealers, so she took a class offered by one of the casinos. Within two months, she was snapping cards, raking pots, and wearing a uniform that made her feel like Carole on a bad night.

It only took a few weeks for her bosses to realize that Grace was a natural poker dealer. They gave her the busy shifts—Thursday through Sunday nights—and she spent her evenings playing the game of cowboys, fancy men, and whores. Finally, there was a bit of an Old West feel to her life, a bit of excitement, a sense of purpose.

When she got off at midnight, she would be too keyed up to go home. She started bringing a change of clothes to work and, after her shift, she would go to the casino next door. It had a great bar upstairs—filled with brass, Victorian furnishings, and a real hardwood floor. She could get a sandwich and a beer. Finally, she felt like she was becoming the woman she wanted to be.

One night, a year after she had run away from home, a man sidled up next to her. He had long blond hair that curled against his shoulders. His face was tanned and lined, a bit too thin. He looked road-hardened—like a man who’d been outside too much, seen too much, worked in the sun too much. His hands were long, slender, and callused. He wore no rings, and his shirt cuffs were frayed at the edges.

He sat beside her in companionable silence for nearly an hour, while they both stared at CNN on the big screen over the bar, and then he said, “Just once I’d like to go someplace authentic.”

His voice was cigarette growly, even though he didn’t smoke, and he had a Southern accent that was soft as butter. She guessed Louisiana, but it might have been Tennessee or even Northern Florida. She wasn’t good at distinguishing Southern accents yet. She figured she would after another year or so of dealing cards.

“You should go up to Virginia City. There’s a bar or two that looks real enough.”

He snorted through his nose. “Tourist trap.”

She shrugged. She’d thought it interesting—an entire historic city, preserved just like it had been when Mark Twain lived there. “Seems to me if you weren’t a tourist there wouldn’t be any other reason to go.”

He shrugged and picked up a toothpick, rolling it in his fingers. She smiled to herself. A former smoker then, and a fidgeter.

“Reno’s better than Vegas, at least,” he said. “Casinos aren’t family friendly yet.”

“Except Circus Circus.”

“Always been that way. But the rest. You get a sense that maybe it ain’t all legal here.”

She looked at him sideways. He was at least her age, his blue eyes sharp in his leathery face. “You like things that aren’t legal?”

“Gambling’s not something that should be made pretty, you know? It’s about money, and money can either make you or destroy you.”

She felt herself smile, remember what it was like to paw through receipts and tax returns, to make neat rows of figures about other people’s money. “What’s the saying?” she asked. “Money is like sex—”

“It doesn’t matter unless you don’t have any.” To her surprise, he laughed. The sound was rich and warm, not at all like she had expected. The smile transformed his face into something almost handsome.

He tapped the toothpick on the polished bar, and asked, “You think that’s true?”

She shrugged. “I suppose. Everyone’s idea of what’s enough differs, though.”

“What’s yours?” He turned toward her, smile gone now, eyes even sharper than they had been a moment ago. She suddenly felt as if she were on trial.

“My idea of what’s enough?” she asked.

He nodded.

“I suppose enough that I can live off the interest in the manner in which I’ve become accustomed. What’s yours?”

A shadow crossed his eyes and he looked away from her. “Long as I’ve got a roof over my head, clothes on my back, and food in my mouth, I figure I’m rich enough.”

“Sounds distinctly unAmerican to me,” she said.

He looked at her sideways again. “I guess it does, don’t it? Women figure a man should have some sort of ambition.”

“Do you?”

“Have ambition?” He bent the toothpick between his fore- and middle fingers. “Of course I do. It just ain’t tied in with money, is all.”

“I thought money and ambition went together.”

“In most men’s minds.”

“But not yours?”

The toothpick broke. “Not any more,” he said.

***

Three nights later, he sat down at her table. He was wearing a denim shirt with silver snaps and jeans so faded that they looked as if they might shred around him. That, his hair, and his lean look reminded Grace of a movie gunslinger, the kind that cleaned a town up because it had to be done.

“Guess you don’t make enough to live off the interest,” he said to her as he sat down.

She raised her eyebrows. “Maybe I like people.”

“Maybe you like games.”

She smiled and dealt the cards. The table was full. She was dealing 3-6 Texas Hold ‘Em and most of the players were locals. It was Monday night and they all looked pleased to have an unfamiliar face at the table.

If she had known him better she might have tipped him off. Instead she wanted to see how long his money would last.

He bought in for $100, although she had seen at least five hundred in his wallet. He took the chips, and studied them for a moment.

He had three tells. He fidgeted with his chips when his cards were mediocre and he was thinking of bluffing. He bit his lower lip when he had nothing, and his eyes went dead flat when he had a winning hand.

He lost the first hundred in forty-five minutes, bought back in for another hundred and managed to hold onto it until her shift ended shortly after midnight. He sat through dealer changes and the floating fortunes of his cards. When she returned from her last break, she found herself wondering if his tells were subconscious after all. They seemed deliberately calculated to let the professional poker players around him think that he was a rookie.

She said nothing. She couldn’t, really—at least not overtly. The casino got a rake and they didn’t allow her to do anything except deal the game. She had no stake in it anyway. She hadn’t lied to him that first night. She loved watching people, the way they played their hands, the way the money flowed.

It was like being an accountant, only in real time. She got to see the furrowed brows as the decisions were made, hear the curses as someone pushed back a chair and tossed in that last hand of cards, watch the desperation that often led to the exact wrong play. Only as a poker dealer, she wasn’t required to clean up the mess. She didn’t have to offer advice or refuse it; she didn’t have to worry about tax consequences, about sitting across from someone else’s auditor, justifying choices she had no part in making.

When she got off, she changed into her tightest jeans and a summer sweater and went to her favorite bar.

Casino bars were always busy after midnight, even on a Monday. The crowd wasn’t there to have a good time but to wind down from one—or to prepare itself for another. She sat at the bar, as she had since she started this routine, and she’d been about to leave when he sat next to her.

“Lose your stake?” she asked.

“I’m up $400.”

She looked at him sideways. He didn’t seem pleased with the way the night had gone—not the way a casual player would have been. Her gut instinct was right. He was someone who was used to gambling—and winning.

“Buy you another?” he asked.

She shook her head. “One’s enough.”

He smiled. It made him look less fierce and gave him a rugged sort of appeal. “Everything in moderation?”

“Not always,” she said. “At least, not any more.”

***

Somehow they ended up in bed—her bed—and he was better than she imagined his kind of man could be. He had knowledgeable fingers and endless patience. He didn’t seem to mind the scar on her breast. Instead he lingered over it, focusing on it as if it were an erogenous zone. His pleasure at the result enhanced hers and when she finally fell asleep, somewhere around dawn, she was more sated than she had ever been.

She awoke to the smell of frying bacon and fresh coffee. Her eyes were filled with sand, but her body had a healthy lethargy.

At least, she thought, he hadn’t left before she awoke.

At least he hadn’t stolen everything in sight.

She still didn’t know his name, and wasn’t sure she cared. She slipped on a robe and combed her hair with her fingers and walked into her kitchen—the kitchen no one had cooked in but her.

He had on his denims and his hair was tied back with a leather thong. He had found not only her cast iron skillet but the grease cover that she always used when making bacon. A bowl of scrambled eggs steamed on the counter, and a plate of heavily buttered toast sat beside it.

“Sit down, darlin’,” he said. “Let me bring it all to you.”

She flushed. That was what it felt like he had done the night before, but she said nothing. Her juice glasses were out, and so was her everyday ware, and yet somehow the table looked like it had been set for a Gourmet photo spread.

“I certainly didn’t expect this,” she said.

“It’s the least I can do.” He put the eggs and toast on the table, then poured her a cup of coffee. Cream and sugar were already out, and in their special containers.

She was slightly uncomfortable that he had figured out her kitchen that quickly and well.

He put the bacon on a paper-towel covered plate, then set that on the table. She hadn’t moved, so he beckoned with his hand.

“Go ahead,” he said. “It’s getting cold.”

He sat across from her and helped himself to bacon while she served herself eggs. They were fluffy and light, just like they would have been in a restaurant. She had no idea how he got that consistency. Her home-scrambled eggs were always runny and undercooked.

The morning light bathed the table, giving everything a bright glow. His hair seemed even blonder in the sunlight and his skin darker. He had laugh lines around his mouth, and a bit of blond stubble on his chin.

She watched him eat, those nimble fingers scooping up the remaining egg with a slice of toast, and found herself remembering how those fingers had felt on her skin.

Then she felt his gaze on her, and looked up. His eyes were dead flat for just an instant, and she felt herself grow cold.

“Awful nice house,” he said slowly, “for a woman who makes a living dealing cards.”

Her first reaction was defense—she wanted to tell him she had other income, and what did he care about a woman who dealt cards, anyway?—but instead, she smiled. “Thank you.”

He measured her, as if he expected a different response, then he said, “You’re awfully calm considering that you don’t even know my name. You don’t strike me as the kind of woman who does this often.”

His words startled her, but she made sure that the surprise didn’t show. She had learned a lot about her own tells while dealing poker, and the experience was coming in handy now.

“You flatter yourself,” she said softly.

“Well,” he said, reaching into his back pocket, “if there’s one thing my job’s taught me, it’s that people hide information they don’t want anyone else to know.”

He pulled out his wallet, opened it, and with two fingers removed a business card. He dropped it on the table.

She didn’t want to pick the card up. She knew things had already changed between them in a way she didn’t entirely understand, but she had a sense from the fleeting expression she had seen on his face that once she picked up the card she could never go back.

She set down her coffee cup and used two fingers to slide the card toward her. It identified him as Travis Delamore, a skip tracer and bail bondsman. Below his name was a phone number with a 414 exchange.

Milwaukee, Wisconsin and the surrounding areas. Precisely the place someone from Racine might call if they wanted to hire a professional.

She slipped the card into the pocket of her robe. “Is sleeping around part of your job?”

“Is embezzling part of yours?” All the warmth had left his face. His expression was unreadable except for the flatness in his eyes. What did he think he knew?

She made herself smile. “Mr. Delamore, if I stole a dime from the casino, I’d be instantly fired. There are cameras everywhere.”

“I mean your former job, Ms. Mackie. A lot of money is missing from your office.”

“I don’t have an office.” His use of her former name made her hands clammy. What had Michael done?

“Do you deny that you’re Grace Mackie?”

“I don’t acknowledge or deny anything. When did this become an inquisition, Mr. Delamore? I thought men liked their sex uncomplicated. You seem to be a unique member of your species.”

This time he smiled. “Of course we like our sex uncomplicated. That’s why we’re having this discussion this morning.”

“If we’d had it last night, there wouldn’t be a this morning.”

“That’s my point.” He downed the last of his orange juice. “And thank you for the acknowledgement, Ms. Mackie.”

“It wasn’t an acknowledgement,” she said. “I don’t like to sleep with men who think me guilty of something.”

“Embezzlement,” he said gently, using the same tone he had used in bed. This time, it made her bristle.

“I haven’t stolen anything.”

“New house, new name, new town, mysterious disappearance.”

The chill she had felt earlier grew. She stood and wrapped her robe tightly around her waist. “I don’t know what you think you know, Mr. Delamore, but I believe it’s time for you to leave.”

He didn’t move. “We’re not done.”

“Oh, yes, we are.”

“It would be a lot easier if you told me where the money was, Grace.”

“Do you always get paid for sex, Mr. Delamore?” she asked.

He studied her for a moment. “Don’t play games with me, honey.”

“Why not?” she asked. “You seem to enjoy them.”

He shoved his plate away as if it had offended him. Apparently this morning wasn’t going the way he wanted it to either. “I’m just telling you what I know.”

“And I’m just asking you to leave. It was fun, Travis. But it certainly wasn’t worth this.”

He stood and slipped his wallet back into his pocket. “You’ll hear from me again.”

“This isn’t high school,” she said, following him to the door. “I won’t be offended if you fail to call.”

“No,” he said as he stepped into the dry desert air. “You probably won’t be offended. But you will be curious. This is just the beginning, Grace.”

“One person’s beginning is another person’s ending,” she said as she closed and locked the door behind him.

***

The worst thing she could do, she knew, was panic. So she made herself clean up the kitchen as if she didn’t have a care in the world, and she left the curtains open so that he could see if he wanted to. Then she went to the shower, making it a long and hot. She tried to scrub all the traces of him off of her.

For the first time in her life, she felt cheap.

Embezzlement. Something had happened, something Michael was blaming on her. It would be easy enough, she supposed. She had disappeared. That looked suspicious enough. The new name, the new car, the new town, all of that added to the suspicion.

What had Michael done? And why?

She got out of the shower and toweled herself off. She was tempted to call Michael, but she certainly couldn’t do it from the house. If she used her cell, the call would be traceable too. And if she went to a pay phone, she would attract even more suspicion. She had to consider that Travis Delamore was following her, spying on her.

In fact, she had to consider that he had been doing that for some time.

She went over all of their conversation, looking for clues, mistakes she might have made. She had told him very little, but he had asked a lot. Strangely—or perhaps not so strangely any more—all of their conversations had been about money.

Carole would have been proud of her. Grace had finally let her libido get the better of her. Alex would have been disgusted, reminding her that men couldn’t be trusted.

What could he do to her besides cast suspicion? He was right. Without the money, he had nothing. And she had a job, no criminal record, and no suspicious investments.

But if he continued to follow her, she could go after him. The bartender had seen them leave her favorite bar together. She had an innocent face, she’d been living here for a year, got promoted, was well liked by her employer. Delamore had obviously flirted with her while he played poker the night before, and the casino had cameras.

They probably had records of all the times he had watched her before she noticed him.

It wouldn’t take much to make a stalking charge. That would get her an injunction in the least, and it might scare him off.

Then she could find out why he was so sure he had something on her. Then she could find out what it was Michael had done.

***

The newly remodeled ladies room on the third floor of the casino had twenty stalls and a lounge complete with smoking room. It had once been a small restroom, but the reconstruction had taken out the nearby men’s room and replaced it with more stalls. The row of pay phones in the middle stayed, as a convenience to the customers.

Delamore wouldn’t know that she called from those pay phones. No one would know.

She started using the third floor ladies room on her break and more than once had picked up the receiver on the third phone and dialed most of her old office number. She’d always stop before she hit the last digit, though. Her intuition told her that calling Michael would be wrong.

What if Delamore had a trace on Michael’s line? What if the police did?

A week after her encounter with Delamore, a week in which she used the third floor ladies room more times than she could count, she suddenly realized what was wrong. Delamore didn’t have anything on her except suspicion. He had clearly found her—that hadn’t been hard, since she really hadn’t been hiding from anyone—and he had probably checked her bank records for the money he assumed she had embezzled from her former clients. But the money she had gotten from the sale of the business was still in that hidden numbered account—and would stay there.

Her native caution had served her well once again.

She had nothing to hide. It didn’t matter what some good-looking skip trace thought. Her life in Racine was in the past. A part of her past that she couldn’t avoid, any more than she could avoid the scar on her breast—the scar that Delamore had clearly used to identify her, the bastard. But past was past, and until it hurt her present, she wasn’t going to worry about it.

So she stopped making pilgrimages to the third floor women’s room, and gradually, her worries over Delamore faded. She didn’t see him for a week, and she assumed—wrongly—that it was all over.

***

He sat next to her at the bar as if he had been doing it every day for years. He ordered a whiskey neat, and another “for the lady,” just like men in her fantasies used to do. When he looked at her and smiled, she realized that the look didn’t reach his eyes.

Maybe it never had.

“Miss me, darlin’?” he asked.

She picked up her purse, took out a five to cover her drink, and started to leave. He grabbed her wrist. His fingers were warm and dry, their touch no longer gentle. A shiver started in her back, but she willed the feeling away.

“Let go of me,” she said.

“Now, Gracie, I think you should listen to what I have to say.”

“Let go of me,” she said in that same measured tone, “or I will scream so loud that everyone in the place will hear.”

“Screams don’t frighten me, doll.”

“Maybe the police do. Believe me, hon, I will press charges.”

His smile was slow and wide, but that flat look was in his eyes again, the one that told her he had all the cards. “I’m sure they’ll be impressed,” he said, reaching into his breast pocket with his free hand. “But I do believe a warrant trumps a tight grip on the arm.”

He set a piece of paper down on the bar itself. The bartender, wiping away the remains of another customer’s mess, glanced her way as if he were keeping an eye on her.

She didn’t touch the paper, but she didn’t shake Delamore’s hand off her arm, either. She wasn’t quite sure what to do.

He picked up the paper, shook it open, and she saw the strange bold-faced print of a legal document, her former name in the middle. “Tell you what, Gracie. How about we finish the talk we started the other morning in one of those dark, quiet booths over there?”

She was still staring at the paper, trying to comprehend it. It looked official enough. But then, she’d never seen a warrant for anyone’s arrest before. She had only heard of them.

She had never imagined she’d see her own name on one.

She let Delamore lead her to a booth at the far end of the bar. He slid across the plastic, trying to pull her in beside him, but this time, she shook him off. She sat across from him, perched on the seat with her feet in the aisle, purse clutched on her lap. Flee position, Alex used to call it. You Might Be a Loser and I Reserve the Right to Find Someone Else, was Carole’s name for it.

“If I bring you back to Wisconsin,” he said, “I get a few thousand bucks. What it don’t say on my card is that I’m a bounty hunter.”

“What an exciting life you must lead,” Grace said dryly.

He smiled. The look chilled her. She was beginning to wonder how she had ever found him attractive. “It’s got its perks.”

It was at that moment she decided she hated him. He would forever refer to her as a perk of the job, not as someone who had given herself to him freely, someone who had enjoyed the moment as much as he had.

All that gentleness in his fingers, all those murmured endearments. Lies.

She hated lies.

“But,” he was saying, “I see a way to make a little more money here. I don’t think you’re a real threat to society. And you’re a lot of fun, more fun than I would’ve expected, given how you lived before you moved here.”

The bartender came over, his bar towel over his arm. “Want anything?”

He was speaking to her. He hadn’t even looked at Delamore. The bartender was making sure she was all right.

“I don’t know yet,” she said. “Can you check back in five minutes?”

“Sure thing.” This time he did look at Delamore, who grinned at him. The bartender shot him a warning glare.

“Wow,” Delamore said as the bartender moved out of earshot. “You have a defender.”

“You keep getting off track,” Grace said.

Delamore shrugged. “I like talking to you.”

“Well, I find talking with you rather dull.”

He raised his eyebrows. “You didn’t think so a few days ago.”

“As I recall,” she said, “we didn’t do a lot talking.”

His smile softened. “That’s my memory too.”

She clutched her purse tighter. It always looked so glamorous in the movies, finding the right person, having a night of great sex. And even if he rode off into the sunset never to be seen again, everything still had a glow of perfection to it.

Not the bits of sleaze, the hardness in his expression, the sense that what he wanted from her was something she couldn’t give.

“You know, the papers said that Michael Holden went into your old office, and put a gun in his mouth and pulled the trigger. Then the police, after finding the body, discovered that most of the money your clients had entrusted to your firm had disappeared.”

She couldn’t suppress the small whimper of shock that rose in her throat.

Delamore noted it and his eyes brightened. “Now, you tell me what happened.”

She had no idea. She had none at all. But she couldn’t tell Delamore that. She didn’t even know if the story was true.

It sounded true. But Delamore had lied before. For all she knew he was some kind of con man, out to get her because he smelled money.

He was watching her, his eyes glittering. She could barely control her expression. She needed to get away.

She stood, still clutching her purse like a schoolgirl.

“Planning to leave? I wouldn’t do that if I were you.” His voice had turned cold. A shiver ran down her spine, but she didn’t move, just stared down at him unable to turn away.

“One call,” he said softly, “and you’ll get picked up by the Nevada police. You should sit down and hear what I have to say.”

Her hands were shaking. She sat, feeling trapped. He had finally hooked her, even though she hadn’t said a word.

He leaned forward. “Now listen to me, darling. I know you got the money. I been working this one a long time, and I dug up the records. Michael closed all those accounts right after you disappeared. That’s not a coincidence.”

Her mouth was dry. She wanted to swallow, but couldn’t.

“‘Member our talk about money? One of those first nights, here in this bar?”

She was staring at him, her eyes wide and dry as if she’d been driving and staring at the road for hours. It felt like she had forgotten to blink.

“I told you I don’t need much, and that’s true. But I’m getting tired of dragging people back to their parole officers or for their court date, or finding husbands who’d skipped out on their families and then getting paid five grand or two grand. Then people question your expenses, like you don’t got a right to spend a night in a motel or eat three squares. Or they demand to know why you took so danged long to find someone who’d been hiding so good no cop could find them.”

His voice was so soft she had to strain to hear it. In spite of herself, she leaned forward.

“I’m forty-five years old, doll,” he said. “And I’m getting tired. You got one pretty little scar. Did you notice all the ones I got? On the job. Yours is the first case in a while where I didn’t get a beating.” Then he grinned. “At least, not a painful one.”

She flushed, and her fingers tightened on the purse. Her hands were beginning to hurt. Part of her, a part she’d never heard from before, wanted to take that purse and club him in the face. But she didn’t move. If she moved, she would lose any control she had.

“So,” he said, “here’s the deal. I like you. I didn’t expect to, but I do. You’re a pretty little thing, and smart as a whip, and this is probably going to be the only crime you’ll ever commit, because you’re one of those girls who just knows better, aren’t you?”

She held her head rigidly, careful so that he wouldn’t take the most subtle movement for a nod.

“And I think you got a damn fine deal here. The house is nice—lots of light—and the town obviously suits you. I met those friends of yours, the ball-buster and the one who thinks she’s God’s Gift to Men, and I gotta say it’s clear why you left.”

Her nails dug into the leather. Pain shot through the tender skin at the top of her fingers.

“I really don’t wanna ruin your life. It’s time I make a change in mine. You give me fifty grand, and I’ll bury everything I found about you.”

“Fifty thousand dollars?” Her voice was raspy with tension. “For the first payment?”

His eyes sparkled. “One-time deal.”

She snorted. She knew better. Blackmailers never worked like that.

“And maybe I’ll stick around. Get to know you a little better. I could fall in love with that house myself.”

“Could you?” she asked, amazed at the dry tone she’d managed to maintain.

“Sure.” He grinned. That had been the look that had made her go weak less than a week ago. Now it sent a chill through her. “You and me, we had something.”

“Yeah,” she said. “A one-night stand.”

He laughed. “It could be more than that, darlin’. It took you long enough, but you might’ve just found Mr. Right.”

“Seems to me you were the one who was searching.” She stood. He didn’t protest, and she was glad. She had to leave. If she stayed any longer, she’d say something she would regret.

She tucked her purse under her arm. “I assume the drink’s on you,” she said, and then she walked away.

He didn’t follow her—at least not right away. And she drove in circles before going home, watching for his car behind hers, thinking about everything he had said. Thinking about her break, her freedom, the things she had done to create a new life.

The things that now made her look guilty of a crime she hadn’t committed.

***

She didn’t sleep, of course. She couldn’t. Her mind was too full—and her bed was no longer a private place. He’d been there, and some of him remained, a shadow, a laugh. After an hour of tossing and turning, she moved to the guest room and sat on the edge of the brand new unused mattress, clutching a blanket and thinking.

It was time to find out what had happened. Delamore knew who she was. She couldn’t pretend any more. But he wasn’t ready to turn her in. That gave her a little time.

She took a shower, made herself a pot of coffee, and a sandwich which she ate slowly. Then she went to her office, sat down in front of her computer and hesitated. The moment she logged on was the moment that all her movements could be traced. The moment she couldn’t turn back from.

But she could testify to the conversation she’d had with Delamore, and the bartender would back her up. She wouldn’t be able to hide her own identity should the police come for her, and so there was no reason to lie. She would simply say that she was concerned about her former business partner. She wanted to know if any of what Delamore told her was true.

It wouldn’t seem like a confession to anyone but him.

She logged on, and used a search engine to find the news.

It didn’t take her long. Amazing how many newspapers were online. Michael’s death created quite a scandal in Racine, and the pictures of her office—the bloody mess still visible inside—were enough to make the ham on rye that she’d had a few moments ago turn in her stomach.

Michael. He’d been a good accountant. Thorough, exacting. Nervous. Always so nervous, afraid of making any kind of mistake.

Embezzlement? Why would he do that?

But that was what the papers had said. She dug farther, found the follow-up pieces. He’d raised cash, using clients’ accounts, to bilk the company of a small fortune.

And Delamore was right. The dates matched up. Michael had stolen from her own clients to pay her for her own business. He had bought the business with stolen money.

She bowed her head, listening to the computer hum, counting her own breaths. She had never once questioned where he had gotten the money. She had figured he’d gotten a loan, had thought that maybe he’d finally learned the value of savings.

Michael. The man who took an advance on his paycheck once every six months. Michael, who had once told her he was too scared to invest on his own.

I wouldn’t trust my own judgment, he had said.

Oh, the poor man. He had been right.

The trail did lead to her. The only reason Delamore couldn’t point at her exactly was because she had stashed the cash in a blind account. And she hadn’t touched it.

Not yet.

She’d been living entirely off her own savings, letting the money from the sale of her business draw interest. The nest egg for the future she hadn’t planned yet.

Delamore wanted fifty thousand dollars from her. To give that to him, she’d have to tap the nest egg.

How many times would he make her tap it again? And again? Until it was gone, of course. Into his pocket. And then he’d turn her in.

She wiped her hand on her jeans. It was a nervous movement, meant to calm herself down. She had to think.

If the cops could trace her, they would have. They either didn’t have enough on her or hadn’t made the leap that Delamore had. And then she had confirmed his leap with the conversation tonight.

She got up and walked away from the computer. She wouldn’t let him intrude. He had already taken over her bedroom. She needed to have a space here, in her office, without him.

There was no mention of her in the papers, nothing that suggested she was involved. The police would have contacted the Reno police if they had known where she was. Even if they had hired Delamore to track her, they might still not have been informed about her whereabouts. Delamore wanted money more than he wanted to inform the authorities about where she was.

Grace sat down in the chair near the window. The shade was drawn, but the spot was soothing nonetheless.

The police weren’t her problem. Delamore was.

She already knew that he wouldn’t be satisfied with one payment. She had to find a way to get rid of him.

She bowed her head. Even though she had done nothing criminal she was thinking like one. How did a woman get rid of a man she didn’t want? She could get a court order, she supposed, forcing him to stay away from her. She could refuse to pay him and let the cards fall where they might. Years of legal hassle, maybe even an arrest. She would certainly lose her job. No casino would hire her, and she couldn’t fall back on her CPA skills, not after being arrested for embezzlement.

Ignoring him wasn’t an option either.

Then, there was the act of desperation. She could kill him. Somehow. She had always thought that murderers weren’t methodical enough. Take an intelligent person, have her kill someone in a thoughtful way, and she would be able to get away with the crime.

Everywhere but in her own mind. No matter how hard she tried, no matter how much he threatened her, she couldn’t kill Delamore.

There had to be another option. She had to do something. She just wasn’t sure what it was.

She went back to the computer and looked at the last article she had downloaded. Michael had stolen from people she had known for years. People who had trusted her, believed in her and her word. People who had thought she had integrity.

She frowned. What must they think of her now? That she was an embezzler too? After all those years of work, did she want that behind her name?

Then again, why should she care about people she would never see again?

But she would see them every time she closed her eyes. Elderly Mrs. Vezzetti and her poodle, trusting Grace to handle her account because her husband, God rest his soul, had convinced her that numbers were too much for her pretty little head. Mr. Heitzkey who couldn’t balance a checkbook if his life depended on it. Ms. Andersen, who had taken Grace’s advice on ways to legally hide money from the IRS—and who had seemed so excited when it worked.

Grace sighed.

There was only one way to make this right. Only one way to clear her conscience and to clear Delamore out of her life.

She had to turn herself in.

***

She did some more surfing as she ate breakfast and found discount tickets to Chicago. She had to buy them round-trip from Chicago to Reno (God bless the casinos for their cheap airfare deals) and fly only the Reno to Chicago leg. Later she would buy another set, and not use part of it. Both of those tickets were cheaper than buying a single round-trip ticket out of Reno to Racine.

Grace made the reservation, hoping that Delamore wasn’t tracking round trips that started somewhere else, and then she went to work. She claimed a family emergency, got a leave of absence, and hoped it would be enough.

She liked the world she built here. She didn’t want to lose it because she hadn’t been watching her back.

Twenty-four hours later, she and the car she rented in O’Hare were in Racine. The town hadn’t changed. More churches than she saw out west, a few timid billboards for Native American Casinos, a factory outlet mall, and bars everywhere. The streets were grimy with the last of the sand laid down during the winter snow and ice. The trees were just beginning to bud, and the flowers were poking through the rich black dirt.

It felt as if she had gone back in time.

She wondered if she should call Alex and Carole, and then decided against it. What would she say to them, anyway? Instead, she checked into a hotel, unpacked, ate a mediocre room service meal, and slept as if she were dead.

Maybe in this city, she was.

***

The district attorney’s office was smaller than Grace’s bathroom. There were four chairs, not enough for her, her lawyer, the three assistant district attorneys and the DA himself. She and her lawyer were allowed to sit, but the assistant DAs hovered around the bookshelves and desk like children who were waiting for their father to finish business. The DA himself sat behind a massive oak desk that dwarfed the tiny room.

Grace’s lawyer, Maxine Jones, was from Milwaukee. Grace had done her research before she arrived and found the best defense attorney in Wisconsin. Grace knew that Maxine’s services would cost her a lot—but Grace was gambling that she wouldn’t need Maxine for more than a few days.

Maxine was a tall, robust woman who favored bright colors. In contrast she wore debutante jewelry—a simple gold chain, tiny diamond earrings—that accented her toffee-colored skin. The entire look made her seem both flamboyant and powerful, combinations that Grace was certain helped Maxine in court.

“My client,” Maxine was saying, “came here on her own. You’ll have to remember that, Mr. Lindstrom.”

Harold Lindstrom, the district attorney, was in his fifties, with thinning gray hair and a runner’s thinness. His gaze held no compassion as it fell on Grace.

“Only because a bounty hunter hired by the police department found her,” Lindstrom said.

“Yes,” Maxine said. “We’ll concede that the bounty hunter was the one who informed her of the charges. But that’s all. This man hounded her, harassed her, and tried to extort money out of her, money she did not have.”

“Then she should have gone to the Reno police,” Lindstrom said.

An assistant DA crossed her arms as if this discussion was making her uncomfortable. It was making Grace uncomfortable. Never before had she been discussed as if she weren’t there.

“It was easier to come here,” Maxine said. “My client has a hunch, which if it’s true, will negate the charges you have against her and against Michael Holden.”

“Mr. Holden embezzled from his clients with the assistance of Ms. Reinhart.”

“No. Mr. Holden followed standard procedure for the accounting firm.”

“Embezzlement is standard procedure?” Lindstrom was looking directly at Grace.

Maxine put her manicured hand on Grace’s knee, a reminder to remain quiet.

“No. But Mr. Holden, for reasons we don’t know, decided to end his life, and since he now worked alone, no one knew where he was keeping the clients’ funds. My client,” Maxine added, as if she expected Grace to speak, “would like you to drop all charges against her and to charge Mr. Delamore with extortion. In exchange, she will testify against him, and she will also show you where the money is.”

“Where she hid it, huh?” Lindstrom said. “No deal.”

Maxine leaned forward. “You don’t have a crime here. If you don’t bargain with us, I’ll go straight to the press, and you’ll look like a fool. It seems to me that there’s an election coming up.”

Lindstrom’s eyes narrowed. Grace held her breath. Maxine stared at him as if they were all playing a game of chicken. Maybe they were.

“Here’s the deal,” he said, “if her information checks out, then we’ll drop the charges. We can’t file against Delamore because the alleged crimes were committed in Nevada.”

Maxine’s hand left Grace’s knee. Maxine templed her fingers and rested their painted tips against her chin. “Then, Harold, we’ll simply have to file a suit against the city and the county for siccing him on my client. A multi-million dollar suit. We’ll win, too. Because she came forward the moment she learned of a problem. She hasn’t been in touch with anyone from here. Her family is dead, and her friends were never close. She had no way of knowing what was happening a thousand miles away until a man you people sent started harassing her.”

“You said he’s been harassing you for a month,” Lindstrom said to Grace. “Why didn’t you come forward before now?”

Grace looked at Maxine who nodded.

“Because,” Grace said, “he didn’t show me any proof of his claims until the night before I flew out. You can ask the bartender at the Silver Dollar. He saw the entire thing.”

Lindstrom frowned at Maxine. “We want names and dates.”

“You’ll get them,” Maxine said.

Lindstrom sighed. “All right. Let’s hear it.”

Grace’s heart was pounding. Here was her moment. She suddenly found herself hoping they would all believe her. She had never lied with so much at stake before.

“Go ahead, Grace,” Maxine said softly.

Grace nodded. “We had run into some trouble with our escrow service. Minor stuff, mostly rudeness on the part of the company. It was all irritating Michael. Many things were irritating him at that time, but we weren’t close, so I didn’t attribute it to anything except work.”

The entire room had become quiet. She felt slightly lightheaded. She was forgetting to breathe. She forced herself to take a deep breath before continuing.

“In the week that I was leaving, Michael asked me how he could go about transferring everything from one escrow company to another. It required a lot of paperwork, and he didn’t trust the company we were with. I thought he should have let them and the new company handle it, but he didn’t want to.”

She squeezed her hands together, reminded herself not to embellish too much. A simple lie was always best.

“We had accounts we had initially set up for clients in discreet banks. I told Michael to go to one of those banks, place the money in accounts there, and then when the new escrow accounts were established, to transfer the money to them. I warned him not to take longer than a day in the intermediate account.”

“We have no record of such an account,” the third district attorney said.

Grace nodded. “That’s what I figured when I heard that he was being charged with embezzlement. I can give you the names of all the banks and the numbers of the accounts we were assigned. If the money’s in one of them, then my name is clear.”

“Depending on when the deposit was made,” Lindstrom said. “And if the money’s all there.”

Grace’s lightheadedness was growing. She hadn’t realized how much effort bluffing took. But she did know she was covered on those details at least.

“You may go through my client’s financial records,” Maxine said. “All of her money is accounted for.”

“Why wouldn’t he have transferred the money to the new escrow accounts quickly, like you told him to?” Lindstrom asked.

“I don’t know,” Grace said.

“Depression is a confusing thing, Harold,” Maxine said. “If he’s like other people who’ve gotten very depressed, I’m sure things slipped. I’m sure this wasn’t the only thing he failed to do. And you can bet I’d argue that in court.”

“Why did you leave Racine so suddenly?” Lindstrom asked. “Your friends say you just vanished one night.”

Grace let out a small breath. On this one she could be completely honest. “I had a scare. I thought I had breast cancer. The lumpectomy results came in the day I left. You can check with my doctor. I was planning to go after that—maybe a month or more—but I felt so free, that I just couldn’t go back to my work. Something like that changes you, Mr. Lindstrom.”

He grunted as if he didn’t believe her. For the first time in the entire discussion, she felt herself get angry. She clenched her fingers so hard that her nails dug into her palms. She wouldn’t say any more, just like Maxine had told her to.

“The banks?” Lindstrom asked.

Grace slipped a small leather-bound ledger toward him. She had spent a lot of time drawing that up by hand in different pens. She hoped it would be enough.

“The accounts are identified by numbers only. That’s one of the reasons we liked the banks. If he started a new account, I won’t know its number.”

“If they’re in the U.S., then we can get a court order to open them,” Lindstrom said.

“Check these numbers first. Most of the accounts were inactive.” She had to clutch her fingers together to keep them from trembling.

“All right,” Lindstrom said and stood. Maxine and Grace stood as well. “If we discover that you’re wrong—about anything—we’ll arrest you, Ms. Reinhart. Do you understand?”

Grace nodded.

Maxine smiled. “We’re sure you’ll see it our way, Harold. But remember your promise. Get that creep away from Grace.”

“Right now, your client’s the one we’re concerned with, Maxine.” Lindstrom’s cold gaze met Grace’s. “I’m sure we’ll be in touch.”

***

Grace thought the eight o’clock knock on her hotel room door was room service. She’d ordered another meal from them, unable to face old haunts and old friends. Until she had come back, she had never even been in a hotel in Racine, so she felt as if she weren’t anywhere near her old home. Now if she could only get the different local channels on the television set, her own delusion would be complete.

She undid the locks, opened the door, and stepped away so that the waiter could bring his cart/table inside.

Instead, Delamore pulled the door back. She was so surprised to see him that she didn’t try to close him out. She scuttled away from him toward the nightstand, and fumbled behind her back for the phone.

His cheeks were red, and his eyes sparkling with fury. His anger was so palpable, she could feel it across the room.

“What kind of game are you playing?” he snapped, slamming the door closed.

She got the phone off the hook without turning around. “No game.”

“It is a game. You got away from me, and then you come here, telling them that I’ve been threatening you.”

“You have been threatening me.” Her fingers found the bottom button on the phone—which she hoped was “0.” If the hotel operator heard this, she’d have to call security.

“Of course I’d been threatening you! It’s my job. You didn’t want to come back here and I needed to drag you back. Any criminal would see that as a threat.”

“Here’s what you don’t understand,” Grace said as calmly as she could. “I’m not a criminal.”

“Bullshit.” Delamore took a step toward her. She backed up farther and the end table hit her thighs. Behind her she thought she heard a tinny voice ask a muted question. The operator, she hoped.

Grace held up a hand. “Come any closer and I’ll scream.”

“I haven’t done anything to you. I’ve been trying to catch you.”

She frowned. What was he talking about? And then she knew. The police had put a wire on him. The conversation was being taped. And they—he—was hoping that she’d incriminate herself.

“You’re threatening me now,” she said. “I haven’t done anything. I talked to the DA today. I explained my situation and what I think Michael did. He’s checking my story now.”

“Your lies.”

“No,” Grace said. “You’re the one who’s lying, and I have no idea why.”

“You bitch.” He lowered his voice the angrier he got. Somehow she found that even more threatening.

“Stay away from me.”

“Stop the act, Grace,” he said. “It’s just you and me. And we both know you’re not afraid of anything.”

Then the door burst open and two hotel security guards came in. Delamore turned and as he did, Grace said, “Oh, thank God. This man came into my room and he’s threatening me.”

The guards grabbed him. Delamore struggled, but the guards held him tightly. He glared at her. “You’re lying again, Grace.”

“No,” she said and stepped away from the phone. He glanced down at the receiver, on its side on the table, and cursed. Even if he hadn’t been wired, she had a witness.

The guards dragged him and Grace sank onto the bed, placing her head in her hands. She waited until the shaking stopped before she called Maxine.

***

Grace had been right. Delamore had been wearing a wire, and her ability to stay cool while he attacked had preserved her story. That incident, plus the fact that the DA’s office had found the money exactly where she had said it would be, in the exact amount that they had been looking for, went a long way toward preserving her credibility. When detectives interviewed Michael’s friends one final time, they all agreed he was agitated and depressed, but he would tell no one why. Without the embezzlement explanation, it simply sounded as if he were a miserable man driven to the brink by personal problems.

She had won, at least on that score. Her old clients would get their money back, and they would be off her conscience. And nothing, not even Delamore, would take their place.

Delamore was under arrest, charged with extortion, harassment, and attempting to tamper with a witness. Apparently, he’d faced similar complaints before, but they had never stuck. This time, it looked as if they would.

Grace would have to return to Racine to testify against him. But not for several months. And maybe, Maxine said, not even then. The hope was that Delamore would plea and save everyone the expense of a trial.

So, on her last night in Racine, perhaps forever, Grace got enough courage to call Alex and Carole. She didn’t reach either of them; instead she had to leave a message on their voice mail, asking them to meet her at Oh Kaye’s one final time.

Grace got there first. The place hadn’t changed at all. There was still a jukebox in the corner and cocktail waitresses in short skirts and ankle boots with big heels. Tin stars and Wild West art on the walls, unstained wood and checkered tablecloths adding to the effect. High bar stools and a lot of lonely people.

Grace ignored them. She sashayed to the bar, slapped her hand on it, and ordered whiskey neat. A group of suits at a nearby table ogled her and she turned away.

She was there to diss men not to meet them.

Carole arrived first, black miniskirt, tight crop top, and cigarette in hand. She looked no different. She hugged Grace so hard that Grace thought her ribs would crack.

“Alex had me convinced you were dead.”

Grace shook her head. “I was just sleeping around.”

Carole grinned. “Fun, huh?”

Grace thought. The night had been fun. The aftermath hadn’t been. But her life was certainly more exciting. She didn’t know if the tradeoff was worth it.

Alex arrived a moment later. Her auburn hair had grown, and she was wearing boots beneath a long dress. The boots made her look even taller.

She didn’t hug Grace.

“What the hell’s the idea?” Alex snapped. “You vanished—kapoof! What kind of friend does that?”

In the past, Grace would have stammered something, then told Alex she was exactly right and Grace was wrong. This time, Grace set her whiskey down.

“I told you about my lumpectomy,” Grace said. “You didn’t care. I was scared. I told you that, and you didn’t care. When I found out I didn’t have cancer, I called you to celebrate, and you didn’t care. Seems to me you vanished first.”

Alex’s cheeks were red. Carole stubbed her cigarette in an ashtray on the bar’s wooden rail.

“Not fair,” Alex said.

“That’s what I thought,” Grace said.

Carole looked from one to the other. Finally, she said, very softly, “I really missed you, Gracie.”

“I thought some misogynistic asshole picked you up and killed you,” Alex said.

“Could have happened,” Grace said. “Maybe it nearly did.”

“Here?” Carole asked. “At Oh Kaye’s?”

Grace shook her head. “It’s a long story. Are you both finally ready to listen to me?”

Carole tugged her miniskirt as if she could make it longer. “I want to hear it.”

Alex picked up Grace’s whiskey and tossed it back. Then she wiped off her mouth. “What did I tell you, Grace? Women always tolerate misogyny. You should have fought him off.”

“I did,” Grace said.

Alex’s eyes widened. Carole laughed. “Our Gracie has grown up.”

“No,” Grace said. “I’ve always been grown-up. You’re just noticing now.”

“There’s a story here,” Alex said, slipping her arm through Grace’s, “and I think I need to hear it.”

“Me, too.” Carole put her arm around Grace’s shoulder. “Tell us about your adventures. I promise we’ll listen.”

Grace sighed. She’d love to tell them everything, but if she did, she’d screw up the case against Delamore. “Naw,” Grace said. “Let’s just have some drinks and talk about girl things.”

“You gotta promise to tell us,” Alex said.

“Okay,” Grace said. “I promise. Now how about some whiskey?”

“Beer,” Alex said.

“You see that cute guy over there?” Carole asked, pointing at the suits.

Grace grinned. Already, her adventure was forgotten. Nothing changed here at Oh Kaye’s. Nothing except Cowboy Grace, who’d finally bellied up to the bar.

 

___________________________________________

“Cowboy Grace“ is available for one week on this site. The ebook is available on all retail stores, as well as here.

Cowboy Grace

Copyright © 2016 Kristine Kathryn Rusch
First published in The Silver Gryphon, edited by Gary Turner and Marty Halpern.
Published by WMG Publishing
Cover and Layout copyright © 2016 by WMG Publishing
Cover design by WMG Publishing
Cover art copyright © Imageegami/Dreamstime

This book is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. All rights reserved. This is a work of fiction. All characters and events portrayed in this book are fictional, and any resemblance to real people or incidents is purely coincidental. This book, or parts thereof, may not be reproduced in any form without permission.

I read a lot in January and liked a lot of it as well. Some truly marvelous books (which is not what I could say for February & March. More on that in those lists). I also finished my reading for the in-person space opera workshop I was conducting in the middle of the month. Honestly, I didn’t like much of what I read in the brand-new anthologies I found. The stories had no depth or no ending or both. So I don’t have a lot to recommend from those books. Usually I can at least recommend the introductions, but one stunningly left out all the great female space opera writers of the 1990s and barely mentioned the ones in the 2000s. I realize that bias happens, but that one stung on a bunch of levels. (I guess I expect it from old timers, most of whom are not with us anymore, but not folks who were active in those time periods.)

I haven’t yet finished reading  The Best American Sports Writing of the Century, because I needed to take a break. The book has a slant that is very white-male oriented. It’s also filled with some challenging pieces that aren’t holding up to the 26 years since the book was printed. (I swear, New Journalism is soooo self-involved.) But some of it is good and interesting and I’ll come back to it when the mood suits me. I doubt I’ll ever recommend the book, but watch: there will be a time when I recommend more essays from it.

I read one of the best novels I’ve seen in years and some great articles. So January was quite a success…which is why this list is so late. It took a while to chronicle my reading.

 

January 2025

Anders, Charlie Jane, “A Temporary Embarrassment in Space Time,” New Adventures in Space Opera, edited by Jonathan Strahan, Tachyon, 2024. I absolutely love this story. It’s everything a certain kind of space opera should be—fun, preposterous, believable, tense, and adventurous. All wrapped into a neat and well-written package. A wonderful gem of a story.

Crais, Robert, The Big Empty, Putnam, 2024. The best book I’ve read all year, maybe in the past few years. I love Robert Crais’s Elvis Cole and Joe Pike. Pike doesn’t show up until halfway through this book because Bob is so dang good at point of view and the way a story should flow. I don’t have a lot of time for leisure reading, and right now, my lack of time is significantly worse. So I did the readerly thing. I stayed up past my bedtime, and Dean literally had to pull the book from my hands. I still read it in two days. Fantastic. And no, I’m not going to tell you much more than “fantastic” because, as with all of Bob’s books, to say more is to ruin a surprise. (I might have already said too much, in fact.)

Deaver, Jeffery, and Maldonado, Isabella, Fatal Intrusion, Thomas & Mercer, 2024. Yep, I have an Amazon link only for this book, because I just discovered something very unpleasant. This book (and a bunch of Deaver novellas) are only available in ebook on Amazon. Sorry about that! I read the book in paper, which is how I prefer to read, so I had no idea that this had happened until the moment I was putting the book on the list. Sigh. It makes me, as a reader, more than mildly pissed off.

The book is good enough. It’s not as good as most Deaver books, but it’s better than a lot of thrillers. I’ll read the next book in the series, and if I like it, I’ll pick up one of Maldonado’s books. Collaborations are a difficult animal. They can be something better than both writers, especially if the book is something they wouldn’t have written without the collaborator. I suppose Deaver could argue that he wouldn’t have had a character like Carmen Sanchez, but except for a few chapters that I suspect were all Maldonado, she felt very generic. So I don’t think this collaboration enhanced the two writers’ work (I’m saying this without having read hers). But this is a good way to while away a few hours.

Fekadu, Mesfin, “The Loophole That Landed Muni Long a Grammy Nom,” The Hollywood Reporter, November 20, 2024. The online version of this article has the title “Muni Long Explains How She Made It,” and I think that is a better title for the content here. Muni Long has been around for awhile, and she has followed her own path. There are some great quotes in here, but the best was her response to how she got paid for her streaming content:

Sometimes you look at your quarterly statement and you’re like, “Oh wow, $1,000 for 500 million streams. Great. That’s awesome.” The sheer volume that I have to write in order to make an income that makes sense [is insane]. What saved me is that I have quality and quantity, whereas some of these people, all they have is one or two records.

Quantity and quality. She’s right. We’re doing the same. Take a look at this one, even if you’re new to Muni Long.

Harris, Robert,, Vintage Books, 2016. I really like Robert Harris’s writing, although his topics don’t always interest me. I picked up Conclave after seeing a review of the film. A lot of my favorite actors are in it, and since I like Harris, I thought I should give the book an eyeball before watching the film. Glad I did. There’s a nice moment toward the end of the book, something completely unexpected and yet set up. It worked for me, and might not have worked in the film (which I have not yet seen). Of course, that had me looking through more Robert Harris for the books I’ve missed. I mostly didn’t order the ones on the topics that I don’t care about, but I did preorder the next. I love his courage as a writer. He’s always doing something interesting. This is a novella, filled with his great characters and marvelous writing. Oh, and for the interested: I am not Catholic, although I was in and out of Catholic churches as a kid because so many of my friends were Catholic. So I have a passing familiarity with some of the rituals, but no great interest in the church or its habits. I still found this fascinating.

Heinz, W.C., “Brownsville Bum,” The Best American Sports Writing of the Century, edited by David Halberstam with Glenn Stout, HarperCollins, 1999. I had never heard of W.C. Heinz before reading this book. Yet many of the other writers in the front half of the book (at least) mentioned him as the best of the best. Well, this is my favorite piece in the book so far. It’s a 1951 piece about someone named Bummy Davis who was a fighter back in the day when fighters could kill each other in the ring. This one reads like a short story—the life and death of kinda thing. The writing itself is sharp and crisp, the events breathtaking. The murder, at the end, shocking because it happened in a bar, not in the ring. If you find the book, read this one first.

Rose, Lacey, “Selena Gomez is Waiting For Your Call,” The Hollywood Reporter, November 20, 2024. Last fall and early this year, there were a lot of interviews with Selena Gomez as the Oscar and Grammy hype heated up. She has a good team. But she’s also a great interview because, as young as she is, she’s had an amazing career. She knows who she is, and she’s blunt about it. I can’t encapsulate this long piece in any coherent way, except to say all writers (and Selena fans) should read it.

Royko, Mike, “‘A Very Solid Book,'” The Best American Sports Writing of the Century, edited by David Halberstam with Glenn Stout, HarperCollins, 1999. A lot of the work in this book is dated. So dated, in fact, that I had to look up some of the rivalries just to see what was going on. But this piece by Mike Royko from 1987 is familiar. I was 27 at the time, and aware of the Mets/Cubs rivalry.

Some idiot at some NY publishing house asked Royko to review a book about the Mets. And oh, did he. This piece is not dated, once you knew about the rivalry, and it is one one of my favorites. I just read it again, out loud this time to Dean. It’s a very short piece that is, ostensibly, a review of a book by Mets first baseman (at the time) Keith Hernandez. And Smith was a Cubbies fan through and through. The book is solid, you see, because it can survive being thrown against a wall…

Really worth reading

Score, Lucy, Things We Never Got Over, Bloom Books, 2022. Okay, this is annoying. As I set up this post, I discovered that Lucy Score’s ebooks are exclusive to Amazon. Same thing as the Deaver/Maldonado above. Grrrr. You can get the paperbooks anywhere you want, but to get the ebook, you have to go to Amazon. You can’t even go to her own website/store to get the book. Sorry about that. Get the paper. She has some lovely deluxe editions.

However, I did find the book on Amazon. I had just finished something else (what I can’t remember) and the algorithm suggested this book. I did what I often do and read the first chapter. And wowza is it good. Seriously, this first chapter is worth reading even if you don’t pick up the book. The chapter is a masterclass of information flow. The chapter title is Worst. Day. Ever. The first paragraph is a perfect hook:

I wasn’t sure what to expect when I walked into Café Rev, but it sure as hell wasn’t a picture of myself behind the register under the cheery headline “Do Not Serve.” A yellow frowny face magnet held the photo in place.

Each paragraph builds on that. With each page, the situation gets worse and worse and worse. You—well, I—had to go to the next chapter immediately. The book ends up being a tiny bit long, and for a moment verges on “if you two only talk to each other, this would end” but by then I didn’t care. The book is fun, the writing is great, and the characters are a hoot. So pick this one up…or at the very least (writers) read that first paragaph.

Smith, Red, “Next To Godliness,” The Best American Sports Writing of the Century, edited by David Halberstam with Glenn Stout, HarperCollins, 1999. My father, who was born in 1914, used to talk about the great sports writers and announcers from his life. He also talked about great players, so many of their names are familiar to me. Others, not quite as much. But Red Smith was quite familiar. His name was in the air all the time in our family, and also in the various writing classes I had. Red Smith was one of those writers even non-sports fans enjoyed.

Back when my father imprinted on baseball, there was radio, but it was local only. So games played outside of the area weren’t aired. The readers had to rely on the print media.

“Next To Godliness” describes an entire game in maybe 1,000 words. It also describes the reaction to that game from Smith himself. It’s lovely and well done. There’s a reason this man’s work was remembered—at least for another 50 years.

Smith, Thomas, “Dua Lipa Talks 2024,” Billboard, December 14. 2024. I love Dua Lipa’s stuff. I run to it. I also enjoy how she’s running her career, in the same way that I admire the way Taylor Swift is. These women are taking charge in a way that most musicians do not. So read this. She’s interesting and what she’s doing with her business is also great.

Verhoeven, Beatrice, “John M. Chu,” The Hollywood Reporter, November 13, 2024. Fascinating interview with John M. Chu, released just before Wicked came out. (If you haven’t seen Wicked, oh, you must! It’s marvelous.) Lots of great material here, mostly about being courageous. Lots of behind the scenes on his various movies as well. In The Heights, Crazy Rich Asians, and more. Read this one.

Weir, Keziah, “Give And Let Give,” Vanity Fair, October, 2024. I’ve been thinking about this interview ever since I read it, particularly as one particularly nutty billionaire chainsaws his way through American government, another sends his fiance into space, and the rest don’t seem to give a rat’s banana about actual human beings.

Melinda French Gates, former wife of Bill Gates, is also worth billions, and she’s giving it away, systematically, to charity after charity. She says it’s not easy, because she had to have the right organization in place to help funnel the money, and then she has to figure out where she can do the most good. Note the difference: Do The Most Good. Yeah, she’s not the only ex-wife of a billionaire doing this.

It’s fascinating to me that the wealthy women understand their social responsibility and the bulk of the men…do not.

 

 

A desert lake. A severed arm. A thousand questions.

Las Vegas summer sun bakes Metro Detective Sofia Herrara as she carefully steps her way to solving this murder mystery, while protecting herself, her partner and the department.

From water wars to the mob, good guys to bad, she’ll follow the clues to answer these pressing questions:

Whose arm? Who died? And—most importantly—why?

“Body Parts & Bathtub Rings“ is available for one week on this site. It’s available in Crimes Against Nature, edited by Robert Lopresti. The ebook is also available on all retail stores, as well as here.

 

Body Parts & Bathtub Rings By Kristine Kathryn Rusch 

The skin on the hand remained intact, although it was pale and bloated. Black hairs curved out of the base of the fingers and along the wrist. The body was missing, but the wedding ring studded with three visible diamonds wasn’t. The diamonds sparkled.  This hand hadn’t been in the water long, which was both good and bad.

Las Vegas Metro Detective Sofia Herrara pulled gloves onto her own hands, the heat of the day making the task harder than it should have been. Her own hands were slightly swollen and just a little bit damp. Sweat trickled down her back despite the loose weave long-sleeve shirt she wore. Her dark khakis were probably sweat stained as well behind the knee. Part of the problem was her heavy boots, which required thick socks just to keep the blisters away. Her feet were hot, she was hot, and it would only get worse.

She was crouched in the midday sunlight at the edge of Lake Mead. Her wide-brimmed hat cast shade over the rocks of what had once been the lakebed. The water pushed against larger rocks about a foot away.

The water glistened as if the sunlight made it happy. Sunlight in July did not make Sofia happy. She had given her standard issue water bottle to her partner, Zach Gelb, to hold while she examined the crime scene. If, indeed, this could be called a crime scene. The crime had clearly happened elsewhere.

Zach had taken a few steps away from the scene to talk on his cell. He had his back to her, but he was standing still, not pacing, trying to act like this was a crime scene as well.

The sun was so high that Zach didn’t leave much of a shadow. There was, essentially, no escaping the sun out here at this time of day, which was usually when the lake was the emptiest—at least of locals. Tourists, on the other hand, had no idea what they were facing when they encountered the desert sun, the water, and the increased elevation.

The third person in their group knew that better than she did. The park ranger who had called the hand in, Roberto Bonetti —Call me Berto— had been out here for most of the morning as he waited beside the hand to preserve the scene.

He wore the National Park Ranger’s standard summer uniform, a tan shirt with tan slacks and boots as heavy as hers. His hat wasn’t thin and floppy like hers and would have made her head sweat.

Maybe he was used to this heat, although she had no idea how anyone could be. He did have two water bottles attached to his utility belt, along with some hydration packs and a small emergency kit. She hadn’t asked him how many times he had found dehydrated tourists suffering from heat stroke, but she suspected it was quite a lot.

The three of them were now waiting for the Clark County Coroner’s Office to send someone here. Technically, the ranger should have contacted them immediately, but this wasn’t Berto’s first rodeo. He could see that the hand was suspicious. Or rather, what was visible of the arm was suspicious.

The wrist was intact, but the forearm wasn’t. And it hadn’t been cleanly cut. It had been ripped through. The bone, which was what she had to go on, was jagged.

Which made it suspicious, and because it was, Berto knew that a detective would be needed. So he had called Metro first, and then called the coroner.

Sofia was grateful for that because the faster they all moved on this the better. The last thing she wanted was for the media to get wind of a severed hand discovered at Lake Mead.

As Lake Mead’s water levels had dropped due to the drought conditions of the past twenty-plus years, more and more bodies—or parts of bodies—got discovered. The national press corps went nuts a few years back when a body in a barrel turned up. That body was at least forty years old and most likely the remains of someone who had run afoul with the Las Vegas mob.

Since then, every single grisly discovery on the shores or sticking out of the water got the press’s attention. It would only be a matter of time before someone heard of this one.

Thank heavens, though, this hand had been discovered by a ranger and not a tourist. At least Sofia wasn’t dealing with social media postings and the hasty arrival of the local news channels. She’d faced that last fall when a skull was discovered by a couple hiking the lake bed. Turned out that skull belonged to a local man who had drowned while jet skiing in the 1990s, but it took a while for the DNA testing to come back, which meant she had to endure weeks of speculation and interviews about contract killings and the violence that was part of Las Vegas’s past.

She always tried to steer the discussion away from that and toward the changes in Lake Mead. The lake she remembered from her childhood was gone; what she saw was a tiny expanse of water revealing more and more of its lakebed.

A white “bathtub ring” encircled everything, marking where the waterline had been when she was a little girl. Even back then, though, Lake Mead was considered the deadliest national park in the United States. There had been more deaths at Lake Mead in the past two decades than at any other national park. She had actually looked that statistic up because she’d gotten so many questions about the deaths and discovered that Lake Michigan was the deadliest lake, but it wasn’t a national park site.

And when the deaths were put into a context, such as the number of deaths versus the number of visitors, the deaths were a tiny tiny tiny percentage. Last fall, she’d had all of those numbers at her fingertips, because she was so annoyed by the discussions of the mob and the murders and the deaths. She’d actually snapped at one reporter: How come you care so much about these so-called mob murders and not the bathtub ring around the lake? That’ll lead to hundreds if not thousands of deaths in the Las Vegas Valley if the drought continues…

She got pulled off of media duty after that, and no one sent her to Lake Mead again. Until now.

Although, to be fair, she wasn’t even sure this was a homicide. Not yet. For all she knew, the arm could have been severed in a boating accident. If someone got too close to a boat propeller or maybe got their arm entangled in an anchor chain, the force might sever the arm.

She was going to have to find out if local hospitals had treated someone with this kind of severed limb. If the arm’s owner had assistance from someone who knew what they were doing, the owner might’ve made it to a hospital before bleeding out.

Might was the operative word, though. The chances of surviving a severing like this would take skill and luck. There were ambulances parked in strategic areas around the lake, but a bleed-out like this one would need attention immediately. Just getting from one part of the lake to another might take five minutes, and then there’d be a hike to the water itself.

She didn’t really expect to find the owner of the arm alive, but she couldn’t rule it out.

She felt a half second of irritation. The coroner should have been here by now, considering the fact that Berto had called them right after her. But she knew it could sometimes take a while for the coroner to free up enough staff for an investigation. The last time Sofia had responded to a case out here—a case of simple murder, it turned out, one fueled by beer and fisticuffs—it had taken the coroner’s office nearly ninety minutes to arrive.

She braced her gloved hands on her knees and stood up. Her calves ached from the crouch. She used to be able to hold that position for an hour or more. Now, fifteen minutes nearly wrecked her.

Berto was standing near the shore—if one could call it that. He was staring at the other side of the water, where a couple of people—teens maybe?—were playing on the large rocks near the waterline.

“Berto,” she said.

He turned. His face was ruddy, his skin leathery from too much time in the sun. He had old eyes, which relieved her. She hated dealing with people who had not been on the job long.

He walked over, glancing at Zach, who was still on the phone. That did not bode well for the coroner’s arrival.

“I need to ask a few baseline questions,” she said, removing her small notebook from her pants pocket. The leatherette cover was damp. She clicked the pen attached to the notebook with a small plastic cord. Usually, Zach gave her crap about that.

He looked over, waved his phone at her as if to say, I can’t come yet, and grimaced in annoyance. She gave him a tiny nod. They’d worked together for years, so she didn’t have to tell him to get to her side as soon as he could.

Berto waited patiently.

“Tell me again how you found this hand.” She asked the question a second time for two reasons. The first was simple; she hadn’t had her notebook out when she originally spoke to him, although she suspected Zach was recording the encounter.

The other reason was she wanted to make sure that Berto gave her the same story, with few embellishments.

“I was walking my beat.” He had already warned her he used a lot of police shorthand because he found it more convenient. He had worked as a police officer back in the Midwest, so he knew procedure—and apparently liked the lingo. “I saw something white and flat on the rocks there. It looked organic, but I couldn’t be sure. And I didn’t smell it. Normally when you see something that white, the smell of decay hits you first.”

She waited, pen poised. He hadn’t given her this much detail before, but it was consistent with what he had already told her.

“I walked down to it, saw that it was a human hand, and called it in.” He nodded toward that hand. “You know the rest.”

She didn’t, though. He had spoken to dispatch, then to Zach, and then to her when she had arrived. The story probably seemed like old hat to Berto already.

She needed to move him off of that, distract him a bit. “When was the last time you were in this part of the park?”

He blinked, tilted his head just a little, clearly considering the question.

“Had to be a week ago,” he said. “We try to see everything, keep track of it all, but we’re dealing with a million and a half acres. We can’t monitor all the changes, especially not with visitors.”

“How early in the morning do you walk this?” she asked. Because it had to be morning; every local knew that this time of day could prove deadly quickly.

“In the open like this?” he asked. “As early as I can. Usually sunrise.”

“You called us at nine,” she said. It had taken her a while to arrive—first because of the drive and then the walk to this part of the park. She had given Berto permission to leave the area, but he hadn’t. He had been in this sun for hours now.

He didn’t even look wilted. She was becoming a puddle.

“I did,” he said. “I was just finishing up the rounds. I was planning to go to the station for a while, maybe have some ice coffee, maybe something to eat before I handled whatever crises arose for the day.”

“Ice coffee,” she muttered.

“It’s not as good as it sounds,” he said. “We just pour brew coffee over ice. Nothing fancy.”

“I’ll take not fancy at the moment.” She smiled at him. Then she let her smile fade. “You haven’t found other body parts, have you?”

“No,” he said. “Not recently, and not, y’know, something like this one that hadn’t been in the water long.”

She nodded. She had had Zach dig into recent findings at Lake Mead while they drove here. There had been a lot of body parts—apparently, the lake released its bodies in chunks—but nothing in the past few months. So, this confirmed what Berto was saying.

Now she got to the question she wanted to ask.

“The hand’s a yard or more from the water line,” she said. “How do you think it got here?”

He glanced at the water, the reflection of its surface lightening his skin just a little. Then he shrugged.

“It could’ve washed up in a boat wake,” he said. “Lots of speed boats create their own waves. Or it could’ve been a bird.”

“A bird?”

“They find all sorts of things. Then, if something startles the bird, it’ll drop whatever it’s carrying. I’m surprised there haven’t been any birds around this. But, I guess, there’s no soft tissue—eyeballs, whatnot. That’s less interesting to them.”

If he was trying to gross her out, he had failed. She’d probably seen everything he had and more. She had no idea where he had worked with the police in the Midwest. That covered a lot of ground, from small towns to cities like Chicago or Detroit.

“I was thinking the hand looked pretty fresh,” she said. “You think maybe someone dropped it here so that we could find it?”

“No.” His response was swift. “If they wanted someone to discover the hand, they would have gone to, say, Echo Bay. It’s the boat launch with the fewest restrictions right now, so too many people frequent it.”

“You think someone would know that?” she asked.

“Detective,” he said, with just a tiny hint of contempt, “if you came up here for something other than bodies, you’d know it too. We deal with a lot of complaints about the declining water level and the restrictions on people’s boats. We encourage everyone to come, but we really can’t accommodate them anymore.”

By the end of that little speech, the contempt had vanished. Maybe she had misread it. Maybe she was hearing frustration or anger.

“Talk to me about emergencies,” she said. “What happens with the serious ones?”

“Well,” he said, “we can’t help with most of those. The drownings are usually over before we’re notified. And if someone tries to kill themselves, we find out when the family realizes they’re missing. Usually we don’t learn someone’s a danger to themselves until deep into the investigation.”

“What about something like this? Something that involves a serious wound or a broken limb or a heart attack?”

Berto tipped the brim of his hat back just a bit. “If they call us, we can dispatch one of the ambulances. If the ambulance heads to Boulder City, it might be a while before another arrives to replace it.”

“Does that happen a lot?” she asked.

“Mostly in the spring,” he said. “It’s our busiest time. I’ve been lobbying for more medical services. But you know the whole drill about funding.”

“I do.” She looked down at that hand. “An ambulance couldn’t come down the path we walked.”

“No,” he said. “But a stretcher could. We’ve done it countless times.”

She crouched again, and tried to peer under the hand. If an ambulance had responded to something near here, the EMTs would have put the hand on the stretcher to cart it back. Once at the ambulance, they would have put the hand on ice.

Not to reattach the limb, should they locate the owner, but to take DNA and fingerprints off it, if possible.

Zach half-walked half-slid his way toward them. He was wearing dress shoes instead of his normal boots. He had initially thought he was going to be in court this morning. Considering the sweat stains on his white shirt and the fact that he was using his hat as a fan, he probably would have preferred testifying to this.

“Coroner’s assistant got lost,” he said. “I had to talk them through the directions. They should be here at any moment.”

“Good,” Sofia said, “because I was just beginning to wonder if we could find something to shade this hand from the sun.”

Something that wouldn’t contaminate it further.

A clatter sounded behind them. Sofia turned. A coroner she didn’t recognize was coming down the path sideways to accommodate the slight decline. Behind him was another person, wearing light clothing and a hat with a brim so low that Sofia couldn’t really see who that was either.

Both were carrying equipment. The person in the back had a white-and-blue cooler that was reflecting sunlight.

Zach went up to greet them. He had been talking to them on the phone, so he would handle it from here.

Sofia looked at Berto. “You feel like sharing some of that delicious ice coffee?”

He smiled at her, surest proof that he had seen everything. No newbie smiled like that over body parts.

“I’d be happy to,” he said, “if only to see what a glutton for punishment you really are.”

***

The ice coffee left her a little too jazzed, but it was not the highlight of the ranger station. The highlight was the aloe cream that she apparently needed despite her sunscreen and warm-weather gear. She had been in that sun too long.

All she ended up with, though, was a slight headache that lunch would cure. Zach didn’t stay long with the coroners and met her at their car.

He was already inside, AC running, when she approached. When he saw her, he scooted to the passenger side, and grabbed his laptop.

“We have an I.D.,” he said.

She handed him aloe. He lathered his skin while she backed the car out of the lot.

“Fingerprints?” she asked.

“Yeah, they were able to get some.” He grimaced. He hated watching the techniques that the coroner’s office used. If Zach could avoid working with the bodies, he would. “His name is Elias Venegas. He was reported missing three days ago by his wife.”

She pulled out of the lot and headed back toward Boulder City, taking her time because she knew that some drivers—usually tourists—were all over these roads.

“Why was he fingerprinted?” She pulled off her hat and tossed it in the back seat, then set the AC on frigid. The aloe had helped, but she was definitely burned. The touch of the sun through the window was irritating.

“He was bonded and certified. He went through all kinds of vetting.” Zach stared at his computer screen. “He was a well-known landscape artist who specialized in creating desert gardens.”

She glanced at Zach sideways. He was frowning. She was frowning.

“So, you’re thinking, accident?” she asked.

“I don’t know,” Zach said. “It’s weird. The wife reported him missing when he didn’t come home from work a few days ago.”

“Where’s work?” she asked.

“His offices are in downtown Summerlin.” He tapped the laptop. “Looking at the missing persons filings now. The intake officer said the wife was adamant that her husband wouldn’t disappear on her.”

A four-by-four passed her on a narrow corner, a boat attached to the back swinging into her lane. She barely had room to get out of the way and stay on the road.

“Jeez,” Zach said, sounding panicked. But Sofia’s heart rate hadn’t even gone up, which was why she was driving, and he was not.

“The report?” she asked.

“The intake officer was pretty diligent, even though he didn’t believe the wife,” Zach said.

Years ago, Sofia had worked Mis-Pers. Nearly everyone claimed that the person wouldn’t disappear without telling anyone, and usually they were wrong.

But to go from Summerlin to Lake Mead was a deliberate trip.

“Was he entertaining clients?” she asked.

“No,” Zach said. “He’d gone to visit a client.”

“Who?” she asked.

“The wife didn’t know but said the client was a really important one.” Zach scrolled along the laptop’s pad. “No one asked or explained what ‘important’ meant.”

So now the question became, should they call the wife and tell her about the body part just to get answers? Or did they leave that part out of this?

Sofia wasn’t ready to tell anyone yet about the hand.

“Contact his office, find out where he went,” she said. “And check the hospitals, see if this Venegas guy is in any of them.”

“The report says the wife already did,” Zach said.

He hadn’t worked Mis-Per, so he didn’t know that sometimes people called in a missing person’s report after killing someone, just to cover their butts.

“Start with Boulder City,” she said, “and then go to Kingman, Laughlin, Bullhead City. Places the wife wouldn’t have thought to check, if she had no idea he was at Lake Mead.”

“Hospitals first?” Zach asked. He sounded irritated, but he didn’t say anything. After all, she couldn’t check any of this, since she was driving.

“Yeah,” she said.

He tapped on the keyboard of his laptop, then picked up his cell with a sigh.

She dodged another four-by-four with a boat behind it, shaking her head as she did so. Who came out here in this heat? It had to be tourists.

An ancient RV weaved across the road before her, and she leaned on the horn, hoping to get their attention. She did. They snapped to their lane.

But as they went past, she frowned at it.

Trucks, RVs, boats. Lots of equipment, lots of empty spaces. No one thought twice about all of those vehicles heading to the lake. No wonder so many bodies turned up.

It wouldn’t be hard to transport them from somewhere else.

She didn’t say anything about that, though, because Zach was deep in his conversation with the hospital in Boulder City. He wasn’t having any luck.

She doubted he would.

Something about Venegas’s job and the fact that he worked in Summerlin made her think he was dead before he got to the lake.

But she would wait on what the coroner had to say. Sometimes cases surprised you. She hoped this wouldn’t be one of those.

***

They stopped at a local fast-food chicken place in Boulder City. She promised Zach a milkshake. He’d contacted all the hospitals in the area, and none had any record of an Elias Venegas, nor did they have a record of a John Doe who had come in missing a hand.

As she and Zach headed inside, they saw a sprinkler head near the edge of the door, leaking water all over the parking lot. She sighed and signaled Zach to get lunch while she asked for the manager.

When an older woman with a manager’s tag stuck her head out of the back area, Sofia said, “You know you have a leaking sprinkler, right?”

“Yeah,” the woman said. “People’ve been telling us.”

Which meant it had been going on for a while. “You realize you can be fined for excess use, right?”

“I won’t be fined,” the woman said, and walked away.

Sofia sighed again, knowing she couldn’t let that go. Too many people failed to report. She went back outside, took a picture, and sent it to the Southern Nevada Water Authority. They would know what to do.

Then she joined Zach at the table. He’d already picked up the food.

“This guy, he’s a big deal,” Zach said in between bites of a chicken tender. “The mucky-mucks in town, they all hire him to transform their lawns into a desert oasis.”

He had to be half-quoting some promotional something or other. Sofia took her orange tray and pulled it toward her, grabbing a fry as she did so.

“His fees are astonishing,” Zach said. “I mean, hell, I’d just lay ratty Astroturf instead of pay for this.”

“Or pull up the grass yourself,” she said.

“Yeah,” Zach said with a grin. “Desert landscaping done easy.”

Nevada had passed a law as the drought crushed everything, forcing residents to get rid of what the state termed “decorative grass” by the end of 2026. Some people were doing that already. Others were pressing for a variance.

She tried not to follow any of that because it irritated her too much. What was wrong with people? They lived in a desert, and water had been scarce from the start. In the 1990s, predictions were that Las Vegas wouldn’t make it another ten years because of a lack of water, so the city embarked on a recycling program.

Now, all water used indoors was recycled. The problem was things like that broken sprinkler. Outdoor water was one-time use only, although there were measures trying to reform that as well.

“Lemme see what he charges,” she said.

Zach spun the laptop around. Venegas’s website was beautiful, high-end, and filled with lovely pictures of various landscapes. He hadn’t called himself a landscape artist. Architectural Digest had.

This guy was one of the top landscape designers in the country. A guy like that didn’t go on a jaunt to Lake Mead in the middle of the week.

“Find out if anyone is actually in the office,” Sofia said.

She had a feeling, but it wasn’t something she could articulate. Not yet.

Zach looked at her measuringly. He had worked with her long enough to know that she wasn’t going to share her thinking yet. He respected the hunches, but he always wanted to know how she got there, which led to irritated discussions, which neither of them needed right then.

He spun the laptop back toward himself, glanced at the number, and dialed with his thumb. Then he grabbed the milkshake and stood up, heading toward the car.

He had finished eating, and she had just started. She finished in a hurry, headed outside, and slipped into the car’s air conditioning, which was fighting a losing battle with the heat. Records every day this July, and it looked like today would be no different.

“We’re in luck,” Zach said. “One of the associates is waiting for us.”

“Did you tell them why we’re coming?” Sofia asked as she put on her seat belt.

“Didn’t have to,” Zach said. “When she found out who I was, she said, ‘I hope to hell this is good news about Elias.’”

“Did you tell her the bad news?” Sofia asked.

“I didn’t,” Zach said, “because we still don’t know. I mean, maybe…”

Sofia gave him a knowing nod. They did know; they just couldn’t prove anything. And an excess of caution was always the best.

“I just told her we were investigating the missing person report,” he said.

“Was she surprised?” Sofia asked.

“Are rich people ever surprised that someone is doing something for them that doesn’t happen for anyone else?” he asked.

“She’s probably not rich,” Sofia said. “She works for someone.”

“Yeah, maybe,” he said, “but given how much money that place brings in, she’s richer than we are.”

They were going to have to drive to downtown Summerlin, and the easiest way was to take the Beltway, which would give Sofia exactly no time to go home and clean up. Ah, well. The extra aloe had helped, as had the chocolate shake.

She drove while Zach continued to tap on his laptop, occasionally naming the very famous clients who had hired Venegas. Apparently, the pictures of their properties were gorgeous, if Zach’s enthusiasm was any indication.

She was going to have him look deep into the business’s financials when a call came into her cell. It was the coroner. She put it on speaker.

“Please tell me you found the rest of his body in your cooler,” Sofia said.

“Nope,” the coroner said. “I suspect it’s still in Lake Mead.”

“Really?” Sofia asked. “We’ve been calling hospitals to see if he’s alive.”

“The arm was severed post-mortem,” the coroner said, “and I think severed is the wrong word. I think the chain that was wrapped around it somehow twisted and snapped the bone.”

“Chain?” Sofia asked. Zach was leaning forward, frowning at the car’s speakers as if they were the coroner herself.

“Yeah,” the coroner said. “We found bits of it in the skin and the bone itself.”

“This wasn’t, say, a boating accident? Something got caught in, maybe, a propeller?”

“Well, maybe, in one sense,” the coroner said. “A propeller might’ve snagged that chain and put enough force on it to make it snap the arm.”

“And send it to the shore?” Zach asked.

“Flying to the shore, maybe,” the coroner said. “The hand was dropped from above. There were rocks in the skin, and they came from directly underneath the hand. So it landed with some force.”

“Not deliberately dropped, then,” Sofia said. She wasn’t sure if that was a question or not.

“Well, not unless it was deliberately dropped from some kind of height,” the coroner said. “And given that there was no hills in that part of the beach…”

“Yeah, okay,” Sofia said.

“I’ll have more for you as we investigate, but I thought you’d want to know that this person was dead when he went into the water. Someone wrapped him in chains and probably attached him to something they thought would sink. It probably didn’t go as deep as they wanted.”

“Or they put him somewhere a bit too shallow,” Zach said.

“Maybe,” the coroner said. “But people usually underestimate how much weight it takes to hold a gaseous bloating body underwater. Bodies like that want to float.”

Zach winced. Apparently, he could picture that. If Sofia let herself, she could smell it, which wasn’t something she really wanted to do—not even in her imagination.

“I’ll have more for you later,” the coroner said, “but I figured you would want to know that this guy was already a corpse when he was tossed into Lake Mead.”

“Thanks,” Sofia said, but the coroner had already hung up.

“So,” Zach said, “a murder then.”

“Most likely,” Sofia said.

Whether they could prove it or not would be something else entirely.

***

The offices of Venegas Landscape Artistry and Design were in one of the newer buildings in Downtown Summerlin, near the Las Vegas Ballpark. The entire development was snooty, catering to people with more money than Sofia would ever earn in her lifetime.

The building had opaque glass walls that reflected the mountains. The site looked lovely, except from the parking lot. There, it felt like she had entered a sterile office park that could be in any city.

Inside, the walls belied that impression. The doors opened onto an expensive blue and gray lined carpet. The walls were covered with murals—if one could call a black-and-white gigantic flower a mural.

The offices took up the entire seventh floor. As she and Zach emerged from the elevator, the first thing she noticed was that the art had changed. The walls were covered with photographs of the desert or desert plants. Brown and gray rocks, with a bit of green or gray or the ever-blooming flowers, something she actually loved about this city.

Those images soothed her, which was probably what they were supposed to do. There was another set of smoked glass doors, and as she was about to go through, the doors opened.

A lanky woman with skin so leathery that it looked like it had been glued to her bones came out, right hand extended.

“Officers,” she said in one of those sickly sweet voices that people used when they were uncomfortable.

“Detectives,” Sofia said, pausing between that word and the rest, “Herrera and Gelb.” She deliberately did not give the woman any clue as to who was who.

Since neither of them took her hand, the woman let it drop.

“I’m Louisa Langford,” she said, pushing the smokey door open. “We spoke on the phone.”

She said that to Zach.

“We’ve been worried sick about Elias. He missed several important meetings, and his wife has no idea where he is. I take it you do?”

She led them to a conference room, talking the entire way. The conference room was a glass box. The view was visible from the hallway, but so were the people inside.

Sofia went in and stood near the windows. The heat of the day radiated through the glass, leaving the front of her warm and her back cold in the air conditioning.

“We don’t know where he is,” Zach said, not exactly lying. Sofia could see him reflected in the glass, his body larger than the towers dotting the Strip. “When did you last see him?”

“Three days ago,” Langford said. “He was going to see one of our clients. He was really nervous.”

That caught Sofia’s attention. She turned, so she could see Langford’s face. “Why would a man with his credentials be nervous?”

Langford took a deep breath and looked over her shoulder. Then she made sure her back was to the hallway.

“Look, this client is…” She paused. “I’m not supposed to discuss him or the work, but well, Elias is missing, and I’m scared.”

“Why?” Sofia asked.

Langford gripped the back of a chair. “You know we have a lot of foreign money, billionaires, in Summerlin, right?”

Sofia blinked, trying to follow. “You’re saying your client is a foreign billionaire?”

“I’m not saying that,” Langford said. “I don’t give out client names.”

She let that hang for a moment, but neither Sofia nor Zach jumped on it. They would figure this out, with a warrant if they had to. First they needed to let Langford talk.

“We often don’t meet the actual clients,” she said after a moment, “but instead, we meet the people running their estates. Those people are…protective…of their positions. Apparently, the estate manager, in this instance, was…difficult at best. Elias wouldn’t let any of us near him.”

“Difficult why?” Sofia asked.

“Elias used the word thugs to describe the security. He was worried for anyone on our team to go up there and work. The security is armed and…his word…volatile.” Langford’s fingers dug into the back of the chair.

Interesting, Sofia thought but didn’t say. “So what did they want Elias for?”

“Apparently, someone wanted to change the estate’s landscaping to desert landscaping.” Langford raised her eyebrows. “You’re aware of the Named and Shamed List?”

“Yes,” Zach said without looking directly at Sofia. He knew she didn’t always follow the news. But she was aware of the Named and Shamed List, mostly because it frustrated her. Every year, the Las Vegas Valley Water District released the names of the top 100 residences that used too much water.

The problem was that all of them belonged to the rich, who could afford the exorbitant fines that came with excessive water usage. Sofia was of the opinion that anyone who overused their allotment—in some cases by millions of gallons per year—should have their water shut off until there were changes.

But she wasn’t in charge of that.

“Many of our clients come from the list,” Langford was saying to Zach. “But they’re usually locals who made good and want to change their behavior and cut their water footprint.”

Zach nodded.

“Someone in our current client’s compound wanted to change the behavior there or at least change the unfavorable reporting. Elias was going to essentially say he couldn’t do what they were asking, and they needed to hire someone else.” Her hands ran along the top of the chair as if trying to rub it clean.

“What were they asking?” Zach asked.

“If we could set up a system that made it look like they were using less water without changing the landscaping at all.” Langford frowned. “Of course we can’t, not legally. We’d have to shuffle the water meters and change the way that things are recorded…I’m sure someone could do it, but we certainly can’t.”

Sofia could hear the frustration in her voice.

“So, you fire the client,” Sofia said. “People do that all the time.”

Langford straightened her back. “We do that all the time as well. But this client…” She looked away as if conjuring a memory. “Elias told them he wasn’t interested in working with them. I guess it got heated. When he came back, he was really upset because we’re all about conservation here.”

“Okay…” Zach said, trying to keep his voice level as if he didn’t understand where this was going.

Langford looked at him, her gaze sharp. “Elias was afraid…well, we were afraid…that the water waste would continue. Millions of gallons wasted and untraceable. It’s just…wrong.”

Sofia didn’t see how any of that was worth killing over, though. That thought must have shown on her face because Langford squared her shoulders.

“I know most people think this is silly, but it’s not. Water waste here in the valley is a matter of life and death for all of us. For the city too.” Langford had made a fist with her right hand, and pounded it slightly on the back of the chair. “I know it’s not an immediate problem. People don’t think about the future—”

“What happened?” Sofia asked. She didn’t need the lecture. She did worry about the future, but right now, she needed to focus on the present. On this case. “He was angry. He must have done something.”

Langford nodded, just once. “Something he’d never done before,” she said. “He reported them to the Water Authority so that they could be on the lookout for any kind of tricks. And he was talking to some people with law enforcement ties—lawyers, in particular—to find out if doing such a thing would be fraud on a large scale.”

“Large scale?” Zach asked.

“A felony, to make them stop,” Langford said.

That would make no difference to a foreign national, but it might to the estate manager, if they were local.

“I’m confused,” Sofia said. “If they’re not a client, why did Elias return to the estate after reporting them?”

“They’re still on our books as a client,” Langford said. “Elias was going to give them a list of landscapers to replace him. Only he didn’t make a list. He was going to tell them off. I told him not to.”

She gave them an odd look.

“I was scared for him. I really was. These people aren’t people you cross or confront. They play by different rules.”

“Because they’re armed?” Sofia asked.

“No.” That single word had frustration in it. “Lots of our clients have armed security these days. But these guys—they seem violent.”

“You’ve met them?” Zach asked.

“No,” she said. “Violent was Elias’s word. And I was scared. But he went anyway.”

“And no one has seen him since?” Sofia asked.

“That’s right,” Langford said. “No one has seen him since.”

***

The nice thing about Summerlin was that it was a brand-new planned development. Started in the 1990s, most of the Vegas Valley’s wealthy migrated up there for enhanced security and privacy. The communities were gated, even though the homes were on multiacre estates.

Enhanced security meant cameras. It meant monitors. It meant doorbell cameras and prying eyes, even though the locals wanted privacy. They got it behind their own gates but on the way to and from the gate? They had no privacy at all.

So that was why it wasn’t hard for Sofia and Zach to trace what happened to Elias Venegas. As they drove away from his business, Zach looked up the foreign nationals on the Named and Shamed List. Most had been on the list for decades because no one had been able to shut them down. But the newcomer to the list was a Chinese billionaire who owned casinos in Macao and who had some ownership in one of the casinos on the Strip.

The billionaire had never been to Las Vegas, apparently preferring to park his money here without bothering to visit it in person. But there had been dozens of reports of late-night parties on the estate, lots of random weapons fired, and some generally out-of-control behavior that made the wealthy neighbors nervous.

A new estate manager was hired, and promises were made to the gated community’s board that the estate would clean up its act. Apparently, someone thought that included cleaning up the landscaping.

It took more than a week of careful investigation and several warrants to get information from nearby security cameras. Sofia also got permission to dredge Lake Mead near where the hand had been found.

Sure enough, Venegas’s body wasn’t that far out, in waters deep enough to boat but too shallow to really hide a corpse effectively.

The story, as it came out, was sad and simple. Venegas had gone alone, gotten into a loud verbal disagreement with the estate manager. The fight brought in security, who saw Venegas as a threat, and shot him.

Then the guards were informed as to who he was and what they had done. That night they placed him into a van and drove it to Lake Mead. It showed up on several traffic cams along the way.

The big mistake they made, though, was driving his car along with it. That car was in the lake as well, only it hadn’t been found yet.

Sofia had everything wrapped up within the month. So many employees of the estate saw what happened or were involved, and did not want to get charged with aiding and abetting. That made them talk.

The Chinese billionaire did not help them. He fired the estate manager and put the entire place on the market.

And all of this happened before the media got wind of any of it, which relieved her. It put her in charge of the way that the story got covered.

No one mentioned the severed hand in Lake Mead. That would come out in trial.

Instead, she managed to get a friendly journalist to report on the center of the story—or at least, what she believed to be the center of the story:

Elias Venegas was a passionate defender of the future. He had just run into someone so stuck in the past that they had been willing to commit fraud to make their bad habits invisible to the community writ large.

The story had that focus for two whole days before the preliminary hearings. And then the arm and the body in Lake Mead and the stories about the lake of death began.

Two days were more than she would have gotten otherwise. Normally, she didn’t care about coverage, but in the Lake Mead cases, she did.

She wanted people to understand that bathtub ring. She wanted them to know that the drought situation had long since become serious.

The death of Elias Venegas wasn’t the first death connected to the changes in the climate, and it certainly wouldn’t be the last.

But it had been dramatic enough to catch the world’s attention—if only for a few hours.

And sometimes, that was all it took.

 

___________________________________________

“Body Parts & Bathtub Rings“ is available for one week on this site. The ebook is also available on all retail stores, as well as here.

Body Parts & Bathtub Rings

Copyright © 2025 by Kristine Kathryn Rusch
Published by WMG Publishing

First appeared in Crimes Against Nature, edited by Robert Lopresti, Down & Out Books, 2024

Cover and Layout copyright © 2025 by WMG Publishing
Cover design by WMG Publishing
Cover art copyright © Canva

This book is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. All rights reserved. This is a work of fiction. All characters and events portrayed in this book are fictional, and any resemblance to real people or incidents is purely coincidental. This book, or parts thereof, may not be reproduced in any form without permission.

People often misquote Benjamin Franklin on the only certainties in life—death and taxes. But Patrick wonders about the truth in that.

Once, young and foundering, he embarked on a quest to challenge life’s inevitabilities.

Now, older and jaded, he comes face to face with his past, forcing him to question everything he believes.

“Death And Taxes“ is available for one week on this site. The ebook is also available on all retail stores, as well as here.

 

Death And Taxes By Kristine Kathryn Rusch

Sixteen years and a half continent away from the great American Midwest, Patrick saw Keri. She was running out of the market across the street from his favorite coastal café, a bottle of wine in her hand.

At first he thought it couldn’t be her. Her long brown hair caught the sun, reflecting it in golden highlights. She was slender, and the blue sundress she wore hung off her as if she hadn’t grown into it yet.

Perpetually twenty. That was what he thought as he sipped his mocha and returned to the Wall Street Journal. Keri would always be twenty and coltish, not quite grown into her body.

He smiled at himself, at his romantic nature. Proof, perhaps, that he had loved her because he saw her in every gangly twenty-year-old with the promise of great beauty.

Then a car horn made him look up. The woman was standing in the middle of the street, staring at him, cars stopped all around her. The bottle of wine had shattered at her feet.

His gaze met hers.

She hadn’t changed.

And there was a look of abject horror on her face.

***

Sixteen years and half a continent away, he’d been twenty-five, callous and certain of his own future. The son of a prominent lawyer, he’d become a lawyer too—not with the thought of practicing law, but with the thought of creating it. He studied politics like it was a religion, and decided that he had to be in the seat of government. So, with his newly minted certificate from the bar, he headed downstate thinking the capitol would welcome him.

Instead, he learned that any state capitol had its share of locally grown lawyers. With his pedigree, the partners at the large local firms said, he could get a job anywhere. The following question—why here?—had an underlying meaning: what’s wrong with you? How come you haven’t gone to your father’s firm?

He couldn’t very well say he had come because he thought getting into politics would be easier here. It wasn’t. He didn’t know anyone, and the art of politics was the managing of connections.

Eventually, he got a job as a junior staff lawyer at the Fair Housing Coalition, a job he saw as beneath him both financially and politically. Yes, yes, he believed everyone should have a home and everyone should be treated fairly, but most of the people he saw were too dumb to realize that a lease agreement was a legal document and that their behavior had put them in trouble with their landlord and the local laws.

He could have, he later supposed, joined the interoffice coalition that was working to change some of the more egregious landlord-tenant laws, but his heart wasn’t in it. Instead, he gravitated to the local university, spending his time in the student union, drinking with people who reminded him of his friends back home, talking philosophy and planning to change the world, one little decision at a time.

That was how he learned about the Professors Simmons and their interdisciplinary study—financed by any number of government agencies and private corporations—and extended, theoretically, over decades.

The study only made it through the first five months of its existence.

It caused two deaths, and derailed any hopes he had of politics—at least out front. Only fast-talking and the excellent attorneys of his father’s firm had saved Patrick from being disbarred.

By then, he didn’t care. He’d already met and lost Keri.

And had his belief in everything shattered.

***

He grabbed his mocha as he headed out of the café. Interesting, he would later think, that he’d left his PDA and his newspaper, but took his beverage.

It was a clear sign that he wasn’t thinking, just reacting, running through the closely set tables to the double-doors, pushing them open and hurrying into the street.

A VW Bug swerved past him, and the driver shouted an obscenity. A sedan, following, leaned on its horn.

But he didn’t move. He stared at the broken bottle, the red wine running like blood down the empty sidewalk.

Keri was gone—as if she had never been.

***

The Professors Simmons were not related. There were four of them, all in different disciplines. They met at a large university faculty gathering where everyone had been asked to clump alphabetically. Their common last names, their common ages, and their uncommon interests held them together a lot longer than the meeting had.

Professor Abigail Simmons taught philosophy. She had two seminars in which she tortured undergraduates, forcing them to challenge the realities in the world around them. She also taught three graduate seminars to the same twenty grad students, the courageous few who thought majoring in philosophy was a good idea, no matter how badly it ruined them for the job market. She had grown frightened for her own job, discovering that publishing occasional articles in philosophical and religious journals wasn’t enough to impress her dean. Apparently, she had to do some sort of breakthrough research to justify her salary. But, she would argue, breakthrough research and philosophy were by definition incompatible, something her dean believed she—of all people—could overcome.

Professor Roderick Simmons taught political science. He was the rightwing guru of the poli-sci department, the man that local media always called to give a reliable—and seemingly balanced—view of local elections. Roderick Simmons specialized in political systems and, in addition to his well-received books, he spent a lot of time away from campus, consulting with various groups, many of them tied to the Republican Party. He was tenured and secure, which made him perfect for this joint project.

Professor Marilyn Simmons was a biologist. Her teaching work involved occasional lectures to overcrowded 101 classes (with the day-to-day work done by teaching assistants) and supervising the research of sleep-deprived graduate students. Her seat at the university had funding from outside grants; she was a star professor who felt her own area of expertise had grown a bit stale. She was looking for a new challenge, one that would improve her prestige even more, and this, she felt, was it.

Professor Nash Simmons was the youngest and the most professionally insecure of the group. Even his specialty reflected his insecurities: His professorial bio said that he focused on Cognitive Analysis and Behavioral Theories—a lot of words, he liked to joke, that meant he had no idea what he was doing. He did whatever it was that he did from the Behavioral Science Department, where he taught upper-level psychology classes and graduate seminars in the brain. He supervised almost no graduate students and his thesis, a trailblazing work on cognitive theory that had been published to great acclaim, was now several years old. He had to produce something new, and in the way of all who were acclaimed when they were too young, he felt that something new had to be trailblazing as well.

Patrick had no idea how the multidisciplinary study went from cocktail party talk to grant-writing to grant-winning, but by the time he had encountered Simmons-N, as Nash Simmons had been designated by those involved in the work, the study was looking for willing bodies. That Patrick wasn’t a student and had an understanding of the body politic made him an unusual choice.

That he was willing to step into the real world in the name of science made him even more unusual.

But it was his willingness to apply experimental techniques to that real world that made him the most desirable candidate the Professors Simmons had found.

***

Patrick walked into the market. It smelled of garlic and fish overlaid with the faint scent of roses from a display near the door. The place was dark compared to the street and cramped, which instantly made him uncomfortable. He preferred the large chain grocery store at the end of town, where the lights were bright and the products were displayed according to dictates of some corporate official in another state.

As his eyes adjusted, he saw six different aisles heading toward the seafood department along the back wall. The seventh aisle, which started behind the cashier, carried wines, beer, and hard liquor. Cigarettes were stacked high, where no one could get them without help from the staff.

He waited in line, noting that everyone ahead of him had fresh produce and canned products with the words “healthy” or “organic” or “natural” on the label. He shuddered, hating the pretension, remembering when he used to do the same thing just to fit in with his university friends.

When he made it to the front of the line, he reached into the back pocket of his jeans and pulled out his badge. Most people in this small town knew their sheriff, but he was cautious for the handful that didn’t.

“The woman who just left,” he said. “The one with the wine. Can I see the copy you made of her license?”

The clerk flushed and for a moment, he thought the gambit wouldn’t work. Keri still looked twenty; she should have been carded. Oregon law stated that anyone who looked thirty-five or younger had to show identification to buy liquor.

But the clerk nodded and called for a manager, who took Patrick to the back office where he could look at the fuzzy identification that had been scanned into the computer system.

Kerissa Simon, the ID said, the last name dangerously close to Simmons—so close that it made his head hurt.

“Any idea where she’s staying?” he asked, knowing the store didn’t need a record of that, but often took it to avoid problems later on.

He got the name of a roadside motel, cheap but comfortable, and somehow it didn’t surprise him, just like her appearance in his refuge hadn’t surprised him.

Although it should have.

***

The meeting room was an old lecture hall in one of the campus’s earliest buildings. The building was now used primarily for offices, but this room had clearly been too big to give to just any professor.

Radiators ran along the walls beneath the single-paned windows, and despite the constant heat blowing into the room, there was still a draft. Patrick sat near the door in a wooden desk chair that was at least eighty years older than he was. Some of the names carved into the desk’s surface had been there so long that their edges had worn smooth.

He traced them, feeling out of place among the students, knowing he looked out of place in the suit his father had purchased for him before his first moot court appearance. Patrick had taken off the tie and stuffed it into his briefcase, but the fact that he had a briefcase instead of a backpack and a suit coat instead of a sweater already showed that he wasn’t One of Them.

A few stared, and a couple kept glancing at him like they expected him to get up front and talk about the various studies.

He’d had some preliminary meetings with the Professors Simmons and the assisting graduate students; he assumed these other participants had as well. Now, though, they were getting together for their first official meeting. They would have four such meetings before splitting into various subsets, four meetings in which the Professors Simmons would lay out the purpose of the studies as best they could, without tainting the results.

The professors stood in the hallway, heads bent, conferring, while a graduate student with a clipboard checked off the names of each attendee. Finally, a young woman, snowflakes melting on her hair and collar, stopped near the graduate student, gesturing an apology as she gave her name. Then she slipped inside the room, and took the only remaining chair, right next to Patrick.

“The snowstorm they predicted came, huh?” he asked.

She leaned away from him and finger-combed the moisture from her brown hair. Then she peeled off her coat, meticulously hanging it on the back of her seat.

“The roads are a mess,” she said. “I had to park six blocks away.”

He was in one of the private lots, courtesy of the Fair Housing Council. He hadn’t really noticed the snow until he started climbing hill. Then he worried about the swiftness of the storm, knowing that the sidewalks could get buried during the few short hours of the meeting.

“I’m Patrick,” he said as she sat down across from him.

“Keri.” She stuck her mohair scarf inside her coat sleeve, then smiled at him. “You need the money too?”

No, he wanted to say but didn’t, I just need the company. He knew this study paid the highest of any conducted on campus, and he thought he knew why. The interdisciplinary approach allowed for even more grant money than usual, and the professors decided to use that money to pay the subjects extra, so that they’d stick around for the duration rather than leave when the semester ended.

“Money’s always nice,” he said, which was as much of a dodge as he wanted to give her. He wasn’t sure why he felt this odd need for honesty. She was a bit thin for his tastes—all elbows and knees and sharp angles. She was also at least five years younger than he was, an undergraduate when he’d been out of school for a year now.

She smiled at him, then pulled an older laptop from her backpack. The laptop barely fit on the desk. Several other participants had laptops or AlphaSmarts or PDAs with keyboards.

He hadn’t even thought of taking notes, which suddenly showed him how far he had come from the student mentality. He leaned to the right, opened his briefcase, and pulled out both a legal pad and his BlackBerry, not sure which would work best in this situation.

Then the door opened one more time, and the Professors Simmons came in. Their appearance was as varied as their disciplines. Simmons-A was short and dumpy, her curly hair a mixture of gray and grayer. Simmons-R wore a suit as expensive as Patrick’s. His black hair had a precision cut, and his hands looked manicured. Simmons-M was slender and wore her long red hair in some sort of upswept do that looked like it took time and three other people to create. Simmons-N had the prerequisite professorial ponytail and wispy goatee. His glasses fell to the edge of his nose, making him seem even more absent-minded than he probably was.

Patrick’s stomach turned. Studies, waivers, payment by the hour, altering his behavior because he had agreed to do so, not because he wanted to do so.

Was he that lonely? Was he that lost?

He glanced around the room, at the stressed, pimply faces around him, and realized he probably was.

***

The motel had been built in the late 1950s, when this coastal community had been known as the Disneyland of the Pacific Northwest. Once there’d been a theme park (although in those days, they’d called it something else) on the outskirts of town. Only a few remnants remained—a red-and-white store downtown that made its own candy; a go-cart park across from a restaurant once known as (and still referred to by locals as) the Pixie Kitchen; and a five-story resort hotel built in the Cape Cod-style where presidents had stayed but which had become, in the intervening years, an old-folks home.

This motel, unoriginally called the Beach-Goer, still advertised that it had television and clean, comfortable rooms. It stood on a bluff overlooking the ocean, prime real estate that the elderly owners refused to sell to all sorts of development firms.

The main entrance was off a narrow drive that barely fit today’s SUVs; he had no idea how the large automobiles of forty years ago had negotiated the same road.

He drove a truck/van combination with an engine modified for high speeds. The county owned the vehicle, and if he ever lost a local election, he would have to give the thing back. Sometimes he thought he might miss it—in the back was all sorts of life-saving equipment mixed with weaponry—but mostly he saw it as a burden of his job, one of many he hadn’t understood when he learned that his checkered past mattered less to the people here than it probably should have.

He parked just outside the entrance, making sure that the official decals were facing away from the street, so as not to interfere with any walk-in business. Then he went inside.

The desk clerk was a local gal who played bingo at the casino every Wednesday night. He didn’t know her name, but they’d seen each other around. It was hard to miss the other locals in a town of 7,000.

She smiled at him with recognition. He didn’t have to flash his badge. He just asked for Keri Simons’ room, and the clerk gave him a room key.

He weighed it in his hand as he walked along the concrete sidewalk. The key was a kind of power: if she wasn’t there, he could wait inside her room, surprise her, let her know who was really in charge.

That he even had the thought surprised and appalled him at the same time. He had never thought of control in connection to Keri before.

But the study itself, the reason they met, was all about control.

And hubris.

And the belief that somehow, humankind had the power to alter its own destiny.

***

“For thousands of years, mankind has felt it has a destiny.” Simmons-A stood in front of the long wooden desk beneath the chalkboard. She had taken a piece of chalk before beginning her welcoming remarks, almost as if the chalk provided a kind of comfort. All during her talk, she kept the piece in her palm, alternately rolling it and clenching her fingers around it.

Patrick found himself watching the chalk instead of her face, partly because she reminded him of every professor he’d ever disliked, and he wasn’t exactly sure why.

“Not just a species destiny,” Simmons-A was saying, “but individual destinies as well. We can turn to almost any early document based on the oral tradition and find evidence. Genesis tells us that God created Man in His own image, and just that sentence alone implies that God had a purpose for Man, a purpose that Woman screwed up, of course.”

The group laughed, but it sounded dutiful. Patrick made himself smile, even though he hadn’t felt like it, but Keri crossed her arms.

“Mythology gives us story after story of people confronting their destinies, from the Christ story to the Greek story of Oedipus.”

Patrick shifted in his chair. He didn’t need the history lesson if that was what it could be called. He just wanted to get on with the actual business of the study, whatever it would be.

“Fighting destiny is one of the greatest themes mankind has.” Simmons-A tossed the chalk into the air and caught it. “Look at Joseph Campbell’s The Hero’s Journey. Look at our own fiction from popular tales of Harry Potter to Star Wars. Even romance fiction flirts with destiny. Romance hints that every person on earth has a soulmate—someone they’re destined to be with. If we take the time to find that person—or if we recognize that person (apparently some of us do not)—then, the theory goes, we shall live happily ever after.”

Keri bit her lower lip. Patrick didn’t know when he started looking at her instead of Simmons-A.

“From time immemorial,” Simmons-A said, “mankind has tried to fight its destiny, whatever that destiny might be. Few are with that proverbial silver spoon in their mouths. Even fewer accept that spoon with grace. If you do not believe me, look at the remaining royal families of the world. Such tales we hear of debauchery and rebellion.”

A few people smiled, but most stirred, just like Patrick had.

“What has this to do with us?” Simmons-A asked. “Simple.”

She then gave a capsule summary of the faculty meeting, the conversation the Professors Simmons had in lieu of listening to faculty debate.

“The only thing that the four of us could agree on that evening,” she said with a smile that transformed her face from sour and discouraged to slightly pretty, “was that Benjamin Franklin was right: in this world, nothing is certain but death and taxes.”

“And being born,” someone said from the front row.

She looked at him in surprise. He had broken her rhythm. Simmons-M, the biologist, came forward at that moment, rescuing her colleague.

“We can’t change that,” she said. “We’ve all been born and we’ve survived. So once we’re here, all we can be certain of are death and taxes.”

She had a powerful voice with a touch of music to it. She also had a great deal of charisma, and Patrick found himself wishing that she had been in charge of the opening speech instead of Simmons-A.

But Simmons-M knew her place, at least in this beginning. She made a little bow to Simmons-A and returned to the cluster of Simmonses near the blackboard.

“Precisely,” Simmons-A said, attempting to recover. “Death and taxes. We argued about that flip remark for weeks. And somehow, we went from a philosophical discussion of certainties and uncertainties in this world to what we’re calling a multidisciplinary study. According to our grants, we’re attempting to see if humankind can change its known destiny. But between us—”

And she grinned again, looking over her shoulder at her colleagues like a schoolgirl. Only Simmons-N smiled back.

“—we decided to have a race. We have four things to prove: That we do indeed have destinies. That we can change them. That human-made systems—in this case, taxes—can be changed. That biological systems—in this case, death—can be changed.”

Then she stepped back with a little nod, and Simmons-R came forward. Patrick slouched. He’d never realized until this moment how much Simmons-R reminded him of his father.

“You’d think,” Simmons-R boomed and half the room sat up as if they’d dozed and been rudely awakened, “that human systems would be the easiest to change. But I have my doubts. In a cursory search of governmental systems throughout human history, I cannot readily find an example of a society without taxation. Once again, let me turn to the Bible. The Egyptians…”

And as he discussed the levies that the Egyptians placed on their subjects, the taxes that built the Roman roads, the demands the medieval Japanese put on families, he made an eloquent, if familiar, point.

Patrick assumed the point probably wasn’t as familiar to the undergraduates—few people in the room besides the Professors Simmons were as overeducated as he was. He glanced at Keri. This time her gaze caught his, and she smiled.

He felt twelve again, and actually had to resist the urge to write a note on his legal pad and pass it to her. So far, she hadn’t typed anything into her laptop, and he’d only written down “Death and Taxes” as if it were the topic sentence of an essay exam.

In fact, he never wrote anything else down that night. The remainder of the evening was a jumble of lecture—Simmons-M discussing the necessity of death, not just on an individual scale, but on a worldwide one (species death; death of ecosystems; the eventual death of the planet itself), and the arrogance of humankind to think it can alter death, even on a small scale; and Simmons-N referring to behavioral studies that suggest humankind’s perceptions of the world have led humans to misunderstand it—and an increasingly shared but silent intimacy with Keri, who seemed to find the whole thing as pretentious and amusing as Patrick did.

“One of the things that we’re going to examine,” Simmons-N said in his nasal voice, “is whether time actually exists or is just a matter of perception. Because if it is a matter of perception, then nothing around us is real—or everything is real, from the primordial soup that the Earth was once to this moment to the heat death of the universe, all happening at once.”

Simmons-A smiled through that entire speech, as if she agreed. Indeed, it seemed to Patrick that she would have been better off saying it than the cognitive and behavioral scientist.

Patrick said that later to Keri, at an all-night coffee shop just off the main drag. They’d ducked inside on their way back to their cars—or, more accurately, on the way back to hers; he’d passed his blocks before, but hadn’t told her, enjoying her company enough to hazard the ice pellets and heavy wind that the storm had become.

They found a booth in a warm corner away from the door, where they spent the next few hours laughing about the pretension, about the silly race between the disciplines (which implied, Patrick said, that they would all succeed in areas of study where no one had succeeded before), about the ironic coincidence that led the Professors Simmons to each other in the first place.

Sometime during the evening, Keri postulated that the winner of the entire thing might end up being the philosopher, who had somehow gotten a group of diverse people together to re-examine their beliefs in a way that seemed as irrational as the most screwball religious cult.

Patrick had laughed at that remark. And it was his own laughter that he thought of most often when he thought of Keri. Not of those nights at his apartment, not of the horrible last day. Just the laughter.

And the professors’ fight against a complacency that he didn’t then understand.

He understood it now, even felt it on days when the sunlight hit the ocean, and his small town was bathed in a clear, almost unworldly light. He would tell himself, as he looked at that beauty, that he had done the best with what he had.

But there was always an itchy restlessness underneath—a what-if chorus that continued to sing: What if he had gone to his father’s law firm first? What if he hadn’t been interested in politics? What if he had never met Keri?

What if, what if, what if.

He played the scenarios in his mind as if he were screenwriter finishing a script for a time-travel movie.

What if…

He didn’t know. He would never know.

He only knew that if the ancient Greeks had written his life story, the what-ifs didn’t matter. Destiny was destiny. The Greeks always showed that no matter what changes mere mortals tried to make, destiny would win out.

Somehow, the Greek version seemed to tell him, he would meet Keri anyway, she would die, and everyone would be sued. Careers would end. Lives would be ruined. Simmons-N would commit suicide all over again.

And Patrick would end up here, carrying a little sheriff’s badge in an unimportant town on the Oregon Coast, living alone, and wishing none of it had ever happened.

***

He paused before knocking on the door to her room. Only now, with a key in hand, and the memories fresh, did he realize how silly he was being.

Keri Andreeson was dead. He’d seen her corpse. They all had. They had clustered around it in the biology lab, her mouth slack, her tongue protruding ever so slightly, her eyes bulging, and her skin an unnatural clay color, and they had stared.

No one had said a word. He wasn’t sure, even then, if anyone completely understood how much her death would change everything.

He wasn’t sure he understood even now.

He swallowed against a dry throat. Was standing here a sign of a growing insanity? The fact that he was willing to believe that some girl—coincidentally named Keri (spelling the same)—whose driver’s license claimed she was twenty-two and from Illinois (Keri had been from North Dakota, complete with a melodic Fargo accent)—the fact that he was willing to believe she was the same person as the girl whose body he’d seen, the fact that he was willing to believe she was alive, and looked the same, and was terrified of him—showed just how far he had fallen intellectually, how little he believed in realities any more, how much he hoped for miracles.

Which made him no better than the people who had placed their faith into those studies.

Or put their faith in anything, for that matter. For what was faith, but a belief in the impossible? An irrational belief in something unbelievable.

He clutched the key in his fist, tempted to open the door and scare the girl, whoever she was. Who would she report her fear to? The sheriff?

He felt a bitter smile cross his lips. Then he turned away.

Better to leave the past in the past. Better to leave destiny or fate or the lack thereof to the philosophers and the professors and the dreamers.

Better to return to the realities of traffic accidents and one murder a year and a lonely house on a cliff-face overlooking the ocean, a house with a television as large as his bookshelves, a place where he went when he couldn’t stand reality any more.

He had just stepped into the parking lot when he heard a lock turn and a door open behind him.

And before he had time to think—or maybe he lied about that: maybe he did have time to think and he chose this—he turned, and stared Keri Simons—Keri Andreeson—in the face.

***

They’d become lovers even though the Professors Simmons had cautioned against fraternizing. That alone might have skewed the study—or one of the studies—had any of them been completed. But the thing had barely gotten off the ground when it all ended. Patrick had just received his working orders from Simmons-R the week before, working orders that included an overall personal plan which extended for five years.

The breadth of the study surprised him, even then.

Patrick was to ally himself with a local political group—any political group would do, so long as it worked on the grassroots level—and slowly ease them to a new vision: that taxation was a scourge, that government needed fiscal responsibility, and that required budget-tightening, reduced spending, and no new taxes. Over time, the no-new-taxes pledge would become a no-tax pledge, depending on how high up the political ladder he could climb, how much power he could attain, and how many followers he could convert to his—actually, Simmons-R’s—way of thinking.

Patrick, in his naïveté, had thought it possible. Much as he believed politics was the art of compromise, he also knew it lived in the realm of argument. A charismatic man with the right argument could change the playing field—make compromise happen on the one-yard line instead of the fifty-yard line, and yet convince everyone that they had attained a middle ground.

He’d actually see in happen, years later. The political center moved farther and farther right as he moved farther and farther west. When he finally stopped long enough to look at what America had become while he’d tried to outrun his past, he found himself wondering if some of Simmons-R’s other subjects hadn’t continued with the experiment, working their way up the political ranks until they reached the national level, influencing everyone from senators to the president himself.

Then Patrick would shake that feeling off—surely he would recognize someone from the bad old days, right?—and he would remind himself that taxes still existed, that the United States went through cycles of heavy taxation followed by cycles of light taxation, but never, in its two-hundred-plus year history had the United States ever gone without taxing someone for something.

He found that vaguely reassuring, just like he found the obituary columns reassuring. People continued dying. Humankind kept fulfilling their destinies, one grave at a time.

***

She was twenty. That was the first thought which reached his brain as he stared at her, framed in that cheap wooden doorway, sunlight peaking over the building’s eaves and the shush-shush of the ocean beyond.

In no way could this woman be in her mid-thirties, stretched by time and loss and years on the run.

She put both hands on the doorframe as if bracing herself or blocking his entrance or simply holding herself up. She was as thin as ever, coltish, all angles and lines, a girl who had not yet fulfilled her physical potential, whatever that might be.

“Can I help you?” she asked in a voice he wasn’t sure he remembered.

He flushed. She had seen him pause in front of her door, maybe even seen his hand raise slightly, his fist clench the key. She’d certainly seen his indecision, and, ultimately, his retreat.

“You bought a bottle of wine today,” he said, finally choosing an official approach.

“Is that illegal?” She tilted her head slightly as if she were interested in the answer. The movement was familiar. Keri used to do it when she was flirting.

His heart literally contracted. He’d only felt that squeezed sensation once before, when he saw her on the cot in the lab, her arm dangling to one side, the IV still taped into it but listing, as if it had died with her.

It took a physical effort to bring himself to the present.

“No,” he said. “Buying wine isn’t illegal. Neither is dropping it. But you could have picked up the glass.”

“Is this town so poor that it sends someone out to get its littering fees?” Then he heard it: the Scandinavian music behind the Fargo accent. The accent existed in the up-and-down cadence of the words as much as the long-vowel pronunciation.

She had cured the long vowels, but not the melodious intent behind them.

“I’m not here to collect any fees,” he said, “even though I am the county sheriff.”

“I would have thought that a man who read the Wall Street Journal had higher ambitions.”

She had seen him then, drinking his mocha and reading his paper, taking his afternoon break and pretending he was someone else.

If she had seen him, then that look of horror had been real.

And if that look of horror had been real, did that mean she had recognized him?

And if she had recognized him, did that mean she was Keri Andreeson masquerading as Keri Simons?

“I did have higher ambitions once.” He felt odd discussing them with a woman he thought dead in the parking lot of a cheap motel. “I left the café to talk with you, but you’d already vanished.”

“Vanished.” She smiled. That smile belonged to a woman, not a girl. It was learned. It held a wisp of sadness as well as a touch of irony. And through it all, her eyes hadn’t changed. “Leaving broken glass behind.”

He should have brought a bottle of wine. He saw that now. It would have eased the moment, given it some symmetry. But he wasn’t that kind of thinker.

Or maybe he was—a man who knew better than to tempt fate.

“We got it cleaned up,” he said as if he had something to do with it.

She nodded. She didn’t ask who he was. She just studied him in the odd light filtering over the building.

Finally, he had to become the supplicant, even though he didn’t want to. “Is there somewhere we can talk?”

She shrugged a single shoulder, her hands remaining in place. “This is fine.”

It wasn’t fine. Even though the motel was sheltered by the trees, there were other doors, other windows, other rooms where people might be. They might listen. The desk clerk might be listening, and later she’d mention the odd conversation to her friend in the bingo hall, telling them how strange the sheriff seemed on that sun-dappled afternoon.

“It’s not very private,” he said.

“I don’t see other cars,” she said, as if she’d expected his objection.

He sighed, and walked back toward her. She locked her arms, and he had the sense she had done that instead of flinching. Why would she be afraid of him? If they hadn’t met, then it was something about her. If they had, then she was afraid he’d recognize her. He’d know that she hadn’t died, that people had gone to jail for no reason.

But she had died. He had touched her waxy skin. He had cried for her.

He’d loved her.

He hadn’t thought of any way to approach this conversation, and now he felt tongue-tied. Did he ask her if she’d known a Keri Andreeson? Wouldn’t someone who had changed her name deny it? Or should he ask if she had gone to the university? Or simply ask what brought her here, to the literal end of the earth?

Finally, he settled on: “Have we met before?”

Her mouth opened as if she planned to answer him, then closed as if she thought better of it. “You mean besides now.”

He nodded, not willing to play any more word games.

“Outside the market, you looked at me like I frightened you,” he said, then wished he hadn’t.

“That’s why you ran outside?” she asked, her voice rising. “That’s why you tracked me down?”

“I was already thinking you looked familiar,” he said, letting the implication hang that yes, he had sought her out because he wanted to find out what terrified her.

“A lot of people say that.” She gave another one-shoulder shrug. “I have one of those faces.”

But not one of those bodies. Not in combination. But he didn’t dare say anything like that lest she think it improper. Not that she would have any recourse here, in this small town, where he normally was the recourse.

“Still,” he said. “Something you saw frightened you.”

She studied him for a moment. “I don’t think we have met,” she said, answering the earlier question. “You seem like a man a woman would remember.”

He felt his breath catch. The other Keri had described him that way. When he had asked her why she had gone with him that first night, she had said she would have regretted not going. He had asked why. She had smiled. Because, she said, you’re the kind of man a woman would remember.

The echo bothered him. Everything about this meeting bothered him.

“You came to see me because you thought I was frightened,” she said.

“I came because I wanted to find out if you’re the woman I remembered,” he said, noting the echo in his own language.

“Am I?” she asked.

He swallowed, his throat still dry. The movement was painful.

“No,” he said after a moment. “I don’t think you are.”

***

She died testing the equipment. That was the official story. She was lying on the cot, taking a bit of fluid in the IV, seeing if the heart monitors worked, when somehow, she went into cardiac arrest.

Experiments on human beings, whether in government funded labs or university trials, were forbidden in the United States. Tests could be performed—trial runs of pharmaceuticals, for example, or psychological batteries—all with waivers, properly signed, and the risks carefully laid out.

For the death study, administered by Simmons-M with help from Simmons-N, the risks hadn’t been properly laid out. The implication—never proven—was that the participants would be brought to the brink of death and brought back. At the brink, they would attempt to prolong life, through perception changes or medications or some other procedure.

But unlike the tax part of the study, none of this was written down. It didn’t dare be.

Although the grant for this part of the study had been explicit enough to bring the two Professors Simmons to criminal court, and drag the university into a system-wide scandal. Simmons-R got brought in when it became clear he had lobbied the institution that issued the grant money, but Simmons-A remained untouched.

Simmons-A had only her grant proposal to delineate her involvement, and her participants were going to examine the philosophical underpinnings of both death and taxes, with a touch of psychological attribution.

She claimed betrayal by the other Simmonses, and that was how she parlayed her involvement into bestselling nonfiction books, while the other professors spent years in court.

Arguing over Keri’s death. Accident? Possibly. The administering nurse was really a nursing grad student, not through her pharmacological classes. Perhaps she had put a sedative into the IV in error—or grabbed the wrong IV in error. But there was too much verbal testimony otherwise.

Too many indicators that the Simmons Three, as the press had started to call them, had become arrogant enough to believe they could conquer death. Simmons-N’s suicide, shortly after he had been let out of jail on bond, led to jokes in the local media—that the Simmonses were again trying to prove they could conquer the state, if not death itself.

There was no sympathy.

Not even from Patrick.

He had stayed for the trials, even though his father told him not to. He had stayed, even though he (and the other tax participants) were classified as non-involved.

No one discovered his relationship with Keri, and he didn’t confess it.

He watched as Simmons-M’s brilliant career dissolved, as Simmons-R went from being an authority to being a blowhard, as the two of them sat across from a jury and waited for judgment.

What’s your destiny now? The reporters would ask as the two of them and their lawyers hurried out of the courtroom every night.

Their destiny, it turned out, was a plea bargain. Negligent Homicide for Simmons-M. Conspiracy for Simmons-R. A few years time in a minimum-security prison, followed by community service.

None of this brought Keri back.

Simmons-A didn’t even attend the trials. When Patrick went to see her, after the trial, she grew rude and frightened when he said he wanted to discuss the study. But he didn’t leave.

Did you really want to change destinies? He asked.

I told them it couldn’t be done, she said. It’s the one thing philosophers agree on. That in life, some things cannot be changed.

He almost fell for it. Then he realized that she was wrong. The Hindu system was based on knowledge—reincarnation as learning, improving, changing, growing—and, by implication, changing destiny. Not accepting it as the Christians taught. Not bowing to its inevitability, like the Greeks.

But he didn’t challenge her. He no longer had the energy.

He couldn’t change his destiny. But he could change his life.

So he headed west.

***

Where, he thought as he got into his truck, he had become a man who drowned in taxes. They created his job, provided his ride, paid his salary. In an odd, and completely unplanned way, taxes were his destiny.

Just as death would be someday.

He started to pull away, and then he stopped.

None of that explained Keri, her look of fright, her resemblance to the other Keri, the one he thought he had loved.

He couldn’t leave. Not yet.

He rested his head on the steering wheel and sighed. Then he got out of the truck one final time.

He rehearsed what he was going to say as he crossed the parking lot.

Do you believe in destiny? He’d ask. Do you believe in soulmates? In love that doesn’t die?

He didn’t know what he’d do if she said yes.

But he was willing to find out.

 

___________________________________________

“Death And Taxes“ is available for one week on this site. The ebook is also available on all retail stores, as well as here.

Death and Taxes

Copyright © 2017 by Kristine Kathryn Rusch
First published in Fate Fantastic, edited by Martin H. Greenberg and Daniel M. Hoyt, Daw Books, 2007
Published by WMG Publishing
Cover and Layout copyright © 2017 by WMG Publishing
Cover design by WMG Publishing
Cover art copyright © Jun He/Dreamstime

This book is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. All rights reserved. This is a work of fiction. All characters and events portrayed in this book are fictional, and any resemblance to real people or incidents is purely coincidental. This book, or parts thereof, may not be reproduced in any form without permission.

Madison, Wisconsin, 1972—When Detective Hank Kaplan calls Valentina Wilson to a crime scene, she wonders why. She soon finds more questions than answers in a secret room belonging to a wealthy female philanthropist, whose brutal murder the police hastily cover up. Val’s search for the truth will take her from the rape hotline she runs to the shocking realization that the woman’s murder anchors a long line of horrific events stretching back decades.

Chosen as one of the best mystery short stories of the year by the readers of Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine, “Sob Sisters” continues the powerful story of Valentina Wilson, a character who first appeared in Nelscott’s award-winning Smokey Dalton series.

“Sob Sisters“ is available for one week on this site. The ebook is also available on all retail stores, as well as here.

 

Sob Sisters By Kris Nelscott

TECHNICALLY, I WASN’T supposed to be at the crime scene. I wasn’t supposed to be at any crime scene. I’m not a cop; I’m not even a private detective. I’m just a woman who runs a rape hotline in a town that doesn’t think it needs one, even though it is 1972.

Still, what woman says no when she gets a phone call from the Madison Police Department, asking for her presence at the site of a murder?

A sensible one, that’s what my volunteers would have said. But I have never been sensible.

Besides, the call came from Detective Hank Kaplan who, a few months ago, had learned the hard way to take me seriously. Unlike a lot of cops who would’ve gotten angry when a woman out-thought him, Kaplan responded with respect. He’s one of the new breed of men who doesn’t mind strong women, even if he still has a derogatory tone when he uses the phrase “women’s libbers.”

The house was an old Victorian on a large parcel of land overlooking Lake Mendota. Someone had neatly shoveled the walk down to the bare concrete, and had closed the shutters on the sides of the wrap-around porch, leaving only the area up front to take the brunt of the winter storms.

And of the police.

Squads and a panel van with the official MPD logo on the side parked along the curb. I counted at least four officers milling about the open door while I could see a couple more moving near the large picture window.

I parked my ten-year-old Ford Falcon on the opposite side of the street and steeled myself. I was an anomaly no matter how you looked at it: I was tiny, female and black in lily-white Madison, Wisconsin. Most locals would’ve thought I was trying to rob the place rather than show up at the invitation of the lead detective.

I grabbed the hotline’s new Polaroid camera. Then I got out of the car, locked it, and walked as calmly as I could across the street. I wasn’t wearing a hat or gloves, so I stuck my hands in the pocket of my new winter coat. At least the coat looked respectable. My torn jeans, sneakers, and short-cropped Afro were too hippy for authorities in this town.

As I approached, a young officer on the porch turned toward me, then leaned toward an older officer, said something, and rolled his eyes. At that moment, Kaplan rounded the side of the house and caught my gaze.

He hurried down the sidewalk toward me. He was wearing a blue police coat over his black trousers and galoshes over his dress shoes. Unlike the street cops on the porch, he didn’t wear a cap, leaving his black hair to the vicissitudes of the wind. He was an uncommonly handsome man, with more than a passing resemblance to the Marlboro Man from the cigarette ads. I found his good looks annoying.

“Miss Wilson,” he said loud enough for the others to hear, “come with me.”

He sounded official. The cops outside started in surprise, then gave me a once-over.

A shiver ran down my back. I hated the scrutiny, even though I knew he had done it on purpose, so no one would second-guess my presence here.

“This way,” he said, and put a hand on my back to help me up the curb.

I couldn’t help it; I stiffened. He let his hand drop.

“Sorry,” he said. He knew I had been brutalized by a cop in Chicago. While that experience had made me stronger, I still had a rape survivor’s aversion to touch.

“What’s going on here?” I asked.

“I’ll show you,” Kaplan said. “But we’re going in the back. Did you bring your camera?”

I held up the case. I had wrapped the strap around my right hand.

“Good,” he said. “Come on.”

He walked quickly on the narrow shoveled sidewalk leading around the building. I had to hurry to keep up with him.

“So,” I said, as soon as we were clear of the other cops, “you guys don’t have your own cameras?”

“We do,” he said. “You’ll just want a record of this.”

Now I was really intrigued. A record of something that he was willing to share; a record of something that they didn’t want to record themselves? Maybe he had finally decided that I should photograph a rape victim immediately after the crime had occurred.

Although Kaplan didn’t handle the rape cases. He was homicide.

The narrow sidewalk led to another small porch. Kaplan pulled on the screen door, and held it for me. Then he shoved the heavy interior door open.

A musty smell rose from there, tinged with the scent of fall apples. I had expected a crime-scene smell—blood and feces and other unpleasantness, not the somewhat homey smell.

To my right, half a dozen coats hung on the wall, with a variety of galoshes, boots, and old shoes on a plastic mat. This was clearly the entrance that the homeowner used the most.

“When should I start photographing?” I asked.

“I’ll tell you when,” Kaplan said, and led me up the stairs.

We stepped into a kitchen that smelled faintly of baked bread. I frowned as Kaplan led me through swinging doors into the dining area. A picture window overlooked the lake. The view, so beautiful that it caught my attention, distracted me from the coroner’s staff, who clustered in the archway between the dining room and living room.

Kaplan touched my arm, looking wary as he did so. I glanced down, saw an elderly woman sprawled on the shag carpet, arms above her head, face turned away as if her own death embarrassed her. This area did smell of blood and death. The stench got stronger the closer I got.

I couldn’t see her face. One hand was clenched in a fist, the other open. Her legs were open too, and looked like they had been pried that way. A pair of glasses had been knocked next to the console television, and a pot filled with artificial fall flowers had tumbled near the door.

The coroner had pulled up the woman’s shirt slightly to get liver temperature. The frown on his face seemed at once appropriate and extreme for the work he was doing.

I moved a step closer. He looked up, eyes fierce. His mouth opened slightly, and I thought he was going to yell at me. Instead, he turned that look on Kaplan.

“Who the hell is that? Control your crime scene, man. Get the civilians out of here.”

“Sorry,” Kaplan said, sounding contrite. “I turned in the wrong direction.”

He touched my arm to move me away from the crowd. I realized that he had play-acted to convince the coroner and the other police officers that my appearance in that room had been an accident.

But it hadn’t been. Kaplan had wanted me to see the body.

“This way,” he said in that formal voice, as if he thought someone was still listening.

He led me back into the kitchen, then opened a door into a large pantry. Canned goods lined the walls. A single 40-watt bulb illuminated the entire space.

My stomach clenched. I had no idea what he was doing, and I wasn’t the most flexible person around cops.

He pulled the pantry door closed, then moved past me and pushed on the far wall. It opened into a book-lined room with no windows at all. Mahogany shelves lined the walls. The room was wide, with several chairs for reading and a heavy library table in the middle, stacked with volumes. Those volumes were half open, or marked with pieces of paper.

Beyond that was another open door. Kaplan led me through it.

We stepped into one of the prettiest—and most hidden—offices I had ever seen. The walls were covered with expensive wood paneling. A gigantic partners desk sat in the middle of the room. The flooring matched the paneling—no shag carpet here. Instead, the desk stood on an expensive Turkish carpet, of a type I had only seen in magazines. The room smelled of old paper, books, and Emerude. I couldn’t hear the officers in the other part of the house. In fact, the only sound in this room was my breathing, and Kaplan’s clothes rustling as he moved.

An IBM Selectric sat on the credenza beside the desk. Behind it stood a graveyard of old typewriters, from an ancient Royal to one of the very first electrics. Above them, files in neat rows, with dividers. The desk itself had several open files on top, and a full coffee cup to one side. I wanted to touch it, to see if it was still warm.

“This is what you wanted to show me?” I asked.

“I think you’ll find some interesting things here,” he said, nodding toward the floor. Against the built-in bookshelves in a back corner, someone had placed dozens, maybe hundreds of picture frames.

I crouched. Someone had framed newspaper and magazine articles, all of them from different eras and with different bylines.

“What is this?” I asked.

“Her life’s work,” he said.

“Her,” I repeated. “I’m not even sure whose house this is.”

He looked at me in surprise. “I thought you knew everything about this town.”

“Not even close,” I said.

He sighed softly. “This house belongs to Dolly Langham.”

“The philanthropist?” I asked.

He gave me a tight smile. “See? You do know her.”

“I don’t,” I said. “Some of my volunteers kept trying to contact her for help with fundraising for the hotline, but she never returned our calls or our letters.”

A frown creased his forehead. “That’s odd. She was always doing for women.”

I frowned too. “I take it she’s the woman in the living room?”

“That’s the back parlor,” he said, as if he knew this house intimately. Maybe he did.

“All right,” I said slowly, not sure of his non-response. “The back parlor then. That’s her?”

He closed his eyes slightly and nodded.

“You’ve caught this case?” I asked. “It’s yours entirely?”

“Yeah,” he said, and he didn’t sound happy about it. “This is a big deal. Miss Langham is one of the richest people in the city, if not the richest. Her family goes back to the city’s founding, and she’s related to mayors, governors, and heads of the university. She’s important, Miss Wilson.”

“I’m getting that,” I said. “Why am I here?”

“Because,” he said, “cases like this, they’re always about something.”

“Yes, I know, but—”

“No,” he said. “You don’t know. There’s the official story. And then there’s the real story.”

I froze. Cops rarely spoke to civilians like this. I had learned that from my ex-husband, who had been a Chicago cop and who had died, in part, because of what had happened to me.

“You think the real story is going to get covered up,” I said.

“No,” Kaplan said. “I don’t think it. I know it.”

I glanced around the room. “The real story is here?”

He shrugged. “That I don’t know. I haven’t investigated yet.”

He was being deliberately elliptical, and I was no good with elliptical. I preferred blunt. Elliptical always got me in trouble.

“Why am I here?” I asked.

“I need a fresh pair of eyes,” he said.

“But the investigation is just starting,” I said.

He nodded. “So is the pressure.”

I let out a small breath of air. So, he had a script already, and he didn’t like it. “You want me to photograph things in here?”

“As much as you can,” he said. “Keep those pictures safe for me.”

“I will,” I said.

“And Miss Wilson, you know since you were once a cop’s wife, how things occasionally go missing from a crime scene?”

“Oh, I do,” I said. “You want to prevent that here.”

He shook his head, and gave me a look he hadn’t shown me since the first time I met him. The look accused me of being naïve.

“You know, Miss Wilson, I find it strange that you don’t carry a purse. Most women carry bags so big they can fit entire reams of paper inside them.”

My breath caught as I finally understood.

“I prefer pockets,” I said, and stuck my hands inside the deep pockets of my coat.

“You are quite the character, Miss Wilson,” he said approvingly. “I think you might have a couple of uninterrupted hours in here, if I keep the doors closed. Is that all right with you?”

Inside a room with no windows, only one door, a phalanx of cops outside, and a dead body a few yards away. Sure, that was Just Fine.

“You’ll be back for me?” I asked.

“Most assuredly,” he said, and put his hand on the door.

“One last thing, Detective,” I said. “Who found this room?”

A shadow passed over his face, so quickly that I almost missed it. “I did. No one else.”

So no one else knew I was here.

“All right,” I said. “See you in two hours.”

He nodded once, then let himself out, pulling the door closed behind him.

I felt claustrophobic. This room felt still, tense, almost as if it were waiting for something. Maybe that was the effect of the murdered woman in the back parlor. Maybe I was more tense than I thought.

That would be odd, though. I had training to keep me calm. I went to medical school until I couldn’t find a place to intern (honey, we don’t want you to take a position away from a real doctor), and then I went to the University of Chicago Law School. I got used to cadavers in medical school, and extreme pressure in law school, and somewhere along the way, I had accepted death as a part of life.

I let out a small sigh, squared my shoulders, and pulled off my coat. I opened it, so that the inner pockets were easily accessible, and draped it on one of the straight-backed chairs near the door. Then I grabbed the Polaroid and put it around my neck.

I didn’t know where to start because I didn’t know what I was looking for. But Kaplan had asked me here for a reason. He wanted me to find things, and to remove some of them, which meant that I shouldn’t start with the books or even the framed articles.

I started with the files.

I walked behind the desk. The perfume smell was strong here. Dolly Langham had clearly spent a lot of time at this desk. The papers on top were notes in shorthand, which I had never bothered to learn. I was certain one of my volunteers at the hotline knew it, however. I stacked those papers together and put them in a “Possible” pile. I figured I’d see what I found, and then stash what I could just before Kaplan came back for me.

I opened the drawers next. The top held the usual assortment of pens and paperclips, and stray keys. The drawer to my right had a large leather-bound ledger in it.

The ledger’s entries started in 1970, and covered most of the past two years. The most recent entry was from last week. There were names on the side, followed by a number (usually large) and a running total along the edge. That much I could follow. It was the last set of numbers, one column done in red ink and the other in blue, that I couldn’t understand.

Kaplan had to know this was here. He had to have looked through the desk; any good investigator would have.

I took the ledger and placed it on my coat.

Then I went back and searched for more ledgers. I figured if she had one for the 1970s, she had to have some from before that. I didn’t find any in the drawer—although I found a leather-bound journal, also written in shorthand, with the year 1972 emblazoned on the front.

I set that on the desktop along with the notes, and continued my search.

The desk, organized as it was, didn’t yield much, so I turned to the files behind me. They were in date order. The tab that stuck out had that date and a last name. I opened the oldest file, and inside found more handwritten notes, and a yellowed newspaper clipping. The byline—Agnes Olden—matched the name on the outside of the file.

Someone had scrawled 1925 on the clipping, which came from a newspaper I’d never heard of called The Chicago Telegram. The headline was Accuser Speaks!

Dressed in an expensive skirt and a shirtwaist blouse with mullion sleeves, Dorthea Lute looks like a woman of impeccable reputation instead of the fallen woman all assume her to be. For our interview, she sat primly on the edge of her chair, feet crossed demurely at the ankles, hands clasped in her lap, head down. She spoke softly, and when she described the circumstances of her accusation, she did not scream or shout or cry, but told the tale with a calm tone that belied its horror.

I scanned as quickly as I could, trying to get the gist of the piece. Apparently this Dorthea Lute accused one of Chicago’s most prominent citizens of “taking her forcibly and against her will” in the “quiet of his own home.” Friends and family said that she was bruised, and “indeed, witnesses saw her wearing her arm in a sling. She had two black eyes, and a purplish bruise that ran from her temple to her chin.”

I closed my eyes for a brief moment. This was an account of a rape, and the interview was conducted with the “accuser,” who—of course—had been accused herself of using her body and her “wiles” to “improve her standing in the world.” When that didn’t work, she accused this prominent businessman of “the most vile of crimes.”

I thumbed through the file and found no more clippings, just more notes. Then I grabbed the next file. It had the same byline, and featured an interview with the family of a young girl who died brutally at the hands of her boyfriend. File after file, interview after interview, all written in that now-dated manner.

I replaced those files and grabbed another from the next row. This came from the Des Moines Voice, another paper I had never heard of, and came from 1933. The content of the file was similar to the others, with the shorthand notes, the scrawls, but the byline was different. This one belonged to Ada Cornell. Cornell had the same kind of interest in crimes against women.

Only these files also contained carbons of the original news piece.

I was intrigued.

The next shelf down had stories from the 1940s, and many of them came from different communities. The bylines all differed but the files remained the same.

So I took the last file off the last shelf. It came from nearly twenty years before—1955 to be exact. I had expected it to be a 1972 file, considering there were notes on the desk. So either the files from 1955 onward were missing, or she hadn’t done anything for years and got back into the work.

I couldn’t believe that she had given up until recently, not with the typewriter graveyard behind me. I looked around the room for another place that held files. Then I walked to the center of the room, put my hands behind my back, and frowned at everything.

This was a room within a room within a room, so secret that it was in the very center of the house, hidden behind what most people would consider the pantry. Dolly Langham wrote under false names, so she hadn’t wanted anyone to know she was doing this work.

I frowned, then glanced at the panels. In the old mystery novels, paneling—especially from fifty years ago—hid secret passageways. This room itself was a secret, so I doubted I’d find a passageway. But I might find a hidden compartment.

I surveyed the area, looking for scuff marks, fingerprints, something that jutted out, but I saw nothing obvious. Then I looked at the paneling itself. It had a pattern along the right and left side, but the wall with the files and the typewriter graveyard was configured differently, as if that entire area was built especially for Langham. Wall panels weren’t mass produced forty years ago; they were crafted by someone, who—if the inside room had been built in the Depression—wouldn’t have questioned the design.

A decorative frame had been built around the shelves in the center. Then the waist-high shelf that housed the typewriter graveyard jutted out an extra foot, and so did the area below it.

I went behind the desk, crouched and felt along the edges. I found a small ridge that my fingertips just fit inside. They brushed against a tiny knob. I pressed it, and half of the lower cabinet swung open, silently. A tiny light clicked on, revealing more files.

The shelves ran across the length of the cabinet, and the files continued to the floor.

I left that open, then touched the frames on the right side of the entire unit, looking for a similar ridge. I found it, and that long door swung open, revealing a closet. Inside, wigs, make-up, clothing, and the faint scent of mothballs. I peered into the darkness beyond and realized I had been wrong: there was a hidden passageway behind the clothes.

I pushed the clothes aside, and coughed as dust rose. Cobwebs hung from the opening beyond. I stepped inside anyway and peered. It didn’t appear to be a passageway after all, but more of an extension of this room, like a gigantic walk-in closet.

But I couldn’t be certain unless I explored.

It was clear that Langham hadn’t used this closet in a long time. If I could assume that whatever happened to her in that living room happened because of something she had hidden, then I might be safe in assuming the “something” was a recent occurrence, not one housed in mothballs and cobwebs.

I knew I was making a hasty judgment, but that was all Kaplan had left me time for. Besides, I didn’t have a flashlight. I would have to haul whatever I found into the main room—or trust that there was an electrical switch somewhere back there that I could find easily.

I closed that panel door, and opened the one on the other side just in case it was something different. As I thought, it was the other end of this “closet,” with more wigs, and clothing, including a few very old furs. The musty smell made my eyes water.

I pulled out my Polaroid and took pictures of that back area. I also took pictures of the files. Then I took a few pictures of an open file on the desk.

And by then I was out of film. The Polaroids dried on the desktop as I closed the doors. Then I sat on the Turkish carpet, and looked through the files in the hidden case. The writing style that Langham cultivated had lost popularity, and so had the long yellow journalism stories. They vanished after the war. But she seemed to adapt. There were articles here from The Milwaukee Journal, the Chicago Tribune, the Des Moines Register, and more. Many of the longer articles appeared in Saturday Review, Ladies Home Journal, and surprisingly, that new magazine for women, Ms.

The bottom shelf was empty except for two large manuscripts, in their entirety. As I was about to pull one out, I heard a sound from the outer room.

I cursed, then carefully closed the cupboard door. My heart was pounding. I had a hunch the person out there was Kaplan, but if it wasn’t, I didn’t want the other investigators to know about this—and neither did he.

Then I grabbed my pile from the desktop, hurried it over to that chair, and covered the entire pile with my coat. If I left with everything I’d hidden, I’d look like I gained fifty pounds, but that couldn’t be helped.

The door opened just as my coat settled on top of everything.

Fortunately, the person at the door was Kaplan, and he was alone.

He closed the door, then leaned on it. “You find anything?”

“You know I did,” I said. “How come she kept all this secret?”

“I don’t know,” he said. “I just looked at it today.”

“But it’s clearly relevant to your case. You’re going to need it.”

He gave me a bitter half-smile. “In a perfect world.”

I felt chilled. “Meaning?”

“Apparently, she interrupted burglars,” he said with such sarcasm that I didn’t have to ask him if he believed it. He clearly did not.

“Who made this decision?” I asked.

“I don’t know,” he said tiredly. “It’s coming from the chief. We’re to wrap up the investigation in a hurry.”

“What about this?” I waved my hands at the files in the back. “Who gets this?”

“That’s the question, isn’t it?” he said. “Dolly was the last of the Langhams. We haven’t even looked for a will or contacted her attorney. I have no idea who inherits. I suspect it’s a bunch of charities.”

“This is her life’s work,” I said.

That bitter smile creased his face again. “Apparently, she had a lot of different life’s work. Folks around here would say her life’s work was her philanthropy, spending Papa’s money.”

I thought of the ledgers. “I wasn’t able to go through anything. I just located things. I’d like to come back—”

“I doubt that’ll be possible.”

“But you have no idea how much is here, what she has. I certainly don’t. I can’t even decipher most of it. I don’t read shorthand.”

“Ah,” he said, “the benefits of a law school education.”

I understood what he meant. If I had been a typically educated woman, I would have known shorthand. But I never was typical.

“I have some volunteers who can read it. Give us a few days in here—”

“I can’t, Miss Wilson,” he said. “You shouldn’t be here now. In fact, I came to get you out. The mayor is on his way, and I’m sure the television cameras will follow. I don’t want anyone to know you were even on the premises.”

“Great,” I said. “There’s more than I can carry.”

He unzipped that heavy police department jacket of his. “Give me some of it,” he said. “Quickly.”

I picked up my coat, and handed him the ledgers. I kept the two journals and all of the recent shorthand notes, shoving them inside my coat. We zipped up together, like co-conspirators.

Which, I guess, we were.

“Let’s go,” he said. He waited for me near the door, and as we stepped out, he turned off the lights. The room disappeared into a blackness so profound it made my skin crawl.

The library was empty. Still, I hurried through it, not wanting to stop this time. I waited at that door for Kaplan.

I clutched my hands around my middle like a pregnant woman. The edges of the journals dug into my stomach, and I wanted to adjust them, but I couldn’t.

We went through the same routine—I stepped into the pantry, he shut off the lights, then closed the door. Once it was shut, he moved a few boxes in front of it.

I could hear voices not too far away. Kaplan paused at the pantry door, peering through it. Then he beckoned me, and we scurried across the kitchen. The voices were coming from the dining room beyond.

Kaplan led the way down the stairs and out the side door. He looked along the sidewalk, nodded when he wanted me to follow, and walked faster than I liked on the ice-covered concrete.

My papers and journals were slipping. I shifted my hands slightly, praying that nothing fell as I hurried after Kaplan.

He reached my car before I did, tried the door, and cursed loud enough for me to hear. He didn’t like that I had locked it. I wasn’t sure how I was going to unlock it without dropping anything. I pulled the keys out of my pocket, adjusted my papers again, and leaned a little on the cold metal to unlock my door.

I pulled it open. Kaplan reached around and unlocked the back door. He looked both ways, bent over, and opened his jacket. The ledgers fell out along the seat. Then he slammed the door closed and shoved his hands in his pockets.

I just got in the driver’s side, figuring it was easier than getting rid of my stuff.

“I’ll be in touch,” he said before I could ask any more questions. Then he slammed the driver’s door closed.

He had returned to the other side of the street before I could get the keys in the ignition. My breath fogged up the window, but I just used my fist to make a hole.

I didn’t have to be told to get the hell out of there. I pulled out just as a group of large black cars came around the corner behind me.

I followed the narrow street out of the neighborhood, then pulled over until the windshield cleared. While the defrost was doing its job, I reached around to the back seat. I locked the door, and grabbed a blanket I kept on the floor for emergencies. I used it to cover the ledgers that Kaplan had spilled.

If we had dropped anything outside the car, I hoped Kaplan had found it.

Because I wasn’t going anywhere near that place again.

***

I got back to the hotline in record time. The hotline was a few miles away, deeper in the city itself. We weren’t far off State Street, which connected the University of Wisconsin with the Capitol. This neighborhood used to be a nice enclave for the medium rich, leaving the very rich to Langham’s neighborhood. Now, the old Victorians here had been torn down or divided into apartments, usually crammed with students.

The church where we housed the hotline had been abandoned two decades before. I lived in the rectory and used the church proper for the hotline, and sometimes to house women in need.

On this day, I pulled into the rectory side of the parking lot. I didn’t want the volunteers to see what I had.

It took me two trips to bring in all of the material. I piled the stuff on my coffee table, then closed and locked my door. I pulled the curtains too, something I rarely did in the middle of a Midwestern winter.

I took off my coat, put some innocuous papers over the things on my coffee table, and picked up one sheet of the paper covered in shorthand. Then I headed into the hotline proper.

The passageway between the rectory and the church had no heat, and was cold this time of year. I opened the unlocked door into the church, and inhaled the scent of sawed wood.

My volunteers, as inept as they were, loved doing the repair work.

I went down the stairs into the basement and found five women in t-shirts and ragged jeans, discussing the finer points of electricity.

“Val would never say she’d hire an electrician,” Louise said. She was a tall, middle-aged blond and one of my best volunteers.

“And yet I will,” I said as I went by. Several women looked up in surprise. Apparently they hadn’t heard me come in. “We’re not going to remodel this place just to burn it down. If we’re at the electricity stage, let me know and I’ll hire someone.”

“Consider yourself on notice,” Louise said.

I nodded. Something else to take care of.

I went all the way back to the main office, where we had our phones. We’d initially had only one line for the hotline and one private line. But our hotline had expanded after some recent publicity, and now, we had three separate desks with phones on them. The calls rolled over to a different line if one was in use. It was an expensive system, but well worth it.

The afternoon’s volunteers were an undergrad named Midge who had just started a few weeks ago, and one of my old hands—Susan Dunlap, who worked for the phone company.

“Don’t tell me you’re here on your day off,” I said.

“Okay,” she said. “I won’t.”

She was writing in the logbook. We kept a record of each call that came in, the time, date, and what was said. The volunteer signed in at the beginning of her shift, and then, if there were no calls, she read what had been written between her shifts. We sometimes got repeat callers, women who tested us before they confided in us, and the volunteers had to be prepared for that.

Susan was a middle-aged redhead who had never really lost her baby weight, even though her kids were in high school now. Like Louise, Susan was one of my most reliable volunteers, a main supporter, almost from the beginning.

Midge was studying at the other desk. She had the secondary phone, not that it mattered. Right now, the phones were silent.

I hovered until Susan finished writing. Then I asked, “Do you know shorthand?”

“Doesn’t every woman?” she asked so blandly that at first, I thought she was serious. Then I realized she was making a political statement.

I smiled. “If so, then I’m decidedly not female.”

“Me either,” Midge said.

Susan grinned. “I’m older. Back when I was a girl, they forced us to learn shorthand while they suffocated us in girdles.”

Midge looked alarmed. But I grinned back.

“Come with me,” I said to Susan. “Midge, can you watch the phones?”

“Sure,” she said, frowning at us.

Susan and I went into the kitchen. It was a marvel, built to serve dozens at church suppers. And unlike the rest of the church, this kitchen had been in good condition when I bought the place. Apparently it was one of the few places that the previous tenants had kept up.

Susan sat at the large table we had in the center of the room. I handed her the sheet of paper.

“What’s this?” she asked.

“I don’t honestly know,” I said. “Tell me if you can read it.”

I poured us some coffee from the pot we kept on the stove.

“It’s an idiosyncratic form of shorthand, and it uses some symbols that are pretty old,” Susan said. “But I think I can read it. Something about a—this can’t be right.”

“What?” I asked.

She shook her head. “Can you get me a legal pad?”

“Sure,” I said.

I went out to the front office, and grabbed a legal pad from the stack I kept in one of the desks. I brought it and a pad back to Susan. She translated the shorthand into English, pausing over a couple of words, shaking her head the entire time.

“This can’t be right,” she said again.

She didn’t say that as if something in the text bothered her, but as if something in her translation did.

“Show me,” I said as I sat beside her.

“Okay.” She tapped her pen against the legal sheet. “It starts in the middle of a sentence. Usually when someone takes shorthand, she skips the articles—‘a’ ‘the’—and that’s happening here.”

She slid the paper to me. Her handwriting was clear.

…tortured family relationships. Rumors he had fathered his stepdaughter’s bastard child. Z denies. Paternity test would prove nothing since Z & stepdaughter share blood type. Other accusations…

“What is this?” she asked me.

“I’m not sure,” I said. “I have reams of this stuff. Can you translate it for me?”

“I’m not sure I want to,” she said. “I’m not the only one who knows shorthand here.”

I nodded. “But I trust you.”

“You trust the others,” she said, still looking at that paper.

At that moment, Louise came into the kitchen. She was covered in grayish dust. When she wiped a hand over her forehead, she only managed to smear everything.

“You realize, Val, that there are no female electricians, right? Who the hell are we going to hire?”

“There’s got to be a female electrician somewhere,” I said.

She snorted. “Maybe on Mars.”

I sighed.

“You’re going to have to break the no-men rule,” she said.

“And here we have that trust thing again,” Susan said.

“Did I miss something?” Louise asked.

“Not really,” Susan said.

Louise went to the fridge and removed two Cokes and a Hires root beer. She set the bottles on the counter, then fumbled for the bottle opener.

“I’m interrupting something, aren’t I?” Louise asked.

“Just Val trying to rope me into a job I don’t want,” Susan said. “It’ll probably give me nightmares.”

I looked at her.

“You mean answering the phone doesn’t?” Louise asked.

Susan sighed. “Worse nightmares.”

“Ah hell,” Louise said. “Nothing can get worse than mine. I’ll do it.”

I glanced at her. She’d been around almost as long as Susan. Louise was my unofficial foreman on the remodeling.

“Do you read shorthand?” I asked.

“Is there a woman alive today who doesn’t?” she asked, and she was serious.

“You mean besides Val?” Susan asked.

“Oh, gee, sorry,” Louise said. “Yes, I read shorthand.”

“You’d have to keep all of this confidential,” I said.

“Not a problem,” Louise said, and I believed her. She had kept everything confidential so far.

“Good,” Susan said. “She can do it.”

I shook my head. “I have a lot of material. I need both of you to work on it.”

“Mysterious Val,” Louise said. “Let me take the drinks to my crew and I’ll be back.”

She slipped out of the kitchen, clutching the bottles between the fingers of her right hand.

“You’ll have to work in my place,” I said to Susan.

“Oh, God, Val, that’ll drive you nuts,” Susan said. “I’d offer to take this home, but I don’t want my kids near it.”

“I don’t blame you.” I couldn’t bring myself to tell her that there was a chance that what was on these papers had gotten Langham killed. “That’s why I want you here.”

Susan frowned, thinking. “Then what about the vestry? It has a desk and good lighting. And no windows, so no one would know we were there. Besides, none of the girls go upstairs.”

“If you’re comfortable working up there,” I said.

She smiled. “I love that room. It’s as close to a secret hideaway as we have in this place.”

She was right. And I thought it appropriate for them to examine materials from Langham’s secret room in our most secret room.

“If Louise agrees,” I said.

Susan smiled. “She will,” she said.

***

They worked throughout the afternoon. I didn’t interrupt them. Instead, I sent the workers home, and stepped in for Susan at the phones. The evening shift arrived with pizza. I was about to go upstairs with some pieces for Susan and Louise when Susan surprised me in the kitchen.

“We found something,” she said quietly.

I knew that Kaplan would be in touch, so I told the two volunteers that if someone came or called for me, I was in the vestry. They seemed surprised. I wasn’t even sure these two new girls knew where the vestry was.

Then I followed Susan upstairs.

The smell of sawed wood was strong here as well. I was in the process of remodeling the former offices and choir room into a women-only gym. At the moment, I still taught my self-defense classes at Union South and my friend Nick’s gym, but I wanted a room of my own, as Virginia Wolff said.

The vestry was to the left of the construction zone, past the still closed-off sanctuary. Paneling hid the door on this side, apparently to prevent parishioners from walking in on the minister as he prepared.

Right now, though, the door was half open revealing a well-lit little room. It wasn’t as big or as fancy as Langham’s hidden office, but it was beautiful, with lovely paneling that I planned to save, and a ceiling that went almost two stories up, ending in a point that mimicked the church’s closed-off spire.

Louise had lit some homemade scented candles, so the little room smelled like vanilla. The desk was covered with hand-written legal papers. The garbage cans were overflowing with wadded up sheets. The nearby table had all of the journals opened to various pages. A blank legal pad sat on one of the reading chairs I had placed toward the back.

“Where did you get this stuff?” Louise asked.

“I can’t tell you,” I said.

“You need to tell us,” Louise said.

My heart sank. After that step-, only-, half-daughter thing, I braced for the worst. “How bad is it?”

Susan went over to the table. She touched an open journal.

“This,” she said, then touched another, “this,” and another, “this,” and yet another, “and this, all tell the same story. Different days, different years.”

“And the handwriting is a little looser in all of them,” Louise said, as if that would mean something to me.

“What story?” I said, knowing they wanted me to ask.

“You’d recognize it if you could read it,” Louise said. “It’s the sob sister.”

***

We’d been calling her the sob sister from the beginning of the hotline. She had called every Saturday night like clockwork, rarely missing, usually around eleven.

She always told the same story—a brutal, violent rape that nearly killed her, left her ruined and heartbroken, and made it impossible for her to have children. She would sob her story out. The first few times I took the call, her words were almost incomprehensible.

I tried to get her to come in, to talk to someone, to report the incident. I told her I would go with her, and she would always quietly, gently, hang up.

Other volunteers had a similar experience, and finally we stopped telling her to report the incident. We just listened. Every Saturday night. Sometimes there were more details. Sometimes there were fewer. She always sobbed. If we tried to console her, she would hang up.

I’m not sure exactly when we figured out she was drunk—maybe about the point someone gave her the nickname, about the point when we realized we were helpless in the face of her never-ending grief.

The sob sister taught me that not all victims could be healed, and that for some, grief and loss and terror became an everlasting abyss, one they would never come back from.

I had assumed the sob sister was some broken-down drunk who lived in a trailer, or as a modern-day Miss Haversham in a ramshackle house at the edge of town.

I never thought the sob sister was someone as powerful and competent as Dolly Langham.

“You’re sure?” I asked, sounding a bit breathless.

“Positive,” Susan said. She picked up one of the journals. “This is from 1954.”

Then she read the account out loud. It wasn’t word-for-word what I had heard on the phone—after all, Langham had written this in shorthand, with missing articles and poor transitions—but it was close enough to make the hair rise on the back of my neck.

“And this one,” Susan said, “is the day after Pearl Harbor. She speculates on who might enlist, and then—suddenly, as if she can’t control it—that damn story again.”

I held up a hand. I had to think this through. It violated a lot of my assumptions about everything, about the sob sister, about the nature of victimhood, about Dolly Langham.

Who, come to think of it, was a single unmarried woman who lived alone in the family manse after her father died, who had no family, and who seemingly had only her charities to keep her warm.

But she had had a secret life.

As a sob sister. Not the sobbing woman who called my hotline, but as a front-page girl, one of those women writers of the press, the kind who specialized in an emotional sort of journalism nearly forgotten and completely discredited. Nellie Bly, who got herself tossed into an insane asylum so she could write passionately about the awful conditions; Ida Tarbell, whose work on Standard Oil nearly got discredited because of her gender; or even the great Ida B. Wells, whose anti-lynching campaign almost got her killed, all got dismissed as sob sisters.

Women who wrote tears.

Dolly Langham wrote tears. Accuser Speaks! It was a piece of sympathy, not a piece of hack journalism. So were other stories, all under the guise of a straight news story, told in a way that would appeal to the woman of the house, the emotional one, the one who actually might change the mind of her man.

“Do you guys remember who gave the sob sister her nickname?” I asked.

“It was before my time. You guys had already labeled her before I got here,” Louise said. “So, you know who she is now. You want to share?”

“I can’t yet.” I said, even though I wanted to.

Susan was tapping her thumbnail against her teeth.

“June seems like so long ago,” she said after a moment. She was frowning. “Maybe Helene nicknamed her. Or Mabel.”

Our oldest volunteers. I adored Mabel. She had campaigned for women’s rights in the teens, and had done her best to change the world then. That she was helping us now seemed a miracle to me.

Helene, on the other hand, drove me nuts. She was conservative, religious, yet determined to make this hotline work. I still struggled to get along with her, but as time progressed, I had learned to appreciate her.

“I think it was Helene,” Susan said. “I have this vivid memory of her passing the call to me one Saturday night just as the phone rang. She said she couldn’t help the sob sister any. Some others were there and the name stuck.”

She couldn’t help the sob sister. Because they knew each other?

“Are there names in any of these accounts?” I asked. “Does she give us a clue as to who this guy is who hurt her so badly?”

“It wasn’t one guy,” Louise said softly.

I glanced at her. Her eyes were red.

“It was a gang,” she said. “A few of the early accounts were really graphic.”

Susan nodded. “And there are no names, at least not that we’ve found.”

“What about in the other papers I gave you?” I asked. “Are there any names in those?”

“Initials,” Louise said. “And I have to tell you, this stuff is gruesome.”

“Yeah,” Susan said. “What was this woman into?”

I shook my head again. “I’ll tell you when I can. The most recent papers, what are they about?”

Susan bowed her head. “You don’t want to know.”

But Louise squared her shoulders. “It’s another group.”

“A group of what?” I asked, feeling cold.

“A group of perverts,” Louise said.

Susan had put a hand over her mouth. Her head was still bowed.

“What kind of perverts?” I asked.

“The kind who like little boys,” Louise said. “They take them from the home, to work. And the boys work, all right.”

Her words were clipped, bitter, angry.

“The home?” I asked, my mind a bit frozen. I’d become so used to dealing with women that the phrase “little boys” threw me off. “Their homes?”

“The boys’ home near Janesville,” Susan said, sounding ill. “My church gives that place money.”

“Please tell me she uses names,” I said.

Louise shook her head. “Initials, though. That and the home might be enough information to figure it out.”

If we were cops. If someone was going to investigate this. I didn’t know if Kaplan could do it. Groups, gangs, rings of organized anything were often the hardest thing to defeat.

“Did they know she was investigating them?” I asked.

“Someone—a E.N.—thought she was asking a lot of questions. She was scared,” Susan said. Then she added, “I got that from the journal, not from her notes.”

“Can you give me what you translated?” I asked. “Not the journals, but the notes themselves?”

“I wish we had one of those expensive copiers,” Louise said. “I really don’t want to write this stuff out again.”

I empathized.

“Just set the papers in a pile right here.” I moved a metal outbox onto the table. “I’ll pick them up if I need them. Don’t copy right now. Keep translating, if you can. If you can’t, I understand. But I sure would like names.”

Susan picked up her pen. Then her gaze met mine. “How do people stay sane in the face of all this crap?”

I thought of the cops I’d known, good and bad, as well as the people I knew who were trying to make things right in the world.

“I’m not sure they stay sane,” I said. “Hell, I’m not even sure they were ever sane.”

I wasn’t sure I was either. But I didn’t say that. I figured both women knew that already.

***

I was halfway down the stairs when I met one of the volunteers coming up. Her eyes were bloodshot, and her nose was red.

“Call for you,” she said in a thick voice.

“You okay?” I asked.

She nodded. “Just taking a break.”

She was trying for jaunty, but she failed miserably. A lot of the volunteers took breaks after a particularly tough phone call. Often those breaks took place in the ladies room, and involved lots of Kleenex.

I hurried down the stairs to my desk. Kaplan was on the line.

“I’m coming over there,” he said. “But I figured, given the nature of your business, that you’d want me to let you know first.”

I did appreciate it, but knew better than to thank him. In the past when I noticed him being sensitive, he got offended.

“Do you know where the old rectory used to be?” I asked.

“Yes,” he said.

“Go to that door.”

I hung up and hurried back through the walkway into my tiny living room. I had just switched on the lights when I heard a car pull up. I didn’t look through the curtains. I waited, tense, listening to the car engine shut off, the door slam, and footsteps on the gravel. I anticipated the knock on the door, but it still made me jump.

“It’s me.” Kaplan’s voice. I appreciated that he didn’t identify himself. He probably had no idea that I was alone.

I checked the peephole, then unlocked all of the dead bolts. I pulled the door open.

Kaplan was still wearing his heavy police jacket, and his galoshes. His black pants were stained with snow and salt along the hems.

“C’mon in,” I said, standing back.

He nodded, stamped his feet, and entered. He stopped as I closed the door, a look of surprise on his face. “This is your place?”

“Yes,” I said.

“I expected—”

“The hotline, I know,” I said. “We don’t let strangers in there.”

“I remember,” he said grimly. He took off his jacket, put his gloves in the pocket, then ran a hand through his hair. He slipped out of the galoshes as well.

He was wearing a rumpled suit coat under the jacket. “You see the 10 o’clock news?”

“No.”

“Open and shut. Burglars surprised her, knowing what was in the house. Now we’re having an all-out manhunt which will, of course, fail.”

I opened my hand and gestured toward the sofa. His gaze passed over the materials that I had left on the table. “Coffee?” I asked. “Water? Soda?”

“Coffee,” he said. “Black. Thank you.”

I went into the kitchen and started the percolator. Then I hovered in the archway between the kitchen and the living room.

“How do you know it wasn’t burglars?” I asked.

“You mean besides the fact nothing was stolen? Oh, that’s right. I forgot. She surprised those burglars, so they viciously attacked her. The odd thing was there was more than one of them, and still they didn’t have time to take her purse or the diamond earrings she wore or the gold bracelet around her wrist.” He leaned his head back. “There’s so much not right here, and I can’t tell anyone.”

Except me. The tension had left me, and I actually felt flattered, although I knew better than to say so.

“You knew her, didn’t you?” I asked quietly.

He raised his head, and looked at me. “She called me her disappointment.”

I raised my eyebrows. At that moment, I heard the percolator and silently cursed it. “Coffee’s done.”

I filled two large mugs, grabbed the plate of five raisin cookies that I had stolen from the volunteers two days ago, and put it all on a tray that had come with the kitchen. I brought the tray into the living room and put it on the end table near him.

I sat across from him on the matching chair that faced the window. “You were a disappointment?”

“Yeah.” He grabbed two cookies, but he didn’t eat them. “Among the other things she did, Dolly Langham gave out two full-ride scholarships every year to the University of Wisconsin. She gave them to the best students from Madison area high schools, no matter the gender.”

“Wow,” I said. “You got one?”

He nodded. “Four years at our greatest state institution.”

“And then you became a cop,” I said.

He shrugged one shoulder. “Like father, like son.”

“And she got angry at you.”

“Said I was wasting my talents.”

“Are you?”

His gaze met mine. “Are you wasting yours?”

I smiled. “Touché.”

We both picked up our coffee mugs. He didn’t add anything, so I said, “You never lost touch with her.”

“I checked up on her,” he said. “She wasn’t young and she lived alone.”

“I’ll bet she appreciated that.” I blew on my coffee, wishing I hadn’t tinged that sentence with sarcasm.

“You got it. She hated it. Not that it made any difference. She still died horribly. Worse that I would have expected.” He sighed. His sadness and regret were palpable.

Yet the thought of him just discovering that hidden room today didn’t ring true. He had known all along that it was there.

“So she took you into her private office before,” I said.

He shook his head. “I’d seen her go in it once, but I’d never gone in myself. I just thought she had some paperwork stored in the back of the pantry, until today.”

“What made you get me?” I asked.

“I don’t know,” he said, not meeting my gaze. “I guess I always figured you and her as kindred spirits.”

I started. Had he known what she was doing? “Why?”

“The stubborn independent streak, maybe,” he said. “The willingness to go against female norms. The way that you both believe men are unnecessary.”

“I never said that.” I sounded defensive. I liked men. Or, at least, I used to.

“She never said it either. It was just the attitude—don’t help me, don’t do for me, there’s nothing you can do that I can’t do.” He shook his head. “She was a cussed old broad.”

His voice broke on the last word.

He loved her. He really should not have been in charge of this investigation, and yet he was. I doubted he would have been able to relinquish it to anyone.

And yet, because he loved her, he couldn’t go along with the fake investigation. He had to know why, and it might cost him his career.

I almost said something to him, warned him, but it wasn’t my place. It angered me when he told me what to do; I was certain my warning him would make him just as angry as it would have made me.

So I decided to approach the entire idea sideways. “Do you know what she was working on?”

He took a deep breath, ran a hand over his face, and sighed, clearly gathering himself. “You mean besides the charities.”

I nodded.

“No,” he said. “But you do.”

I got up and took the Polaroids out of my pile. Then I held them before showing them to him. Showing them to anyone almost felt like a betrayal of her trust—this woman I hadn’t known, and hadn’t met, who was, as Kaplan had so astutely seen, a kindred spirit.

I even knew why she had avoided the hotline. She didn’t want—she couldn’t, really—draw attention to her secret life. Besides, she had called us before we approached her. She was afraid we would figure out who she was.

“Here’s the problem,” I said before I put the Polaroids in front of him. “She’d been doing a mountain of investigative work, and she’d done it for decades—longer than you and I have been alive. Any one thing from her past could have killed her.”

I carefully laid each Polaroid in front of him, explaining them all, the secret closet, the hidden shelves, the pen names, the meticulous notes that we hadn’t even really begun to explore.

“Jesus,” he said when I was finished, and the word was a half-prayer, half-reaction. “Jesus.”

I hadn’t even told him what she had been working on. I only touched the old cases, because I wasn’t familiar with most of them, not yet.

“Why would she do this?” He picked up one of the pictures, the one that showed the wig, the different clothing. “Her father was still alive through much of this. He never knew?”

“I doubt it,” I said.

“It doesn’t make sense,” Kaplan said more to himself than to me. He looked up, his gaze open and vulnerable. “It doesn’t—”

Then his mouth dropped open. He closed it, and shook his head slowly.

“I should listen to myself,” he said. “I said she was like you. She was, wasn’t she? She had the same background and there was no way in hell she was ever going to be someone’s victim.”

“Not the same background,” I said softly. “It’s never the same.”

“You know what I mean,” he said with more heat than I expected. He thought I was belittling his realization. “You know what happened. Is it important? Did it get her killed?”

I shrugged. “I don’t know. I’m not even sure when it happened. In the teens, I think. I can’t tell you much more. She used to call here, so it falls in my confidentiality rules.”

“Which won’t hold up in court,” he said fiercely.

“I know,” I said. “I’d give you names and dates if I had them. She’s gone, after all, and I’d love to find out who killed her. But she never gave names, and she didn’t give a lot of details that would ever help us find who hurt her.”

Damaged her, damn near destroyed her. “Hurt” was such a minor word in the context of what happened to Dolly Langham and the power of her reaction to it.

“Names?”

I nodded.

His eyes narrowed. “So give me what you do have. The recent stuff. Logically, that would be what got her killed. If nothing else, it’ll give me a place to start.”

I was shaking my head before he even finished speaking. “You’re not going to like it.”

“I don’t like any of this,” he said. “Just tell me.”

So I did.

Somewhere in the middle of the discussion, partly because I couldn’t stand his expression, and partly because I didn’t want to answer questions I knew nothing about, I went up to the vestry for the translated papers.

Louise was still there, looking ragged.

“A man called you earlier,” she said, as if I had done something wrong.

I nodded.

“Your cop friend?”

I picked up the papers from the out basket. “Thank you,” I said.

Then I went down the stairs again. My cop friend. Were we friends? I wasn’t sure.

I let myself back into the rectory. It smelled of toast, bacon, and coffee. Kaplan wasn’t sitting on my couch any longer. He was in my kitchen, scrambling eggs in my best cast iron pan.

“I hope you don’t mind,” he said. “I haven’t eaten anything except cookies all day.”

“I don’t mind when someone else cooks.” I looked at the clock on the stove—it was the middle of the night. I should have sent Louise home.

Kaplan divided the eggs between two plates, then added bacon and toast. He handed me a plate which I gladly took. I was hungry, and that surprised me.

I set the papers on the table as I sat down.

He sat across from me, but didn’t read. Not yet.

“She did this for almost fifty years,” he said, “and never got caught before.”

“We don’t know that,” I said.

“If she did, she got out of it.”

I nodded slightly, a small concession.

“How could she get caught this time?”

“Maybe the disguise didn’t work for an elderly woman,” I said. “Or maybe someone recognized her voice. We probably won’t know.”

He had already cleaned his plate. I had barely touched mine.

He picked up the papers, then went into the living room to read them. I finished eating and cleaned up the kitchen.

It felt both strange and natural to have a man in my house again. To have a cop in my house. A benevolent cop. I need to stop thinking of every cop like the man who hurt me and remember how much my husband Truman had cared about the people around him. Truman was like most of the cops I had known. I needed to keep that in mind.

When I finished the dishes, I went into the living room. Kaplan had rolled up the legal sheets and was holding them in his left hand. His right elbow was braced on the arm of the couch, and he was lost in thought.

“What am I going to do?” he asked as I sat down across from him. “I’m a detective in a small city. I have orders from the chief of police to close this quickly. I don’t think he’s involved, but I’ll wager whoever is has money and clout and the ability to close the cases that he believes need closing.”

“I know,” I said softly.

“Sometimes,” he said, not looking at me, “you learn to close your eyes. But this….”

He let the words trail off. Then he raised his head. His eyes were red-rimmed.

“They killed her. They killed her to keep her quiet, and she worked her whole life to make sure the full story got told on cases like this. They silenced her, and she didn’t believe in silence. Hell, Miss Wilson, she’s going to haunt me if I let them get away with it. Even if she’s not a real ghost, she’ll haunt me. Just her memory will haunt me.”

“Val,” I said.

He blinked, and focused on me for the first time.

“Call me Val,” I said. I didn’t need to explain why.

“Val,” he said softly. Then he sighed. “I won’t have a career if I go after this. I might not live through the week.”

He wasn’t exaggerating. I’d seen worse over the years.

“But I can’t let it drop,” he said.

“I’ve been thinking about that,” I said. “You might not have to.”

His breath caught—just a moment of hope, a small one, and then I watched that hope dissipate. “It won’t work. Anything I do—”

“I’ve had a few hours longer to think about this than you have,” I said. “And there’s something pretty glaring in the evidence that Miss Langham gathered.”

“Glaring. Something that’ll convince the chief?” he asked. Then before I could get a word in edgewise, he added, “Even if the evidence is rock-solid, I can’t do anything. Hell, for all I know, there are judges involved and city officials and—”

“Hank,” I said quietly. “This gang, this ring, they operate across state lines.”

His mouth opened slightly. Then he rubbed a hand over his chin.

“Jesus H. Roosevelt Christ, you’re right. Hell, I won’t have to even tie this to Dolly’s murder. I just have to quietly hand it to the right person.” Then he smiled. “And I just happen to know some good men who work for the FBI.”

***

I wish I could say it was easy. I wish I could say it all got resolved in the next few days. But I can’t, because it didn’t. It took nearly a year on the orphanage case, and most of the time, Kaplan was out of the loop.

Which meant I was too.

And that made me uncomfortable. I didn’t trust the FBI on the best of days. But I had to continually remind myself that this wasn’t my case or really, my business. Although if they didn’t stop it, I promised myself I would find a way.

Eventually, the Feds arrested a lot of people and more quietly resigned, and the regional papers had a lot of articles that were vague and unsatisfying, because someone deemed the details too graphic for publication.

Langham’s case got closed quickly. Kaplan and I decided that it was better to assume her death was caused by the most recent case, and to get the ringleaders for that. However, I know that Kaplan is still quietly investigating. He’ll never be satisfied until he knows what really happened.

But for now, the official story stands: Langham’s death inside her own home was caused by burglars she interrupted. What got taken? No one knows exactly, but it turned out that the house had two secret rooms that probably dated from Prohibition—or so the papers speculated, without proof, of course. The rooms had books and desks, but there were empty cupboards, except for clothing that apparently belonged to Langham’s father’s various mistresses.

Whatever had been in the drawers of the desk and the cabinet behind one of the desks, well, the burglars had clearly made off with all of that.

In the middle of the night. With police escort.

If you could call Kaplan a police escort.

That part wasn’t in the papers, of course. And the neighbors never seemed to notice the two police officers—one tiny and dark, and the other who looked like he was from central casting. They arrived at one a.m. on two consecutive nights, parked in the driveway, and carried boxes of documents out to a squad car.

No one questioned it, no one remembered it, and no one even knew about those rooms for nearly two months after the investigation closed, when the heirs—the administrators of seven local charities—got their first tours of the place they now held in trust.

Then the story broke open again.

By then, no one even mentioned the cops dealing with that late-night crime scene. No one mentioned the boxes.

Boxes that moved from one secret room to another—although my room wasn’t exactly secret: just forgotten. It was the closet off what had been the choir room. There were even a few musty robes balled up in the corner. I didn’t move them. I just locked the closet door, then locked the choir room door, and wondered what I would do with my treasure, what I would do with another woman’s life work.

Kaplan asked me not to worry about it, not yet.

I didn’t worry about it, but I decided it was time to join the female half of the human race. I signed up for a shorthand course at Madison Area Technical College, starting in January.

And that would have been the end of it, except for one rather strange conversation, late on a Saturday night, two weeks after Langham’s death.

I found myself alone with Helene, our second-oldest volunteer, the one who irritated me, the one who had given Dolly Langham her nickname.

That night, Helene wore a blue dress over a girdle that had to hurt like hell, her perfect stockings attached at the thigh with clips that she would have been appalled to know I had seen as she sat down. She had played the organ at Langham’s funeral, and stood graveside like a supplicant.

I had pretended I hadn’t seen her.

But that night, in the silence of the phone room, about eleven p.m. when Langham’s drunken calls usually came in, I said, “You knew who it was from that first call, didn’t you?”

I watched Helene weigh her response. An old secret versus a new one, the sadness at the loss of a friend, the weight we both felt in the silence.

After a long moment, she nodded.

“You knew what she had been doing all these years too, didn’t you?” I asked.

“The charities? Of course,” Helene said.

“The writing,” I said.

Helene peered at me. Then sighed. “I thought she had quit decades ago. I would have told her to quit if I had known.”

So Helene suspected the truth: that Langham’s death was caused by her work, not by burglars.

“Who hurt her so badly?” I asked.

Helene shook her head. “Does it matter? They’re all dead now.”

The words were so flat, so cold. “You’re sure?”

“I’m sure,” she said. “A couple of them committed suicide. After their disgrace.”

I frowned. She shrugged, then slid the log book of all the calls toward her, to do her night’s reading.

“Their disgrace?” I asked.

“Different for all of them, of course,” she said as if she were discussing the weather. “You know how it is. They come to Madison for graduate school or to work in government, and then they go home to Chicago or Des Moines. And then the press finds some story—true or not—and hounds them. Just hounds them.”

She smiled just a little, her hand toying with the edge of the log.

“Those tearful interviews with the female accusers. Readers used to love those.”

Then she stood up, nodded at me, and asked me if I wanted coffee. As if we were in the basement of a still functioning church. As if we weren’t discussing the unsolved murder of a woman who had been Helene’s friend for decades.

A shiver ran through me, and I looked at my half-finished room, that still smelled of sawed wood.

Sob sisters.

The things we did to live with our pasts. The things we did to cope with the violence.

The things some of us did for revenge.

 

___________________________________________

“Sob Sisters“ is available for one week on this site. The ebook is also available on all retail stores, as well as here.

Sob Sisters

Copyright © 2021 by Kristine Kathryn Rusch
First published in Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine, November, 2013
Published by WMG Publishing
Cover and Layout copyright © 2021 by WMG Publishing
Cover design by WMG Publishing
Cover art copyright © Curaphotography/Dreamstime

This book is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. All rights reserved. This is a work of fiction. All characters and events portrayed in this book are fictional, and any resemblance to real people or incidents is purely coincidental. This book, or parts thereof, may not be reproduced in any form

 

I know, I know. It’s April Fool’s Day. And Dean Wesley Smith decided to launch a Kickstarter anyway. It’s for his Poker Boy series, which is one of my favorites. If you back it, you’ll get four Poker Boy ebooks and whatever stretch goals we hit. And writers, there’s some really great rewards here. So take a look.

And if you’re uncertain, at least watch the video I did. Enjoy! (Oh, and head to the Kickstarter here.)

Carol wants a nap. Carol needs a nap. And no one will let her have one because she’s important. She’s important because the grown-ups believe she’s an average five-year-old. Average five-year-olds have uses for bad guys who want to conquer the world. Only no one realizes that Carol isn’t average. Carol’s smart. And tired. And will do anything to get her nap.

“Advisors at Naptime“ is available for one week on this site. The ebook is also available on all retail stores, as well as here.

 

Advisors at Naptime By Kristine Kathryn Rusch 

It was time for Carol’s nap. They always forgot her nap. Mommy says every kid needs a nap. Carol used to hate naps, but now she’s tired. All she wanted was her blankie, her cuddly dog, and her squishy pillow.

And Mommy. They never let Mommy into the playroom with her.

They said Mommy sat outside, but once they left the door unlocked and Carol got out. She was in a cold hallway that looked like a giant tube or something. No chairs, icky white lights, and a hard gray floor.

No Mommy, no guards, no one to hear if she cried.

She stamped her foot and screamed. Everybody came running. Mommy said they were watching a TV screen with Carol on it in that room up there—and then she pointed at this tiny window, way up at the end of the hall—and Carol got mad.

“You lied,” she said, pointing her finger at Mommy in that way Mommy said was rude and mean. “You promised. You’d be right here. You said!”

Mommy got all flustered. Her cheeks got kinda pink when she was flustered and she messed with her hair, twirling it like she yelled at Carol for doing.

“I meant,” Mommy said in that voice she gets when she’s upset, “I’d be able to see you all the time.”

“You said—”

“I know what I said, honey.” Mommy looked at one of the guards—they’re these big guys with square faces and these weird helmets you could see through. They also had big guns on their sides, latched down so nobody can grab them away—and then she looked back at Carol. “I meant I’d be able to see you. I’m sorry I said it wrong.”

Carol wiped at her face. It was wet. She was crying and she didn’t know it. She hated that. She hated this place. It wasn’t fun like Mommy said it would be. It was a stinky place filled with grown-ups who didn’t get it.

Mommy said she’d be playing games all day, and she did, kinda, but by herself. She sat in front of this computer and punched numbers.

Once this scary guy came in. He wore bright reds, and he kinda looked like a clown. He bent down like grown-ups do, and talked to her like she was really stupid.

He said, “Carol, my dear, I’m so glad you’re going to help me with my little project. We’ll have fun.”

Only she never saw him again.

Which was good, because she didn’t like him. He was fake cheery. She hated fake cheery. If he was gonna be icky, he should just be icky instead of pretending to be all happy and stuff. But she didn’t tell him that. She didn’t tell him a lot of stuff because she didn’t like him. And she never saw him again. Just his mittens.

Mommy said every important person had mittens. Everybody who worked for him could be called a mitten, which meant Carol was one, even though she didn’t look like a mitten. She finally figured it was some kinda code word—everybody here liked code words—for workers.

She thought it was a stupid one—Mommy would say, be careful of Lord Kafir and his mittens—and Carol would have to try not to laugh. How can people be afraid of big fake-cheery guys with mittens? ’Specially when they had big red shoes and shiny red pants like those clowns at that circus Uncle Reeve took her to.

Carol had a lot of uncles. Mommy used to bring them over a lot. Then she met Lord Kafir, and the uncles didn’t come to the house no more. Lord Kafir promised Mommy a lot of money if Carol would play games at the Castle with him.

Mommy asked if this was a Neverland Ranch kinda thing and Lord Kafir’s mittens—the ones who’d come to the house—looked surprised. Those mittens didn’t wear helmets. They wore suits like real grown-ups and they had sunglasses and guns that Carol had seen on TV.

They wouldn’t let her touch the guns (she hated it when grown-ups wouldn’t let her touch stuff) but they promised she’d be playing with “weapons” all the time.

Mommy had to explain that weapons were like guns and stuff, only cooler.

So here’s what Carol thought then: she thought she’d be going to a real castle, like that one they show on the Disney Channel—maybe a blue one, maybe a pink one, with Tinkerbell flying around it, and lots of sparkly lights. She thought she’d get to wear a pretty dress like Cinderella, and dance with giant mice who were really nice, or meet a handsome beast like Belle did.

All the girls who go to castles get to wear pretty dresses with sparkly shoes, and they got to grow their hair really long (Mommy keeps Carol’s hair short because “it’s easier”) and got to dance what Mommy called a walls, and they lived happily ever after.

But that’s not what happened. The Castle wasn’t a castle. It’s this big building all gray and dark that’s built into a mountain. The door let you in and said stuff like checking, checking, all clear before you got to go through another door.

Then there was the mittens. The ones outside the mountain door wore suits and sunglasses. The ones inside actually had the helmets and weird-looking guns and big boots. They scared Mommy—the mittens did, not the boots—and she almost left there. But the assistant, Miss Hanaday, joined them and talked to Mommy and reminded her about all the money she’d get for just three months of Carol’s time (Carol didn’t like that), and Mommy grabbed Carol’s hand really tight and led her right into the castle/hall/mountain like it was okay.

Carol dug her feet in. She was wearing her prettiest shoes—all black and shiny (but no heels. Mommy says little girls can’t wear heels)—and they scraped on that gray floor, leaving black marks. Mommy yelled at her, and Carol hunched even harder, because the place smelled bad, like doctors or that school she went to for three days, and Mommy said the smell was just air-conditioning, but they had air-conditioning at home and it didn’t smell like this. At home, it smelled like the Jones’s dog when he got wet. Here it smelled cold and metal and—wrong.

Carol hated it, but Mommy didn’t care. She said, “Just three months,” then took Carol to this room with all the stuff where she was supposed to play with Lord Kafir, and that’s when Mommy said she’d be right outside.

So Mommy lied—and Carol hated liars.

And now all she wanted was a nap, and nobody was listening because Mommy was a liar and nobody was in that room. Carol was gonna scream and pound things if they didn’t let her nap really soon. She wanted her blankie. She wanted her bed.

She wanted to be let out of this room.

She didn’t care how many cookies they gave her for getting stuff right. She hated it here.

“Hate it,” she said, pounding on the keyboard of the computer they had in here. “Hate it, hate it, hate it.”

Each time she said “hate,” her fist hit the keyboard. It jumped and made a squoogy sound. She kinda liked that sound. It was better than the stupid baby music they played in here or the dumb TV shows that she’d never seen before.

She wanted her movies. She wanted her big screen. She wanted her blankie and her bed.

She wanted a nap.

She pounded again, and Mommy opened the door.

“Honey, you’re supposed to be looking at the pretty pictures.”

She was leaning in and her cheeks was pink. If her hands wasn’t grabbing the door, they’d be twirling her hair, and she might even be chewing on it.

“I don’t like the pictures,” Carol said.

“Honey—”

“I wanna go home.”

“Tonight, honey.”

“Now,” Carol said.

“Honey, we’re here to work for Lord Kafir.”

“Don’t like him.” Carol crossed her arms.

“You’re not supposed to like him.”

“He’s s’posed to play with me.”

“No, honey, you’re supposed to play with his toys.”

“A computer’s not a toy.” Carol was just repeating what Mommy had told her over and over.

“No, dear, but the programs are. You’re supposed to look at them and—”

“The bad guy always wins,” Carol said. She hated it here. She wanted to see Simba or Belle or her friends on the TV. Or maybe go back to that kindergarten that Mommy hated because they said Carol was average. She didn’t know what average was ’cept Mommy didn’t like it. Mommy made it sound bad.

Until that day when she was looking at the want ads like she did (Honey, don’t mess with the paper. Mommy needs to read the want ads) and then she looked up at Carol with that goofy frowny look and whispered, “Average five-year-old…”

“What?” Mommy asked.

“In the games,” Carol said. “The bad guy always wins.”

Mommy slid into the room and closed the door. “The bad guy’s supposed to win, honey.”

“No, he’s not!” Carol shouted. “He gets blowed up or his parrot leaves him or the other lions eat him or he gets runned over by a big truck or his spaceship crashes. The good guys win.”

Mommy shushed her and made up-and-down quiet motions with her hands. “Lord Kafir’s a good guy.”

“I’m not talkin ’bout him!” Carol was still shouting. Shouting felt good when you couldn’t have a nap. “On the computer. The bad guys always win. It’s a stupid game. I hate that game.”

“Maybe you could do the numbers for a while, then, honey.’

“The numbers, you hit the right button and they make stupid words. Nobody thinks I know letters but I do.” Carol learned her ABCs a long time ago. “What’s D-E-A-T-H-R-A-Y?”

“Candy,” Mommy said. Her voice sounded funny.

Carol frowned. That didn’t sound right.

“What’s I-R-A-Q?”

Mommy grabbed her hair and twirled it. “Chocolate.”

“What’s W-H-I-T-E-H-O-U-S-E?” Carol asked.

“That’s in there?” Mommy’s face got all red.

“What’s W-O-R-L-D-D-O-M-I-N-A-T-I-O-N?” Carol asked.

“D…D…O…” Mommy was frowning now too. “Oh. Oh!”

“See?” Carol said. “Stupid words. I hate stupid words and dumb numbers. And games where the bad guy wins. I want to go home, Mommy.”

“Um, sure,” Mommy said. She looked at the door, then at Carol. “Later. We’ll go later.”

“Now,” Carol said.

Mommy shook her head. “Carol, honey, you know we can’t leave until five.”

“I wanna nap!” Carol shouted, then felt her own cheeks get hot. She never asked for a nap before. “And a cookie. And my cuddly dog and my pillow. I wanna go away. I hate it here, Mommy. I hate it.”

“We have to keep coming, honey. We promised.”

“No.” Carol said and swung her chair around so she was looking at the computer.

It was blinking bright red. It never did that before.

“Mommy, look.” Carol pointed at the big red word.

Mommy looked behind her like she thought somebody might come in the room. “Honey, I’m not supposed to see this—”

“What’s that say?”

Mommy looked. Then Mommy grabbed Carol real tight, and ran for the door. She got it open, but all those mittens with guns and helmets was outside, with guns pointed.

Mommy stopped. “Please let us go. Please.”

“I’m sorry, Ma’am,” the man with the biggest gun said. “You have to wait for Ms. Hanaday.”

“We can’t wait for Ms. Hanaday,” Mommy said. “My daughter punched the computer. Now it’s counting down to a self-destruct.”

Carol squirmed. She watched Star Trek. She knew what a self-destruct was. “We gots to go,” she whispered.

Mommy just squeezed her tighter.

“We gots to go!” Carol shouted.

Mommy nodded.

The guards kept their guns on them.

“A self-destruct?” one of them whispered.

Another guard elbowed him. “She’s the average five-year-old. She finds the holes before we implement the program.”

“Huh?” the first guard asked.

“Y’know, how they always say that the plan’s so bad an average five-year-old could figure out how to get around it? She’s the average—”

“Enough!” Mommy said. “I don’t care if it is fake. I’m not going to take that risk.”

Carol squirmed. She wanted to kick, but Mommy hated it when she kicked. Sometimes Carol got in trouble for kicking Mommy. Not always. Sometimes Mommy forgot to yell at her. But right now, Mommy was stressed. She’d yell.

“I’m sorry, ma’am,” the first guard said. “We can’t let you go until Ms. Hanaday gets here.”

“And she is!” a lady’s voice said from far away. Carol peered around Mommy, and sure enough, there was that Ms. Hanaday, in her high heels and her black suit and wearing her glasses halfway down her nose even though she wasn’t as old as Mommy was.

“I wanna go,” Carol whispered.

“I know, honey,” Mommy said, but she wasn’t listening. She was just talking like she did when Carol was bugging her. But she did set Carol down, only she kept a hold of Carol’s hand so Carol couldn’t run away.

Ms. Hanaday was holding a bag. Her heels made clicky noises on the hard gray floor. It was colder out here than it was in that room. Carol shivered. She wanted a jacket. She wanted her blankie. She wanted a nap.

“I wanna go home,” she said again.

One of the guards looked at her real nice-like. He was somebody’s daddy, she just knew it. Maybe if she acted just a little cuter…

“What have we got here?” Ms. Hanaday said as she got close. She reached into the bag, and crouched at the same time. She whipped out a giant chocolate chip cookie, the kind Mommy said had to last at least three meals.

Carol reached for it, but Mommy grabbed her hand.

“We would like to leave now,” Mommy said.

“May I remind you, Ms. Rogers, that you signed a three-month contract? It’s only been three weeks.”

“Still. My daughter isn’t happy, and I’m not real comfortable here. No child should have to work all day.”

“It’s not designed as work, ma’am. It’s play.”

“Is not,” Carol muttered, wanting that cookie. She stared at it. Maybe if she stared hard enough, it would float over to her. She seen that in movies too.

“Did you hear her?” Mommy asked. “She doesn’t think it’s play.”

“Wanna nap,” Carol told Ms. Hanaday.

Really want that cookie, but Mommy still had a hold of her hand. Too tight. Mommy’s hand was cold and kinda sweaty.

Ms. Hanaday was frowning at her.

“I don’t like it here,” Carol said louder this time, in case Ms. Hanady didn’t hear so good. “Wanna go.”

“The day’s not over yet,” Ms. Hanaday said.

“Delores!” Lord Kafir shouted from down the hall. Carol knew it was him because he had the funny accent Mommy called Brid Ish. Some people from England had it. Most of them got to be bad guys in movies.

Carol shivered again.

Ms. Hanaday stood up. Lord Kafir was hurrying down the hall. His shoes didn’t make that clicky sound. They were kinda quiet, maybe because they weren’t official grown-up shoes.

“Is it true?” he asked Ms. Hanaday like there wasn’t Mommy and Carol and all those guys with the big guns. “Did she break the code?”

“I’m afraid so,” Ms. Hanaday said. She was holding the cookie so hard part of it broke. She had to move really fast to catch it before it fell to the ground.

Now the cookie was Carol-size. Carol looked at Mommy, but Mommy wasn’t looking at her.

“This is the five-year-old, right?” Lord Kafir pushed past Ms. Hanaday, knocking the cookie again. She had to grab real fast and still parts of it fell on the floor. Wasted. Carol wanted to get them, but Mommy wouldn’t let her go.

“Yes, sir. This is Carol. You’ve met her.”

“That’s right.” He crouched.

Carol made a face at him. She hated people who forgot her.

“You look pretty smart,” he said.

“I’m tired,” she said.

“Are you smart?” he asked.

“Of course I am, dummy,” Carol said.

“Carol!” Mommy breathed. “We don’t talk to grown-ups like that.”

He wasn’t a grown-up. He was a mean man in bright red clothes. He was glaring at her like she’d done something wrong.

“I think you’re pretty smart,” he said like that was bad.

“Her teachers said she was average,” Mommy said.

“We tested her IQ three times. She always came out in the normal range.” Ms. Hanaday sounded kinda scared.

“You know that children often give unreliable IQ tests.” Lord Kafir pushed up and looked at the other grown-ups. “I don’t think she’s average.”

“Mr.—Lord—Sir,” Mommy said. “She’s—”

“The other five-year-olds couldn’t beat that self-destruct,” he said.

“They barely got a chance, sir.” Ms. Hanaday was dripping cookie crumbs. “She got it earlier than the others—”

“Because she solved the earlier puzzles sooner. She’s good at code words and passwords and secret plans. She shouldn’t be this good if she’s average.”

“She watches a lot of television,” Mommy said.

“Can I have that cookie?” Carol asked.

Everybody looked at her.

“Please?” she asked in her best company voice.

“Oh, for heaven’s sake,” Mommy said, but Ms. Hanaday handed her all the parts of the cookie.

Carol chomped. The cookie wasn’t as good as it looked. Maybe because it got all sweaty and gooey in Ms. Hanaday’s hand.

“I swear, sir,” Ms. Hanaday said. “She’s average.”

“I’m tired of five-year-olds,” he said. “It’s time to implement the plan.”

“Sir! We can’t do that! It’s not ready!” Ms. Hanaday said.

“Get it ready,” he said.

“But the five-year-old—”

“Isn’t average,” he said.

Ms. Hanaday looked at Mommy like Mommy had gone into the living room without permission. It was like that code grown-ups had. Lord Kafir understood, even if Carol didn’t.

“Have you seen anything?” Lord Kafir asked Mommy.

“No,” Mommy said. She was lying. Carol looked at her in shock. Mommy was a horrible liar. She lied all the time. Carol just didn’t know it before.

“She saw the red lights,” Carol said. She didn’t want Mommy to get in trouble with Lord Kafir. “It scared her.”

“Red scares a lot of people,” he said, smoothing his ugly clothes. Was that why he wore them? To scare people?

The guards looked at each other, like they didn’t like any of this.

Ms. Hanaday shook her head.

“Pay the lady her three weeks and get them out of here,” Lord Kafir said to her. “And wash your hands. You’re a mess.”

“Yes, sir,” Ms. Hanaday said, but Lord Kafir was already hurrying down the hall.

The guards had lowered their weapons.

Ms. Hanaday ran a hand through her hair, making a streak of chocolate on the side of her face. It looked a little like poo.

Carol tried not to giggle.

“You know that this is all just war games,” Ms. Hanaday said.

“Sure,” Mommy said.

“Pretend stuff,” Ms. Hanaday said.

“Yeah,” Mommy said.

“None of it means anything,” Ms. Hanaday said.

“I know,” Mommy said.

“I’ll get your check,” Ms. Hanaday said, “and meet you at the door.”

“Okay,” Mommy said.

Ms. Hanaday hurried off after Lord Kafir. The guards just stared after her.

“I don’t like this,” one said to the other.

Mommy picked Carol up like she was a baby. “We’re going, honey.”

Carol swallowed the last of the cookie. Cookies were yucky without milk. “Okay,” she said.

Mommy hurried down the hall, a different way than everybody else went. It only took a few minutes to get to the door.

Ms. Hanaday was already there, holding a long piece of paper. It had to be a check. Mommy snatched it, then said thanks in a kinda rude voice, and then hurried out the door.

Nobody stopped them. In the movies, somebody would’ve stopped them. ’Specially the way Mommy was breathing, like she was all scared and stuff.

Carol wasn’t scared. Carol was glad to be outside where the sun was bright and the air smelled really good. She stretched. She wanted down. She wanted to run, but Mommy held tight all the way to the car.

They backed up and headed out of the parking lot, driving really, really fast.

“If you want a nap,” Mommy said, “close your eyes.”

“Where’re we going?” Carol asked.

“Far away,” Mommy said.

“Can we get my blankie?”

“Maybe,” Mommy said. That meant no. Carol sighed. She hated no. But not as much as she hated that place.

“What’s far away?” Carol asked.

“Good guys,” Mommy said.

Carol smiled. This was how it was supposed to go. She leaned back in her chair and closed her eyes. But she couldn’t sleep. Mommy was driving really bad. Fast like in the movies. Tires squealing. Going around corners on two wheels, stuff like that.

Mommy’d been watching Carol play too many games.

Carol opened her eyes. They were on a road outta town. Carol’d never been outta town before. This was kinda cool.

“Mommy?”

“Hmm?” Mommy said in that don’t-bother-me voice.

“Am I average?”

“I hope so, honey,” Mommy said. “In fact, I’m praying that you are.”

“Because average kids beat the game?” Carol asked.

“And that means it’s easy,” Mommy said.

It didn’t seem easy. It was just dumb. But Carol didn’t say that. She closed her eyes again. She didn’t care about numbers and weird letters and computers. Or bad guys like Lord Kafir. They could be scary, but they always lost in the end.

At least she got part of what she wanted. She got a cookie. She got outta there.

And now—finally—she was gonna take a nap.

 

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“Advisors at Naptime“ is available for one week on this site. The ebook is also available on all retail stores, as well as here.

Advisors at Naptime

Copyright © 2016 by Kristine Kathryn Rusch
First published in If I Were An Evil Overlord, edited by Martin H. Greenberg and Russell Davis, Daw Books, March 2007
Published by WMG Publishing
Cover and Layout copyright © 2016 by WMG Publishing
Cover design by WMG Publishing
Cover art copyright © Lane Erickson/Dreamstime

This book is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. All rights reserved. This is a work of fiction. All characters and events portrayed in this book are fictional, and any resemblance to real people or incidents is purely coincidental. This book, or parts thereof, may not be reproduced in any form without permission.