“She’s out,” I replied, “but I think she’s okay.”
“Is there anyone else in the cabin?”
“Yes,” I replied. “But he had nothing to do with this.”
“Son, if you could just walk slowly toward us...”
“I can’t — not until you promise me he won’t be hurt!”
“Just step aside, son. Everything will be just fine.”
“He didn’t do anything wrong,” I replied. “It was Billy. Billy McMahon.”
“You lyin’ son of a bitch!” A man stumbled toward me, stopping midway between the shack and the search party. He was unshaven and reeked of whiskey. A lantern swung precariously in one hand. “Nobody talks about my boy like that!”
“Sir, step away from the cabin,” said an officer.
“The hell I will! You tell me where my boy is!”
“He’s dead.”
He charged me, screaming. A single shot rang out. Blood sprayed red from his shoulder, just a graze, but he spun and fell. The lantern shattered as it hit the ground.
The weeds were dry and brittle, and caught instantly. I stumbled backward toward the stream, Alison heavy in my arms. Flames engulfed the bank, cutting us off from the rescue party. Isaac’s shack went up like so much tinder.
I splashed into the water. Fire rained down as the canopy caught. Thick smoke seared my lungs. The entire forest was ablaze. My face stung from the heat. I heard nothing but the roar of the flames.
The stream was barely two feet deep. Not deep enough to stop the flames. I kept low to the surface, dragging Alison along behind.
The waterfall, I thought. Our only chance. I struggled on, choking on the acrid, poison air. I was dizzy. My vision went dark, and I slipped below the surface.
Fingers tangled in my hair. Yanking. My head broke the surface of the water. I gasped, suddenly alert. Beside me was Alison, wide-eyed and frightened, but awake. She put an arm around my shoulder, and together we pressed on as the world burned around us.
By the time we were found, we’d spent ten hours huddled together beneath the fall. Eighty acres burned that night, they told us. Had the wind shifted, it might have been eight hundred.
Billy’s father died in the blaze. Mom said better that than know the truth. I don’t know, maybe she was right. The truth is never quite as simple as we’d like it to be.
I sit and sip my tea, watching over the porch rail as the sky lightens in the east. Behind me, the screen door creaks. Alison steps out into the pre-dawn half-light wrapped in a bathrobe, her hair mussed from sleep. She’s the most beautiful woman I’ve ever seen.
“Couldn’t sleep?” she asks.
“Guess not,” I reply.
“Everything all right?”
I think back to that summer, so many years ago. And, weeks later, to that cool September morning when I found on my porch a single MoonPie wrapper, carefully folded and placed beneath a chipped and yellowed bowl.
“Yeah,” I reply. “I think it is.”
Blog Bytes
by Ed Gorman
Copyright © 2007 Ed Gorman
The Carolyn Hart website. This website offers Hart fans and readers a well-organized and useful look at both the books and the life of a writer who took many of the cozy conventions and tropes and gave them much more depth than they once possessed. Especially notable is Carolyn’s advice to writers, in which she talks about how difficult but rewarding the writing process can be. A major talent and a very cordial guide through the world of publishing, she has a site that warrants frequent visits. www.carolynhart.com
The Jan Burke website. Jan is not only a bestselling writer, as she notes, she’s also “the founder of The Crime Lab Project, which works to increase awareness of the problems facing public forensic science labs in the U.S.,” so you’ll find not only material about Jan and her books but some impressive material on this particular subject. Jan makes very clear what her website readers can find here: “This is a place where readers can ask questions and get information about my books and stories, and where I’ll be talking about subjects both related and unrelated to my writing.” An excellent site. janburke.com/blog.html
The Winning Ticket
by Bill Pronzini
© 2007 by Bill Pronzini
2007 marks the 40th anniversary of the “Nameless” detective series (to which this story be-longs), making it the longest-running of all ongoing P.I. series. Nameless’s 31st book-length case, Savages, is due soon from Forge, and another Pronzini novel, The Crimes of Jordan Wise (Walker 2006) has just been nominated for the prestigious Hammett Award.
Jake Runyon and I were hunched over mugs of coffee and tea in an all-night diner near the Cow Palace when the man and woman blew in out of the rain.
Blew in is the right phrase. They came fast through the door, leaning forward, prodded by the howling wind. Nasty night out there. One of the hard-rain, big-wind storms that sometimes hammer the California coast during an El Niño winter.
The man shook himself doglike, shedding rainwater off a shaved head and a threadbare topcoat, before the two of them slid into one of the side-wall booths. That was as much attention as I paid to them at first. He wasn’t the man we were waiting for.
“After eleven,” I said to Runyon. “Looks like Maxwell’s a no-show again tonight.”
“Weather like this, he’ll probably stay holed up.”
“And so we get to do it all over again tomorrow night.”
“You want to give it a few more minutes?”
“Might as well. At least until the rain lets up a little.”
Floyd Maxwell was a deadbeat dad, the worst kind. Spousal abuser who owed his ex more than thirty thousand dollars in unpaid child support for their two kids; hard to catch because he kept moving around in and out of the city, never staying in one place longer than a couple of months, and because he had the kind of job — small-business computer consultant — that allowed him to work from any location. Our agency had been hired by the ex’s father and we’d tracked Maxwell to this neighborhood, but we’d been unable to pinpoint an exact address; all we knew was that since he’d moved here, he ate in the Twenty-Four/Seven Diner most evenings after ten o’clock, when there were few customers. Bracing him was a two-man job because of his size and his history of violent behavior. Runyon was twenty years younger than me, a former Seattle cop with a working knowledge of judo; Tamara and I couldn’t have hired a tougher or more experienced field operative when we’d decided to expand the agency.
This was our third night staked out here and so far all we had to show for it were sour stomachs from too much caffeine. I had mixed feelings about the job anyway.
On the one hand, I don’t like deadbeat dads or spousal abusers and nailing one was always a source of satisfaction. On the other hand, it amounted to a bounty hunt, the two of us sitting here with handcuffs in our pockets waiting to make a citizen’s arrest of a fugitive, and I’ve never much cared for that kind of strong-arm work. Or the type of people who do it for a living.
The new couple were the only other customers right now. The counterman, a thin young guy with a long neck and not much chin, leaned over the counter and called out to them, “What can I get you folks?”
“Coffee,” the man said. He was about forty, well set-up, pasty-faced and hard-eyed. Some kind of tattoo crawled up the side of his neck; another covered the back of one hand. He glanced at the woman. “You want anything, Lila?”
“No.”
“Couple of hamburgers to go,” he said to the counterman. “One with everything, one with just the meat. Side of fries.”