Kwik Krimes (33 page)

The AQ limped, likely on something akin to a clubfoot; Kerr could tell that from the distance between steps. He also realized that his quarry was wearing
khuf
, tough socks with a sole thick enough for walking.

Walking very quietly.

It figured, didn’t it? Kerr thought, beginning to form a mental picture of how this particular AQ had managed to sneak past security and leave bodies behind before disappearing—

POOF!

…into thin air.

But he’d left a trail. And HK Kerr was on it, his tenth notch soon to be added. He made them small to leave room, lots of room, for the kills to come.

The khuf prints broke sharply to the left, and Kerr followed the trail, banking upward toward a nest of caves that made the mountain face he was approaching look like rocky swiss cheese.

Until stones rustled ahead.

He twisted toward the sound with the M4A1 leveled, ready to shoot. Senses keyed, mouth gone dry. The volume of the world cranked up into the red, the sight of it sharpened to crystal clarity. Feeling the assault rifle start to grow hot in his grasp, expended 7.62 mm shells about to do their airborne dance before clamoring to the gravel and stones below.

A mountain goat pranced onto the path, regarded him briefly, and then moved on. But the goat had done him a favor. Really. Its hooves had disturbed the ground enough to reveal fresh khuf prints stopping at a steeply angled rock face that led to a trio of cave mouths peeking out from a narrow ledge.

HK Kerr moved on. Got safe from view of the cave mouths and ducked between twin boulders to wait for nightfall. When it came he retraced his steps to the steep path rising up the rock face. Climbed it slowly, pushing with his legs and pulling with his hands.

Three cave mouths.

I’m the AQ. Which one would I hide in?

The first in the row—no. The last—also no. The middle made for the most defensible position. The middle provided the extra second that could make the difference between dying and killing.

HK Kerr headed for the middle. Looping in from the side to leave no hint of shadow or shape ahead of him. He lurched into the cave mouth, built-in major candlepower light piercing the darkness with flashbulb brightness. A cascade of bullets ready to follow down the iridescent tunnel, when his finger froze just short of squeezing.

Because the light had found a boy, twelve or thirteen, huddled against the cave’s rear with a crutch lying by his side. Grime
coated his face. Fear filled eyes that looked too big for his face. He tried to speak, but all that emerged from his trembling lips was air. All the toes on his left foot were missing.

I almost shot Tiny Tim.

It would’ve been funny if it wasn’t so damn sad. Kerr’s tenth notch would have to wait.

“Sorry, kid,” he said, lowering his M4A1 and starting to turn.

Never saw the kid grab his crutch and fire it. Felt something intensely hot and then frigidly cold hit his spine even as he hit the cave floor facedown, eyes open and sightless.

The kid rose, limped toward him, supported by the crutch that held a rifle in disguise.

Never saw that coming, did you?

The kid kicked at Kerr’s body, making sure he was dead. And only then did he raise his gun-crutch enough to dig a nail into the sawed wooden butt that fit neatly under his arm.

Adding a tenth notch to the nine already in place.

Jon Land is the critically acclaimed author of thirty-two books, including the best-selling series featuring Texas Ranger Caitlin Strong that includes
Strong Vengeance
and the forthcoming
Strong Rain Falling
(August 2013). He has more recently brought his long-time series hero Blaine McCracken back to the page in
Pandora’s Temple.
He lives in Providence, Rhode Island.

Joe R. Lansdale

I
t was a third date. The first date had been dinner and a movie and a kiss good night, dropped off at her door, that sort of thing. The second they ended up in a hotel room. Tonight, she was at his place, had driven over. They were going to have dinner at his house, then go to a movie. All very casual. Nothing highly romantic. She liked that. It made her comfortable; two lovers who were starting to know each other well enough not to do anything fancy.

When she got there he let her in before she could knock, like he had been watching. The place was lit up, and she could hear the TV going and could smell cooking. He was wearing one of those novelty aprons that said “Kiss the Cook.”

“This is it,” Jim said, waving his arm at the interior of the house. It was nice. Nothing fantastic, but nice. He was neat for a guy, especially a traveling salesman who went all over the states and didn’t stay home much.

“You wore the earrings?” he asked.

“You asked me to. You like them that much?”

“Liked them when I bought them for you,” he said.

“Date three, thought they might get a little old,” she said.

“Not yet. You want a drink?”

“Sure,” she said, and followed him into the kitchen. The TV prattled on in the other room. He poured her a drink.

“You know,” she said, “we could stay here tonight.”

Jim was at the stove, stirring spaghetti in a pot of boiling water. He turned and looked at her. “You want to?”

“You got some movies?” she asked.

“Yeah, or we can order one off the TV.”

“Let’s do that, and then let’s go to bed. You can fix me dinner tonight and breakfast in the morning.”

“That sounds fine,” he said, smiling that killer smile he had. “That sounds really nice.”

“I hoped you’d think so,” she said. “Bathroom?”

“Down the hall, around the corner to the left.”

She walked down the hall and turned the corner, opened the door to the left. She had missed the bathroom. It was the bedroom. She started out, saw a dresser drawer slightly open. He was neat, but not that neat. She, on the other hand, had a thing about open doors and drawers. She slipped over quickly, started to push it shut, saw what was blocking it. An ear.

Taking a deep breath, she thought, surely not.

Sliding the drawer open, she got a better look. There was a string running through the ear. She pulled it out of the drawer. There were a number of dried ears on it. They had a faint smell, a combination of decay and the smell of pickles; they had been in some kind of preservative, but the flesh was still losing the battle. Something sparkled on one of them.

“It’s from the war,” he said.

She turned, gasping. He was standing in the doorway, his head hung, looking silly in that apron.

“I’m sorry,” she said, because she didn’t know what else to say.

“My brother, he was in Afghanistan. Brought it home with him. This will sound odd, but when he died, I didn’t know what
to do with it. I kept it. Thought I had it put away better. I should throw it away.”

“It’s pretty awful,” she said, lowering the ears back into the drawer, pushing it shut.

“Forgive me for having it, for keeping it.”

“He died in the war?”

“Cancer. Came home from the war with his collection, those ears. Come on, forget it. I’ll throw them out.”

She went back to the kitchen, and later they ate dinner. When he went into the den to pick a movie, she slipped out the front door and drove home, trying to remember if she had told him where she lived, then thinking, even if she hadn’t, these days it wasn’t so hard to find out. Easy, really.

In her house, sitting in the dark with a fresh drink, she felt stupid to have fallen for Jim so quickly, to not know him as well as she should have. A guy like that wasn’t a guy she wanted to know any more about.

She finished her drink and went to bed.

In the middle of the night she was startled awake, sat up in bed, her face covered in a cold sweat.

She remembered Jim said on their first date he was an only child, but tonight he said he had a brother, said the ears were from Afghan warriors. Several thoughts hit her like a barrage of arrows. She hadn’t just awakened. She had heard something moving in the house; that’s what brought her awake with her mind full of thoughts and questions. That sound was what woke her up. And in the moment she realized that all those ears had been small and one of them had something shiny on it. She knew now what it was. She had only glimpsed it, but now she knew. A woman’s earring. Not too unlike those she had worn tonight.

Something banged lightly in the other room, and then her bedroom door opened.

Joe R. Lansdale has written thirty novels and numerous short stories. He is a member of the Texas Institute of Letters, writer in residence at Stephen F. Austin State University, and has had several stories filmed. His novel
The Bottoms
won the Edgar Allan Poe Award for Best Novel in 2000. His most recent novel is
Edge of Dark Water
from Mulholland Books.

Janice Law

M
ike Brinley closed his notebook and turned to me. “I think that will do it, Chief. I’ll run the piece next Thursday for your last day, and I’ll drop off some extra copies for the grandkids.”

“Thanks, Mike. I’m sure you’ll make me sound like the Valley’s answer to Sherlock Holmes.”

He laughed at that. “Your record’s pretty damn good. No perfect crimes in Fisher Valley, eh?”

That was a question I didn’t need to answer, but I heard myself say, “There are no perfect crimes, only imperfect detectives.”

He had the notebook out again, quick as a lizard’s tongue. “Perfect,” he said as he scribbled. “Just the right note to end on.”

We shook hands, and I watched him drive away: a good friend and a good reporter, off with a quote more apt than he could imagine. But true, and standing there on the porch in the summer sunshine, I was once again back at the start of my career, bouncing over the frozen ruts of a farmyard to find the corpse of Charlie Dunmore, a bastard and a bully who had gone to his final reward via a chunk of ice.

That’s what his wife, Edith, had screamed over the phone. “Come, come right away. The ice hit him. I can’t move him. Please.”

So there I was, standing in the Dunmores’ farmyard. Icicles hanging three and four feet long off the house. Ice backed up in all the gutters and hanging off the cowshed. Ice underfoot and wet snow in the air.

I walked around the side of the house to where Charlie was lying under an old tartan rug. Footprints everywhere—man, woman, and dog—plus a trail where she’d tried to move him. I uncovered him and saw a scrape across his temple and found blood on the back of his head. Two icicles. Odds of that? I noticed chunks of ice now half buried in the snow. The light was fading, and I thought it was going to be mighty hard to tell which ones had hit him.

“He was trying to clear the gutters.” I turned to see Edith Dunmore. She was a slight woman who had once been pretty. Now she was thin and pale with a darkening bruise under one eye and a couple of missing teeth.

Inside I called for the ambulance. Frozen as he was, Charlie wouldn’t fit in the backseat of my cruiser. Then I sat at the kitchen table and took her statement. She’d been busy with the day’s baking because the hotel wanted extra for the holidays. Charlie said he’d try to clear the gutter, and she hadn’t noticed how long he’d been gone. Then she went out and found him.

As we talked, she iced trays of streusel and coffee cakes. I noticed the big earthenware bowls and the heavy pots on the stove. Edith Dunmore was slight, but she had strong arms and capable hands.

I looked at her black-and-white spaniel, too. It lay on a blanket in the corner, whimpering and licking its right front leg. Broken, I guessed, from the way it was limping. I was being the perfect detective, and I had a little scenario all worked out: Charlie had hit her once too often—or maybe he was hurting the dog—and she’d followed him out, picked up one of the fallen icicles, and let
him have it. That was the perfect detective’s scenario, though I didn’t yet see how to prove it.

Edith finished the icing and cut me a thick slice of one of the pecan cakes. I should mention that she was the best baker west of Paris, France. The perfect detective hesitated.