Cut
to the Chase by Connie A.
Ferdon. Even in the
criminal world, efficiency is a good thing. Don't waste
time. Get it done and get out of there... IF you can.
“Here’s your cut, Joe.” Harper
counted out some hundreds, placing them in his operative’s hand.
Staring at the small stack of bills,
Joe sputtered, “Hey, our deal for a caddy was for a thousand, not
eight hundred.”
“You were two days late with the
delivery. Our deal included prompt service like always.” Harper
jutted a thumb towards the assembly line of men in the makeshift
warehouse. “You know we need time to strip the paint and redo her.
My customers don’t pay to wait.”
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Death
of a Dream by Kate
Anderson. Most of us have a
fantasy of one kind or another in our lives. Maybe it is about
money, or a big mansion or a lover. The danger usually comes when we allow the fantasy, the dream world, to take over our life... to
become more important than the reality.
“Would it make you nervous if I
told you someone was following us?” Bethany’s normally melodic
voice sounded tense.
I glanced over. Her perfect teeth
nibbled at the corner of her soft, pink, bottom lip, a sure sign of
stress. I quickly reassured her. “It’s probably just a car going
in the same direction we are. To the coast. A coincidence.” I
stopped short of telling her she was seeing things; it was just
possible she wasn’t. I tried looking casual as I searched the road
behind us in the rear view mirror. I didn’t want anything to ruin
this trip.
“Are you sure your wife doesn’t
suspect anything?” Bethany put her hand lightly on my arm.
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Easy
Go by Fleur
Bradley. Ah, the attraction of easy
money! If you could just catch that leprechaun, he'd be
forced to tell you where he's hidden his pot o' gold, and you could live
out the rest of your life in ease and pleasure. But somehow... the
easier it is to come by money, the easier it is to just flush it all
away.
It wasn’t a crime. At least, I
didn’t think so. I mean, the man had so much dough, he wouldn’t
even know what was missing, right? “Easy job, I swear,” I
told my buddy Hank over a pitcher of beer at The Peak, our favorite
dive in Colorado Springs. “The guy’s loaded, and likes to get himself
loaded every
night too. There’s at least a hundred grand, sitting right there in
the basement safe. And guess who knows the code?” I pointed at my
chest. I pay attention when it matters.
Hank looked skeptical. “I remember
Boulder, Benny. You said the same thing, and I ended up with a
Doberman’s teeth in my leg. Remember that?” He shook his bald
head. Hank was getting old.
“That was a fluke.” Maybe I
should’ve looked for a different partner. But I knew I could trust
him. And Hank had ears like nobody else. He could hear a penny drop a
mile away, and not just because he’s a cheapskate.
“I don’t trust you to get the
details right, Bennyboy.”
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Plateau
30 by Sunny
Frazier. What defines a
crime? Is it an offense against society? Or is it an offense
against the individual, by those in authority? Maybe it is the
misuse of authority. Here is an award-winning story from Assistant
Editor Sunny Frazier, that explores those ideas. (This story was a
"Best of
Show" winner in the Saroyan Competition, 2001.)
I loved to watch Cara dance. I'd
stand in the doorway of the studio and watch her and her mirrored
refection swirl over the polished boards. If I close my eyes even now
I see her in constant motion, not strapped to the hospital bed with
drugs flowing into her veins.
I need to record the fate of the
others: Lario, who wielded paintbrushes as his weapon of choice until
they became his destruction; the sound of Mia's violin floating
through the hallways, inspiring us until the music saddened and faded
away; Trumain's poetry which turned dark and suicidal. One by one they
disappeared from the tenth floor, the "Ark" as we called it,
after the religious myth. Appropriate because we were chosen to
preserve the remnants of our culture. And my name happened to be Noah.
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Rainbow's
End by Jan
Christensen. It started with a
dame. Doesn't it always start with a dame?? Sadly, even when
you've been in the P.I. racket for over 400 years, it's hard to resist a
pretty snout. (First appeared in Futures Mysterious Anthologies
Magazine in 2001.)
Spike Mallet is my name. Private
investigation is my game. I hung my shingle outside my iron door about
four hundred years ago. In that time, I'd had some pretty interesting
cases, believe me.
Last month an extremely succulent
broad rang my chimes. When I went to answer the summons, I couldn't
believe my eyes. She was gorgeous. Small, almost dainty for a dragon,
she had emerald green eyes, an adorable snout, beautiful iridescent
green scales, and lovely long claws with pink tips. But her wings! Flat
in all the right places, if you know what I mean.
"Spike Mallet?" she asked in
a husky voice.
"That's right," I said.
"I need your help."
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Top
Detective by Austin
Camacho. Sometimes it's
the little, esoteric details that help to solve a case. Our friend
Austin Camacho, author of the Hannibal Jones series, brings us a flash
piece that illustrates that very point.
Monte ran past me like death itself
was behind him, but as it turned out, he was racing toward it.
I fell back against my car to give him
room. He shouted as he raced by, “Dude was shot in his car.”
Well, news travels fast in my
neighborhood, and murders in the southeast corner of the District aren’t
exactly rare so I had to figure it was probably true. I was in no hurry
to get into the apartment, and it was the first really warm day of
spring, so I followed on foot. I’ve been mentoring Monte for a while
now so I know he’s seen corpses before. Still, this kind of thing can
affect you and I thought I should try to be on hand, just in case.
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No Motive
for Murder Episode 3 by Gary R.
Hoffman. The
tension continues to build in this strange story of a "haunted"
laptop computer and murder.
During the rest of
their conversation, Jason told Detective Ridgeway what he knew of
Quinton Fridley. Jason also found out that the woman who sold Regan the
computer and television was named Margaret Sullivan and apparently had
no connection to any of this except that she had rented a room to
someone who said they were Alex Granby. Ridgeway also told Jason there
were no prints found in the house on anything that had been trashed and
that no hospitals or doctors in the area had reported treating someone
who might have been cut up with a broken bottle. They were running DNA
tests on the blood found in the alley to see if it matched anyone in
their data base.
Regan rode to work
with Jason in his car. She was to the point where she didn’t want to
be alone, even for a short time. Jason had one small job waiting for
him, but nothing immediately after that. He put in a call to Stanford.
After being transferred many more times than he wanted to be, he got to
talk to a Doctor Paul Hartwig. “So were you at Stanford while Alex
Granby was there?”
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forget the Members' Hall of Fame!
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