The miners emerged up from the shaft at Ludlow just as the red sun faded like a slash of blood behind the Sangre de Cristo Mountains. Their leather caps sagged over their coal black faces as they walked, carrying their tin lunch buckets past the breaker, down the guttered dirt road. Byrnes was not yet […]
“What do we got?” Detective Reid Pierce asked the rookie guarding the corral of yellow crime scene tape. A bloodless moon hung low in the gluey August night. “The boyfriend stopped over after the bars closed. He found her.” “Okay,” Pierce said. He dug in his pocket for a notepad and pen. His spare keys […]
Staring at the body, Kelly thought: Look at all that red. He rested on the floor of the cold room, propped against a stack of champagne, legs splayed, blood and port pooled across the checkered linoleum. His throat had been cut and his open eyes reflected the stacks of wine and spirits before him. In […]
Claudia Richards sat at the table in her kitchen, eyes closed, a burning cigarette hanging from her lips, when a knock at the backdoor made her jump. “Oh, shit,” she said, grabbing the .357 from the table. She hopped up and stepped over to the door, the pistol raised. “Who the hell is it?” she […]
It was a regular weekday afternoon in Mama Rita’s Saloon. A handful of customers with no work to do or a few dollars to spend, some guy hammering out a nameless tune on the old piano, and a poker game on the centre table. A couple of the girls were busy upstairs, otherwise it was […]
Hundies, fifties, twenties. Plenty. All tidied in a mother-of-pearl inlay cash clip. A chunk chiseled off the sun. Not plated; gold on through, eighteen carat, maybe twenty-four, more?, plucked off Saturday morning’s flaking decayed curbstone, battered-to-dust slate-gray snow powdering the personalized “J.F.D.”, and the etched-in artwork; like half-a-claddagh, or entwined fingers, or a secret society […]
The slab of precision-machined blue steel felt heavy in Tara’s tiny red purse, so heavy it had its own gravity, pulling her hand in every few moments for a reassuring squeeze. She shifted the purse strap from shoulder to shoulder to relieve the weight, but she didn’t dare set it down, not even for a […]
The jangle of heavy spurs along with the thud of boots slapping against rough wooden planks clearly echoed through the night’s frigid cold. The boots . . . the janglin’ spurs . . . of a man walking slowly . . . deliberately . . . across the wooden boardwalk of the town’s only hardware […]
I’m supposed to meet Nick at eleven, but I’m an hour late because Maggie didn’t show up again and I finished a whole pot of coffee while I waited for her, even though I’m pretty fucking sure she’s gone for good this time. When I get there, it’s raining and I’m soaked through, but Nick’s […]
McGee knew instinctively as a migrating goose headed south for the winter that he didn’t have long. Johnny would send Frankie, he knew him best. They’d come up together twenty years ago; punk kids who knew how to use their fists and worked for Johnny Prezatori in the nose candy racket; they thought they could […]
Pure She throttles the motorcycle, g-forces resist her. Downhill, the street is vacant, save for houses on each side. She could hit top speed but she needs gas later. For after. She’s in the before now. “Before” means that anxious worm writhes inside. “Before” means bike and helmet are blacked out. “Before” means she could […]
Earlier that day around noon his Pa and Seth had been working on a harness. His mother had been outside too, scrubbing some clothes in the wash tub outside. Tyler had been assigned to sweep the floor of the cabin. “Ma, we got some visitors comin’ to call on us” Seth said loud enough for […]
