The blank sheet of paper didn’t stay blank for long. Archer used a charcoal pencil begin to begin his sketch. He already had a vague shape in mind, but scratching the visual down on paper always helped him see the shapes and angles he needed to clarify before he could start any kind of actual...
The main facade is new and bright, with fresh white paint and light blue trim. Just up the street is the welfare office. Every Thursday you can see the welfare recipients lined up, looking across the street at the place a good majority of them will wind up after blowing their check on malt liquor...
The homicide chief checks the “board” and sees what team is up. Two detectives, Karl Markey and Florence Lavin, are assigned the case via a cell phone call from Giancarlo that alerts them to the location of an unidentified body. The body was discovered in the early morning hours of Tuesday by an ...
He barreled around the corner and saw a man dragging something behind a horse. Within a sickening instant, he knew it was Bird. The man was too far away to get there in time, so he drew his Winchester from its scabbard, slid from his horse, and took careful aim at the man dragging Bird behind his...
The oversized wooden door is kicked open. The man walks inside and looks around to make sure nothing has changed since he last visited. It hasn’t. The building is an abandoned gymnasium with none of the athletic equipment remaining. No basketball ...
But she had come back to an estate in Grosse Pointe Farms. I knew this because she had settled on Kenwood Road, home of the famous Nun’s Walk of Grosse Pointe. Two evenly spaced rows of towering, hundred-year-old Silver Maple trees lined the street. The story went that the nuns from the Sacred...
Tower, always an early riser, was up and had walked the town, going over what he knew so far about the murder of Bertram Egans. Now, he leaned on the top rail of a cattle fence, one of thousands at the Big River cattle yards, watching some of the longhorns being herded into the nearest enclosure....
I said.“Oh don’t give me that shit,” Anna said. I’d gone through the expected ordeal; a statement at the police department in Detroit, several informational interrogations, paperwork up the yin yang, a stop at the emergency room for two stitches on my arm and now, several hours later, I’d finally...
Slick Twenty-Two Dylan walks into his office, sets down his messenger bag and fires up his computer. He plops into a chair and flips through a magazine while sipping coffee. The computer screen is visible as it starts to display icons as it powers up. Dylan drains the re...
Two guys, one old and tan, the other young and tan, sat with me. We were having our own little “conference,” law-enforcement style. We’d gone over my story several times. Why I was in Florida, who I was, and how I’d found the girl. “Pretty big coincidence, don’t you think?” the young one said. H...
There was a half-pint of bourbon he kept for emergency purposes in the van, and he went there, deluding himself into thinking that he should do a once-over on the equipment, just in case anything broke from the Nation’s Most Wanted. He clambered into the van through the re...
He said hello and she breezed past him, barely registering his presence with a slight nod. She went to her husband, who had lifted his feet from the ottoman and placed them on the floor, like a punch drunk prizefighter playing rope-a-dope.“Vin,” she said. “It’s time for you to go upstairs. There’...
She didn’t say anything at first, just hugged me hard. I desperately did not want to cry, but I couldn’t stop myself. I felt ashamed at displaying so much emotion, but it felt so good to be crushed to her breast, to be patted on the back and have my hair stroked by Laurett...