“Guess who changed their status to ‘In a Relationship’ at two-thirty in the morning?” Lucy asked. Marybeth had other things on her mind, so even though she heard her youngest daughter talking, the words didn’t register. After a pause, Lucy said, “Mo...
“Why Eastern time?” “Our new friend here is used to Eastern,” Barnum said. “Didn’t you notice how he said ‘here’? He said ‘here’ like JFK. He’s from Boston or someplace, but he’s got Virginia plates and a lot of outdoor gear in his rig. Judging by the dirt on that car, I’m guessing he didn’t fly ...
The announcement over the intercom had been received with unabashed cheers and whistles, and was followed by a mad scramble of books and uneaten lunches being thrown into backpacks.Sheridan couldn’t share in the enthusiasm, though. A snow day meant nothing with her sister April gone.Outside, the ...
Big trucks filled the highway to Watson City like normal. They were moving slowly, though, because of the weather. Kyle could see dust devils of snow kicked up by dual rear wheels caught in the lights of oncoming trucks. He made a V with his fingers and raised his hand to his mouth. This morning,...
It felt good to get out of town and away from the cemetery and go to work. He had packed his lunch that morning in the kitchen and filled a Thermos of coffee. Maxine had been waiting for him in the back of the pickup, her heavy tail thumping the toolbox like a metronome as he approached. He patro...
Joe called out. “Are you having any luck?” At the sound of Joe’s voice, the man upstream froze in midcast. He didn’t jump or wheel around but his fly line dropped and pooled unceremoniously around his ankles. As it did, he slowly turned his head, but his expression was sto...
SHE OWED HIM; SHE WAS LOYAL. Her journey from that frozen campground on fire in Wyoming to Chicago had been cruel and difficult, consisting of movement with no destination in mind. Until Stenko. As Stenko and Robert argued back and forth in the front seat of the SUV as they drove north toward Wyo...
WHEN THE sun broke over the mountains, Villatoro was in his compact on a two-lane state highway headed west, trying to get a better sense of where he was, what this place was about. His back was stiff from sleeping in the too-soft bed, and his belly rumbled with hunger. He’d been awake since five...
He was in New York, Chicago, St. Louis, and the Bay Area on business. He kept in touch with Melissa by text messaging her from airports between flights. She kept the messages and showed them to me when I got home from work. I reviewed them over coffee Saturday morning. LEARNING MORE AND MORE THIN...
He’d chewed up two packages of Stride gum and drained his Nalgene bottle, pretending the warm plastic-tasting water was 100-proof alcohol, but it wasn’t. His cravings for nicotine and booze pulled at him from the inside like talons and he thought, One cold beer, one cigarette, that’s all I fuckin...
It is leased from Cingular Wireless to a guy named L. Robert Eckhardt, RN, whose last known address is Fort Bragg in North Carolina.”Nate was right about that, Joe thought. He wrote the name down on a legal pad.Harvey continued, “I’m assuming RN stands for registered nurse. We’ve got calls down t...
The Old Man reclined on the mineral-slick steps of a very hot pool and closed his eyes. He willed the muscles in his neck and back to begin to loosen up and untie what he imagined as a series of complicated, technical knots. He sighed heavily and slid forward another step so the hot water lapped ...
If Parker didn’t immediately throw back the covers and get up, Champ would woof until he did. So he got up. The dog used to bound downstairs in a manic rush and skid across the hardwood floor of the landing to the back door, but now he felt his way down slowly, with his belly touching each step, ...
His sheathed bowie knife was in his bed within easy reach, where it had been each night for the past twenty-eight years. Jim clamped his eyes shut and stroked the leather-wrapped handle with his fingertips. The blade was as sharp and as long as his thigh and he had used it to cut apart hundreds o...
7:26 A.M., Wednesday, November 21 RONALD PERGRAM DROVE his mother’s white 1986 Buick Riviera past the unmanned National Park Service window at the north entrance to Yellowstone and goosed it on the straightaway before beginning the switchback climb to Mammoth Hot Springs. The car, like his mother...
He vowed he would never look back at it, because he intended to never see it again for the rest of his life, and there was nothing good to remember about it anyway. Not even when the corrections officer called out after him, “We’ll keep the light on for you, Timber, my boy...
The crack itself, looking like a jagged bolt of crystal-white lightning, zips across the ice with the flick of a lizard’s tongue. But it is the sound of the crack, the plaintive, anguished moan, that penetrates a man and makes his skin crawl, reminding him that if the earth wanted to swallow him ...
The man had world-weary brown eyes and a thin neck rising like a cornstalk out of the gaping collar of his shirt. His hair was light brown, peppered with silver. A pair of smudged reading glasses hung from a cord around his neck. Joe got the immediate impression the man was or had been in law enf...