Tobias Mandelbaum sat in his living room with the air-conditioner on full blast, cooling his chest and ankles. He had aged like the desert, baked in the sun. His face was leathery. He was thicker around the middle than he’d been in his youth. He was slower. His joints hurt him a little. But he wa...
He thought about his adulterous wife and how much he wanted to kill her. He held up his hand to catch a few flakes, each one unique, and they melted on his palm. He shivered and checked his watch. Her class was almost over. Any minute now. He glanced up and down the sidewalk and smoothed his fing...
A Victorian ruin on the edge of a nondescript town. The front door is scratched and weathered beyond time, and the façade has a tired, ghostly look that makes you pause in mid-step. Natural forces have squeezed the house until it has taken on the distorted shape of a crushed cardboard box. As soo...
He was lean and tan with greasy brown hair and wire-rim glasses. He surprised her one warm spring Saturday afternoon by walking into the foyer wearing nothing but a pair of baggy shorts and a yellow fishnet T-shirt. His bare feet landed pat-pat-pat against the floor. “Oops,” he said, nearly bumpi...
She lifted her wedding dress and twirled around, and the world spun for a dizzying moment. She and Sophie were hanging out behind the historic mansion, sharing a bottle of champagne with Tobias Mandelbaum, while the rest of the wedding party was indoors doing the chicken dance. She could hear lau...
There was nothing out here but dying family farms and woods and fallow cornfields. But this was where I decided to land. 32 Welcome Street. I had killed a widow in Ohio. I had killed a mechanic in Mississippi. I had killed a minister and his wife in North Carolina. I hadn’t killed anyone in New E...