Paula sipped coffee, waiting for Detective Vincelli to arrive. When she called him last night, he said he would pick up the manuscript around seven o’clock, on his way to the station. She flipped the corners of the sixteen pages, now wrinkled from so many readings that she could recite key passages by heart. The manuscript’s date stared up from the title page. October, 1979. Felix would have been in his late twenties. Evidently, he had set out to write a book, but rushed the story to the end. The result was a novel synopsis in semi-legible handwriting with numerous misspellings and crossed out words. The first pages chronicled an idyllic boyhood spent shooting gophers in wheat fields that led to Felix’s love affair with guns. I blame the Y-chromosome for inspiring my passion for shiny cylinders that go “pow” and explode with the force of death. A creak down the hall made Paula turn. She hoped it wasn’t Isabelle waking up. After her first skim of the story, Paula had read it aloud to Isabelle to make sure she wasn’t exaggerating its significance.
