The Best of the Best American Mystery Stories

by Otto Penzler

  “I’m sorry,” he said, “but what exactly is it you’re trying to create?”

  “A character’s private moment,” Jessica said.

  “Is this the place we’re going to use?” Susan asked.

  “I think so, yes. Don’t you think so? Our own apartment. A real place. It feels very real to me. Doesn’t it feel real to you, Sue?”

  “Oh, yes. Yes, it does. It feels very real. But I don’t feel private yet. Do you feel private?”

  “No, not yet.”

  “Excuse me, ladies . . .” Will said.

  “Ladies, ooo hoo,” Susan said, and rolled her eyes.

  “. . . but we can get a lot more private here, if that’s what you ladies are looking for here.”

  “We’re talking about a private moment,” Jessica explained. “The way we behave when no one’s watching.”

  “No one’s watching us right now,” Will said encouragingly. “We can do whatever we wish to do here, and no one will ever . . .”

  “I don’t think you understand,” Susan said. “A character’s private feelings and emotions are what we’re trying to create here tonight.”

  “So let’s start creating all these feelings and emotions,” Will suggested.

  “These feelings have to be real,” Jessica said.

  “They have to be absolutely real,” Susan said.

  “So that we can apply them to the scene we’re doing.”

  “Ah-ha!” Will said.

  “I think he’s got it,” Jessica said.

  “By George, he’s got it.”

  “You’re rehearsing a scene together.”

  “Bravo!”

  “What scene?” Will asked.

  “A scene in Macbeth,” Susan said.

  “Where she tells him to screw his courage to the sticking point,” Jessica said.

  “Lady Macbeth.”

  “Tells Macbeth. When he’s beginning to waver about killing Duncan.”

  “Screw your courage to the sticking point,” Jessica said again, with conviction this time. “And we shall not fail.”

  She looked at her sister.

  “That was very good,” Susan said.

  Will figured maybe they were back on track again.

  “Screw your courage, huh?” he said, and smiled knowingly, and took another sip of champagne.

  “She’s telling him not to be such a wuss,” Susan said.

  “The thing is they’re plotting to kill the king, you see,” Jessica said.

  “This is a private moment for both of them.”

  “Where they’re both examining what they’re about to do.”

  “They’re planning a murder, you see.”

  “What does that feel like?” Susan asked.

  “What is that like inside your head?” Jessica said.

  “That private moment inside your head.”

  “When you’re actually contemplating someone’s death.”

  The room went silent for an instant.

  The sisters looked at each other.

  “Would anyone like some more champagne?” Susan asked.

  “I’d love some,” Jessica said.

  “I’ll get it,” Will said, and started to rise.

  “No, no, let me,” Susan said, and took his glass and carried all three empty glasses into the kitchen. Jessica crossed her legs. Behind him, in the kitchen, Will could hear Susan refilling their glasses. He watched Jessica’s jiggling foot, her pump half-on, half-off, held only by her toes.

  “So that stuff in the bar was all part of the exercise, right?” Will said. “Your suggesting we kill somebody? And then choosing your sister as the victim?”

  “Well, sort of,” Jessica said.

  Her pump fell off. She bent over to retrieve it, spreading her legs, the black dress high on her thighs. She crossed one leg over the other, put the pump back on, smiled at Will. Susan was back with the full glasses.

  “Still some more out there,” she said, and passed the glasses around. Jessica held hers up in a toast.

  “From this time such,” she said, “I account thy love.”

  “Cheers,” Susan said, and drank.

  “Meaning?” Will said, but he drank, too.

  “That’s in the scene,” Jessica said. “Actually, it’s at the start of the scene. Where he’s beginning to waver. By the end of the scene, she’s convinced him the king must die.”

  “False face must hide what the false heart doth show,” Susan said, and nodded.

  “That’s Macbeth’s exit line. At the end of the scene.”

  “Is that why you were dressed as a file clerk? False face must hide . . . whatever it was you just said?”

  “What the false heart doth show,” Susan repeated. “But no, that’s not why I was in costume.”

  “Then why?”

  “It was my way of trying to create a character.”

  “Maybe he hasn’t got it, after all,” Jessica said.

  “A character who could kill,” Susan said.

  “You had to become a frump?”

  “Well, I had to become someone else, yes. Someone not like myself at all. But it turned out that wasn’t enough. I had to find the right place, too.”

  “The place is here,” Jessica said.

  “And now,” Will said. “So, ladies, if no one minds . . .”

  “Ooo hoo, ladies again,” Susan said, and again rolled her eyes.

  “. . . can we get off all this acting stuff for a moment. . . ?”

  “How about your private moment?” Susan said.

  “I don’t have any private moments.”

  “Don’t you ever fart alone in the dark?” Jessica asked.

  “Don’t you ever jack off alone in the dark?” Susan asked.

  Will’s mouth fell open.

  “Those are private moments,” Jessica said.

  For some reason, he could not close his mouth again.

  “I think it’s beginning to work,” Susan said.

  “Take the glass from his hand before he drops it,” Jessica said.

  Will watched them with his eyes and his mouth wide open.

  “I’ll bet he thinks it’s curare,” Jessica said.

  “Where on earth would we get curare?”

  “The jungles of Brazil?”

  “Venezuela?”

  Both girls laughed.

  Will didn’t know if it was curare or not. All he knew was he couldn’t speak and he couldn’t move.

  “Well, he knows we didn’t go all the way down to the Amazon for any poison,” Jessica said.

  “That’s right, he knows you’re a nurse,” Susan said.

  “Beth Israel, you bet,” Jessica said.

  “Access to lots of drugs there.”

  “Even synthetic curare drugs.”

  “Plenty of those around.”

  “List them for him, Jess.”

  “Don’t want to bore him, Sue.”

  “You have to inject curare, Will, did you know that?”

  “The natives dip their darts in it.”

  “Shoot the darts from blowpipes.”

  “The victims are paralyzed.”

  “Helpless.”

  “Death comes from asphyxia.”

  “That means you can’t breathe.”

  “Because the respiratory nerve muscles get paralyzed.”

  “Are you having trouble breathing yet, Will?”

  He did not think he was having trouble breathing. But what were they saying? Were they saying they’d poisoned him?

  “The synthetics come in tablet form,” Susan told him.

  “Easy to pulverize.”

  “Easy to dissolve.”

  “Lots of legitimate uses for synthetic curare drugs,” Jessica said. “Provided you’re careful with the dosage.”

  “We weren’t particularly careful with the dosage, Will.”

  “Did your champagne taste a little bitter?”

  He wanted to shake his head no. His champagne had tasted just fine.
Or had he been too drunk to know just how it had tasted? But he couldn’t shake his head, and he couldn’t talk.

  “Let’s watch him,” Susan said. “Study his reactions.”

  “Why?” Jessica asked.

  “Well, it could be helpful.”

  “Not for the scene we’re doing.”

  “Killing someone.”

  “Killing someone, yes. Duh, Susan.”

  Killing me, Will thought.

  They are actually killing me here.

  But, no . . .

  Girls, he thought, you’re making a mistake here. This is not the way to go about this. Let’s go back to the original plan, girls. The original plan was to pop a bottle of bubbly and hop into the sack together. The original plan was to share this lovely night three days before . . . actually only two days now, it was already well past midnight . . . two days before Christmas, share this sweet uncomplicated night together, a sister act with a willing third partner is all this was supposed to be here. So how’d it get so serious all of a sudden? There was no reason for you girls to get all serious about acting lessons and private moments, really, this was just supposed to be fun and games here tonight. So why’d you have to go drop poison in my champagne? I mean, Jesus, girls, why’d you have to go do that when we were getting along so fine here?

  “Are you feeling anything?” Susan asked.

  “No,” Jessica said. “Are you?”

  “I thought I’d feel . . .”

  “Me, too.”

  “I don’t know . . . sinister or something.”

  “Me, too.”

  “I mean, killing somebody! I thought it would be something special. Instead . . .”

  “I know what you mean. It’s just like watching somebody, I don’t know, getting a haircut or something.”

  “Maybe we should have tried something else.”

  “Not poison, you mean?”

  “Something more dramatic.”

  “Something scarier, I know what you mean.”

  “Get some kind of reaction out of him.”

  “Instead of him just sitting there.”

  “Sitting there like a dope and dying.”

  The girls leaned over Will and peered into his face. Their faces looked distorted, so close to his face and all. Their blue eyes looked as if they were popping out of their heads.

  “Do something,” Jessica told him.

  “Do something, asshole,” Susan said.

  They kept watching him.

  “It’s not too late to stab him, I suppose,” Jessica said.

  “You think?” Susan said.

  Please don’t stab me, Will thought. I’m afraid of knives. Please don’t stab me.

  “Let’s see what’s in the kitchen,” Jessica said.

  He was suddenly alone.

  The girls were suddenly gone.

  Behind him . . .

  He could not turn his head to see them.

  . . . behind him he could hear them rummaging through what he guessed was one of the kitchen drawers, could hear the rattle of utensils . . .

  Please don’t stab me, he thought.

  “How about this one?” Jessica asked.

  “Looks awfully big for the job,” Susan said.

  “Slit his fuckin’ throat good,” Jessica said, and laughed.

  “See if he sits there like a dope then,” Susan said.

  “Get some kind of reaction out of him.”

  “Help us to feel something.”

  “Now you’ve got it, Sue. That’s the whole point.”

  Will’s chest was beginning to feel tight. He was beginning to have difficulty breathing.

  In the kitchen, the girls laughed again.

  Why were they laughing?

  Had they just said something he couldn’t hear? Were they going to do something else? with that knife, other than slit his throat? He wished he could take a deep breath. He knew he would feel so much better if he could just take a deep breath. But he . . . he . . . he didn’t seem to be . . . to be able to . . .

  “Hey!” Jessica said. “You! Don’t poop out on us!”

  Susan looked at her.

  “I think he’s gone,” she said.

  “Shit!” Jessica said.

  “What are you doing?”

  “Taking his pulse.”

  Susan waited.

  “Nothing,” Jessica said, and dropped his wrist.

  The sisters kept looking at Will where he sat slumped in the easy chair, his mouth still hanging open, his eyes wide.

  “He sure as hell looks dead,” Jessica said.

  “We’d better get him out of here.”

  “Be a good exercise,” Jessica said. “Getting rid of the body.”

  “I’ll say. I’ll bet he weighs at least a hun’ ninety.”

  “I didn’t say good exercise, Sue. I said a good exercise. A good acting exercise.”

  “Oh. Right. What it feels like to get rid of a dead body. Right.”

  “So let’s do it,” Jessica said.

  They started lifting him out of the chair. He was, in fact, very heavy. They half-carried him, half-dragged him to the front door.

  “Tell me something,” Susan said. “Do you . . . you know . . . feel anything yet?”

  “Nothing,” Jessica said.

  Contributors’ Notes

  Russell Banks, a member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters, has written fourteen novels and five short story collections. Two of his novels were nominated for the Pulitzer Prize, Continental Drift and Cloudsplitter. Two others have inspired motion pictures: The Sweet Hereafter, starring Ian Holm and directed by Atom Egoyan, who also wrote the screenplay, and Affliction, starring Nick Nolte, Sissy Spacek, and James Coburn and written and directed by Paul Schrader.

  John Biguenet has written short stories that appeared in such publications as Esquire, Granta, Playboy, Story, Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine, and Zoetrope and have been selected for an O. Henry Award, a Pushcart Prize, and for The Best American Short Stories for 1997, 1998, 1999, and 2002. He lives in New Orleans and teaches at Loyola University. His debut collection of stories, The Torturer’s Apprentice, was published in 2001. Oyster, his first novel, was published the following year.

  Christopher Coake received an M.A. at Miami University in Ohio and an M.F.A. at Ohio State. His short stories have appeared in such publications as Epoch and the Gettysburg Review. His first book was a collection of stories, We’re in Trouble, after which he was named one of Granta’s Best of Young American Novelists in 2007; he published You Came Back, his first novel, in 2012. He now teaches creative writing at the University of Nevada–Reno.

  James Crumley was born and raised in Texas, received an M.F.A. at the University of Iowa, and taught at several universities. He was the author of a novel about the Vietnam War, One to Count Cadence, and seven highly acclaimed crime novels, including The Wrong Case; Dancing Bear; The Mexican Tree Duck; and The Last Good Kiss, often described as the best and most influential private eye novel of the second half of the twentieth century. He died in 2008.

  Jeffery Deaver is a former journalist, folksinger, and attorney. He was born in Chicago and received a journalism degree from the University of Missouri. As the author of more than thirty suspense novels, he has become an international bestseller, published in twenty-five languages in 150 countries, and received countless awards, including seven Edgar nominations. His most successful series features Lincoln Rhyme, a quadriplegic former policeman who first appeared in The Bone Collector, filmed by Universal and starring Denzel Washington and Angelina Jolie.

  Brendan DuBois is a former newspaperman who was born and raised in New Hampshire, where he still lives. He has been writing mystery and science fiction for a quarter of a century, producing sixteen novels and about two hundred short stories, two of which won Shamus Awards and three of which were nominated for Edgar Allan Poe Awards. His alternate history novel Resurrection Day won the Sideways Award for Alternate History and was optioned for motion p
ictures. He was a one-day champion on Jeopardy.

  Louise Erdrich is a member of the Turtle Mountain Band of Ojibwe, whose language she has been studying since the late 1990s. She is the author of fourteen novels and numerous other works, including volumes of poetry, short fiction, children’s literature, and nonfiction. Her work has received numerous awards, including the 1984 National Book Critics Circle Award for Love Medicine and the National Book Award in 2012 for The Round House; The Plague of Doves was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in 2009.

  Tom Franklin grew up in Alabama and now teaches at the University of Mississippi; he was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship in 2001. His first book was the short story collection Poachers: Stories, which was followed by the novels Hell at the Breech, Smonk, and Crooked Letter, Crooked Letter, which won the Gold Dagger Award as best novel of the year from the British Crime Writers’ Association. His most recent novel is The Tilted World, which he cowrote with his wife, the poet Beth Ann Fennelly.

  William Gay was the author of only three novels and two short story collections, but they received so much critical acclaim that he was soon compared to Flannery O’Connor, William Faulkner, and Cormac McCarthy, who was an early admirer. In addition to the novels The Long Home, Provinces of Night, and Twilight, Gay wrote stories for such publications as Harper’s and the Atlantic Monthly and had work selected for O. Henry Prize Stories. He died in February 2012.

  Andrew Klavan has been nominated for four Edgar Allan Poe Awards and won twice, for Mrs. White (under the pseudonym Margaret Tracy) and The Rain (as Keith Peterson). He also was nominated under his own name in the Best Novel category for Don’t Say a Word, which was filmed with Michael Douglas starring. His novel True Crime was filmed with Clint Eastwood as the star and director. He wrote the screenplay for Simon Brett’s novel A Shock to the System.

  Dennis Lehane was born and raised in the Boston area and has set most of his novels there, notably the series of six private eye novels featuring Angela Gennaro and Patrick Kenzie, beginning with A Drink Before the War. The third book in the series, Gone, Baby, Gone, was filmed (Ben Affleck directed), as were others of his novels, notably the award-winning Mystic River, directed by Clint Eastwood, and Shutter Island, directed by Martin Scorsese. He also won several awards as one of the writers of the successful television series The Wire.