The Best Mystery Stories of the Year 2021

by The Mysterious Bookshop Presents the Best Mystery Stories of the Year 2021

  “Interesting, but so what?”

  “So we should check it out,” Joey said eagerly. “One of us sneak up to the window. See if it’s breathing.”

  “Why would we do that?”

  “Because if it’s dead, it’s probable cause for entry. If we can get in there, Mitch is probably lyin’ on the couch drinkin’ a beer and watchin’ the tube.”

  “Probable cause? Baloney. How do you figure that?”

  “Should be good enough for a good lawyer to get something to fly,” Joey said. “We’re on a legitimate stakeout, so we have a legitimate reason for watching the place. We see a dead cat in the window. We know it’s dead because we’ve checked it out. It means the person inside can’t properly tend to it, so they may be in trouble. One of those ‘I’ve fallen into the tub and I can’t get out to feed the cat’ kind of deals. So we’re going in to help out and oh, by the way, there’s Mitch. Or maybe even animal cruelty, abandonment, maybe; dead cat in the window isn’t exactly ideal care, isn’t exactly business as usual. What I’m sayin’ is, a good lawyer can work with something like that.”

  Hank didn’t say what he was thinking, because he thought it might spur Joey on—that there was an extremely slim chance that the right combination of wink-and-a-nod lawyer and judge just might waive the warrant. But he didn’t think it could ever survive an appeal. Just too thin.

  “Never fly,” he said. “Need exigent circumstance for warrantless entry, and the more exigent, the better. Think gunshots. Think screams. Think smoke from the roof. Even if the cat is dead, it’s not an emergency. Anything we get will be tainted and tossed.

  “Tell you what, let’s check our feline friend. I’m gonna put the glasses on ’em for five minutes. Time me.” Hank tightened the focus on the cat. He could see it pretty well with the faint rays from a streetlight.

  “Time,” Joey said.

  Hank had seen no movement. “You might be right,” he said.

  “Okay, so we knock on the door, announce ourselves . . . just want to let them know there’s a dead cat in the window and waltz on into the house.”

  “Jesus, Joey, you don’t just waltz into a house. A dead cat in the window doesn’t make for a valid search. They’d have no reason to let us wander around the house for that, and a judge would know it. Just let it go, will you, relax. This is a stakeout. We’re just looking for Mitch—or at least someone we can claim is Mitch—to be goin’ in or out.”

  “A dead cat in the window isn’t business as usual,” Joey said firmly. “We can use it.”

  “We can use it to get our ass chewed off for illegal entry.” Hank stretched, still groggy from his restless sleep. He could see Joey was worked up. First time he’d seen that. He decided to try to placate him. No one was in charge here. They were temporary partners, and the fact that Hank was senior didn’t matter. “Look, if it’s not dead, it’s a moot point, right, so I’ll go to the window up close and personal and see what’s what. If anyone comes out or approaches the place, give me one quick beep on the horn. Don’t use the radio.”

  “Works for me,” Joey said, satisfied for the moment to be doing anything but just sitting.

  In the brittle moonlight there was a snap to the early morning air as Hank moved along the side of one of the low industrial buildings, then walked briskly in the open right up to the window. The cat’s mouth was open slightly, a bit of its pink tongue protruding. Hank rubbed his finger on the window then tapped lightly, something only a cat would hear. Nothing. He watched the rib cage. The rib cage was not moving. The cat sure looked dead. Damn.

  Hank returned to the Honda.

  “How come you kept lookin’ up when you were goin’ over there?” Joey asked.

  “Did I? Rooftops, I guess. Just a habit. They’re great for snipers and for phoning in IEDs.”

  “That’s not much of a problem in South Bend.”

  “I didn’t get the habit in South Bend,” Hank said.

  “So . . . ?”

  “So it looks dead to me, but it’s a lame-ass reason to roust the place, and if something does happen it’s going to be a mess trying to make it stick. And, okay, maybe it’s boring as hell, but we just have to sit here and do our job.”

  Joey shifted in his seat and looked directly at Hank. Hank had the feeling of looking a strange dog in the eye and having no idea what it might do. Might lick your hand. Might bite it off. It’s not growling or showing its teeth, but you’re very much aware that you really don’t know the animal.

  “It’s enough to go in,” Joey said mildly. “I want to do it. So they throw it out, so what? Maybe we get the guy, maybe we don’t, so what?”

  “Look, we’re partners,” Hank said. “We’re supposed to agree on a course of action.”

  “Fine, you can be my partner sitting here in the car doing nothing and I’ll be your partner going into that house.”

  “You know I can’t do that. I have to back you and we have to call it in.”

  “Then do it. Call it in and back me up.” Joey got out of the Honda.

  Hank was startled. Joey was just going to go ahead and do it. He had to decide: confront him or what. Okay, to keep the peace and follow Butch’s advice, he would allow himself to look silly back at the ranch. Half-assed or not, they would at least look like they were cooperating in trying to do their job. He didn’t know what confronting Joey might lead to, but it wouldn’t be anything good. Hank got out of the car and grabbed Joey by both shoulders, squaring him up in front of him.

  “I can’t call it in because I don’t know what the hell I’d say,” Hank said. “If it’s necessary, we’ll just say we thought the other guy called it in.

  “This isn’t a lark,” he said firmly. “Anything could happen, so we’re gonna do it right. First, let’s see what we can through all the windows and check the layout. Then we’ll figure out the next step. And just for the record, if there’s an exigent circumstance around here, it’s Butch sticking me with your sorry ass.”

  “Sure thing,” Joey said. “Whatever you say.” It was clear that angering Hank did not bother him.

  Moving together, they crossed the street, Hank pissed off at how stupidity has a habit of getting its way. As they approached the house, they went left and circled it. The blinds were drawn on the windows. The only variation was the cat at the front window. On the driveway side, a window glowed faintly from a single light. Hank remembered that this was the kitchen. He decided to go in the front, away from the light.

  “Okay,” he said. “We’ll announce ourselves and wait to be let in. If Mitch is there, maybe we’ll be lucky and catch him in the open.”

  “Guns?” Joey asked.

  “Not for a dead cat, but be damn ready in case it’s Mitch.”

  Hank beat loudly on the door, and suddenly Joey surprised Hank by putting his shoulder to it. The worn lock gave up easily. “You jerk,” Hank breathed. “Now it’s forced entry for maybe a dead cat.”

  The door opened directly into a small living room faintly lit by a plug-in night light. The couch and overstuffed chairs had seen better days. At one end of the room, a backlit archway led to the kitchen. On the other side, a dark shadow of a hallway led to the back of the house. But what captured their attention was someone on the floor apparently asleep in front of the television a few feet away. It was the spot where loverboy Roy had been watching the ballgame. The TV was off.

  “Police,” Hank said loudly. “Everything okay here?” No response. No movement.

  As their eyes adjusted to the half-light, they could see dark ovals on the person’s back. Hank drew his Glock and Joey followed suit. “Cover the room,” Hank told Joey. He approached the body and knelt. It was loverboy Roy, his white T-shirt decorated with four dark smudges of bullet holes. Hank didn’t bother to check for a pulse. He pointed to himself and then the kitchen doorway on the left: He would check that out. He motioned for Joey to check down the hallway.

  With his gun up and ready, Hank moved to the open archway.
<
br />   Bathed in the stark light of a single bulb, Sally Sanchez was sitting at the kitchen table wearing the same light-blue, threadbare cotton robe, a cup of coffee before her and a golden-brown pint of Seagram’s VO. A little black Browning .25 auto about the size of a deck of cards was a few inches from her right hand. She turned her head to look at Hank.

  “Sally, please don’t move,” Hank said softly. “Want to tell me what happened?” His gun was at table level, pointing at her body.

  “I really loved him, you know.”

  “So you said. I remember.”

  Joey appeared in the doorway on the other side of the kitchen. He shook his head, indicating that no one was in the back of the house. He aimed his Glock directly at Sally, who didn’t seem to notice. Her focus was entirely on Hank.

  “I got so angry,” Sally choked. “I mean, I really thought he was my soulmate. I didn’t want to hurt him. But he was so mean.”

  “I’m sure people will understand, Sally.”

  “Don’t you tell them he was beating me. He never did that. Roy loved me.”

  “I won’t tell anybody anything,” Hank said. “Sally, you’re going to have to come with us.”

  She didn’t move. Hank hesitated. He didn’t believe there was any danger. His sense of it was that the violence was over, drained away. He looked into her eyes and saw pain in that aging face—and the pain of other faces—and he saw so much that pointing a gun at her was something he just couldn’t do.

  “Look, Sally,” Hank said gently, slowly and deliberately holstering his Glock. Joey’s eyes widened, and in the very moment of that de-escalating gesture Sally smiled ever so slightly and that little smile curled into a snarl of sheer menace. A frightening, twisted face that jolted Hank, as he knew instantly that this was how she looked when she shot loverboy Roy four times. She lunged for her Browning.

  Joey’s aim was fixed on Sally’s heart when she lunged for her gun, but he did not fire. Instead, he took a quick half-step and launched himself across the kitchen. He hurtled through the air for several feet and crashed into the wooden table, collapsing everything, dumping Sally to the floor, and anointing the room with a mixture of Seagram’s and coffee. The little black automatic skittered across the yellowed linoleum to the other side of the room.

  Joey’s face was buried in Sally’s warm, soft chest, her robe reeking of cheap perfume and sour sweat, old booze and old smoke. She was motionless. “That damn Roy,” she slurred into his neck. Her eyes closed.

  Joey got to his feet. His pant leg was torn and he had a small cut on his calf from the sawtooth edge of a broken table leg. He knelt and shifted Sally to a more natural position there on the floor. He eased her limp arms around her back and cuffed her. He turned to face Hank, who was standing stock still, glued to the same spot. His Glock was still holstered.

  “She’s out, Hank,” Joey said. “Probably half drunk and half cold-cocked. We got to call this in, like, right now.”

  “You call it in,” Hank said.

  “What do you want me to say?”

  “Use your own judgment,” Hank said. “Whatever you say will be okay with me. I need a moment. I’m gonna go get the car.”

  Hank walked through the cool night air lost in thought. He was shaken. He couldn’t believe what he’d done. He felt like he should be slapped around and kicked up and down the street. “So stupid,” he muttered in disgust. He realized that wherever he had been mentally, it was sufficiently dysfunctional that he wouldn’t have reacted fast enough to prevent Sally from getting that gun. But he was a learner. He believed he knew what prompted the dangerous move. A type of thinking had caused him to do something that was potentially deadly. He wouldn’t go there again. He would see it coming.

  He pulled the Honda well off to the side of the broad gravel driveway, leaving plenty of space for the two prowlers and the ambulance that were quickly on the scene. He watched as officers and paramedics entered the ranch. They brought Sally out on a stretcher and loaded her in. Joey came out with them, said something to them, then walked over to the Honda and stood by the open window. The skinny black cat was in his arms. It was alert and seemed to like him. “Old,” Joey said. “Shallow breather. . . . Deaf.”

  “What did you report?” Hank asked.

  “I told them we heard shots,” Joey said. “That’s why we went in. Couldn’t tell how many because they were muffled. We heard shots and went in fast. I didn’t mention the cat. Didn’t want to screw around with that on a murder case. I said Sally was standing in the kitchen with the gun at her side and I tackled her as soon as we came in. Didn’t tell them about you holstering your gun. Didn’t want to screw around with that either, and that’s not something you want in your record. So that’s it . . . everything happened in a couple minutes . . . really fast. . . . If Sally contradicts anything, well, she was drunk, wasn’t she? . . . How’s that sound?”

  Hank nodded approval. “That’s damn good. It will save us a lot of explaining and not hurt a thing. Typical stakeout, we hear shots, beat feet to the house, bust the door, and you tackle her as soon as we come in. . . . That was one hell of a body block, by the way. No hesitation. Got to be one of the fastest moves I ever saw. . . . But you should have dropped her, you know. A bullet is a sure thing. A tackle, not so much. . . . You risked both our lives.”

  Joey laughed softly. “You’re talking to me about risk? The guy who holstered his gun in front of an armed murder suspect? She was in my sights. I could have popped her no problem. But I was following your lead. You were trying to finesse her, okay, I get that. You saw something in her that wasn’t there or maybe missed something that was. People make mistakes like that every minute of every day. With your record, you get a mulligan. But I’ll tell you what, I wouldn’t do that again even if the person with the gun is the Virgin Mary.”

  “Never happened before and won’t be back,” Hank said. But he wasn’t all that sure. Sometimes things that follow catch up.

  “Here’s how I see it,” Joey said. “There was a shooting here tonight and someone got killed. We handled the situation without shooting and without killing. I figure that’s the best we can do. We get paid to take chances and the chances we took tonight were the best kind. We tried to save a life. Sally is still breathing, and who knows, maybe she’ll invent a cure for cancer in the slammer.”

  “More likely she’ll knife a guard,” Hank said.

  Joey laughed. “Yeah, you’re probably right. Anyway, our first order of business is finding a good home for this old guy. I’d say his support system was pretty much wiped out tonight.”

  Hank looked up at Joey. Standing there with the cat asleep in his arms, he was perfectly calm, unfazed by the night’s events. Hank realized that if he had not followed Joey’s lead, they would still be across the street in the Honda deciding where to go to get morning coffee. Just another uneventful stakeout. And then when someone else had to handle the situation with Sally, maybe something terrible goes down and she kills someone else or gets herself killed or both. If they had killed Sally, the mood at this moment would be very different. Trying to get to sleep this night would be very different. Hank believed every cop in the department would have shot Sally Sanchez when she went for that gun. Every cop but one. It slowly came to him, almost as an epiphany, that he was looking at his next partner. It would take some work, but it would work.

  *“Paper will put up with anything printed on it.” So said Joseph Stalin. I don’t generally turn to Stalin for inspiration, but I find this particular truism useful. It helps me remember that as a writer you can write anything you want. Anything. Period. I’d been working on “Things That Follow” for a while and had received early feedback from two editors. The feedback was the same and bad: “Too dark. Characters are off-putting.”

  I’m usually wedded to my characters and my plot. And if you listen to all critics, you won’t get out of bed in the morning. But these two I knew I shouldn’t disregard. I had no idea how to “tweak” the story. It
was solid. So, what the hell, in keeping with the welcoming nature of the blank page, I tried something dramatic. I inverted the characters. And inverted the plot. Bad cop became good cop. A cop I had envisioned as a sneering asshole became St. Francis of Assisi walking happily down a sunlit forest path with a fawn under one arm and a lamb under the other. A killed cat became a rescued cat. A shot old lady became a saved old lady. A wartime flashback of grotesque butchery was softened to something almost wistful.

  This inversion turned out to be engaging and the more I worked on it, the better I liked it. There was still tension, still conflict, still murder, still realism, but the mood music was far different and the ending was altogether different.

  It’s easy when you’re working in this genre to be oblivious to the fact that you’re sinking, constantly trying to one-up yourself in dark doings. Like car chases in the movies. Got to have at least one more spectacular crash than the last flick you made. Funny thing, though, identification is paramount in fiction. And I found it far easier to identify with my inverted characters. Thus, I found it easier to empathize with them. I just plain liked them more than my characters who were sinking ever deeper into the darkness. Is there a place for these half-craven characters and stories? Of course. And it’s a revered place. Do you always have to write about them? No. That should be a no-brainer but, apparently, it wasn’t to me. In the end, then, this challenging inversion turned out to be a useful course correction in my writing and introduced me to characters I liked hanging out with and will be visiting again.

  Michael Bracken is the author of several books, including the private eye novel All White Girls, and more than twelve hundred short stories in several genres. His short crime fiction has appeared in Alfred Hitchcock Mystery Magazine, Black Cat Mystery Magazine, Black Mask, Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine, Espionage Magazine, Mike Shayne Mystery Magazine, The Best American Mystery Stories 2018, and in many other anthologies and periodicals. A recipient of the Edward D. Hoch Memorial Golden Derringer Award for lifetime achievement in short mystery fiction, Bracken has won two Derringer Awards and been shortlisted for two others. Additionally, Bracken recently became editor of Black Cat Mystery Magazine and has edited several anthologies, including the Anthony Award–nominated The Eyes of Texas and the Mickey Finn series. He and his wife, Temple, reside in Central Texas.