Shotgun Honey Presents: Locked and Loaded (Both Barrels Book 3)

by Owen Laukkanen

  Shotgun Honey Presents: Locked and Loaded

  Both Barrels Volume 3

  Copyright © 2015 One Eye Press LLC

  All stories are copyright © 2015 to the respective author.

  All rights reserved. This book or any portion thereof may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever without the express written permission of the publisher except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  ISBN-13: 978-0692434307

  ISBN-10: 0692434305

  www.OneEyePress.com

  www.ShotgunHoney.net

  Table of Content

  Foreword by Ron Earl Phillips

  A Kid Like Billy by Patricia Abbott

  Border Crossing by Michael McGlade

  Looking For the Death Trick by Bracken MacLeod

  Maybelle’s Last Stand by Travis Richardson

  Predators by Marie S. Crosswell

  Twenty to Life by Frank Byrns

  So Much Love by Keith Rawson

  Running Late by Tess Makovesky

  Last Supper by Katanie Duarte

  Danny by Michael Bracken

  The Plot by Jedidiah Ayres

  What Alva Wants by Timothy Friend

  Time Enough To Kill by Kent Gowran

  Copas by Hector Acosta

  Yellow Car Punch by Nigel Bird

  Love at First Fight by Angel Luis Colón

  Traps by Owen Laukkanen

  Down the Rickety Stairs by Alan Orloff

  Blackmailer’s Pep Talk by Chris Rhatigan

  With A Little Bit of Luck by Bill Baber

  Cute as a Speckled Pup Under a Red Wagon by Tony Conaway

  Chipping off the Old Block by Nick Kolakowski

  Young Turks and Old Wives by Shane Simmons

  The Hangover Cure by Seth Lynch

  Highway Six by John L. Thompson

  Biographies

  More from One Eye Press

  for A.J. “Bill” Hayes

  Foreword

  Ron Earl Phillips

  A couple weeks ago the Shotgun Honey flashzine turned four. I am not sure whether that is called a birthday or an anniversary? In social media circles, the site was wished a happy birthday, though it seems the latter would be the proper term. Either way, four years is a sizable amount of time, not to mention an accomplishment that would not be had without the dedicated writers, readers and editors.

  The community.

  It is a community that goes beyond Shotgun Honey, and goes well beyond my first inclinations to accept its warm embrace in 2010 when I wrote my first bit of flash fiction for a challenge. It featured a nameless hero who learns the hard way that “No Good Deed” goes unpunished. And at a mere 550 words would have fit right into the Shotgun Honey criteria. If you do a search on my website you’ll find that little gem. It didn’t win any awards, but it did garner a few kind words.

  That was my hook into the crime writing community—the immediate feeling that I belonged, and while I might dabble in horror, sci-fi, or the paltry attempt at lit, crime fiction was where I belonged.

  It took a mere 18 months, but after I had been invited to participate in challenges, anthologies, and other venues, I felt like I wanted to give back. I wanted to interact with other writers, give them a venue to share and grow their words. I didn’t know how, but I wanted to do what Steve Weddle, David Cranmer, Neil Smith, Christopher Grant, and numerous others had done—they gave their time to promote new writers and to build the community.

  Then Kent Gowran happened. Shotgun Honey happened. Things kind of stuck, morphed, and marched on as time has a tendency to do. And through Shotgun Honey I got to work with many of the writers/editors that I admired. Weddle, Smith, Grant. I got to share their words.

  Over the past four years, through a circulating gauntlet of editors, Shotgun Honey has published more than 500 stories and marching towards half as many writers, with thousands of comments from avid readers of the genre getting their 2-3 blasts of fiction weekly.

  Bam! That’s community.

  Shotgun Honey Presents: Locked and Loaded is our third foray into the short story marketplace. Created as an extension of the flashzine to allow our contributors a little elbow room and as an enticement for writers we have wanted to work with, but who had no desire to write in the limited form of flash fiction. With perseverance, and a little hen pecking, I managed to get the original Shotgun Honey ringleader to contribute, not to mention a story from Mister Noir Bar himself. Kent Gowran and Jedidiah Ayres. Both giants in my book, partially because they stand well above my 5’ 10 ½” stature, but mostly because they are damn fine writers.

  I’ve gone into each volume with a wish list—or should I say hit list—of writers I’d like to include. And it doesn’t always pan out with the desired result. Understandably, most cases it’s a conflict of events. After all, you ask writers in the middle of edits, you are likely to be the lower priority. Other times, well, you just run out of time.

  From the very first days of Shotgun Honey, one of the biggest contributors to the flashzine wasn’t a writer—though that’s not entirely true, because he was a damn fine writer—rather, it was a commenter named A. J. Hayes, Bill to his friends. As clockwork like our weekly three-story cycle most of the first two years, A. J. would comment on stories as only A. J. could: genuine, knowing, with a beat of poetry. When he gave you his praise, you took it as words off the mountain. He made you want to reach in that well again and again. There was passion in his love of crime fiction, and it was infectious.

  We were privileged to publish two of his stories: “All You Got” and “Small Separations.”

  In March of 2014, around the time I was making my wish list for Locked and Loaded, A. J. Hayes let go of this world after a courageous battle with lung cancer. It was a great loss to the community.

  It is inevitable to lose those who inspire us to be better writers, but it is a tragedy to lose those who inspire us to be better people.

  I’d like to believe that Bill considered us all friends—a community of friends sharing words and a passion for words.

  I think A. J. would have enjoyed all 25 stories included in this anthology, and would have had a unique riff on each and every one. It’s a good collection with eclectic stories from authors around the world. Best sellers and newcomers. A bit of something for everyone.

  Welcome to the community.

  A Kid Like Billy

  Patricia Abbott

  Everyone knows a kid like Billy. You’ve seen him at the grocery store bagging food or stocking shelves, or in a pet store feeding the animals and cleaning cages. Or maybe at a nursery dragging a Christmas tree to someone’s car. That’s the sort of place you regularly find a boy like mine.

  His mother was killed by a careening car when Billy was three. When I surfaced from the bottomless well of grief, I counted myself lucky Billy was off in pre-school that morning and not in Ellie’s arms.

  The years passed slowly for us. Billy repeated fourth grade and then ninth. On the night I watched him walk across the squeaking stage to take his diploma, I knew in my heart he still didn’t understand what a fraction was or where to find Michigan on a map. But in a town like West Lebanon, anyone who puts his butt in his seat eventually gets a certifica
te. And I made sure he stuck it out.

  People advise you to get a boy like Billy into plumbing or carpentry—jobs where you use your hands more than your heads. Billy hands weren’t his strongest suit either, but I called in a favor and got a friend in construction to hire him.

  “What’re you doing home?” I said, finding him in front of the TV one day when I came home unexpectedly to retrieve a file. He should’ve been down at a work site on State Street, sweeping up nails or toting 2 x 4s.

  “I wanted a tuna sandwich today. Came home to make one.”

  He looked around the rumpus room, seeming surprised himself that he was watching The Ellen DeGeneres Show, his shoes kicked off, and the half-eaten sandwich drying up on a plate. His feet smelled bad, and I wondered when he’d last changed his socks.

  “I packed you tuna,” I said. “Did you even unwrap it to look?”

  “You usually pack ham on Wednesdays.”

  “Today’s Tuesday,” I said, grabbing the dirty plate.

  Al Ferguson gave him a job at the IGA the next month. About the only things Billy had to do was stock shelves, sweep the sidewalk, and help customers tote bags to the car. But Billy took it into his head to begin organizing the cans by colors—markers he could relate to more easily than the brand names.

  “Oh, no you don’t,” I said, coming in one day to pick up some Hamburger Helper. He was on his knees, sorting the cans. I began replacing the cans, getting angrier with each one. “Look, just do what Mr. Ferguson tells you. Bear down.”

  But he couldn’t keep that job either. Don’t get me wrong. There was no meanness in my boy, no cunning or ill-will. He wasn’t lazy or dishonest. But neither was there an ounce of common sense. I lay awake nights wondering what would happen to him, wondering if a town like West Lebanon was the best place for a boy like mine.

  West Lebanon’s in the northern part of the Lower Peninsula in Michigan. In summer the population swells to 5000, but for nine months a police force of six keeps order for the 1200 permanent residents. In my years as Chief, we’ve never had a murder or even a suspicious death. Drug problems, more than enough DWIs, a few marital disputes, one or two suspicious fires, some B & E’s, especially in the summer, a bully or two raising hell over at the high school, lots of traffic accidents. But spread that over 365 days and it’s a peaceful spot.

  In the tenth year of my tenure as Police Chief, I hired Billy. I took some heat for it—both with my men and with two members of the City Council.

  Patty Harmon, the Council President that year, put it bluntly, “I guess you’re the one who’ll take the blame if he screws up. Right?”

  Gradually my men came around. Billy turned out to be a pretty good crossing guard at the elementary school. He also saw the squad cars were washed and serviced, answered the phone, and ran errands. These were the chores my men disliked most and after a few months nobody was complaining about his doing them. I never sent Billy out on a dangerous or complicated job. He didn’t carry a gun or even a nightstick. He didn’t do patrols. If he answered a call asking for serious help, he passed it on.

  “A good kid,” Sam Hunter, my second in command, told me. “A high IQ isn’t everything, Chief.” He laughed a little. “As I can testify.”

  The winters up north are filled with slow days when a crossword puzzle or crime novel often occupied us. Rummy and solitaire were popular. So was The Price is Right.

  It was a lousy February, like most of ‘em up here, one of those months where it never seemed to be fully light. Cold, snowy. In the second week, four of us came down with a terrible stomach virus. The headache that came with it was crippling. Billy didn’t catch it though. He’d never been sick a day in his life.

  So it was just Billy and Ed Stuyvesant at the station that day. Around noon, the bug hit Ed like a bullet to the gut. He high-tailed it into the bathroom.

  “All right out there, Son?” he called to Billy between bouts. Ed wasn’t worried. Half the town was down with the bug too so things were even more quiet than usual.

  The call was clocked at 12:45, coming from a house out on Badger Creek Road. Helen Clayton’s. She told me later she’d expected Billy to pass the phone on to someone senior.

  But after hearing her first sentence or two Billy told her he’d see to it and hung up.

  Ed said he’d heard Billy talking through the john door, but since he hadn’t heard the phone ring, he thought it was Billy just babbling to Ed about something. Maybe asking if he was all right. Ed mumbled something back and returned to the business at hand, never dreaming Billy took off to answer a call.

  Billy drove out to Badger Creek Road on his motor scooter at 12:55. The roads were recently plowed from a storm the day before. Mrs. Clayton had reported the disturbance as coming from the Ryans’ summer home. We’d checked the house for a disturbance the week before and came up empty. But Helen was no hysteric and breaking into summer homes is an ongoing problem where houses are deserted for months. Mostly it’s teenagers looking for a place to have sex and drink. But not always.

  As a year-round resident, Helen didn’t want a long driveway to plow so she was smack-dab alongside the road. She couldn’t see much, if anything, because the Ryans’ house was set further back. She described the noise as a radio playing at full volume, laughter, swearing, shouting, a car pulling in and out too noisily. She thought it was teenagers—out of school for President’s Day. Skiers maybe. It was odd for a party at noon though.

  The racket finally died down, and she assumed one of us had come out to quiet things, and went back to whatever she was doing. It wasn’t until an hour or two later that someone stumbled into the station saying he’d seen something—probably a body—holding the door open at the Ryans’ place.

  “No, I didn’t go any closer,” the fellow told Ed. “Didn’t know what I might be walking in on.” Embarrassed, he muttered, “Looked like he was past any help from what I could see.”

  Ed’d been wondering what’d happened to Billy by then. But since wandering was one of Billy’s most aggravating traits, he hadn’t been too worried. He took the guy’s statement, asking him how he happened to be tramping around out near Ryan’s. The guy whisked his hunting license out, told Ed where he was staying, and left, pretty shaken up. Of course, the hunting season for anything other than crow, squirrel and rabbit had been over for months, but Ed had other things on his mind.

  After checking the phone log and talking to Helen, Ed called me, trepidation in his voice. We drove out there, seeing Billy’s figure sprawled in the doorway. It was almost certain someone had hit my boy with the iron shovel lying next to his body. There was blood everywhere: blood and parts of Billy’s skull and brains. My stomach, which had been churning all day from the damned virus, went suddenly calm. Ed’s reaction was different: he ran right inside, making it to the john in time but defiling the crime scene. Me and my men weren’t used to such things—either the body or the proper procedure.

  Within fifteen minutes, the area swarmed with my little army and men from the neighboring town. I put in a call to Traverse City, a bigger place, and they sent over their forensics team and a detective more experienced in handling crime scenes and homicides.

  “Do you realize these bloody footprints probably belong to your own man?” the detective asked me.

  I nodded. “We’ve never investigated a murder.”

  “You get the same training we do.”

  “It’s his kid, you know,” Ed told him, going quickly from ashamed to angry. “The body you just carted away.”

  “Sorry for your loss,” the detective said quietly.

  Those were the words we’d been taught to say, and for the first time, I realized how hollow they sound. How perfunctory.

  I hung back from the start of the investigation, letting others take the lead, allowing others to turn my son’s body over, letting other men carry him away. I never set foot in the house. It wasn’t up to me to find my son’s killer. Anything I did was likely to screw up a subsequent
trial because of my inexperience in homicides and my relationship to the victim.

  At least a dozen times in the weeks ahead, Billy’s actions were questioned, and I repeatedly admitted Billy shouldn’t have been there, shouldn’t have been employed by a police department, shouldn’t have been allowed to think himself capable of answering such a call.

  If I’d grieved over Ellie’s death twenty years earlier, Billy’s death damn near sent me ‘round the bend. Why had Billy gone out there? Certainly because the rest of us were down sick but why hadn’t he called me. I hadn’t given enough thought to a situation like this one arising, and Billy paid the price. The only thing keeping me sane was the conviction the murderer would be caught and brought to justice—that I would see him put behind bars for the rest of his days.

  But it didn’t look like there was going to be a trial anytime soon because the one and only piece of potential evidence was a Spider-man wristwatch, the kind you can buy in any department store. It wasn’t even certain that the watch—found about ten yards from the door—hadn’t been lost by some summer guest months earlier or a more recent passerby.

  It’d only been spotted because the glint of the glass caught someone’s eye when the sun made a brief showing.

  “What do you think, Chief,” Ed asked. “Has it been lying out here since last summer?”

  We both looked at the watch. It was in pretty good shape for a watch supposedly lost six months earlier. The band was surprisingly long for a kid.

  “Do adults wear these things?” Ed asked.

  “A girl might think it was cute or something.”

  Billy would have loved a watch like that I thought to myself.

  I looked at it again. “It may not belong to whoever was in that house, but it hasn’t been here for long. It would’ve been a foot deeper in the snow and a lot dirtier. Nobody would’ve found it in that case and I don’t think it’d still be running.”

  We both consulted our own watches and found Spidey kept pretty good time.