Over Their Heads

by Eric Beetner

  I knew now that it was, but there was no time for hindsight with Skeeter skipping away across my lobby.

  Ernie fired another shot but missed him. Maybe the old man wasn’t the marksman he used to be. I had my gun out and was ready to take a shot—something to blast away the frustration and pain of the past few days—but before I could, Skeeter’s forward momentum stopped.

  He ran for where the door used to be, but didn’t expect the post to be there. A thick metal beam that probably should have been holding up the ceiling or something jutted out in his path and he smacked that thing face first while paying more attention to where Ernie’s shots were coming from than to where he was going.

  He disappeared to the mess on the floor. I couldn’t see a thing from behind the half counter where I was.

  “Did I get him?” Ernie called out.

  “I don’t think so,” I said.

  Griffin spoke in a panicked whine. “Can I stand up? Can I run?”

  “Stay down,” commanded Ernie and then the whole place fell into silence. The crunch of feet moving slowly over the broken shards of my business meant someone was moving out there, but I didn’t know who. Only a few hours earlier I thought this bullshit was behind me, but there I was lying to my wife again about where I was, not sure where the next bullet was coming from.

  “Anyone see him?” I asked.

  I got back nothing.

  After a few more moments of silence I started to wonder if Skeeter had knocked himself out on the beam or if he’d caved his head in so much he was dead.

  I poked my head out and saw Ernie in a low crouch. He caught my eye and made some hand motions I couldn’t translate. I gave him a “What?” look. He rolled his eyes at me mouthed the words in over-exaggerated mime. I’m. Going. Over. There.

  I nodded and held out my gun in a two handed grip for him to see as my way of saying I was backing him up. I saw him turn and make the same hand motions to Brent on the other side, then movement caught my eye.

  The sound came a moment later and I could see Skeeter up and scrambling for the door. He stayed low and zig-zagged across the floor. Ernie broke off from his pantomime with Brent and took two shots that missed the mark. I lifted my gun and sighted down on Skeeter, though he was moving fast and I didn’t have enough confidence in my shot to pull the trigger.

  He reached what used to be the front glass doors. There used to be the bell that told us any time a customer walked in. There used to be the hours of operation sign, the open and closed sliding sign and our membership affiliation stickers for the various rental guilds and AAA approval ratings. All gone now.

  My finger moved onto the trigger as Skeeter stood up a little straighter, his body almost through the door. He slipped and skidded sideways. I didn’t fire, but I didn’t have to. Skeeter slid and slammed his body into the twisted metal of what used to be the door frame. A thin silver strip of door molding was torn and bent out to the side. He caught it, or maybe it caught him, in the neck. It drove in sharply and poked out the other side.

  Skeeter hung from the protruding metal and dripped blood down the former door frame. He twitched a few times, his legs spasming and piss staining the insides of his pants. And then, he stopped moving.

  The room was still for a while as we all took it in, watching from our different corners of the room. Ernie was the first to stand up. He hung his pistol down by his side and sounded dejected when he said, “Damn it. That was supposed to be me that ended him.”

  Griffin still sounded desperate and reluctant to get off the ground. “Is that it? Is he dead?”

  “Yeah,” I said. “That about wraps it up.”

  92

  BRENT

  More cops. The FBI guy again. And more questions. Always the goddamn questions. I answered as best I could, keeping an eye on Skeeter’s body. They’d tossed a sheet over it and techs scrambled around taking photos. He was good and dead, but I still half expected him to come at us again.

  It was a kidnapping by a psychopath, plain and simple. No one was to leave town until all the questions had been answered and the matter cleared up. Like any of us had anywhere to go. I looked over at Sean Griffin. He had an arm slung around his wife. She’d been crying and didn’t seem to want to leave his side. I finished with my questions and was shoved into an ambulance. My foot had opened up and was bleeding again. It was getting hard to talk through the pain and at last, they let me go. I gave a wave to Clyde as the ambulance pulled out. Then I let my eyes close and gritted my teeth against the ache in my foot.

  93

  SEAN

  We finished with the cops and, thanks to the order not to leave town, headed back to Ernie and Betty’s house. It looked like we’d be staying with them for a while.

  We didn’t get a chance to talk until almost midnight, when Ernie sat us all down on the deck with beers and Betty passed around a tray of cheese and crackers.

  “I think you should call your brother,” Ernie said. “Return the money you took.”

  “And go to jail,” I finished.

  He shook his head. “You won’t go to jail. He’s an ass and he screwed you. Take whatever happens like a man and you can’t go wrong.”

  God help me I was actually starting to like the guy.

  His eyes narrowed and he looked hard at me and Linda. “The pair of you are a couple of fuck ups,” he said.

  “Daddy!”

  Ernie just shrugged. “Your kids are rotten and the way you treat each other is rotten.”

  “Ernie,” Betty said with a warning in her voice.

  “You’re pretty pathetic too, woman. So am I for that matter.” He took a draw on his beer. “But we’re family. And we need to stick together.”

  I didn’t know what that meant, exactly, but I knew then that we would work it out, me and Linda and our kids and Ernie and Betty. Family. Maybe we’d stay in Virginia. Maybe I’d go to jail. I didn’t know. Linda took my hand and gave it a squeeze. Whatever happened, I figured we really would be okay if we just stuck together.

  94

  CLYDE

  I drove home in a haze from the car lot. Agent Stu Trumble had told me not to leave town. I apologized to him for the badge but he waved me off. “Just a name tag,” he said. “The real one is in my pocket.”

  I parked the car and climbed out. I stood and stared at the house for a minute, wondering if I was still welcome inside, hoping Madeline could forgive me.

  The living room was dark and cool when I stepped in. My girls were on the couch and little Jane was breastfeeding. It hit me like a fist in the gut. Perfection. My family. Who the fuck cared if we had to scrimp and save for college? Good stuff didn’t come easy. And this was good stuff.

  “Hi,” I said.

  Madeline’s face was drawn and worried when she looked at me. “You look like hell.”

  “I’ve been a total dick.”

  “Yeah. But we have Jane. And we have each other. I think we’ll be okay.”

  I moved to hug her, but she held up a hand. “You are not touching me or this baby until you shower and throw those clothes away.” I smiled and headed for the bathroom. “And brush your teeth for the love of God.”

  Yeah. We’d be okay.

  THANKS

  We’d like to thank Eric Campbell and the good people at Down & Out Books for all their hard work. JT Lindroos for the excellent cover. Jake Hinkson, Anonymous-9 and Bill Craig for the kind words. And to our families for their continued love and support.

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  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  JB Kohl and Eric Beetner met online through a mutual love of classic crime fiction and film noir. Eric read Jennifer's debut novel, The Deputy's Widow, and loved it. When he sent her a story of his, a partnership was born. They have written four full novels together despite never having met in person.

  Their first two collaborations, One Too Many Blows To The Head and the sequel, Borrowed Trouble, garnered praise from Megan Abbott, Rebecca Cantrell, Kelli Stanley and many
more for their evocation of classic noir film and fiction in mood and style. Over Their Heads is a contemporary thriller which sees Kohl and Beetner at their most playful and exciting.

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  ALSO BY JB KOHL & ERIC BEETNER

  One Too Many Blows to the Head

  Borrowed Trouble

  ALSO BY JB KOHL

  The Deputy’s Widow

  ALSO BY ERIC BEETNER

  The Devil Doesn’t Want Me

  Rumrunners

  The Year I Died Seven Times

  The Backlist (with Frank Zafiro)

  Criminal Economics

  Dig Two Graves

  White Hot Pistol

  Stripper Pole at the End of the World

  A Bouquet of Bullets (stories)

  Fightcard: Split Decision

  Fightcard: A Mouth Full of Blood

  Back to TOC

  Other Titles from Down and Out Books

  See www.DownAndOutBooks.com for complete list

  By Anonymous-9

  Bite Harder (TP only)

  By J.L. Abramo

  Catching Water in a Net

  Clutching at Straws

  Counting to Infinity

  Gravesend

  Chasing Charlie Chan

  Circling the Runway

  By Trey R. Barker

  2,000 Miles to Open Road

  Road Gig: A Novella

  Exit Blood

  Death is Not Forever

  By Richard Barre

  The Innocents

  Bearing Secrets

  Christmas Stories

  The Ghosts of Morning

  Blackheart Highway

  Burning Moon

  Echo Bay

  Lost

  By Eric Beetner and JB Kohl

  Over Their Heads

  By Eric Beetner and Frank Scalise

  The Backlist (*)

  By Rob Brunet

  Stinking Rich

  By Milton T. Burton

  Texas Noir

  By Dana Cameron (editor)

  Murder at the Beach: Bouchercon Anthology 2014

  By Eric Campbell (editor)

  Down, Out and Dead

  By Tom Crowley

  Viper’s Tail

  Murder in the Slaughterhouse

  By Frank De Blase

  Pine Box for a Pin-Up

  Busted Valentines and Other Dark Delights

  A Cougar’s Kiss (*)

  By Les Edgerton

  The Genuine, Imitation, Plastic Kidnapping

  By A.C. Frieden

  Tranquility Denied

  The Serpent’s Game

  The Pyongyang Option (*)

  By Jack Getze

  Big Numbers

  Big Money

  Big Mojo

  Big Shoes (*)

  By Keith Gilman

  Bad Habits

  By William Hastings (editor)

  Stray Dogs: Writing from the Other America

  By Matt Hilton

  No Going Back

  Rules of Honor

  The Lawless Kind (*)

  By Terry Holland

  An Ice Cold Paradise

  Chicago Shiver

  By Darrel James, Linda O. Johsonton & Tammy Kaehler (editors)

  Last Exit to Murder

  By David Housewright & Renée Valois

  The Devil and the Diva

  By David Housewright

  Finders Keepers

  Full House

  By Jon Jordan

  Interrogations

  By Jon & Ruth Jordan (editors)

  Murder and Mayhem in Muskego

  Cooking with Crimespree

  By Bill Moody

  Czechmate: The Spy Who Played Jazz

  The Man in Red Square

  Solo Hand

  The Death of a Tenor Man

  The Sound of the Trumpet

  Bird Lives!

  By Gary Phillips

  The Perpetrators

  Scoundrels: Tales of Greed, Murder and Financial Crimes (editor)

  Treacherous: Griffters, Ruffians and Killers

  By Gary Phillips, Tony Chavira, Manoel Magalhaes

  Beat L.A. (Graphic Novel)

  By Robert J. Randisi

  Upon My Soul

  Souls of the Dead

  Envy the Dead (*)

  By Lono Waiwaiole

  Wiley's Lament

  Wiley's Shuffle

  Wiley's Refrain

  Dark Paradise

  By Vincent Zandri

  Moonlight Weeps

  (*) Coming soon

  Back to TOC

  Here’s a sample from Trey R. Barker’s Death is Not Foever.

  1

  He dreamed...

  “A mustache, Mariana?”

  She was dead, she was a dream, but his wife was still a young girl dancing on the desert breeze.

  “Something different.” Her mustache was thin and curled and reminded him of a melodrama villain.

  “A little, yeah.” The Judge twirled with her, his big feet stumbling in his beige cowboy boots, toes scuffed from desert rock.

  “I miss yours.” Mariana smiled, looked at him through the tops of her eyes.

  It had been one of the things she loved best. He’d had it from before they’d met until well after she died. In fact, the real Mariana, flesh and blood, had never seen him sans mustache. Only in his dreams, when he conjured her from deep in his soul and gave her voice and life by what he knew was his head full of delusions, did she see him without his mustache.

  She laughed, a sound as sweet as pecan pie. “Why are you looking at me like that?”

  He dipped her to music only they heard. “Don’t see a mustache on many women.”

  “I grew it to remind me of yours. Or maybe I joined the circus...the mustachioed lady.”

  “Got a circus in Heaven, do they?”

  “That where you think I am?”

  The Judge stopped dancing. “Aren’t you?”

  She shrugged. “I guess. Probably in hell, too, though.”

  Knowing it was heavy and boring in its banality, Judge Bean sighed. “As long as we’re separated...I am, too.”

  “Jeremiah...you never found it, did you?”

  He avoided her eyes. “I’m sorry.”

  She kissed his cheek. “It’s okay, honey, it’s just a piece of tin.”

  “Helluva lot more than that.”

  In this dream, they were on their first date again: that incredible spring night when the air inside the Barefield Country Club smelled of honeysuckle and warm dust. The band was on fire, tearing through old big band tunes that both of them knew from their parents’ record collections. Saxophones jumped double time, never out of synch, while trumpets wailed over everything and the drummer and bass player laid down a foundation that made Bean’s chest thump.

  Tables sat in the back half of the room, more a place for people’s drinks while they danced rather than a place to eat dinner. On each table were electric candles inside tall glasses. It gave the entire room an eerie cast, light flickering against the walls, doing its own dance.

  And on those walls?

  The full-page newspaper ads from the Judge’s first campaign, writ large as wall-sized posters. In one, a rusty 1930s truck sat in a field on blown-out tires. Across the hood of the truck was his opponent’s name. The brutally clear implication was that the Judge’s opponent was not only old, but broken-down and hadn’t any understanding of how the World worked anymore. That one was for the younger voters, to tell them Bean was as cool and hip as they were. In the second ad, an old woman answered her front door on Halloween. A kid, dressed as Bean’s opponent, tells the old lady he’s going to let all the bad guys out of jail so they can break into her house.

  “That one was for the older voters,” Mariana said.

  With a big dip, her back arched onto his left arm and a beautiful smile on her face, he nodded. “To scare them. So they’d vote for me.”

  Both ads had been bullshit.
Bean supported them, no crap about that...because he wanted to win. But now? It wasn’t really regret he felt, just a kind of sad resignation at what he’d done to his opponent.

  The question was: what the fuck were those ads, now as big as posters, doing in his dream? Their first date had been beautiful and fantastic and had left him giddy for days afterward and had no hint of politics...all that bullshit came way later.

  “Ignore them, baby.” Mariana pulled him close. “Spin me.”

  So he did, still chuckling about her mustache. “I miss you, Mariana.”

  “I miss you, too, Jeremiah.”

  “It’s been so long since I’ve seen you.”

  “You see me every day and every night.”

  He frowned. “Bah. Dreams and visions and hallucinations. You know what I mean. You’re dead and I’m alive and so I miss you. If you asked, I’d end myself here and now.”

  “Babe?”

  “I’ve been thinking about it again.”

  “A bit of suicidal ideation, Jeremiah?”

  “A bit.” He spun her again, the music loud and pleasant in their ears.

  “It would be a mortal sin.”

  He said nothing. His feet, always clumsy, were still clumsy in dreams. His boots shuffled her across the floor, as often as not stepping on her toes.