Kwik Krimes

by Otto Penzler (ed)

  And yet…

  He wanted to get into Delta Pi, the most elite fraternity on campus. They took only a few students a year, and then only when the alumni got tired of banging the co-eds and moved on, leaving a vacant room. For Kevin, who had spent his whole life on the outside looking in, it was everything he ever wanted, status, recognition, the impossible dream. One few achieved.

  And now he knew why.

  Kevin couldn’t believe it was true, thought it must be some sick hazing stunt. Even if a pledge were depraved enough to go through with it, surely at the last moment the frat brothers would step in and stop it, the young man’s willingness to commit the act all that had been required all the while. Even so, Kevin couldn’t plan a person’s death, whether he intended to go through with it or not.

  Then he heard Jeremy talking during lunch.

  Some things, Kevin thought, were omens, signs from the gods. Jeremy was carrying on about the bums who panhandled from the students on their way to class. The security guards tried to chase them off the campus, but they were like cockroaches, kept coming back. The students ignored them for the most part, just went about their business as if they weren’t there.

  It was not surprising Jeremy was unable to ignore them. A brilliant student but socially awkward, he was a ripe mark for a panhandler, and there was one loathsome creature who wouldn’t leave him alone. The man was easy to spot in a filthy red shirt, so usually Jeremy got away. But not today, and so he sat in the dining hall, bruised, beaten, and babbling about the dangerous psychopath who terrorized him, saying how he felt like following the bum until he drank himself into a stupor and passed out, then sneaking up on him and hitting him on the head.

  For Kevin, it was a weight being lifted, the answer to a prayer. He could never kill another human being. But an inhuman monster, a sadistic, psychotic menace?

  Which is how Kevin found himself all alone at midnight, scouring the doorways down by the waterfront with a steak knife in his pocket. Kevin had gone on the Internet, googled “fatal stab wounds.” The consensus was that the best bet was in the left chest, piercing the heart. The front was far superior to the back, the neck, or the head, though it occurred to him now, as he fingered the knife in his pocket, that slitting the throat might be more effective.

  Kevin kept walking, trying to stifle second thoughts and trying not to look over his shoulder, where he knew the frat boys were. They would be tagging along to confirm the kill. They would see him when he did it. Or they would see him when he chickened out. They would be there to witness his humiliation and his shame.

  It would be hell if he didn’t do it.

  If he could just find the guy. And it didn’t look like he was going to. He’d found bums in doorways, bums in cardboard boxes, one bum behind a Dumpster, even one bum passed out in the street. But none in a red shirt. Could he have changed it? That would be the ultimate bad luck, the typical kick in the head. The thought crossed his mind: would it count if he went back and killed the bum passed out in the street?

  And there it was. On the corner, just ahead, curled up against the metal loading door of a factory building, a flash of red. Could it be?

  It was. A shirt so dirty it could have passed for brown. The hair stringy, greasy, spread out like a huge furry spider around the head.

  Could he do it?

  Yes, he could.

  He slipped the knife out of his pocket.

  In the front. Not the back. But he’s facing away. He’d have to turn him. Maybe the throat was better. Maybe he should slit the throat. Would a steak knife do that? Why didn’t he spend more time on the Internet?

  Goddamnit, they were watching him. They were standing there watching him hesitate. No time for thought. He had to do it now.

  Kevin crept forward, stealthy, crouching, the knife in his right hand. He reached the man, knelt down. Throat? Chest? The body was lying by his left knee. He would have to reach across himself to slit the throat. If the man were lying in the other direction, Kevin’s left hand could hold the head, but from this angle his left hand was near the man’s belt. Slitting the throat was out. It had to be the chest.

  Kevin raised the knife, rolled him over.

  Kevin didn’t know what it was—the pain in his chest. Divine intervention? His conscience kicking in? Or cardiac arrest, his heart literally bursting?

  He felt excruciating pain.

  Then nothing.

  Jeremy rolled off the body in disgust. He clambered to his feet, pulled off the greasy wig. He bent down, pried the steak knife from Kevin’s lifeless fingers, and then wrapped Kevin’s hand around the knife in his chest, as if he’d made one futile gesture to pull it from his heart.

  Jeremy stood up, slipped Kevin’s knife into his pocket, and then stripped off his thin rubber gloves. Out of the corner of his eye, he could see the frat brothers moving in to confirm the kill.

  Jeremy couldn’t wait to pledge Delta Pi.

  Parnell Hall is the author of the Stanley Hastings private eye novels, the Puzzle Lady crossword puzzle mysteries, and the Steve Winslow courtroom dramas. His books have been nominated for the Edgar Allan Poe, Shamus, and Lefty awards. Parnell is an actor, screenwriter, singer/songwriter, and past president of the Private Eye Writers of America. He lives in New York City.

  GAMES PEOPLE PLAY

  * * *

  * * *

  Bruce Harris

  She wore short shorts, sneakers, white socks, and a tank top. No bra. Her blonde ponytail rested on Mr. Perfect’s broad shoulder. They listened as I stood next to my Saturn, explaining my actions to a cop whose shined shirt-pocket name tag read “Ortiz.” He nodded. “Go on.”

  “Like I was saying. I was out of milk, and Stephanie, that’s my wife, asked me to head to the grocery store for a gallon. I was steering my car with one hand, trying to find the Cubs game on the radio with the other, and then I saw her.” I pointed to No Bra Girl. “Jogging, blonde ponytail bouncing up and down, but no one in hell was looking at that, especially me. Excuse my bluntness, but even Stevie Wonder can see she isn’t wearing a bra, and her boobs were practically hanging out of that top. Damn.

  “I slowed down, maximizing the time I had to admire her, my prurient thoughts raging. I shifted my gaze to the side-view mirror as I passed her. I’m still watching her ass as she jogs out of my life, when I see a black pickup truck pull up alongside her. She stops and peers into the truck’s window and, in an instant, she’s gone! Shit. I just watched some guy drag her into his truck. I do an immediate U-turn and head for the pickup truck. At first I can only see the driver, but seconds later I see her blonde head, but it quickly disappears again. From about five hundred feet away, it appears that they’re struggling. I floor it. I think the bastard is hitting her as he speeds up, but I’m not letting him out of my sight. He swerves right to avoid a UPS truck, and I can see him looking back at me through his rearview mirror. I give him the finger. I smack into the truck’s rear bumper, and again the guy looks back at me. He’s cursing. I slam into him again. Now, she’s in sight, staring at me. She looks petrified. She’s screaming something, but I can’t make it out. He’s shouting, too. I’m playing bumper cars with this fucker’s, excuse my language, truck, but I’m not really playing. The radio is between stations, so I shut the damn thing and reach for my cell phone and dial 911. Before it connects, I hear your siren and see flashing red lights approaching. Someone else must have called you. Within minutes, you cut him off, and here we are, all three vehicles are stopped on the side of the road. Good, I figured, now the bastard’s going to get what he deserves.”

  “Boy, am I glad you came in time, Officer. This fucking guy is crazy. Look what he’s done to the back of my truck! He nearly drove us off the fucking road.” Ortiz looked away from Perfect Man toward the damaged vehicle and shook his head.

  “Watch your language, sir. Keep it civil.” He turned to me. “Do you have anything else to say?”

  “Officer, I watched this guy pull this young lady off the
street against her will. I was just trying to stop him and help her, you know, trying to be a Good Samaritan and all that. That’s the truth.” The policeman looked at the couple with raised eyebrows.

  Now it was Braless’s turn. Pointing to me, she said, “This guy is out of his mind.” The perfect couple hugged again. “This is my boyfriend, Officer. We were just having a little fun playing a game, keeping things exciting between us. It was nothing more than a little harmless sex skit we were acting out. The next thing we know, this nut is ramming the back of our truck. I called 911, and thank goodness you showed up.”

  A moment later, a second squad car pulled up. A black cop named Brown sauntered over, said, “Whatcha got, Ortiz?”

  Ortiz motioned to the couple. “This guy was harassing this young woman. Get him the hell out of my sight, Terry.”

  I watched two jaws simultaneously drop. Before either could say a word, Officer Brown escorted a handcuffed Perfect Body into the backseat of his police cruiser and drove off. “What the hell are you doing?” shouted Ponytail. “That’s my boyfriend!”

  Ortiz slapped her face, cuffed her wrists, and pushed her into the backseat of his car. “Get in there and shut up. You, Good Samaritan,” he pointed to me, “in the front seat.”

  “Are you crazy? What the hell do you think you’re doing? I want a lawyer!” Ms. Boobs in the backseat was crying.

  Shit, a lawyer was going to help her about as much as the boogey man was going to scare Ortiz. Ortiz was as crooked as an arthritic finger. I’d seen his type plenty of times. We left the sobbing blonde in the locked police car as we belted down close to a dozen cold ones at a local tavern. Ortiz told me shit I didn’t want to hear about his childhood and stepfather. After nearly two hours, he grabbed a fistful of peanuts and said, “Let’s go!” We were both drunk. He had trouble opening the patrol car’s rear door, stuffed his face with nuts, loosened his belt and grabbed the girl. Spitting peanut shells, he said, “If you say a word about this to anyone, you’ll think this was Christmas morning compared to what I’ll do to your boyfriend.” Ortiz undid her handcuffs and positioned himself inches away from her face. His uniform pants dropped. “You know what to do!” She did. When Ortiz screamed “Yes!” the poor bastard was too drunk to notice Blondie had removed his gun with her newly freed hands. She fired. Twice.

  THIS STORY WAS FIRST PUBLISHED IN DEADLY CHAPS.

  Bruce Harris is the author of Sherlock Holmes and Doctor Watson: About Type and a chapbook, The Man and the Mark. Visit the author’s website at BatteredBox.com.

  BUILT WITH LOVE

  * * *

  * * *

  Jamie Harrison

  Paul’s grandmother Ruth had been a gardener, and his grandfather Matthew had begun a greenhouse for her, but she had left anyway. Paul had never known her, but he knew, from his father, that Ruth had been the only person Matthew had ever loved.

  Everyone had baggage. Now Paul stood in the humid sun measuring the frame for glass for the third time, as if the metal might have bent and warped overnight after forty years. The greenhouse had been no more than a skeleton and a flagstone pad for most of his life except for a brief period when Matthew had topped it with willow branches as a sort of ramada. He’d built it on the edge of Maiden Lake, and on high-water years it was possible to jump directly into the water from the pad. Paul and his brother had played foursquare and table tennis during summer visits, though the table warped quickly in the constant rain, and the location was hard on every kind of ball.

  Paul finished and went inside. Julia, the live-in aide, was in the kitchen; she was the reason he didn’t mind this long visit. “Are you ready to guess?” she asked.

  “Yes.”

  “Turn around and shut your eyes.”

  He already had, even though he wanted to see her. Honey-colored hair, big gray eyes, the nose a little hooked. She liked to read books. She liked what they did and seemed to like who he was. He had to figure out how to stay, or how to move them to Montana. Her to Montana—Matthew couldn’t last much longer.

  “It’s not hot,” she said. “Open up.”

  “Chickpeas,” he said.

  “Of course,” said Julia. “But what’s in there? What’s the edge?”

  “Cayenne and salt.”

  “More.”

  “Garlic?”

  “No. Preserved lemon, drizzled with a little sesame oil. I used the garlic press, so maybe there is a touch there.”

  “Sit on my lap,” said Paul, opening his eyes.

  She slid on, facing him. Through the glass patio doors, they could see Matthew watching the water, the frame of the never-glassed greenhouse cutting through the view.

  Many people with Matthew’s condition lost their sense of taste, but food had been his greatest love, after the late, great Ruth. Since Paul had arrived two weeks earlier, everything Julia had cooked had boggled and seduced. When Matthew, an obsessive, seemed to want rice, she’d made Persian rice and paella and sticky rice balls, stuffed cabbage, rice pudding, and avgolemono. A sudden desire for halibut brought on grilled grape-leaf packets and red-cooked halibut cheeks and tacos and chowders. The pork run, which preceded this relative diet, nearly killed Paul—and sealed his adoration.

  Matthew couldn’t speak but wrote notes: nectar of the gods, the heart is an interminable artichoke, who ate the first oyster?

  The next day the glaziers arrived, and by afternoon the greenhouse was finished. The idea had been to recreate some idea of happiness, finish the project Matthew had started to remind him of the notion of love or joy. He’d written notes: She preys on my mind. She wanted the greenhouse. Ruth hadn’t left for some fresh life: she’d been clinically depressed, frayed from shock therapy and problematic drugs; she had found an unfindable place to kill herself.

  That didn’t diminish the fact that her husband had loved her enough to build most of it before she left. Matthew had been upset until Paul reassured him that they wouldn’t cut down the trees around it, wouldn’t change the path or the view from the house. The first plant in the greenhouse would be the last one to survive Ruth, a stunted Turkish fig that Matthew had managed to keep alive in the den. It produced one fig a year, and every year he chopped the fruit into pieces and fed it to the flickers.

  That afternoon they maneuvered the fig tree onto a dolly and rolled it down the path, then fetched Matthew and some glasses and champagne. It was trickier getting the tree through the door than it was the man in the wheelchair. “Where do you want it?” asked Paul.

  He was asking Julia, but Matthew pointed. The flagstones were bumpier than Paul had realized, and the cork was tougher to pull than Julia had expected. Paul paused to open the bottle, then pushed a little too hard on the fig tree, rather than on the dolly. The massive pot tilted and crashed against the stone.

  “The tree’s okay,” Julia said. “It’s okay. We can wiggle it into place now.”

  “Watch your feet,” said Paul. “Don’t you see what happened?”

  What had happened: the stone had cracked, and the cement around it, and the whole area, had sagged. He lifted the rock away and saw that the metal screen underneath had rusted to a red powder shadow and lay over a cavity where the base gravel or dirt had subsided. “Fuck,” he said. “This is going to be a complete pain in the ass to fix.”

  Matthew made a sound; Julia smoothed his hair without looking.

  “It reeks,” she said.

  “Just old,” Paul said. “Let it air out.”

  “What’ll you do?”

  “Clear it away, refill, repour, try to relay the stone.”

  Matthew was crying; they’d botched the christening. Julia poured anyway. Paul plucked away the rotten wire and slivered wood under the broken concrete, wondering if the structure could handle the weight of the glass. He saw more wood and pulled out a piece, and dropped it next to his champagne.

  It was a leg bone, a tibia.

  “That’s human,” said Julia.

  “Jesus, Papa, who built this t
hing?”

  Matthew waved a hand, and Julia handed him the pad. Matthew wrote slowly, big jagged letters. He mantled over the paper, and Paul could only make out one word, fucking, and braced for another rant. It had been a few days, but this mess would set him off.

  I did it myself. She wanted a fucking greenhouse.

  Jamie Harrison is the author of The Edge of the Crazies, An Unfortunate Prairie Occurrence, and two other mysteries. She lives in Livingston, Montana, with her family.

  THE GUN WITH TWO TRIGGERS

  * * *

  * * *

  Rob W. Hart

  The digital readout on the dash of the rental says the outside temperature is ninety-seven degrees. The sun went down three hours ago. I tap the plastic—like that’ll make the numbers drop.

  Fucking Texas.

  I kill the engine. The air conditioner stops chugging, and heat creeps in like the cold air wasn’t even on. When I open the door, the swelter rushes up and clocks me across the jaw.

  I hate this kind of weather, but in this economy it’s hard to say no to a job.

  Especially when Ginny Tonic gives it to you.

  The aluminum briefcase next to me is still cold. I hold it at arm’s length, try to guess at what’s inside. I can’t, so I drag myself into the parking lot as sweat breaks on my brow.

  I hit the lock button on the key fob. The car beeps, and the sound bounces off the empty stretch of road and the laundry across the street. There’s nothing else around besides that, a streetlight, and the building in front of me: a vegetarian restaurant, in Texas.

  The door is unlocked. Inside the lights are off and Muddy Waters is growling from the overhead speakers. Robust air-conditioning makes me chilly and thankful.