One shot, center mass, and down he went.
Just in the last three years, I’d been forced to move five times as police department after police department switched to voiceless dispatching. Although my equipment was top of the line, it still couldn’t intercept communications sent out over secure IP networks.
The first time I ever saw white crosses to mark the scenes of fatal crashes was the day we moved to New Hampshire. My wife, Lindsey, pointed them out as we drove along Route 101. She wasn’t impressed. “Oh my God. How fucking depressing.â€
“…so Billy says, ‘But Mommy, I came straight home!’ Then in the next panel here he draws this dotted line showing all the places Billy went to on his way home! See, he stops at the playground, runs through the sprinkler over here, plays with a dog…” Ralph chuckled softly at the newspaper funny pages and wiped a small tear from the corner of his eye.
Ben straightens his back and adjusts the heavy new briefcase in his left hand before he rings the doorbell of this non-descript house. He’s never carried a briefcase before, yet somehow a briefcase seems necessary to give him an air of authenticity. Dana helped him pick it out. They sat in front of the computer for an hour and ordered it online, along with the other things they’d need, and then they climbed into bed and she was crying. And although Ben is used to her tears, it continues to disturb him in a way he cannot explain.
Rachel Zambri knew she’d have to tell her husband, Randy, that her book club had kind of turned into armed robbery and when she did, he said, “Kind of?â€
Arizona sun leeched blue from the sky, scorched blacktop.
The heat got so bad Joe Pender abandoned his office for the front stoop of U-Save Storage. A wind picked up and spat warm dust at him, but it was movement, at least. Air circulated past his armpits. The sweat clinging to his Dickie shirt started to dry.
And then: two shapes approached along the frontage road.
Stuart eased the Accord onto the Van Nuys off ramp and glanced at his rearview mirror. Shit. “Check it out, Eddie. White Navigator getting off, been behind us for a while now.â€
Eddie took a look at the sideview mirror. “First of all, that’s an Escalade. Don’t hold a candle to the Navigator. Second, it was a QX4 behind us before. Turned off a couple, three miles back. The Escalade got on after that.â€
Stuart said, “Maybe they’re using two vehicles.â€
“You thinking they’re cops?â€
She always said paint was cheap. And so I’d arrive home to find the kitchen yellow, the bathroom light green, or the den a different off-white. These weren’t what she called the colors, but that’s what they were nevertheless.
“In 1592, one hundred years after Columbus discovered the Americas, Johann Van der Flieder and sixty-one men landed on a small island off the coast of Maine. That was in the summer. Their ship left them with a supply of tools, food, weapons, and water. They spent the remainder of the summer building two longhouses to use as barracks, and a small command post for Van der Flieder and two officers along with a surgeon.
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The call troubled Pete Thorsen. It wasn’t like Sam Lawrence to call him in the evening, much less when he was out to dinner with a client.
When Pete got back to Sears & Whitney, he found Sam hunched over a small conference table in one corner of his office, staring intently at a document. A jumble of paper covered the table with a couple of glasses, one tipped on its side, mixed in. Crumpled scraps of paper littered the floor nearby. That wasn’t like Sam either. Pete’s old friend and mentor was the most meticulous man he knew. Even in his prime, Sam’s office had always looked like the set for a magazine shoot rather than the workplace of one of the busiest and most successful lawyers in Chicago.