Shred of Evidence

It had taken quite an effort in Carrie’s head not to put the chain lock on the door. That was the first thing she reached for as soon as the guys were out. First it would be the chain lock, then the deadbolt, the lock in the handle, and three other locks she didn’t even know the proper names for. She had to wonder what they would say if they came back in a hurry only to find her keeping them out. Actually, they would probably skip saying anything and go right to breaking down the door and splattering her brains all over the carpet with a .45

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I don’t come from a very literary family. Well, my father once wrote a suicide note, but he never followed up with a sequel, so he doesn’t count.

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Midway through lunch, Taylor Chaste stands up from her table at Vicente’s and tells her entourage of three she has to go to the ladies room.

Harlan watches her lurch away, wondering if her clumsiness is more from the pitcher of Long Island Ice Tea or the handful of vikes she dry-swallowed on the drive over. Or some magical synergy of both. Taylor’s two buddies, Mandy and Tate, start laughing as soon as she’s out of earshot. They point at the pitcher and gulp down imaginary drinks with both hands. Mandy pretends to fall out of her chair.

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He sleeps loud enough to wake the dead. That’s what she thought. Space being short, she wrote: Snores. Crossing one denim-clad knee over the other, she considered going back to bed, all the same. Maybe she could dream something so wonderful it would banish the nightmare that had chased her out here to the kitchen too early on an autumn Saturday.

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Gecko sat in a booth at the back of a club on the Sunset Strip, nursing a beer and trying to tell himself that things were not so bad. They weren’t, not really, at least when compared to his life before Los Angeles. Even that life had not been so bad. Sure, he had had to try to finding bars and halls in Iowa that would let him and his band Hydrahead play for a measly two hundred dollars a night. Life had been hard, but fun. Now he had a huge house, a wife with plastic surgery habit, and Hydrahead was steadily putting out albums on a major label.

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The kid, he couldn’t have been more than 23 or 24, sat on the hood of the cruiser, starring up at the sign.

The round sign tried to take on the look of a donut. In case you couldn’t tell, the word “donuts” was written in red neon across the middle of the sign. Above it was the name Joes and below, deliberately misspelled, was tastee.

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I stopped counting bullet holes in the sedan when I got to thirty. It didn’t make any difference to my investigation and besides the sticky blood on the seats kept getting on my pants.

I looked across the garage at Sheriff Cooper and Deputy Weidman and asked, “What are you going to do with the reward money, buy more ammunition?”

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It is a little before dinnertime when they approach my rented cart, the woman and her baby boy, the woman winding her way through the crowded mall while the baby squirms in her arms. She looks like she needs a place to rest. Her little one throws himself to the side and I see shoes on his feet; clearly he wants to be allowed to walk, but his mother, she will not allow it. Maybe because there are too many shoppers, this evening a week before Christmas.

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“Liquidity.”

The voice came from the darkness near my feet. “What?”

“That’s your problem, Luke. Liquidity.” I felt Clay shift next to me. “A man sticks a gun in your face and asks for money it’s best to have some to give him.”

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I was driving my taxi down the street, eyes open for a fare, any fare, even short haul, because there was nothing coming over the radio from dispatch. The weather was unseasonably warm for that late in the fall; dry too, so there was no rain or cold wind pushing people into cabs. The moon was bright, there was a gentle breeze, and folks were more inclined to enjoy the evening by taking a leisurely stroll to wherever they were going.

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