I was an okay looking guy when I cleaned up, but I hadn’t shaved in a couple of days, and my clothes were strictly bargain basement — Salvation Army hand-me-downs. She was either the nicest girl in th...
I took the photos with me and heard Lucija making the call. As I closed the door behind me, I caught the scent of death from the patio, carried on the breeze moving the branches of the olive trees.
I stood. She reached up and squeezed my hand, trying to hold on to this us, before we went through with it and became a different us, held together by our sin. I turned and headed down the cliffs to t...
I packed up the office files, then swung by the apartment to pay up my rent and let the sour-faced old bat who collected it know I was moving out. She didn’t seem heartbroken.
I never had a more wonderful time with anyone than I had with Mary that afternoon. I won her a small stuffed bear, and felt ten feet tall. She introduced me to just about everyone, and it made me feel...
I had to drive through a very poor and largely Hispanic section of Miami to get to the apartment complex where Casey Martin had died. There were a lot of beautiful women on the sidewalks and at the ou...
I don’t know if I’ll get in with all the bad in life I done. But at least when Saint Peter, or whoever they got guardin’ ‘em asks what I did in life to deserve heaven, I’ll be able to tell ‘em about K...
I could not imagine a divine hand was involved, but perhaps Frank Lassiter had done enough evil that I was just the instrument being used to give him a shove off this mortal coil — because he wasn’t s...
I became mad for a time, wanting to dig her up just to be certain she was dead. Once, I even had the shovel in my hand. But then I knew I could not let her suffer the indignity of a man who had lost h...
Hill City and Hayward is as close to that area as I’ve ever been. It was a long time back, when it was pretty dangerous. I was on my way to Cheyenne at the time, and in a hurry to get there. I was non...
Her face, especially those lovely eyes, filled with amusement. She whispered, Who knows what evil lurks in the hearts of men? I laughed and she couldn’t help but join me. There was something restful a...
He suspected in another decade or so the railroad might have laid track right into Santa Barbara. Everything would be connected soon, Wyn imagined with some sadness. Something would be lost when a man...
For months afterward I was numb, almost paralyzed from the shock. I was some emotionless automaton, speaking and answering questions and working, never feeling. My heart was empty.
Even with all Caroline had lost and forgotten, she knew a lot about archaeology and past civilizations. I often wondered if knowing all those things, only saddened her that she couldn’t remember the r...
Death, especially murder, was always an abstract when you had no connection with the victim, thought Karen. Now that there was a connection, however tenuous, the Strangler had suddenly become real, a...
Yeah, that’s it! There’s these gorgeous paintings on the arches. Now, they ain’t my cup o’ java, mind ya, but it’s gotta be high class, cause one them women’s topless, and ain’t nobody pays her no att...
Wyn noticed Jace had what appeared to be a copy of Wilkie Collins’ The Moonstone. He smiled to himself.
They have public service announcements about cancer, heart disease, every malady imaginable. But no one ever warns you about the world’s greatest killer — Hope.
There was something starkly different about him that separated him from other men, reflected even in his choice of horses. Every seasoned cowboy, and even some greenhorns, knew owning a white horse to...
Then something happened which made Callie feel something she’d never felt before. A tall boy close to her own age stepped from the train and gave the big man a hug.