The Best Mystery Stories of the Year 2021

by The Mysterious Bookshop Presents the Best Mystery Stories of the Year 2021

  But maybe it had some effect. No more shots came.

  Kneeling beside Charlie, I put pressure on the wound, but I could feel the disconnect from his spine, an unnatural flexing, and read his empty stare.

  He was dying before my eyes.

  “Help me!” I roared at the EMT. “We’ve gotta get him out of here!”

  Our flying column roared into Valhalla Samaritan like the invasion of Iraq. We’d called for an ambulance, but Charlie couldn’t wait for it. We loaded him aboard the lead Humvee and tore out of the forest, leaving the young agents to sort through the wreckage and hunt for the shooter.

  At the hospital, the emergency team quickly loaded Charlie onto a gurney and rolled him away. Tanaka and I found a bench in a waiting room, but neither of us had much to say, both of us trying to sort out what the hell just happened.

  We weren’t the only ones asking. A State Police team showed up a few minutes later. Officer-involved shootings are always investigated by another department, but this didn’t feel likes standard procedure to me. Two uniformed Staties quickly led Tanaka away to question us separately.

  I stayed in the waiting room with two detectives in civvies, a heavyweight sergeant, Haskey, square and gray as a cement block with an attitude to match, and his boss, Lieutenant Sharon Keenan. Haskey’s tweed jacket was Sears off the rack. Keenan was in black slacks, black jacket, black turtleneck. Blonde, no makeup, her hair cropped short as a boy’s. Haskey had a mouse under his right eye. It looked fresh.

  I gave them a quick briefing on what happened, our approach, the blast, the kid running out, then Charlie’s shooting.

  “So, right after the blast, you, Agent Tanaka, and Sergeant Marx were bunched up?” Haskey asked. “Not too smart. Made a pretty sweet target for the meth cookers.”

  “I’m not sure it was them. The RV was already blown, the shot came from the other direction and it was definitely a long one. Charlie was already falling when I heard the report. The shooter had to be seven or eight hundred meters out. Helluva long ways for a head shot.”

  “Actually, the round struck Sgt. Marx in the throat,” Keenan said.

  “Think center mass, Lieutenant. Normally, you zero in on the heart, but Charlie was wearing a vest. The shooter moved his bull’s-eye up to the bridge of his nose and only missed by a few inches. I think he hit what he was shooting at.”

  “Why cap Charlie?” Haskey asked. “He’s at thirty and out, about to retire and everybody knows it. There was even a write-up in the paper about it. If somebody wanted him gone, they only had to wait a few days. But you? You’re brand-new on the job when the DEA tip line gets a call about a lab they need your help to find? Did you make that call, LaDart? Or maybe one of your backwoods relatives, trying to make you look good?”

  I stared at him. “Me? Where’s that coming from?”

  “Same place you came from, sport—Afghanistan. Only a trained marksman could make a shot like that. Or maybe a woodsman. Did you make any enemies over there LaDart? Maybe one who followed you here?”

  “You think a vet did this?”

  “We’ve been having a lot of problems with Afghan vets,” Keenan put in. “Sergeant Haskey mixed it up with one last week.”

  Which explained the eye, and maybe the attitude.

  “We’re seeing substance abuse, domestic violence, even suicides—”

  “I’m aware,” I interrupted. “We call it going Belgian, the same as the burned-out war dogs. A vet would have no reason to kill Charlie.”

  “Maybe he missed by more than a few inches,” Haskey said. “Maybe he missed by a couple of feet.”

  “Missed me, you mean? How long have you been on the job, Haskey?”

  “A lot longer than you, sport.”

  “Maybe that’s your problem,” I said, standing up. “This is a lazy interrogation, guys. You’re asking me questions without doing fieldwork first, ergo, you don’t know if I’m lying or not.”

  “Are you lying to us, Sergeant LaDart?” Keenan asked.

  “Lady, somebody just capped the guy who saved my life, years ago. I want him a lot more than you do.”

  “This is a State Police investigation, LaDart,” Haskey said. “Stay away from it.”

  “I know the rules, guys. If I accidentally trip over anything useful, you’ll be the first to know. But right now, unless I’m under arrest? I need to get some air before somebody gets his other eye blackened.”

  I half expected an argument, but they let me go. No choice. We all knew they had no cause to hold me.

  Out in the corridor, I took the stairs, two at a time, up to the burned cooker’s room.

  Agent Kelly was on guard out in the hall. “Any news about Charlie?” I asked.

  “In surgery, last I heard, Sarge.”

  “How’s the kid doing?”

  “Still unconscious. He was a mess before he got burned. Meth head, bad skin, rotten teeth. He’ll be a zombie in a year.”

  “Did he talk at all?”

  “Nothing coherent. Between the painkillers they gave him for his burns, and the bat shit he’s been snorting, I doubt he knows what year this is.”

  “Did he say anything about the shooting?”

  “No, but I’ve spoken with the guys who searched the wreckage of the motor home. The only weapons they found were sawed-off shotguns plus a few handguns, strictly street quality. Mismatched calibers, none bigger than a nine.”

  “No long guns? Anything with a scope?”

  “Nah. Tanaka thinks these punks are downstate bangers, Sarge, learned to shoot by watching TV. They don’t aim, they pose. Probably couldn’t hit a barn from the inside.”

  “Somebody did,” I said. “Last question. Where’s your dog, Kelly?"

  She was down in the parking lot in one of the Humvees, patiently waiting for her next assignment. I gave her some water from the Hummer’s canteen, then sat beside her, stroking her great, scarred head as I tried to sort everything out, the raid, the dog, Charlie’s shooting, and the Staties’ focus on vets.

  Hell, maybe they were right. Maybe we all do come home a little crazy. Trying to make sense out of the ’Stan could definitely send you around the bend.

  Maybe they should lace our Alpo with arsenic like they’d do to this lady—Damn.

  That’s exactly what would happen if they found out she was here. Kelly’s brother would get jammed up over it, and Kelly too. And the Belgian would definitely be put down. Poisoned, or just shot in the head. And thank you for your service, ma’am.

  To hell with this. I’d lost enough friends for one day.

  Firing up the Humvee, I headed south out of Valhalla, into the Black River hills, eighty thousand acres of rough country, an area bigger than most nations in the UN. It was a good fifty-minute run, and I needed four-wheel drive to make the last ten miles after the gravel road I was following petered out to a dirt track.

  The old farmhouse sat atop a long rise, with a magnificent view of the rolling forest on all sides. From the front porch, Fifi Dumont can watch the morning sun rise, and then see it set again at the end of the day. He can also see anyone approaching a good half hour before they pull into his yard.

  He was waiting for me on his porch, a grizzled beer barrel of a woodsman in a checked flannel shirt, cork boots, and hard eyes. He had a long rifle on his lap, an old ’95 Marlin, I think. Used to be his dad’s.

  “Hey, Feef,” I said, climbing out of the Humvee. “Long time.”

  “Jax? What the hell, I thought you was the law.”

  “I am, bro, but I’m strictly local. Are you and your brothers still growing high grade weed out in the bush?”

  “Who’s askin’? My high school buddy or Five Oh?”

  “Your old bud. You’re not in my jurisdiction out here, anyway. Do you still fence in your grows?”

  “Some. Chain link keeps the deer off the reefer, but it don’t stop the meth heads. They cut their way in to rip us off now and again. Why?”

  “I brought a present for y
ou. Hond! Volg rechts!” The Belgian sprang out of the Humvee and immediately took up a position beside me. Eyeing Fifi hungrily. His eyes went wide as saucers.

  “What the hell is that?” he asked uneasily. “Cross-wolf?”

  “No,” I said. “She’s the answer to your prayers.”

  I explained exactly what the Belgian Malinois was, and that I’d brought her here because woodsmoke boys treat their dogs like family. He could turn her loose inside his enclosures, and she’d guard his crops with her life, running free in the forest while she did her duty. It wasn’t a perfect solution, but it was the best I could do.

  I gave him a list of commands in Dutch, the language she was trained in, and we practiced his pronunciation until the dog clearly understood him. And at the end of things, I asked for a favor in return.

  “You know Charlie Marx, right, Feef?”

  “I heard he got shot,” Fifi nodded. “It was on the radio. How is he?”

  “Bad. Maybe gone by now. Whoever capped him did it from seven hundred yards out. I’ve been away awhile, Feef. Who could make a shot like that?”

  “I could,” he shrugged. “You could. Hell, half the woodsmoke kids we grew up with could do it.”

  “But why? Charlie was at his thirty and out, almost done being a cop.”

  “I don’t know why it would happen now,” Fifi said. “Maybe years ago, but not no more.”

  “How do you mean?”

  “Back in the day, Marx had a rep for roughhouse. If he busted you for beating on your wife, or abusing a kid, you might trip and fall a few times on your way to jail. Or get your head slammed in a door.”

  “Charlie told me a bust went bad,” I said. “I need a name.”

  He chewed that over a minute, then shrugged. “Broussard,” he said. “Or maybe Guthrie.”

  “Who?” The names meant nothing to me.

  “There’s a junkyard out on 41, Guthrie’s Recycle?”

  I shook my head.

  “I think the Guthries moved up here around the time you left for the army, ten years ago or so. Bunch of ’em, rednecks from Alabama. Came up to Detroit to work in the auto plants years back, but when the shops closed, they moved up here, to the backwoods. Fit right in. Outside of town, the county’s pretty redneck.”

  “Woodsmoke,” I said, shaking my head.

  “What’s the difference?”

  “Not much,” I admitted. “Where does Charlie come in?”

  “One of the Guthrie girls, Janiva? Gets in a family way with Leon Broussard. Wasn’t married, but they’re livin’ together. But when Janiva gets knocked up, Leon starts knockin’ her around. About the third time Charlie gets called out to their place, he beats the livin’ hell out of Leon, kicked his drunk ass across his front yard like a dog, I heard.”

  “Sounds like he had it coming.”

  “Sure enough. But after Charlie leaves, Leon staggers into the house, grabs a shotgun, and paints the kitchen with his brains.”

  “Damn,” I said.

  “Yeah. Naturally, Janiva blames Charlie for it. It’s all his fault her drunken boyfriend offs himself, because he got his butt kicked. She’s blamin’ Charlie while she’s still wearin’ the shiner Leon give her.”

  “What happened?”

  “There was some kinda investigation, Charlie got suspended a week, that was it. But he definitely calmed down after that, didn’t go on the muscle so much.”

  “What about the ’Bama rednecks? How’d they take it?”

  “The Guthries? No problem, far as I know. Leon wasn’t family, just Janiva’s boyfriend, and a bad one at that. Left ’em a little something to remember him by. A kid, a boy. Never had no luck with him neither.”

  “Why?”

  “He passed away last week. Ten years old. Cancer. Heard his funeral cortege was a mile long. Damn shame.”

  “Funeral,” I echoed, remembering. “Flatbed truck in front, long line of pickups, a lot of rebel flags?”

  “That’s them Guthries. Do you know ’em?"

  “No, I just saw it pass,” I said. “From Charlie’s office.”

  I thanked Fifi for the info, warned him again about the lady Belgian, and headed back to town, still chewing over what he’d told me.

  Fifi was right. Whatever happened was over and done with way back when. No reason for it to crop up now, years later.

  And it wasn’t my problem, anyway. It was a State Police case, they’d warned me off, and the lines were clear. I’d been an army cop for most of a decade, I knew all about the lines you shouldn’t cross.

  But Charlie Marx had crossed a line for me once, and maybe saved my life. If I’d taken a fall for grand theft auto at fourteen, God knows where I’d be now.

  Maybe dead. Or doing hard time. Not much difference to a backwoods kid.

  I knew I should hand over Fifi’s information to the Staties, but I decided to check it out first. At this point, it was only hearsay anyway. An old story told by an old friend. Probably nothing to it.

  I headed back to the station, but didn’t bother to check in. I parked on the street out front instead, waited for a break in traffic, then walked out to the centerline and stood there, looking up. Cars were whipping past on both sides, horns blaring, drivers yelling stuff about my mother.

  But it was worth it. Because there was nothing to see.

  Looking up from the street, I was standing roughly where I’d seen the flatbed pass with its flags and small coffin. At the time, I thought the old man on the truck was staring up at me, even adjusted the blinds to get a better look at him.

  But from down here, with the building in sunlight? I couldn’t see squat. The windows were completely opaque in the reflected light. So the old guy hadn’t been staring at me at all. From here, all he could see would be the blind windows of Charlie’s office.

  And when Charlie said that crossing the line can end up in a funeral, he didn’t mean just any funeral. He meant this one. The boy’s. Which made no sense at all. Because Charlie’d quit muscling suspects years ago. And the sod on this kid’s grave probably hadn’t taken root yet.

  Whatever happened between Charlie and the kid’s drunken, wife-beating father went down before the boy was born. Why would it crop up again after all this time?

  A horn blared behind me, a garbage truck this time. I crossed the street to the station, but didn’t get past the front desk. The duty sergeant had two messages for me, one from Tanaka. Charlie was gone. Never regained consciousness.

  It wasn’t a surprise. Hell, I’d known from the moment I saw the wound. But it still drilled me like a kick in the belly. Which did surprise me. I’ve lost friends in combat, once saw a best bud get blown in half. I hadn’t seen Charlie Marx in years, we weren’t really friends, but he’d had a huge impact on my life. Far more than I’d realized until this day.

  The second message was from my boss, Chief Kazmarek. The two Staties had more questions for me. I wadded up that message in my fist, tossed it in the trash.

  “Damn shame about Charlie,” the desk sergeant said. “Only a week from his thirty and out, you know? Crazy.”

  “It is,” I agreed. “And you didn’t see me, okay?”

  He frowned at that, but only for a moment. “See who?” he asked.

  Route 41 leads northwest out of Valhalla, past the hardboard plant and used car lots, definitely the seedier side of town. Guthrie’s Auto Salvage was a sprawling junkyard set back from the main road, acres of rusty cars half-hidden behind a galvanized metal fence. Compared to the ’Stan, the yard looked prosperous. They call it vehicle recycling nowadays. Late model wrecks are worth more for parts than the cars cost new. I guessed this yard held two to three thousand units on a hundred acres. Probably worth a million or more. Wrecks they might be, but junk they ain’t.

  A few cars were parked in front, with a row of rusty wreckers off to one side. The flatbed truck from the funeral was on the far end, still flying its flags, American and rebel. The only thing missing was the bier. And the small
casket.

  The office/showroom was built like a fortress, concrete block walls, windows narrow as gun slits, a muddy, rutted driveway that stopped at the front door, the end of the line in more ways than one.

  Inside, the lighting was dim, overhead fluorescents winking and buzzing. The room was filled with long rows of shelving units piled high with car parts, some rusty, some new, still gleaming with lube. The air was rank with the stench of burned metal and motor oil. A long counter ran the width of the building at the back of the room. A young guy in greasy coveralls was behind it, Latin from the look of him. Jumpy as a cricket on a griddle.

  I headed for the counterman, but veered off when something caught my eye. A rifle rack was bolted to the back wall beside a door that opened out to the yard. The rack held a half dozen long guns, most with scopes. A security chain ran through the weapons’ trigger guards, but its padlock was unclasped and the last slot in the rack was empty. A framed display hung beside the rack, and as soon as I saw it, I knew.

  It held a long row of medals for expert marksmanship, plus red and yellow combat medals from Vietnam.

  The guns in the rack were a serious collection of military sniper rigs. The oldest was a .30-40 Krag that dated from Teddy Roosevelt’s charge up San Juan Hill, 1898. Then a ’03 Springfield from the War to End All Wars, and a scoped Garand and an M14 from the wars after that. If the logic of the collection held, the missing weapon would be the most modern, a Winchester Model 70 from Vietnam, or maybe an M16. It didn’t matter which. Either way, with only my sidearm, I was totally outgunned.

  I turned to ask the counterman about the missing weapon, but he’d vanished. I was on my own.

  I knew I should call for backup, it was a State Police case now, but I didn’t. I wasn’t here as Sgt. Jax LaDart, the FNG. I was the kid Charlie Marx stood up for all those years ago.

  And however this went down, it wasn’t police business anymore. It was personal. I thought about taking one of the rifles in the rack, but the magazines were empty and I didn’t see any ammo at hand. I left them.