The Best Mystery Stories of the Year 2021

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

  “Ah,” the major breathed knowingly. “Ah. The shores of Lake Huron.”

  “Yes,” Hank said.

  The wistfulness, the fondness in the major’s voice told Hank of the major’s intimate knowledge of the region and brought to Hank a painful sense of loss. He might never see the big lake again. Never again see that high blue sky with circling gulls, see the towering white pines, and hear the quiet lapping of waves softly surging up a sandy beach. A gust of dry desert wind came through an open window and brushed his face with the faint scent of death.

  The major put his hand gently on Hank’s shoulder: “Son,” he said, “no matter where your travels take you from here—become an astronaut and fly to the moon—you’ll never be any further away from home than you are right now.”

  “Hank?” Carmen queried. “Anybody home?”

  “Sorry,” Hank said, then quickly, “There’s some around Campbell the same age, same look, but I don’t think I’ve ever seen her. Was she wearing a black leather jacket, high waisted and tight, lots of bangles on it? You know, those shiny trinket-things like on bracelets.”

  “Charms,” Carmen said, looking at Hank appraisingly. “Yeah, she was.”

  “Well, she’s in sort of a club, then, not really a gang, I don’t think, just a bunch of young girlfriends dressing alike. It’s worth checking out. I’d start at Tubby’s about ten. From what I’ve seen, there’s at least five or six of ’em. I’d bet nobody over twenty.”

  “Okay, good,” Carmen said. “Good. I can use that. Thanks for stopping by.”

  As they left, Carmen motioned for Hank to wait up. “Go ahead,” Hank said to Joey and went back to Carmen.

  “So that’s Joey Sheridan,” Carmen said. “I heard about him. If you bring ’em to the morgue again he’ll need therapy.”

  Hank laughed. “You think it’s that bad?”

  “You know there’s a pool on him?”

  “Pool for what?”

  “For what he’ll do if there’s real trouble. Melt. Freeze. Puke. Be okay. Lot of guys think he should have stayed in PR, that he’s not cut out for the street.”

  “Yeah? Where’s the smart money?”

  “You kiddin’? Where do you think? Anyway, I figure if anything happens you’ll handle it because you always handle it.”

  “Like I’ll have a choice,” Hank said.

  “I was sorry to hear about Frankie. How long were you guys together?”

  “Six years.”

  Frankie Cohen passed a physical, then two weeks later had a heart attack. He went from cholesterol being a little high to the cardiologist saying he should think about early retirement to dying at forty-one while reeling in a northern pike. He was a good partner and a good friend to Hank. They took turns watching each other’s back. Their relationship had a comfortable rhythm to it.

  “Well, I don’t think this Joey is going to fill his shoes,” Carmen said. “I don’t think he understands that we don’t always help little old ladies cross the street. Sometimes we have to put her down with an arm bar because she’s high on crack and trying to kill her two-year-old grandson. Rose-colored glasses. A sweet man headed for a fall. Better get Butch to transfer him back to PR.”

  “Got a meeting with him first thing in the morning,” Hank said.

  Hank shifted uncomfortably in his chair. He was six foot three and stocky and easily overwhelmed the standard office chair. He had something to say to Assistant Chief Butch Johnson about Joey Sheridan, and he really didn’t want to.

  If you could draw a soldier—square shoulders, square jaw, determined bearing, sandy hair cut shorter on the sides—that soldier would look like Hank Sawyer. Butch Johnson was a darker, shorter, denser version.

  A dark green Marine, Butch was the informal leader of the informal Marine Corps Mafia within the South Bend PD; all the ex-Marines who never really considered themselves “ex.” Mostly veterans of Afghanistan and Iraq, they were a close-knit group who hung together and helped each other out. Butch was a busy man. Hank was sure he would consider his concern petty. He hoped he would be wrong.

  Among themselves, the Marine Corps Mafia expressed serious doubt about Joey Sheridan. Like Hank, this group of veterans had seen plenty of combat. Yes, it was war, but killing is killing. And if the moment ever came, they weren’t sure Joey Sheridan would be up to the task. And none of them wanted to partner with him, including Hank.

  “Okay, let’s have it,” Butch said, recognizing Hank’s reluctance to speak.

  “I’m not comfortable with the guy.”

  “What guy?”

  “Joey Sheridan.”

  Butch groaned. “Oh, here we go. Takes a good reason to mess around with assignments, Hank, you know that.”

  “I don’t want to work with him.”

  “Why?”

  “Instinct.”

  “Oh, well, no problem, there’s a reason that will breeze right on through. Joey’s okay, Hank. He’s been through the same in-depth interviews and foolproof psych evals that we all have.” They both laughed. “Look, this is not a small thing. It’s going to irritate people for no apparent reason.”

  “No apparent reason? You heard about the pool?”

  “That’s a bunch of crap,” Butch snapped. “Stupid waste of time.”

  Hank brought intensity, focus, and seriousness of purpose to any job of work. This Joey thing was a job of work to Hank, because otherwise he wouldn’t even have brought it up, and Butch knew he wasn’t going to let it go.

  “I can’t mess with assignments on your personal whim. You kidding me? You want me to give you a choice of air fresheners for your prowler while I’m at it? You like Cinnamon Spice or Wildflowers?”

  “It’s not a whim,” Hank said flatly. “I’ve learned the hard way not to ignore my gut. I trust my own antenna in some situations, and this is one. I don’t want to be a pain in the ass but this guy’s trouble. Unreliable. So I’m askin’.”

  “Let me guess,” Butch said. “Because he comes from PR?” He snorted. “You’re worried about being with Joey in a shaky situation? Well, welcome to the world, pal. Nobody’s reliable until they’ve proved it, and you know it. Nothing counts except the real deal and you can’t simulate that.”

  Hank didn’t know how to push Butch and, anyway, he didn’t want to be pushy so he just sat staring into space.

  “Give me something,” Butch said.

  Hank was silent.

  “That’s what I thought,” Butch said.

  As he was talking, Butch caught a glimpse of the small, egg-shaped traumatic tattoo on the left side of Hank’s chin. It came and went depending on the angle of the light, a whimsical patch of blue or gray or black. Butch remembered it as a larger area of harsh granular red when Hank first came on board. He was still having trouble with it then. Particles of sand, glass, metal, asphalt—anything the shotgun-blast force of the IED had picked up along the way—were embedded there. Aggressive scrubbing under sedation coupled with surgical, enzymatic, and mechanical debridement had got the worst of it out. But microscopic specks of Iraq were still in there, glacially working their way up through the flesh, trying to get out. All scars were like that.

  “He’s ex–Air Force,” Butch offered.

  Hank frowned. “Death from Above. Not exactly a recommendation for our kind of work.”

  “He’s won the pistol competition twice.”

  “Targets don’t bleed.” Finally Hank said, “Okay, okay, you’ve got nothing solid to work with. But his reaction to that dead teen in the morgue worries me. It was the way he talked about her. Like she was his sister or something. Carmen said ‘rose-colored glasses.’ ”

  “So he failed your and Carmen’s half-assed tough-guy test,” Butch said. “Big deal. . . . Well, look, best I can do is switch you out in maybe a month or two. Something will open up. Always does. Don’t bitch to anybody, just suck it up and keep your mouth shut. Won’t do a damn bit of good to have Joey and the others know you think he’s shaky. And if you ask m
e, it’s kind of sad that we’re talking about somebody maybe bein’ a bad cop because he might be too nice.

  “I’ll move you in a way that won’t reflect on you or Joey or me. Might look a little strange, but no one will care. To the degree that it’s possible, I’ll try to keep you out of hot zones.”

  “I don’t expect you to do that, Butch.”

  “With your track record, if you trust your gut, maybe I should too.”

  On a cloudy Monday afternoon Hank Sawyer and Joey Sheridan were headed for the bad side of South Bend. Hank was quiet. He knew Joey could feel his reticence, but Joey was content with small talk and fiddling with time-wasters on his phone.

  They were going to talk to Sally Sanchez, the sixty-five-year-old mother of Mitch Sanchez, a two-time loser who had a habit of seeking refuge at home, refuge his mom was known to provide in the past. Mitch had finally hit the big time: He was suspected of a homicide during an armed robbery. It was a SOP discussion that Hank knew would be futile. He had talked to Sally before.

  They turned into a sinking section of town with mixed light industry and low-income homes. All the homes in this neighborhood were bowed and bent and fading, the ranches sitting on slab foundations like they were intended for car habitation rather than human.

  Hank pulled the prowler into the gravel driveway of a typically nondescript gray ranch. He and Joey stood under a ripped green-and-white-striped canvas awning that looked like it was ready to go with the next good blow. Hank pushed the doorbell, but nothing happened. He knocked.

  “Door’s open,” came a gravelly female voice.

  She was sitting at the kitchen table in dull afternoon light wearing a light blue threadbare cotton robe, a cup of coffee before her and a Marlboro dangling from the corner of her mouth. Her hair was dried-out salt-and-pepper. She glanced up at Hank. A small smile. “You again,” she said, a lungful of smoke coming out in a stream.

  “You remember,” Hank said. “I’m touched. Here for the same reason too.”

  “I haven’t seen Mitch. Hasn’t called, hasn’t been around.”

  “You said that last time and we picked him up in front of your house.”

  “He comes and goes,” she said. “He’s a grown man. Last time you put him in the hospital.”

  “Wasn’t my idea. He came at me.” The tats-on-tats gangbanger with God knows what chemicals coursing through his bloodstream had decked Hank with a sucker punch. But Hank got up and Mitch found out why his sucker punch wasn’t enough.

  “Mitch isn’t so easy to put in the hospital.”

  Hank shrugged. “That’s a fact, but I figured better him than me. . . . Listen, Sally, it’s different this time. Worse. Armed robbery. Somebody got hurt. Believe me, you don’t want a SWAT team rolling in here on a tip. He needs to give himself up or you need to tell me where he is. The only way these things don’t end badly is if someone helps us out.”

  She nodded. “I know. I know that’s true. But it can’t be me. He trusts me. And anyway, it’s Mitch, so it’s gonna end badly no matter what.” She looked over at Joey. Looked him over, up and down. Studied him.

  “Me and Officer Sawyer are having a talk, sonny,” she said. “Why don’t you go out in the other room with loverboy and watch the game.”

  Joey looked at Hank. Hank nodded. “I got this,” he said. Joey went into the living room.

  Sally sipped her coffee. “What is it,” she asked, “take your kid to work day?”

  Hank laughed. “He’s new on the job,” he said.

  “He’s a sweetheart,” she said. “Mitch would eat him alive.”

  “Joey’s won our pistol competition twice and he was in the Air Force,” Hank said.

  Sally smiled hugely. “Right,” she said.

  “May I?” Hank asked and Sally nodded. He poured himself some coffee and sat down with Sally in her worn robe, her cigarette, her chipped white cup. Traces of the smooth, forgotten contours of youth were still visible in her weathered face. He could imagine her young, pretty, laughing. Full of promise. And she had been once. He used to be brusque with older women, never had time for them. He wasn’t like that anymore. Sally Sanchez reminded him of the moms and grandmothers he’d sat with in Iraq, on the floor, trying to gather information, get support, or give them advice, like get the hell out of here before you and your kids get shot or blown up. But they had nowhere to go. They had seen the sprawling squalor of refugee camps that stretched to the horizon. And Sally didn’t have anywhere to go either. She was stuck with her chipped white cup and a son gone bad. It seemed to Hank that sons gone bad were a staple of female existence regardless of oceans or religions or race. “You were alone last time I was here,” Hank said. “Congratulations.”

  Sally tossed her head toward the living room. “Right. My loverboy,” she said in disdain. “I thought I’d found my soulmate. That’s all I been lookin’ for, really. Someone to be with me. Love him, you know.” She gazed at the white cup. “But he drinks. And when he drinks, he’s different. Mean. Ever know anyone like that?”

  “Lots.” Hank said. “It’s half my work and half my family.”

  “Yes, I thought I’d found my soulmate,” she went on. “God, we got along so great.” There was a lost passion beneath that aging smoker’s skin. A tiny pink bow held her thinning ponytail in place. Hank thought she must have been really something when she was eighteen.

  “I get so angry, I mean, really, he told me, ‘It’s me and you baby, all the way.’ And I believed him. Then he turns out to be mean.”

  “How long have you known him?”

  “Three or four months, I guess.”

  “So is he roughing you up? I can have a talk with him.”

  She turned furious eyes on him, her voice rising, shrill. “He’s not rough with me. I never said that. Roy loves me.”

  “Oh, oh, sorry. I mean, you said he was mean when he drank. I just assumed . . .”

  “No, he isn’t mean that way. He watches TV.”

  “Watches TV.”

  “Yeah, he comes home from work, pours himself one big drink, plops down on the floor, and lays there watching TV. Every night. Like clockwork. He’ll sip that drink till bedtime. He watches whatever. Doesn’t matter. Movies. Wrestling. War. Scandals. Sometimes I call to him but he just stays there.”

  “Does he ever drink more than that?”

  “Naw. Oh, on Saturdays he might have two. Doesn’t drink on Sunday. Says the Lord doesn’t like it. Like the Lord gives a damn about having a drink. Sometimes he goes for hours without saying a word to me. And us fresh in love and all.” Her voice trailed off.

  “It’s natural for things to slow down,” Hank said gently. “I’m sure it’ll be okay, Sally.” He waved his card at her and laid it on the table. “Now listen, if Mitch shows up or contacts you, please call me. He’s in deep this time, but we can help him. He’s gonna have to do time, but he doesn’t have to take the fall for all of it. If you’re not careful, that SWAT team will show up, go cowboy, and Mitch will get hurt. It doesn’t have to be that way. Together we can keep him from getting hurt.”

  She smiled at him warmly, lighting another cigarette, and he smiled back, indicating without words that they both knew Mitch would come here, however briefly, and that she would not contact Hank under any circumstances. Pro forma visit over for both parties.

  From the kitchen Hank moved into the man cave television gloom. Joey was standing straight, restlessly chewing away at a toothpick, arms folded across his chest, wired and bored.

  “Who’s this?” Hank asked.

  “Tigers and Indians,” said loverboy Roy, a big man lying on the floor with his chin on a pillow and a small black cat comfortably curled in the small of his back. “Tigers have talent but only use it when it doesn’t matter,” he said. “They’re like Mitch.”

  Night was here and they were sitting in the worst car in the motor pool, a beat-up, slime green 2010 Honda Civic. It blended nicely with the neighborhood. The only new cars here were just p
assing through. Plus, they were likely going to sit here all night, so the fact that the Honda might look abandoned didn’t hurt. On blocks with no tires or sitting on flat tires, useless cars were as common as unmown lawns. Of the assignments on Butch’s sheet, this stakeout was the least likely to yield results and bring the kind of action that Hank was worried about.

  They had found a narrow empty lot between two small repair shops. Between the two buildings and from the back of the lot they would be in shadows and had an angled look at the dismal ranch of Sally Sanchez, enough to see the front and side doors.

  “You first or me?” Hank asked.

  “Go ahead, catch some Zs,” Joey said. “I haven’t done anything all day and I’m not tired.”

  “Talked me into it,” Hank said, sliding down in the seat. As he dozed off, he knew he wouldn’t dream about four-thousand-pound Humvees doing cartwheels through the air, although he’d seen that. He wouldn’t dream about buildings turned into hollow-eyed skeletons, although he’d seen plenty of those. He would dream about the Sunni family. His dream was an imagined prequel of something he hadn’t actually seen. Those about to be slaughtered were at dinner—chatting, happy, eating, safe—when hooded, shouting, shadowy figures burst into the room. Bullets were sprayed wildly and the noise was deafening. Family members toppled into the positions that he and the major had come upon. And through all the lethal chaos the matriarch with the sad dead face struggles to shield the children until she, too, is among the fallen.

  “Wow, you call that sleep? You were like a beagle dreaming about rabbits. Yippin’, legs jerkin’.”

  Joey handed the binoculars to Hank. “See that cat asleep in the window?” With the binos, a thin black shape at the base of the window turned out to be a black cat stretched out between the window and the stained, pearl-colored curtains, which were tightly closed.

  “Yeah.”

  “It’s not dead to the world. It’s dead period.”

  “And just how do you know that?”

  “We’ve been here almost three hours. Hasn’t budged.”