The Best American Mystery Stories 2020

by C. J. Box

  She heated more water for when Tristan would need his bandages changed, and prepared bean paste for them both. Once she was done, there was little left to do but wait.

  His small black pistol lay in the bundle of his cast-off uniform. Ariya licked her lips. Tristan would surely hit her or even kill her if he saw her touch it; but he was still deep asleep. Quietly she knelt and picked it up. Her father had showed her how to use his old rifle when she was six; carefully she opened the action just to be safe, and nearly dropped the pistol in shock.

  The chamber was empty. The magazine was empty too. Tristan had pointed an unloaded weapon at her, before. Ariya felt the blood drain from her face. How can he shoot Imran without bullets?

  * * *

  “Your gun is empty.” She said it accusingly, unable to stop herself.

  Tristan shrugged. He had slept through the night, waking at dawn and hobbling to the latrine with muttered curses. Now he was lying back on the cushions, eating slowly. “I used my bullets in the fight. I did not have many. We did not want to be seen, so no rifles, no more magazines.”

  Ariya slammed down her metal plate, her ice-blue eyes flashing. “But what about Imran? You said you would kill him! And now he’s going to kill you and me both!”

  She felt her eyes sting. Grimacing, she wiped her eyes, then stared openmouthed at the tears dampening her fingers. It was the first time she had cried since Zahra had been strangled, more than a year ago. Suddenly she was sobbing, her thin body shuddering; ashamed, she tried to stifle her cries, but they only became louder. She rose to flee to the bedroom.

  “Ariya.”

  He said it firmly, as a command, in a hard voice that compelled obedience. She froze. He reached up, wincing in pain, and shockingly took her hand and pulled her back to a seated position. His hand was rough and callused, and she could feel its strength. He stared at her until satisfied that she would stay, then let go. She pulled her hand back toward her chest, sniffling.

  “What is the most powerful weapon, Ariya?” he said, still in that hard voice. “Not a gun. What?” She hiccupped and shook her head. He pointed at his temple. “It is this. And this,” and he pointed at her head. “A gun is just one tool. If I want to, I can fight with many tools. But I have to want to, to know it in my head. In your head too.”

  She shook her head again, suddenly terrified, and he leaned forward. “Yes, Ariya. You too. My wounds hurt; what if I’m—” He paused, then said in English something like enfektid. “What if I’m sick? What if your husband kills me? What are you going to do? Lie down and die?”

  Why am I so scared? Shame slithered deep into her belly. Isn’t this what I’ve been hoping for? Haven’t I spent three years hoping for a way to kill Imran? Or was that all just an act? She firmed her jaw. No. I am not a coward!

  Tristan saw the change in her face and nodded. “Okay. Now see, there are many weapons in this house. Knives. Wooden poles. Even your pots and pans. It is not easy; if your husband has a gun, you will have to hit him from behind. But you finish the mission, Ariya. You always finish the mission, always. There is always something more to do, some other way to fight. Because you have no choice, Ariya. We win or we die.”

  Ariya breathed heavily. After an eternity, she rose and retrieved the carving knife from the cramped kitchen. Her hand trembled on the hilt. Could I really have killed him myself, all this time? In a small voice she said, “Teach me how to use this.”

  * * *

  It was Wednesday evening. Tristan was getting stronger, but his wounds had acquired an angry red color around the edges and were hot to the touch. Ariya cleaned them again and again, until the pile of bloody cloths was nearly a foot high, but it seemed not to help. The American did not complain, but she could see in his eyes that he was worried. Sipping cool water carefully, still lying on the floor, he said in his rough Kurmanji, “We have to take an auto and go, while I can still drive.”

  “How?” Ariya turned up her hands. “You can’t walk very far, and we have no good way to steal someone else’s car without being caught. It has to be Imran’s Jeep.”

  Tristan grimaced. “Then your husband needs to come soon.”

  “Stop calling him my husband!” Ariya flared up suddenly. “He’s a murdering kidnapping pimp! He may have taken me into his bed, but he is not my husband! ”

  “You called him that first,” Tristan said, and raised an eyebrow.

  She flushed and looked down. “Well, I shouldn’t have.” The words echoed in her mind and she repeated more softly, “I shouldn’t have.”

  The American gazed at her, then smiled approvingly. “Good.”

  That afternoon when he tried standing up, his injured leg buckled beneath him and he pitched forward onto his face. Ariya cried out; Tristan grunted and forced himself to his knees but could not stand again. His face was sweaty and red. Ariya brought over his cushions and a blanket and gave him food and water, a queasy knot forming in her stomach. He’s very sick. There’s no way he can beat Imran like this. He might lose consciousness before Imran even gets back. A sudden thought chilled her. What if Imran doesn’t come back? What if he’s been killed or wounded in combat? That means no Jeep. Maybe I can find another way to escape, but it won’t be soon enough to save Tristan. He needs to get back to the Peshmerga soon, or he’ll die. Melek Tawuse, help us now!

  Melek Tawuse apparently had a dark sense of humor. The low, heavy growl of Imran’s Jeep suddenly reached her ears, along with the crunch of tires on gravel in front of the house. Ariya’s pulse hammered in her ears. He’s early! She looked around the house wildly, seeing the pile of bandages against the wall, the discarded plates scattered over the floor, the pot of saltwater boiling on the stove—​and most of all the groaning American stretched out in the middle of the floor.

  Her wits frenzied, she grabbed a large white bloodstained sheet and threw it over Tristan, covering his whole body. “Lie still,” she hissed. “Quiet.” The sheet sank to the floor, contouring itself to his body. It was still obviously a person under the sheet, but maybe it was a dead person and hence not a threat. Not something Imran would expect, anyway.

  Footsteps came up to the door, and the lock rattled. “Wife!” Imran called. “I’m back!” He sounded surly; perhaps the battle had gone against Daesh. Ariya’s chest seemed to freeze. Panting, she snatched up the carving knife with one hand and a heavy ceramic jar with the other and ran soundlessly behind the bedroom doorway.

  The front door swung open. “Wife!” Imran called again, striding into the house, his shoulders slumped with weariness, his camouflaged robe stained with sweat and mud. Then his eyes registered the sheet-covered body, and he stopped dead. “Wha—” He stiffened and lifted his AK-47. Without looking away from Tristan’s body, he called again, “Wife!” Ariya said nothing, vomit rising in the back of her throat, her hands sweaty. Her heart was beating so fast, it felt as though it would burst.

  Imran took a careful step closer to Tristan, his rifle trained on the center of the American’s body. God, let him stay still! Ariya thought. Imran took another step. Then Ariya leapt around the door frame and hurled the jar with all of her strength, right at Imran’s head.

  He never saw it coming. The jar smashed against his skull and he staggered like a drunk, the rifle dropping to the floor. Letting out a shriek as if the spirits of her murdered parents had returned for vengeance, Ariya charged across the room with the knife clenched in her hand.

  The best way is to stab hard, Tristan had told her. Like you’re punching him with all of your strength. Not just once, but do it again and again and again until he dies. He had made her drill with a wooden spoon, stabbing the wall for twenty minutes straight until her arm ached and her fingers chafed. Only then was he satisfied. Your instinct is not to hurt, he said. Good people have to learn to hurt, or bad people will win.

  She slammed the knife into Imran’s side, below the ribs. It went in at a shallow angle but still sank deep into his flesh. She yanked it out and stabbed him aga
in, this time more solidly in the belly as Imran turned to face her. His expression was rapidly turning from shock to fury. “Putain de merde,” he growled. She tried to stab him again, and he slammed his fist into her jaw. Her eyes went blurry, her knees buckled; the knife went spinning aside in a spatter of blood.

  Seemingly not even noticing the wounds in his stomach, Imran wrapped both hands around Ariya’s throat and smashed her slim body back against the hot stove. She couldn’t breathe; her throat was being crushed. Pain throbbed through her jaw; the fire’s heat beat against her back. Wildly she scrabbled at Imran’s snarling face, at his inexorable hands around her neck, but it made no difference. Black flecks filled her vision. The world went dim.

  Stop. Calm down. You only have enough air to do one more thing, so make it count. And then, in Tristan’s steady voice, came another thought: Finish the mission.

  She allowed herself to relax and let her hands drop away from Imran’s. A feral grin spread across his face. He leaned forward, resting his full weight against her body.

  And then he screamed. Ariya had grabbed the pot of boiling saltwater from the stove and flung the water into his face and eyes. Moaning, Imran reflexively let go and stumbled backward. Ariya took in a shallow breath and coughed horribly, but her vision was already sharpening and she did not hesitate. She swung the pot like an ax, bashing it against his head with all of her strength. Then she did it again. And again.

  She didn’t stop until Imran’s body had stopped twitching and the pot was dented and bent, its bottom spattered with blood.

  She stood there for a long moment, her chest heaving, gulping sweet air down her burning throat. Then she knelt next to the bloody corpse of her former captor. Ignoring the blood and the unsettling feel of his too-still flesh, Ariya rifled through his pockets until she found his key ring.

  She loaded the car with food and tools and Imran’s weapons. Tristan was lucid enough to drive, barely, and they left the village under cover of darkness with the headlights off. Once they were ten minutes away, Tristan brought the Jeep to a stop. He was too weak to continue; instead, he coached Ariya through her first hour of ever driving a car and told her to keep driving until she saw Peshmerga, before passing out. She drove gingerly, her head barely making it over the dashboard, keeping the speedometer below 30 kilometers per hour and being careful to stay on the road.

  I don’t know what my life will be like tomorrow, she thought. It could even be worse than before. But I don’t care anymore. I’m done letting things happen to me. My life is my own.

  But not just her life. In the passenger seat, Tristan was breathing shallowly; he desperately needed the medical care he could only get in Kurdish territory. His life depended on her now. The thought actually made Ariya smile. She was no longer helpless; she mattered. Perhaps I will save more people tomorrow.

  The Jeep drove on through the darkness. Dawn would come soon.

  RICK MCMAHAN

  Baddest Outlaws

  FROM After Midnight

  The Creeches of Clement County were the baddest outlaws I’ve ever known. That’s a pretty big accomplishment when you look at that statement in the larger scheme of things. Many Kentucky counties are known for being rough, with some having whole communities damn near lawless. Even folks outside the state have heard of Harlan County. The region’s reputation started way back during the blood spilled during the feuds between the Hatfields and McCoys, but it was the Depression-era coal wars that cemented Bloody Harlan’s violent name.

  People in the know, the crooks and cops who truly know the underbelly of the commonwealth, might say the Cornbread Mafia had the roughest criminals. They would have a point. After all, Johnny Boone’s crew all came from Marion County, and that county has a long outlaw history. Back during Prohibition, it’s said, Al Capone himself traveled to Marion County to make deals for alcohol to feed his Chicago-based speakeasies. Moonshine and running outside the law, some would say, runs deep in the DNA of Marion County. Decades later, Johnny Boone turned that outlaw way from moonshining to growing and selling marijuana on a large scale. The Cornbread Mafia had a reputation for protecting their own, demanding fierce loyalty. It was said that those who went against the Cornbread Mafia or talked to the law were met with swift, violent retribution. To this day the Cornbread Mafia is the boogeyman to would-be informants. You snitch and the Cornbread Mafia will kill you. They’ll nail your house shut with you inside before they torch the place. They’ll grab you and put you in a dark hole. Even though the feds arrested most of the Cornbread Mafia members, not a one turned state’s evidence and testified. Not one. So there must be something to the loyalty and fearsomeness of the Cornbread Mafia.

  Still, my money is on the Creeches. And I think if you listen to what I’m about to tell you, you too will agree that the Creeches of Clement County are the baddest outlaws in the whole Commonwealth of Kentucky.

  * * *

  I was sent to Clement County fresh out of the Kentucky State Police academy. This was the time before cell phones and social media and instant communication. CDs were the rage, but many folks still had cassette players in their cars or on their home stereos, and DVDs were slowly winning the battle with VHS tapes. As a rookie trooper, I was destined for the midnight shift. Clement County is one of the commonwealth’s biggest counties in terms of land, but not so much of people. We rode shotgun with old dog road troopers, learning the hollers and back roads of the county. At the same time those troopers eyed us to see if we were going to measure up to the standards of the thin gray line. They wanted to see if we had the mettle to be the only law in the county at 3 a.m. when we stopped a car alone.

  First time I had a Creech sighting I’d been wearing my badge all of two weeks. I was on day shift partnered with Shawn Morman, a grizzled bear of a trooper whose presence took up most of the front seat of a Ford Crown Victoria. He was a large, imposing man who smoked cheap cigars and could wither you with just a look. He had been a Kentucky state trooper longer than I had been alive. We were driving along when he stabbed his two fingers holding his cigar at the windshield and declared, “That’s the most dangerous man in Clement County.”

  I looked where he was pointing. There was a single car parked in front of the gas pumps at the Texaco, but no gas was getting pumped. The only person in sight was a guy leaning against the front fender of a long Caddy in a tough-guy pose. Arms crossed. Hard stare.

  “Londell Creech,” Shawn said. “King outlaw of the Creeches.” Shawn eased his foot onto the brake of the Crown Vic, and we eased in front of the gas station. Morman rolled his window down.

  “Lonnie,” he called out.

  The man leaning against the fender never broke eye contact with Morman as he pulled a pack of Camels from inside his leather jacket and shook one out. Firing up his smoke, he gave a curt nod of his head. Creech wore a fancy dress shirt underneath his jacket, a large collar folded over the lapels. He had on khakis and brown ankle boots that zipped up one side. I saw the boot only because his foot was wedged against the shiny front hubcap. His shoulders barely cleared the side-view mirror.

  “Mister Graybelly,” Londell Creech said as introduction. He took a long drag on his cigarette. He and Morman blew out tendrils of smoke almost in unison.

  “How’s that Brahma bull of yours doing?”

  “Blue’s dead,” Londell said nonchalantly.

  “Blue?” Morman asked, perplexed.

  “Yeah, Blue,” Londell explained. “Like Paul Bunyan’s bull.”

  “Ah, I see,” Morman said. “How’d he die?”

  “Too damn stupid to live,” Londell said. “One time he got to chasing me in the field next to the house. He was serious, so I had to show him I was more serious. Hit him in the head with a hammer to get him to stop.” He shook his head. “Was never right after that.” He let out a fog of smoke. “We made the best of a bad situation. Barbecued old Blue for the family reunion.”

  After a polite pause to mourn Blue’s passing, Morman said, “I
heard Hobart came home.”

  “Yeah,” Creech said, drawing the words out. “Them big cities weren’t for him. Mountain’s in his blood.”

  Morman nodded, then patted his hand on the side of the cruiser. “My partner and I have to move along. Gotta keep the county safe, so you stay out of trouble now, Lonnie.”

  “Wouldn’t think of it, Mister Graybelly,” Creech said as we pulled away.

  As Shawn rolled up his window, he mumbled, “Paul Bunyan, my ass. I don’t think Lonnie can read.” The Crown Vic picked up speed as we pulled away. Morman gave me a sly smile as he said, “He hates being called Lonnie.”

  I was thinking I was being played. I already suspected that Master Trooper Shawn Morman was the one who had sent me on a run up a lonesome mountain road to locate Mr. Squatch, whose car was broke down. When I called back for a first name, I was told Sas. “That guy is the king of the roughest outlaws in Clement County?” My disbelief was obvious in my tone.

  Shawn threw me a sideways withering glance that cut me off. He clamped his cigar in his mouth, chewed on it a minute. Finally he said, “I’m hungry. Let’s get lunch.”

  Slinging the wheel with his hand, he spun the cruiser around and headed back into town.

  There weren’t too many fine-dining options in Clement County, so when Shawn turned the car around I knew where we were going. Poppa’s place. There was a sign out front that simply said POPPA’S. A few years later, when the rock band Papa Roach made it big, since the old man’s last name was the same, though spelled differently, Poppa put up a new sign. POPPA ROCHE’S PLACE. I heard the band made a special trip to visit the store when they came through Kentucky.