The Best American Mystery Stories 2017

by John Sandford

  The action had started, it wasn’t going the way we planned, and our only hope was to trust Jilly. She was the one in the ring under the lights. It was her call to make.

  And I had no idea what it would be.

  But subtlety ain’t Jilly’s style. She didn’t keep me waitin’.

  She was dancing in place, glaring up at the Russian all the way through the ring announcements. Ready for Freddie. Her opponent was big and battle-scarred from the cages, looked like she ate lions for lunch. Experienced and sure of herself, she glared back at Jilly with open contempt.

  An expression she didn’t wear for long.

  At the bell, Jilly came rocketing across the ring like a cruise missile, trapping the Russian coming out of her corner. Facing a much shorter fighter, Olga thought she could fend Jilly off, keep her at bay, out of reach.

  It was like trying to hold back a hurricane with a parasol. Jilly’s punches just kept raining in furiously from all directions, nonstop. And I felt my heart drop.

  Jilly was going all-in in the first minute, gambling everything on this round. It was an impossible pace to maintain. If her strategy failed, Jilly’d be totally burned out by the second—but it didn’t fail.

  Trying to duck away from the rain of punches, the Russian caught a right cross flush on the jaw. Rocked by the blow, she lunged desperately at Jilly, trying to wrap her up into a clinch.

  But she didn’t make it.

  Her arms closed on air as Jilly danced back a step, just out of reach. Then charged back in firing off a half-dozen straight shots that caught the Borg off-balance and out of position, driving the Russian to her knees.

  Waving Jilly to a neutral corner, the ref began his count: one . . . two . . .

  Before he could say three, Olga’s eyes rolled up and she toppled. Wrapping a protective arm around her, the ref took a quick look into the Borg’s vacant stare, then waved Jilly off, stopping the bout!

  The crowd exploded with cheers and applause, galvanized by the explosive action that ended with a first-round knockout. By a girl? Freaking amazing!

  Jilly was even more excited than the spectators, bouncing around the ring like a dervish, pumping her fists in the air, celebrating . . .

  Which was totally out of character. Irish Maguires don’t celebrate. We’re all business, all the time.

  But not this time.

  Jilly was over the moon!

  And then she was over the ropes.

  Scrambling up the ring post, she pumped her fists, saluting the fans, bringing the audience to its feet with a deafening roar. Then she leapt into the crowd!

  Dropping onto the ring apron, she launched herself into the ringside seats, catching Dukarski totally by surprise as he lurched to his feet.

  Slamming into Big Duke chest high, Jilly’s tackle carried him backward into the next tier, though I doubt Dukarski had any idea where he was at that point. She was hammering him the whole time, with the same furious barrage of punches that had demolished the Borg. Dukarski was lights-out before he hit the floor.

  Gamez was apparently smarter than he looked. Seeing his boss laid out on the deck, the gunsel immediately backed away from Jilly and the boys with his hands raised, then turned and fled up the aisle, running like a scalded dog.

  The place dissolved into pandemonium as security guards charged into the crush, trying to wrestle Jilly off Tony Duke. It took them a while. The fans fought for her, pushing them back, defending their new princess.

  But chaos at a fight isn’t unusual. Order was quickly being restored. And I was on next.

  Stepping back into my dressing room, I did a few quick pushups to get my heart pumping, then faced the mirror.

  It was definitely time to call for the ring doctor.

  But I didn’t.

  I started to dance instead. Tuning up, getting my mind right.

  Getting ready for Toro.

  Pops found me there a few minutes later, shadowboxing.

  “What the hell are you doing? Where’s the doc?”

  I just shook my head and kept on punching.

  “Dammit, Mick, you don’t have to do this! We’re off the hook now.”

  “It’s got nothing to do with the fix, Pops. However it goes, this is probably my last night. We both know that. Dukarski and Toro are poster boys for everything that’s wrong with this sport. Jilly took care of the one, now I’m going to settle with the other. I owe it to the game, and to that poor bastard they killed in Mexico.”

  “But—”

  “I owe it to myself, Pops! If it’s my last shot, I want to take it. There’s no time to argue about it. I’m going on. Get me ready.”

  And he did. When a gofer came to call us to the ring, he found the Irish Maguires throwing leather as hard and fast as we could, both of us grinning like feral dogs.

  I was halfway down the arena aisle when the ring announcer roared out my name. I got a huge ovation that had more to do with the show Jilly’d just put on than my own record.

  It didn’t matter. I wasn’t fighting for the crowd.

  I was here for the guy across the ring, dancing in his corner, his face hidden by his black silk cowl. My emerald-green trunks seemed boyish as the ref called us to the center.

  Neither of us heard a word he said. We both stood like stone statues, staring each other down. When the ref told us to touch ’em up, neither of us even offered. He asked again, then shook his head and sent us to our corners.

  Across the ring, Toro was snarling as he slammed his fists together. Pumping himself up, his eyes locked on mine. He knew the fix was off. Knew it the moment Jilly won her prelim. Knew I’d fight him now. Straight up.

  He didn’t care.

  Neither did I.

  Because Bobbie was right. In the end, it comes down to the fighters in the ring, matched fairly or mishandled, with the crowd screaming for blood.

  With my shoulder lamed up, I knew I had no real chance against Toro.

  Except the one.

  A puncher’s chance. The same chance Bobbie’s father took one time too many.

  The same chance we all get, every single day.

  We choose to keep punching or not. To speak up or keep silent, stand our ground or step off. To tell someone we care for them. Or not.

  And as long as you keep punching, one split second can change a fight. Change your luck.

  Change your life.

  Every fighter believes that.

  Because we have to.

  And because it’s the flat-ass truth.

  JIM ALLYN

  The Master of Negwegon

  FROM Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine

  “It is not a garment I cast off this day, but a skin that I tear with my own hands.”

  —Kahlil Gibran

  On this warm August morning Josh Zuckerman thought he was alone on the beach. He didn’t know he was being watched. He didn’t know he was being regarded by a set of eyes that considered him just another enemy in a country that contained nothing but, a country that Josh had never seen and never would see because he had less than ten minutes to live. He was going to live that last ten minutes on a pristine stretch of Lake Huron shoreline named after a long-dead Chippewa chief: Negwegon.

  Josh was thrilled to be away from his invalid mother. During the school year, a home-care nurse helped her in and out of her wheelchair, helped her with personal things, and did routine chores. In the summer, though, to save money, they dispensed with the nurse and Josh did the work. None of the summer jobs he could get would earn as much as the nurse cost. So Josh didn’t get the summer break most kids got. But right now he had a break and was scary happy. Scary because he knew the huge, lightly used wilderness park and its seven miles of undeveloped beach was protected, off-limits to four-wheelers. He’d snuck his Yamaha Raptor into the forests and fields of the park before and there he stayed well concealed, never daring the beach. That much was easy, because the park boundary was long and roadless and only two miles from the family farm on Black River
Road. But tearing around on the open beach—that was risky: just what he needed to shake the boredom of weeks of caring for a beloved cripple. He had successfully negotiated the broken trails without being spotted. Now the broad empty beach was all his, a perfect place to release the muscle of his Raptor, a gift on his fourteenth birthday.

  If he had been standing, he would have been taller than the cluster of young six-foot Scots pines in front of him. But he was crouching, peering through the green needles at the roaring four-wheeler doing figure eights in the desert sand. He wasn’t sure where he was. His best guess was about two miles from where the Euphrates emptied into Lake Huron. He watched as the giant beetle straightened, accelerated and soared over the top of a small dune, and splashed into the shallow waves. He couldn’t understand why nobody was shooting. The son of a bitch was running wild inside the perimeter. Frigging thing might be loaded with explosives. Why wasn’t anyone shooting? Skidding, spraying sand into the water, the fat treads of the Mud Wolf tires were ripping up a beach that had been unmolested for centuries.

  He couldn’t see who was driving. It didn’t matter. He was going to kill him. Carve a deep red smile into his throat and let the blood spray out over the hot sand. The desert sand of the Holy Land has an unquenchable thirst for human blood. Yes, he would kill him and throw his body in the alley with the rest of the corpses that had welcomed his unit this morning in Fallujah. The religious and ethnic factions were engaged in fratricidal butchering of biblical proportions. Bombings. Kidnappings. Murder, because it’s the only thing you know and the only job you can find. Home invasions. Drive-bys. Sunni against Shiite against Kurd against Christian, tribe against tribe, clan against clan, family against family. The only good thing about that was that when they were busy killing each other they weren’t busy trying to kill the infidel invaders. And now come the Internet-savvy, joyfully murderous thugs of the self-proclaimed Islamic state—ISIS. He’d seen their black uniforms and black flags in the Alpena News and on the tube. It was only a matter of time until the butchers showed up here.

  Josh Zuckerman didn’t see the lean, bearded, half-naked figure break from the pines like a jungle cat and sprint across the sand. He didn’t realize someone had jumped on his back until a strong hand grabbed his chin from behind and jerked his head back. The searing pain, the profound and final gagging, lasted ninety seconds. Like vanishing music, his strength and vision faded, his last image a lone magnificent cloud moving unhurriedly across an open blue sky.

  He shut off the engine. Now the sounds were as they should be. The gentle lapping of the waves, the screech of a gull, the wind trailing through the towering white pines. He dropped from the Raptor and jogged back into the forest. The beach was quiet again . . . and all his.

  A warm, breezy August night in northern Indiana. Joy Gunther and Hank Sawyer had opened all the bedroom windows of the old farmhouse that sat isolated about twenty miles south of South Bend. Hank was wrapped in Joy’s arms and legs with the wind dancing across his back. He had reached that wonderful state when the mind finally shuts down and all that’s left is warm, damp, exciting rhythm. That’s why Joy had to make a fist and pound him on the temple to get his attention, not exactly one of her usual playful moves. It hurt.

  “Hey, take it easy.”

  “I heard something. I think there’s someone at the door.”

  “If you knock me out I won’t be able to check on it.”

  She giggled. Together they became still, like someone had pulled the plug on a washing machine. Quiet, just the curtains rustling. Then Hank heard it too. A gentle rapping at the front door. He grabbed his snub-nosed Colt off the nightstand. Trouble usually doesn’t knock, but it was one a.m. and he was definitely a little dazed and confused, not to mention naked and aroused. With domestic violence a routine part of his work, he had noted the menacing glances the husband Joy was dumping had sent his way. Without turning on a light he tied Joy’s blouse around his waist and went out into the living room. He looked sideways out the bay window at the front door and saw a stocky white shape. He let his head clear for a moment. His heart was still beating fast. He called out through the screen.

  “Who is it?”

  “Hank, it’s Frenchie. Open up.”

  It’s funny how people you were close to in your youth remain familiar always. You bump into them after years have gone by and start talking to them like you’d seen them only yesterday. Hank hadn’t seen Frenchie Skiba in five years, but somehow it seemed perfectly natural that he was at his door in the middle of the night. He flicked on the porch light and opened the door. Frenchie Skiba stood there in a rumpled white baseball uniform with navy pinstripes. ALCONA WILDCATS was emblazoned on a patch on his left shoulder. A black Alcona County Sheriff ‘s Department prowler sat in the driveway. Hank smiled. Even with all the windows open wide, they hadn’t heard the prowler pull up. They wouldn’t have heard the space shuttle land either.

  “You here for the tryouts?”

  “You gonna shoot me or invite me in?”

  Hank glanced down at the Colt. “I’m on the fence.”

  Frenchie pushed by Hank. “You never could hit shit anyway.” From behind Hank got the smaller man in a friendly horse collar and gave him a big hug.

  “Jesus, if you’re gonna do that put some pants on.”

  Hank laughed and led him to the kitchen that Joy was restoring and sat him down in the breakfast nook. He put the gun on the counter. “My girl is separated, getting a divorce,” he said. “Thought you might be her husband dropping by to cast his vote.”

  “Husbands that knock you don’t have to worry about.”

  Hank went back into the bedroom. “It’s Frenchie Skiba,” he said as he put on baggy khaki cargo shorts and a white T-shirt. Joy had never met Frenchie but she knew him as the stocky, somber, heavy-bearded black man omnipresent in photos from Hank’s youth. In the pictures he looked short, but most people looked short standing next to Hank.

  “Why is he here at this ungodly hour?” she asked, rummaging around for something to throw on. “Some kind of emergency?”

  “Don’t know, but I expect so. He’s driving a prowler and wearing a Little League uniform. I’d say he hit the road in a hurry.”

  “He didn’t tell you anything?”

  “Not yet. Frenchie tells you things when he’s ready. Come out to the kitchen and we’ll talk.”

  She leaned into him. “This is just halftime, you know.”

  “Not a good analogy,” he said.

  “Why not?”

  “Because there’s no sport where both sides win. How about ‘intermission’?”

  “Mmmmm . . . I like your logic.” Together they went out to the kitchen. Like the rest of the sprawling old farmhouse, the kitchen was in the middle of a transformation. About half the cabinetry was still covered by original blistering and peeling white paint. The other half was lovingly if sloppily painted light yellow with light green trim right over the old paint, no sanding or scraping done at all. Joy’s choice of colors was odd, but like everything else she did it exuded casual charm. It was that touch that made her the youngest vice president in South Bend’s biggest marketing firm. Clients loved her, were wowed by the pretty blonde with the purring engine and creative mind.

  “Frenchie, this is Joy Gunther.”

  Frenchie sprang awkwardly from his chair, banging the table as he did so, eyes fixed on Joy. What she had thrown on wasn’t much.

  “It’s great to finally meet you,” she said, taking his rough, outstretched hand in both of hers. “Hank doesn’t have many pictures, but you’re in all of them, and that makes me feel like I already know you. He talks about you all the time.” She excused herself and padded barefoot down the hall to the bathroom. Frenchie watched her all the way. “Holy shit,” he said. Hank grinned and set about making coffee.

  “Make detective yet?” Frenchie asked.

  “Few months ago,” Hank said.

  “That’s fast. Congratulations . . . This is quit
e a spread.”

  “Yeah, it’s a handful, but it’s fun. Ten acres. Monster of an old barn. Joy’s making it all into something special. That’s a gift she has. Takes beat-up, discarded things and makes them special.” Hank was letting Frenchie move at his own pace. He owed Frenchie a lot. They say it takes a village to raise a child. When Hank was growing up in northeastern Michigan, there wasn’t a village to be found. What he had was Frenchie Skiba. Frenchie pushed aside the whiskey bottles Hank had for parents and gave him a hand to hold on to and a hand up.

  Earl, Joy’s big orange tomcat, jumped up on the counter and sat down next to the coffeepot.

  “You let the cat up on the counter?”

  “His ass is cleaner than yours.”

  “That’s not saying much. Besides, I’m wearing pants and I’m not the one sitting on the counter.”

  Hank nudged Earl off the counter. “All excellent observations. They didn’t make you sheriff for nothing.”

  “Speaking of asses, how’s the sand in yours?” It was a reference to Iraq.

  “Less and less,” Hank said. “Less and less. You never wash it all out, do you?”

  “Never met a combat vet who ever forgot he was in combat,” Frenchie said.

  Hank sat down at the table, waiting for the coffee. They waited in silence, perfectly comfortable, like a pair of worn hunting boots in a corner. They waited for Joy, for the coffee, for Frenchie to get down to it.

  “You serious about this girl?”

  “Pretty serious. I like the hell out of her.”

  “You love her?”

  “Every chance I get.”

  “You love her?”

  “We get closer every day. Pooled our money to buy this place. We haven’t talked marriage but we’re already joined at the hip.”

  “I’m glad to hear it.”

  Joy returned as the coffee finished up. “I’ll get it,” she said. “What did I miss?”