Killer Year

by Lee Child

  I put the gun on the table.

  “Let me tell you a story, so you know where I come from. Then you can tell me what kind of Westing my son was.” John Westing leaned across the table and did his best to point a finger at me.

  “When I was twenty-five years old, I killed a man in Boston. Drowned him in the harbor. Held his head under water until he stopped kicking and screaming. That’s how I met my wife. The man was trying to rob her, you see? And I did what was necessary.”

  Red had finished cleaning the bar and was now going around and blowing out candles. Shadows crossed our faces.

  “Thirteen years later, when Bartholomew was just starting at the local school in Philadelphia, I shot a man. He tried to walk out on a bill in my friend’s bar. Again, this was necessary.”

  Red came and took the last of the empty glasses and whispered to me it was last call. He paused, looking at the gun on the table. He repeated the words.

  Westing acted like he hadn’t heard. “Get us another beer, will you, Red? Me and Sam here are talkin’.”

  Red looked at me and I shook my head.

  “One day, probably three years ago,” Westing continued, “before he left for school, Bartholomew came home with a bloodied nose. One of the boys he was with punched him. I asked Bartholomew what he did in response. Bartholomew said nothing.

  “Nothing. Can you believe that? Someone punches you and you don’t respond. He wasn’t my son. That was not what I brought him up to be. And what he did, he soiled our family’s name. I had to find the boy who punched Bartholomew. I went out, found him and his father together.” A smile crossed Westing’s face. “They won’t bother anyone anymore. They won’t hurt my family. Or my son.”

  “You left town after that, didn’t you?” I asked.

  Westing nodded.

  “But you kept in touch. With your son, with your wife. You wrote them letters.”

  Westing nodded. “I wrote Evelyn a letter every day until she passed. I wrote Bartholomew a letter when I thought he needed one. Maybe, he’d read one and wake up.”

  “Your son is dead.”

  Westing didn’t smile. But he didn’t appear sad, either. “You said that earlier. Why don’t you tell me what happened?”

  The doctor came first. He needed help getting Bartholomew down, and Harriet needed to be pried from my arms so I could help. He was shorter than me, but as we pulled him down, he seemed the size of a child.

  We cut the noose and laid Bartholomew on his bed. His face was blue, his eyes bulged in their sockets. His mouth was twisted in what could only be described as horror. I tried shutting my eyes to block out the image, but it wasn’t possible. I could already sense Bartholomew Westing’s face creeping into the recesses of my brain, planning to haunt my dreams.

  As the doctor looked over the body, I let Harriet weep against my shoulder. After a while I told the doctor I was going to walk her home. He agreed and said he and the police would be here when I got back. Before I left, I took the wooden box from my desk and the open letter that rested on Bartholomew’s desk.

  Harriet and I walked across the city, our silhouettes cast in gaslight. We didn’t speak. The drinks we’d had earlier had worn off, as had the mood. Around us people laughed and enjoyed the evening.

  After I dropped her off, I found the closest streetlamp and leaned against it. I unfolded the letter.

  Dear Bartholomew,

  I am writing you again to plead for you to realize what you’ve done to your family. You have broken us apart.

  Your mother is dead. She died shamed. You cannot defend your family name. And now you’ve done what? You pay too close attention to girls you cannot expect to know intimately. You say you go to school to learn, to be a man.

  You are not a man. This is the last correspondence you will receive from me. As of today, you are no longer my son.

  Signed,

  John Westing

  The letter also contained a return address on it. I folded the letter and placed it in my jacket pocket. I took my father’s gun from the box and secured it in my belt.

  I thought about what my mother said a day earlier. That I couldn’t always be there. I should have been. If I had stayed home that night, I would have stopped him. I couldn’t always look out for him. But there I could make it up to him.

  I set off for Westing’s town the next morning.

  We left the saloon, Westing stumbling ahead of me. After I told him the story, he showed no remorse, no sadness. His anger scared me, but I had traveled a long way. I would not be deterred.

  A few horses tied to posts muttered at us as we passed. I noted the stars glittering in the sky, stars I’d gotten to know well during my journey to this forsaken town. Being in the open, things that were familiar to me on my trip were familiar now. The sky, the smell of the air, the heft of the gun returned to my hip. The image of Bartholomew Westing’s twisted face.

  I stopped walking in the middle of the road. I stood next to a closed hardware store. The sign in the window advertised to prospectors. All their gold-digging needs could be found in that store.

  It wasn’t like this back home. Even at night restaurants bustled, people were in the streets, living. The gaslights glittered off expensive buildings. Candles flickered in the windows of houses where families enjoyed their time together.

  For six weeks, I’d abandoned that comfort. I rode a horse in darkness. Now I stood among rickety buildings on weak foundations. Nothing moved, no one laughed. This town was dark and silent.

  Dead.

  Westing must have noticed his feet were the only ones crunching gravel. He stopped and slowly turned toward me.

  I took out my gun.

  John Westing eyed me, his hands at his sides. He stood a good twenty feet from me.

  “I don’t know what you’ve read about how things occur out here, but you’re wrong. There are no draws, no duels. I’m not going to do that. And even if I were, you know I’d win. I should shoot you right now.” He laughed and spat on the ground. “But I won’t.”

  “Why not?”

  “I’ve killed people, but everyone deserved it. You don’t. You’re trying to avenge a friend. I can understand that.”

  “You really think I’d come out all this way and not kill you?” I didn’t want to say those words. There was too much of a chance they were true.

  “Do you even know how to fire a gun? You’re a college boy, probably like your father before you. You’re following your path. My son didn’t follow mine. He deserved what he got. He deserved it for what he did to my name. Where did you get that gun?”

  I pulled the hammer back.

  “It was my father’s,” I said. “From the war.”

  Westing paused, and his eyes widened. He knew then I would pull the trigger.

  So did I.

  “Don’t,” he muttered, but there was no conviction behind it.

  I imagined my father, the smile on his face as he lifted me out of my cradle. I pictured my father returning from the war, his hair gray, his eyes sad. I wondered what he did in those years, what he’d seen.

  I wondered what lay ahead for me. And what path I was setting for my children. Then I remembered Bartholomew Westing would have no children. And would never set a path for them.

  I squeezed the trigger.

  Coda

  by Laura Lippman

  So, what do you think? C’mon, admit it, that was a pretty fun ride, a roller-coaster journey in some very fine company. Aren’t you curious to see what this bumper crop of writers does next?

  The bottom line is that one could argue every year in crime fiction is a killer year, and this has been the case for quite some time. After slumping slightly sales-wise, in the 1970s, the genre of Chandler and Christie came roaring back in the 1980s and now holds a significant amount of real estate on the New York Times bestseller list in any given week. Lee Child and I made our debuts in 1997 (as did Joseph Kanon), while Ken Bruen has been publishing since 1990. Other writers wh
o came on the scene in the nineties include: John Grisham, Patricia Cornwell, Michael Connelly, Dennis Lehane, George Pelecanos, Lisa Scottoline, Laurie King, and Harlan Coben.

  The striking thing to me about the writers gathered here is not their camaraderie, but just how young some of them are. I was thirty-eight when I published my novel and felt positively precocious. Lehane, not quite thirty when he published A Drink Before the War in 1996, was crime fiction’s official young’un. If thirty-somethings were a minority wherever crime writers gathered, then twenty-somethings were simply unheard of in our ranks. Why, then, are more and more young writers heading straight for a life of crime?

  I have a theory about this, one that no one necessarily supports, but no one has invested any energy in disputing it, either. In the 1980s, Vintage Books began reprinting James Crumley’s novels in trade paperback editions that made them more widely available than before. These seminal works were discovered by various young writers—many in their twenties and trying to write mainstream literary fiction. I was one of them and I won’t presume to speak for anyone else, but reading Crumley was a sock-in-the-gut epiphany for me. There was no guilty pleasure in Crumley’s work, just pure pleasure. Here was a guy who had the chops to write whatever he wanted, and he had chosen the crime genre. In doing so, he blazed a path and a lot of us plunged down it, conscious of the fact that we might not be able to do what Crumley did, but there was no shame in trying. The result was some pretty exciting work, genre-bending work, most notably by Lehane and Pelecanos. Now those two writers are the most-cited influences among young would-be crime writers. But it really began with Crumley and, before Crumley, a youngster named Elmore Leonard, who started writing Westerns in the 1950s, then switched to crime with the so-called Detroit novels of the 1970s. But it wasn’t until the 1980s that Leonard’s critical and commercial reputation really soared, winning him the approval and awe of the literary establishment.

  Also in the 1980s, a trio of female writers—Marcia Muller, Sara Paretsky, and Sue Grafton—began breathing life into what had been presumed to be the moribund body of the private detective novel. All three women are significant, but I’m going to single out Paretsky because she was present, in 1986, at the creation of Sisters in Crime, which is a clear precursor to cooperative efforts such as Killer Year. A decade before the widespread use of the Internet, women—and men—were joining this new organization, which offered advice and mentoring programs to new writers.

  In the 1990s, crime writers often toured together—in formal groups, assembled by publishers, but also in ad hoc arrangements hatched by the writers themselves. Walter Mosley was a member of one of those traveling caravans. So was Coben, touring with Jeff Abbott and Sparkle Hayter. In 1999, Lauren Henderson and Stella Duffy, two versatile UK writers, started the Tart City Web site, a precursor to the group blogs now thick on the web—First Offenders, Murderati, Naked Authors, The Lipstick Chronicles. In short, mystery writers have always been a collegial bunch, committed as much to the genre as they are to their own careers.

  Killer Year, however, is the largest such enterprise to date and the first to be featured in its own anthology. Let’s hope it works. You see, all too often, publishing plays out like a clichéd World War II movie: A diverse set of troops go out there every year, but not all of them make it back. Does it have to be that way? I don’t know. But I’m for anything that increases writers’ odds of enjoying long and successful careers. Let’s hope Killer Year does just that, for these writers and generations of writers to come.

  Copyright Acknowledgments

  Introduction by Lee Child. Copyright © 2008 by Lee Child.

  The Class of Co-opetition. Copyright © 2008 by M. J. Rose.

  Perfect Gentleman. Copyright © 2008 by Brett Battles.

  Introduction by James Rollins. Copyright © 2008 by James Rollins.

  Killing Justice. Copyright © 2008 by Allison Brennan.

  Bottom Deal. Copyright © 2008 by Robert Gregory Browne.

  Introduction by Gayle Lynds. Copyright © 2008 by Gayle Lynds.

  Time of the Green. Copyright © 2008 by Ken Bruen.

  Slice of the Pie. Copyright © 2008 by Bill Cameron.

  Introduction by Anne Frasier. Copyright © 2008 by Anne Frasier.

  A Failure to Communicate. Copyright © 2008 by Toni McGee Causey.

  Introduction by Harley Jane Kozak. Copyright © 2008 by Harley Jane Kozak.

  One Serving of Bad Luck. Copyright © 2008 by Sean Chercover.

  Introduction by Ken Bruen. Copyright © 2008 by Ken Bruen.

  Prodigal Me. Copyright © 2008 by J. T. Ellison.

  Introduction by Lee Child. Copyright © 2008 by Lee Child.

  The Only Word I Know in Spanish. Copyright © 2008 by Patry Francis.

  Introduction by Tess Gerritsen. Copyright © 2008 by Tess Gerritsen.

  Teardown. Copyright © 2008 by Marc Lecard.

  Introduction by Joe R. Landsdale. Copyright © 2008 by Joe R. Landsdale.

  Runaway. Copyright © 2008 by Derek Nikitas.

  Introduction by Douglas Clegg. Copyright © 2008 by Douglas Clegg.

  The Crime of My Life. Copyright © 2008 by Gregg Olsen.

  Introduction by Allison Brennan. Copyright © 2008 by Allison Brennan.

  The Point Guard. Copyright © 2008 by Jason Pinter.

  Introduction by Jeffery Deaver. Copyright © 2008 by Jeffery Deaver.

  Gravity and Need. Copyright © 2008 by Marcus Sakey.

  Introduction by David Morrell. Copyright © 2008 by David Morrell.

  Death Runs Faster. Copyright © 2008 by Duane Swierczynski.

  Righteous Son. Copyright © 2008 by Dave White.

  Introduction by Duane Swierczynski. Copyright © 2008 by Duane Swierczynski.

  Coda by Laura Lippman. Copyright © 2008 by Laura Lippman.

  AUTHOR BIOGRAPHIES

  Brett Battles was born and raised in southern California. Though he still makes California his home, he has traveled extensively, including trips to Vietnam and Germany—two locations that play prominent parts in his debut thriller, The Cleaner. He is a founding member of Killer Year.

  New York Times bestselling author Allison Brennan is the author of six romantic thrillers. RT Book Reviews called her newest release, Fear No Evil, “fast-paced,” “pulse-pounding,” and “Brennan’s best book to date.” A former consultant in the California State Legislature, she lives in northern California with her husband and five kids. Look for her next novel in spring 2008.

  Ken Bruen was a finalist for the Edgar, Barry, and Macavity Awards, and the Private Eye Writers of America presented him with the Shamus Award for the Best Novel of 2003 for The Guards, the book that introduced Jack Taylor. He lives in Galway, Ireland.

  Winner of the prestigious AMPAS Nicholl award, Robert Gregory Browne spent several years riding the Hollywood roller coaster before severe motion sickness forced his retirement from the business. At the urging of a novelist friend, Browne tried his hand at long-form fiction and the result, a thriller called Kiss Her Goodbye, is the first of a two-book deal with St. Martin’s Press.

  Bill Cameron lives with his wife and poodle in Portland, Oregon, where he also serves as staff to a charming yet imperious cat. He is an eager traveler and avid bird-watcher, and likes to write near a window so he can meditate on whatever happens to fly by during intractable passages. Lost Dog is his first suspense novel. He is currently at work on his second novel.

  Toni McGee Causey lives in Baton Rouge with her husband and two sons; a Louisiana native (and Cajun), she has nearly completed a double masters at LSU. She’s placed in top-tier screenwriting contests, published many nonfiction articles, and edited a popular regional magazine. To support her writing addiction, she and her husband, Carl, run their own civil construction company. Bobbie Faye’s Very (very, very, very) Bad Day is the first in a three-book deal with St. Martin’s Press on a pre-empt; the chaotic, roller-coaster thriller world of Bobbie Faye owes much to Toni having way more experienc
e than she’d like to own up to in the world of troubleshooting, disaster prevention, and survival.

  After graduating from Columbia College Chicago and the American Security Training Institute, Sean Chercover worked as a private investigator in Chicago and New Orleans. He has since written for film, television, and print. He’s also worked as a film and video editor, scuba diver, nightclub magician, truck driver, waiter, car jockey, encyclopedia salesman, and in other, less glamorous positions. These days, he splits his time between Chicago and Toronto and generally stays out of trouble. Big City, Bad Blood is his first novel.

  Lee Child was born in 1954 in Coventry, England, but spent his formative years in the nearby city of Birmingham. By coincidence he won a scholarship to the same high school that J. R. R. Tolkien had attended. He went to law school in Sheffield, England, and after part-time work in the theater he joined Granada Television in Manchester for what turned out to be an eighteen-year career as a presentation director during British TV’s “golden age.” During his tenure his company made Brideshead Revisited, The Jewel in the Crown, Prime Suspect, and Cracker. But he was fired in 1995 at the age of forty as a result of corporate restructuring. Always a voracious reader, he decided to see an opportunity where others might have seen a crisis and bought six dollars’ worth of paper and pencils and sat down to write a book, Killing Floor, the first in the Jack Reacher series.

  J. T. Ellison is a thriller writer based in Nashville, Tennessee. A graduate of Randolph-Macon Woman’s College and The George Washington University, Ellison had a career in politics before turning to crime fiction full time. Her short stories have appeared in Demolition Magazine, Flashing in the Gutters, Mouth Full of Bullets, and Spinetingler Magazine . She blogs at www.Murderati.com and is a founding member of Killer Year. All the Pretty Girls is the first novel in the Taylor Jackson series.