The Best American Mystery Stories, Volume 17

by Lisa Scottoline

  Yes, thank you. I would relish a little coffee if it don’t put you out too much, for being up all night this way and walking to town on an empty stomach has left me kind of weak—besides what happened, and I’m getting to that pretty soon.

  Fear of being the butt of the town’s jokes had started Miss Thyrza on what looked like a noble sacrifice, and vanity had buoyed her up during the giddy, gaudy whirl of the trial. But now it was over, a darker, uglier feeling raised its head.

  “Effie, get supper on. And Jasper, you can help Ernie with the chores when you’ve laid a fire. For we’ve got no hand now, and there won’t be none.” Jasper stood white and silent as she went on. “And Effie here can take her turn when she’s through with the work in the kitchen—there’ll be fewer to do for now and she’ll have more time. You’ve cost me enough, you two, in shame and money; I’ve bought you both ways and now you can start paying me. Get to work!”

  Over and over in the days that followed she’d remind them how it was her money that had paid the lawyers, even bringing out bills to prove all it had cost her, how it was her stock and crops had suffered from neglect at harvest time.

  And when folks passing by would stop and stare at the house, she’d say bitterly, “See, I’m a scarlet woman. That’s what I’ve made of myself to save you from the gallows.”

  Again and again she’d fling at them what they owed her: “If it wasn’t for me, you wouldn’t have any life, or her any reputation. They’re mine, both of them—I’ve bought them.”

  And every night at prayers she’d remind them of their sins, which only the blood of the Lamb could cleanse, while she begged God to save their souls from eternal fire. Through it all Effie was scared and ashamed, like a child that knows it’s done wrong and is being rightly punished. But Jasper was steady and serene—untouched.

  And that nearly drove Miss Thyrza wild: to think she’d bought him and he still belonged to himself, that he had the power to lift himself up and beyond anything she could say or do. He was never defiant, always gentle with her as if humoring a sick person, but quiet and smiling as if his mind was on other things. I don’t think he even realized how she was reaching out, like something with feelers and claws to suck its prey down into the mud.

  But her chance came that spring.

  The work wasn’t so hard that winter, but when spring came, with all the plowing and planting and farrows besides the regular work, there were days when the three of us worked, with our tongues hanging out, from four in the morning till nine at night and still weren’t through. And on top of it all she decided to clear out the timber along the crik and dredge out the gravel pit (the road commissioners had made her an offer)—Effie and Jasper shoveling and me to haul.

  I had just started off with a load of the gravel and was halfway up the hill when the singletree broke, and I went back to get Jasper’s help. I’ll always remember them like that, standing there on the bank of the crik, half hidden by the new green of the willows that dipped here and there in the water, a turtle peeping up through the mud, and the sunshine everywhere warm and lazy—and she looking up at him with that winging, soaring look in her eyes that were blind to everything in the world but him. And he was saying only her name over and over and over. And you knew from that look, whether ever a word was said, that come what may, the bond between them was for all the days of their life.

  I stole away, thinking how she, Miss Thyrza, I mean, had really brought it about. The way she had hurled at them always, “You two—you two—you two.” Seeking all the time to make them hers, she had only bound them together in a suffering that had turned to love.

  That night after supper they told her and asked that she let Effie go; fifty dollars would take her back to her mother’s people, or else to the city, where she could find work. But she couldn’t stay on there with Jasper, her loving him and knowing that he loved her—it wouldn’t be right.

  Miss Thyrza refused. Effie had caused her the loss of Amos McGill, the best hand she ever had, and she had no mind to go out hunting another. If she was so particular about doing right, that was it: to stay and, so far as she could, fill his place.

  Of the love between Effie and Jasper, she said not a word. But from then on she tortured him through the girl. Effie was afraid of the dark, so Miss Thyrza’d make excuses to send her with only a candle that threw ghastly shadows into the dry cellar, where we kept the potatoes and turnips, apples and squash. She was afraid of rats, so Miss Thyrza would make her set the bit-steel trap in the corn crib (Priscilla had died with her last batch of kittens) and hold it, full of slick, fat rats, in the watering trough till they were drowned, or else pick up the bodies when they’d eaten the poison she scattered around. She couldn’t stand the sun, so all summer long Miss Thyrza kept her working in the fields and Jasper inside at easy jobs; then she could watch him suffer when Effie came in sick and dizzy from overheat. And once, when she gave way and fainted, Miss Thyrza wouldn’t even let him go near her, but she brought her around, all the time smiling, a smile that was meaner somehow than her harshest words had ever been. Jasper broke under this. At last she had found a way to reach him! And the more haggard he grew, the happier and brighter she was—like she was feeding, really eating and feeding, on his suffering. It was horrible to watch, for she seemed to be circling and circling about them, like a buzzard, waiting, waiting.

  Yes, I know I’m going slow, but I’m tired. I’m terrible tired. It’s two nights now.

  For they came to her again night before last and all night they pleaded and begged: that she should let them go away together, that Jasper would send what money he could earn and she could divorce him.

  “No,” she said. “You can’t drive me to a thing like that. I’ve been a good woman all my life—you have sinned, but you can’t force me to.”

  Then let Effie go—Effie would have to go, they said.

  And she flung in his teeth all the words he had said that night of the murder: “‘A young girl we’ve taken in our home and our duty to protect her!’ Fine way you’ve got of protecting! I took her sin on me once, but this time she shall know disgrace.”

  “Then we’ll both go away,” Jasper said slowly. “We’ve put it up to you fair.”

  “I’ll have the law on you first! I’ll tell them the truth about the trial. Effie perjured herself and they’ll send her to prison, and as for you—”

  “I wish they had hanged me,” he said. “I wish to God that they had!” And all Effie asked was that Jasper be forgiven; she wouldn’t mind prison herself, only—

  “You needn’t worry about that,” Miss Thyrza said, still smiling, “for I’ll bring the child up like mine.”

  Morning came and she sent them about their work, Jasper to town with a load of hogs and Effie to clean out the henhouse and rid it of rats, while she went upstairs to sleep. Effie gave me a snack for noon (I was husking in the bottom field), and all day I figured and wondered. Had Miss Thyrza known from the very first, had she planned it all, had she meant this should happen—the final link for her chain?

  I came to supper and found her there at the table alone, and I took the rope I had brought from the barn and wound it round her, with a cloth tied around her throat and head—and you’ll find her like that, bound and dead.

  I waited all night, but Jasper and Effie didn’t come. They have gone as they told her they would, and I am glad. There’s no need to bring them back—they know nothing about it all. This is my statement, voluntary and of my own free will.

  I don’t know what Miss Thyrza ate that night, Mr. Hedges. Why do you ask me that? What she ate had nothing to do with it! I don’t care what the doctor and coroner say—tell Mr. Morgan not to believe them! She died, like I told you, from being bound! Poisoned? The autopsy shows poison? With the stuff they give rats! And Effie and Jasper have confessed—oh no! Why didn’t they wait! Give me back my statement! You said it would be used against me, not them. I’m as guilty as they are: I wanted her dead but didn’t know how. And t
hey did.

  We hope you enjoyed this book.

  To read the contributors’ notes, click here.

  To find out about the editors, click here.

  To find other distinguished mystery stories from 2012, click here.

  For an invitation from the publisher, click here.

  Contributors’ Notes

  Tom Barlow is the author of the story collection Welcome to the Goat Rodeo. Other stories of his have appeared in anthologies, including Best New Writing 2011, and magazines and journals, including Redivider, Temenos, Apalachee Review, Hobart, Needle, the William and Mary Review, and the Hiss Quarterly. He is a graduate of the Clarion Writer’s Workshop for fantasy and science fiction. He has also written about personal finance for websites, including Forbes.com, DailyFinance.com and Dealnews.com. He writes because conversation involves a lot of give-and-take, and he’s always thought of himself as more of a giver.

  • “Smothered and Covered” started, not surprisingly, with a visit to one of my favorite restaurants, Waffle House. At the time I was working a pressured job, which caused me often to be awake in the middle of the night. Knowing that I wouldn’t fall back to sleep, I would occasionally head over to the Waffle House and dawdle over a 4 A.M. breakfast. Looking at the other clientele, I realized that WH is one of the few places where those who desperately need to get out of the house in the middle of the night can nurse their demons for the price of a cup of coffee.

  Knowing that one of those people was destined to become my main character, I searched for a conflict that could account for his malaise. I’d been thinking about the awful preponderance of fatal car accidents caused by drunk drivers and the guilt that must, or at least should, haunt those who survive, especially if the fatality is a loved one. How could he carry on with such a burden? How could a marriage survive?

  That darkness led me to a noir style and voice, which seemed to capture a sense of inevitability. After agonizing for weeks over a proper ending, I spent one day trimming the fat from the story (for me, a crucial step in the process), only to discover that I already had an ending that worked well. I just hadn’t recognized it as such. Older, wiser, and a devotee of Lunesta, I now trawl for characters during the daylight hours, usually at coffeehouses. I’m not sure, however, that the pickings are quite as rich.

  Michael Connelly is a crime-beat reporter turned novelist. He has written twenty-five novels in twenty years, most of which center on the pursuits of Detective Harry Bosch of the Los Angeles Police Department. He also has written several novels about Bosch’s half-brother Mickey Haller, a criminal defense attorney, thus pursuing an exploration of crime and justice from both sides of the aisle, so to speak. Connelly is married and the father of a teenage daughter. He lives in Florida but spends a lot of his time in Los Angeles, the city he writes about.

  • The subject of the Vengeance anthology naturally lent itself to explorations of the fine line between punishment and retribution. When people take matters into their own hands, is it always vengeance, or can there be justice? It’s a theme I have played with before, and I was happy to be asked to contribute to the collection edited by Lee Child. When I was a reporter I wrote about a major gold fraud in which hundreds of people lost their savings in a gold-buying scheme. There were many threats against the perpetrators’ lives and I started with that, thinking, What if a victim made good on the threat or hired someone to make good on the threat? Would it be justice or vengeance? I remember these guys had really been callous in the extent they went to rip people off. They would crawl under their desks while on the phone with a customer and say they had just entered the gold vault to pick out their gold bars. The slight echo made under the desk sounded like they could actually be in a vault, and it helped them sell the fraud. Of course, there was no gold. They were just taking people’s money. So that was the starting point of this story, and of course I wanted to bring Harry Bosch into it. It had been quite a while since I had written about Harry in the short form. It is always fun to do that.

  O’Neil De Noux’s crime fiction has garnered several awards: the Shamus for best short story, the Derringer for best novelette, and the 2011 Police Book of the Year. His recurring characters include New Orleans Police detectives Dino LaStanza (1980s), Jacques Dugas (1890s), and John Raven Beau (twenty-first century) as well as private eye Lucien Caye (1940s). In 2013, De Noux was elected vice president of the Private Eye Writers of America. He also writes in other genres, including historical fiction, fantasy, horror, western, science fiction, and erotica.

  • Writing about New Orleans AK (After Katrina) is difficult, as the city changes just about every day. Some areas have come back faster than others; some will never return, buildings still gutted, slabs where houses once stood, restaurants torn from the piling. The only constant is the crime rate, which returned with a vengeance. This inspired me to write a story about a citizenry that acts as if its police department is an occupying army. New Orleans has always been the hardest city in America to police. It’s a city of great promise and great disappointment, where the good times roll and crime is always around the corner. The New Orleans Police Department is understaffed, underpaid, undertrained, and held up to standards few humans can achieve. And most of the time the men and women in blue feel alone.

  The New York Times bestselling, award-winning author Eileen Dreyer has published thirty-eight novels and ten short stories in multiple genres, ranging from historical romance to medical-forensic thrillers. Living in St. Louis with her husband and children, she has turned in the nurse’s whites she wore during a career in trauma medicine and made writing, travel, and St. Louis Cardinals baseball her full-time hobbies. She has animals but refuses to submit them to the glare of the spotlight.

  • I was invited to submit a short story for the Crime Square Anthology, in which all the crimes took place in Times Square. Each story was set in a different decade. When asked which decade I wanted, there was no question. I picked the 1940s because immediately I saw in my head that iconic photo of the sailor kissing the nurse on VJ Day. It has always really spoken to me. There had to be a story there somewhere.

  I studied the photo. I researched it and found that Alfred Eisenstadt, who took the photo, had followed the sailor down the length of Times Square as he kissed every woman he passed. Then I learned that there was more than one photo and in each different people are seen in the background. What of those people? What is going on that day that we’re missing because we’re watching the performance put on by an exuberant sailor? My story is about two of those other persons, another sailor and the wife who has waited for him to come home. It’s about not assuming that you know what you see.

  David Edgerley Gates lives in Santa Fe, New Mexico, and many of his stories take place in the West—period pieces like the Placido Geist bounty hunter stories, and others more contemporary, dealing with the meth plague in Indian country, say, or the border war, drugs and human traffic moving north, guns and money going south, and the corrosive influence of the Mexican cartels. “The Devil to Pay,” although it’s set in present-day New York, nods in passing to the long reach of cartel money and the increased Latino gang presence in the American prison system.

  Gates is a past Shamus and Edgar Award nominee. His stories appear regularly in Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine and Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine. His website is www.davidedgerleygates.com.

  • Tommy Meadows is small-time, a pilot fish swimming in an ocean of larger predators. He’s not as ruthless as some, but neither is he that nice a person. I think the character’s influenced, to some degree, by the guys Donald Westlake used to write about, grifters and also-rans, who never quite make it into the heavy or the big score. And Tommy is more of a catalyst than a major player. He just finds himself in the wrong place at the right time. The ending of this story is one of my few ventures into what might be called metafiction. The fairy tale Tommy tells his gramma is, of course, the story you’ve just read.

  Although best known
for his true crime books, notably the Edgar-nominated Six Against the Rock, about Alcatraz, and Zebra, also nominated, which examined the infamous San Francisco murders of the early 1970s, Clark Howard has developed a great following for his short stories, five of which have been nominated for Edgar Allan Poe Awards; one, “Horn Man,” was picked as the best of the year for 1980. He has also won the Derringer Award and in 2009 was voted the Golden Derringer for Lifetime Achievement in the mystery genre. Other nominations have been for Shamus and Spur Awards, and five times he was named as the favorite for the Ellery Queen Readers Award by that popular magazine.

  Andre Kocsis lives in the West Chilcotin, a remote area of British Columbia, Canada. His work has been published in the Dalhousie Review, the New Orphic Review, Skyline Magazine, The Oak, and Couloir Magazine as well as a number of online publications. Currently he’s working on the fifth and, he fervently hopes, final draft of a novel entitled Canyon Marathon.

  • It has been my lifelong ambition to use the name Sierra for a protagonist. However, this was not the sole impetus for “Crossing.” Marijuana is a $6 billion industry in British Columbia, with an estimated 95 percent of this cash crop destined for the United States. A news story about the capture of some smugglers started me thinking that the mountains along the Canada-U.S. border could provide an interesting way to move drugs. I felt, however, that it was prudent to try out this idea in fiction rather than in real life.

  The southeast of British Columbia, where the Rocky Mountains cross the border, has a history of serving as a haven for dissidents. The Doukhobors, a pacifist religious sect with strong antigovernment beliefs, escaped persecution in Russia with the aid of Leo Tolstoy and settled here in the early 1900s. As well, a community of polygamous Mormons have made this area their home since 1946. And during the Vietnam War many American youths escaped the draft by settling here. They’ve had a noticeable impact on the culture of the region.