Knock and Talk
by
Michael J. McCann
SMASHWORDS EDITION
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This is a work of fiction. All names, characters, institutions, places and events portrayed in this novel are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or locales is entirely coincidental.
Copyright 2011 by Michael J. McCann
All rights reserved.
This story is the third in the collection STORIES from the Donaghue and Stainer Crime Novel series. Find other free samples from this collection at http://www.smashwords.com/profile/view/mjmccann, where you’ll also find Blood Passage, the first full-length Donaghue and Stainer Crime Novel.
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Lieutenant Hank Donaghue got out of the unmarked Crown Victoria police cruiser and buttoned his jacket as Detective Karen Stainer swung around the front of the Crown Vic from the driver’s side and shook her head at him.
“This better be good.”
Hank said nothing, leading the way into the small park where they expected to find Loreen Solomon and her two children, a four-year-old girl and a three-year-old boy. They had just interviewed Loreen’s sister at her home a block away. Loreen had moved in with her sister and brother-in-law last week after the shooting death of her husband, Pete Solomon, on the front porch of a rowhouse on Devin Street. Someone had walked around the corner with a sawed-off shotgun and opened fire on the four men sitting on the porch, killing Solomon and another man instantly and sending the other two to hospital, where they later died from their wounds.
Although the neighbors had flocked like flies to the scene, none of them was willing to tell police they’d seen or heard anything suspicious. No one had noticed a man with a shotgun either coming or going, although several admitted they’d been sitting on their own front porch nearby during the time of the murders. Family members of the other victims had already been interviewed and swore they knew nothing. Loreen and the two kids apparently were inside when it happened but took off out the back door. After several days of tenacious legwork Karen had finally found them and now here they were, down to their last possible witness.
It was a small park at the end of the block, about the size of a double lot, with a couple of benches, a swing set, a waste bin and a water fountain. There were only three people in the park: a woman sitting on the bench and two kids playing in the dirt beneath the swings. They approached the woman and held up their identification and badges.
“Detective Karen Stainer, m’am. Homicide. This is Lieutenant Donaghue. Are you Loreen Solomon?”
She was a tiny woman in her early twenties, about five feet even and maybe 100 pounds. She wore a plain black t-shirt, black denim jeans and black Chelsea boots. There was a tattoo of a swallow on her bicep and another of a spider web on the side of her neck. She wore a labret stud on her upper lip and a small silver ring on her lower lip. The paperback she put down on the bench as Karen spoke her name was the latest in a series of popular vampire romance novels aimed at young women just like her. Her eyes, when she looked up at Karen and nodded, were violet from tinted contact lenses.
“I guess this is about Pete.”
“Right the first time.” Karen put away her badge and ID. “You’re a hard girl to find.”
Loreen shrugged.
“You were there when it happened. Tell us about it.”
Loreen looked away, her face hard. “I’m not going to let anything happen to the kids. We’re getting the fuck out of here.”
Hank glanced over at the two children, who were still sitting in the dirt. Each of them had a toy car, and they were making a little network of roads in the dirt to push the cars along. They were absorbed in what they were doing, completely ignoring the two people questioning their mother. They’d probably learned a long time ago not to pay attention to what the adults around them were doing.
“Did you see who did it?”
Loreen shook her head. “I was in the kitchen, trying to clean up. Stupid bastard had bike parts piled up in the sink, on the counter, every fucking where you looked.”
“The kids?”
“In the back yard. Playing.” She shook her head. “I grabbed them and took off.”
“On foot?”
“Duh. We walked down to the mall and caught a bus.”
“How long were you guys married?” Karen asked.
“Weren’t. I moved in with him after Tammy was born, while I was still carrying Beau. Big mistake.”
“Why’s that?”
“He was bad news, honey. No job, bad friends, no brains. That’s what happens when you screw first and ask questions later.”
“What sort of bad friends?” Hank asked.
She sighed, watching her kids. “He was such a loser. All he wanted was to be a big shot, a hardassed biker, somebody people were scared of. He bought that useless Harley in the back yard thinking he could fix it up and be the man, but he didn’t know what the fuck he was doing and he didn’t have the money to get the bike shop to fix it for him. A complete tool.”
“You’re saying he hung around bikers?” Hank persisted. “That he was friends with them? What about the other guys on the porch? Bill Ellis, Thomas Hart, Patrick Gibbons? Were they bikers?”
She snorted. “Losers, just like Pete. If they were bikers, I’m Lady Gaga.”
Hank and Karen looked at each other. Hank ran a hand through his frizzy brown hair, frowning. “How’d you pay the rent? Did Solomon work?”
“I did. At a convenience store on Devine. Part time. Pete sold some weed here and there. He couldn’t hold a job. He kept asking at the bike shop and they kept telling him to fuck off.”
“Bike shop?”
“Some dump across the river. In Strathton. Hot Wheels or some stupid thing. A biker hangout and head shop. Pete went over there all the time.”
“Does the name Fanshawe mean anything to you?”
“No.”
“Did Solomon have a gambling problem?” Karen asked. “Big poker debts?”
“Of course. What else, right? The cash he made from weed was gone by the next night.”
“Who’d he play with? Ellis and those guys?”
She snorted. “They had less money than he did. Pete started getting into games with guys he knew from way back. Said they were big shots in the biker world. His dream.”
“Guys from this bike shop in Strathton?” Hank asked.
“No, these guys were different. Down in South Shore West. He said one time he thought they were connected to the Angels. I think he figured if he couldn’t get in with one bunch he’d try the others.”
Hank nodded. The day before, a confidential informant had told him that the Devin Street murders were a hit carried out on one of the men by someone named Fanshawe, an enforcer for the Angels. The CI thought it might have been because of a gambling debt that had gone unpaid too long. If Pete Solomon was sitting in on poker games run by the Angels and losing the way he was apparently capable of losing, it was possible he’d been murdered as a warning to others who were having trouble paying off their own debts.
Karen handed her a business card. “If you think of anything else, call. How long are you going to be at your sister’s?”
Loreen took the business card and looked at it. “Two weeks, max. I got one more paycheck coming and then we’re outta here.”
“You need anything,” Karen said, “call.”
Loreen picked up her paperback and stuck the business card into it.
Back in the Crown Vic, Karen shot away from the curb as Hank hastily buckled in on the passenger side. “Your CI said it was an Angels hit over a bad debt,’ she said, tapping the brakes to swing a hard right onto Richmond Street. “Sounds right. I wonder about this other place she was talking about, where he hung out all the time.”
“Hot Wheels.”
“In Strathton. The Angels are in South Shore West, like she said. Who’s in Strathton? The Heathens?”
“Give me a minute.” Hank took out his cell phone and called a sergeant who worked out of the district station in Strathton. A minute later he put the phone away and nodded. “Heathens. The shop’s called Smokin’ Wheels, on Detburn. Run by a semi-retired full-patch member of the Heathens, a guy named Tommy Baker.”
“We should go have a little chat with him,” Karen said brightly, “express our condolences on the loss of his l’il friend, that sort of thing.”
“Sounds like an idea.”
The Smokin’ Wheels bike shop occupied the ground floor of an old building that had once served as a rooming house for longshoremen back in the days of sailing ships and the horse and wagon. Curtains in the windows of the second floor suggested apartments, and three dormers on the shingled roof probably looked out from an attic used for storage. The exterior was painted light green, the window frames and dormers were white, and the long banner-style sign across the front featured a smoking Harley and the shop name on a black background. The place was well cared for and neat as a pin.
Karen’s eyes crackled as she crossed the sidewalk ahead of Hank and went into the bike shop. She was geared up and ready to go, so he dawdled behind as she strode back to the counter at the rear and started pounding on its surface with the flat of her hand.
“Hey, wake the hell up back there! Y’all asleep or dead?”
Bead curtains parted in the doorway as a heavy-set, middle-aged man came out to see what the fuss was about. His grey hair was long and pulled back in a ponytail, he wore a salt-and-pepper van Dyke-style beard, and both arms were covered with tattoos. The bags beneath his eyes emphasized his general pudginess, but the thinness of his lips and the hardness of his stare betrayed an underlying muscularity and violent disposition. He leaned on the counter.
“What’s all the noise about, darling?”
Karen leaned on the other side of the counter and showed him her badge. “Got a few questions for you, Ugly. Nothin’ too complicated, so you should be able to manage without having to look up any of the words.”
Hank slowly moved around the back fender of a shiny, brand-new motorcycle in the middle of the shop floor so that the man behind the counter could see him clearly.
“You’re Tommy Baker, right?” Karen put her badge away.
“I got nothing to say to you people,” Baker said, folding his muscular arms on top of his paunch. “Get the fuck outta my store or I’ll file a complaint.”
“That’ll hurt my feelings for sure,” Karen drawled. “You probably heard Pete Solomon got blown to doll rags the other day. Understand he was a pal of yours.”
“Got nothing to say.” Baker pointed with his chin. “There’s the door.”
“We understand he hung around here a lot.” Hank looked at a glass display case filled with bongs, hookas and other paraphernalia. “Kind of a loser, wasn’t he?”
“Nothing to say,” Baker repeated.
“A sawed-off shotgun sprays the guts and brains of four men all over a front porch,” Karen growled, “and you got nothing to say?”
“I don’t sell firearms. I got a gun under the counter and the permit for it is in the cash register. That’s it. Now get the fuck outta my store.”
“We heard Pete Solomon hung around here wanting to join your little boy’s club and you and your friends kept tellin’ him to piss off.”
“He was asking for a job. I kept telling him no. That’s it.”
Hank edged behind the counter to look at a vintage Harley-Davidson leather riding cap hanging on the wall. “This is great. Didn’t Brando wear one of these in a movie?”
“No customers behind the counter.” Baker unfolded his arms a little too quickly.
“Easy does it,” Karen said, straightening. She brushed aside her jacket to show her sidearm. “I’m a helluva lot quicker than you’ve ever seen.”
Hank took the cap from its hook and held it up. “Cool. Is it for sale?”
“No, it ain’t.” Baker held out his hand.
“Too bad.” Hank gave him the cap and leaned on the end of the counter. “Here’s what we’re thinking. Pete Solomon wanted to be a Heathens hangaround. He couldn’t get past the eyeball test, so he thought if he could get a job here and mooch with the guys coming into the store he could at least get a tryout. You wouldn’t give him the time of day. So he settled for being a regular customer, buying parts for a broken-down bike he’d never get on the road, but it was an excuse to come in and talk to you guys. Annoying as hell, but nothing to shoot him over. How’s that sound?”
Baker shrugged. “Yeah, sure. So?”
“We heard in addition to being a general loser,” Karen said, “he was a big-time loser at the poker table. Got in over his head.”
Baker tossed the leather cap down on the counter. “We don’t have no gambling here.”
“Yeah yeah yeah,” Karen complained, irritated, “we know, just bikes and glassware and shit. Let’s move this along, okay? Christ! While he was nagging your ass off to join the Heathens he was also down in South Shore West playing cards with the Angels and racking up a ginormous debt. Hear anything about that?”
Baker’s baggy eyes widened. “News to me.”
“You sure?” Hank stared at him. “You didn’t hear he was trying to repay his debt to the Angels by hanging around here spying on you guys and passing information back to them?”
Baker stared at him.
“Sure,” Karen said. “You guys heard about it and sent one of your whack jobs around to shut him up with a little shotgun music.”
“Not a chance. I had no idea he was doing stuff like that. If I did….”
“Then we’d be snapping the bracelets on you as we speak,” Karen finished. “Maybe your brother thugs knew about it and took care of it themselves.”
“No way. If they knew, I’d know. Believe me.”
“We do believe you,” Hank said. “Actually, what we think is that Solomon was just too stupid to come up with anything useful for the Angels and they ended up blowing him into next Sunday as a warning to all the other losers out there to pay their debts like good little boys.”
“Wouldn’t doubt it.” Baker sat down on a wooden stool.
“You biker guys probably know a fair bit about each other,” Hank said. “More than the average person might realize. You know their guys, where they hang out, what their rep is, that kind of thing.”
Baker said nothing, looking at him.
“Solomon was nothing to you,” Hank went on. “A pain in the ass. A loser. He gets smoked, it doesn’t put a crease in your day. Guys get dead all the time. You’ve seen guys get dead before. He crosses the line, he’s got to pay the price.” Hank shook his head. “You may not have seen guys dead like this before, though. Solomon’s head was gone. The lab IDed him through fingerprints. The guy next to him took it in the stomach. Ground meat from his collarbone to his crotch. The other two were almost as bad. Nobody deserves that kind of brutality.”
“Shit happens,” Baker said.
It sounded lame, even to Karen. “C’mon, they fucked up. Too big a splash for a fish that small. Now they got us poking up everybody’s ass with a microscope. You could get us out of here, point us in the right direction if you wanted to.”
Baker shrugged.
“We heard it was one of their musclemen did it. Guy named Fanshawe. Know anything about him?”
Baker shook his head.
“Baker’s not a rat,” Hank said to Karen. “It’s the no-snitch rule. He won’t give us anything, even if it means screwing an Angel.”
“C’mon, Ugly. Don’t be that way.”
“He won’t tell us anything. It’s the code of honor.”
“Bullshit. He just needs a workaround, Lou. A way to tell us where we can find Fanshawe without actually telling us.”
“I don’t talk about other people,” Baker agreed. “It’s bad for the health.”
“That’s a shame,” Hank said.
“I’m a businessman. This is an HD dealership. You like that bike you were looking at?”
Hank glanced back at the motorcycle in question. “Yeah, it’s nice.”
“I’m the only guy in town can sell you that bike brand new. The next closest you can come to it is a dump in South Shore West that sells used and reconditioned Harleys, and that guy’s a fucking crook. Got bad connections, is what I hear.”
Karen stirred. “What place are we talking about, Ugly?”
“Call me that again, darling, and I’ll make you wish you hadn’t, cop or no cop.”
“Answer the question,” Hank snapped.
“She’s gotta learn to be nice to people, she wants them to tell her stuff.”
“I’m nice,” Hank said, “and you were talking to me.”
“That’s right, I was. I was telling you to compare my bikes to the garbage they sell down on Adams Street, place called Argus Cycle. They got apartments upstairs, like I do here, only they got a lot of fucking riffraff living there. Guys that keep illegal firearms lying around where someone could get hurt with them.”
“We’ll take a look,” Hank said.
Karen rapped here knuckles on the counter. “This better be good, Ugly. I don’t want to have to come back here. I hate this part of town.”
Baker got off the stool in a hurry and came around the counter to confront Karen as she began to turn away. His belly brushed against her as he thrust his face an inch from hers and bared his teeth. “I told you not to have a smart mouth.” He grabbed her right wrist with his left hand and began to squeeze as his right hand went for her gun.
Hank stayed out of the way.
Baker’s eyes widened suddenly as Karen made a fist with her hand, twisted her wrist in his grasp, then opened her hips and swung back with her left leg, jerking her wrist out of his hand. With blazing speed she reversed direction and hammered the back of her fist against his right ear, whipped her left knee forward into his crotch and then bent him backwards over the counter, her forearm applying a steady pressure to his throat.
“You know,” she said conversationally, staring into his eyes, “I can understand you don’t like to talk, you gotta respect the biker code, all that. But I’m having a hard time deciding whether or not to just go ahead and crush your fucking larynx right now so you never talk again, period. Help me out here. Should I just go ahead and do it? Huh? Should I?”
“Mmmnnnphh,” Baker managed, eyes rolling, searching for Hank.
Hank moved forward and put a heavy hand on Baker’s shoulder. “He’s too old for this, Detective. You shouldn’t pick on the elderly. It’s not fair.”
“Sure. Okay.” Karen released him and stepped back, angrily looping her hair behind her ear.
Hank thumped Baker’s shoulder once on the counter. “Mind your manners, understand? Don’t start something you can’t finish.” He took away his hand and watched carefully as Baker slowly straightened up.
“Fu’ outta here,” he managed, gasping.
Out on the sidewalk Karen delivered a swift kick to a half-empty metal garbage can, sending it end over end across the sidewalk, garbage spewing. It tumbled out onto the street and then rolled back against the curb. She strode around the front of the Crown Vic, jaw working, and got in behind the wheel. Hank got in on the passenger side and buckled up.
“Fucking bastard.” She started the engine.
“His mistake. He doesn’t know you.”
“Fucking right he doesn’t know me.” She peeled away from the curb.
“You okay to drive? You want me to drive?”
“No!”
“Okay.”
“God, I hate being touched by slime balls like that. The fucking nerve.”
“I know.”
A block later she said: “I’m okay, you don’t have to hold on to the armrest like you’re gonna die in the next five minutes. The adrenaline’s working off.” As though to prove her point, she came to a full stop at a stop sign, looked left and right, then proceeded through the intersection at a more or less normal rate of acceleration.
“I’ll call South Shore West, get them to send a patrol car to meet us at Adams Street,” he said, taking out his cell phone.
“Good idea.” She glanced in the rear view mirror. “Just let that fucker file a complaint.”
“Baker?” Navigating through his phone directory for the number of the South Shore West district police station, Hank glanced over at her. “It’ll never happen. Intimidation’s like a second language to guys like him. He got your message loud and clear.”
“He fucking better have.”
As Baker had promised, Argus Cycle was a dump. Formerly a car dealership sandwiched in the middle of a block between an abandoned furniture store and a pawn shop, it featured a large picture window that at one time had displayed the latest new cars and now was cluttered with cardboard boxes, bike wheels and assorted garbage. To the left of the window was the main entrance, sheltered by a kidney-shaped porch roof, and to the right was a narrow door that led upstairs to the second floor. No one was visible in any of the windows at the front of the building.
The police cruiser was waiting for them at the mouth of the wide alley that ran the length of the block behind Adams Street. Everyone got out and met in front of the cruiser.
“No warrant,” Karen said, “so the Lieutenant and I are going to do a knock and talk. The guy’s apartment is supposedly upstairs, so we’ll try there first.”
The senior of the two patrol officers, whose name tag said he was Officer Dolman, nodded. “All right.”
The other one, whose name tag said he was Officer Peete, kept his mouth shut.
“We didn’t see anything out front on the drive by,” Karen went on. “How ‘bout you?”
Dolman knew better. “We came the back way, up Kline. Didn’t go by the front.”
Karen nodded. “Good. Sit tight. If anyone comes out the back, do your thing.”
“All right, Detective.”
They turned and looked down the alley at the back of the building. There was a large set of back doors through which the cars would have been driven in the good old days, and a wooden staircase leading up to the second story. The windows up there were all covered with white roller blinds. There was a nondescript green van parked next to a dumpster. This side of the van was a motorcycle. Nothing moved. Everything was quiet.
“Let’s go.”
Karen and Hank got into the Crown Vic. Dolman and Peete got into their cruiser and slowly slid up the alley to get into position. Karen swung around the corner onto Adams and parked in front of the narrow door that led upstairs to the apartment above the bike shop.
“Fucking quiet around here,” she said, opening her door.
“Yeah.” Hank got out on his side.
They went inside and trudged upstairs to a short corridor with a single door at the end. Karen knocked loudly. “Hello! Anybody home?”
Silence.
She pounded again. “Hey there, anyone home?”
A faint thud and the whisper of footsteps.
Karen waited.
The door opened a crack. “Who is it?” a male voice asked.
Karen glanced at Hank, who moved slowly against the wall. She stepped a little to the other side of the opening.
“Glendale police department, sir,” she said in a loud voice. “Is this where Mr. Fanshawe lives? Can we come in? We’d like to talk to him.”
“Deron? He’s not home right now.”
“Can you open the door and let us come in, sir? We’d like to ask a few questions.”
“I guess.”
Karen took another step to the side as a chain rattled and the door opened. A man in his early twenties stood there in grubby boxer shorts and a grey t-shirt. He picked at his scruffy beard as he stared at Karen, trying to focus his eyes.
“Come on in, I guess.”
“Anyone else in the apartment with you, sir?”
“Just Connie. My girlfriend. We—.”
“What’s your name, sir?” Karen pushed past him into the apartment. Hank followed.
“Um, George.”
Karen’s eyes swung around the apartment as Hank moved several steps to the right. There was an open doorway straight ahead leading into a kitchen, a bathroom next to that, a closed door along the far wall to the left and an open door on the right. The room in which they stood was a large, untidy living room with a couch, several battered armchairs, a widescreen television, a beer fridge, and a lot of junk scattered everywhere. There was no one else in sight. No shotguns in sight. No drugs. Nothing out of the ordinary.
As Hank moved toward the open door on the right a young woman walked out, rubbing her eyes. She was short, a natural blond, and completely naked.
“George, what—.” She took one look at Hank and disappeared back into the room.
“That’s Connie,” George said apologetically. “We were just—.”
“I get it,” Karen interrupted. “What’s your last name, George?”
“Carl.”
“This where a guy named Fanshawe lives?”
“Yeah, Deron. He’s not here right now. You said you’re from the police?”
Karen took out her badge and identification and held it up with a bored expression on her face. “Now your turn, pal. Show me some ID.”
George looked around in confusion, then saw his jeans lying on the floor in the bathroom. He found his wallet in the back pocket and handed Karen his driver’s license. She looked it over, looked at him, then gave it back.
“What’s behind that closed door over there?” Hank asked, nodding across the room.
“What? Oh, that’s Deron’s room.”
“Is he in there?”
“No, I told you he’s not here right now. He went out a while ago.”
“Mind if I look?”
“It’s locked. He always keeps it locked.”
“Mind if I try it anyway?”
“Sure,” George said, waving his hand, “but it’s locked.”
Hank took a roundabout route across the room to the door and saw that it was a steel door in a steel frame. He tried the doorknob and found it locked. There was a deadbolt above the knob that suggested Fanshawe took no chances with his privacy.
“Got a key?”
“No, sorry.”
“Tell your girlfriend to put something on and come out.”
“Okay.” George walked toward the bedroom door and called in. “Con? Are you decent? They want you to come out.”
She emerged from the bedroom wearing jeans and a white t-shirt. She glared at Hank and went over to stand next to George.
“So if this is Fanshawe’s place,” Karen said, “what the hell are you two doing here?”
George smiled uncertainly. “I’m his cousin. We’re from Baltimore. We’re looking for jobs and Deron said we could stay for a few days until we found a place.”
“Nice guy.” Karen looked at Connie and had an idea why an Angels tough guy would suddenly feel so hospitable. “So where is he right now?”
“I think he went to get something to eat.”
“Where, George?” Karen prompted impatiently.
“Oh, sorry. I forget what it’s called. It’s a pool hall down the street, they have takeout and stuff. He told Connie they let him go back into the kitchen and fix whatever he wants.”
Hank looked into the kitchen and saw a door leading out to the wooden staircase at the back of the building. “We’d like you to come with us and answer a few more questions for police officers downstairs in the alley. You okay with that?”
“I guess so,” George said. “Are we under arrest?”
“No, not at all. But your cousin may have done something and we don’t want you mixed up in it.”
“I told you this was a bad idea,” Connie hissed, pinching George angrily on the forearm.
“Ow. Sorry.”
Hank herded the two of them through the kitchen and outside, down the back stairs into the alley. When they were settled into the rear of the police cruiser Karen called for additional backup. They stood at the bottom of the stairs and looked back up at the apartment.
“Think he’s in the room behind that damned metal door?”
Hank shrugged. “Hard to say for sure, but I don’t think so. Let’s check out the other place.”
They drove around the block, found the pool hall and met their backup. This time they went in through the rear entrance into the kitchen, Karen leading the way. She walked around a big deep fat fryer and saw a tall, muscular man at a steel food preparation table cutting a sandwich in half with a chef’s knife. He wore a sleeveless black t-shirt advertising Jack Daniels and faded blue jeans.
“Deron Fanshawe? Police. Don’t move. Just want to ask you some questions.”
There was a moment of dead silence. Then Fanshawe’s lips parted and he slowly shook his head. “That fucking Solomon. Right?”
She nodded, hands apart at waist level, palms up.
“What a fucking loser,” he said, almost with regret.
Karen looked at his long blond hair, his light brown beard, and the tattoos covering his bare arms. She looked at the knife, motionless above the sandwich, looked at the big knuckles on his wide hands, and looked at the revolver stuck into the waistband of his jeans, tight against his abdominal muscles.
She shook her head. “You’ll lose if you try.”
The eyes that locked on hers were such a pale blue that they almost appeared to be backlighted. He was a damned good looking guy, there was no question. As he smiled he showed perfect, well-kept teeth. One eyebrow arched higher than the other, giving him a boyish, mischievous look.
Hard to believe this guy was a cold-blooded, deadly killer who’d blown four men to bits over a gambling debt. He looked more like a college football player thinking up a practical joke to play on his best friend.
Goddammit, she thought.
He whipped the knife at her backhanded and started to duck down behind the steel table. Karen drew and fired a round through the top of his head as the knife passed over her right shoulder no more than two inches from her cheek. She heard it strike the fryer behind her and splash down into the boiling hot fat.
Hank hurried around the other side of the table. She saw him bend down and come back up with Fanshawe’s revolver in his hand. He looked at her and shook his head.
“Done.”
This time, the adrenaline felt like a toxin in her body.
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If you enjoyed this short story, please consider rating it or leaving a review. The author greatly appreciates your feedback.
Look for other stories from this collection at http://www.smashwords.com/profile/view/mjmccann, where you’ll also find Blood Passage, the first novel in the Donaghue and Stainer Crime Novel series.
The Plaid Raccoon Press
2011