ronearl

At the bottom of a remote lake in the Sierra, a skeleton rocks with the current, ankles and neck chained to the decaying hulk of a snowmobile.  Close by, covered with muck, lie a rusty ax and a pistol. The corpse wore, for a while, the expression of a man both surprised and betrayed.  A […]

The day they killed Frank Watson, I was three hundred miles away, fly fishing in the High Sierra. If I’m honest, I have to say I ran out and left him holding the bag. True, I’d had the fishing trip planned for months, well before I’d ever heard of Dave Silva or Rawcliffe Construction. But […]

I only tried to kill one person in my life, and it was out of mercy. He was in misery. But he cried when I put the gun to his head. My uncle was a strong man before the accident. Up until I was a teenager, I would hang from his flexed arms like a […]

I remember the long thin bloodstain that had frozen into the ice in our backyard. It formed a dripping pathway from the bed of my uncle’s truck to the old dilapidated garage that had always been off limits to us as kids. I knew the drill because I had heard it before. I would hear […]

“Freeze and let me see your hands!” Fosdick’s raspy voice cut through the warehouse from behind me.  My stomach turned over and a chill went up my spine. “Gun out, slowly.  Throw it to the side. Good. Now turn around… slowly.” I turned and saw the forty-five in Fosdick’s right hand with its ugly death […]

Glen’s Liquor Store was just off the main drag along the way home. The joint was lit up with half-dead, flickering red neon lights surrounding a shit-pile.  I’d meant to stop in for the past week, but the bossman had me doing other things off the normal route. The overhead bell jingled when I pushed […]

Tinian then Saipan, one worse than the other, Jenkins falling in that mangrove swamp, so utterly gone it was like he’d never been there. Whose hand is this? Gloria’s? Gloria’s been dead for years. Months? Yesterday? Better not let the Mulcahy kid make the collections. Useless. Never gets the count right, shorts all the working […]

I parked the stolen Monte Carlo across from the strip mall, feeling damn good about this job. Few shoppers, light traffic. Should be easy. But then Mark tossed his surgical mask up from the back seat. “Gonna wear my ski mask instead.” His voice like crushed stone. Ben spun around. Brows creased, eyes narrowed. His […]

The sun beat down on the hotel patio. A glass door was cracked open. Inside a man in a pinstripe suit sat on the edge of the bed, holding a telephone to his ear. Mary watched him talk, his mouth barely moving as it pressed near the pink handset, his other hand holding a faded […]

It had been nearly four months since James Daley had won the lottery. Not a fortune, but a good chunk of change. Nearly $100,000. His wife of more than twenty years had been thrilled and, for a couple of weeks, the money was like a shot of Viagra for both of them. Their passion was […]

“Thieves,” Officer Summers said, “are generally lazy.” I wrote this down in my notepad. It was my first day on the job, and I wanted to make a good impression. “Take that car over there, for example” he said, pointing to a late-model black Audi in the rear of the Pacific Place parking garage. We […]

Three seconds was all it took. Push, slip, fall then a haphazard tumble down the wooden stairs the teachers’ quarters were known for, before Ms. Adebisi’s body rolled to a stop at the bottom, lifeless. How long did they stand there, eyes bulging out of their sockets, the horror before them not registering? The first […]