"Get out there. Bid on the darned boat," Fred X. Keefer hammered his desk top. "Pay any amount. Be sure no one outbids you!" Sam Dooley, loyal bean counter, saluted his boss and scurried out of the office, his "Yessir," hanging in the air like a piece of dry jerky. Fred X. needed that yacht. Mildred's body was on it. Read more.

July in Baltimore. A killing heat. It roasted Marty the minute he stepped foot outside his office. It sweated him of hope. Two blocks down, the Greene Street bus stop shimmered like a mirage. Marty knew he didn’t stand a chance of getting there without an alluvial overflow of wetness dripping down his crack. And a mouthful of the grit five o’clock traffic whipped up. Or the wince of white-hot sidewalk nuking the bottoms of his ancient Oxfords. For a second he stood blinking in disbelief: Marty Childs, bookkeeper. Age forty-six. Sporting creased uppers and a baggy, summer-weight suit. Circle of hair scruffy from neglect. And a pain in his gut that felt like a midget pounding him with a polo mallet every time he took a breath. Read more.

I stare at my melted keyboard and blank monitor and the CPU humming nonstop, and I don't dare unplug it. I'm not sure what would happen, but it would be ugly. Somewhere early on there might've been a bail-out point. The best thing I could've done - and jeez, I never thought I'd hear myself say this - was listen to Mom. Read more.

Billy Ray Jones eased the station wagon onto the highway, skirting a pothole at the edge of the shoulder to avoid bouncing the corpse around. This was the third time in two years he'd hauled a body for the state prison system. The cheap administrators had never yet provided a transport box. At the other end, the country church that donated burial space would have a pine coffin waiting, but that didn't help Billy Ray any now. He could just see himself trying to explain a corpse to the highway patrol. So far he'd never been stopped, but he kept the transfer papers tucked right up here on the visor, in case that ever happened. Read more.

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