Джеймс Грейди - The Best American Mystery Stories 2002

Many hours later we are sitting there still. Janie, asleep, is trundled hard against Hal’s shoulder and I have turned off all the lights. They are breathing softly, the two of them, and if they wake up I will pretend to be asleep myself, for Janie will think me crazy to not have gone home. I sit here watching them sleep because it’s good to sit here, good to be among family, to rest in the same room among loved ones and listen to them breathe in the dark. It has been so long since we shared a room together. So I will stay here and sip my drink, and think about what Janie doesn’t care to remember, about that day in the park, when Skeet killed a butterfly in the company of my friends.

The day was dwindling. Everyone was drunk. Skeet had some music he wanted to play for us, convinced it would pick everyone up. Nobody protested, though nobody wanted it. We were pretending to enjoy the quiet. And as he opened his hatchback to take out his tapes, an insect — I couldn’t see what, a bee or a wasp or a moth — began wheeling around him furiously. Skeet leapt back, clearly alarmed. That’s when I looked up and saw him. He stepped back, then forward, and reached deftly into the trunk. He pulled out a beach towel. Holding it high, he aimed at the insect, still whirling around him, and swung at it frantically, thrashing like a swordsman in a duel with the air. He pulled back for one more swing, then, appeased, let his arm drop limply to his side.

“Did you get it?” I asked, not really caring, but wanting to show some interest for Skeet’s sake.

He looked at me absently, with that familiar trance born of violence, and then leaned over into the trunk. Between his thick thumb and forefinger he withdrew a wide-brimmed orange butterfly. It was a monarch — I know that now. He held it up for our inspection. Then he began to study it a little himself. He held its wings up to the light, examined its underbelly, turned it back and forth. Or maybe I’m giving him too much credit. Maybe he didn’t study it at all. Whatever attention he gave it, though, suddenly ceased when Janie, who had been watching too, stood up and dusted the seat of her pants. “Is it dead?” she asked.

Skeet lifted it once more and looked at it. He shrugged, then let his hand, still pinching the butterfly, fall to his side.

“Did you kill it?” Margaret asked, looking up from the cutting board. She shook her head. “Oh no,” she mourned halfheartedly. “You killed it.”

Janie, a hint of humor in her voice, said, “Hey, Skeet murdered the butterfly.”

“Oh yuck,” said Barbara. “He murdered the butterfly.”

“Murderer,” Stan teased.

“Murderer,” laughed Barbara, who went back to weaving her wildflowers.

“Murderer,” they all canted in chorus and I joined in, thinking it funny too until Skeet’s confused eyes hardened into discs at the sight of me and I remembered too late.

From HandHeldCrime & Plots with Guns

After my wife divorced me last August, I left upstate New York and drove west. My plan was to live in Seattle, but money ran thin in Moscow, Idaho. I got stuck there. I devoted a lot of time and attention to heavy drinking and found I was really good at being drunk.

Functional alcoholism requires a delicate balance of solitude, booze, and money, and I worked on making a science of it. Keeping the money part of the equation flowing is always tough, so I was relieved when Greg showed up on my doorstep early one Saturday morning, talking about getting paid cash for a day’s work.

Greg was a big ex-football player of a man who lived with his girlfriend and her son in one of the trailers that surrounded my little cinder block, one-bedroom shed. Greg sold insurance, he painted houses, but his main sideline was bounty hunting and skip tracing. He was licensed by the State of Idaho, so most of the things he did were somewhere in the neighborhood of legal. My first week in Moscow, Greg roped me into helping him catch a fugitive, then we transported the bad guy to the U.S. Marshal’s office in Spokane. He had given me some of the reward money, which I promptly drank. Every time I saw Greg outside near his girlfriend’s trailer, I waved to him and he waved back. We were partners, in an unofficial sort of way. I saw him walking up the gravel road that wound through the trailers, and I opened the door before he knocked.

“Hi,” I said. Greg wore a denim shirt, jeans, a tan hunting vest, and black cowboy boots.

“Early to be stinko, isn’t it?” he asked, pointing his chin at the beer in my right hand.

“That’s a myth,” I answered. “Alcohol doesn’t even begin to affect your brain before noon.”

“Sure,” Greg said. He nodded. “Feel like taking a ride? I’ve got a potential client and we could get paid cash for working today.”

“How much?” I asked.

Greg shifted his weight and looked out over the trailers. “I think that depends,” he said.

“Ballpark it for me,” I said. I leaned against the doorjamb and sipped my warm beer.

“It’s a missing person job,” he said. He turned to look straight at me. “Could be a couple hundred bucks in it, and probably no guns.” He paused. “Well, maybe guns, but definitely no cops.”

I nodded. “I’m in,” I said. I tilted my head and drained my beer, tossing the empty can back into my apartment. “Can I use your pistol?” Greg owned a Beretta that I coveted.

Greg smiled. “Sure. Let’s drive over.”

We walked back down the gravel road together and got into Greg’s ugly truck. It was an old Toyota four-door that he had rigged with a Plexiglas barrier, separating the front seats from the back, just like the cops. He started it up and we drove across town and out into farm country. Mile after mile of lentils and corn stretched toward the horizon.

“Nice country,” I said. I was wearing my work clothes — a pair of jeans, work boots, blue T-shirt, and tan work jacket. There was a bottle of whiskey in my jacket pocket. I took it out and had a swallow. I looked at the fields passing by.

Greg leaned over, reached into the glove compartment, and handed me the Beretta. I stuck it in the right hand pocket of my work jacket. “Farms always scare me,” Greg said. “Too much work.” He watched the road straight ahead, oceans of grain fields passing by on both sides. “I like town,” he said. “No matter how small a town.”

We passed a long-abandoned church and made a right turn onto a dirt driveway. A hand-lettered sign at the side of the driveway read Ryan’s Farm. I sucked back some whiskey. We drove down the dirt driveway and stopped in front of a white house surrounded by farm buildings. A sagging picnic table sat on the front lawn. An old man walked off the porch toward us. An older, white-haired woman stood on the porch steps, in front of the house. We both got out of the truck and I left the whiskey under the passenger’s seat.

“Hi,” said the old man. His voice was a ton of gravel coming off a truck. “I’m Harry Ryan.” He wore farmer’s denim coveralls and a green ball cap.

Greg nodded. “I’m Greg Newell and this is my partner, John Thorn,” he said. I nodded and lifted my right hand in a half-wave.

“Sam Haag said you were a good man for this job. Sam said you were tough.” Harry Ryan looked at Greg, then at me. “I need somebody tough,” he said.

“We’re tough,” Greg said.

Harry Ryan came closer. “I smell booze,” he said.

“I spilled some on my boots last night, out playing pool,” I lied.

Harry Ryan came a step closer. “Smells like you spilled it in your mouth first thing this morning,” he said.

“It helps me be tough,” I said.

Harry Ryan nodded.