Gary Alexander - The Best American Mystery Stories 2010

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Featuring twenty of the year’s standout crime short stories handpicked by one of the world’s best thriller writers, Best American Mystery Stories 2010 showcases not only the very best of the crime genre, but the best of American writing full stop. Within its pages, literary legends rub shoulders with the hottest new talent. Contributors in the past have included James Lee Burke, Jeffrey Deaver, Michael Connelly, Alice Munro and Joyce Carol Oates. This year’s guest editor is Lee Child, the creator of Jack Reacher and a simultaneous bestseller on both sides of the Atlantic.

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Ray continued as if he hadn’t heard anything Doyle had said. “No, you would never even think of lookin’ at your poor brother’s wife.” He continued stalking Doyle around the boar, his face seeming calm, but his eyes on fire.

“Ray, come on. I ain’t sniffin’ around your wife, if that’s what you’re getting at. That was an accident. I was only lookin’ for you. The dogs was barkin’, I didn’t know what was goin’ on.” Doyle tripped over Otis, the dog still worrying the boar’s ears at his feet.

He sprawled on the ground, caught himself, scrambled to get back to his feet and slipped again in the dirt, now slick with blood. In that instant, Ray was over him.

“I saw what you did to our little garden.”

Doyle stared back at him.

“Every one of them plants knocked down and trampled on. Might not mean much to you, brother. Means a hell of a lot to me. I got a kid to worry about. I need the money that stuff brings in. You got everything you need. You didn’t want to be involved, coulda said so. I coulda left you out of it. I guess you’re in it now, though.” Ray spit on the ground next to Doyle’s hand.

“Fuck you, Ray. That stuff is on my land. I don’t want to end up spendin’ time in prison over a few extra bucks.” Doyle could feel a bead of sweat running down his forehead. Felt the sting of it as it got into his eye, but tried not to blink.

“That’s right. Your land. I done forgot.” Ray reached out one hand as if to help his brother up, but still clutched the spear tightly in the other. “Come on, Doyle. We’re family.”

Doyle didn’t take Ray’s hand. Instead, he pushed himself up off the ground. Ray standing there the whole time with his hand out like a statue, wanting to make sure the gesture didn’t go unnoticed. Doyle was conscious of the dogs whining behind Ray, sniffing at the dead boar, his dead dog. “I guess it’s true what they say, then. You can’t pick your family.”

Ray lunged at him with the spear. Doyle jumped back, but was too slow. He couldn’t believe that this was happening. At least not to him. The spear point sunk an inch into his belly. He felt the blood running into the waistband of his pants. When Ray tried again, he grabbed at the spear, got it just behind the point, and didn’t let go.

Ray pushed forward, grunting, his eyes narrowed, and Doyle fell back to the ground. He gasped for breath, but it wouldn’t come. The shaft of Ray’s spear slipped a little in his sweaty hands, the point inching closer to his face.

Ray started screaming. He let go of the spear. Doyle rolled away and looked up to see Hammer gripping Ray by the hamstring, shaking his whole body back and forth, but making no sound. All the sound was coming from Ray, who was swinging his fists back at the dog, but only hitting the Kevlar cut vest, doing no damage.

Doyle found Ray’s spear still in his hand. He got to his knees, and then up to his feet, breathless from the fall and lightheaded with adrenaline. He looked at Ray’s eyes. They were still furious, burning pinpricks set into his skull. He looked at Hammer, the dog still gripping and shaking, Ray’s blood on his muzzle. Dixie and Otis were barking, but keeping their distance.

Doyle stepped forward with the spear and drove it deep into Ray’s rib cage. He let go of the shaft, left the spear sticking out of his brother. Ray stopped struggling with Hammer. He fell back, landing on the dog still hanging on his leg. Hammer let go and grabbed him by the shoulder, holding Ray as if he were a pig, pinning him down. Doyle sat next to his brother. Tugged on the dog’s collar to get him to let go. Ray’s chest fluttered up and down with his breath. Blood gurgled in the back of his throat. His eyes were wide open, staring up into the cypress trees and the sky above. “Damn it, Ray,” Doyle said. He stroked his big brother’s hair for a long time after he died, after the dogs had filled their bellies on the carcass of the boar and wandered off to nap, after the sun had traveled its course long enough to drag shadows across Ray’s face, and watched as the dirt swallowed the last of the bad blood under the cypresses.

Contributors’ notes

Gary Alexanderhas written nine novels, including Disappeared , which will be in print this year. He’s also written more than 150 short stories, most for mystery magazines. Back in the good old days (five to ten years ago) when newspapers were buying freelance travel, he sold articles to six major dailies, including the Chicago Tribune and the Dallas Morning News. He lives in Kent, Washington, with his wife Shari and teaches creative writing at the Kent Senior Activities Center. Please visit him at www.garyralexander.com.

We visited Campeche City, Mexico, in 1997. It was a wonderful city full of colonial history, nice people, and thanks to lousy beaches, very few gringo tourists, I sold a travel piece on Campeche City to the New Orleans Times-Picayune, which was a lot of fun as well as a tax write-off for the trip. It’s gratifying to finally get this terrific place into a mystery yarn.

R. A. Allenhas published fiction in the Barcelona Review (64), SinisterCity, PANK, Sniplits, Calliope, and other publications, and poetry in Boston Literary Magazine, The Recusant (U.K.), Word Riot, Pear Noir! and elsewhere. Nominated by LITnIMAGE for Dzanc Books’ Best of the Web 2010, he lives in Memphis. For more information, visit www.nyqpoets.net/poet/raallen.

This story explores the relationship between two career criminals who have been friends since their impoverished childhoods in an area of the United States known more as a leisure destination for its spectacular beaches. As they enter their thirties, they are faced with choices made unique by their status as ex-convicts. One of them wants to go straight, the other wishes to become a more efficient criminal. While fleeing a violent confrontation in a stolen car, they accidentally stumble into a horrific incident being perpetrated on one of those spectacular beaches. I tried to write a story about the same things that fascinate me on a day-to-day basis: human relationships, human motivations, and the role the unexpected plays in rearranging our lives.

Award-winning author Doug Allynhas been published in English, German, French, and Japanese, and more than two dozen of his tales have been optioned for development as feature films and television. The author of eight novels and more than a hundred short stories, his first story won the Robert L. Fish Award for Best First from Mystery Writers of America, and subsequent critical response has been equally enthusiastic. He has won the coveted Edgar Allan Poe Award (plus six nominations), three Derringer Awards for novellas, and the Ellery Queen Readers’ Award an unprecedented nine times, including this year.

Mr. Allyn studied creative writing and criminal psychology at the University of Michigan while moonlighting as a guitarist in the rock group Devil’s Triangle and reviewing books for the Flint Journal. Career highlights are sipping champagne with Mickey Spillane and waltzing with Mary Higgins Clark.

“An Early Christmas” touches on two of my favorite themes: the beauty of the lake country, and the social turmoil seething just beneath the surface.

Mary Stewart Atwelllives in Springfield, Missouri. Her short fiction has appeared in Best New American Voices 2004, Epoch, and Alaska Quarterly Review, and she recently completed her first novel.

Having “Maynard” included in this anthology feels appropriate, since the story and its protagonist are still in many ways a mystery to me. I woke up one morning with the image in my head of a baby floated down the river on a cheap plastic raft, and though I don’t usually use dreams as source material, I decided to see where it led. Originally that image began the story, but as I went on, I found that the narrator’s voice had taken over. I was going through a period of worrying that all my first-person narrators sounded a little bit too much like me, so I was thrilled to find myself hearing this new voice — naive, bold, and capable of saying almost anything.

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