Joe Lansdale: Leather Maiden

Oswald wrote a really good piece based on what he knew about the leather maidens found in the church and at the back of the field. He wrote about Dinkins, the note and the DVD. Dinkins looks to be prison-bound. A month later, Oswald wrote an article about a rotting body found on the scenic overlook. Another anonymous tip led him to that. Oswald thinks he has fans amongst the underworld. It makes him feel important.

They ran a picture of Gregore’s somewhat weathered shoe stuck in the fork of the old oak tree. Oswald took the picture.

Oswald and I talk now. I think it’s because he feels more content. He didn’t get nominated for a Pulitzer, but he did get a lot of attention, and Timpson doesn’t call him “boy” anymore. But she does refer to him as colored.

The school in the black section of town didn’t get built. I see Judence on TV from time to time, always looking to be the nation’s moral barometer. The black racists and white racists have turned relatively silent for the time being.

The world still sucks.

I drove by Gabby’s work the other day, just out of the blue. I saw her car there, and through the window I got a glimpse of her. I didn’t feel a thing. I drove by her house to see how that felt. It was just a house. After that, I drove home to meet up with Belinda. We like to have dinner together when our jobs permit. She got a job as a reporter in the town next door. She’s real happy about that. I’m not writing hard news anymore, just the columns, and a lot of them have turned to fluff, but I like it that way.

Now and again I drive by the old Siegel house on my way out of town, or on some errand for the paper, and I wonder how Caroline’s body is doing up there. She had once been just a kid who maybe had some possibilities. A smart kid who thought she might be a princess or some such thing, the way little girls do. She became a woman whose soul and heart had been turned to leather, just as surely as the bodies of those poor dead women she and that psycho Stitch had tortured and killed.

Caroline was the true leather maiden. She had been that way a long time. And, to this date, as far as anyone else knows, she’s still missing.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Joe R. Lansdale has written more than a dozen novels in the suspense, horror and Western genres. He has also edited several anthologies. He has received the British Fantasy Award, the American Mystery Award, seven Bram Stoker Awards and the 2001 Edgar Award for best novel from the Mystery Writers of America. In 2007 he won the Grand Master Award at the World Horror Convention. He lives in Nacogdoches, Texas, with his family.

ALSO BY JOE R. LANSDALE

Lost Echoes

Sunset and Sawdust

A Fine Dark Line

Captains Outrageous

The Bottoms

Freezer Burn

Rumble Tumble

Bad Chili

Mucho Mojo

THIS IS A BORZOI BOOK

PUBLISHED BY ALFRED A. KNOPF

Copyright © 2008 by Joe R. Lansdale

All rights reserved. Published in the United States by Alfred A. Knopf, a division of Random House, Inc., New York, and in Canada by Random House of Canada Limited, Toronto.

www.aaknopf.com

Knopf, Borzoi Books, and the colophon are registered trademarks of Random House, Inc.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Lansdale, Joe R., [date]

Leather maiden / by Joe R. Lansdale.—1st American ed.

p. cm.

1. Journalists—Fiction. 2. Cold cases (Criminal investigation)—Fiction. 3. Texas, East—Fiction. 4. Domestic fiction. I. Title.

PS3562.A557L43 2008

813'.54—dc22 2007051854

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are 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.

eISBN: 978-0-307-27041-2

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