The Best American Mystery Stories 2015 by James Patterson, Otto Penzler Read Free Book Online Page B

jagged end of it across Harvey’s new parka, smearing his coat with blood and slime.
    “What—? What the hell are you doing?” Bemis stammered, staggering back, horrified.
    “Take a deep breath, counselor. That’s what justice smells like in the deep woods. Avery cut Novak a check for his daughter and expected him to take it. I warned you it would blow back, and now it has. I helped make this mess, so I’m going to fix it, but I’m done playing games. I’m going to tell Novak the flat-ass truth about what happened. And he’ll give me a name and I’ll bring that bastard in. It won’t be justice, but I’ll have to live with it. This,” I said, tossing the bone at his feet, “is the part you have to live with.”
    As I turned away, Bemis grabbed my arm.
    “Just a damn minute, LaCrosse—”
    Pure cussedness on my part. As he jerked me around, I used the momentum to slap him across the face. Harder than I meant to. He went down like a sack of cement, staring up at me in stunned disbelief.
    “I’ll—I’ll have your badge for that!”
    “No, you won’t. I’d love to tell a judge about this mess, Harve, but your boss wouldn’t like it. And just so we’re clear? If you ever lay hands on me again, I’ll break your goddamn jaw. C’mon, get up.” I offered him my hand, but he brushed it away angrily and staggered to his feet.
    A black carrion beetle the size of my thumb was working its way through the muck on his overcoat.
    “You’ve got a bug,” I said, pointing at the beetle.
    “What?
Oh!
” he gasped, horrified. He tried to brush it away, but the beetle clung stubbornly to the fabric, scarfing its lunch.
    Harvey plucked it off and cast it aside, but his fingertips came up smeared with Derek Patel’s remains. It was too much. Stumbling into the brush, he dropped to his knees in the snow, retching up everything but his spleen.
    I almost felt sorry for him.
    But I couldn’t spare the time. I needed to get to Novak fast.
    To tell him the truth. And destroy him with it.
     
    I picked up my partner at the shore highway, where patrolmen were taping off the original dump site. Racing back into Valhalla with lights and sirens, we crossed the river to Poletown, to Carl Novak’s run-down double-wide.
    I carried the femur with me. Technically it was evidence, but the forest den wasn’t really a crime scene. The coyotes were only guilty of being coyotes.
    When Carl Novak answered my knock, I simply handed him the savaged bone, explained what it was and where I’d found it. And what had actually happened the night his daughter died.
    It took a moment for the horror of it to sink in. But when it did, Novak sagged against the doorjamb like he’d been slammed across the knees with a Louisville Slugger.
    And then he gave us the hired killer’s name.
    A familiar one.
    Joni Cohen was right. When you do police work in your hometown, you’re bound to run into people you know.
     
    “Holy crap,” Zina said, scanning the screen of her laptop. We were in my Jeep, idling in Novak’s driveway, waiting for a prowl car to show, to take him into custody.
    “What have we got?” I asked, keeping an eye on Carl Novak, as he said his goodbyes to his wife and remaining kids on his porch. Dry-eyed now, but he looked decades older. In utter despair.
    “Oskar Sorsa, Big Ox,” Zina read. “Six foot seven, two-eighty. Two-time loser, both busts tied to the meth trade, three years on the first fall, four more on his second. Ganged up in prison with the Aryan Militia. The LEO lists him as a violent offender. Presume to be armed, approach with caution. Paroled to Valhalla after his latest hitch. Elkhart Road? I don’t recognize that address.”
    “It’s in the state forest. His grandfather had a cabin back there.”
    “You know this guy?”
    “I used to see him around logging jobs, back in the day. Never worked with him. He had a rep as a bad-ass then. Sounds like prison made him worse.”
    “How do we handle