Cold Bullets and Hot Babes: Dark Crime Stories Read Online Free Page A

just won the California lotto. He’d never eaten a crawdad in his life. He didn’t speak French. He said he’d driven to Louisiana in a truck he couldn’t locate and had identity papers he could not find. The deputies laughed their asses off.
    Suzette was brought into the station to give a statement. “I’ve been living in terror for over a month,” she said. “One night Pierre got drunk and attacked me. When Uncle Rémy came to my defense there was a terrible fight. Rémy knocked out two of Pierre’s teeth...just look for yourself...at that point Pierre grabbed his shotgun and killed my uncle. He threw his body to the alligators. When I threatened to tell Étienne what had happened, he went nuts. He can make up any name he wants, but what other man has eyes like his?”
    The D.A. heard every word from his chair in the corner.
    “As absurd as it seems, let’s give this man every opportunity to clear his name before he gets what’s coming to him. Fly that woman out from California and we’ll listen to what she has to say.”
    Jeeter breathed a sigh of relief. Suzette shifted nervously in her chair.
    Charleen Tate walked into the interrogation room two days later. She looked like a million bucks in her pink Chanel suit and triple strand of pearls. Awaiting her arrival were Sheriff DuBois, Suzette, the D.A. and Jeeter.
    “Baby doll,” said Jeeter when she looked his way. “I’m so glad you came to clear things up.”
    “Well,” said Étienne, “is this your husband?”
    “I’ve never seen this man before in my life,” she said.
    “CHARLEEN! It’s me, Jeeter, the father of those sweet baby boys.”
    Everyone in the room burst out laughing.
    “Believe me, Sheriff,” she said. “when you win the lotto every Tom, Dick and Harry crawls out of the woodwork.”
    The D.A. extended his hand. “So sorry to have inconvenienced you Mrs. Tate. I think we now have all the evidence we need.”
    As she left the room she looked at Suzette and winked.
    Out on Blood Bayou the moon turned the water to silver. Two skulls floated side by side downstream.

BRUISED
     
    The digital clock read 3 a.m . when the phone jangled me out of my drug-induced sleep. Reaching for the receiver, I cursed, as I banged my bad knee on the nightstand. Mom’s brogue was as thick as potato soup in my ear.
    “It’s Rory,” she said, softly rolling her R’s.
    At the mention of my diminutive twenty-one-year-old sister, with her flying red hair and wild lifestyle, the pain in my shattered knee went into over drive. What now? A drunk and disorderly? Another DUI?
    “Do we have to do this right now?” I croaked, through a haze of painkillers.
    “She’s missing, Joey. And she’s pregnant.”
    I squinted as I snapped on the bedside lamp and threw a T-shirt over the shade.
    “I know. They’re talking about it in every bar on the strip. I wish she’d hooked up with some blue collar guy from the neighborhood, but no, it has to be some rich dandy in silk skivvies.”
    “And a coward to boot, slappin’ her around so she can’t even hide the bruises.”
    “Listen Mom, you think Stafford needs his ticket punched, call Pug. He’s the muscle in the family.”
    I tapped a Camel out of the pack and lit it.
    “Jesus, Mary and Joseph, you’re the cop, Joey!”
    “Remember my knee, Mom? The shotgun blast? The doc says I’m off that leg for six more weeks or I could lose it.”
    “That would never have stopped your Da when he was on The Force. Listen, me boyo, Stafford is facing eighteen years of a rich man’s child support. He told Rory he’d have her down at the clinic if he had to drag her by the hair.”
    Seemed reasonable to me, drugged up as I was.
    “She’s a good Catholic lass, Joey.” I rolled my eyes. “This morning she went to have it out with Mr. Moneybags. No way that sweet girl could take care of her problem on Friday and face Mick at Sunday morning mass. Stafford says she never showed up at his place. He must think us