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- Herausgeber: Wildside Press
- Kategorie: Krimi
- Sprache: Englisch
Police chief Scott Landon is stunned to see a cherished but deceased girlfriend stroll into a downtown cafe. Turns out she’s not a ghost—but the truth is even more shocking.
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Seitenzahl: 38
Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2022
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Table of Contents
COPYRIGHT INFORMATION
FROM TEN TO TWO, by John M. Floyd
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
COPYRIGHT INFORMATION
Copyright © 2022 by John M. Floyd.
Original publication by Wildside Press, LLC.
wildsidepress.com | bcmystery.com
FROM TEN TO TWO,by John M. Floyd
At exactly 11:45 a.m. on July 12, 1995, Police Chief Scott Landon entered the B&F Café in Serenity, Mississippi and took a seat at his usual table against the wall. Before looking at his menu, which was already there alongside a glass of sweet tea, he took out a pack of cigarettes, shook one loose, and lit it, all in motions so practiced they took only a few seconds. Exhaling a plume of blue smoke, he stared down at the tabletop and thought about his crime.
It had happened two days ago, after a call about a fiery single-vehicle accident just outside the city limits. Landon had been in the office at the time, and arrived late at the scene—the sheriff and a county mounty were already there. It was a bad one, a collision between a whitetail deer and a Ford Taurus, which had apparently been flying low at the time and had wrapped itself around a pine tree at the edge of the road. Its driver, the car’s only occupant, was dead at the wheel. Hours later, after both the literal and figurative smoke had cleared, Landon had returned to the scene, drawn by the bleak memories it spawned of another tragic accident not long ago. It was only by chance, as he was about to leave again, that he noticed a gleam of metal in the green distance.
He climbed out of his cruiser and trudged alone across the dry and weed-choked field. Lying there in a sunny patch of johnsongrass almost thirty yards from the mangled tree was a shiny steel briefcase, dented but still closed. Out of shape and out of breath from the walk, Landon tried the latches. It was unlocked.
For a long, stunned moment he stared down at stacks and stacks of rubber-banded bills. Mostly hundreds, some twenties, all of them old and worn and wrinkled. Almost certainly drug money, thrown clear of the flattened and charred Taurus.
To his credit, Landon hesitated—but not for long. He looked around at the field and the woods and the deserted road and found no one in sight, then looked into his own conscience and found nothing there either. The tragic incident six months earlier had changed not only his life but his outlook. He was a different man now, and he knew it.
He had a short Army shovel in the trunk of his cruiser, and half an hour later the steel case and its contents were buried in a thick stand of oak and sweetgum a hundred yards from the highway. He was sweating like a field hand when he returned to his car, and not just from exertion. His imagination was working overtime. For months he’d been wishing for a way to get out of this town, away from its heartbreaking memories, and start over. Now he had it.
All this was churning through his mind as he sat at his regular lunch table at the café two days later, staring at nothing. As it turned out, he’d been right about the source of the small fortune in the case—the body of the Taurus driver had been identified as one Juco Martinez, a known dealer and runner for a gang out of Memphis. Even so, taking the money weighed on his mind. Not enough to make him go dig up the cash and turn it in, but enough to bother him. He was mulling this over when he heard the jingle of the bell above the café’s front door and raised his aching head to look, and that was when he saw her.
He froze, not believing his eyes.
Helen Mayweather. Standing there framed by the open door, her face tanned and her dark hair plastered to her forehead by the summer heat and humidity. A year ago, this would’ve been a common sight. Today it wasn’t. Helen Mayweather had been dead for six months.
When he’d recovered from his shock Landon rose from the table and walked toward her on stiff and unsteady legs. His eyes were wide, his heart thudding. Only later would he realize that he’d dropped his cigarette before leaving the table, its glowing end burning a neat yellow-black circle on the plastic lunch menu.
