by john | Sep 4, 2017 | Amazing Grace, Fiction, Serialized Fiction, Writing
This is the latest chapter of an ongoing serialized novel that I’m working on and posting up here in rough draft form. To read other chapters, CLICK HERE.
Epilogue
There were only three of us at the graveside for Jeff’s funeral. Me, Willis, and Reverend Turner. The rest of the deputies disavowed any connection with the murderer, and I couldn’t really blame them. The town tried its best to forget they ever knew the man, too, because to claim him would be to claim their part in making him what he was, to claim their tiny piece of guilt. His family was long dead, the only person in the world who depend on him was a sweet little Corgi named Butch, who I had on a leash next to me at the funeral.
Reverend Turner spoke kind words about the man, ignoring his end and focusing on the parts of his life he spent in service. He kept it short, though, not needing to embellish for his audience of two. When he was done, I knelt beside the casket for a moment and prayed for him. I knew full well he wasn’t in a better place, I’d seen him go, but maybe my prayers could lessen his sentence a little bit. The things he did were terrible, and he deserved to pay for them, but he was, in the end, a pitiful, scared little man, and that deserved a little leniency.
Reverend Turned stepped over to me and extended his hand. “Lila Grace, I feel I may have wronged you,” he said, looking me straight in the eye.
I stood up, brushed the dirt off my knees, and shook his hand. “All is forgiven, Reverend. I appreciate you speaking here today.”
“If I don’t minister to the lost, what kind of shepherd would I be?” He asked with a gentle smile. “I don’t understand what you do, but I believe now that there is no malice in you, and no touch of evil in your gifts.”
“Thank you, Reverend. I might not ever turn Baptist, but I reckon we can at least sit next to each other at the church softball games,” I said, smiling back at him.
He shook hands with Willis and turned to walk into the church. Willis raised an eyebrow at me. “That was unexpected.”
“Not really. We had a talk a little while ago. I think he learned a thing or two.”
“Maybe you can teach an old dog new tricks,” Willis said with a grin.
“Maybe,” I said, grinning back “As long as one of those tricks is putting the toilet seat down, we’ll be fine.”
We laughed as we walked back to the patrol car. I stopped at the door and looked back at the grave, where three filmy images of old woman wavered in the wind. The Dead Old Ladies Detective Agency had helped solve their first case, and even if it didn’t end happily for everyone, it did end, and we did put Jenny Miller to her heavenly rest. I had to count that as a win, I decided.
Then I slid into the passenger seat of the sheriff’s car and let my boyfriend drive me home, the first time that had happened in my fifty-seven years. I guess that was another win, this one for the Living Old Lady.
THE END
by john | Aug 28, 2017 | Amazing Grace, Fiction, Serialized Fiction, Writing
This is the latest chapter of an ongoing serialized novel that I’m working on and posting up here in rough draft form. To read other chapters, CLICK HERE.
29
I was stuck in a ramshackle trailer in the middle of the woods in a makeshift fishing camp nobody knew about, with a crazy as a loon deputy turned murderer pointing a pistol at my head. My only living backup was shot and unconscious on the floor across the room, and I, being a genius hostage negotiator who’s seen way too much Law and Order, had disarmed myself. So all I had to save me was my wits and a couple of ghosts.
This was not how I thought I would die, let me just be clear about this. Like everybody, I’ve imagined my own death on more than one occasion. When I was younger, I assumed I would die at home, surrounded by a passel of grand- and great-grandchildren, my descendants all dutifully weeping in the parlor while I passed my last breath in some lavender-scented dignity that in no way involves messing my bed or any other bodily fluids.
As I grew older, and my lack of descendants became more pronounced, I realized that if I was lucky I would be able to shuffle off my mortal coil in a decently appointed rest home somewhere, but if the cost of things continued to do what they inevitably do, I would most likely be relegated to some state-run old folks’ home with last week’s sheets and and yesterday’s Depends.
At no point did I envision myself getting shot in a trailer while trying to save a woman who despised me from a former student who once idolized me while my brand new boyfriend lie perforated on the floor and two dead people watched the whole sideshow unfold like a tawdry hillbilly episode of Murder, She Wrote.
“Jeff,” I switched into my “teacher voice,” and his head snapped up. It was good to see I still had it, at least a little. I managed to hold my voice steady and my expression severe. “This has gotten ridiculous. Put that gun down, untie that woman, and turn yourself in immediately. You are not going to shoot me, and you are not going to hurt anyone else tonight. What Karen and her friends did to you back then was awful, but it did not ruin your life. It ruined your prom, but anything that happened after that night was your responsibility.”
“I couldn’t go back to school!” He wailed. “I couldn’t take them laughing at me in the halls. Every time I saw somebody from school, I knew that was all they were talking about.”
“For a few days, yes,” I agreed. “You were a laughingstock. For a little while. But you know as well as I do that children can’t keep a thought in their head longer than five minutes. You would have had a bad week, maybe two, but by the time school was out it would have all blown over. But you didn’t let it, did you?” I poured it on. I knew the only way I was walking out of that trailer was to get him to move off his plan of killing us all, and this was the only thing I could think of to do that.
“No,” he said, his voice wavering. “You don’t know what it’s like to have everybody whisper about you.”
“I don’t? Boy, have you even lived in this town? Who do you think you’re talking to? Why, the woman in that chair right there wouldn’t even eat my casserole because Reverend Turner convinced her that Satan helped me bake it. Like the devil himself would help me snap green beans,” I said with a laugh.
My voice softened, and I took a step closer. “Jeff, sweetie, I’ve been the one they talk about behind their hands for fifty years, and I’m still here. My front yard has had more toilet paper in the trees than the principal’s house, and I’ve been thrown out of more Bible study groups than the Whore of Babylon. I know exactly what it’s like to have the whole town staring at you, and talk about you, and that’s how I know that it don’t hurt. All you have to do is hold your head up and walk on by. If you don’t acknowledge the fools, they can’t touch you.”
He looked up at me, his eyes full. “But I let them. I let them, and they just kept going, and going. That’s why I didn’t get the sheriff’s job, because I wasn’t strong enough. It’s why I never got married, because I was too weak. Well, I’m not weak now! I’m strong! I’m strong, and everybody’s going to know how strong I am!”
His gun, which had drifted to point toward the ground while I spoke, snapped up and pointed at Karen Miller’s head from less than three feet away. There was nothing I could do, no way I could get there in time. He was going to kill that woman, and all I could do was watch.
But Jenny didn’t. Jenny, sweet, dead Jenny, who helped start all this in motion by picking at Jeff with her stupid little pretty girl teasing, summoned up enough energy somehow to smack his wrist away and send the bullet slamming through the side of the trailer. Jeff looked down at his hand, then looked to where Jenny was standing right in front of him.
She looked more solid than any ghost I’d ever seen, and the way the color ran out of his face, I knew Jeff saw her, too. He staggered back, raising his gun and firing into her face three times. The bullets passed right through her, barely making the girl’s image flicker, and he backed up more until he slammed into the small bar separating the kitchen and living room.
“Jenny?” Karen’s voice was soft, thready, a timid little thing that might escape at any moment.
Jenny turned to her mother, and Jeff did at the same time. He raised his pistol again, but before Jenny could whirl back to strike his hand, another shot rang out, followed by two more. Jeff’s eyes went wide, and his legs went rubbery as he collapsed straight down, blood pouring out onto the carpet.
I looked to Willis, who sat on the floor holding his pistol, smoke wafting from the barrel. “You’re alive!” I said, thrilled and surprised in equal measure.
“This is one of those nights I’m glad I bought new vests for the department when I started. I reckon I’m also glad not everybody decided to wear them.” He nodded to Jeff, who lay on the floor, his eyes open and glassy.
Before my eyes, his spirit peeled up from his body, looked around the room, and shook his head. “I’m sorry,” he said. “For everything.” Then he vanished, a small dark hole opening up in the air around him and taking him to wherever he was destined to spend eternity.
“Apology not accepted, asshole,” Jenny replied, and my head whipped over to where she stood by her mother’s chair. A bright white light appeared behind her, and she looked up at me with a wistful smile. “I guess it’s time for me to go, huh?”
“Yes, sweetie, it’s time for you to go,” I said.
“What’s happening?” Jenny’s mother said, her head whipping around.
“There’s a white light opening up right past that wall over there, and Jenny is supposed to go to it. She’s done what she stayed here to do, and now it’s time for her to go.” Karen smiled at my words, but one tear slid down her cheek all the same.
“Time for me, too,” came a gravelly voice from the kitchen as Sheriff Johnny walked through the bar and headed to the light. “I think my town will be in fine hands. But tell that boy to take care of my people, or he won’t like it when I come back to pay him a visit.”
“Will do, Sheriff,” I said with a smile.
Jenny and the sheriff walked into the light, which blossomed to blinding brilliance before fading to just water-stained paneling once more. “They’re gone,” I said. I felt a strange wetness on my own face, and reached up to find tears on my cheeks. I didn’t even know I was crying, and I certainly wasn’t sad, but it was a night full of emotions, that’s for certain.
I helped Willis up off the floor, and we untied Mrs. Miller, then we waited outside for the ambulance and coroner and crime scene unit to arrive. I scrounged up a blanket from behind the seat of my truck to put around Karen, since she was in her pajamas, and then Willis went down to pull my truck up into the yard beside Jeff’s Bronco. We told our story more times than we cared to, leaving out any mention of dead sheriffs or daughters, and the sun was peeking over the horizon before we finally pulled back onto the highway and headed back to my house.
We didn’t speak as we walked in the front door, I just reached back and took his hand. I led Willis through the house to my bedroom, undressed him, and laid beside him, feeling his solid masculinity next to me as I drifted off to sleep. There would be more to come, I was sure, but there was plenty of time for that.
by john | Aug 25, 2017 | Appearances
Yeah, I know I post something like this almost every year about this time. These tips are still relevant, and become only moreso as the convention grows and the hotels do not. So here are Hartness’s tips for surviving Dragon Con.
- Carry a water bottle. You don’t have to carry a full one, there are water stations all over the place, and many of the hotel bars will fill your bottle for you if you’re nice and don’t jam it in their faces when they’re crazy busy. But it’s hot as Beelzebub’s ballsack in Atlanta Labor Day Weekend, and humid as a gator’s taint. If you aren’t accustomed to moving around in that kind of heat and humidity, you could end up in real trouble. So stay hydrated. For every beer or alcoholic drink you have, drink one glass of water. Ditto for soda.
- Plan for shit. There’s an app and everything. Your favorite writers have probably posted their schedules to their websites or Facebook. So there’s no excuse for doing nothing, unless you want to do nothing for a little while.
- Plan for shit to go sideway. It’s fucking crowded. It’s fucking hot. You’re fucking hungover. Hell, maybe you’re just fucking. But be prepared to throw your plans in the shitter if something awesome comes up. Maybe you’ll be waiting in line for a restaurant and one of your favorite cover artist of all time will invite you to go sit in the back of a panel and have a picnic with he and his wife, who happens to be one of your literary heroes. Maybe you’ll end up dancing with this amazing guy/girl/genderfluid person at DJ Spider’s set and you’ll go hook up. Maybe you’ll walk past a room and find a legendary knife maker teaching knife throwing. These are all things that are worth abandoning your spot in line to get Nathan Filion’s autograph, I promise. Have the flexibility to enjoy an experience more than a thing. And two of those three cool things happened to me. No, I’m not telling you which one didn’t happen. If you want to know buy me a drink, or bring a cold Miller Lite to one of my panels for me.
- Meet new people. There are some awesome people at Dragon, and some of them are folks that you’ve either read or heard of or watched on TV. Meet them. Either go up to their table and say hi, or if they’re in a bar with a crowd of people, don’t be afraid to walk up and say hi. If you’re a public figure and you don’t want anyone to approach you, you won’t be hanging out in a bar. Don’t be a dick, and if they seem to be in an intense meeting or conversation, don’t bug folks. Ditto when they’re eating in a restaurant. But bars? Before or after panels (especially after)? Fair game.
- Go to a reading by an author you’ve never read. I suggest the one held in the Hyatt Marietta room at 1PM on Saturday. Even if you’ve read my stuff, there will probably be someone reading there that you’ve never heard of. I open my readings up to my friends, because I don’t want to read for an hour. So come see me and my pals! Then stick around for whoever is after me, because they’re probably awesome, too.
- Go to the Dealer Room Monday or during the parade. This is a legit pro tip – the dealer room is crowded as FUUUUUCCCCCKKKKK. To avoid that shit, go when people aren’t there. Parade time and Monday are prime shopping times. Don’t know when the parade is? Use the app. You’re a damn adult, I can’t do everything for you. 🙂
- Don’t go near the fucking habitrails from 4PM Friday to 1PM Sunday. Those things are like a goddamn claustrophobic sauna during the height of the con. I avoid them at all costs during those hours.
- Take pictures, but don’t be a dick about it. Don’t stop in the fucking habitrails. Don’t stop at the top of the fucking escalator. Don’t stop right outside the fucking elevator. Don’t fucking stop abruptly. Don’t stop right inside or outside a fucking door. Don’t fuck up the traffic flow. There are 75,000 fucking people, and all of them want to get somewhere.
- Don’t be a perv or a creeper. Here’s how to tell if whatever you’re about to do or say qualifies. Ask yourself this question – “If someone said those words to my mother/sister/daughter/spouse/friend would I want to punch them in the dick?” If the answer is “yes,” then don’t say those words. The same thing applies to actions. If you wouldn’t want someone to do it to you or someone you love, don’t do it. This does not apply to me slapping Tamsin Silver on the ass. I have been granted a lifetime pass, and she has a lifetime pass to grab my butt. We went to college together. We’ve seen some shit, y’all.
- Stay calm, stay flexible, have fun. We all have anxieties. We all have things that set us off. Keep all that shit in check, and if you need to go sit in a bathroom stall for fifteen minutes to chill the fuck out, then go do that. Just grunt every once in a while so people will think you’re taking a titanic shit and they won’t be afraid you died. But for real, I have hidden in the crapper for five minutes to escape the madness on more than one occasion and at more than one con. It’s a legit survival strategy. Anytime you’re in a new place, you find out where all the exits are, and where all the shitters are.
- Do at least one thing you never thought you’d do. For some of y’all, this is a once-in-a-lifetime trip. For others, it’s an annual thing. For some of us, it’s the toughest and most enjoyable work week of the year. But there’s one thing that’s universal – we love this shit. So do something awesome. Meet someone awesome. Have a motherfucking adventure!
- Buy my shit. No trip to Dragon Con is complete without buying my shit. You can place orders on the Autographed Books page and I’ll deliver them to Dragon Con. Just tell me which one of my panels you plan to be at (preferably one in the Hyatt, since that’s where I’m staying) and I’ll bring your books to the panel. Yeah, I’m a whore. What did you expect, public fucking service?
Here’s my schedule –
Title: Two Sides of the Same Coin: Angels & Demons in Urban Fantasy
Time: Fri 05:30 pm Location: Chastain 1-2 – Westin (Length: 1 Hour)
Description: Representations of angels & demons vary widely within folklore, religion, & literature. Our panelists will discuss how depictions often focus on their similarities as well as their differences.
Title: Reading: John G. Hartness
Time: Sat 01:00 pm Location: Marietta – Hyatt (Length: 1 Hour)
Description: The author of urban southern fantasy and host of the podcast Literate Liquors reads from his works.
Title: The Black Dog: Depression & Mental Health in Fiction & Fandom
Time: Sat 04:00 pm Location: Embassy AB – Hyatt (Length: 1 Hour)
Description: Our panelists examine how mental health is portrayed in SF. Are there any portrayals that help those of us dealing with our own issues? Note that this is not a prescriptive or workshop.
Title: Writer’s Block: Real or Imagined?
Time: Sat 05:30 pm Location: Embassy CD – Hyatt (Length: 1 Hour)
Description: The debate about writer’s block is as old as the craft. Every writer has an opinion. The pros discuss the condition and the cures.
Title: Broad Universe Rapid Fire Reading
Time: Sun 10:00 am Location: Piedmont – Hyatt (Length: 1 Hour)
Description: Enjoy a varied sampler of short readings from authors whose work spans a range of fantasy sub-genres in the Broad Universe Rapid Fire Reading.
Title: Run Screaming into the Night
Time: Sun 05:30 pm Location: Embassy CD – Hyatt (Length: 1 Hour)
Description: Does your own writing scare you? Dark Fantasy & Horror need a real edge that guarantees a terrifying read…even for the writer.
Title: Coming to America: An American Gods Fan Panel
Time: Sun 08:30 pm Location: Chastain 1-2 – Westin (Length: 1 Hour)
Description: A moderated fan-panel discussion of the new hit series based on the book by Neil Gaiman.
See you next week!
by john | Aug 24, 2017 | Fiction, Writing
I’ve got two new releases this week, and it might get a little confusing for folks, so here’s the deal, just in case you want to buy a bunch of shit. I want to help you with that!
Once upon a time, I wrote several short stories featuring Bubba’s Great-Grandpappy Beauregard, the original family Monster Hunter. These were featured in anthologies and collected into a three-story volume called Moonshine & Magic.
If you bought that, and you enjoyed it, then you should pick up the fourth Great-Grandpappy Beauregard short story, called County Fairy Tale. It’s available for a buck, and has this awesomeballs cover from Natania Barron.
This story was originally published in Capes & Clockwork 2 from Dark Oak Press. The rights have reverted, and now I’m selling it as a stand-alone. You can get it on Amazon here.
It will be available everywhere else, too. I just haven’t done that yet. If you want it, go get it. 🙂
If you’ve never read any of Great-Grandpappy Beauregard’s adventures, then you can get all four short stories in the collection Shinepunk, which also features a cool-ass Natania Barron cover.
It looks like this.
This collection features four short stories, and is on Amazon here. It will also be available everywhere else, I just haven’t done that yet, either.
These four stories are all set in Georgia in the early 20th century, and feature moonshine, ghosts, fairies, explosions, and a redneck Frankenstein.
What more do you want out of life?
Oh, a preview? You want to little taste?
I can do that. Here’s a piece of the very first Beauregard the Monster Hunter short story – Fire on the Mountain.
Fire on the Mountain
“Beauregard Ulysses Brabham, get your worthless ass down here and help me!” The shrill voice rang out over half the valley and Bubba sat bolt upright in his bed. Only he wasn’t in his bed, he was in the hammock out in his back yard, so the motion of sitting up quickly deposited all three hundred pounds of him firmly and swiftly onto the hard-packed earth. Bubba hauled himself up to hands and knees, then crawled out from under the hammock, shaking his head to clear the cobwebs. How did I end up in the hammock? He wondered. And where are my pants?
The answer to the second question revealed itself a few moments later as Bubba walked around the house to the front porch. His worn overalls were folded carefully over the porch railing, with an empty quart jar sitting next to them. Well, that explains about everything, I reckon. Bubba thought. Apparently Preacher Mason had come by with a sample from his newest batch of ‘shine and they had commenced to tasting. It all made sense to Bubba now. After the better part of a jar of Preacher Mason’s recipe, the wind through a man’s beard felt mighty fine, and the best way Bubba had to generate wind was to swing as quickly as possible in the hammock. That didn’t explain why he felt the need to remove his pants, but perhaps in his state of mind last night he wanted to feel the wind other places than just his beard.
Regardless, he put his pants on then pulled on his battered leather work boots. He had just stepped onto the porch to go inside and fix up some grits and bacon and maybe see if there was a slash or two left in that jar when Octavia’s voice rang out again, this time sounding even more irritated. “Beauregard! Come here, boy! I need you!”
Godawmighty you’d thing she was my wife instead of my little sister the way that woman abuses me. I need to get her married off so she’ll have somebody else to make miserable, Bubba thought. He sighed the sigh of a man who knew he was ruled by a woman, and started off down the hill to see what his sister wanted this time.
* * *
Octavia was standing on her own porch peering into the woods when Bubba came stumping down the trail. “What in the blue blazes do you want, woman? Don’t you know a body needs his rest?” Octavia was dressed for work on the farm, in a plain homespun dress and apron, with her long blonde hair tied back from her strong jawline. She was what the mountain folk called a “healthy woman,” with “child-bearing hips” and a shelf of bosom that was impressive on an otherwise slender woman. She wore sensible leather boots and had a shotgun leaning on the porch rail beside her, along with a haversack.
She lit into her brother the second he hove his gigantic form into view. “Bubba, it is three hours past the noon meal you worthless layabout, so do not be speaking to me of rest! Now get your fat, lazy carcass down here and aid me in my moment of peril!”
“Moment of peril? You’re on your porch, what in the hell could possibly be periling you?”
“Don’t you swear in my presence, Bubba, for I am a lady. And it is not just my moment of peril, but the entire valley. We are under attack by sorcery and blackheartedness!”
“I told Pap he never should have taught you how to read, Tavvy. Now you ain’t never gone find a man.”
“I neither need nor desire a man, brother dear. Not for those purposes, at any rate. Now are you going to help me or not?”
“You got anything to eat?”
“There’s a rasher of bacon on the table with some grits, a half dozen biscuits and some gravy. Take what you like.”
“If you’ll feed me, Tavvy, I’ll do whatever you need.” Bubba pushed past his sister into the neat little kitchen. In complete contrast to his own, Octavia’s kitchen contained a modern icebox, a stove heated by some strange series of pipes from the wood stove out back, and food. There were also clean plates and no insects to be seen anywhere, both remarkable upgrades from Bubba’s house. Bubba piled all the food onto a serving platter and carried it back out to the porch. He sat down on the porch steps and called Octavia’s hound Buster over. After giving Buster a good scratch behind the ears, he slipped the dog a piece of bacon and started in on the biscuits.
A few minutes later the bacon and biscuits had all vanished, and Buster was licking the last remnants of the grits from the platter. Bubba leaned back on his elbows, let out a mighty belch that rattled the windows in Octavia’s cabin, and lookedup at his sister.
“Alright, Tavvy. What’s periling you today?”
“The children are missing, Bubba.”
“You ain’t got no children, Tavvy.”
“Not my children, you great lummox! The children from the congregation!” Octavia swatted him on one giant shoulder.
“What children?”
“If you would darken the door of our house of worship more than twice a year, you would know these things, Bubba. There are six children missing from nearby farms and homes.”
“I darken the door, Tavvy, I just can’t seem to find my way through it. Maybe if the door was taller I’d have an easier time of it. Where’d them young’uns go?” Bubba asked, sitting up and picking a tick from one of Buster’s ears.
“Nobody knows, Bubba! That’s why they’re missing.”
“Oh. Okay, what do you want me to do about it? You want me to go look for ‘em? I know the woods and these hills pretty good I reckon, but I don’t know where I’d start looking for kids…” He trailed off as he caught the black stare Octavia was giving him.
“You don’t want me to go looking for the kids, do you?”
“No, Bubba. I do not need you to go looking for them. I know where they are, I need your help to go get them back.”
Bubba stood up and snapped his fingers for Buster. The dog crouched beside Bubba’s feet but stayed alert. “Well, let’s go get ‘em! Are we gonna have to carry ‘em, Tavvy? ‘Cause half a dozen young ‘uns is gonna be hard to haul in one load.”
“Bubba, are you the stupidest human being in six counties? I don’t need you to carry the babies, I need you to shoot whatever took ‘em!”
“Oh. Well I can do that. Lemme go get my gun.” He stood and started back up the hill to his cabin, but stopped at Octavia’s exasperated sigh.
“Get in here, Bubba. You don’t need to go get that stupid double-barrel. I got something better.” She turned and went into her house, and Bubba followed. She led him through the kitchen into the rest of the cabin where they had grown up. Bubba took a moment to observe the changes Octavia had wrought upon the old home place since their Pap died just two short years ago. Gone were the spittoons that once nestled in a corner of every room. Gone were the ashtrays on the arm of every chair. Instead the floors practically gleamed, they were so clean, and the windows had been scrubbed spotless and new curtains hung in every one. Bubba thought fleetingly of asking Octavia up to clean his cabin, but decided against it for fear he’d never find anything again.
by john | Aug 23, 2017 | Appearances, Book Spotlight
Here’s a quick rundown on what I’m reading this week (and maybe some of last week, because I forgot to do this post last week).
Currently I’m in the middle of (more like 3/4 of the way finished with) Jake Bible’s Salvage Merc One. I’ve had this on my e-reader for a while, I probably picked it up when it was on sale because I like Jake’s writing, and he’s a good friend. I’m really enjoying it so far. It’s mil-SF, but like most of the stuff I enjoy, and most of the stuff Jake writes, it’s got a fun snark to it, and a protagonist that isn’t a superhero. I like a hero that can (and does) take a beating, and the merc in this one certainly fits that bill! Light-hearted sci-fi with heart and plenty of explosions! Highly recommended!
I’m listening to Christopher Golden’s Ararat, which is old-school slow-burn horror, the kind of stuff that very few people are writing nowadays. Chris can really pull it off, and while I’m not too deep into the book, only 3-4 hours so far, it’s starting to pick up steam and I can already tell that this one will barrel to a hellacious conclusion. His Snowblind was one of my favorite books a few years ago, and this one looks to be a worthy successor.
There would be more, but my internet is being goofy as fuck, and isn’t wanting to pull up books on Amazon for me to link to, so go ahead and Google that shit. Buy the books I’ve listed above, and if you feel like picking up Fireheart or one of my other books while you’re over there, it wouldn’t hurt my feelings. 🙂
If you’re anywhere near Columbia, SC this weekend, come say hi to me, Matthew Saunders, Jim McDonald, Davey Beauchamp, and a bunch of other talented artists and folks at the Soda City Comic Con. We’ll be at the convention center in downtown Columbia Saturday and Sunday, so bring us your hard-earned money, and we’ll turn it into hard-earned books! Or art, in Davey’s case. But anyway, bring us your cash! I’ll be in Artist’s Alley in booth 61. Hope to see you there!
Oh, that picture to the left? Well…there might be a new Great-Grandpappy Beauregard collection releasing this Friday, 8/25. I’ll be back tomorrow with a preview!
by john | Aug 22, 2017 | Promos/Giveaways, Writing
Bubba is trapped in the Winter Court of the Fae, and he’s going to have to battle his way through four rounds of mortal combat to get out! Cold as Ice is coming soon, check out the awesome cover from Natania Barron!
by john | Aug 21, 2017 | Amazing Grace, Fiction, Serialized Fiction, Writing
This is the latest chapter of an ongoing serialized novel that I’m working on and posting up here in rough draft form. To read other chapters, CLICK HERE.
28
I pulled my truck off to the side of the dirt road as soon as I saw the lights of the trailer up ahead. It looked to be about a quarter mile away yet, but my big old Bessie made enough noise that if Jeff was paying any kind of attention he already knew we were there. Willis got out of the passenger side and made some kind of gesture to me like he expected me to wait in the car.
I hate to disappoint people, really I do. Except it seems like my whole life has been one long string of disappointments to somebody. I disappointed my daddy by not being a boy he could teach to play baseball. I disappointed my mama by not being the normal little lady she wanted to raise and marry off. I disappointed more than a few boys in high school by keeping my knees together a lot longer than they hoped, and now I was about to disappoint Sheriff Willis Dunleavy, because there was no way on God’s green earth I was staying in that truck.
I opened the driver’s door and got out, leaving the door hanging open behind me. The dome light in old Bessie burned out about seven or eight years ago, and I never bothered replacing it. I left the keys in the ignition in case we needed to get out of there quick, and besides, the number of grand theft auto cases in the woods of Union County are about even with the number of votes George Wallace got in Harlem when he ran for President.
“Get back in the truck,” Willis hissed at me. “I am not taking a civilian into what might an active hostage scene.”
“Then you should have thought about that before you let the civilian use her truck to drive you to the scene. I’m going up there. Jeff and I have always had a good relationship. I might be able to help the situation.”
He glared at me, and I could see the wheels turning behind his blue eyes. I know he was weighing his chances of getting me to do what he wanted, and after a few seconds he came to the right decision – his chances were slim and none. And Slim just left town. I relaxed a little bit when I saw that acceptance come over him, because the last thing I wanted to do was waste time and energy arguing with Willis in the middle of the woods while Jeff was a couple hundred yards away maybe hurting Jenny’s mama.
“Come on, but stay behind me,” he grumbled, starting back toward the house.
I nodded, and reached back inside the truck for the double-barrel 12-gauge behind the seat. I was willing to go into the house, but I wasn’t going in there without a little backup of my own. Just because I wasn’t the son Daddy hoped for didn’t mean he wasn’t willing to teach me how to hunt, fish, and shoot. That old gun hadn’t been fired in months, but I took it out to behind Karen Montgomery’s house a couple times a year and shot up some tin cans to make sure I still knew which end to point toward the target. I cracked the gun open to make sure it was loaded, then slung it over my shoulder and caught up to Willis.
“I thought you told me you kept the shells in the glove compartment,” he said, his voice low.
“I keep the extra shells in the glove box,” I said. “Out here in the country we’ve got a name for an unloaded shotgun.”
“What’s that?”
“A bat.”
He snorted a little laugh, then sobered as we stepped into the clearing around the trailed. It was a single-wide that had seen better days. And better decades. It started life as white with a wide blue stripe around it, but most of that was replaced with rust. The underpinning, if there’s ever been any, was long gone, and what passed for steps was just a half dozen cinderblocks with nothing resembling a handrail. A couple of the windows were gone, and yellow lamp light shone from what I assumed was the living room. I saw a figure moving inside, waving his arms and pacing, and from where we were it looked enough like Jeff for me to decide we were in the right place.
Jenny appeared at my elbow, rising up out of the ground with Sheriff Johnny at her side. “Dad’s okay. He doesn’t have a concussion, so they’re sending him home. Is she in there?”
“We don’t know yet,” I whispered. Willis’ head whipped around at my voice, and I pointed to where Jenny stood, invisible to him. He nodded, then put his finger to his lips. I nodded, and fell silent.
Jenny walked up to the trailer, then through the door. It always strikes me funny, how long it takes for the dead to shake their hold on habits from life. She didn’t need to go through the door, she could have walked through any wall just as easily, but the habit of years had her use the door, even if she was passing through it. I made a mental note to myself to ask Johnny about that when we finished up here. Of course, he was less than half a year dead himself, so he probably still had quite a few hangups from his time walking the earth.
Willis started forward, and I put a hand on his shoulder. I leaned down close to his ear, so there was no chance of my words traveling, and said, “Jenny’s inside. She can tell us what’s going on in there.”
“I hope her mother is still alive,” Willis said.
“Me too,” I agreed. “The poor child doesn’t need to see that.”
Jenny returned seconds later, a worried look on her face. “She’s alive. He hasn’t hurt her, but he’s got her tied to a chair. The place is all made up with candles and flowers, like he’s trying to make it romantic. He keeps yelling at her, telling her how she ruined his life at the prom, how he couldn’t help it when Shelly and me said that to him about going out with him, how he’s sorry, but she’s got to see how much he loves her. He’s crazy. Y’all have got to get in there.”
I kept my face next to Willis’ and relayed everything just as it came out of Jenny’s mouth. He nodded, then turned to me. “He’s devolving. We don’t have much time. If we don’t get in there in the next couple of minutes, he’s going to kill her. I’ll go in the front door, you go around to the back. If he draws on me, shoot him.”
“Give me thirty seconds to get back there. It’s dark as the bottom of a well out here,” I said. I took a deep breath, steadied my nerves, and peeled off to the right to creep around the trailer as best I could. I felt like I stepped on every branch and dry leaf in the county walking that fifty yards, and froze in my tracks three times waiting on Jeff to shoot me from a window, but I made it to the back door and up the rickety cinderblocks. The knob turned under my hand and I pulled the door open, sticking my head in a foot or so above floor level. I looked down the fake wood-paneled hallway toward the living room and saw Karen Miller’s back to me. She was tied to a ladder back wooden chair, the kind found in countless dining room sets all across the south.
I didn’t see Jeff at first, but he came into my view a second later, pacing and shaking his head. He was muttering something I couldn’t hear, but to be honest, all my attention was on the pistol in his hand. It was a boxy black thing that I guessed was his department-issued gun, and it looked like a handful of deadly in the light of the small lamp on the end table. Jeff’s head whipped around, and he trained his gun off to his left toward something I couldn’t see, then I heard Willis’ voice cut through the night like the crack of a whip.
“Drop the gun, son. This has to end right now.”
The second Willis spoke, I pulled the back door wide open and stepped up into the hallway. The top step wobbled as my weight shifted, and it threw me off balance. I stumbled forward and crashed into the wall. Jeff spun in my direction and fired his gun, missing my head by inches. The bullet dug into the wall behind me, and I dove onto my belly. My shotgun hit the brown shag carpet and tumbled away from me, leaving me unarmed and sprawled on my face less than twenty feet away from a murderer that I still remembered as a cherubic little boy in my Sunday School class.
I heard another shot boom through the enclosed trailer, and Jeff whirled around, firing his gun three times. There was a crash from somewhere in the living room that I couldn’t see, then Jeff was back in my line of sight, standing right in front of Karen Miller with his gun aimed at her face.
He looked down the hall at me, and as I got to my feet and picked up my shotgun, he got a confused look on his face. “Ms. Carter? What are you doing here?”
“I’m here to end this, Jeff. You need to let Mrs. Miller go and put the gun down,” I said, walking down the hall toward him.
He pointed the pistol at me, but I saw his hand shaking even as far away as I was. I didn’t stop. “You’re not going to shoot me, Jeff. You always liked me in Sunday School, and I always liked you. Now put that gun away and let’s talk about this.”
“I can’t talk about nothing no more, Ms. Carter. I done killed the sheriff, and I killed them two girls, and now I’m going to kill this bitch here. Then I’m going to shoot myself and go to Hell for all eternity where I belong.” Tears ran down his face, and rage mixed with terror at what he had done.
“Jeff, this isn’t you,” I said. “Tell me what happened. We can work it out. We can get you help. You—“
“There’s no help for this bastard!” Karen Miller screamed from the chair. She’d been so quiet to this point I thought he had her gagged, but evidently not. “Don’t you lie to him. You tell him the truth. That he needs to just blow his damn brains out and rot in hell until the end of time for what he did to my baby girl.”
“Mrs. Miller, that isn’t helping,” I said, trying to keep my voice calm while wanting to smack her upside the head with the butt of my shotgun. I looked over at Jenny, who shrugged as if to say “what can I do?”
I stepped into the living room and leaned the shotgun against the wall. “There, Jeff. See? I put my gun down. Now I’m not going to hurt you, and I know you don’t want to hurt me. So let’s talk about this, and see what we can figure out.” I looked past the distraught deputy, sweat stains soaking the armpits and neck of his uniform shirt, his normally neat brown hair disheveled, and tears streaking his cheeks.
Willis lay slumped against the far wall of the trailer, half on the threadbare carpet by the door, half on the worn linoleum of the kitchenette area. His gun was loose in his grip and his eyes were closed. I couldn’t see enough to tell if he was breathing, and the dark shirt he wore hid any signs of blood, but he didn’t even move an eyelid at my voice.
“I told you, there’s no helping me now, Ms. Carter,” Jeff wailed. “It’s just like high school, only worse! I should have never trusted her then, and I should have never spoke to her kid now. These damn women have ruined my life, and now I’m going to kill the last one, and be done with it. I’m real sorry, but since you’re here, I’m going to have to kill you, too.”
He raised the pistol to aim it at my face, and this time his hand was rock steady.
by john | Aug 16, 2017 | Business of publishing, How to Sell Books, Writing
Well, I guess we were going to have this conversation eventually, and now seems like as good a time as any. Last weekend, a bunch of Nazi dickbags staged a march in Charlottesville, Virginia, and one of the aforementioned dickbags murdered a woman with his car. Said dickbag was arrested, but the rest of the Nazi dickbags were not, and many online Nazi dickbags started trying to spin the whole mess to make it look like the dickbag driver was actually a liberal protestor. He wasn’t. There are photos of him in the line of Nazi dickbags earlier in the day.
This may come as a surprise to you, but I am not a fan of Nazi dickbags, or dickbags in general, but I particularly dislike Nazi ones.
As a writer of fiction, and someone with a (very limited) public profile, I am sometimes asked about taking public political stances and whether I think that’s something that writers and celebrities should do. Sometimes this is accompanied by the person asking the question continuing on by saying that they don’t care about Chuck Wendig’s or Orson Scott Card’s or Larry Correia’s or John Scalzi’s politics, they just want them to shut up and make with the entertaining. These folks also often rage about Colin Kaepernick not standing for the national anthem or Susan Sarandon speaking out against the death penalty.
If these people are folks I actually know, and we’re speaking face to face, I call them idiots to their face and tell them that since my art is part of me, and my beliefs are part of me, that I can no more divorce my beliefs from my work than I can painlessly amputate my own nutsack, and am about as likely to do so. If this encounter happens on the internet, I may not call them an idiot, because believe it or not, I’m more polite when people don’t have the opportunity to punch me in the face, not less.
I’m also six feet tall, weigh over three hundred pounds, and look like a day player on Sons of Anarchy. I’m not any flavor of badass, but I kinda look like one. So I don’t often fear people just randomly punching me.
But the fact of the matter is that I am a political person. I’m about as liberal as the day is long, and I’m pretty damn sure that shines through in a lot of my work. There are certain things I’ve written because there were issues of social and societal weight that I want to explore, and my own exploration of race, sexual identity, gender equality, and other issues comes through in my work. Yeah, I use my writing to work through some shit. I hope I take readers along for an enjoyable ride, but sometimes your punching in the face may be accompanied by a side of social justice. If you don’t like it, you don’t have to read it. It’s cool. There are way more people in the world who don’t read my books than there are people who do.
There are probably more people in the world who have never even heard of my books than there are who have.
Wow, now I feel fucking insignificant. Excuse me while I go look at my Goodreads reviews to re-inflate my ego.
Time passes.
Well, that was a stupid goddamn idea. Note to self – if you want someone to blow sunshine up your ass about your writing, call your sister. No, she doesn’t read your books, but she loves you, and will tell you they’re great anyway.
But back to politics, or when to be political at least. I don’t advocate that everyone drop a bunch of heavy-handed preachy-preachy bits in every book they write. I actually had a conversation with a writer friend not long ago where I told them that too much of their religious views were seeping into the work and undermining the narrative, and they needed to cut that shit out. I’ve done the same thing with my work, telling editors “look at this section and tell me if I need to pull it back.” But to all the people who say “entertainers should entertain and not have political opinions,” I say, “go fuck yourself.”
But there’s a right way and a wrong way to do it.
I’m not going to wear a “Fuck Trump and the horse he rode in on” shirt to Dragon Con. I don’t own one, and wouldn’t wear it in public if I did. That gains me nothing. It’s attacking, and by extension it’s attacking everyone who voted for our sitting President. That gets me nothing. I have in the past, and if I ever lose more weight, will happily again wear t-shirts promoting equality and LGBTQ rights. That promotes something positive, rather than attacking someone. I’ve heard many times that people in authority should never punch down, meaning that I shouldn’t slag on new writers or writers with less success than me, and Jim Butcher shouldn’t pick on me so much (Jim has never been anything but nice to me, he’s a very kind dude in every encounter we’ve had). I actually amend this to tell people not to punch up either. Taking potshots from the bottom of the ladder at someone higher up than you only makes you look small, bitter, jealous, and petty. None of these are traits that will attract readers.
So it’s better not to punch at all. Except Nazis. What’s good for Captain America is good for everyone.
So I try not to attack individuals for political stances. I try not to let the politics or the issues overwhelm the narrative, because that is our job – to tell a good story, and any teachable moments that come along with that are a bonus. And I try not to let my political beliefs color the way I interact with fans, which I hope is always polite (or at least funny) and approachable.
And if people want to avoid my politics entirely, they can follow my Facebook Author Page, join the Facebook Group, or follow the Falstaff Books website, which have appearance and publication updates, but nothing about my personal life. This blog is my personal blog and predates my professional writing career. My Facebook page is my personal page, and it’s wide-ass open. I approve most friend requests that aren’t obvious fake profiles, but you better understand that you’re getting unexpurgated Hartness on there. The Facebook group is a 100% no-politics zone, and anything political there gets pulled immediately. So there are places that I don’t mention politics, but I don’t try to keep it out of my work, and I sure as shit don’t keep it out of this blog or my personal FB page. that’s my personal balancing act, which I think gives people that liken my words but don’t agree with me politically (some of them are my real-life friends, even!) an opportunity to keep track of my work without getting constantly reminded that we are polar opposites on many things.
So that’s what I do. Does it work? I don’t know. But I have to write the stories I want to tell, and I’m not going to hide my beliefs. So that’s the compromise I can figure out.
by john | Aug 15, 2017 | What I'm reading
Hey gang – I decided that I should share some of the awesome stuff I’ve been reading recently, so I’ll try to keep y’all updated. I don’t do the whole Goodreads thing, and Amazon doesn’t like writers reviewing other writers’ work, which is fine, because I won’t be doing any reviews. I’ll just post images and links every once in a while to stuff I’ve read that I enjoyed.
Let’s start with this one.
I’m not a huge mil SF guy. I just haven’t read a ton of it. But I really enjoyed Cartwright’s Cavaliers by Mark Wandrey. It’s got a great sad sack turns tough protagonist, with a lot of heart, and I found the book to be very enjoyable. It’s a tight, fast read, without a ton of subplots, but there’s plenty of behind the scenes machinations going on to keep stuff moving. It’s set in a world that is well-established, but I had no problems getting everything I needed to know about the world (and universe) without reading anything else in the setting. I think Mark knocked this one out of the park and I really enjoyed it.
I’ve mentioned on Facebook that I’m totally addicted to Melissa Olson’s urban fantasy stuff right now. I’ve been kinda off reading UF for a little while because I felt like I’ve read it all before, but these series push back against that mold for me. They’re very “closed-world” in that the supernatural beings want to keep their shit secret, at any cost, which I like, and the protagonists are well-rounded women with flaws and issues, but they aren’t totally broken (always), which is another trope that gets a little old. These are tough, strong women, but not heartless, and not cold. I really like the characters a lot. There’s some romance, but not much, just enough to where you feel like people can like each other, which is nice. I’ve read the first three Scarlett Bernard books, and moved on to the first Boundary Magic book. There will be more. Oh yes, there will.
My favorite book I’ve read in months is the first Soulwood book by Faith Hunter. Holy shit, Betty, this is a kick-ass novel. It’s so very Southern, and so very Faith, and so very tough, and has soooo much heart. I really love this character – there’s something so sweet and childlike about her that I adore. I can’t wait to read the next books in the series. For real, I’m late to the party on this one, just like with Melissa’s books, but goddamn this is a killer novel. I’ve read a bunch of Faith’s work, and this is the best thing I’ve read by her. Seriously fantastic blend of Southern Gothic with Urban Fantasy. I love it.
And yeah, because I’m a huge whore, I won’t hesitate to remind you that I have a new book out, Fireheart, which is very different from anything else I’ve released. It’s a YA standalone with dragons, and kissing, and a love triangle. Maybe even a little bit of a love rhombus. But I’m pretty proud of it.
by john | Aug 14, 2017 | Amazing Grace, Fiction, Serialized Fiction, Writing
This is the latest chapter of an ongoing serialized novel that I’m working on and posting up here in rough draft form. To read other chapters, CLICK HERE.
PS – It’s my birthday – buy me something pretty. Or just buy something I wrote. Either one.
27
Willis and I left the Miller house not long after, after Willis directed Larry to take Jenny’s dad to the hospital and left Chuck at the house in case any calls came in about ransom or anything else. We didn’t expect the phone to ring; we both knew exactly what was going on here. I sat in the passenger seat of the sheriff’s patrol car while he got on the radio and ordered dispatch to call in the auxiliary deputies. There were half a dozen or so men and women that were deputized in case of missing children or elderly folks, lost hikers, or any large-scale emergencies. Jenny rode along to the hospital with her dad, unseen and unheard, but there to see he was taken care of.
Willis opened the door and slid in behind the wheel. “Everybody will meet us here in a few minutes. I’m going to station two of them in the house, probably Gene and Clyde. They’re old enough and trustworthy enough to babysit the place while Mr. Miller is getting checked out. I’ll have Chuck start the canvass in one direction, and get Ernest McKnight to head down the other side of the street.”
“You think that’s gonna work out okay? This is still South Carolina, Willis. Some people see a black man knocking on their door in the middle of the night, they’re going to answer with a twelve-gauge before they ever look to see if they know him.” Ernest McKnight was a respectable businessman, one of the best mechanics I’d ever seen, and about six and a half feet tall and blacker than the ace of spades. I did not want to see that gentle giant killed by some nervous homeowner while trying to help the police.
“I’ll send Irene Middleton out with him. Make sure she does the knocking, and Ernest can ask the questions. He’s been an auxiliary deputy for a long time, and was an MP in the army, too. He knows what kind of things to look for.”
“You know they ain’t going to find anything,” I said.
“I know we have to try everything we can think of,” he growled.
“I’m not arguing that, Willis,” I said. “I’m just saying that…well, I don’t even know what I’m doing here. I can’t help none with the living.”
“You’re helping me, Lila Grace. This is my first real case in this town, with these people. I need somebody to be my touchstone, to keep me grounded. That’s why you’re here – because I trust you, and because everybody here trusts you.”
“Everybody here is scared shitless that I might really be able to talk to their dead relatives and find out all the dirt on them.” I was grumbling, but Willis’ words made me feel good, like I was useful.
“Well, there’s probably a little of that, too,” he agreed, and I slapped him on the arm. We both laughed, then headlights appeared and he was out of the car to give instruction to the new arrivals.
I waited patiently for about three seconds, then started to fidget. I got out of the car, knowing full well that if I sat there much longer I was going to start messing with the switches and buttons on the dash. The last thing any of us needed was me firing up the siren on Church Street in the middle of the night. Not that anybody within a mile of us was asleep. If there’s one sure way to wake up small-town folk in the middle of the night, it’s turn on some police lights.
I felt a chill on my arm and looked to my left, starting a little as Sheriff Johnny looked at me, his hand on my shoulder and a worried expression on his face. “Good Lord, Johnny, you scared the fire out of me!” I said. “What’s wrong? I mean, more than what I already know about, that is.”
Johnny didn’t speak. Johnny never spoke, except for that one time a couple days ago. He was a quiet man in life, and death hadn’t loosened his tongue any. Some ghosts are just barely different from when they were living, but some are mere shades of their former selves, no pun intended. Johnny seemed to be fading the longer he was around. I had a fleeting worry that he needed to cross over soon, or there wouldn’t be anything left to pass on to the other side.
I don’t know what that means, what waits for anyone after they leave our world for the next, but my faith tells me that even though some souls wander the earth for a time after their bodies die, eventually they move on to a better place. Well, not all. Young Jeffrey was very quickly getting relegated to the list of people I wanted to see go to a much worse place.
“What is it, Johnny? Did you find something?” He nodded, and motioned for me to follow him. I did, walking down the sidewalk several houses to the Terrance house. I knew that Jackie and Mike Terrance were in Michigan for a month, visiting their new grandbaby, so I wasn’t sure what Johnny wanted me to see there. He stopped at the mouth of the driveway and pointed down, but of course O couldn’t see anything. I pulled out my phone and turned on the flashlight app, shining the bright LED beam down at the ground. There, in the mud built up in the dip between their driveway and the street, was a set of fresh tire tracks. There was no reason for anyone to be at the Terrance house with them gone, and it had just rained a few days ago, so these tracks were almost certainly from tonight. Which meant they were Jeff’s.
“Well, what about it, Johnny? We know he drove here. Are you telling me there’s something about these tracks that Willis needs to know?” He nodded. “Alright, then. Let me text him, and we’ll see what we can figure out.” I took a photo of the tracks with my phone and texted it to Willis, telling him that Johnny pointed them out at the Terrance house.
“Stay there. Don’t touch the tracks. Be there in 5.” Was the reply I got, so I went over and sat down on the retaining wall Mike Terrance built out of rocks he picked up out of the Broad River last summer. A few minutes later, Willis came walking up, his own flashlight cutting a narrow beam through the dark night.
I got up and walked over to the tire prints. “Here you go. I don’t know what good this does us. We knew he drive here. It ain’t like he was going to carry Mrs. Miller off over his shoulders.”
“It tells us he ain’t in his squad car,” Willis said. “The treads don’t match the department-issue tires. And these are big tires, not like the car I’ve seen Jeff drive around town. These are from a pickup, or an SUV. Maybe something with four-wheel drive. From that, I’d guess he had to do some off-roading to get to wherever he’s holding Mrs. Miller, or at the very least, down some rough dirt roads.”
Johnny was nodding so hard I thought his head would pop off. Obviously Willis was saying what Johnny was thinking, I just couldn’t figure out all the connections. I wracked my brain, trying to remember anything from Jeff’s childhood about hunting cabins, or favorite spots in the woods, or…
“That’s it,” I said. “That’s got to be where he took her.”
“Where?” Willis asked.
“I’m not real sure, we should probably ask Cracker, but I seem to recall there being something about Jeff’s daddy having a little piece of property over on John D. Long Lake, with a trailer or a fishing cabin, or something like that. I think his daddy called it his quiet place. Jeff talked one time in Sunday School about going with his daddy to the quiet place, and how much he liked it there.”
“That sounds like the perfect place to take somebody if you don’t want to be seen,” Willis said.
“And it’s not far from where he dumped Shelly’s body. Do you think he might have…”
“I don’t know,” Willis interrupted me before my thoughts went too far down that path. “Her body was in the water too long to know if there was any kind of sexual assault, so don’t think about that right now. Just think that if he’s got some kind of deranged fantasy playing out in his head, that Mrs. Miller might still be alive.”
“As long as we can find that place and get to her fast enough,” I said.
“Welcome to the wonders of the internet,” Willis said. “Let’s get back to the car.” We can look up property records online with the computer in the car.”
I followed him back to the car and slid into the passenger seat. He tapped a few buttons and looked annoyed.
“Nothing under his name. I know he rents the house he lives in from Clint Maxwell, but whatever other place he’s got oughta show up in the tax records.”
“Maybe it’s under his daddy’s name still?” I half-asked, half-suggested. “Try Richard Walker.”
He tapped the keys, then grimaced, shaking his head. “What’s his mother’s name?”
“Serinda Walker. Her maiden name was Cowen. Try that, too.”
A few more taps, more head shaking, then more tapping and more scowling. “Nothing. How does a person as transparent as Jeff keeps something like property hidden. I wouldn’t think he was somebody that would think like that.”
“I wouldn’t think he was somebody that would kill two teenagers and kidnap a woman, either,” I said.
“We don’t know that he did, Lila Grace,” Willis said, a cautious tone to his voice.
“Don’t use that policeman tone of voice with me, Willis Dunleavy,” I snapped. “You know as well as I do that boy is our best and only suspect, and if he don’t have that woman in his fishing trailer, wherever the hell it is, we ain’t got a snowball’s chance in Hell of getting her back. I looked into that man’s eyes and I promised him we would bring his wife home. He’s already lost his little girl. That woman is the only thing left keeping him in this world, so if we can’t do that, we might as well put a bullet in his head when we give him the news.”
Willis’ eyes were haunted, and he wore the face of a man who had told too many families their loved ones weren’t coming home. “I know, Lila. I know.”
I felt a little twinge in my chest. “Nobody calls me just Lila,” I said.
“I do.” Those two little words, in the middle of the night, sitting in a police car hunting down a murderer and trying to bring Karen Miller home safely, rang deep inside me. This was not a man who planned on just visiting in my life. He was part of me to stay. I took a deep breath, realizing I liked that feeling, then turned my attention back to the task at hand.
“Try Dargin Feemster,” I said.
“What the hell is a Dargin Feemster?”
“That’s Jeff’s granddaddy. He’s liable to have never switched the deed over when his Pap died, just kept paying the tax bill every year. The county wouldn’t care, as long as they got their little piece of money, and Jeff probably never thought anything about it.”
“Well, I’ll be damned,” Willis muttered. “There it is. A little six-acre plot on the lake, a couple miles from the main road. Ain’t no way to get there in a car, but I reckon that old Bronco of Jeff’s would do just fine. It’s got about fifty yards of frontage onto the lake, just enough for a little dock to fish off of.”
“If he’s anywhere, that’s where he’ll be,” I said. “We ain’t getting there in this Chevrolet, though. We’ll take my pickup. It’ll get us through about anything.”
“Then let’s go bring her home.” Willis said, putting the car in gear and tearing off on a ghost-fueled rescue mission.
