“She’s dead, Mr. Spencer.” Conrad stared at the detective’s upper lip. Adriana, dead? How could she be? He’d sat with her on her balcony this morning, drinking lapsang souchong with a splash of milk and honey. She’d made him scones. He’d kissed her twice. “Mr. Spencer. Are you listening? Do you understand the gravity of…
Quadrant 24b has been giving me trouble. It is difficult to manage a ten-pound core sampler with a bent spinner head while dangling from a harness and ripple cord at a height of 5 meters in the baking hot sun.
Maurice Bentonville the second hitched up his overalls, adjusted his milk-can crown, and peered through his toilet-paper-roll binoculars. His perch? A cottonwood stump. His kingdom? The river streaming by. His subjects? Trout, catfish, carp, sharks, beluga whales, crabs, crawdads, worms, water striders, and hippopotamuses.
All I’ve got is muscles and rage. If you don’t believe me, ask my knuckles. They’ve tasted more jawbones than average, blued more eyeballs, cracked a dozen ribs, and busted more cheeks than I can count. There’s more teeth embedded in my fists than bone.
I’d woken up exhausted. My bed was a rumpled mass of sheets and popcorn crumbs and melted smarties. I hauled myself upright, stumbled against the dresser, and stared bleary-eyed at my reflection. The man who looked back at me was a stranger, cut, stitched, wrenched to life like some unholy Frankenstein. I laughed. The sound gurgled from my throat, bounced like a hyena over the walls, and died when it saw the wedding ring.