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

for a murder, Dylan. He caused the death of an innocent boy.”
    “He didn’t know he was innocent! If we’d given him the truth instead of buying him off—”
    “Maybe he would’ve murdered the Champlin boy instead!” Girard snapped. “We’ll never know, will we? We only know what he did.”
    “We put him in a lousy situation and he made a lousy choice. I’m not saying he walks, but we owe him something. What can you do?”
    “I—hell.” Girard looked away, chewing the corner of his lip. “If he serves the minimum with no more trouble, I’ll consider a humanitarian release. That’s the best I can offer.”
    “Then I guess it’ll have to do.”
    “Not quite,” he said, meeting my eyes dead-on. “I need a straight answer from you. About Sorsa.”
    “What about him?”
    “If you’d brought him in breathing, I could have used his testimony against Novak to put them both away for life. You told the board you went alone, hoping he’d surrender. Was that true?”
    I didn’t say anything.
    “I didn’t think so,” he said, rising, looking down at me. In every sense. He waited a moment for me to say something in my defense. When I didn’t, he turned and stalked out.
    He left angry, thinking the worst. Thinking he knows an ugly truth about me.
    But he’s wrong.
    I chewed over his question a good long while after he left.
    I’ve known Todd since high school. I didn’t want to lie to him.
    But I couldn’t tell him the truth.
    Because I don’t know what it is.
    Some night, many years from now, maybe I’ll wake in the dark and know to a certainty what really happened in that clearing. I’ll know that I gave Ox Sorsa a choice because I hoped he’d surrender. Or because I hoped he wouldn’t.
    For now, I’ll have to live with not knowing.
    So will Todd.
     
    I worked at my desk the rest of the afternoon, catching up on paperwork. When I headed out into the fading twilight, a gentle snow was falling. Downy flakes, swirling on the wind. But as I walked to my car, I slowed, then stopped.
    Listening.
    Up the block, in Memorial Park, a children’s choir was on the bandstand singing Christmas carols, their voices carrying clear and pure in the gathering dusk.
    Without thinking, I fell in step with a throng of shoppers and families and passersby, all of us drawn by the music, gathering around that small stage. Letting the old songs carry us back to a time when the world was a simpler place. Or we were too young to know the difference.
    Peace on earth, good will to men.
    It’s tough to argue with that.
    But as I listened to the voices ringing in the icy air, my gaze strayed to the far corner of the park, where a winged figure stands watch over a memorial, a stone tablet that bears the names of the Great Fallen. Local boys who died in the first War to End All Wars. And in all the wars since.
    It’s a long list.
    The mourning angel that guards it was aglow, decorated for the holidays with glittering lights, her hands spread wide in benediction, a marble teardrop frozen on her cheek.
    And my throat seized up. And I couldn’t breathe.
    I wonder if I will
ever
see an angel again without remembering that shining schoolgirl sleeping in the snow.
    I hope not.

ANDREW BOURELLE

Cowboy Justice
    FROM
Law and Disorder
     
    J ACK PUT FOUR shells of double-ought buck into the twelve-gauge, chambered a round, then added the fifth shell. His breathing was shallow. He wondered how he was going to get through this. Beside him in the passenger seat, David had already loaded the 30.06 and the .270 and seemed to be waiting patiently. A Kenny Chesney song about a guy leaving his summer fling and heading back to Cleveland was playing on the stereo and Jack turned it off.
    “I thought you liked Kenny Chesney,” David said.
    “He ain’t bad. It just ain’t the right kinda music for now is all.”
    David nodded and looked out the window. They were parked in an empty Raley’s parking lot. The sun wasn’t up yet; the black of