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When you walk into a motel room in St. Augustine, Florida, and find the only woman who ever really mattered lying on the floor with a hole in her head, a chill slithers up your spine and your good knee buckles.

Your gut feels like you swallowed a bowl of pennies.

You lift the tail of your Hawaiian shirt, ease the Smith and Wesson from its holster and scan the room, knowing the most beautiful girl in the world did not do this to herself. You push the bathroom door open, find nothing but a toothbrush and a tube of Crest with the cap off.

You catch your own reflection in the mirror. You look older than you did an hour ago.

I hadn’t seen Nancy for over twenty-five years, but her hair was still black and her eyes--staring blankly at the ceiling now--still green. The lips I had kissed a million times hung slack, frozen in a pout, and a thin trail of blood ran from the corner of her mouth to the carpet.

I knelt down, careful not to disturb any evidence, and checked her neck for a pulse I knew wouldn’t be there. Her face had the waxen sheen of a mannequin.

A pillow lay close to Nancy’s right arm, along with a .22 caliber revolver. The pillow had a hole in it, and a burn mark from the muzzle flash. Otherwise, the room looked undisturbed.

Nancy’s suitcase was on the bed, unopened, along with an expensive-looking black leather shoulder satchel, and a nine-by-twelve manila envelope with RE written across the front in red magic marker.

I shoved my gun back into its holster, walked outside, called 9-1-1 on my cell.

“My name is Nicholas Colt,” I said. “I’m at Sharkey’s Inn, on A1A. Room one thirty-seven...”

I sat on the sidewalk outside Nancy’s room, closed my eyes and waited. Some kids in the pool played Marco Polo. I saw Nancy at eighteen, riding shotgun in my Corolla hatchback, laughing, hair dancing in the wind.

A single black-and-white from the St. John’s County Sheriff’s Department pulled up. A uniformed officer, white guy in his mid-thirties, fit, shaved head, got out. His nametag said Aaron Wright.

“Are you Nicholas Colt?”

“Right.”

“You called nine-one-one?”

“In there...”

Officer Wright donned a pair of surgical gloves, pushed the door open and walked into the room. I didn’t follow him. He came back out, told me not to go anywhere, walked to his car and used the radio.

An ambulance showed up, along with three more black-and-whites and an unmarked Chevy Lumina. The guy driving the Lumina took two of the uniforms with him and inspected the room. He instructed them to make some calls, and then asked me to follow him to his car.

I sat beside him in the front seat. The interior smelled like French fries and cigarette smoke.

“Colt, is it?” he said.

“Yeah.”

“Why does that name sound familiar?”

“I used to work homicide in Clay County,” I said. “I’m private now.”

“Ah. You were one of Barry Fleming’s guys. How is Barry?”

“We don’t talk much.”

“I’m Koby Rogers. Violent Crimes. You were involved in that Paul Riley case, right?”

“Yeah. Pretty involved. Colby? Like the cheese?”

“Koby. Like Toby, with a K. How’s Riley doing these days? I heard he lost an eye.”

“We don’t talk much either. He’s doing time in Starke. Went down for The Bitch.”

Detective Rogers pulled a pack of Marlboro Lights from his shirt pocket, shook one out and lit it. He offered me one.

“I quit a while back,” I said.

“So, tell me what happened in room one thirty-seven this afternoon. The vic your girlfriend?”

I laced my hands together. “A long time ago. In high school, and then a couple of years after we graduated. Her name’s Nancy Blake now. It was Simpson back then. She’s a widow. I hadn’t seen her in twenty-some years. She contacted me through email, and then telephone. She said her son had gotten involved with some kind of religious cult down here. She wanted me to help her talk him out of it.”

“She’s not local?”

“She’s the former mayor of Louisville.”

“Kentucky?”

“Yeah. She was selling insurance up there now.”

Rogers yanked his cell phone from a clip on his belt, punched in some numbers. “Hey, Bob. I’m on a case that could go high-profile. Turns out the vic was the former mayor of Louisville, Kentucky. I’d appreciate it if you could come over and work it yourself. Yeah, I have some techs on the way.”
Rogers listened while Bob said something, then disconnected.

“Medical Examiner?” I asked.

“Just wanted to make sure he didn’t send an assistant for this one. The mayor of Louisville. Damn. You and Ms. Blake were sharing the room?”

“Negative. I drove down from Hallows Cove. We were supposed to meet in the bar here at seven. When she didn’t show, I got the room number from the clerk. I knocked, no answer. That’s when I walked in. The door wasn’t locked.”

“These goddamn old motels. Screwdriver’s good as a pass key. No marks on the door, though. You say it was open?”

“I said it wasn’t locked. I turned the knob and walked right in. Whoever shot her probably did the same thing. Looked like she was brushing her teeth at the time.”

“Why was a former mayor staying in a dump like Sharkey’s?”

“Old time’s sake. It was our place when we were kids.”

Nancy and I had lost our virginity in the same room where she lay now. August 16, 1977. The day Elvis died.

Rogers took a drag on his cigarette, flipped the butt out the window. “You ever been to Louisville, Colt?”

“No, but I have a baseball bat from there.”

“You play?”

“Yeah. I keep it in my car, for pickup games.”

Rogers smiled, shook his head. “I went to the Derby, the year Secretariat won. Jesus. What a fucking horse that was.” He lit another cigarette, stared at the windshield.

“On second thought, give me one of those.”

“You sure? Thought you said you quit.”

“Fuck it. Nancy never smoked a cigarette in her life. Look where it got her.”

He tapped one out and gave me a light. It’s hard to describe that first draw of tobacco smoke after six months of abstinence. A man lost on the dry side of Hell finally getting a gulp of cold water comes close.

“Look,” Rogers said. “We’re going to treat this as a homicide. For now. Go through the motions. But looks to me like--”

“It wasn’t suicide. Someone used the pillow for a silencer. If you’re going to kill yourself, why care if anyone hears it?”

He scratched the back of his hand on his chin. “One time I found a guy with a belt around his neck, hanging from a ceiling fan. On the floor underneath him, by the chair, was a hand mirror, a disposable razor, and a can of Edge Gel for sensitive skin. For some reason, he’d taken the time to shave first. Guess he wanted to look his best for the coroner’s camera. Who knows what goes through the mind of someone in that state?”

“She didn’t kill herself,” I said.

He left it alone. “We’ll need to notify her family. Her parents still alive?”

“They’re in Louisville. Her dad owns a bakery or deli or something.”

“She has a son down here?”

“Yeah. I’d like to tell him myself, if you don’t mind. I’ll go tonight. Right now, before he hears something on the news. Also, there’s a manila envelope on the bed with R-E written on it in red magic marker. I don’t know what’s in it, but it was meant for me. Re was my nickname in school, short for Colt Revolver. I’d like to have it.”

“You can fill out a four-eighty at the courthouse after we process and clear it,” Rogers said. “We’ll need her son to come and make positive ID on the body. What’s his name?”

“Amstel,” I said. “Amstel Blake.”


* * *

Amstel Blake limped across the parking lot, barefoot, his right hand wrapped tightly around the grips of a .40 caliber Taurus 24/7. The gun’s previous owner, a security guard known affectionately as “Officer Fridge,” had fallen asleep on the job.

Not that it was Fridge’s fault, really. Amstel had managed to spike the guard’s coffee with a little white pill, a tablet given to Amstel by his nurse. Something to help you relax, honey. The nurse watched Amstel swallow, but failed to check under his tongue. Her mistake. Officer Fridge became very happy for about thirty minutes, then nodded off.

Getting hold of the weapon and the keys to the shackles had been relatively easy. Sliding down the linen chute to the ground floor was another story.

Amstel hobbled on, briskly as he could.

At the corner of 8th and Jefferson, a Honda Accord waited to turn left.
Favoring the boiled grapefruit that had previously been a left ankle, Amstel skipped to the passenger’s side, yanked the handle, pounded on the window and shouted, “Open the goddamn door. Now.”

The woman didn’t scream for help. She didn’t floor the accelerator, and she didn’t go for her cell phone. She didn’t produce a weapon of her own and blast Amstel’s aching skull to smithereens. The driver, a petite woman in her mid twenties with long blonde hair, froze.

Amstel felt a pulse in his teeth. “I swear to God, lady, I will kill you.”

The lock popped.

Amstel climbed in, aimed the gun at her head. “Drive. Make a U-turn, back toward the interstate.”

“What do you want?” Her face, wet with tears, shimmered blue in the dashboard light. The badge clipped to her uniform top said Sally, the last name blacked out with a strip of surgical tape.

Amstel took a deep breath. “We’re going to save the world, Sally. Just you and me.”

“Oh, God. Please don’t kill me. I’ll do whatever you want. I have money. You can have the car...”

“My name is Amstel Blake. I’m not going to kill anyone, Sally, but it’s essential that you do exactly as I say. Are you a nurse?”

She nodded. “I always come in early and eat in the cafeteria. I’m a diabetic.”

Amstel lifted her cell from the center console, flipped it open, set it on speaker phone. “Tell me your work number. I’m going to dial it, and you’re going to talk. You’re calling in sick today.”

Sally told him the number. The charge nurse answered and Sally explained, in a trembling voice, that she wasn’t feeling well and wouldn’t be able to make it in. After bitching about the staffing situation, the charge nurse gave Sally best wishes for a speedy recovery and hung up.

Amstel dropped the phone into his breast pocket. “You got something to clean your face with?” he asked.

“In there.”

Amstel opened the glove compartment, found a moist towelette from KFC, ripped the package open and handed it to Sally.

“I have to eat,” Sally said. “I already took my shot this evening, and I feel my blood sugar dropping. I could pass out. There’s a sandwich in my backpack, on the back seat.”

Amstel unwrapped the sandwich and gave it to her. Ham and cheese on rye. “You want any of this other stuff?” he asked, referring to a bag of Doritos, a banana, a package of granola bars and a Diet Pepsi.

“No. I’ll drink my coffee.”

A Styrofoam Bean Street cup dangled from a holder on Sally’s door. The coffee was still steaming, and Amstel wished he had some for himself. It smelled great.

Sally’s voice steadied some. “What do you mean we’re going to save the world?”

“It’s a long story,” Amstel said.

“Where are we going?”

“New Orleans. The Naval Air Station in Belle Chase. Just get me there, and you can turn around and go home.” Amstel glanced at the gas guage. Sally must have topped off the tank when she bought the cup of Bean Street. Still, they would have to make a fuel stop somewhere along the way. “I’m a government agent, Sally, a Criminal Investigations Special Agent with the IRS. We investigate tax evasion, fraud, all kinds of stuff. We’re the IRS’s police force.”

“You’re a cop? Why the green scrubs?”

Amstel paused. “I was a patient on the fourth floor. A prisoner, really.”
“The psych unit?” Sally said, accompanied by a nervous chuckle. She swallowed a bite of sandwich.

“Ever heard of Reverend Lucius Stone?”

Sally looked puzzled. “Yeah. That preacher on TV, right? But what does he have to do with--”

“He has everything to do with everything,” Amstel said. “He’s the leader of a secret cult, an army of assassins called Harvest Angels. Tomorrow, at the Naval Air Station in Belle Chase, Louisiana, they’re going to kill The President and Vice President. I have to stop them.”

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I think that most editors would find your shifting POV's problematical. The use 2nd and 1st POV in the first scene is jarring. The shift to third in the second scene reads pretty well.

Other than that, the description and dialog are spot-on. Nice start.
Thanks, Terry!
Thanks, Jon!

I am thinking about just making the whole thing 3rd, but I've seen quite a few authors use 1st/3rd to good effect. James Patterson, JA Konrath, Nelson DeMille...

It's kind of scary I guess, but the guards where I work (a hospital) do carry firearms. The patients who are also Sheriff's Dept. prisoners are always in shackles, but still...

What if a prisoner managed to spike a guard's coffee with a dose of Ativan or Valium or something? Could be bad news, eh?
The first-person narrator is somehow still telling the story in retrospect, recounting the movements of the 3rd person-close character?

Not at all. It works the same as any story with multiple POVs. I'm not sure who did it first (perhaps Patterson, with Along Came a Spider, at least in the crime fiction genre), but it has become fairly commonplace and accepted as a legitimate format. 1st/3rd has its critics--some writers think it's cheating, or a schizophrenic format or whatever, but I like to think of it as the best of both worlds. You get the intimacy of 1st person for, usually, about 80% of the narrative, but without the obvious limitations.
I felt the same way the first time I read a book written in 1st/3rd, Jon. Whoa! You're allowed to do this?

Now that I've read a bunch of them, though, I really like the format. It's an acquired taste.

BTW, if you decide to try James Patterson, right away you'll think the prose is absolute rubbish. Try to approach it with an open mind, as if you're a kid in a funhouse. It's primitive, pure storytelling, I think.

James Lee Burke, on the other hand, writes beautiful prose, almost poetic at times.

As a reader, I can appreciate both brands of genius.
You'd be surprised at how chummy some of the prisoners get with some of the guards. They tell stories and laugh, or talk about their personal relationships with Jesus or whatever. First-rate manipulators and con artists, some of those guys.

And, you'd be surprised at how unattentive the guards are sometimes. I've seen them fall asleep in a chair (without being drugged!), with their loaded firearms flapping in the breeze.

You're right that I might need to add some more detail, though. I wrote an entire chapter showing the escape, but scrapped it thinking the story really starts with the carjacking. Maybe another couple of sentences at the beginning of Amstel's POV would do the trick. I'll play with it. Thanks, Jon.
I'd love to see an ongoing workshop forum here given all the talent around. To that end ...

Well structured sub, Jude, good level of detail overall (although it lacks a killer detail or two, IMO, something original and really vivid here and there). I'd thought the story was a mystery until the last graph, and now I think it's a thriller. Perhaps that's an issue because you don't want to mislead the reader.

Recommended changes: Have that deputy go into the hotel room with his hand hovering over his holster until he sees for himself there's no danger. That's the paranoid approach law enforcement types are taught. He's too trusting the way you have it now with him donning latex gloves before even having a peek inside.

On a similar note, many hotel and motel desks clerks in this day and age won't give out room numbers to people asking for them. That this is a dive makes it possible, but still I was surprised upon learning how the Colt character--A gun for a last name? A bit too Mickey Spillane for me--got into the room.

A few random thoughts:

A 22 is not the weapon of choice for a suicide or a murder it seems to me, and women rarely, rarely shoot themselves when they want to commit suicide, so it may be more obvious than you want that she was shot by someone.

Where's the bullet hole? I would think Colt would've searched for it a bit at least.

Also the deputy seems to be jumping to suicide awfully fast given the circumstances. It's early yet, and Colt could easily have shot her in the head during some argument. He's already admitted a former relationship and the hotel room suggests rekindled romance. (The deputy would also know how rarely women blow their own brains out.)

How you get "RE" out of Colt Revolver eludes me, and I would think the deputy would say so too.

Lastly, I might've enjoyed Amstel's escape from the psych ward more than just the tail end of it. I'm not sure. (The name "Amstel" is too cute for me as well. Don't like cute names at all. Maybe that's just me though.)

On the 1st/3rd POV issue: If a guy like James Lee Burke uses it then it can't be all bad. I've got no problems with it personally.

Hope this helps...
Nice critique, Eric. I'll take all those suggestions into consideration on rewrite. Thanks!

I think an ongoing workshop forum here would be cool, too.

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