Down These Strange Streets

This made Rick want to strangle him even more. To justify the man’s terror. But he let Blake go and backed away, leaving him to Hardin’s care.

The old man sank to his knees, knocking over the oxygen canister. He held his hands before him, clawed and trembling.

“He’s dead! Dead! He has to be dead! He has to be!” He was sobbing.

Maybe leaving him on his knees and crying before the police was revenge enough.

Rick, hands raised, backed out of the line of fire. “I could have saved you some paperwork, Detective.”

“You’d just have forced me into a whole other set of paperwork. What the hell did you think you were doing?”

The uniforms had to pick up Blake and practically drag him away. They didn’t bother with cuffs. Blake didn’t seem to know what was happening. His mouth worked, his breaths wheezed, his legs stumbled.

“I take it you got your evidence,” Rick said.

“We found the shooter, and he talked. Blake hired him.”

He certainly didn’t look like he’d pulled any triggers in a good long time.

“So that’s it?”

“What else do you want?”

“I wanted to get here five minutes earlier,” he said. Not that any of it really mattered. It all faded from the memories around him.

“I need to ask you to depart the premises,” she said. She wasn’t aiming the gun at him, but she hadn’t put it away. “Don’t think I won’t arrest you for something, because I will. I’ll come up with something.”

Rick nodded. “Have a good night, Detective.”

He returned to his car and left the scene, marking the end of yet another chapter.

* * *

RICK HADN’T BEEN ABLE TO ATTEND THE TRIAL, BUT HE’D MET WITH HELEN every night to discuss the proceedings. She came to Murray’s, tearing up with relief and rubbing her eyes with her handkerchief, to report the guilty verdict. He quit his shift early and took her back to his place, a basement apartment on Capitol Hill. With Blake locked up, he felt safe bringing her here. He owned the building, rented out the upper portion through an agency, and could block off the windows in the basement without drawing attention. The décor was simple —a bed, an armchair, a chest of drawers, a radio, and a kitchen that went unused.

They lay together on the bed, his arm around her, holding her close, while she nestled against him. They talked about the future, which was always an odd topic for him. Helen had decided to look for an old-fashioned kind of job and aim for a normal life this time.

“But I don’t know what to do about you,” she said, craning her neck to look up at him.

He’d been here before, lying with a woman he liked, who with a little thought and nudging he could perhaps be in love with, except that what they had would never be entirely mutual, or equitable. And he still didn’t know what to say. I could take from you for the rest of your life, and you’d end with . . . nothing.

He said, “If you’d like, I can vanish, and you’ll never see me again. It might be better that way.”

“I don’t want that. But I wish . . .” Her face puckered, brow furrowed in thought. “But you’re not ever going to take me on a trip, or stay up to watch the sunrise with me, or ask me to marry you, or anything, are you?”

He shook his head. “I’ve already given you everything I can.”

Except for one thing. But he hadn’t told her that he could infect her, make her like him, that she too could live forever and never see a sunrise. And he wouldn’t.

“It’s enough,” she said, hugging him. “At least for now, it’s enough.”

THE LADY IS A SCREAMER by Conn Iggulden

Historical novelist Conn Iggulden is the author of the bestselling Emperor series— The Gates of Rome, The Death of Kings, The Field of Swords, and The Gods of War—detailing the life of Julius Caesar, as well as the Conqueror series— Wolf of the Plains, Lords of the Bow, Bones of the Hills, and Empire of Silver—exploring the life of Genghis Khan. He is also the coauthor of the bestselling nonfiction books The Dangerous Book for Boys and The Dangerous Book of Heroes, as well as Tollins: Explosive Tales for Children. His most recent book, written with Lizzy Duncan, is Tollins 2: Dynamite Tales.

In the flamboyant story that follows, he takes us on the road with a raffish con man who discovers a new profession—ghostbuster—but who learns that some ghosts are harder to bust than others.

I SUPPOSE I THINK OF MYSELF AS RUNNING A SMALL BUSINESS, PROVIDING a necessary service. I’m just one of a hundred million guys, paying the bills with the talents God gave them. I don’t have a fancy name for what I do. I’m not a stage magician and to be honest, the kind of clients I get aren’t impressed by that sort of thing. If I called myself Afterlife Inc., or something, well, it wouldn’t get my car there any faster. Not that car. I’m part of the backbone of America, my friend. Anyway, out of the four of us I’m the only one drawing a salary, so my costs are pretty low.

I started this to make a record of a few odd years, but I’m not really interested in passing on my pearls of wisdom. Not so someone else can wade through this kind of crap on a daily basis. If I had kids, I wouldn’t recommend it as a line of work, you know? It was all right in the beginning, when it was just checking the obits and knocking on doors. Everyone wants to say a few last words to the recently departed. If you’re interested, the number one choice was “Sorry,” closely followed by second prize: “I should have told you I loved you more often,” and my personal favorite, which was always some variation on “Are you happy?” No, my dear grieving widow with the sprayed hair still up from the funeral, he’s dead, of course he’s not happy. I’ll admit I hadn’t the first idea back then whether he was happy or not. I know a bit more these days, but I’ll get to that. I just used to assure her that poor Brian was just fine, that he missed her and he was looking forward to seeing her in heaven. If I handled it right, I’d also get a couple of juicy hits. Sure, as I’m already talking, I’ll tell you. Hits are when you get a detail right that they think you couldn’t possibly know. “He says he remembers that time in the Maldives, does that mean anything to you?” It’s a golden moment and you never get tired of watching the last trace of cynicism drain away from them. All it takes is a couple of Barnum statements and a little research.

Maybe I do have a little knowledge worth passing on, at that. P. T. Barnum made them famous, but it all started with a lecturer named Forer, back in the forties. I can start the list from memory, so here it is:

“You have a great need for others to like and admire you. You have a tendency to be critical of yourself. While you have some personality weaknesses, you are generally able to compensate for them. At times you have serious doubts as to whether you have made the right decision or done the right thing.” And so on. You get it? They apply to everyone. Couple a few of those to some personal research and you have a cold reading they’ll remember forever.

They never think I could do some actual work before turning up at the door. The Internet is good for that, though my favorite was the old microfiches they had in libraries. Newspaper records were useful, but the gold was often in court records and voting rolls. It’s all public. These days, half the people I read about are still the Google and microfiche crowd—too old to have heard of Facebook. The rest are low-hanging fruit. Facebook don’t dump a page for about a week after a death and their privacy policy is, well, the difference between me scoring and not,