“I didn’t see nothin’.”

  “I might’ve been there, but I don’t think so.”

  “Look, buddy, I’m trying to work. Don’t have time for this.”

  Three voices. Three shrugs. Three small graves for the truth.

  By the time the third had brushed me off, the afternoon had gone sour in my mouth. Three women died in plain view of half the neighborhood, yet every witness suddenly developed a case of civic blindness.

  I stood outside a laundromat that smelled of soap and surrender and watched as traffic slid past in slow resignation. Days of questioning had bought me nothing but cigarette smoke and locked jaws. People around here could watch a murder happen ten feet away and still swear they’d spent the evening admiring pavement.

  My patience had worn thin enough to read a newspaper through. The Sorrow and Patrick witnesses were nothing more than drunks with memories as dependable as a broken compass, a literal dead end. That left exactly one pair of eyes.

  Jeffery Wright. The only man who saw Carmen Sandor die.

  His address sat folded in my coat pocket like a final bad idea. Mercy Street didn’t live up to the name. It was a tired strip of cracked pavement and leaning houses that looked like they’d already surrendered to gravity. The Wright place sagged beneath peeling paint and acid rain. The windows stared out at the road like a pair of tired old eyes.

  The porch steps groaned under my bootstep. I hadn’t even knocked when the shouting began.

  “Lord, please cover me in your light!” The voice was high and desperate, ricocheting past the walls. “Shine upon me in this moment of need!”

  Then the smell hit me. Petrol. Sharp. Bitter. Thick enough to taste.

  “Save me, salvation!”

  Gasoline and prayer rarely share a room unless somebody intends to leave it burning.

  No time to knock now; my foot solved that issue. The wood split with a dull crack and the door slammed inward hard enough to shake dust from the ceiling. The smell inside was overwhelming—petrol soaked into the air like bad news.

  Jeffery Wright stood shining in the center of this show like a prophet who’d wandered too far into wilderness. For a moment he looked almost Christ-like. His hair hung to his waist, drenched in gasoline that streamed down his chest. His shirt clung to him like wet paper, barely concealing the scars beneath. Fresh ones. Above his left nipple someone (almost certainly Jeffery himself) had carved a crude crucifix into flesh. The wounds were still bleeding, thin red lines mixing with the motor spirit running down his ribs. The room reeked of mechanical sin.

  In his left hand he held a box of matches. In his right, a lone match; he was trembling so badly the stick rattled between his fingers. For a moment neither of us moved. Dust drifted through a shaft of afternoon light cutting across the room. The scene had the stillness of something already condemned. My hand moved to the hilt of my Promethean sword: An M1911. The steel rested cool and familiar in my palm. Some men carry crosses when they walk into hell; I prefer forty-five caliber reassurance.

  “My brother,” I said quietly, “I’m gonna need you to put those down.”

  Jeffery stared at me as though I were a cockroach crawling over a Michelin star meal. His eyes were enormous, not innocent, but with the brittle terror of a man who’d seen something that he just couldn’t keep packed behind his skull.

  “You don’t know,” he whispered. Gasoline dripped from his hair and tapped softly onto the floorboards. “You don’t know what I saw.”

  Stolen from its rightful author, this tale is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

  “Then help me fix that.” My gun stayed low. Ready.

  “I deserve this,” he seethed, the words drifting from him as smoke. “We will all be saved by flame.”

  Religious men talk about fire like it’s a friend. Personally, I’ve never trusted anything that enjoys burning.

  Jeffery’s hand twitched. Time slowed the way it always does when someone decides to gamble with eternity. Two seconds stretched like wire, electrifying all around.

  One Mississippi.

  My arm swung upwards, his down.

  Two Mississippi.

  My pistol fired, and a shot rang through the room like thunder rumbling a coffin. His index and middle finger vanished in a red mist. The match dropped harmlessly to the floor as he collapsed backward, clutching the wreckage of his hand. The stench of gunpowder tangled with gasoline. For a moment I wondered if the whole house might explode just to keep the afternoon interesting.

  “My hand! Oh God, my fuckin’ hand!” Jeffery howled, writhing to and fro. I kicked the matchbox across the room and knelt beside him.

  “Amen brethren,” I cheeked. “You’re still alive.” Blood spread across the floorboards.

  “You shot me!” Duh.

  “You tried to set yourself on fire.”

  “Doesn’t make it right!”

  “It sure as shit does when I’m standing in the splash zone.”

  I grabbed a rag from the back of a chair and shoved it against the wound. “Hold that tight unless you want to repaint the floor.” He obeyed through sobs. Up close he looked worse than I expected. Hollow cheeks, sunken eyes; the sleepless ruin of a man whose brain had been gnawing on poison.

  “You were there,” I rattled off before the thought could fully form. Jeffery froze. “When Carmen Sandor died.” The name struck him like another gunshot.

  “I… I didn’t-”

  “Careful,” I interjected, shifting the pistol lightly towards him. “You’re already short two fingers. Let’s not make it a theme.”

  His lips trembled. “You don’t understand.”

  “That’s why I’m here.” I retorted.

  For a long moment he stared at the floor. Words and tears soon began leaking out. “I was walking home,” he whispered, the words barely eaking past his throat. “Behind the pharmacy. I heard them arguing first.”

  “Who?”

  “I couldn’t see yet. Just voices.”

  “But one of them was Carmen.” He nodded.

  “I turned the corner and saw the man.” My grip and jaw tightened.

  “What man?”

  Jeffery swallowed. “I- I don’t know, but-”

  “Not helpful.”

  “He wasn’t right!” The phrase bounced between us, volleyed back and forth until I could form some vocab.

  “Define not right.’”

  Jeffery shuddered. “The way he stood. The way he moved.” His voice dropped. “Like he wasn’t carryin’ his bones correctly.”

  The sentence crawled into my spine and stayed there. “What happened next?”

  “She told him to stay away,” Jeffery whispered. “Said she knew what he was.”

  “What did she think he was?” Jeffery shook his head.

  “Didn’t get to finish.” His breathing quickened. “One second they were arguing. The next…” He stared at the wall like the memory was still painted there. “She was on the ground.” Silence settled into the room.

  “What did he do after?” Jeffery looked at me slowly.

  “He looked at me.”

  “And?”

  Jeffery’s voice shrank to a whisper. “He smiled.”

  Something cold slid through my psyche. “You sure he saw you?” Jeffery nodded. “Then why are you still alive?” Jeffery leaned closer.

  “That’s why I...” His eyes were glassy with fear. “Because when he looked at me…” He swallowed hard. “He looked like I wasn’t worth killing.”

  I holstered my gun and stood. Jeffery watched me like a condemned man watching the hangman measure rope.

  “Am I going to jail?” he asked. I looked at the blood soaking through the rag around his hand.

  “Hospital first.” I stepped through the shattered doorway and back onto Mercy Street. Evening was creeping across the city, dragging a hideous shadow behind it.

  Somewhere in New Haven walked a man who didn’t carry his bones correctly. A man who killed a woman in an alley and left the only witness alive. That told me something important: either he was careless, or he wanted someone to follow the trail. Whatever the case, I had just been invited to the hunt.

  Unfortunately invitations like that are often signed in blood.