This was not believable! Reno"s brain was struck blank, for a long moment he could not think ... The hairs stirred at the nape of his neck and he wondered if he was being watched.
A makeshift grave about fifteen feet from the base of his house. And when had this little body been buried? Twenty years ago, ten years ago? By the look of the bones, the rotted clothing, and the broken urn, the burial hadn"t been recent.
But these were not Indian bones of course. Those bones would be much older-badly broken, dim, and scarified with time.
Reno"s hand shook. The small teeth were bared in a smile of sheer terror. The small jaws had fallen open, the eye sockets were disproportionately large. Of course, the skull was broken-it was not a perfect skull. Possibly fractured in the burial-struck by the murderer"s shovel. The skeleton lay in pieces-had the body been dismembered? Reno was whispering to himself words meant to console-Oh G.o.d. Help me, G.o.d. G.o.d! As his surprise ebbed Reno began to be badly frightened. He was thinking that these might be the bones of his daughter-his first daughter; the little girl had died, her death had been accidental, but he and her mother had hurriedly buried her ...
But no: ridiculous. This was another time, not that time.
This was another campsite. This was another part of Paraquarry Lake. This was another time in a father"s life.
His daughter was alive. Somewhere in California, a living girl. He was not to blame. He had never hurt her. She would outlive him.
Laughter and raised voices from the lakesh.o.r.e. Reno shaded his eyes to see-what were they doing? Were they expecting Daddy to join them?
Kneeling in the dirt. Groping and rummaging in the coa.r.s.e earth. Among the broken pottery, bones, and rotted fabric faded to the no-color of dirty water, something glittered-a little necklace of gla.s.s beads.
Reno untangled it from a cl.u.s.ter of small bones-vertebrae? The remains of the child"s neck? Hideous to think that the child skeleton might have been broken into pieces with a shovel, or an axe. An axe! To fit more readily into the urn. To hasten decomposition.
"Little girl! Poor little girl."
Reno was weak with shock, sickened. His heart pounded terribly-he didn"t want to die as his father had died! He would breathe deeply, calmly. He held the gla.s.s beads to the light. Amazingly the chain was intact. A thin metallic chain, tarnished. He put the little gla.s.s-bead necklace into the pocket of his khaki shorts. Hurriedly he covered the bones with dirt, debris. Pieces of the shattered urn he picked up and tossed into the cardboard box. And the barrel staves ... Then he thought he should remove the bones also-he should place them in the box, beneath the debris, and take the box out to the landfill this evening. Before he did anything else. Before he washed hurriedly, grabbed a beer, and joined Marlena and the children at the lakefront. He would dispose of the child"s bones at the landfill.
No. They will be traced here. Not a good idea.
Frantically he covered the bones. Then more calmly, smoothing the coa.r.s.e dirt over the debris. Fortunately there was a sizable hole-a gouged-out, ugly hole-that looked like a rupture in the earth. Reno would lay flagstones over the grave-he"d purchased two dozen flagstones from a garden supply store on the highway. The children could help him-it would not be difficult work once the earth was prepared. As bricks had been laid over the child"s grave years ago, Reno would lay flagstones over it now. For he could not report this terrible discovery-could he? If he called the Paraquarry police, if he reported the child skeleton to county authorities, what would be the consequences?
His mind went blank-he could not think.
Could not bear the consequences. Not now, in his new life.
Numbly he was setting his work tools aside, beneath the overhang of the redwood deck. The new shovel was not so shiny now. Quickly then-shakily-climbing the steps, to wash his hands in the kitchen. A relief-he saw his family down at the sh.o.r.e, with the neighbors-the new wife, the children. No one would interrupt Reno washing the little gla.s.s-bead necklace in the kitchen sink, in awkward big-Daddy hands.
Gently washing the gla.s.s beads, that were blue-beneath the grime a startling pellucid blue like slivers of sky. It was amazing, you might interpret it as a sign-the thin little chain hadn"t broken in the earth.
Not a particle of dirt remained on the gla.s.s beads when Reno was finished washing them, drying them on a paper towel on the kitchen counter.
"Hey-look here! What"s this? Who"s this for?"
Reno dangled the gla.s.s-bead necklace in front of Devra. The little girl stared, blinking. It was suppertime-Daddy had cooked hamburgers on the outdoor grill on the deck-and now he pulled a little blue gla.s.s-bead necklace out of his pocket as if he"d only just discovered it.
Marlena laughed-she was delighted-for this was the sort of small surprise she appreciated.
Not for herself but for the children. In this case, for Devra. It was a good moment, a warm moment-Kevin didn"t react with jealousy but seemed only curious, as Daddy said he"d found the necklace in a "secret place" and knew just who it was meant for.
Shyly Devra took the little necklace from Daddy"s fingers.
"What do you say, Devra?"
"Oh Dad-dy-thank you."
Devra spoke so softly, Reno cupped his hand to his ear.
"Speak up, Devra. Daddy can"t hear." Marlena helped the little girl slip the necklace over her head.
"Daddy, thank you!"
The little fish-mouth pursed for a quick kiss of Daddy"s cheek.
Around the child"s slender neck the blue gla.s.s beads glittered, gleamed. All that summer at Paraquarry Lake, Reno would marvel he"d never seen anything more beautiful.
ABOUT THE CONTRIBUTORS.
ROBERT ARELLANO was born in 1969 at Overlook Hospital in Summit, New Jersey, and raised at 228 Kent Place Boulevard, where he shared a bedroom with brothers Manuel and Miguel, a wall with sisters Alicia and Ana Maria, and another wall with parents Manuel and Alicia. His novel Havana Lunar, which was a 2010 Edgar Award finalist, and his Southwest noir Curse the Names (2012), are both published by Akashic Books.
RICHARD BURGIN"S fifteen books include the novel Rivers Last Longer and the story collections Shadow Traffic and The Ident.i.ty Club: New and Selected Stories, which the Huffington Post listed as one of the forty best books of fiction of the last decade. His stories have won five Pushcart Prizes and been reprinted in many anthologies including The Best American Mystery Stories 2005. He teaches at St. Louis University where he edits the literary journal Boulevard.
MICHAEL CARROLL"S stories have appeared in Open City, Ontario Review, Boulevard, and such anthologies as The New Penguin Book of Gay Short Stories. He has twice been nominated for the Pushcart Prize.
JONATHAN SAFRAN FOER is the author of the best-selling novels Everything Is Illuminated, which was adapted into a film starring Elijah Wood; and Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close. His short stories have been published in the New Yorker, the Paris Review, and Conjunctions. Foer"s latest book is a work of nonfiction, Eating Animals, which was an instant New York Times and international best seller. He lives in Brooklyn.
JEFFREY FORD is the author of the novels The Portrait of Mrs. Charbuque, The Girl in the Gla.s.s, and The Shadow Year. His most recent story collection is The Drowned Life. Ford is the recipient of an Edgar Award, a Nebula, a Shirley Jackson Award, and a World Fantasy Award. He lives in South Jersey and teaches early American literature and writing at Brookdale Community College.
SHEILA KOHLER is the author of eight novels including Becoming Jane Eyre and Love Child, and three collections of short stories. Kohler was awarded two O. Henry Awards, an Open Voice, the Smart Family Foundation, a Willa Cather, and an Antioch Review Prize. She was a fellow at the Cullman Center and teaches at Bennington and Princeton. A film based on her novel Cracks, directed by Jordan and Ridley Scott, debuted in theaters in the spring of 2011.
BARRY N. MALZBERG graduated obscurely in the same Syracuse University cla.s.s of 1960 of which New Jersey Noir"s editor was valedictorian. Less than a decade later, as Malzberg struggled toward modest prominence in science fiction, the valedictorian won the National Book Award in fiction. Not only has she been an inspiration for well over half a century, she"s kept Malzberg humble. Extremely humble.
LOU MANFREDO served in the Brooklyn criminal justice system for twenty-five years. His short fiction has appeared in The Best American Mystery Stories, Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine, and Brooklyn Noir. He has auth.o.r.ed three novels, Rizzo"s War, Rizzo"s Fire, and Rizzo"s Regards (forthcoming). Born and raised in Brooklyn, Manfredo and his wife Joanne have lived in New Jersey for many years.
BRADFORD MORROW is author of the novels Come Sunday, The Almanac Branch, Trinity Fields, Giovanni"s Gift, Ariel"s Crossing, and The Diviner"s Tale. His anthology, The Inevitable: Contemporary Writers Confront Death, coedited with David Shields, came out in 2011 with W. W. Norton, and a collection of short stories, The Uninnocent, is forthcoming from Pegasus Books. Morrow is a professor of literature at Bard College, and lives in New York.
PAUL MULDOON is now Howard G.B. Clark "21 Professor at Princeton University. From 19992004 he was a professor of poetry at the University of Oxford. In 2007 he was appointed poetry editor of the New Yorker. Muldoon"s collections of poetry include New Weather (1973), Mules (1977), Quoof (1983), Madoc: A Mystery (1990), The Annals of Chile (1994), Hay (1998), Poems 1968-1998 (2001), Moy Sand and Gravel (2002), Horse Lat.i.tudes (2006), and Maggot (2010).
JOYCE CAROL OATES is the author of a number of noir works of fiction including Rape: A Love Story, Beasts, A Fair Maiden, The Female of the Species, The Museum of Dr. Moses, and most recently Give Me Your Heart. She has edited American Gothic Tales, The Oxford Book of American Short Stories, The Ecco Anthology of Contemporary American Short Fiction, and The Best American Mystery Stories. She has been a resident of Princeton, New Jersey, since 1978.
ALICIA OSTRIKER has published thirteen poetry collections including The Book of Seventy, which received the 2009 National Jewish Book Award for Poetry. The Crack in Everything and The Little s.p.a.ce: Poems Selected and New, 19691989 were both National Book Award finalists. As a critic, Ostriker has written several books on poetry and on the Bible. She is Professor Emerita of Rutgers University, and teaches in the low-residency poetry MFA program of Drew University.
ROBERT PINSKY"S Selected Poems was published in 2011. His recent anthology, with accompanying audio CD, is Essential Pleasures. His honors include the Harold Washington Award from the city of Chicago and the Los Angeles Times Book Prize for his translation of The Inferno of Dante. The videos from his Favorite Poem Project can be viewed at www.favoritepoem.org.
BILL p.r.o.nZINI has been a full-time writer since 1969. He has published seventy-five novels, including four in collaboration with Barry N. Malzberg and thirty-five in his long-running "Nameless Detective" series. Also to his credit are four nonfiction books, and three hundred short stories of which sixty bear the Malzberg/p.r.o.nzini byline. Among his numerous awards is the Mystery Writers of America"s Grand Master, which he received in 2008.
S.J. ROZAN, author of thirteen crime novels, is an Edgar, Shamus, Anthony, Nero, and Macavity award winner, as well as a recipient of the j.a.panese Maltese Falcon Award. She"s a lifelong New Yorker, which means she grew up within sight of New Jersey, and specifically Newark. She misspent a shameful amount of her childhood at the late lamented Palisades Amus.e.m.e.nt Park and is a huge Cory Booker fan. Her latest book is Ghost Hero. For more information, visit www.sjrozan.com.
JONATHAN SANTLOFER is the author of The Death Artist, Color Blind, The Killing Art, Anatomy of Fear, and The Murder Notebook. He is the recipient of a Nero Wolfe Award, and two National Endowment for the Arts grants. He is coeditor, contributor, and ill.u.s.trator of the anthology The Dark End of the Street, and editor/contributor of L.A. Noire: The Collected Stories. He lives in New York where he is currently at work on a new novel.
HIRSH SAWHNEY moved to Jersey City in 2009, when he received a fellowship to teach and study writing at Rutgers-Newark University. He is the editor of Delhi Noir, published by Akashic Books, which is being translated into French and Italian. His writing has appeared in the New York Times Book Review, the Guardian, and Outlook Traveller. He is working on his first novel.
GERALD SLOTA"S photographs have been widely exhibited throughout the U.S. and abroad. His work is included in collections at the L.A. County Museum of Art and the Whitney Museum of Art. His images have appeared in the New York Times Magazine, the New Yorker, and Art in America. Awards include a MacDowell Artist Residency and Mid-Atlantic Fellowship grants from the New Jersey State Council on the Arts in 2001 and 2009. For more information, visit www.geraldslota.com.
S.A. SOLOMON has published short fiction and poems in the Dos Pa.s.sos Review, Exquisite Corpse, the New York Quarterly, Lungfull!, and other journals. Her lyrics for Leonid Andreyev"s The One that Gets Slapped, a circus-cabaret-drama, were featured in a 2008 production at Colby College. Her brush with New Jersey noir comes from her years living and working in Jersey City and Newark. She now lives in New York City, and is a freelance writer and editor.
GERALD STERN, born in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, in 1925, is the author of fifteen books of poetry including This Time: New and Selected Poems, which won the 1998 National Book Award, and a book of personal essays t.i.tled What I Can"t Bear Losing. He has won the Ruth Lilly Prize and the Wallace Stevens Award, and his Early Collected: Poems from 1965-1992 was published by W.W. Norton in the spring of 2010.
EDMUND WHITE has written some twenty-five books-memoirs, biographies, novels, travel books, short stories, and essays. Among his best-known novels are A Boy"s Own Story and The Married Man. He lives in New York but teaches in Princeton, New Jersey.
C.K. WILLIAMS"S books have won the Pulitzer Prize, the National Book Award, and the National Book Critics Circle Award, among others. His most recent book of poems, Wait, was published in 2010, as was a prose study, On Whitman, and a children"s book, A Not Scary Story About Big Scary Things. He is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters, and teaches in the creative writing program at Princeton University.
Also available from the Akashic Noir Series.
BOSTON NOIR.
edited by Dennis Lehane.
240 pages, trade paperback original, $15.95.
Brand-new stories by: Dennis Lehane, Stewart O"Nan, Patricia Powell, John Dufresne, Lynne Heitman, Don Lee, Russ Aborn, J. Itabari Njeri, Jim Fusilli, Brendan DuBois, and Dana Cameron.
"In the best of the eleven stories in this outstanding entry in Akashic"s noir series, characters, plot, and setting feed off each other like flames and an arsonist"s accelerant ... [T]his anthology shows that noir can thrive where Raymond Chandler has never set foot."
-Publishers Weekly (starred review) BROOKLYN NOIR.
edited by Tim McLoughlin 350 pages, trade paperback original, $15.95 *Winner of Shamus Award, Anthony Award, Robert L. Fish Memorial Award; finalist for Edgar Award, Pushcart Prize.
Brand-new stories by: Pete Hamill, Arthur Nersesian, Ellen Miller, Nelson George, Nicole Blackman, Sidney Offit, Ken Bruen, and others.
"Brooklyn Noir is such a stunningly perfect combination that you can"t believe you haven"t read an anthology like this before. But trust me-you haven"t ... The writing is flat-out superb, filled with lines that will sing in your head for a long time to come."
-Laura Lippman, winner of the Edgar, Agatha, and Shamus awards MANHATTAN NOIR.
edited by Lawrence Block.
264 pages, trade paperback original, $15.95.
Brand-new stories by: Jeffery Deaver, Lawrence Block, Charles Ardai, Carol Lea Benjamin, Thomas H. Cook, Jim Fusilli, John Lutz, Justin Scott, Maan Meyers, Martin Meyers, S.J. Rozan, Xu Xi, and others.
"A pleasing variety of Manhattan neighborhoods come to life in Block"s solid anthology, the latest entry in Akashic"s city-themed noir series ... [T]he writing is of a high order and a nice mix of styles."
-Publishers Weekly D.C. NOIR.
edited by George Pelecanos.
312 pages, trade paperback original, $15.95.
Brand-new stories by: George Pelecanos, Laura Lippman, James Grady, Kenji Jasper, Jim Beane, Ruben Castaneda, Robert Wisdom, Jim Patton, Norman Kelley, Jennifer Howard, Jim Fusilli, and others.
"[T]he tome offers a startling glimpse into the cityscape"s darkest corners ... fans of the genre will find solid writing, palpable tension, and surprise endings."
-Washington Post LOS ANGELES NOIR.
edited by Denise Hamilton.
360 pages, trade paperback original, $15.95.
*A Los Angeles Times best seller and winner of an Edgar Award.
Brand-new stories by: Michael Connelly, Janet Fitch, Susan Straight, Hector Tobar, Patt Morrison, Robert Ferrigno, Neal Pollack, Gary Phillips, Christopher Rice, Naomi Hirahara, Jim Pascoe, and others.
"Akashic is making an argument about the universality of noir; it"s sort of flattering, really, and Los Angeles Noir, arriving at last, is a kaleidoscopic collection filled with the ethos of noir pioneers Raymond Chandler and James M. Cain."
-Los Angeles Times Book Review BALTIMORE NOIR.
edited by Laura Lippman 294 pages, trade paperback original, $14.95.
Brand-new stories by: David Simon, Laura Lippman, Tim c.o.c.key, Rob Hiaasen, Robert Ward, Sujata Ma.s.sey, Dan Fesperman, Marcia Talley, Ben Neihart, Jim Fusilli, Rafael Alvarez, and others.
"Baltimore is a diverse city, and the stories reflect everything from its old row houses and suburban mansions to its beloved Orioles and harbor areas. Mystery fans should relish this taste of its seamier side."
-Publishers Weekly These books are available at local bookstores.
They can also be purchased online through www.akashicbooks.com.
ALSO IN THE AKASHIC NOIR SERIES:.
Baltimore Noir, edited by Laura Lippman.
Barcelona Noir (Spain), edited by Adriana V. Lopez & Carmen Ospina.
Boston Noir, edited by Dennis Lehane Bronx Noir, edited by S.J. Rozan Brooklyn Noir, edited by Tim McLoughlin.
Brooklyn Noir 2: The Cla.s.sics, edited by Tim McLoughlin Brooklyn Noir 3: Nothing but the Truth edited by Tim McLoughlin & Thomas Adc.o.c.k Cape Cod Noir, edited by David L. Ulin Chicago Noir, edited by Neal Pollack.
Copenhagen Noir (Denmark), edited by Bo Tao Michaelis D.C. Noir, edited by George Pelecanos D.C. Noir 2: The Cla.s.sics, edited by George Pelecanos Delhi Noir (India), edited by Hirsh Sawhney Detroit Noir, edited by E.J. Olsen & John C. Hocking Dublin Noir (Ireland), edited by Ken Bruen.
Haiti Noir, edited by Edwidge Danticat Havana Noir (Cuba), edited by Achy Obejas Indian Country Noir, edited by Sarah Cortez & Liz Martinez Istanbul Noir (Turkey), edited by Mustafa Ziyalan & Amy Spangler Las Vegas Noir, edited by Jarret Keene & Todd James Pierce London Noir (England), edited by Cathi Unsworth.
Lone Star Noir, edited by Bobby Byrd & Johnny Byrd Los Angeles Noir, edited by Denise Hamilton Los Angeles Noir 2: The Cla.s.sics, edited by Denise Hamilton Manhattan Noir, edited by Lawrence Block Manhattan Noir 2: The Cla.s.sics, edited by Lawrence Block Mexico City Noir (Mexico), edited by Paco I. Taibo II Miami Noir, edited by Les Standiford Moscow Noir (Russia), edited by Natalia Smirnova & Julia Goumen New Orleans Noir, edited by Julie Smith.
Orange County Noir, edited by Gary Phillips Paris Noir (France), edited by Aurelien Ma.s.son Philadelphia Noir, edited by Carlin Romano Phoenix Noir, edited by Patrick Millikin Pittsburgh Noir, edited by Kathleen George.