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By Kristine Kathryn Rusch

George has lived a full life as a decorated WWII veteran, high-end attorney, family man. But the incident that haunts him only took five minutes—five minutes when he shared a Coke with a woman on her way to California, a woman who would die hours later. Murdered. Maybe even by George.

Winner of Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine’s 1998 Readers’ Choice Award.

“Kristine Kathryn Rusch’s crime stories are exceptional, both in plot and in style.”
—Ed Gorman, Mystery Scene Magazine

• Language: English
• Publisher: WMG Publishing
• Release date: Jul 13, 2010
• ISBN: 9781452319391

Kristine Kathryn Rusch

USA Today bestselling author Kristine Kathryn Rusch writes in almost every genre. Generally, she uses her real name (Rusch) for most of her writing. Under that name, she publishes bestselling science fiction and fantasy, award-winning mysteries, acclaimed mainstream fiction, controversial nonfiction, and the occasional romance. Her novels have made bestseller lists around the world and her short fiction has appeared in eighteen best of the year collections. She has won more than twenty-five awards for her fiction, including the Hugo, Le Prix Imaginales, the Asimov’s Readers Choice award, and the Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine Readers Choice Award. Publications from The Chicago Tribune to Booklist have included her Kris Nelscott mystery novels in their top-ten-best mystery novels of the year. The Nelscott books have received nominations for almost every award in the mystery field, including the best novel Edgar Award, and the Shamus Award. She writes goofy romance novels as award-winner Kristine Grayson, romantic suspense as Kristine Dexter, and futuristic sf as Kris DeLake.  She also edits. Beginning with work at the innovative publishing company, Pulphouse, followed by her award-winning tenure at The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, she took fifteen years off before returning to editing with the original anthology series Fiction River, published by WMG Publishing. She acts as series editor with her husband, writer Dean Wesley Smith, and edits at least two anthologies in the series per year on her own. To keep up with everything she does, go to kriswrites.com and sign up for her newsletter. To track her many pen names and series, see their individual websites (krisnelscott.com, kristinegrayson.com, krisdelake.com, retrievalartist.com, divingintothewreck.com). She lives and occasionally sleeps in Oregon.

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Copyright Information

Details

Copyright © 2015 by Kristine Kathryn Rusch

First published in Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine, December 1998

Published by WMG Publishing

Cover and Layout copyright © 2015 by WMG Publishing

Cover design by Allyson Longueira/WMG Publishing

Cover art copyright © Amuzica/Dreamstime

This book is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. All rights reserved. This is a work of fiction. All characters and events portrayed in this book are fictional, and any resemblance to real people or incidents is purely coincidental. This book, or parts thereof, may not be reproduced in any form without permission.

No more alcohol, no more steak. In the end, it’s the little things that go, and you miss them like you miss a lover at odd times, at comfort times, at times when you need something small that means a whole lot more.

I’ve been thinking about the little things a lot since my granddaughter drove me to the glass-and-chrome hospital they built on the south side of town. Maybe it was the look the doctor gave me, the one that meant you should’ve listened to me, George. Maybe it was the sight of Flaherty’s, all made over into a diner.

Or maybe it’s the fact that I’m seventy-seven years old and not getting any younger. Every second becomes a detail then. An important one, and I can hear the details ticking away quicker than I would like.

It gets a man to thinking, all those details. I mentioned it to Sarah on the way back, and she said, in that dry way of hers, Maybe you should write some of those details down.

So I am.

***

I know Sarah wanted me to start with what she considers the beginning: my courting—and winning—of her grandmother. Then she’d want me to cover the early marriage, and of course the politics, all the way to the White House years.

But Flaherty’s got me thinking—details again—and Flaherty’s got me remembering.

They don’t make gas stations like that no more. You know the kind: the round-headed pumps, the Coke machine outside—the kind that dispenses bottles and has a bottle opener built in—and the concrete floor covered with gum and cigarette butts and oil so old it looks like it come out of the ground.

But Flaherty’s hasn’t been a gas station for a long time. For years it was closed up, the pumps gone, plywood over the windows. Then just last summer some kids from Vegas came in, bought the land, filled the pits, and made the place into a diner. For