Ill-Gotten Games: a Scott Drayco Short Story

By BV Lawson

Tick tock, you lose.

The clock is ticking as crime consultant Scott Drayco and "the world's most diminutive defense attorney" Benny Baskin play games with a dangerous killer in order to save an innocent man from going to jail.

Why is the killer texting cryptic poems to Drayco on his cellphone about stolen Egyptian figurines, and what do the messages mean? Was the murder a crime of opportunity or was it planned all along for more sinister reasons?

Drayco races around Washington, D.C,. trying to find the answers and avoid becoming a puppet as the killer pulls the strings.

• Language: English
• Publisher: BV Lawson
• Release date: Feb 2, 2020
• ISBN: 9781951752125

BV Lawson

Past career hats BV Lawson tried on include maid, super-speedy typist, classical musician, radio announcer, being in TV commercials (for all of one day), research assistant, TV features writer and working for the Discovery Channel. Now a full-time freelance writer, she's penned articles for various publications and won awards for her many published stories and poems.Thanks to the influence of library genes handed down from her mother, she created the blog In Reference to Murder which contains over 3,000 links for mystery readers and writers. She's working on a series of crime fiction novels set in various locations in and around the mid-Atlantic, and when time permits, BV and her husband enjoy flying over Northern Virginia and the Chesapeake in a little putt-putt plane. Visit BV via her web site, bvlawson.com. No ticket required

Book preview

ILL-GOTTEN GAMES

A Scott Drayco Mystery Short Story

BV Lawson

Crimetime Press

Copyright © 2020

Ill-Gotten Games is a work of fiction. All the names, characters, places, organizations, and events portrayed in this novel are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

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Ill-Gotten Games

I

Courthouses are nothing more than human ant colonies. From his vantage point across from the information desk, Drayco watched workers scurrying through tunnels into various chambers, going about the business of life and death as if what they did mattered in a world where justice was fleeting.

Drayco couldn’t help but wonder if he were more of a soldier ant or scavenger ant, or just subject to gloomy metaphors. This case he’d taken on for Benny Baskin wasn’t helping matters, since working with Benny was like partnering with a tornado.

A couple of legal eaglets, twenty-something women walking nearby, stopped dead in the hallway and stared in a direction away from Drayco. One of the two said, That’s him. That’s Baskin.

The comma-shaped eyebrows on the other woman were raised so high, Drayco wouldn’t have been surprised if they’d jumped off her face. She replied in a thick accent more Bostonian than mid-Atlantic, That’s the hardball defense attorney, the one who never loses a case?

Her companion nodded. What did you expect?

Not someone who looks like an elf. Or Yoda. Hardly the type to make that junior Sheinberg associate cry.

With a strangled gasp, the two women averted their eyes to the file boxes in their arms, as the attorney in question headed their way. You don’t think he heard us, do you? the first one whispered, eyes darting back to the approaching elf.

The elf stopped in front of them, then waved to an area behind the girls where Scott Drayco had one foot propped against the wall and was trying not to laugh at the red-faced duo gaping at him like stunned mullets. Oh yeah, Drayco had heard everything.

Benny Baskin watched the girls run in the opposite direction. What’s gotten into them? I’m pretty sure I put on deodorant this morning.

Drayco moved away from the wall, his six-four frame towering over Baskin, who stood four-nine without his platform shoes. Drayco admitted Baskin’s shock of white hair and eye patch might fit the elf description. Or the Hobbit Bilbo Baggins, considering the two shared the initials BB.

"I think they’re