They had left him for dead in the middle of a pool of blood in his own bedroom, his belly slit open like gaping barn doors, the hilt of the knife wedged against his sternum. But the only trouble was that he had stayed alive somehow, his life pumping out, managing to knock the telephone off the little table and dial me. Now he was looking up at me with seconds left and all he could do was force out the words, 'Mike ...there was no reason.'

He stood with his back angled to the wall. To an indifferent observer he was simply in idle conversation, but it wasn't like that at all. This was an instincti…

The two young men turned and they didn't smile because they were Woody Ballinger's two boys, Carl and Sammy, and for one brief instant, there was something in …

They had dropped the body behind a pile of cement blocks from a partly shattered wall, pulling a broken section of sheetrock over to hide it from casual view. …

'I wonder why he shot me,'

In church your grandsire cut his throat; to do the job too long he tarried: he should have had my hearty vote to cut his throat before he married.

And there, a field rat, startled, squealing bleeds, His belly close to ground. I see the blade, Blood-stained, continue cutting weeds and shade