Prompt 4

“Better a chill in the bones, than bones in the grave” – or so they say. What didn’t kill you, all that jazz. You know the deal. But I wasn’t feelin’ chilly, and this was no time for dyin’. I stepped outta the car, my shoe soaking through in a puddle I hadn’t noticed. “Chill in the bones, eh?”

The wind picked up, howling through the neighborhood, shaking red and brown leaves from the trees. A storm was coming. I could feel it in my…well, ya know.

The newsstand was right where the dame said it’d be, at a four-way stop, desolate this early October morning. Nobody minded the stall, so I walked up. Just as I suspected, one of the papers was out of place, folded strategically to combine three headlines into one. “Murder on Main Street fires imagination.” Gal sure had an odd way a sendin’ a message.

I walked back to the car and headed for Main Street. Or I tried at least. I blew a tire a hundred feet down the road on a water-covered pothole. Guess I’d have to hoof it down those mean New England streets.

A salty smell assailed my nostrils, fishy but clean. Never did like Hampton at night. Always deserted, at least since the war. But I didn’t have time fer idle musing. There was a crime to solve.

I hiked up my britches and kept on. It was raining cats and dogs, and the yowling was drivin’ me batty. Afore long I got to Main Street. Sure as shootin’ that was a murder.

Body lay in the street, outlined in white tape in a macabre joke left by the murderer. Or the cops had forgotten the body there, distracted by the donut shop down the street. Even odds.

I squatted beside the corpse, soaked to the bone, literally, in some places. It wore jeans everywhere. Jean jacket, jean pants, jean shirt, even the shoes were denim through and through, where they hadn’t been torn to pieces.

It was a man, and I fished in the fellas pockets but came up empty. It was a dead end for a dead man. There had to be something here, else she wouldn’t a sent me. The rain let up so I pulled out a cig to clear my head. When my match flared the flame danced in the wind. Through its yellow light I could see a mirage, as if the denim man were still alive. His hands were up, and the killer fell upon with a knife, but their face was obscured.

Just as the attacker turned toward me the flames burned my fingers and I dropped it. The image was replaced by the cold reality of the man’s murder. Fired the imagination indeed.

I needed more time, but everything was wet, nothing to burn, not even the clothes on my back. She was teasin’ me. Set me up most like.

But the joke was on her. I carried a sheaf of papers. Divorce papers. Been served earlier in the day, and at least the blasted things’d be good for somethin’ now. I crumpled ‘em and set ‘em alight, then peered through the smoke of my shattered marriage, hoping for a clue, any clue.

It came slow, as all good things take time. Then I saw the attackers face. It was Gal’s face. Something kicked me over and I drew my pistol, but there was nothing but the wind. And regret.

Someone whispered in my ear, “Hey there big boy. Glad you could make it. It’s two for the price of one today.”

I jumped forward, spinning in a crouch, but she was gone, husky voice and all. I put the flames between me and the body. I could just make her out. Damndest thing how she hid herself like that, as if she blended into the night.

She jumped for me and I dodged, shotting right down the barrel at her. She screamed and fell atop me, something sharp skewering me. It hadn’t struck anything vital, or else the adrenaline fooled me. Hard to tell. But she was dead, that much was certain. She’d turned to bones already, taken by the same fell magic she used against her victim, and tried to use against me.

A chill ran down my spine. “Better a chill in the bones, eh babe?”

Guess I didn’t need those divorce papers after all.