Spilled Rice With Simon at a gig downtown, Stu stood outside the tunnel entrance behind the four-car garage, clenching a slender flashlight in his mouth. Wielding a pair of bolt cutters he’d procured from a local hardware store in town, he pinched the padlock shackle between the iron jaws and squeezed the extended handles to break the hardened steel. He...

Simon selected the needle nose pliers for reasons obvious to him. The pliers were more industrial, unlike his dental tools designed for specific applications. The pliers were easier to grip with the rubber handles and fit comfortably in his hand. Crude but highly effective, needle nose pliers served his objective without regard for a certain technique or developed skill required...

Stu typed on his laptop behind a wobbly wooden desk positioned away from the window in his room to avoid the distraction from windblown trees and their bounty of autumn foliage exploding with vibrant orange, red, and yellow hues. Spurred by his aggressive first draft deadline, he reviewed the notes he’d compiled during previous conversations with Simon. A prolific author...

Stu woke up with his phone beeping loudly and stretched across the hotel mattress to feel the empty space beside him. Impeded by restless sleep, he slogged through his morning routine and snagged a caffè americano with a bagel and cream cheese from the breakfast shop downstairs. Outside the five-star accommodations a block from Nashville’s Ryman Auditorium, he greeted the...

Simon Robert Hollis walked out of the United States Penitentiary, Thomson, on One Mile Road in Carroll County, Illinois wearing prison-issue duds with forty dollars in gate money and his personal possessions in a sack lunch bag. Greeted by a cold October breeze through his shaggy brown hair and long sideburns that extended down his rugged jawline, he shunned the...

Coiled against a tangle of red mangrove roots extending from the base of a hardwood hammock, the prolific hunter with a smooth cylindrical body, a pyramid-shaped head, and vertical pupils remained motionless. A chemosensory forked tongue flicked the air to transfer scent molecules to the Jacobson’s organ at the upper back part of the mouth, from where signals could be...

Brannigan observed Agent Nehnja approach him inside Inova Fairfax Hospital and glanced at his chronograph Citizen. “You get lost in Arizona or take the Pony Express home?” A travel-weary Paulan rolled his eyes. “My flight was delayed. Twice. I got back as fast as I could.” “We caught a break from the Jenkins’ wiretap. A recent conversation with Marvin Tibbs...

Brannigan drove his rented Camry under moonlit skies above the Anacostia River in Washington, D.C. while Paulan rode shotgun with a large cherry Slurpee in one hand and his phone with the navigation on in the other. Paulan sucked on his straw hard enough to collapse it. “Take a right at the light, then go left at the next intersection.”...

Dr. Jenkins observed his comatose wife, Cynthia, in the guestroom of the eight thousand square foot estate his wife inherited from her late grandfather. Fitted with a hyperbaric oxygen chamber, a functional MRI machine, and life support equipment for her long-term care, the private location kept her off the radar from other research doctors or FDA investigators unfamiliar with her...

Brannigan drove cautiously on county roads, lost in thought about the investigation. Hours spent at Orange County hospital had left him with memories of being met with blank stares from EMTs who dismissed the cell phone image of Manny Lopez but made a positive ID on Ronald Neyman, whom they’d treated for minor injuries and released from hospital care. Both...