AHMM, JulyAugust 2012 by Dell Magazine Authors

Author:Dell Magazine Authors
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Tags: Mystery/Crime
Publisher: Dell Magazines

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Fiction: BURNING DAYLIGHT

by David Edgerley Gates

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Art by Andrew Wright

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The two boys had been fishing the upper reaches of Kettle Creek, where glacial runoff from up in the Absarokas fed a loop of shallow pools, like spoons, the water very fast and cold. Kettle ponds, they were called, which gave the creek its name. The trout weren't that big, but they were quick to hit the lure.

It was high summer, the air thick with insects, mosquitoes the size of a man's thumb, bees heavy with pollen, butterflies near the end of their breeding cycle, and they drew birds, swifts, and vireos. The day was hot and still, but crowded with life.

Jesse Greyeyes was ten. His first cousin and best friend, Toby Pete, known as Rabbit, was nine, or nine and a half, he would have said. They were Northern Cheyenne, but they weren't reservation Indians. They lived on the economy, outside of Limestone, on the edge of the Gallatin National Forest. They'd fished and hunted these mountains since they were six, when they were old enough to carry a ten-pound pack, and understood their own responsibility. Both of them were excellent shots with a .22 bolt-action, although neither one of them was allowed to carry a weapon at their age without adult supervision, but it might be pointed out that they were probably more grown up about guns than a few grown-ups they knew.

They were fishing catch-and-release, but if they got a fat one, they kept it. On a camping trip with one of their uncles they would have cleaned the fish right there, and fried it over an open fire. This time around, they gutted the keepers to take home to Jesse's mom.

Halfway down, there was a double-wide at the far end of a shallow valley. They'd passed it on the way up, and the trailer had seemed abandoned. But now there were signs of life.

Boys being boys, they snuck in to take a closer look. They had a good scouting position, from up on the ridgeline.

There was a pickup parked next to the trailer, a GMC or a Chevy, an old beater, light blue, with primer on the fenders. They could see a smudge of smoke from the roof vent, which was weird. Even at this altitude, the temperature was in the low eighties. And there were a couple of propane tanks at the rear of the trailer. If you were cooking something with gas, the exhaust was colorless, and the smoke from the vent was a sort of dirty yellow.

The wind shifted, and gusted the smell upslope.

“Yuck,” Jesse said. It was like cat piss, but ten times as strong. It made him gag.

“Gross,” Toby said. “Like he's boiling bones.”

“This is creepy,” Jesse said.

“Maybe he's a serial killer,” Toby said. “You know, like Hannibal the Cannibal? He's cooking up the victims, and then he eats them.”

“Don't be a spaz,” Jesse said.

Toby drew a bead on the trailer with an imaginary rifle and pinched the trigger.

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