In fact, he’d almost shot me on sight, thinking me some drugged up homicidal maniac. He’d been driving past Skinny Man’s house and found me covered in blood in the middle of the street, kneeling over a corpse. Sheriff Teddy (then Officer Teddy) had been the first one on the scene that summer ten years ago. The whole town ended up looking like a Charlie Manson convention. “Yeah, but remember what happened when that Court TV show interviewed you. Might want to change your number, too.”I sighed, sped up around the puttering VW Bug in front of me. Anyway, my guess is they’ll be calling you at some point so. Of course, for all I know they’re in Canada or something. I told her I’d find them and lock ’em up for a night or two. I ran into your folks at the supermarket and your mom started crying when she told me. But these sensationalist pricks always track it down somehow. Thought my dad changed the number again.” Listen, real reason I’m calling is because some website named Thrill of the Kill has been calling your parents’ house.”

They’re so cold they’re cracking like the frigging Liberty Bell.” Shit, if I didn’t have a wife and kids I’d move out there, too. “Well, wait ’til summer, then send me some photos. They wouldn’t get through the traffic jams anyway.” No girls in bikinis rollerskating down the 5. And let me guess, girls in bikinis everywhere?” “Well, it’s February and I’m only in a hoodie. “That dog fucked up all my nerves, but you know this. Plus the bum shoulder makes it hard to drive around and write traffic tickets anyway, so I think they just wanted to put me behind a desk.” Or should I say, ‘Sheriff Teddy’? My dad told me about your promotion.”

I’d been meaning to do a piece on it for a while now, because the contrast of the desert beyond the lake would be a nice change from the ocean images that usually formed my horizons.Īs I got on the highway to head east, my cell phone rang. Not very imaginative, but my guess was the early Mexicans named it that more for descriptive purposes than poetry. The lake’s name was Corazon del Agua-Heart of Water.

Thank God my cell phone has a built in GPS and I was able to backtrack to the casino. My thick New Hampshire accent confuses most people I meet out here, let alone anyone who already struggles with English. Oh, and when I say I’d stumbled onto the lake I mean I’d found it thanks to some poor directions from the Spanish-speaking owner of an avocado stand a few miles south of the casino.

Hissers by Ryan C. Thomas