Awhile
back I read The Shamus Sampler and
enjoyed it quite a lot as you can see from the review here. After my review
went up in various places, Peter wrote me and thanked me for the review. I made
an offer –as I have done with other authors I have read and liked---for him to
come be a part of things here with a Sunday Sample. Peter expressed interest
and then later followed through (a rarity in of itself) with the below piece. Bit
different than what we normally do here…..
They
Die in Eight Minutes
by
Peter DiChellis
Tick,
tick . . . 11:52pm. They die in eight
minutes.
Shadows
crept across the outside walls of the house. Moonlight. Hand signals. Whispers.
Cops.
Three slipped to the front door. Two sneaked to the back.
“Ready.”
Ready
just in time, Sheriff’s Detective Benton Hammel thought. They die at midnight
the man had promised. Not a second sooner, not a minute later. The man’s
ex-wife, stepson, daughter-in-law, all of them. Dead at midnight.
Narcissistic
psychopath, Hammel figured. Precise, cold, game player.
“Careful,”
he’d whispered to his team moments ago. “The guy won’t kill his family until
midnight, but he’ll kill us anytime.”
Tick,
tick . . . 11:53.
Hammel
had already briefed the team on the suspect, situation, and the isolated
location. He had pushed them hard and they’d raced here, to this secluded
housing development at the far edge of the county, after an anonymous caller
alerted cops to the address. Hammel knew the area, had been house hunting
nearby last month. Without that lucky break, and Hammel’s swift reaction,
nobody could have arrived in time to save the family.
“Bust
it open,” Hammel ordered.
The
front door cracked off its hinges. Then the back door.
The
cops’ flashlights dotted the pitch-black rooms as they hustled through,
searching.
“Clear!
Clear!”
“All
clear!”
“Check
for a basement,” Hammel instructed.
“No
basement.”
“Attic.”
“No
attic.”
“Backyard,
garage, outbuilding, anything!”
“Nothing.
Nothing. Nobody here.”
Wrong.
They are here, Hammel calculated. All of them. Hidden somewhere in this dark
unsold house in an abandoned tract of unfinished new homes. At 427 Maple. A
perfect spot for a midnight killing.
Tick,
tick . . . 11:57.
End of sample. Click here to read the rest of the story free
at Shotgun Honey.
Peter DiChellis ©2014
Peter
DiChellis writes short mystery-suspense fiction. His sinister tales appear in a
handful of publications, most recently at Shotgun
Honey, Over My Dead Body!, and in
The Shamus Sampler private eye anthology.
(Coming soon: A story in Plan B Mystery
Magazine’s Volume III Anthology.) For links to his published stories, visit
his Wordpress site Murder and Fries
at http://murderandfries.wordpress.com/
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