THUGLIT Issue Twelve Read Online Free

analysis done. I don't understand it all, but the upshot was that the writer appears to have been educated in both the U.S. and France at different times."
    " Did they give you anything in writing?"
    " No. It was fairly informal since there's no real crime."
    Ruben was impressed, but slightly skeptical without seeing a report. Still, it was something to go on. "No note in the package?"
    " Nothing."
    He gazed around the apartment that had been his home and now was not. "Can I use a spare set of keys? I'll be back later."
     

     
    The hardware store two buildings down that his friend Patrice had presided over for twenty years now still had chipped plum paint on the façade and the familiar display window packed with aging electronics and fading hand-written signs.
    A muffled bonjour drifted out from behind a crowded counter in response to the doorbell. Ruben stood at the front of the store and whistled the first ten ominous notes of Finlandia Opus 26 .
    After a delay, something fell to the floor as a body attempted to brush quickly past a display of rubber door stoppers. Patrice came bursting to the front of the store, his arms held open, a wide genuine smile on his face. He might have been forty, or sixty. He wore a chambray shirt with a pocket protector and khaki pants. His eyes were the liveliest part of a jowly face.
    "My friend," he grabbed Ruben in a bear hug. "Close to four years and you have the nerve to come in here and try to stump me by eviscerating Sibelius? You are batshit crazy."
    " That's not right?" Ruben said innocently.
    Patrice licked his lips and whistled a version infinitely better than Ruben 's, using appropriately dark facial expressions until they both cracked up.
    " You've got me there," Ruben said. "Mine was weak."
    Patrice hustled him to the back of the store and brought out a battered wooden stool for his guest behind the counter. He poured black coffee in mugs for them both and pulled up another stool for himself.
    "I did receive your kind postcard last year however and now have remembrance of the Alamo."
    " It's an institution."
    " When did you arrive?"
    " Two hours ago."
    " How long do you stay?"
    " That I don't know. Probably not long." Ruben gazed around the store that hadn't changed since the first time he'd stepped inside fifteen years earlier. "How's business?"
    " Sales are down," Ruben said with an expression approximating a pout. "Carole does not come in to buy things she does not need simply for the company, like you did."
    " You could open an annex in her apartment," Ruben said. "There's still a closet full of unopened gadgets up there."
    Patrice pursed his lips as he noted how Ruben referred to the apartment as exclusively Carole's. He had been the one person Ruben felt he could talk to about Anne in the months after the avalanche.
    He told now about the package Carole had received. Patrice was truly pained. "The poor woman. There is twisted, and there is twisted, my friend," he said. "How would someone know what your daughter wore if this boot is not hers?"
    " There were photos in the papers taken that day that the other girl's family released."
    " What will you do when you locate this fiend?"
    " I was thinking of lighting a bag of dog shit on his front step and ringing the bell."
    Patrice looked at Ruben. He had always sensed that his joking gentle friend was familiar with unspoken violence .
    " He will be lucky if that's all you do."
    " Does your uncle still live in Grenoble?"
    " Unfortunately, for my uncle Max, he died two years ago. Fortunately for me he left me his apartment. I go down there some weekends now. It is yours for as long as you need it."
    " Do you still have your car?"
    " It also is yours," Patrice said, instinctively understanding Ruben might want a clean apartment and transportation that couldn't be traced directly back to him, if things turned ugly.
    It wasn 't faultless, but close enough for Ruben. He nodded his thanks.
    " This is perfect," Patrice said. "You take