"Tack a couple of tomatoes to my chest. I'll look a lot better."

Bert began to laugh. A chilling laugh that chilled me. He spun, pointing the cleaver at my nose.

"You idiot! Do you think I'm that stupid?"

"Yes."

"What good husband doesn't know the sound of my wife's own voice?"

"You, I was hoping."

"Enough of this tomfoolery! This ends now!"

He launched himself at me, screaming and drooling insanely, his probably very sharp cleaver raised for the killing blow.

Then Lieutenant Jackie Daniels shot him in the head.

"You're an idiot, McGlade," Jackie said, using the cleaver to cut away the ropes.

Carl was dead on the floor. He was finally with his wife. Because she was dead on the floor too. Jack had made me sit there until the Crime Scene Unit arrived, taking pictures and gathering evidence. They cut the bodies down before they freed me.

"So how did you know I was here?" I asked.

Jack wore a short skirt and heels that probably cost a fortune but still looked kind of s.l.u.tty, just how I liked them.

"Norma Cauldridge," she said.

"Who?"

"George Cauldridge's wife."

"Who?"

"She called me, wanted me to arrest you for trying to poison her. I asked where you were, and she said probably here. After we nabbed those necrophiliacs at the cemetery last night, I needed to find you anyway to get your statement. Lucky I heard your girlish screams which gave me probable cause to bust in here without a warrant."

I wasn't listening, because it sounded like a boring infodump.

"Can I give you my statement tomorrow?" I asked. "I gotta take a monster dump. I had some hot dogs earlier that are going to look better coming out than going in."

Jackie leaned in close. I braced myself for the kiss. It didn't come.

"Did you give Norma a bottle full of your urine and tell her it was apple juice?"

"Maybe. Did she drink any?"

"She said the second gla.s.s went down rough. She's going to sue you, McGlade."

"She can take a number. Seriously. I've got one of those number things. I swiped it from the deli." I grinned. "You can come over later, and watch me cut the cheese. You know you want to."

"I'd rather gouge out my own eyes with forks."

"Don't be coy. This could be a way to pay back what you owe me."

She c.o.c.ked her hips, hot and s.e.xy. "Excuse me? I just saved your a.s.s, McGlade."

"Are you kidding? This is front page news. You'll probably get a promotion. There's no need to thank me. It's all part of the service I perform."

"I really think I hate you."

"Really, Jackie?" I raised an eyebrow. "Really?"

She nodded. "Yeah, really. Be in my office tomorrow morning for your statement. And try to stay of trouble until then."

I stood up, stretched, and gave her one of my famous Harry McGlade smiles.

"I'll try. But trouble is my business." I winked. "And business is good."

An Andrew Mayhem Thriller by Jeff Strand Hi. Andrew Mayhem here. I'm about to share a tale with you, and I do so with the best of intentions: shameless promotion. Because I truly want you to buy my books, and I figured that including this dorky little bonus story with your purchase might persuade you to empty your wallet and/or purse for the longer stuff.

The challenge with this kind of promotional effort, of course, is that I had to figure out which story I wanted to tell. It had to be something engaging, but yet not too engaging, because Harry McGlade gets whiny when you upstage him.

Then Roger, my best friend and handy sidekick, suggested that I share the tale of how he and I met for the first time. And even though Roger is scheduled to meet a ghastly death in book #37, I thought that sounded like a great idea!

So let's turn back the clocks to when I was but a wee lad of age thirteen, where every day was filled with magic and wonder, where b.u.t.terflies flapped their wings in meadows, and where two best friends joined forces for the first time...

"I don't want to hold the baby."

"I don't want to hold the baby, either."

"Well, somebody has to hold the baby."

"I know! Let's let Clumsy Joe hold the baby!"

"That's a great idea! Clumsy Joe can hold the baby!"

"Hey, Clumsy Joe! Come over here for a minute!"

I walked up to the front of the cla.s.sroom, which was currently functioning as a theatre stage. "Hi, fellas. What's going on?"

Tim, who was my best friend in Ms. Peckin's seventh-grade cla.s.s, held out the naked baby doll to me. "Here, Clumsy Joe. Why don't you hold the baby?"

"Oh, I don't know," I said, shaking my head. "I'm pretty clumsy."

"That's okay. We trust you, Clumsy Joe."

"Well, all right..."

"Okay, I think we've seen enough," said Ms. Peckin from her desk. "The three of you can sit down."

"But we weren't done!" I insisted.

"Don't argue with me, Andrew Mayhem. That skit was not appropriate and you know it."

I just stood there, appalled. We'd spent an entire evening coming up with the clever dialogue and shocking plot twist (Clumsy Joe drops the baby). And I personally had spent several hours rigging up and testing the baby doll so that the fake blood sprayed just right when it hit the tile floor. Ms. Peckin hadn't notified us about any content restrictions on the a.s.signment beforehand, so how dare she decide at the last second that baby splatter was inappropriate?

"Does that mean we get an F?" I asked.

"No, it means that you'll redo the a.s.signment. Now sit down."

I sat down. Vile old twenty-five year-old crone. Revenge was in order. Sweet, cruel, delicious revenge.

The following Monday, Ms. Peckin walked out into the school parking lot to find her car covered with b.l.o.o.d.y dismembered baby doll body parts.

Somehow she figured out that I was responsible.

Detention was not unknown to me. I sat up front, staring at the periodic table of the elements poster on the wall, wishing the clock would magically fade to an hour from now the way it did in the movies.

Ms. Peckin looked up from the paper she was grading as the cla.s.sroom door opened. "You're fifteen minutes late," she said.

"I couldn't find the room."

"Then you're here until 5:00."

I turned around as the kid sat down.

"Up front, please," said Ms. Peckin.

The kid got up and sat down next to me. I didn't recognize him, but he was extremely skinny and had a sizable nose.

"What am I supposed to do while I'm here?" he asked.

"Just sit."

"No homework?"

"Just. Sit."

The kid nodded. When Ms. Peckin returned to brutally savaging the paper she was grading (at least, that was a safe a.s.sumption), the kid turned to me and rolled his eyes. I rolled my eyes back.

We sat there for a long moment.

The kid took out a blue pen and wrote on his palm. He quickly flashed the message to me: "I'm Roger."

I didn't have a pen handy, but he pa.s.sed his over to me. I wrote "I'm Andrew" on it and flashed it to him.

Roger nodded, and wrote a message on his other hand. "Ms. Peckin seems pretty cool."

What the h.e.l.l was he talking about? Ms. Peckin was the evil ant.i.thesis of cool! Clearly, the new kid was wacky in the head. I gave him a facial expression that indicated that I felt he was wacky in the head.

He kept holding up his hand to show me his fatally flawed message.

Ms. Peckin looked up again. "What are you doing?"

Roger balled his hand into a fist. "Nothing."

Ms. Peckin stood up and walked out from behind her desk. "Let me see what's in your hand."

"It's nothing."

"Open it."

Roger opened his hand and smiled sheepishly. Ms. Peckin read the message. "Oh. Well, this time is really meant for silent reflection, so no more of that, okay?"

"Yes, ma'am."

We both got out at 4:45.

As we walked home from school, Roger told me his life story, which even for a seventh grader was pretty uneventful. He'd lived in Arizona all his life, until his dad got a job in Chamber, Florida.

"What is there to do in this town?" he asked.

"Well...you can go to school, I guess."

"Joy."

"Do you like comics?"

"They're okay."

"You can buy comics."

"Okay."

"There's a guy who wanders around quoting TV shows while he's giving everybody the finger. He's been doing it since before I was born. You can watch him if you want."

"So basically, you're saying that Chamber sucks."

I shook my head. "No, it's not that bad. We've got a movie theatre, and they're going to be opening this new place called The Blizzard Room that I think is going to be an ice cream shop."

"So basically, you're saying that Chamber sucks."

"Okay, yeah."

"There aren't even any cute girls in school, except for Ms. Peckin."

"Don't even joke about that. The whole school will beat you up."

"Did you know my neighbor is a psycho killer?"