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    Weird Crime
    Weird Crime
    Weird Crime
    Ebook104 pages1 hour

    Weird Crime

    By Dean Wesley Smith

    ()

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    About this ebook

    Six really, really, really weird crime stories from the different worlds of USA Today bestselling writer Dean Wesley Smith. Dean details six very wild and different crime stories in this one volume.

    Includes:

    "After the Dance"

    "Death in the Morning"

    "Center Drives"

    "Cheerleader Revelation"

    "Eyes on My Cards"

    "I Killed Adam Chaser"

    You love crime, you love crazy? Dean gives you both layered on thick in this amazingly fun volume.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherWMG Publishing
    Release dateOct 26, 2021
    ISBN9798201646332
    Weird Crime
    Author

    Dean Wesley Smith

    Considered one of the most prolific writers working in modern fiction, USA Today bestselling writer Dean Wesley Smith published far more than a hundred novels in forty years, and hundreds of short stories across many genres. At the moment he produces novels in several major series, including the time travel Thunder Mountain novels set in the Old West, the galaxy-spanning Seeders Universe series, the urban fantasy Ghost of a Chance series, a superhero series starring Poker Boy, and a mystery series featuring the retired detectives of the Cold Poker Gang. His monthly magazine, Smith’s Monthly, which consists of only his own fiction, premiered in October 2013 and offers readers more than 70,000 words per issue, including a new and original novel every month. During his career, Dean also wrote a couple dozen Star Trek novels, the only two original Men in Black novels, Spider-Man and X-Men novels, plus novels set in gaming and television worlds. Writing with his wife Kristine Kathryn Rusch under the name Kathryn Wesley, he wrote the novel for the NBC miniseries The Tenth Kingdom and other books for Hallmark Hall of Fame movies. He wrote novels under dozens of pen names in the worlds of comic books and movies, including novelizations of almost a dozen films, from The Final Fantasy to Steel to Rundown. Dean also worked as a fiction editor off and on, starting at Pulphouse Publishing, then at VB Tech Journal, then Pocket Books, and now at WMG Publishing, where he and Kristine Kathryn Rusch serve as series editors for the acclaimed Fiction River anthology series. For more information about Dean’s books and ongoing projects, please visit his website at www.deanwesleysmith.com and sign up for his newsletter.

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      Book preview

      Weird Crime - Dean Wesley Smith

      Weird Crime

      Weird Crime

      Six Really, Really, Really Whacked Out Crime Stories

      Dean Wesley Smith

      WMG Publishing, Inc.

      Contents

      Introduction

      After the Dance

      Introduction

      After the Dance

      Death in the Morning

      Introduction

      Death in the Morning

      Center Drives

      Introduction

      Center Drives

      Cheerleader Revelation

      Introduction

      Cheerleader Revelation

      Eyes on My Cards

      Introduction

      Eyes on My Cards

      I Killed Adam Chaser

      Introduction

      I Killed Adam Chaser

      Also by Dean Wesley Smith

      Newsletter sign-up

      About the Author

      Introduction

      Six Really, Really Whacked Out Crime Stories

      Okay, so I’m weird. I really like crime stories. Regular crime stories sure. After all, I do write the Cold Poker Gang Mystery series. But I also like the really strange crimes, often with a touch of fantasy mixed in.

      And over the years I have tended to write some really, really whacked out crimes in different stories. Often with perfectly normal characters.

      Here are six of those stories. One is actually a fairly normal crime story in my Doc Hill series, but the other five are far, far from normal.

      The collection starts with After the Dance in the epic world of dead teenager songs from the 1960s. Some of you might even remember the song, but this story starts after the song ends.

      The next story is from my Mary Jo Assassin series. Seems Mary Jo has a job to kill someone in Death in the Morning, something that she and her partner have both been doing for a thousand years. Only something is wrong with this killing.

      The third story, Center Drives, stars one of my regular characters, a superhero detective named Sky Tate. There isn’t so much a crime in this one, although it seems like there should be. Nope, this is revenge, almost as fun.

      The events in Cheerleader Revelation I am fairly certain would be a crime in this modern world. And it could be called science fiction. Honestly, not so sure what this story is, other than fun.

      Eyes on My Cards stars one of my characters, Doc Hill, from a thriller I wrote called Dead Money. Doc Hill has to solve a crime going on in a poker room. Not a weird crime, unless you never sit in poker rooms. Then this will seem strange.

      I Killed Adam Chaser has to be one of my strangest crime stories, and maybe my most twisted. I wanted to write more of these, but I think they were even too twisted for my poor brain.

      So I sure hope you enjoy these six very weird crime stories as much as I enjoyed writing them.

      —Dean Wesley Smith

      Las Vegas, Nevada

      Introduction

      Billy meets Laura at the dance. She loves to dance. But she has a problem. She died on the night of her first dance.

      But when the dance falls on her 16th birthday, she gets to go to the dance again. And this year she meets Billy, a wonderful, gentle boy.

      She hopes he will understand.

      A dead teenager story about what happens when the song ends.

      After the Dance

      From the moon-cast shadows of the night I watch Billy pick up his gray wool sweater from the newly mowed grass of my grave.

      He holds the sweater away from him, as if he has never seen it before, let alone worn it to the dance last night.

      Those gentle hands of his shake, and even across the darkness of the cemetery, I can see the fear clouding his green eyes. His brown hair is mussed by the night breeze and I can tell he is about to panic and run.

      I want to step out of the shadows, to let him kiss me again as he did at my parents’ front door, to feel his strength against me, but I know that would send him fleeing, now that my father has told him the truth. I can’t have him leave. There are only a few hours before the sun breaks over the tops of the hills and I will be forced to return to my grave. I must act before then.

      But at this moment the time is not right.

      I stand in the night shadows and watch him hold his sweater. He stares at it and then at my headstone.

      I know the words he reads.

      LAURA JANE ROBERTS

      Born September 22, 1946

      Died September 22, 1962

      Nothing more. A simple statement of facts.

      Even frightened, Billy seems unable to tear himself away from those words that are carved in the cold, smooth stone. He must love me as much as I came to love him in the few short hours of the dance.

      I almost laugh out loud, but then stop. That would scare him too, so I hold my hand over my mouth and let the laugh die with the wind in the trees.

      Billy sits down beside my grave, his sweater beside him on the grass.

      Good. He is not going to leave yet. I can wait a little longer, until the night air chills him and forces him into my arms.

      I move to a group of shadows closer to him and stand thinking about my first fall dance twenty-eight years ago tonight.

      That night had started out so special.

      I went to the dance with my best friend, Donna. I remember my stomach twisting with excitement. The first dance of my sophomore year. And my birthday would start at midnight.

      Donna and I had planned to stay out late, until one in the morning, dancing with every boy we saw and celebrating the arrival of my birthday.

      Only Donna started drinking. Rum and Coke that some stupid kid from another school gave her.

      Before midnight, before my birthday had even started, she was sick. She had ruined everything.

      I remember telling her I hated her, yelling at her, calling her names as she threw up time after time.

      I stormed out of the bathroom and into the parking lot and the cold night air.

      That’s where I met Craig.

      He was sitting in his blue Chevy, with the radio blaring and the windows wide open. He said he was from downtown.

      Looking back now, from the cemetery, the dark shadows, and all the years, I should have known better. But I was so mad at Donna and the cloth seats of his car felt so soft and he liked the

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