K O'Connor

by Mike McHone

About the Author: Mike McHone lives in southeastern Michigan. His work has previously appeared in The AV Club, The Detroit News, Playboy, Neo-Opsis, and is forthcoming in Sherlock Holmes Mystery Magazine.

Excerpt

“You wouldn’t believe me if I told you.”

He died ten minutes before they arrived at the hospital. The charge nurse led Detectives Molly Fetterly and Jim Biggins into the emergency room where John Doe lay on a stretcher. They looked down at the bloodied face, the massive lump on the forehead, the welted eye, bruised cheek, split lip, and the nose that had been broken that night and many times prior it seemed due to its crookedness and massive bump at the center. “There was nothing we could do,” the nurse said. “He was pretty much gone by the time we brought him in off the curb.”

“Curb?” Jim asked.

“Yeah. Receptionist said some guy came in here saying there was someone lying by the emergency entrance.”

“He stick around?”

“No. When the orderlies went out to get the body they didn’t see hide nor hair of anyone else.”

Molly inspected the trails of dried blood that seeped from his right ear and gathered in a sickly brown pool at the side of his head on the stretcher. “Head trauma?” she asked.

“That’s what we’re thinking.”

Molly eyes traversed the body. He was clad only in a pair of shorts and cheap, faded running shoes. It was late March and although it wasn’t as chilly as that area of southeastern Michigan was used to, it certainly wasn’t beach clothes and bikini weather.

“Was he wearing anything else?”

“Not a stitch,” the nurse said.

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