Golden Lives

by Joseph S. Walker

About the Author: Joseph S. Walker lives in Indiana and is a member of the Mystery Writers of America. His stories have appeared in Alfred Hitchcock Mystery Magazine, Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine, Mystery Weekly, and a number of anthologies. In 2019 his stories won both the Al Blanchard Award and the Bill Crider Prize for Short Fiction. His website can be found at https://jsw47408.wixsite.com/website.

Excerpt

I knew Officer Whitney Lewis would be waiting for me when my flight got into Sacramento. I didn’t know she’d be one of the most beautiful women I’d ever seen. Neither her uniform nor her severe buzzcut could disguise the lithe way she moved, or how the light found her cheekbones. Seeing her should have been diverting, but it just made me angry. Ike would have been awed by her, would have elbowed me in the ribs, thinking he was being subtle. Ogling hot women: just one more item on the endless list of things my little brother would never do again.

Standing at the gate, she noticed the curves of plastic and steel where my right foot used to be and then immediately switched her gaze to my face as she came forward.

“Private Annalee Lincoln? Whitney Lewis. We spoke a couple of days ago. I thought I’d give you a ride into town and we could talk. Do you have more luggage?”

“Just this,” I said, lifting the roll-on bag I’d been living out of for the last three months.

She hesitated for half a beat. “Are you okay to walk a way?”

“Sure. I’m a wonder of modern science.”

“All right,” she said. She started off and I fell in step beside her. “I didn’t know you’d been wounded.”

“I never came within a thousand miles of combat,” I said. “I was working in the motor pool in Frankfort and a faulty jack dropped an armored Humvee on me.”

“Jesus. When was this?”

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