January News Special 2025
February 24, 2025
Greetings from the frigid lands of Michigan! I promised a teaser, and I mean to deliver. What follows is the opening chapter of Sons of Men, the third book in the Leroy Cutter series. There isn't a release date, yet, as I am in the middle of my rewrites before sending the book off to the editors. But that shouldn't stop us from being looky loos. So, without further ado, the opening chapter of Sons of Men, a Leroy Cutter Novel.
He held the phone receiver against his ear but never said a word. His attention was elsewhere, his anticipation unbearable.
Steve Huddle stood hunched in a row of payphones at the bottom of the incline where the secured area of the North Terminal gates of Detroit-Wayne Metro Airport exited. Sunlight burned through every inch of soundproofed windows; magnifying glasses held over an army of travelers with sundae smiles as they marched from one gate to another. Sad sacks of elderly with curved spines shuffled and rolled along with wonderment and frustration. Children threw tantrums as travelers walked by and prayed to the open air that they didn't end up in a seat next to some brat. Arriving or departing didn't matter if everyone kept moving. Anything to prove that life was anything but mundane.
Steve should've stood out to the people passing by. He looked as if he were ready for a late autumn rain in the middle of July. He wore a long, black London Fog raincoat to hide his jittery body. A Detroit Tigers ball cap pulled tightly down on his head buried his nervous eyes. The hat and raincoat helped conceal the sweat wetting his skin. Anyone paying attention should have thought something was strange with the cloaked man in the hat, yet no one did. They never do. No one ever pays even a little attention to their surroundings. Sleepwalkers all around. Floating through time and space until the end.
At the top of the incline to the terminal, drunken executives in three-piece suits parted ways, home after a weeklong conference in Vegas. An air of detrimental importance blew through their whiskey breaths and down to the bank of payphones, where Steve prepared to change two lives and to redeem another. He craned his neck toward the gates for a better look and briefly held the phone away from his ear. According to the arrivals list, the plane he was waiting for landed fifteen minutes ago. They would be the first off; no time to waste. Any minute now.
And so they broke through the center of the executives, men in ill-fitted cheap suits bought off the rack at Sears. They flanked an emotionless white man with a multicolored Reebok windbreaker draped over his steel-clasped wrists. Edgar Mounds was on an inbound flight from Colorado, and the detectives flanking him were from the Wayne County Sheriff's Office.
The hand-off at the gate was uneventful. No one knew who Edgar Mounds was except the flight crew and the detectives from Colorado Springs and Wayne County. But a few passengers could tell he was someone of interest, maybe someone to avoid.
The Colorado detectives handed over the paperwork at the gate. One of them joked about billing Wayne County for the chains. They shook hands with the Michigan detectives and then quickly looked for a bar to kill some time while waiting for their return flight. When asked how the flight was, Edgar said he expected better. The Michigan cops were already tired of him.
A flash of light hit Edgar and the detectives as they left the secured part of the North Terminal and walked the decline toward the bank of payphones. The camera flash was a green flag for a mad dash of reporters toward Edgar and his escorts. The press shouted questions, and Edgar smiled confidently and answered a few of them. His escorts pushed and pulled him along. Arrogance illuminated Edgar as he held his head high with his chin pointed out as if balancing an imaginary trophy of his latest accomplishments upon it. A powerful man in stature, with strong legs and broad shoulders, he had the face of a matinee idol with deep eyes and a perfect nose. His hair was wavy and in place, skin tanned like polished leather. A smooth summer drink laced with arsenic.
The detectives pushed the journalists back and barked that now was not the time. A uniformed escort was waiting for them at the curb. They wanted to get Edgar in county lock-up, an end to a nationwide manhunt and a family's worst nightmare, as quickly as possible. No reason to draw things out. The press would have enough time to get the dirty details during the trial. But the reporters pressed in and shouted above one another. Cameras clicked, video rolled, lights glared. They had a deadline because everyone would want to know about Edgar Mounds and his crimes, whether they realized it or not.
No one saw the man with the gun.
The shot was sudden and final. Half a second went by as everything stood still. There was confusion. The sharp report was a foreign blast in an airport terminal, and no one registered the shot even though ears buzzed from the concussion. The cutting nitroglycerin smell of gunpowder finally snapped the detectives to their senses. They saw the nickel-plated snub-nose revolver, a haze of blue smoke expanding from the barrel, and Steve's face contorted into a rage as he watched Edgar Mounds buckle to the floor. A pink mist of blood hung in the air, and a woman from the Detroit News screamed. Everyone scattered.
Edgar hit the tiled floor hard. Blood gushed from the wound on the side of his head just behind the right ear. His eyes rolled white. Blood oozed from both nostrils as the breath left his twitching body for the last time, and his face turned ashen. A detective grabbed Steve's gun hand. Another wrapped his arms around Steve's waist. They wrestled him to the ground, and the cameras rolled as one of the detectives shouted, "Why, Steve? Why?"