Featured Author for November: Mary Lou Pearce
BY THE BOOK
BY THE BOOK
“Sorry it took so long to get here, I got trapped in a
freakin’ traffic circle! It took me twenty rounds to get out,” Sgt.
Killworthy Innes said to the female officer on scene.
“That’s okay, Killy. A corpse keeps for a while. I did some
preliminary already,” his partner Maple Caisse told him.
Innes winced. It was bad enough being christened Killworthy
and being a cop, but that nickname!
“The deceased is up the stairs and to the left in the
library/office. Let me know what you think of the scene, because it gives me the
creeps,” Caisse told him, shivering.
“Will do,” he said as he left the front hall and climbed to
next floor.
It wasn’t hard to find the crime scene as there was a wide
trail of blood that showed evidence of dragging leading from the top of the
stairs to an open door. Watching where he put his feet, Innes gave the door a
push with one gloved hand. His eyes fell on the body.
Bending down, Innes did a slow visual. His inspection stopped
short when he saw that the right hand of the body was missing.
“I wonder where that ended up. As a souvenir for the killer
probably,” he muttered as he scribbled notes.
Looking past the right side of the body, the sergeant’s eyes
found another anomaly. A large tome with yellowed pages lay open on the rug.
Walking carefully around the body, Innes went up to the book and crouched
down.
As he watched, a bloody right hand came out of the page and
wrote his name with one finger in blood. Then the hand grabbed him by the throat
and began to squeeze.
When Caisse came up the stairs calling his name, Killy
couldn’t answer.
A native North Bayite, I trained as a Library Technician and spent quite a few years in libraries of all sorts. A few years out of college, I fell in love with and married a military fighter, so I've been a few places and seen a few sights that will probably make their way into my memoirs at some point.
As one of a family of nine, I am a storyteller from way back. I loved telling my nieces stories based on prompts they came up with when they were young. Some of those really early works are still in my author stash and may have to be dusted off, revised and put out in the wide world to fly.
These days, I am finally writing daily and finishing up some of those pesky UFOs. To my surprise, I have written a novella which has yet to be published. I firmly believe that: I write not because I choose to, but because I have to.
Mary Lou Pearce
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