COPYRIGHT INFORMATION

      Copyright © 2014 by Triangle Sisters in Crime.

       Copyrights to individual stories are reserved by the authors.

      Published by Wildside Press LLC.

      www.wildsidebooks.com

      FOREWORD, by Karen Pullen

      Write a crime story about sex.

      When the Triangle chapter of Sisters in Crime decided to create our first short story anthology, that was the attention-grabbing guidance we gave to prospective authors—Sisters in Crime members who live in the Carolinas. Interpretation of the theme was left up to the author, though we supplied examples:

      …reproduction; lust and desire; genetic engineering; online dating; animal breeding; infertility; STDs; prostitution; obsession; gender dysmorphia; erectile dysfunction; romance; endocrine disorders; virginity; marriage and weddings; pornography; attracting the opposite sex (clothes, shoes, appearance); jealousy; chromosomes; plastic surgery; secondary sex characteristics; gynecology.

      And the Carolinas’ Sisters—and a few Brothers—came through, submitting wonderful, original, never-before-published stories around this most adult of themes. A blind judging selected the finalists, and we were so pleased to learn that for almost half the authors, it would be their first published stories.

      Carolina Crimes was a Triangle SinC group project. I’m grateful to Britni Patterson, who efficiently coordinated submissions; Tamara Ward for compiling scores and comments; Ruth Moose for editorial guidance; Judith Stanton for copy-editing; Sheila Boneham and Toni Goodyear for proofing; Toni for querying publishers. The anthology committee—Sheila, Toni, and Sarah Shaber—provided valuable oversight. Margaret Maron, a past president of SinC, generously volunteered to write an introduction. Carolina Crimes could not have been produced without their significant contributions of time and expertise.

      The greatest thanks are due to the authors for writing their stories. They’ve invited you, the reader, into their characters’ lives at a moment when passion overrules morality, common sense, and the law. Who among us hasn’t—in our imaginations—stepped close to that line? These nineteen tales of lust, love, and longing will give you chills, make you chuckle, and strike a resonant chord in your heart.

      INTRODUCTION, by Margaret Maron

      Sisters in Crime was formally organized when Sandra Scoppettone invited a group of interested women to her Soho loft back in 1987. Approximately thirty women crime writers attended to vent about the inequalities we had experienced in trying to get a fair share of the advances, the reviews and the promotion routinely given to our male counterparts but stingily doled out to us. As the organization grew, we banded together to pool travel expenses, slept on the couches of Sisters who ran bookstores, and shared tips and promotional strategies. Today, we number around 3600 members in forty-eight chapters around the world. SinC in the Triangle is one of those forty-eight and this anthology showcases the emerging talents to be found in North and South Carolina.

      In keeping with the theme of lust, love, and longing, these stories range from Marjorie Ann Mitchell’s high-tech future of simulated sex play to Sarah Shaber’s look back to sugar rationing during World War II. To illustrate the changing face of the state, Britni Patterson’s story is set among Raleigh’s Korean-American community, while Karen Pullen gives us a gently humorous take on some local “working girls.”

      The stories illustrate facets of sexuality often kept hidden and some even cross into taboo territory. The longing for love is universal. Equally universal are the evanescence of passion and the cruelty of lust. Love can liberate, love can suffocate, and sometimes love can even lead to murder.

      Enjoy!

      January, 2014

      THE BAD SON, by Britni Patterson

      It had been a bad night. Not only had I blown my cover to the person I’d been tailing for a week, but then I lost her immediately afterwards.

      I was having my usual breakfast of Mini-Wheats, trying to decide whether to quit the case or hope for the best, when the morning news reporter’s deliberately regretful-yet-professional tones caught my ear. The top story of the morning was the brutal homicide of a Jane Doe who had been beaten to a pulp in front of the entrance to Umstead State Park off Harrison Avenue. The police were requesting help identifying her. I gave their sketch a look out of habit and dropped my cereal bowl. My target, Min-jun Kim, had been murdered.

      Three hours later I was still sitting across from Homicide Detective Abram Shouft, a giant man of mixed Cherokee and German heritage with an impressive nicotine addiction and a lousy temper. His tiny office was dangerously full of files, empty to-go cups from Dunkin’ Donuts, and two hundred and fifty pounds of nicely-distributed muscle crammed into a suit. Most men look good in a suit, but Shouft would have been better displayed wearing nothing but a loincloth and the blood of his enemies. His face is a little too savage in its lines to wear civilization well. The visitor’s chair in his office was one object too many. I’m only 5’4”, but my knees were starting to ache from pressing against the desk.

      Shouft is never happy to see me in a professional capacity. In his opinion, good private detectives should join the police force, the bad ones should be shot, and neither kind should ever be involved in his cases. I’m one of the best, so he’d like to resent me on principle. But when I have to deal with the police, I go through Shouft, because at least he doesn’t give a shit that I’m female, Korean-American, and have a worse temper than he does. There’s also the fact that he’d be perfectly happy to see me in a personal capacity, if our professional ethics and instincts for self-preservation could be surgically removed.

      “Transgender?” Shouft asked for the third time. “So what do you say, he or she?”

      “She. I don’t know what was still in her pants, but from six inches she passed.”

      “OK. One more time,” he said.

      I groaned. He ignored me. “So you were hired to follow the deceased, by a woman claiming to be the mother of the victim, because the victim had left home on bad terms and the mother wanted to be sure the vic was all right?”

      “I verified her identity before I took the job.”

      Shouft shifted in his chair. “By her, you mean the mother, right?”

      “Yeah. Mrs. Kim.” Somewhere in her late fifties, built small and sturdy, with gray hair wound tightly in a bun. Small pudgy hands clenched tightly on her purse, trouble lines carved between her eyes and doll-size mouth pinched shut. Wearing black because her husband had died. Holding a check from the insurance company to prove she could pay me.

      “And her son…daughter. Whatever. You followed her for a week, and then decided to approach her last night. Shitty surveillance tactic, Parks.”

      “I thought there was a chance for reconciliation.”

      “You stuck your nose where it didn’t belong.”

      I didn’t answer. It wasn’t a question, and I half-agreed with him.

      “According to this—” he tapped my statement with yellow fingertips “—last night, you approached Min-jun Kim at the club where she bartends. You didn’t tell her who hired you. You started talking about mother issues. Kim got agitated, swapped your tab with another bartender, and left work early.” He tapped the pages again. “That’s the last anyone saw her until the park ranger found her body.”

      “Point of clarification, I didn’t know she’d left until the new bartender came over thirty minutes later.” I was being nitpicky, because I didn’t enjoy Shouft rubbing my screw-up in my face.

      “Shitty surveillance work.” Shouft said again, savoring each word with all the righteous vindication of a Baptist watching a Catholic church burn down on bingo night.

      “Blow it out your ass. I didn’t have to come down here and give you a statement or my notes.”

      “You