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  Sprinkle on a Memory

  Dean Wesley Smith

  Sprinkle on a Memory

  Copyright © 2013 Dean Wesley Smith

  Published by WMG Publishing

  Cover design copyright © 2013 WMG Publishing

  Cover Illustration by Herzlinda Vancura /Dreamstime.com

  “Sprinkle on a Memory” was first published in the January 2005

  issue of Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine.

  Smashwords Edition

  This book is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. All rights reserved.

  This is a work of fiction. All characters and events portrayed in this book are fictional, and any resemblance to real people or incidents is purely coincidental.

  This book, or parts thereof, may not be reproduced in any form without permission.

  Introduction to

  Sprinkle on a Memory

  In December of 2003, wonderful fantasy writer Nina Kiriki Hoffman called me and asked a very simple question. “Are we going to do the Christmas challenge again?”

  I said, “Sure.”

  We agreed on a date to meet at a Kinko’s Copy Center in Eugene, (I lived two hours away on the Oregon Coast) and off we each went to write. The challenge was for each of us to write four or five Christmas stories in seven days. Then we would take our first drafts, meet at Kinko’s, copy them into a little chapbook, do fifty copies, sign then, each take twenty-five and give them away to friends and family for Christmas stocking stuffers.

  A really fun challenge.

  Each challenge had a topic. Sometimes it was something like “gifts” where every story had to have a gift in it. This time, for the Christmas of 2003, it was Christmas food.

  Over the years, I had gotten some great stories from this off-and-on challenge with Nina. For example, my entire series of Poker Boy stories got started in the challenge one fine Christmas season back in the late 1990s. I think we did the challenge six or seven times over a few decades as schedules allowed. And if you ever run across one of those silly little Christmas chapbooks, they are very collectable now.

  This story was one of the Christmas food stories I wrote in 2003 and put in the chapbook. Another in the same challenge was called “Santa’s Snack.” (It is out now in paper and electronic format as well.)

  When I finished this story and my wife, Kristine Kathryn Rusch, read it, she wanted me to send it to Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine. I hesitated because to me, it was just a fun and nasty little story and I figured Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine needed something larger.

  She gave me the “You’re an idiot” look that only wives can give a husband. Then she reminded me that writers were the worst judges of their own work and that I should let the editor decide. (I seem to have to be continually reminded of that on just about every story.)

  So I mailed the story in January of 2004 and the wonderful editors at Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine bought it and the story appeared in the January 2005 issue, their Christmas issue.

  I hope you enjoy it as much as I enjoyed writing it.

  Dean Wesley Smith

  Lincoln City, OR

  June 29th, 2013

  Sprinkle on a Memory

  One

  Red sugar sparkles on white cookie icing.

  Blood drops on a snowdrift.

  Who would have thought that decorating Christmas cookies with my kid would remind me of a murder. A murder I had no real memory of doing, yet I had no doubt I had done.

  I could bring back a few details. The feel the cold of the night air, the white of the snow under the light from my car’s headlights, and the smell of hot blood from the woman’s throat. I have a memory of her blood spraying, just like all my victim’s blood did. Her blood had left red dots all over the snow bank. Why hadn’t I remembered her, or that night, or the blood on the snow before now?

  Had I killed too many? Or maybe she was one I had yet to kill.

  “You all right, Dad?” my daughter, Jennifer, asked.

  My mind snapped out of the vision, or the memory, and came back to the kitchen table. The bright-lit room smelled of baking cookies and felt too warm by a few degrees.

  I was sitting at our tablecloth-covered oak table, across from my daughter, Jennifer. My wife, Lisa, was taking another batch out of the oven. Decorating cookies had been a tradition in our family since before Jennifer was born. I always enjoyed it. It made it feel like the Christmas season.

  I had my hand poised over a cookie, the few bits of red sprinkles still in my hand, the rest on the white icing.

  Like blood drops on snow.

  “Changed my mind,” I said, smiling at Jennifer. “I think this one needs green.”

  “You’re strange, Dad,” Jennifer said, laughing and shaking her head before going back to work on getting the exact right color on an angel cookie.

  My wife Lisa laughed also, but it was a fond laugh. For some reason she loved me and all my quirks. Why such a beautiful, brown-haired, brown-eyed smart woman would love me, I had no idea. But I was very glad she did.

  Neither she nor Jennifer had any idea about my little hobby, as I thought of my killing. Everyone in the city, I was sure, had heard of me. I was what the newspapers and police called “The Foothills Killer.” I got the nickname because of I always dumped my victims up in the foothills above the city of Boise.

  I picked up the bottle of green sugar sparkles and started to put them on the half-decorated cookie. But again the red specks on the white frosting distracted me, brought back a memory I clearly had been holding back for a long time.

  Blood splatters on the snow.

  I remembered the woman now. It was my first kill, my first wife, actually, long before Lisa.

  Her name was Stephanie, and we had met in college. She had been tall, blonde, with green eyes. Everything about her shouted sex, and I remember liking that the most about her.

  For some reason Stephanie and I had been arguing the night I killed her. The police had never found her body, and never would. I had buried her up in the Boise National Forest, deep, very deep, and then killed our dog Harvey and buried him two feet above her, so anyone digging would find the dog bones and stop.

  Since she had no parents or close family, I told friends she had taken Harvey and left me for New York City. She had always talked about going to New York to try to break into acting in the theater, and every friend we had knew that we fought all the time. So her leaving me was no surprise to anyone.

  I acted upset, angry, then upset again.

  Everyone bought my little hurt-husband play-acting.

  And after some time had passed, I got a divorce and people stopped asking about her.

  That was over twenty years and thirty-five other kills ago. And not once during that time had anyone even questioned me about any of the deaths. I was that good, and that careful. The Foothills Killer had the police stumped.

  Now I was happily married, had a wonderful daughter, and taught school in a local high school. I even was an assistant couch on the football team. I only killed once or twice a year, always in my private storage building near the river that I had bought to store sports equipment.

  Only Stephanie had been killed out in the open, where I couldn’t control every detail. In the storage building, I controlled the details, controlled the mess, even had a shower to wash up in, along with a washer and dryer to clean my clothes. With gloves and hot water I washed down every woman I killed, then stood them up to dry. I always left them nude, never left any trace of myself on them, and dumped them by keeping my van on the pavement of a well-traveled road in the foothills.

  I also changed vans every year.

  So why now, sitting in my kitchen, did seeing red specks on
a cookie take me back to the memory of that first murder? I hadn’t thought of Stephanie for a decade.

  Suddenly around the cookie I could feel the wonderful kitchen, the image of Lisa, slipping away. I tried to hold onto it, but I couldn’t.

  Two

  The fresh smell of baking cookies was still around me, but now instead of a covered oak dining table, I was sitting at a Formica kitchen table. The room around me was smaller, clearly less expensive.

  “Jason!” my wife demanded, glaring at me from across the room. “Are you all right?”

  I glanced up into Stephanie’s face, the face of the woman I had thought about killing for twenty-five years.

  “Fine,” I said. “Just day-dreaming.”

  Stephanie snorted and shook her head, clearly disgusted. “Wow, that’s a surprise.”

  She always complained that I never seemed to be there, never talked to her, never wanted to touch her anymore. The truth was that she was right. I was always off daydreaming, imaging a life where I had killed her.

  I glanced around, wondering what had happened to me? How I had become this weak person?

  I had the memories of Lisa and Jennifer, yet I knew that in reality Stephanie and I had gotten married right out of college, had two children, one named Craig and one named Leslie. Both kids were now off at college and would be coming home in the next day or so.

  Stephanie had wanted us to decorate cookies like we always did, so the kids would have some.

  “Make it feel like Christmas,” she had said.

  I had agreed because it was just easier to agree with Stephanie than fight her. I had learned that long ago.

  The cookie in front of me had white frosting with red sparkles, just like I imagined the snow would have after I cut Stephanie’s neck. For twenty years I had imagined killing Stephanie, imagined doing my dream job of teaching high school.

  I also imagined killing dozens of other women I had met in my corporate job, women like Stephanie who deserved to be killed and hung naked to dry.

  But instead of acting, I simply did nothing.

  That was the story of my life it seemed. I only dreamed of acting while doing nothing. And by doing nothing, I got nowhere. I agreed with my wife, worked my boring job, and came home to the same old bitching. Somehow I had lost the person I might have become.

  All I had left was my daydreams.

  I stared at the white icing on the cookie, letting the red specks become something besides sugar as I imagined killing Stephanie, slicing her throat, letting her blood spurt out over the snow.

  Three

  “Jason,” Lisa said, putting her hand on my shoulder as I stared at the cookie. “Can I get you something?”

  “Yeah, Dad, take a break,” Jennifer said. “You’re acting even stranger than normal.”

  The memory of cutting Stephanie’s neck, of killing all those other women was there again.

  “I’m fine,” I said. I glanced up at my beautiful Lisa. “Honest. I was just thinking how lucky I am to be here with you two.”

  “Oh, weird,” Jennifer said.

  Lisa laughed and kissed me. “I’m glad you’re here too.” She gave me a wonderful hug and went to get another batch out of the oven.

  I looked around the kitchen, at my perfect family, at the wonderful, rich-textured room filled with the smell of fresh-baked sugar cookies. I had made a life for myself with Lisa. Not Stephanie. And it was in this life where I wanted to live.

  I stared at the cookie with the red sprinkles, remembering how wonderful it had felt to cut Stephanie’s neck and watch the blood spray.

  Then I took another cookie, put white frosting on it, and again put the red sprinkles on it, just to remind myself how lucky I had it.

  About the Author

  Bestselling author Dean Wesley Smith has written more than one hundred popular novels and hundreds of published short stories. His novels include the science fiction novel Laying the Music to Rest and the thriller The Hunted as D.W. Smith. With Kristine Kathryn Rusch, he is the coauthor of The Tenth Planet trilogy and The 10th Kingdom.

  He writes under many pen names and has also ghosted for a number of top bestselling writers.

  Dean has also written books and comics for all three major comic book companies, Marvel, DC, and Dark Horse, and has done scripts for Hollywood. One movie was actually made.

  Over his career he has also been an editor and publisher, first at Pulphouse Publishing, then for VB Tech Journal, then for Pocket Books. He is now an executive editor for Fiction River.

  Currently, he is writing thrillers and mystery novels under another name.

 

 

  Smith, Dean Wesley, Sprinkle on a Memory

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