Monster Hunter Alpha-ARC by Larry Correia

probably around her age, dark hair cut short, neatly trimmed goatee, six foot, hundred and seventy, athletic, dressed nicely, with a white button shirt and a wool overcoat, hands in his pockets. The car parked on the street was a newer model BMW M3, silver. The Beamer stood out on the street full of pickup trucks and older cars. Her initial thought was that he was probably either going to try to sell her something or he had the wrong place.
    His smile was rather disarming, or would have been to most women. Heather was too jaded to be swayed that easily. “Why, I hope so. My name is Nicholas Peterson. I’m sorry to bother you so late, officer.”
    He looked nice enough, but Heather had inherited her family’s Finnish heritage of being sullenly suspicious of anything new. “And?”
    “I was given directions at the library. I’m looking for someone.” He had just a little bit of an accent. Heather couldn’t place it, but he certainly wasn’t from around here. New Yorker? “And I can see from your name tag that I’ve found the right place. Do you know an Aksel Kerkonen?”
    Great. Somebody else Grandpa owed money. She had thought that she was past dealing with this kind of thing. The first year had brought a long line of creditors out of the woodwork, but it had tapered off eventually. “That was my grandfather, but he’s passed away.”
    “I’m terribly sorry to hear that,” he said. “My condolences.”
    “It’s been a few years. What do you want?” She got ready for the invoice to come out, because if there was one skill that Grandpa had been good at, besides drinking, fighting, gambling, and mining, it had been absolutely driving the Kerkonens into poverty.
    “Perhaps you may still be able to help me. You see, I’m a historian by trade. I’m doing some research for a book that I am writing. Your grandfather immigrated here from Finland in 1947, correct?”
    “Something like that,” she replied suspiciously. There really wasn’t anything about her grandfather that a historian would be interested in, unless it was the history of random drunken knife fights of the Great Lakes region. “Lots of Finns around here, though. You’re probably looking for someone else.” Heather was Irish on her mother’s side and didn’t really know much family history either way.
    “Did he fight in the Winter War?”
    Grandpa had. He’d been some sort of sniper, in fact, but he hadn’t spoken of it much. Up until the year he died, he’d been a crack shot with his old Nagant rifle and could still move like a ghost on cross-country skis. It was only when he got to drinking that he’d started referring to Russians as “game animals with no bag limit.”
    When she nodded, Peterson pulled a piece of paper from his pocket. Instead of the expected bill, it was a photocopied drawing. “Did he have a medal like this?” He held the picture up. “About an inch across, relatively flat. It may have been on a simple chain. As you can see, the workmanship is very rough. It would be silver in color.”
    Her first instinct was to wonder if it was supposed to be valuable, as there were a few scams that started that way, but most hustlers were smart enough to prey on widows and the stupid, not suspicious cops. She gave the picture a brief look. It was shaped like an animal track, only comically distorted with three long claws. A facsimile of a human hand was carved into the center. “Sorry. I’ve never seen that before. I can’t help you. Look, Mr. Peterson, I need to get to work.”
    “I’d be willing to pay a large sum of money for it.” The stranger was insistent. “Perhaps he would have left it to your father?”
    Heather really wasn’t in the mood. “He’s dead, too. So is everyone else, and if my grandpa ever had anything that might have been worth something, it would have ended up at a pawnshop a long time ago. Good night.” She started to shut the door, but he quickly jammed his foot in the way before she could