The Best American Mystery Stories, Volume 17 by Lisa Scottoline

account for bullet drop, but the SWAT sharpshooters on the roof of the house across the street did. The chin dot was the heart shot.
    Gables seemed frozen, unable to choose whether to live or die.
    â€œThere’s a lot you could tell us,” he said. “We could learn from you. Why don’t you just put the gun down and we can get started.”
    He slowly started to lean forward, raising his left hand to take the gun.
    â€œI don’t think so,” she said.
    She brought the muzzle up but he didn’t say the word. He didn’t think she’d shoot.
    There were three sounds in immediate succession. The breaking of glass as the bullet passed through the window. A sound like an ice cream cone dropping on the sidewalk as the bullet passed through her chest. And then the
thock
of the slug hitting the door frame behind her.
    A fine mist of blood started to fill the room.
    Gables took a step backward and looked down at her chest as her arms dropped to her sides. The gun made a dull sound when it hit the carpet.
    She glanced up at Bosch with a confused look. In a strained voice she asked her last question.
    â€œWhat was the word?”
    She then dropped to the floor.
    Staying below the level of the file cabinets, Bosch left the desk and came around to her on the floor. He slid the gun out of reach and looked down at her eyes. He knew there was nothing he could do. The bullet had exploded her heart.
    â€œYou bastards!” he yelled. “I didn’t say it! I didn’t say the word!”
    Gables closed her eyes and Bosch thought she was gone.
    â€œWe’re clear!” he said. “Suspect is ten-seven. Repeat, suspect is ten-seven. Weapons, stand down.”
    He started to get up but saw that Gables had opened her eyes.
    â€œNine,” she whispered, blood coming up on her lips.
    Bosch leaned down to her.
    â€œWhat?”
    â€œI killed nine.”
    She nodded and then closed her eyes again. He knew that this time she was gone, but he nodded anyway.

O’NEIL DE NOUX
Misprision of Felony
    FROM
Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine
    Â 
    Detective joseph savary counted nineteen people on Felicity Street. Four older men sat on folding chairs outside Ojubi’s Barbershop, two women swept the sidewalk beyond the shop, two others hosed off their stoops while chatting with each other, three boys rode around on bicycles, four girls hovered between a parked blue Chevy and a dark green Pontiac, two young men leaned against the outer wall of the laundromat, another two sat on the loading dock of the long-abandoned warehouse and pretended they weren’t watching the plainclothesman. Savary tapped down his black sunglasses and gleeked the men on the loading dock. No reaction.
    Savary had left his suit coat in his unmarked gray Chevy Impala. He was glad he wore a white shirt today, as the sweat wouldn’t show. He loosened his sky-blue tie and rested a hand atop the grip of the nine-millimeter Glock 17 semiautomatic resting in its Kydex holster on his left hip, next to the gold star-and-crescent NOPD badge clipped to his belt. He stood stiffly in front of the boarded-up door of Jeanfreau’s Grocery and glanced at his watch. Two P.M . exactly. Same time, same day—a Wednesday—as two months ago. On that Wednesday, a lone black male put a bullet into the forehead of Jack Hudson, the owner of Jeanfreau’s. Grainy black-and-white video showed a young, thin African-American male in a white T-shirt and low-riding jeans, pulling out a forty-caliber semiautomatic, pointing it at the gray-haired old man. The weapon was tilted on its side, gangster-style, waving in the right hand of the shooter. Jack Hudson, a man who’d bragged he was part Zulu and once shook Martin Luther King’s hand, exchanged words with the gunman, touched his chin, and the big pistol went off, snapping Hudson’s head back. The shooter went around, had to kick Hudson out of the way to empty the