Holiday lights and dark endless nights. Winter is a season of contrasts. December festivities and soft new snow give way to dreary days that dissolve into gloom and slippery gray ice. After the parties and presents come introspection and dreams of an escape to the tropics. But if your fantasies come tinged with the macabre, stop right there and let us give you a vicarious dose with 14 tales of cold-hearted misdeeds.

In this winter issue we bring you four holiday-set stories. “Santa’s Eyes” by Joslyn Chase features a dubious department store you-know-who. An armed robbery threatens to derail Christmas dinner in “King of the Visigoths” by Marcelle Dubé. Crime doesn’t stop for the holiday on a gambling riverboat in “Rogue’s Christmas” by Christopher Latragna.

The Girl in the Pit
by Floyd Sullivan

Detective Paul Wilson called early one morning. He wanted me to meet him later at a coffee shop on Lincoln Avenue.

“Am I in trouble?” I asked.

“If you were in trouble,” he said, “I’d be outside your door with handcuffs. No. I need your help. I understand you worked the Caldwell concert last Saturday.”

“Yeah, I did. Tough gig. That poor girl.”

“That’s what I need to talk to you about.” READ MORE

Into the Weeds
by Alice Hatcher 

The hardest thing about being a small-town cop in northern Vermont is that, most days, you don’t do much, and on the days you do, no one wants to know what you did. On a typical day, I’m issuing speeding tickets to tourists flying down back roads in BMWs and Audis—we call them moose bait—on their way to lake houses and ski resorts. Other days, I’m responding to domestic violence calls, administering Narcan to overdoses, arresting drunk drivers, or securing the scenes of car crashes, hunting accidents, and suicides. I mop up after local tragedies, and there’s no one to talk about it with. No one wants to hear gruesome details about victims they knew, or ugly stories about people they’ll run into at the grocery store. It’s too much horror too close to home. If I’m dealing with a body, I call in the State Police. Otherwise, I work alone. I’m not part of a local police force; I am the local police force, and I probably spend too much time in my head. There’s a certain kind of loneliness that comes from living in a place where you know everyone, but where most people associate you with the worst day of their lives. READ MORE