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Otto Penzler, William J. Caunitz, Carol Higgins Clark, Mary Higgins Clark, James Crumley, John Gardner, Faye Kellerman, Jonathan Kellerman, Elmore Leonard, Michael Malone, Bobbie Ann Mason, Ed McBain, Joyce Carol Oates, Sara Paretsky, Anne Perry, Shel Silverstein, Donna Tartt

Murder For Love

A unique and unprecedented collection of original, never-before-published short stories by the great crime writers, including Mary Higgins Clark, Jonathan Kellerman, Sara Paretsky, Ed McBain and Elmore Leonard. Each author offers a vastly different perspective on love, murder and th eopposite sex in short fiction that proves all passion lasts a lifetime- however brief that life may be…

Introduction

Contrary to popular usage, the opposite of love is not hate. It is indifference. Love and hate are too closely connected to be separated by time or circumstance. As long as one exists, the potential for the other also lives. Only when love, or hate, fades into indifference do those two passionate emotions no longer share a chamber of the heart.

The stories that follow are a celebration of love. All right, let's concede that in most of these tales at least one person dies a violent death. It's just love gone wrong. There's nothing wrong with the love-it's just the people who experience it, sometimes, or those who don't.

In order for a crime of passion to occur, there must be, naturally (or, from time to time, unnaturally), a passion. Can you imagine how much one person has to love another person to want to kill? That is not a manifestation of liking someone a lot.

Stories are a little more romantic than others, some are grittier than others, some are less traditional than others, but all have great pleasures to give. It is hoped that you will find this richly flavored cornucopia of crime rewarding enough to reread on special occasions, like St. Valentine's Day or your wedding anniversary. Or the anniversary of the time you thought about being unfaithful and resisted. Or, if you didn't resist, when you were lucky enough to not get caught and didn't have to pay the consequences.

– Otto Penzler

Dying Time by William J. Caunitz

Detective John Parker walked into the Seventeenth Squad's second-floor squad room, went directly over to the command log, and signed himself present for duty at 0800 hours. The heading on the top of the page read: Sunday, April 23, 1995.

Joe Carney, a burly guy with a shiny bald head, was finishing up a night duty, typing furiously. He was clearly a man in a hurry.

"Anything doin'?" Parker asked.

"Naw. The usual Saturday-night bullshit. " Carney pulled the report out of the typewriter and said, "I'm out of here for three days. "

"Have a good swing, " Parker said, and walked around the room emptying overflowing wastebaskets into a large cardboard barrel. Going back to his desk, he raised the window up as far as it would go. A spring breeze blew across the squad room. Outside, police cars were double parked on East Fifty-first Street and along Third Avenue. He watched churchgoers, dressed in their spring fineries, strolling west on Fifty-first to catch the nine o'clock Mass at St. Patrick's Cathedral, four blocks away. He sighed at the thought of having to work on such a beautiful day and, savoring the scent of spring, went back to his desk.