Red Dirt Mystery

         Red dust gritted the air, catching sun falling through the slits in the blinds, converting the light to solid matter, fingers of heat probing into the dark room.  The fan turned lazily overhead, its buzzing harmonizing with the locusts screaming the last of their desperate summer song.  The air was heavy and dull, the heat like that of a fat woman sitting on one's chest.  Our hero propped his boots on his scarred desk, feeling the sand in them slide from his toes back to his heels.  He wiggled his toes, feeling the grit between them scratch an itch of the mind as well as the skin.

         He lit a cigarette, the flare of the cheap Bic lightning in the darkness, flicking across his leathery face.  He took a long slow drag, feeling the smoke curl down his tongue and throat, tickling his lungs.  He let the smoke out in thick gouts through his nostrils, feeling the knots in his shoulders and face go slack as he did so.  He took a sip of room temperature coffee, the bitter, stale liquid stomping down to his stomach and kicking his sluggish brain into gear, mulling over the current predicament.  They had work to do, the first job in a month, and she was late.  She was never late.  Sure, she'd be pissed when she came in and found dry red clay on the desk from his boots, the office wreathed in thick blue smoke (she hated when he smoked inside, but it was her own damn fault for not being here to stop him.  Where the hell was she, anyway?) 

         The strains of steel guitar fought with the fan and the locusts for aural supremacy, Merle Haggard wheezing out of an old cassette player, singing about drinkin', fightin', and the lonesome road.  Damn straight, he thought.  Just then, the door opened and the lights flicked on.  "What the hell?" she said.

         He jumped, sitting up, whipping his feet off the desk, stubbing out his cigarette on a dirty plate, and spilling coffee on himself.  "Shit!"

         "Where were you this morning? We were supposed to meet at the farmhouse at six," she said, handing him a wad of paper napkins from the shelf next to the skuzzy old coffee maker.

         "Aww, shit…I thought we were meeting here at nine like usual," he responded, apologetic and annoyed at the same time, trying to soak the cold coffee out of his bleached jeans.

         She shook her head and jabbed at the eject button, snatching out the tape.  "Well, while you were sitting around listening to shit-kicker music and slowly killing yourself, I was out following a lead.  This case is going to be huge," she said, tossing the tape onto a pile of others on her desk.

*Incomplete*