A curated collection of crime procedural short stories to read.
By Jamie F. Bell
The air bit, sharp and clean, carrying the scent of damp earth and dying leaves. A thin crust of frost glittered on the sparse tundra grasses, giving way with a soft crackle under the weight of my boots. The sky, a bruised purple-grey, pressed low, threatening a cold rain or an early snow. It was a day for hunkering down, not for picking through the exposed guts of a landscape. But some things wouldn't wait for warmer weather, or for permission.
By Jamie F. Bell
A crisp autumn breeze, heavy with the scent of damp leaves and distant woodsmoke, snaked through the park, tugging at the scarves of the three teenagers huddled on a worn bench. Overhead, branches of elm and oak, stripped bare or ablaze in fiery reds, scratched at a sky that bled from pale denim to a bruised violet along the horizon. The air hummed with the faint, far-off rumble of Winnipeg traffic, a mundane counterpoint to the intense, hushed conversation unfolding in the fading light.