New short story published in Trouble in Tucson

New short story published! My new short story, “Adam Carmona and the Case of the Saguaro Ripper,” has just been published in the Trouble in Tucson anthology.

What’s it about? Thanks for asking!

When Det. Adam Carmona of the Tucson PD arrives at the scene of the Saguaro Ripper’s latest grisly killing, the details look the same as the last 5 murders–until Carmona recognizes the corpse.

Here’s the beginning:

On a bright January morning, Detective Adam Carmona of the Tucson PD exited his unmarked SUV and surveyed the latest scene. Another killing, the sixth in as many months.

“Detective Carmona,” one of the uniforms inside the cordon of tape called. “The vic is—”

Carmona held up a hand and the officer fell silent. She must have been new to working a Carmona crime scene, otherwise she’d have known he liked to approach his scenes fresh, cataloging details uncolored by the observations of others.

He picked at the Band-Aid on his finger and proceeded to catalog: remote desert area, a few hundred yards off a dirt road outside Ironwood Forest. The first two in this string of serial murders had been just inside the city limits, which was how Carmona’d gotten involved. Now he was the head of a joint task force with the Pima County Sheriff’s Department, trying to catch the most prolific serial killer in Tucson history. And failing.

The Trouble in Tucson anthology is being published in conjunction with the Left Coast Crime conference and is available now from Amazon. Go get it and enjoy some murder and mayhem in the desert.

Check out the rest of my published stories here.