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    The Last Laugh
    The Last Laugh
    The Last Laugh
    Ebook37 pages36 minutes

    The Last Laugh

    By Justin Cawthorne

    ()

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    About this ebook

    Detective Dirk Nickel couldn't care less about clowns, but his is a city without laughs where clowns are a dying breed.
    Then, one day Nickel is framed - branded a 'chuckler' - and the heat is on.
    Can Nickel uncover who framed him in time, maybe even bring down the city-wide conspiracy against clowns in the bargain... or will the last laugh be on him?

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherJustin Cawthorne
    Release dateFeb 28, 2011
    ISBN9781458149572
    The Last Laugh
    Author

    Justin Cawthorne

    Justin Cawthorne is an author of tales that explore new ways to draw terror from both the known and unknown. In partnership with the "Tales To Terrify" podcast, Justin Cawthorne was a recipient of the 2016 Parsec Award for Best Speculative Fiction Story: Small Cast (Short Form), awarded for the adaptation of his short story "Graves". He has a short story, "Colder Still" appearing in the anthology Shadows & Teeth Volume 2, published by Darkwater Syndicate.

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      Book preview

      The Last Laugh - Justin Cawthorne

      The Last Laugh

      Justin Cawthorne

      Smashwords Edition

      Copyright 2011 Justin Cawthorne

      Discover other titles by Justin Cawthorne at Smashwords.com

      for my lovely wife – whose mortal fear of clowns probably inspired me to write this

      and with thanks to my namesake, Justin Zajac, whose awesome art adorns the cover

      Smashwords Edition, License Notes

      Thank you for downloading this free ebook. You are welcome to share it with your friends. This book may be reproduced, copied and distributed for non-commercial purposes, provided the book remains in its complete original form. If you enjoyed this book, please return to Smashwords.com to discover other works by this author. Thank you for your support.

      The Last Laugh

      by Justin Cawthorne

      It was a dark and stormy night.

      It was the kind of night where the last thing you wanted to do was sit in a drafty canvas room with a big, dumb grin on your face, but somewhere out there people were doing exactly that. I had no bones about how people decided to waste their lives, but the law was the law and if people didn’t stand by that it was my job to stick it to them.

      The Chevy skidded on the slick tarmac, I didn’t even skip a beat. The city was going to hell anyway: what did it matter if I ended up face down in the gutter, or with some joker’s bullet in my gut? That’s why I was good at my job: I didn’t care either way.

      The rest of the boys were as jittery as lawyers on moonshine. Tonight's job had come straight from DA Mellinsky and everyone wanted their extra inch of the greasy pole. Story went that some beat cop had found greasepaint down on 57th, now Chief MacLane wanted to make out that Mellinsky’s personal business was the district’s personal business too. Whichever cop brought in this bunch of clowns was going to get his future handed to him on a silver plate.

      Next to me Rudi was having some trouble sitting still; if he didn't get the hang of it soon he was going to have to introduce his nose to my fist. I didn’t want it to come to that, it would mess up the car. More than that it would get me on Higgin’s bad side – not that I wasn't already on his bad side but I figured there was still plenty of room further down. I didn’t mind sitting at the bottom of everyone’s list, but the nights were getting to me: I wasn’t even sure if the sun came out anymore. If I didn’t score some bonus points with MacLane soon I’d have to visit the library to remind myself what daylight looked like.

      And I hated the library.

      Rudi, I said, busting in on his runaway train of thought. You don’t start taking it easy in the next sixty seconds they’re gonna to have to shoot you twice.

      "Yeah? Twice? That’s a

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