Creator's Notes: Here's my first actual story. Well, not the first one I wrote, but the first one I'm posting. I picked it because it has good character stuff for Corr and Lawrence, shows the setting really well, and I won money for writing it. I submitted it as my writing sample to the Southern Illinois University Carbondale Young Writer's Workshop this summer, and won about $250 for it. (Which pretty much repaid us for the cost of workshop tuition.) I've gotten very good feedback on this one.


"St. Louis Misery"

Sam Corriander had been all over America, and to various locations across the world. And he could tell you, hands down, that his hometown of St. Louis had the harshest weather. When it was cold, it was freezing, when it was hot, it was broiling, and when it stormed, it let loose with the fury of the gods.
Right now, it was early August, and the broiling phase was in full swing. A transcendent heat had stricken the city like a disease and Corr couldn’t remember the last time it had dipped below ninety in the waking hours. And, of course, it couldn’t just be hot, no, no, no. This was a St. Louis summer. It had to be humid too. The damp, pressing heat smothered the city like an inescapable straightjacket. Despite the temperatures, the sun was rarely seen. Everything was shrouded in a cloudy, dim haze.
Corr leaned back in his creaky office chair, letting the incessant drone of a desk fan that made more noise than cool air lull him into a near doze. He hadn’t slept well lately; every night when he went to bed, he found the room too hot to sleep. Weariness from lack of rest, and the perpetual sauna his city had become, made the private investigator unusually irritable. After hearing Marke’s strident whining about how the humidity made his hair frizz, Corr sent the assistant away with a stack of financial transfers to look over. Conspiracy didn’t rest in a heat wave.
Corr’s office window was open, in hopes of tempting in a cool breeze. It hadn’t worked so far. His apartment had a better air conditioning system, though not by much. He would have left and gone there, but he felt too lethargic to move right at the moment. Whenever he went outside, the choking heat hit him like a crashing into a brick wall, and his body screamed in protest. So he tried to stay in one place, inside. He supposed that he would have to go home eventually, at least for a change of clothes. His t-shirt had sweat spreading over the back like an ink blot in a psychological test, and earlier he had cut open the knees of his old jeans in a fit of heat-induced frustration.
Lying on his desk, contiguous to the cruddy fan, was Corr’s hat. It was a worn old brown fedora with an off-white band, a hand-me-down from his father. Corr loved this hat more than he loved most women he’d been with. It was his trademark, really. A drawing of the hat appeared on his business logo, and there were many that just knew Sam Corriander as The Man in the Fedora. He’d had to ditch the hat as of late, though. There were no sun rays to block out, and the hat was only one more unnecessary layer in the heat. He also didn’t want the pungent smell of sweat clinging to his beloved accessory. He often carried it with him, though, as a sort of security blanket.
In the smothering heat of his office, Corr thought of his dear friend Leota with envy. She was a doctor, and while she was probably very busy tending to cases of heatstroke and the like, at least she was cool in the hospital. Especially the refrigerated morgue. Only in a heat wave: never had a morgue seemed so inviting.
Corr was just contemplating getting up and going to the water cooler (not that it was particularly cool), when he heard the faint rhythmic stomping of someone climbing up the stairs to his office. A vague memory stirred in his heat-addled brain. Hadn’t Lawrence said he might come by today?
He must’ve. There was a jingle of keys, and Henry Lawrence pushed the door open and walked in. He was a friend and associate of Corr’s, and a cop. This was the man Corr got some of his cases and information from.
Corr sat up in his chair and brushed his hair away from his forehead, sticky with sweat and lined with years of tension. His hair was a dusty brown color, and formed thick and wavy chunks, like short clips of seaweed. The damp from sweat and humidity didn’t help this resemblance.
“Hey, Lawrence.”
He grunted in response. Lawrence didn’t say much, and when he did, it wasn’t very well composed. Man could barely string a sentence together. And he was usually grumpy, irritated by some indeterminate annoyance.
“I see you got some files for me,” Corr said, noting the folders the cop carried under his arm, limp from the humidity. He was awake now, alert. He had a case to solve.
“Yep,” Lawrence said. He sat down in a wooden folding chair, and slid the folders across the desk to Corr.
The PI flipped through them, muttering as he read.
“String of big-ticket burglaries… Lots of furniture… Housewares, appliances, bulky electronics…”
“Not a murder,” Lawrence told him.
“Yeah, I see that.”
“You done lotta murders lately. Thought you’d like a break. And, you know, dead bodies smell more in the hot.”
“Well, thanks for thinking of me, Lawrence.”
He shrugged apathetically.
Corr read through the files more thoroughly, while Lawrence called and checked in with his wife. Her name was Sherry, but most of the time, Lawrence just referred to her as “wife”. He wasn’t very creative with pet names.
“Uh-huh. Uh-huh. Yeah. I don’t know. Sure. Uh-huh. You too.”
He hung up and Corr questioned him about the cases.
“So, no footage on the security cameras?”
“Nothing useful.”
“Police think it’s all the same guy?”
“Probably. Couple fingerprints that… uh, aren’t total.”
“Partial fingerprints.”
“Yeah.”
Corr paused, and thought.
“Why’d you give this case to me?”
“Cops needed other places. Stop riots for the heat, looting.”
“I see.”
“You take it, right?”
“Yeah, I’ll take it. The items are most likely being sold on a black market,” Corr theorized. “Even thieves need bedroom sets.”
“Guess so.”
“This guy’s stealing refrigerators, easy chairs… Must take a lot of manpower to move all of that. And why do all that heavy lifting in the middle of a heat wave?”
Lawrence shifted uncomfortably in the warm office.
“Dunno, Corr. That’s what you’re for. Figure it out. Solve the case.”
Glancing out the window, to the sweltering city below, his city, Corr smiled grimly.
“Yeah, that’s my job.”


I'm not totally sure where that's going, but I want to develop it into a full episode.

See all those heatwave descriptions? I wrote this thing in February. Just goes to show you how strong and effective the weather is here.