title: Out of the Alley and Other Stories [Full Color]
author: Mark E. Koltko-Rivera
description: Mark Koltko-Rivera was born and raised in the East Village, on the Lower East Side of Manhattan. He has lived for substantial periods of time in Hiroshima, the suburbs of Philadelphia, inner-city Newark (NJ), and Central Florida; he currently lives in New York City. <br /><br /> At various times in his life, Koltko-Rivera has worked as a janitor, hardware store stock clerk, security officer, LDS (Mormon) missionary, systems analyst, director of marketing, psychotherapist, college and graduate school instructor, and as a director of research. For a brief period as a pre-teen, he worked unknowingly as a numbers runner. <br /><br /> He has appeared as an expert in documentaries broadcast on the <i>Discovery</i> and <i>History</i> channels, and has appeared in episodes of the online TV series, "Math Warriors." He is a graduate of Haverford College, Fordham University, and New York University. <br /><br /> His fiction has appeared in several online literary magazines. Three other stories of his appear as interlocking narratives, all encrypted, in <i>Cracking Codes and Cryptograms for Dummies</i> (co-authored with Denise Sutherland; Wiley, 2010). <br /><br /> Koltko-Rivera is at work on a variety of literary projects, fiction, and nonfiction, including works for the stage and screen. Readers may learn more about these projects at the authors website: www.markkoltko-rivera.com . <br /><br /> He can be found at the Mark Koltko-Rivera, Writer page on Facebook. <br /><br /> His Twitter feed is available at @MarkKoltkoRiver . <br /><br /> The author receives e-mail at: authorMEKR@yahoo.com .
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  ## Hangman
  
  
  ## Faye Kellerman
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  For Jonathan—the complete man, from A to Z  
  And for Lila and Oscar—hugs and kisses
  
  
  
  
  
  ## Contents
  
  
  
  
  
  [Chapter One](005-chapter01.html#chapter01)
  
  
  THE PICTURES HAD photographed her swollen, battered, and bruised—a puffy…
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  [Chapter Two](006-chapter02.html#chapter02)
  
  
  STRAIGHT OUT OF a Diego Rivera painting, he showed up…
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  [Chapter Three](007-chapter03.html#chapter03)
  
  
  AS LONG AS Decker was in the city—about twenty miles…
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  [Chapter Four](008-chapter04.html#chapter04)
  
  
  THE CAR WAS quiet on the way home, the boy…
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  [Chapter Five](009-chapter05.html#chapter05)
  
  
  AT TWO IN the morning, the house was dark and…
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  [Chapter Six](010-chapter06.html#chapter06)
  
  
  BY THE TIME Decker broke for lunch, he had done…
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  [Chapter Seven](011-chapter07.html#chapter07)
  
  
  THE BACK PASSENGER door to the cruiser was open, a…
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  [Chapter Eight](012-chapter08.html#chapter08)
  
  
  POSITIVELY