Free Lucky You by Carl Hiaasen

fingerprints, footprints, plenty of blood to be typed. JoLayne Lucks said absolutely not, no way, and started cleaning up. Reluctantly Krome helped. There wasn’t much to be done about the gutted piano, or the bullet hole in the wood floor. The blood mopped up with ammonia and water.
    Afterwards, while JoLayne took a shower, Krome buried the dead turtle under a lime tree in the backyard. When he came back inside, she was standing there, bundled in her robe.
    Dripping water. Shredding lettuce into the aquarium.
    “Well, the others seem fine,” she said quietly.
    Krome led her away from the turtles. “What’ve you got against calling the cops?”
    JoLayne pulled free, snatched up a broom. “They wouldn’t believe me.”
    “How could they not? Look in the mirror.”
    “I’m not talking about the beating. I’m talking about the Lotto ticket.”
    “What about it?” Krome said.
    “I’ve got no proof I ever had it. Which makes it damn hard to claim it was stolen.”
    She had a point. Florida’s lottery computer kept track of how many winning tickets were bought and where, but there was no way of identifying the owners. That’s because Lotto numbers were sold over the counter with the beer and cigarets; trying to keep track of customers’ names—hundreds of thousands—would have been impossible. Consequently the lottery bureau had one intractable criterion for claiming the jackpot: possession of the winning ticket. If you didn’t have it, you didn’t get the money—no matter what your excuse. Over the years, once-in-a-lifetime fortunes had been lost to hungry puppies and teething infants and washing machines and toilets and house fires.
    And now robbers.
    Tom Krome was torn between his sympathy for JoLayne Lucks and the realization that he’d stumbled into a pretty good news story. He must have done a poor job of masking his anticipation, because JoLayne said: “I’m begging you not to write about this.”
    “But it’ll flush the bastards out.”
    “And I’ll never, ever get the money. Don’t you see? They’d burn the damn ticket before they’d go to jail. Burn it or bury it.”
    Krome lifted his feet to make way for JoLayne’s fierce, metronomic sweeping.
    “If these guys get spooked,” she went on, “that fourteen-million-dollar stub of paper is garbage. They see a newspaper headline about what they did … well, it’s all over. Same if I go to the police.”
    She probably was right, Krome thought. But wouldn’t the robbers assume JoLayne would report the theft? That’s what most people would do.
    He no longer heard the manic whisk of her sweeping. She was in the kitchen, leaning on the broom in front of the open refrigerator, letting the cool air soothe the cuts and bruises on her face.
    Tom Krome said, “I’ll put some ice in a bag.”
    JoLayne shook her head. The house was silent except for the drone of the aquarium pump and the turtles’ steady munching of lettuce.
    After a few moments, she said: “All right, here it is. They said they’d come back and kill me if I told anyone about the lottery ticket. They said they’d come back and shoot my babies, one at a time. Then me.”
    A chill went down Krome’s arms.
    JoLayne Lucks went on: “They told me to say my boyfriend beat me up. That’s what I’m supposed to tell the doctor! ‘What boyfriend?’ I say. ‘I don’t have a boyfriend.’ And the short one goes, ‘You do now,’ and he punches me in the tits.”
    Suddenly Krome couldn’t breathe. He stumbled out the back door. JoLayne found him on his knees in the tomato patch. She stroked his hair and told him to take it easy. Before long, the crashing in his ears faded away. She brought him a glass of cold juice, and they sat together on an iron bench facing a birdbath.
    In a raw voice, Krome said: “You can identify these guys?”
    “Of course.”
    “They belong in jail.”
    “Tom—”
    “Here’s what you do: Go to the cops and the lottery bureau, and tell them