"Spiders and Fly," by Gary Phillips, in Witnesses for the Dead, edited by Gary Phillips and Gar Anthony Haywood, Soho Press, 2022.
This is the second time Phillips has appeared on this site.
A nice suspense story, told in an interesting manner. We start in media res, to get all fancy, with Cresston running for his life. Then we see how he got into that mess. And then what led to that. After that we return to his desperate chase.
Seems Cresston saw something nobody was supposed to see. A murder. And worse, the killers were cops. Better keep running, pal.
He winds up with a surprising (and surprisingly resourceful) ally. And then the story takes a turn I never expected.
