Short Story: The Dullitch Assassins (1997)

If you could accept that killing people was a necessary part of the job, and that getting your hands dirty generally meant you ended up covered in your own blood as well as other people’s, then you were going places…though - admittedly - via the morgue. The problem with being a standout killer at Crumb Lane was knowing that you were a standout killer among a hundred or so other death-dealers who probably hadn’t had the luck or the opportunity to surpass you… yet. 

Victor Franklin was a standout killer for all the wrong reasons. He’d passed his first exam because Beau Bledling had fallen backwards out of a window, he’d aced his second final because Peacock Legrand couldn’t hold his poison, and he’d scraped through the third with a critical victory over Beth Paison, which had more to do with her gammy leg than his ability to spot a lurking patch of quicksand.  

As far as he was concerned, Victor Franklin had never killed anybody. However, all that was about to change. If Victor didn’t kill someone this evening, there would be no windows, or poisons, or quicksand. There would just be death, and this time…the icy fingers wouldn’t be touching anyone else.