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EQMM, June 2012
by Dell Magazine Authors
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Mystery/Crime

Dell Magazines
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Copyright ©2012 by Dell Magazines

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CONTENTS

Black Mask: ONE SOUL AT A TIME by Dana Cameron

Reviews: BLOG BYTES by Bill Crider

Novelette: THE RITUAL OF MR. TARPLEE by Simon Brett

Novelette: JENNY'S GHOST by David Dean

Passport to Crime: ANNETTE WRITES A BALLADE by Judith Merchant

Novelette: TUNNEL VISION by Gene Breaznell

Reviews: THE JURY BOX by Steve Steinbock

Novelette: MR. MONK AND THE TALKING CAR by Lee Goldberg

Department of First Stories: WALKING OUT by Judith L. Shadford

Novelette: TORT by Ken Bruen

Novelette: THE RETURN OF THE MUMMY by Steven Saylor

Novelette: ONE ANGRY JULIUS KATZ AND ELEVEN BEFUDDLED JURORS by Dave Zeltserman

* * * *

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Black Mask: ONE SOUL AT A TIME
by Dana Cameron

We begin this issue with a tale on the dark side, by this year's Malice Domestic toastmaster, Dana Cameron. Her role at the Malice convention—which honors traditional mysteries—grew out of her own fiction in the classical vein, of which we'll have an example later this year: a story from her archaeologist Emma Fielding series. Readers who want to experience the Massachusetts writer's full range won't want to miss the series that brought her Anthony and Macavity awards last year, either: the “Fangborn” urban fantasy stories.

It was one line in the obituary that sent me driving north. That, and the thought of a wheelchair overturned on the bluff above a dark river.

I don't usually read obituaries. This one popped up in my e-mail, from a sender I didn't recognize. The only other things in the message were an article describing Naomi Deagan's career and an address, a lawyer's office in Portland, Maine. Ordinarily, I would have deleted an e-mail from an unknown sender, or, if it wasn't recognizably spam, hunted down the sender to discuss his interest in me. But invoking the name Naomi Deagan compelled me, as surely as the sun goes down and gravity sucks.

I called my manager and asked him to fill in for me at the bar for a few days. Then I called my boyfriend Joe and asked him to look after my dog while I was out of town. These three new responsibilities—"responsibilities” sounded better than “encumbrances"—I was learning to live with certainly did complicate life. It's hard, trying to balance personal connections with self-preservation.

Joe asked if he should come with me. As a testament to him, I thought about it, for nearly ten seconds. I finally said no. This was on me.

If Ms. Deagan couldn't go to the police herself, it wasn't for me to bring in strangers.

It took me most of the next day to make the drive from Maryland to Portland. I made good time, but not conspicuously good time. We don't like the “c word” in my circles, and I couldn't afford any kind of official attention, not since I'd left my previous job under a cloud.

The article said Naomi's death was an accident, that she'd wheeled herself too close to the edge of her property, and had apparently fallen into the river when she'd attempted to stand. The tone of the article suggested bad luck and pride on her part, which was a polite way to hint at suicide. Her body had been broken, tumbled around by the water, and trapped among the craggy rocks when the tide went out.

If she hadn't died on impact . . .

I turned that thought off.

The last time I'd seen Naomi Deagan was about five years ago, when she'd visited D.C. Before her retirement, she'd been a professor of anthropology at a tony eastern college, and I'd been a student in several of her classes. I thought a lot about what I'd learned from her. She emphasized, over and over, how the world could be changed one soul at a time. One person could make a difference with the right choice, the correct action. She'd lit many candles against the darkness in her time. Hearing her, I had trusted her at a vulnerable moment in my life.

Caught in an interminable traffic jam in Connecticut, I caught myself whistling under my breath. I'd missed being on my own, a solitary goal ahead of me. I liked the bar well enough, but this was familiar and comfortable. No one but me to worry about.

Thanks to that snarl on I-95, I didn't make it to the Portland lawyer's office before closing. I found dinner at a small joint on Congress Street and a cheap room nearby. I was lucky; it was fall, but after the peak of leaf-peeping.

When I showed up at the lawyer's building the next morning, I was shown to an office. Alison Spector was in her mid forties, her pale blond hair short and slicked back. She worked at a keyboard but turned off the monitor when I entered. The room and her suit were modern, almost to the point of severity: hard lines, sharp angles, stark contrasts in black and white. Two things added color to the office: the rows of leather-bound law books and her desk. The desk was old, a mahogany monster from the nineteenth century. There was a story there, that piece of history in this museum of modern art.

When she turned to me, her blue-gray eyes were so arresting I at first thought they might have been the result of contacts or a medical condition. There was ice behind those eyes that put me on alert, the kind of ancient, glacial ice that cracked continents and drove humanity to the margins. In this, she reminded me of my former employer.

“How can I help you, Jayne?”

It was one of my names, anyway.

Ms. Spector's voice was carefully modulated, but her polite words lacked warmth or concern; they were just the quickest way to get me to tell my story. She was cold, she was hard, and she was . . . odd. Part of it was the stillness in which she held herself. She didn't offer a hand, she didn't smile when I came in, none of the usual social niceties. Regular people move, fidget, have tells.

Ms. Spector gave me the creeps, and I don't creep easy. But the name that summoned me was also a password to me. I should trust this woman.

“I received an e-mail,” I said. “With Naomi Deagan's obituary and this address.”

“And what does that mean to you?”

I paused. She showed no surprise that a stranger had appeared to ask about an e-mail. “There's an error. ‘Last of seven sisters.’ She was an only child. She talked about it when she discussed family structures in class.”

A slight nod. That was the right answer, and I was the correct recipient. I saw the lawyer relax, ever so slightly.

“I'm sorry she's passed, but I haven't seen her in years. Why am I here?”

“To receive this.” Ms. Spector reached into a drawer and removed an envelope. “I don't know what's in it. Occasionally, Naomi would come in and exchange one envelope for another.”

She paused, and watched as I disappeared the envelope into my messenger bag. The envelope was heavy; something other than paper was inside. A key, maybe.

“I don't believe her death was an accident. I saw her the day before she died. She was in the wheelchair, but looking forward to rehab and walking again. She had her cane with her as a reminder of her goal—can you describe that cane to me?”

“She always had it with her. Dark wood, polished ebony, maybe. The end was sheathed in brass.”

She nodded.

“Why didn't you investigate if you thought she was killed?” I asked.

Her pale lips compressed, fading to near invisibility. “There was no evidence for anything else. But you knew her, so you know as often as she rallied the campus to protest the war or started fund-raising for a local shelter, she'd look into things . . . other people wouldn't have dared to. At those times, she'd come in and leave instructions of what to do . . . if. There was a list of names, in rotation, one every week. I had instructions to send that e-mail to one of those names if she didn't show up the next week or if I thought there was something wrong about her death. I assume that's why she wanted you. To investigate.”

I didn't say anything. I didn't want to speculate about what this woman knew about me, and my place on that rotating list.

“Since she trusted you so, you may know what she thought you could do. I don't. I'd prefer to keep it that way. I'd prefer you keep as low profile as possible, but if you can't, please let me know.”

She slid a card across the desk. It didn't match the ones on the receptionist's desk. No firm or address, just her name and number. “When you leave Naomi's house, please let me know. I'll take things from there.”

“When I leave her house?”

“Stay there, while you're here. Read what's in the envelope. Decide. Call me after . . . before you leave town.”

There was something about her manner now, not quite a crack in her perfect self-control. She wanted something badly, and if she didn't get it, it would be the worse for someone.

She knew Naomi Deagan, I guessed. “I really am sorry to hear about her death.” I thought carefully before I spoke next. “She was . . . an extraordinary person. She showed up at exactly the right time in my life.”

Shortly before I should have graduated, my parents were killed. I was about to get myself into a world of trouble doing something about it, when on impulse, I stopped by her office to say goodbye. The advice she gave me that day saved my life. It also put me on the road to my first career, one I loved and was good at. It was possible that in that hour, she made me.

“Many people could say the same thing,” Spector said. She spent the next moment choosing what she would say. I doubted she would tell me what she owed Naomi, but I was curious.

“You know she never would have fallen,” she said finally. “She never would have been able to wheel herself off the path, so close to the edge. And if she'd decided it was her time, she wouldn't have chosen the river. You know this was no accident; she wasn't careless or silly.”

“I do.”

“Good. Sort it out. Make it right.”

I nodded. I don't take orders anymore, except for pitchers of beer. But this order came direct from Naomi Deagan.

* * * *

I pulled up to the house, killed the engine, and opened the envelope. There was a key, as I'd expected, and alarm codes. I let myself in and looked around. I didn't know the place, and had never been here, but it reminded me of her office, when I'd first met her, twelve or so years ago. Photos everywhere. A chronology of her life in joyful disorder, memories treasured but not smothering. She hadn't always been an academic; she'd said after the U.S. Army had shown her the world in war, she needed to get to know it in peace. Naomi in army dress uniform; Naomi as a graduate student in anthropology, studying women's roles in many cultures; Naomi and her students abroad and at Wellesley. She'd always had a keen eye and a profound sense of justice, saying that when cultures created ways for women to act outside the law, it was often because they were beneath the law's notice.

After a long time with the photos, I examined the rest of the envelope's contents. There were several typed sheets, including a list of three men's names, with addresses. A summary paragraph for each of them.

She'd learned from whispered rumors and her own investigations the men had been preying on the migrant-worker community that went through Maine every year, raking blueberries, harvesting broccoli, picking apples. The men had been kidnapping young women and selling them, never more than one or two, but year after year. The migrant workers had little or no legal standing, perhaps not even the language to explain that their daughters and sisters hadn't just “gone on to the next farm.”

Three men, three names. One had the farm and orchard and the connections with the migrant community. One ran the gas station on the edge of town and knew the comings and goings of everyone around. And with the last, I suddenly understood Naomi's circumspection and my role here: The last was the chief of police, who was diverting complaints from the victims’ families with lies or outright aggression.

One of these men had probably killed Naomi, but they were all guilty. As Ms. Spector had said, I had to make it right.

Naomi wouldn't have left this information behind if she could have gone through official channels. Not with the police chief involved. I couldn't go through official channels, either, not after my last, career-limiting dispute with my boss. The one with eyes like Spector's, the one who now believed I was dead.

But Naomi wouldn't have gone after them or left this for me if each of these men hadn't earned himself a bullet. And I owed her everything.

In the kitchen, I ran the tap for a while, waited for the water to get cold. I drank several glasses while I thought.

I only had a few days. The less time I spent up here, the fewer traces I'd leave. I had to fly under the radar to honor the last request of a dead woman.

The next day, I changed my appearance. I was going real-estate hunting, and needed to look the part. A digital camera, a prissy little notebook, a barn coat, and sensible shoes. I looked like any other tourist from “away” trying to dress like a local.

I saw the police car outside the coffee shop in the center of town, and pulled up behind it. Feeding the meter, I could see in through the window. Chief of Police Bill Grafton was greeted by everyone who came in, but he sat by himself. Someone who liked the badge and the gun, but didn't mix with civilians, oil on top of water.

I sat down with the real-estate section of the Portland Press-Herald in front of me, and began to listen as I circled mnemonics:

Privacy—the distance between him and everyone else was significant. Spacious, with a large back deck—he was a big guy, mostly going to fat. Fixer-upper, needs some cosmetic work—he had a bad scratch on his cheek that looked a little infected, and he had dandruff. Gas and oil—well, he wasn't too careful about his hygiene or what he ordered to eat. It gave me a good picture of who he was, of how he might react.

When he got up to leave, the waitress glared venomously after him. He hadn't paid, much less left a tip.

* * * *

I drove out to the gas station next. My map was all circled and covered with scribbles; there was a look of pretty confusion on my face. The attendant was a young guy, eager to help, but the name on his shirt didn't match the name on my list. It was only when I asked about an entirely fictitious house, recommended by an entirely fictitious friend, that he called the older guy, the owner, who'd lived here all his life. His was the right name—Hadlock—and I kept my smile genuine as he set me straight. He had a grizzled crew cut; he was short and stocky, built like a two-by-four and just as hard. Grease was embedded in his nails and calloused hands. I tried not to stare at the cast on his left leg, the bruises upside his cheek, and his cut lip. The marks were exactly as though he'd been struck with a narrow stick, perhaps a polished cane shod in brass.

He directed me away from the road that was my next objective. He explained that property was owned by Ben Brody, who wasn't planning on selling. I must mean another road? Closer to the edge of town?

I smiled, thanked him, then paid for my gas with cash, inside his office. I asked for the key to the ladies’ room, before my next stop.

The Brody farm was off the beaten path. For this one, I took a much more elliptical approach, parking behind the farm and hiking in along a dirt fire road. No sense traipsing through the woods unless I had to, not during hunting season. I did a loop or two, with my birding glasses and notebook, and got the lay of the land. I missed Vera, my dog; she would have loved this kind of thing. Remembering Vera reminded me of Joe; I was surprised I missed him so much. That worried me. Other people complicate things.

I saw two men, one younger, one older; father and son, a couple of string beans in worn-out coveralls. Brody Junior was unloading a load of fertilizer and boxes of Coleman fuel from several camping supply stores. They might be legitimately farming and planning on cooking outdoors, but with those ingredients, in those quantities, it suggested a sideline in meth production in addition to human trafficking. That reassured me about my objectives. They moved the materials to a shed away from the house. They had that much good sense, anyway; meth labs are dangerously volatile. I got a look inside the shed and shuddered. Stacks of ingredients—precursors, reagents, solvents, and catalysts in every home-grown form—lined the walls.

The old man, I could handle. I didn't like the look of Junior. He had a telltale case of acne unusual in someone in his late twenties. He shouted twice at his father and he never stopped fidgeting the whole time they worked.

* * * *

After two days of observation, I was ready. Naomi's notes told me I was too late to save the girls, who were shipped out last week, just as the rest of the workers left for the next orchard. I could, however, prevent these guys from ever doing something like this again.

My plan had to unfold inside one day. Even if I made the hits look like accidents, the men I was going after were probably paranoid enough to go to ground if they became suspicious. I certainly didn't want them bringing in reinforcements.

I took out a map, studied the roads. The timing was all-important—when is it not?—especially since I couldn't afford to be recognized. Especially since I was about to kill at least three men, including a lawman.

That decided me: the uncivil police chief first. Grafton was most likely the leader, the one to divert inquiry and fix complaints. In any case, I didn't want him warning the others or involving outside law enforcement. I wanted things as confused as possible when I went after the others.

Next the Brodys; the remoteness of their property would help. Then the gas-station owner, Hadlock, on my way out of town, with the Feds on the way.

I considered, for a moment, leaving the government out of it. I would have removed the players; why involve anyone else? If they investigated, they might make it harder for the next guys who tried this—and there would always be next guys. But if they clamped down here, maybe the next guys would get smarter, like a bug developing resistance to antibiotics?

Finally, I decided I wanted an official exploration of Naomi Deagan's death. That seemed only right. She deserved recognition on a grander scale than an old woman falling, even if they didn't know the true reason for her involvement.

I'd shape the job to look like it was the guys who bought the girls. If the FBI found them and took them down, so much the better. I'd need a different vehicle, and a gun that was not my preferred SIG.

I worked out the timing and sat back, looking for holes. I liked the rhythm I'd come up with: fast, slow, fast, gone.

* * * *

The next day, I waited until dinnertime, about six-thirty, when the shadows lengthened. Things were in a state of flux, people were tired and less likely to notice anything that didn't impede their trek home. I ditched the tourist look and wore dark clothing. I left my truck at the airport and rented a big SUV. I'd ditch that, get my car, and get out at the end of the job.

Chief Grafton lived in a modest, quiet neighborhood, but his house was set farthest from the road. Something struck me as wrong now, the way nothing had during my reconnaissance. It wasn't cameras or surveillance, and I could see at least three ways to get out of here. Something else was wrong. I didn't know why, but I couldn't dismiss it. I also couldn't wait.

I walked up, rang the bell. Grafton answered, looking tired and annoyed, as I pretended to be rummaging in my messenger bag.

“Yeah?” he said, wiping his mouth.

“Yeah.” I pulled a Glock with a suppressor from behind the flap of my messenger bag. Two shots, one in the throat, the second in the head.

He fell back, inside the house. I pulled the door shut, got into the car, and drove away. All quick and clean, taking less than two minutes.

I was still unable to scratch the itch of concern I had.

* * * *

At the Brody farm, I parked on the fire road, which didn't seem to see much use. I crept up to the edge of the yard, my bad feeling worsening with every step.

I had so wanted to find them both in the lab, where it would be easy to start an awful fire. They weren't cooperating by working on a truck behind the house.

The bad feeling in the pit of my stomach continued to plague me and suddenly, in a cold sweat, I realized what it was.

So far, I'd seen nothing that suggested any of them was responsible for Naomi's death. Was it possible she was wrong? More catastrophically, was the lawyer setting me up? Impossible. Even if she'd found my contact information, she couldn't know who I am—or who I was.

I had to confirm everything now.

Junior went into the house, so I ran to the far side of my cover, then scuttled out. By the time Ben looked up, I'd spun him around, lost his socket wrench, and put the Glock to his chin.

“Tell me how Naomi Deagan died,” I said.

“What the hell are you—?” Confusion mingled with fear.

“Naomi Deagan, the old lady in the wheelchair. Talk!”

“I don't know wha—” His eyes went wide, then flicked past me.

I glanced back, tightening my hold on Ben. Junior was standing at the edge of the yard, a shotgun in his hands. He was beet red, which did nothing to help his skin problem. He didn't say a word.

A silent tweaker is a paranoid tweaker. A paranoid tweaker is a dangerous thing.

He raised the gun.

Ben shoved hard, and broke free. His hand dipped to his boot, and he pulled out a knife with a blade like a scythe.

Ben was closer, the more immediate danger.

I shot him, knowing that I wouldn't get the answers now. He went down, but not out, screaming his head off and clutching his chest.

I dove behind the truck and aimed, firing three shots at Junior before he could get any closer.

Even using an unfamiliar weapon, I was faster and a better shot. The shotgun went off, but my bullets found their way to his chest.

He tagged me too, I realized. Searing pain radiated through my left shoulder. Blood welled and soaked my shirt.

No time for that. I looked under the car, past the wheel well.

Ben was gone.

A lurch and a creak. He had opened the truck's door and was reaching into the glove compartment.

No time to think. I raised the Glock and put two more bullets into Ben.

Definitely no answers from him now.

Cursing, I did what I could to minimize the exposure. I dragged both bodies into the house. The chickens scattered and squawked as I pulled the bodies past, but returned to peck at the bloody path I left. Let them help cover my tracks, I thought, as I scuffed out the worst of it.

I was sweating, cold, and shaking by the time I left, taking the SUV down the fire road past the abandoned orchard. Ben hadn't heard of Naomi, or he was a much better actor than I thought. Either I'd just killed an honest lawman and two not-so-upstanding citizens for no good reason, or I had to trust Naomi and finish the job. I thought while I patched up my shoulder as best I could.

I felt like my ass was swinging out over a canyon, my hands slipping from a breaking branch. I'd had second thoughts on the job before, and had always been able to figure out why—my instincts had led me the right way every time. This felt random, and I'm allergic to random. Getting shot didn't help.

Visit the gas station? Or hit the road south and try to find a shrink who could fix a reforming covert operative with a bad case of the shakes?

I finally decided there was too much going on here to be a setup, too many disconnected connections no one else could make. I knew Naomi had done things in her life, taken chances, gone off the reservation, to help people. I had to assume that's what I was doing here now. I didn't believe her death was an accident, and neither did Alison Spector. Leaving her last wish unfulfilled was unacceptable, so I drove to the gas station.

I wasn't a hundred percent convinced, but any plan was better than nothing.

I parked the car on the road past the gas station, and walked back. It had been full dark for some time now, and the place was lit but deserted.

I watched, waiting for Hadlock. A moment later, he limped over to the soda machine outside, the cast on his leg a little grimier after another day's work. You had to be pretty bad off, these days, to get the full plaster cast and not one of the Velcro models. It hurt, watching him take each step.

I waited until he waved a credit card—stolen?—and heard the rattle and thunk as a soda can fell.

The cast was still new, and the young guy who'd helped him during the day was gone. I knew what was coming and I waited for my moment.

After realizing he couldn't just bend over, he struggled to stick his bad leg out and gradually lowered himself down until he could reach the soda.

I took three quick steps, planted it, and slammed my boot up and into his crotch.

Before he could fall, I grabbed him by the back of the pants and the collar and slammed his head into the machine.

I went through his pockets, checked his phone.

Nothing.

I pocketed the phone and dragged him inside. I shut off the outside lights, and all but a desk light inside. I took the soda, shook it up, and sprayed it on his face. He came to, sputtering, clutching himself.

“Tell me about Naomi Deagan.”

He moaned. “Go screw yourself. Who sent you?”

“She did.”

“Bullshit. When Santoro catches hold of you, you'll wish he threw you into the river—”

Interesting, Santoro being the name of an up-and-coming mobster in New Jersey. More interesting, he was telling me I was on the right path. The knot in my stomach loosened.

He never stopped the threats, winding up with “—do yourself a favor and run now, bitch.”

“How did she find out? Who killed her?”

“You can suck my—”

I've had broken bones before. They're incredibly painful. I stepped on the foot of his broken leg, bending the ankle inward.

He screamed.

I waited until he could breathe again, then raised my foot again. He started talking.

“She heard, from someone, I don't know. Maybe down at the health clinic. Then she was nosing around down the Brody farm—nobody in their right mind would try to buy eggs from them! Ben Junior and I went to her house to find out what she knew, and she started in with that damned stick of hers.”

I knew where the story was going next. He saw the look on my face, so he shut up.

“I got a call to make,” I said.

I went to his land line, called the number for the FBI in Portland. As I waited for the connection, I went through his desk, just out of habit. I had to decide whether to let him spend the rest of his life in prison or kill him now. As my gut eased, I realized my mistake was in thinking Chief Grafton was the leader. It was Hadlock, the guy who saw everything—including opportunity—from his desk at the gas station. With the chief in his pocket, he didn't have anything to fear, except an old lady who'd had the guts and strength to fight back, to break his leg with her cane.

I gave the special agent who answered the address of the farm and said, “It's about the kidnapped migrant workers. Get someone—anyone—up there now. Hurry!” I hung up. The last thing on the desk was a pile of receipts and a desk calendar. Nothing interesting in the receipts; they all looked legit.

I put them back down. “When the cops find you, they'll think it was a holdup gone waaay wrong. Or a serial killer on the loose—which I may be, though I like to think I'm on the right side. Or maybe Santoro and his boys returned after last week because something didn't—”

It was the calendar that stopped me.

There was a circle around today's date. Just a circle, with an arrow from last Friday, and a time: nine o'clock.

Last Friday was when the girls were supposed to have been moved.

I knelt down on his bad leg. “They didn't come for the girls last week, did they? Where are they?”

“They'll be gone in an hour,” was all he said, blood oozing around his teeth. It was eight forty-five now. “You can't get to them before Santoro does.”

I didn't care if he was lying or not. “I won't bother. I assumed they were gone when I got here. In my mind, they're already dead.”

But I must have looked pretty stupid trying to figure out what to do, because he said, “The old lady caught me a couple times with that frigging stick of hers. But I knocked her silly, once I got it away from her. Couldn't even close her mouth, couldn't make a noise.”

I ended the conversation then, with a bullet in his left eye. Then I put another in his right, just because he made me so mad. So much for emotional detachment.

Enough of infant displays. I had a choice. Leave the girls to short lives of violence and abuse, and get out of Dodge. Or go back and try to get them out, risking exposure both to the Feds and to the guys from New Jersey.

It was no choice; I hadn't lied to Hadlock. I got in the car and drove, finding the main road. Those girls were already dead.

I believed that right up until I got to the next exit. I cursed, and pulled off, heading back for the farm. This time, I opened up and drove like fury. The odds were much more likely I'd end up dead, but Naomi wouldn't have left them behind so I couldn't either.

At least I'd already repaid her for what she'd done for me.

This was extra credit, bonus points. Points for style.

* * * *

I did the math as I drove. My anonymous tip meant the Feds would arrive, in who knew what numbers, soon. Santoro's men would be here even sooner. Fifteen minutes to get back to the farm, if I didn't bust an axle going down the dirt fire road. Thirty minutes to search the house, the barn, and the meth shed. Ten minutes to free the prisoners and scatter them into the woods. Ten minutes to get well clear.

Which left me five minutes short. And now, not only were the women at stake, I had ensured the Feds would be there at the same time as the NJ OC. I hoped the Feds came loaded for bear. Lots of cranked-up, well-armed bear.

It was the clinical definition of a goat rodeo. I couldn't decide if Naomi Deagan was watching, and whether she'd be laughing or scowling. Didn't matter, so long as she put in a good word for me now, trusting that I was doing my best.

I thought about the women and put my foot down.

I pulled up to the back of the farmhouse in twelve minutes, parking on the fire road. Inside the house, I stepped over Bob and Junior, both where I'd left them.

Nothing but spiders in the attic, rats in the basement, and the filth of a long closed-up house inhabited by two drug manufacturers.

I went to the shed where Farmer Brody and his tweaked-out son had the lab. I hadn't seen any trace of the women inside, earlier. There was no foundation and therefore no basement here.

I was two minutes behind my self-imposed schedule when I checked the barn. It was huge, and had at least one floor and a hayloft. I found a switch inside the door, and dull yellow light revealed chaos. A mass of rusted-out antique equipment—including most of a 1940s tractor—on both sides. I could barely get through to the stairs to the loft, so it was a safe bet no one else could either. I looked around frantically; most of the loft was partitioned, and I needed to see what was in those spaces.

I was raised on a farm, a long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away. Naomi Deagan's death and my obligation to her memory were crowding my mind. I forced myself to slow down, and almost immediately saw a ladder leading to the loft. I clambered up and found more equipment, dead pigeons, and several bales of weed, probably from one of Ben's own fields.

The Feds would love it, but now I was living on borrowed time. There had to be someplace else.

I glanced out the window. The night sky was not yet so dark that I couldn't make out the tops of trees parallel with my line of sight, fifty yards from—

Oh, you idiot.

I turned and slid down the ladder, then stomped on the floor. Nothing. I moved over ten feet, and stomped again. This time, there was definitely a hollow sound. I grabbed an ax from the pile of equipment on my way outside and ran down and around to the back. The trash inside was blocking the trap door to the basement: The barn was built into a hill, the lowest area accessible from the opposite side of the main door.

Bingo. A fresh padlock was on the back door at the lowest level.

No time for finesse and lock-picks in the dark. I raised the ax up and worked on the wood around the lock. The door was in worse repair than the rest of the building, and with a dozen good strokes I managed to remove the wood around the hasp. I pulled the door open, pretty sure my left arm was about to fall off.

Whimpers and whispers; scuttling in the back. I felt for a light switch, then saw three dark-haired women huddled in the back of one of the stalls, their hands up, shielding themselves from the light. A cable ran along the wall, fastened at two ends with more padlocks. The girls were handcuffed to it—police-issue cuffs, same make as the police chief had.

“Move to the right,” I said, gesturing. "A la derecha!"

“Portuguese—we're from Brazil,” one of them said, as they squeezed to the far end of their tether. “I speak English.”

“Good. I'm going to try to—” I brought the ax down on the cable. I was halfway through. I raised it up again. “—get you out of here.” Almost through; my arms were getting tired, my shoulder blazed with pain, and the light sucked. “Anyone hurt?”

Third time was the charm. The cable snapped, and the women were able to unthread themselves.

“No. Tired, and hungry. We can run all night if—”

“Shh!” There were engines outside. I doused the light now. “You get out, run into the woods if you can.” I handed her the phone I'd taken off Hadlock, and then Spector's card. “You call this number. Hide until you see someone else you know you can trust. Anyone else, you run like hell and keep hidden.”

She nodded and pocketed the card, the loose end of her cuff dangling from her wrist. “Where are you going? Come with us!”

I shook my head. “I was never here. Go!”

I made sure they were heading in the right direction before I went around front to buy them some time.

I saw two Escalades pull around back of the house, similar trucks to the one I'd used earlier. Six guys got out. They were the blackhats; they'd obviously been here before, knew where the girls were.

I had to slow them down. I ducked behind the pile of machinery closest to the door and started shooting.

They broke and scattered for cover like roaches, returning fire. It was full dark now, the only light coming from the house and the headlights. My field of view was too limited to keep them all pinned down at once, but I could drive them away from the back and the woods. How I'd get to my own truck was another matter.

I didn't have enough ammo. I hadn't come prepared for a firefight. I should have been on the road south for an hour now, well away from all this. And I certainly wouldn't have chosen this shitty location to make a stand if I'd had more time to prepare.

So much for sentimentality. So much for perceived obligations. Ego, nerves, and imagination were gonna get me killed.

Headlights, pulsing blue lights, and loudspeakers. The cavalry had arrived.

“Federal officers! Put your weapons down!”

Fire drew away from me. This was my last chance to get out of here.

Not through the front door, though. I'd need a hell of a diversion. I thought longingly of RPGs and flash-bangs. The exchange of fire and shouting wasn't enough cover.

I squeezed past the tractor's wreck, found a window I could fit through. Through the filthy glass, I could just make out the meth shed with its blacked-out windows across from me.

I smiled. No need for grenades now.

I emptied out the last of my magazine, and was slapping in another, when the most beautiful explosion erupted outside. I ducked down, felt window glass and splinters fly over my head. I heard screams; someone had been too close by. More shouts, more confusion.

Time to go.

I hauled ass through the window, trying not to breathe the toxic shit that was fueling the explosions and fire. I scrambled along the outside of the barn as another explosion roared through the chaos. I ran for the truck, got in, and drove.

I kept my eyes on the dirt road, but the fire in my rearview only got brighter, the whirling lights on the Feds’ vehicles and sirens adding to the confusion until I turned a corner.

* * * *

I called Attorney Spector the next night. We met at an all-night diner on the interstate, about ten miles from her office.

She slid into the booth, her suit changed for a flannel shirt and jeans. The extreme line of her haircut and those scary eyes were disguised with a Red Sox cap. She didn't want to look like a lawyer and did a good job of it.

“Didn't exactly tell you to dump a load of illegals on my doorstep, did I?” she said once the waitress left. “Okay, only one of them was without papers.”

“Figured you'd have a better idea of how to deal with them,” I said. “Me leaving them by the side of the road didn't seem like the best choice. Who knows I was here?”

“So far, no one. The young women said one of the Brodys left the ax too near the door. As for the other bodies I've read about, they're blaming Santoro and his guys. Still working it out, but so far, there's no sign of you.”

“That's why they pay me the big bucks.”

“I can fix things, should anything come up.”

“You don't need to. I knew what I was getting into.”

“If I can, I will.” She shrugged. “I owed Naomi too.”

Another story one of us wasn't going to share.

“She wasn't one to leave you in the lurch.” I thought about it. “Just how many names were on that list?”

“More than you'd think. Fewer than I'd like.” Spector hesitated, which looked odd on her. “If I find . . . I could use your talents again, may I use that e-mail address?”

“I'm a bartender, now. I don't really—”

“A bartender who could have left those women to die, but didn't.” She sipped her coffee. “Naomi always said it took only one person to make a difference.”

“Yeah, I know, but . . .” Connections complicate things. People complicate things. I had a thousand reasons for telling her to lose my information, but realized I liked Spector's attitude. Even if she spooked me. “Screw it. E-mail, if you think I can help.”

She raised her coffee mug in salute. I shrugged again. I wasn't Naomi, who did good by bringing people together, by adding something to the mix, effecting change with positive measures. If I did good, mine was more of a subtractive process: one soul at a time.

Copyright © 2012 by Dana Cameron.

Black Mask Magazine title, logo and mask device Copyright © 2012 by

Keith Alan Deutsch. Licensed by written permission.

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Reviews: BLOG BYTES
by Bill Crider

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That intrepid pair Peter Enfantino and John Scoleri have perpetrated a number of blogs previously mentioned here. They've described A Thriller A Day, discussed all 49 episodes of The Outer Limits on We Are Controlling Transmission, and delivered commentary on all 120 episodes of Batman. Now they're taking on the complete adventures of Carl Kolchak in the TV series The Night Stalker at a blog called It Couldn't Happen Here (akolchakaday.blogspot.com/). For those of you too young to remember, Kolchak was a reporter (played by Darren McGavin), who found himself involved with all sorts of supernatural creatures, mysteries, and crimes. Besides the episode assessment, there's also some excellent introductory material, by other hands, including discussion of the TV movies that preceded the series.

For those who find werewolves and vampires a bit outre, In Search of the Classic Mystery Novel (classicmystery.wordpress.com/) might be more appealing. Here you're promised “Spoiler Free Reviews of Fair Play Detective Fiction.” That doesn't mean only Golden Age material, as most of the reviews are of current books, including many historical mysteries. There are some other links at the blog you'll want to check out, including one of particular interest to readers of this magazine. It's “a summary page linking to hopefully what will be a complete set of reviews of the Ellery Queen novels.” There's a similar link for Henry Merrivale, as well.

While we're on the subject of classic mysteries, I'd be remiss if I didn't mention Classic Mysteries (www.classicmysteries.net/), which brings you “podcasts and conversations about fine detective stories worth reading and re-reading.” Rex Stout, Elizabeth Ferrars, and Georges Simenon are among the writers discussed recently. There's also a nice review of the short story collection The Duel of Shadows: The Extraordinary Cases of Barnabas Hildreth” by Vincent Cornier. If older novels and stories are some of your favorite things, Classic Mysteries should be a regular stop.

Tim Mayer holes up in Z7's Headquarters (z7hq.blogspot.com/), a blog of eclectic reviews of “pulp, mystery, science fiction, fantasy, crime, and horror novels.” You'll find reviews of books by authors as varied as Jim Thompson, Fredric Brown, Karl Edward Wagner, and Phyllis Paul. If you're occasionally led to read popular fiction outside the crime and mystery field, you're sure to find something of interest here.

Copyright © 2012 by Bill Crider

Bill Crider is the author of The Wild Hog Murders, published by St. Martin's Press.

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Novelette: THE RITUAL OF MR. TARPLEE
by Simon Brett

The Malice Domestic Convention's Lifetime Achievement Award winner for 2012 is Simon Brett, long-time contributor to EQMM and a writer with a devoted following on both sides of the Atlantic. After working as a producer for radio and TV, Simon Brett began writing full-time in 1979. He's created four popular mystery series, the first starring actor Charles Paris, the second the widow Mrs. Pargeter, the third a pair of amateur sleuths from the village of Feathering, and the latest Blotto and Twinks, a pair of detecting aristocrats. His short stories are often stand-alones; we think you'll like this one!

“Mr. Tarplee comes here the same week every year,” said Mrs. Bolitho. “And there's a story goes with that.”

Hayley-Jane waited. She'd been at Penwillan Castle Hotel long enough now to know that Mrs. Bolitho liked to tell her stories at her own pace. Trying to hurry the old woman would only put her off her stroke and make the storytelling even slower in the long run.

After the initial few weeks of sheer panic at having secured her first job and adjusting to the world of work, Hayley-Jane had begun to realise how slowly the time passed. Back then, listening to Mrs. Bolitho's stories while the digits of her watch clicked imperceptibly towards the end of her shift had seemed to be a refinement of the torture, but that stage had passed.

Hayley-Jane had now come to terms with the fact that she had to go to work every day, and that work moved at a different pace from school. Even if she had nothing to do, she couldn't leave the premises of the Penwillan Castle Hotel before the allotted time. Those were the hours she was being paid for, and the “being paid for” part was important. For the first time in her life Hayley-Jane had some money that hadn't been grudgingly handed over by her parents and though she still thought the amount her Mum charged her for rent was way too much, she did like the feeling of the residue nestling safely in her bank account. It wasn't much, but it was hers.

So, having made these mental adjustments, she had concluded that listening to Mrs. Bolitho was preferable to just sitting alone feeling bored in the linen room. It didn't really matter how long the old woman's stories went on, so long as they didn't last beyond home time.

Hayley-Jane had started the job in early September, just about the time she would have gone back to school, except of course she was never going back to school again. She'd started at the Penwillan Castle Hotel on a Monday, less than twenty-four hours after returning from a family holiday in Marbella with her parents and infuriating younger brother Kelvin. She had spent most of the fortnight away lying on a lounger, reading Mills & Boon romances and pretending that the rest of her party were nothing to do with her. If she had any say in the matter, Hayley-Jane would never be going on another family holiday either.

The Cornish summer holiday season was running down by the time she started her job. The families had mostly left because of the beginning of the new school term. There were a few older couples, eking out the autumns of the year and their lives, but every week fewer and fewer bedrooms at the Penwillan Castle Hotel were occupied. This is when the management hoped to switch over to what was importantly referred to as “the conference trade” but, according to Mrs. Bolitho, “the conference trade” never really got started. Though Christmas and the New Year could be busy, till then there wasn't going to be much work to be done. But, she urged Hayley-Jane, never let the management know you haven't got enough to do. Just keep out of their way and, when they did see you, make sure you looked busy. Otherwise there might be talk of “laying people off.”

In the first few weeks Hayley-Jane had spent a lot of her spare time—as she had while she'd been in Marbella—exchanging constant texts with her school friends, the girls obviously, but also with her on/off boyfriend Bazza. After a time, though, she'd stopped, because there wasn't really that much to say. Those like her who'd been lucky enough to get jobs were too busy—or pretending to be too busy—to communicate that much. So the ones who did text back were the unemployed, which meant they just moaned, Bazza in particular.

(Hayley-Jane was very equivocal, so far as Bazza was concerned. She'd liked having him as a boyfriend at school, because he was very fit, for one thing, and also because she'd snaffled him from under the nose of one of her best friends. But as a member of the ranks of the unemployed he was less appealing. All he seemed to really want from her was sex. And though Hayley-Jane didn't really mind sex, she strictly rationed the amount of it she allowed him. Increasingly, she was coming to the conclusion that she could do a lot better than Bazza.

He certainly didn't fit into any Mills & Boon scenario. Like many women addicted to romantic fiction, Hayley-Jane knew the boundaries very well between that and real life. She didn't expect any relationship of her own to match those between the brusque doctors with tragic secrets and the feisty young nurses that she read about. She just enjoyed the abstract idea of a good romance.)

So exchanging texts with former schoolmates was a matter of diminishing returns. There wasn't much to do in Cornwall if you hadn't got any money, and there was only so much reporting of her friends’ daytime-television viewing habits that Hayley-Jane could take. Besides, after a time, other people's moans got depressing. They all ended up saying that there was nothing for young people in Cornwall, that they couldn't wait to get out of Cornwall, and Hayley-Jane wasn't so sure. She appeared to agree with her friends when they moaned on about it, but only for form's sake. Though she was desperate to get away from her parents and the infuriating Kelvin, Hayley-Jane loved the county of her birth. Now if she could afford a nice little flat somewhere a bit classier . . . Penzance, Newlyn, or St. Ives, say . . . well, that wouldn't be too bad, would it? Though somehow Bazza was never going to fit into that kind of scenario, was he? The mental image she nurtured of her “nice little flat” never had room for Bazza in it.

Besides, Hayley-Jane was in no hurry to make any long-term decisions. She'd never rushed into things, and she wasn't about to start now she was settled as a chambermaid at Penwillan Castle Hotel, in its “stunning clifftop location looking out over the famous Pollack's Head rock,” as the brochure and the Web site put it.

Starting the job was also the first time Hayley-Jane had mixed with older women on even vaguely level terms. Of course, her mum had always been around, and there had been the teachers at school, but in both cases they'd really been the enemy. People like Mrs. Bolitho and the other chambermaids and the Penwillan Castle Hotel kitchen staff brought her into a new sense of a female community. There was a bit of “who snogged who” talk like there had been at school, but Hayley-Jane had found herself included in discussions about wider subjects, like marriages, child-rearing, the sexual antics of the guests, and the enduring inadequacy of men. Some of the other staff also enjoyed Mills & Boons, but none of them had any expectation of finding anything of that sort in their own lives. Hayley-Jane enjoyed being part of these intimacies; for perhaps the first time, it made her feel fully grown up. But she never mentioned her relationship with Bazza to the other women. Though they still met for occasional sex, Hayley-Jane was already airbrushing Bazza out of her life.

Mrs. Bolitho was probably the oldest person working at the hotel. She had started off there as a chambermaid straight out of school, just like Hayley-Jane. Perhaps it was for that reason that she took a particular interest in the girl. Or perhaps, as some of the other staff rather waspishly observed, the old woman would take an interest in anyone who was prepared to listen to her.

Though never specified, there was a general understanding that there had been some “sadness” in Mrs. Bolitho's life. She had no children, nor was there ever any mention of a Mr. Bolitho, so maybe that lay at the root of her misfortune. But whatever had gone wrong had gone wrong a long time before, and no one left on the Penwillan Castle Hotel staff had been around when it had happened. Maybe somebody could have explained the “sadness” to Hayley-Jane, but by the time she thought to ask the question she was too much a part of the hotel set-up to be able to do so.

Mrs. Bolitho could remember when the hotel had been “family-run.” She still spoke fondly of “Mr. and Mrs. Jago” and it didn't take long for her to reiterate the opinion that “everything had gone downhill since Mr. Jago died and Mrs. Jago sold up.” The Penwillan Castle Hotel had been bought up by another couple, but they'd come from “the pub business” and “hadn't had the touch.” Thereafter the premises had been sold on to a series of small hotel chains and become “impersonal.” The latest, the ones who were hoping to develop “the conference trade,” had only owned the Penwillan a couple of years and Mrs. Bolitho didn't “hold out much more hope for them” than she had for any of the others.

There was also the unspoken assumption under everything she said about “management” that, even though Mrs. Bolitho only had the status of “housekeeper,” the Penwillan Castle Hotel would be much better run if she were in charge.

Through all the changes of management, the one constant had been Mr. Tarplee booking for the first week in October every year. And Mrs. Bolitho was the only person still at the Penwillan Castle Hotel who knew “the story goes with that.”

When Hayley-Jane first set eyes on Mr. Tarplee, she knew he was in some way different from the other guests. It wasn't just his age, though he was old. But then there were plenty of old people in the hotel. She had got used to seeing parchment-skinned old men and chicken-legged old women stacked up in the sun lounge like redundant furniture. And she had stopped wondering what on earth was the point of their lives. Most of them seemed happy enough with their lot, though Hayley-Jane couldn't imagine why they should be. They didn't have any real conversation, not what she'd call conversation, except for endlessly discussing whether the rock out onto which the sun lounge faced really did look like the head of a pollack (a fish most of them had probably never seen). It seemed unimaginable to Hayley-Jane that she would ever be that age.

So it wasn't just that Mr. Tarplee was old—though Mrs. Bolitho had said that he was a good fifteen years older than she was. And from the jokes the other staff made at her expense, Mrs. Bolitho had to be over sixty . . . well past the age she ought to have retired, according to some. No, it was something else that made Mr. Tarplee stand out. A kind of . . . Hayley-Jane had difficulty in describing it. She'd heard in some old horror film she'd once watched the word “otherness” used, and perhaps that was the nearest she could come to defining Mr. Tarplee's unique quality.

He was always alone, but he didn't have that waft of loneliness that some of the widows and widowers carried around with them like a musty smell. He had a dignity about him, an air of dignified grief. Something romantic. Mr. Tarplee wasn't gregarious, he didn't seek out company, but he was perfectly friendly if anyone addressed him. Hayley-Jane had once found him still in his room when she'd come in to make the bed, and from that moment every time Mr. Tarplee saw her she was rewarded by a smile. Not a lascivious smile, like some of the older men tried on. Mr. Tarplee's smile was shy more than anything else.

(According to Mrs. Bolitho, there were plenty of guests—even the old ones—who were quite capable of “trying it on” with a young chambermaid. Without putting it in so many words, she implied that the experience was not unknown to her herself. She also implied, darkly, that over the years she'd known chambermaids who'd been “up for it” to make “a few bob on the side.” The suggestion was even there that she “wouldn't put it past” one or two of the current staff . . . prompting furious speculation from Hayley-Jane as to which ones she was talking about.)

But there was nothing of that kind about Mr. Tarplee. In a sudden access of information one afternoon in the linen room, Mrs. Bolitho confided to Hayley-Jane that he'd “lost the one great love of his life.” The girl's Mills & Boon-tuned antennae were instantly alerted. Mrs. Bolitho's implication was that this disaster had put Mr. Tarplee off further romantic adventures, but Hayley-Jane had to wait awhile to be vouchsafed the next part of the story.

It was some three or four days later that the two women were once again alone in the linen room. The weather had turned brutal, as it could in October, the wind so wild you could see why every coastline tree cowered away from the sea. Blinding rain swirled around, seeming to attack the Penwillan Castle Hotel from every direction at the same time. From the linen room at the top of the house in what used to be the servants’ quarters, the Pollack's Head, mentioned in the brochure and on the Web site, was invisible. Ancient bored guests in the sun lounge could no longer fill the time with circular discussions as to whether the rock did actually look like the head of the fish it was meant to resemble.

Through the driving rain even the little clifftop shelter that looked out onto the Pollack's Head could only be seen as a hazy outline. When Hayley-Jane walked back along the cliffs to her parents’ house, she crossed behind that little structure. Though it was usually empty by the time her shift finished, she knew that the shelter had at least one regular visitor.

“He won't be out there in this, will he?” she asked.

“Who?” Mrs. Bolitho knew the answer perfectly well. This was just another little necessary detour in her storytelling routine.

“Mr. Tarplee.”

“He'll be there,” the old woman replied histrionically. “He'll be there. Every day of the week he's here Mr. Tarplee sits in that shelter of an afternoon. He won't let a little bit of weather change his routine.”

“Where does he come from?” asked Hayley-Jane.

“America now,” said Mrs. Bolitho. “Before that, here. Ben Tarplee was brought up around here. Penwillan boy he is, born and bred.”

This was the first time the autumn visitor had been given a first name. Hayley-Jane folded the arms of her chambermaid's uniform snugly around herself. She sensed that the old woman was in informative mood, and that she might be in for a Mills & Boon moment. “Did you know him then, Mrs. Bolitho?” she asked.

“Oh, goodness, yes. I've known Ben Tarplee all my life. Though he was older than me. Handsome boy, he was. Good few lasses round here wouldn't have been averse to Ben Tarplee taking an interest in them.” Mrs. Bolitho spoke almost wistfully, hinting that she might have been among that number. To Hayley-Jane it seemed incongruous that a woman of that age could even have memories of sexual interest.

“What did he do? Did he work round here?”

“Oh yes. Mind you, there weren't many jobs in this part of the world, even back then. The mining was long finished, and the fishing . . . well, if you weren't born into one of the fishing families, there wasn't much chance of getting in there. A lot of the young people gave up hope of finding employment down here. Lots of them couldn't wait to get out of Cornwall. . . .”

“Just like they do now,” volunteered Hayley-Jane.

“Yes, well, maybe. . . . Anyway, Ben wasn't like that. He loved Cornwall . . . which is one of the reasons why he always comes back.” There was an obvious cue from Hayley-Jane to expand on that, but she didn't take it, instead going on, “Anyway, Ben was a bright boy, hard-working too, had a lot about him. Very good with taking photographs, he was, developed his own and all . . . that was before all this digital nonsense came in, of course . . . before people had cameras on their digital phones . . . and what a ridiculous idea that was. . . . Who'd ever want to take photographs while they're talking on the phone . . . ?”

Mrs. Bolitho drew a deep breath, stopping herself from embarking on another of her regular rants. “Anyway, another thing young Ben Tarplee had was real green fingers. Good at gardening. That's how he got work at Trevennor House.” Hayley-Jane's expression betrayed her ignorance. “You must know Trevennor House. Well, it was gone by the time you were born, but your parents must have known it.”

“We only moved here from St. Austell when I was twelve.”

“Oh, of course. Then they might not have known it. Well, you know Trevennor Heights . . . ?”

'The holiday flats?”

“Yes. Well, they were built on the site of Trevennor House after . . . well, after things went wrong in Ben Tarplee's life.”

Once again Hayley-Jane was aware she was being played like a fish, with Mrs. Bolitho completely in charge of the pace of her narration. After a carefully judged pause, the old lady took pity. “Trevennor House had been very grand at one stage, been in the Trevennor family for generations. Lots of servants, they used to have. But things got more difficult after the war—Second World War that is I'm talking, Hayley-Jane. In some parts of the country owners of houses like that couldn't find the staff. No problem like that down here—lots of people needing jobs—but old Mr. and Mrs. Trevennor just couldn't afford to employ them. I think they'd lived on investment income and something'd gone wrong there. . . . I don't know. And they didn't want to sell Trevennor House, you know, because it had been in the family so long . . . and then again, property prices were depressed after the war. They probably wouldn't have been able to sell the place even if they'd wanted to.

“Anyway, result of all this was . . . more and more the Trevennors was having to look after themselves . . . or to be more accurate, their daughter Tamsin was having to look after them. She ended up like their cook/housekeeper. Wasn't what she was brought up to, mind, but Tamsin just knuckled down and got on with it like a good ‘un. Only thing she couldn't manage on her own was the garden . . .”

“Which is where Ben Tarplee came in,” suggested Hayley-Jane.

She was rewarded by a peevish tug at the corner of Mrs. Bolitho's mouth, another small telling-off for trying to hurry the story along.

“Yes,” the old woman conceded. “He came to help Tamsin Trevennor with the garden. And it was soon after he started there that tragedy struck.”

Hayley-Jane was too cowed by her recent reprimand to offer another prompt, and a full minute ensued before Mrs. Bolitho spoke again. “Mr. and Mrs. Trevennor had driven up to London, to see some stockbroker or bank manager, I think it was . . . something to sort out their finances, anyway. And they were driving back, and they were only a couple of miles from Trevennor House . . .” The old woman paused for effect once more. “The lanes were narrower then. That new road out of St. Ives wasn't built. And Mr. Trevennor did always drive liked he owned the whole county . . . and of course in the past his ancestors had owned quite a bit of it.

“They met a tractor coming the other way. Tractor driver was shaken and a bit bruised, but those things're built tough. The Trevennors’ car, though . . . head-on impact, crushed like a matchbox. . . . They didn't stand a chance.

“Most of the county came out for the funerals. Though they'd been hard-up in later years, there was still a lot of respect for them. Not much proper aristocracy in Cornwall, of course, but the Trevennors was held in that kind of respect.

“Result was . . . Tamsin's left alone in that big, draughty, expensive old house ... with no company ... except, of course, for young Ben Tarplee. Tamsin was well into her thirties by then, everyone had long before written off the chances of her ever getting hitched . . . and suddenly there's an announcement in the Western Morning Post of her engagement to Ben Tarplee!”

Hayley-Jane hugged herself. The story was getting more Mills & Boon by the minute.

“As you can imagine, that was enough to set the gossip mills running round here. Tamsin Trevennor was . . . well, not to speak ill of the dead, but looks wasn't her strong suit . . . and Ben Tarplee, handsome lad, at least fifteen years her junior . . . A lot of people reckoned he was after her money. She still had a bit, but Trevennor House, even in the state it was in, had to be worth more than the likes of Ben Tarplee was going to make in a lifetime.

“But just when the gossip was getting out of hand, a strange thing happened. Ben let it be known that he'd contacted his fiancée's solicitors and was having an agreement drawn up whereby he would inherit nothing when Tamsin died. But if they had children, everything would go to them.

“Well, that news caused quite a shock round here, as you can imagine. Acquisitive people, the Cornish, not used to folk making grand gestures like Ben Tarplee had just done.

“But, of course, it had the effect he'd wanted. Stopped all the gossip about him being a gold digger stone dead. People came to realise that it must be love, real love drawing Tamsin Trevennor and Ben Tarplee together.” Hayley-Jane almost purred as the old woman went on, “And together they would work to revive the fortunes of Trevennor House, two people who loved Cornwall, joining together to preserve one of the most beautiful estates in the county. And the people who'd started all the gossip—I wasn't among them, I hasten to add, Hayley-Jane . . . well, they all started to look a bit sheepish, I can tell you. . . .

“Anyway, the wedding happened, just over a year it was after Tamsin's parents had been killed. Wasn't such a big turnout as there had been for the funerals—the Great and the Good of Cornwall weren't so impressed by Tamsin Trevennor tying her fortunes to a Penwillan village boy. But it was a happy affair—more relaxed, probably, without all the bloody Great and Good of Cornwall—and the new Mr. and Mrs. Tarplee had planned to spend the week of their honeymoon here in the Penwillan Castle Hotel.

“Lovely weather it was that October . . . still felt like midsummer during the days, though the evenings got chilly . . .” Mrs. Bolitho looked out at the darkening swirls of rain, measuring the contrast. “And there was a kind of happiness about the place. Somehow, after the grim years we'd been through . . . the war, Mr. and Mrs. Trevennor's deaths . . . it was like something new was starting, new hope perhaps . . . ?

“But of course that hope wasn't destined to last very long . . .”

Hayley-Jane waited frustrated through the inevitable silence. Now at last Mrs. Bolitho's story was reaching its climax.

The phone in the linen room rang. It was the hotel manager. An elderly guest had been taken ill with a diarrhoea and vomiting bug. She'd been whisked away in an ambulance, but the bedding in her room needed changing. Very urgently.

By the time that was sorted, it was the end of Hayley-Jane's shift. She didn't see Mrs. Bolitho again that day.

Or the following day. The bug that had struck the guest had also laid low the redoubtable Mrs. Bolitho.

So, as it turned out, Hayley-Jane got the rest of the story from an even closer source.

* * * *

In a typically Cornish way, the next day dawned bright and sunny, a bit like the Indian summer which Mrs. Bolitho had said shined on Ben Tarplee and Tamsin Trevennor's wedding. There was a mock innocence about the brightness, the Cornish weather denying that it ever behaved any differently, that, whoever had caused the terrible rainstorms of the previous day, it must have been someone else.

Because of Mrs. Bolitho's absence, the chambermaids’ daily rota had been reorganised by one of the hotel's assistant managers, with the result that Hayley-Jane found, to her surprise and delight, that her shift ended at two in the afternoon. A suspicion formed in her mind, not for the first time, that Mrs. Bolitho's time-honoured scheduling system was deliberately inefficient, giving the illusion more work needed doing than there actually was.

Anyway, a result of the day's revised schedule was that, soon after two, Hayley-Jane found herself walking through the hotel grounds to the clifftop path that led her home. And passing the back of the shelter that faced the Pollack's Head.

She wasn't conscious of making the decision, but she knew she was going to go round the front to see if Mr. Tarplee was ensconced in his usual vantage point.

He was, of course. The papery skin of his face wrinkled into a smile as he saw her.

“Ah, now you did tell me your name, young lady, but I'm afraid I've forgotten it.”

Though overlaid with a twang of American, his voice still betrayed a Cornish burr.

“Hayley-Jane.”

“Of course.”

She stated the obvious. “You're here in your usual place.”

“Oh yes.”

“It must have memories for you.”

His pale eyes caught hers shrewdly. He knew she was not just generalising, but talking from specific information. “Ah, you've been talking to Mrs. Bolitho, have you . . . ?”

“Well . . .”

“Or, to be more accurate, Mrs. Bolitho's been talking to you.”

They smiled at the shared joke.

“She told me about your wedding,” Hayley-Jane continued boldly, “and how you'd had your honeymoon at this very hotel.”

Mr. Tarplee was silent, and she was worried that she had offended the old man, but when he did speak, there was no resentment in his tone. Just a deep sadness.

“Yes,” he said. “This is where I last saw Tamsin alive.”

“Here at the hotel?”

“Here in this very spot. Facing the Pollack's Head. This place brought me great happiness.”

Hayley-Jane wasn't sure whether Mr. Tarplee would resent prompting as much as Mrs. Bolitho, but she risked asking, “What happened?”

The faded eyes came back from a great distance away and refocused on her young face. “Throughout my life,” Mr. Tarplee said, “I've always been a very keen photographer. . . .”

“Mrs. Bolitho mentioned you was good at it.”

“And here . . .” He gestured to the view ahead of them, the Pollack's Head rising from the deep blue sea, garlanded with a ring of pure white waves. “Here was the perfect spot for the perfect photograph of my bride. We'd had the reception here at the hotel. The guests had all gone by four . . . weddings didn't go on into the evening back then, not like they do now. And Tamsin and I came down here, because I wanted to take this one perfect photograph . . . Tamsin lined up in front of the Pollack's Head, framed, if you like, in the pollack's jaws.”

Now he said that, for the first time Hayley-Jane could see how much the rock did look like the head of a fish. And yes, there was a perfect V-shape into which someone on the clifftop could be viewed.

No longer worried about prompting him, Hayley-Jane asked breathlessly, “What happened?”

Mr. Tarplee let out a long sigh, which seemed to ripple through his slender frame.

“I've always been a perfectionist,” he said. “Probably my most enduring fault, being a perfectionist. And I wanted that photograph of Tamsin, my bride, to be perfect. I wanted it to freeze that moment, the moment of my greatest happiness, so that I would always have it with me. But of course I hoped I'd always have Tamsin with me as well.”

The washed-out eyes once again sought out something on the far horizon.

“I set up the camera. Cameras were bigger then. The one I used I always put on a tripod. And zoom lenses weren't as sophisticated then as they are now—at least not the ones I could afford. And I spent a long time lining up Tamsin in the shot.

“She didn't mind my dithering about. She was as happy as I was. We had a whole lifetime ahead of us. We could afford a few minutes to get a photograph perfect.”

Another silence. Then he went on, “Tamsin was some way away from me . . . well, you can see where the cliff edge is there . . . and I think she must have misinterpreted my gesture. I was indicating for her to move a little to the right. She thought I wanted her to step back. . . .”

An even longer silence ensued. “By the time I clicked the shutter Tamsin was no longer in the picture.”

Hayley-Jane knew exactly what the old man meant, but shock would not allow her to process the information for a moment or two. Then she said, “But you never thought of staying here in Cornwall?”

The old eyes looked at her bleakly. “After that?”

There was no answer. “So that's why you come here every year?”

“Yes,” said Mr. Tarplee. “It's my ritual. It's my way of saying thank you to Tamsin.”

* * * *

Hayley-Jane thought it was the most romantic story she had ever heard. Better than any Mills & Boon. She had been on the way to making the decision anyway, but now she was absolutely determined to dump Bazza. She could do better than that. And do better than that while still staying in Cornwall. She wasn't going to move. She loved Cornwall. It was the most romantic place in the world.

When Mr. Tarplee checked back into his suite at the Las Vegas hotel where he was a long-term resident, he felt, as ever, purged by his annual visit to the Penwillan Castle Hotel. He was a creature of ritual, and that was one of his most necessary rituals.

He did, after all, genuinely want to thank Tamsin. Nothing in the rest of his life would have been nearly as happy if he hadn't pushed her off that cliff opposite the Pollack's Head on their wedding day.

Needless to say, though he'd spread the rumour about having himself excluded from his wife-to-be's will and had the legal document drawn up, he'd never signed it. And she did have a little money that wasn't tied into Trevennor House, enough for him to set himself up in America, enough for him to get the hell out of bloody Cornwall.

Then he'd just had to wait a few years till the property market picked up, at which point he'd sold off the Trevennor House estate for development. That had been the big money, the money that had enabled him to move to Las Vegas and into the kind of lifestyle he'd always hankered after.

Mr. Tarplee looked at his watch. A quarter to four. As he'd got older, he'd cut down the whores’ visits to twice a week. Cheyenne would be knocking on the door of his suite at four. And what she did was another ritual which never failed to give him pleasure.

Copyright © 2012 by Simon Brett

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Novelette: JENNY'S GHOST
by David Dean

David Dean recently retired from his position as chief of police for one of New Jersey's shore towns. Throughout his career with the police he was also a writer, with sales to EQMM going back more than twenty years. Yet police rarely figure in a central way in Dean stories. Maybe that's because his stories are less often concerned with solving crime than they are with exploring the effects of crime on those who commit or are victims of it. His psychological insight has made him a favorite of EQMM readers.

Connor's head snapped back as if he had been slapped and his eyes flew open on a stampeding mass of humanity. Nearby a child cried and a hoarse voice cursed softly and steadily. People streamed this way and that and Connor thought of the ant hills he had kicked open as a child. Something large and glittering hove into view accompanied by a dying whine and blew the remainder of his dream into tatters; the jangling laughter that had awakened him fading into the nothingness of the past.

The hectic pageant of the airport terminal resolved itself into the usual crush of vacationers and business people, some running, some strolling, but all struggling with the greater or lesser amounts of time granted to them by the airline schedules. The crying child was red-faced and miserable with boredom and restraint; her mother futilely rocking her with a blank, comatose expression on her strained face. The businessman across from Connor continued his litany of curses into his cell phone, his fixed, angry gaze all the while on Connor's face.

The plane that had arrived began to discharge its passengers into the terminal and the noise level and degree of franticness rose accordingly. The laughter from Connor's uneasy dream drifted faintly over this in a startling counterpoint, like the distant cry of some exotic bird.

Connor leapt to his feet, causing the baby to cease crying and eye him in fearful wonder. The businessman went silent. None of the hundreds of passing people appeared to take notice of either Connor or the laughter, and he could not see through the shifting, cattlelike rush of the newcomers. He suppressed the urge to stand on the molded plastic chair he had been sitting in—airport security had little tolerance for bizarre behavior of any kind.

After several long moments, the crowd began to thin as people found their way, herdlike, to the subway train that would take them to baggage claim. The businessman continued to regard the slender, unshaven, thirty-something man in his crumpled grey suit, then abruptly lost interest, snapped closed his phone, and flipped open his laptop. Just like that, Connor was dismissed. The child, similarly disappointed, renewed her thin, penetrating wail as her mother looked on with the resignation of true despair.

Several minutes went by and there was no repeat of what Connor was beginning to suspect was an aural hallucination. He rubbed his eyelids; then contemplated the coffee shop across the busy walkway and pondered if it was worth the effort it would take. This time the laughter was a note of joy, high and piercing, yet carrying a hint of surprise, or perhaps uncertainty, within its tremulous framework. Connor's fellow travelers parted as if cued to allow him a momentarily unrestricted view, and his eyes went immediately to the source of the laughter, even as his legs went weak and watery beneath him.

He watched, barely breathing, as the thin, fragile-looking woman leaned into a man who occupied one of the stools at the nearby bar, his back to Connor. She appeared to whisper something to him, even as her slender fingers squeezed the fabric of his shirt sleeve, and the bicep beneath, in a possessive convulsion.

The man, also slender and as dark-haired as Connor himself, flinched and leaned away slightly; then turned and said something to a companion on the next stool. They both laughed. Connor felt himself straining forward, as if this might allow him to overhear their conversation across the crowded, noisy terminal. The dark young man signaled for the bartender and appeared to order a drink after a brief flirtatious consultation with the woman. Then, just as the curtain of people began to close once more on this tableau, she turned her face in Connor's direction, her wide mouth open in a generous, trembling smile, her large brown eyes seeming to seek his own across the rows of chairs.

Connor struggled to start his breathing once more, even as his heart lurched about in his chest like a drunk staggering from lamppost to lamppost. The woman was Jennifer . . . her laughter, the laughter that rang through his memories. It actually occurred to him that he might be dying, for how else could he explain this apparition . . . this visitation?—Jennifer had been dead for thirteen years.

* * * *

They had become lovers practically the moment they met. It had been the beginning of his junior year, her sophomore year, and all it had taken was a glance into her dark eyes across a library table, eyes that, like her voice and laughter, appeared to contain a depth and vulnerability that he couldn't resist. Within those tremulous pools lay a sensuality and hunger that had ignited his own, and after only days of their meeting he had stalked about like a starving man, his only food, the only antidote to his ravening hunger, Jennifer Armstrong . . . Jenny.

His grades had plummeted with missed classes and halfhearted essays, yet somehow he had scraped by. There were calls from his concerned parents that he ignored. He did not go home that summer, but got an on-campus job so that Jennifer and he could set up house together.

They shared a squalid little studio apartment that had housed generations of students, transients, and junkies. Its only window looked out onto a brick airshaft that let in precious little light while allowing their unseen neighbors’ cries and laughter to tumble into the room in sudden, unexpected bursts.

Sometimes, Connor had felt as if he had sunk into a subterranean world in which only phantoms could be perceived in the dimness, their voices ringing out from time to time in shouts and curses. During such moments, Jennifer would pull him to her in their narrow, springy bed and run her long, sharp nails along his arm, digging in when she reached his bicep. Often this playful pinch would become painful and Connor would gasp, drawing in his breath at the long red trails she had left on his arms and thighs, her eyes never leaving his own, and within moments his desire would be reignited . . . greater than before. Their lovemaking grew more complicated . . . more demanding.

Connor's senior year was a foggy memory. He attended classes only when it was absolutely necessary and sometimes failed to do even that much. His grades had dropped so alarmingly that the Dean of Students had issued him a warning. This same warning had also arrived at his parents’ home. His father had threatened to cut off any further money for college unless he moved back into the dorms and shed himself of Jenny. This he would not, could not, do. Shortly after that, Jenny revealed that she had not bothered to enroll in the spring semester. She already had everything in her life that she could want, she had informed Connor, and further education, she felt, was only a distraction and a waste of time. Connor, while nodding in agreement, had dimly registered alarm bells at this announcement.

In spite of his threats, Connor's father had paid for his tuition after all, no doubt thinking that, as it was his final semester before graduation, his son might just stagger on through. But when Jennifer discovered his generosity she had grown angry with Connor, accusing him of weakness, of failing to be his own man. She had challenged him to walk away from both his parents and the school just as she had done months before. She had demanded a demonstration of the same love and affection she had shown without his asking. It was the first he had heard that she had ceased speaking with her own family. The bells in his head grew louder.

Early in the semester, Connor was thrown out of a class for continued absences. Fortunately for him, it was an elective that he could make up in a summer session. Yet what unnerved him most was that he had forgotten he had signed up for it in the first place. He had understood then that he was no longer in control.

That night, while Jenny worked at the campus union snack bar, he had packed his single suitcase and walked out. An old friend from his hometown who still lived in the dorms had let him sleep on the floor of his room.

With encouragement from his parents, Connor had agreed to meet with Jenny at the quadrangle closest to their apartment and end the affair. He had hoped that the presence of passing students might help damp down the storm he feared might erupt, as well as bolster his own fragile resolve.

His halting, and heartfelt, explanation of how their relationship was not good for either of them was met with tears and angry denial. Before he had even finished his carefully rehearsed speech she had sprung to her feet and slapped his face, calling him a coward. With her luminous face wet with tears, Jenny had stalked away screaming that they were finished, not because he had decided so, but because she now realized that he was not worthy of her, did not deserve her love. Connor had not dared to hope that it would be that easy. It hadn't been, of course.

The following day she had confronted him coming out of class and tearfully thrown her thin arms around his neck. Sobbing into his shoulder, she had pleaded to be forgiven her behavior of the day before and for him to return home with her.

Summoning all the strength he possessed, he had refused. Time, he had assured her, and space, was what they needed right then . . . some breathing room to regain their senses and assess their own identities; to evaluate what their relationship really was . . . and might yet become.

Still clinging to him she had sobbed into his chest, “If you don't love me anymore, Connie, then please just kill me.” Only Jenny ever called him Connie.

He had thrust her away in disgust and sudden fear and she had collapsed onto the wet, muddy grass like an abandoned child. Though her wails had followed him like a warning, his ears had burned with embarrassment at her display.

Connor did not see or hear of her again for two weeks. A silence as dark and lowering as a summer storm had descended between them.

The silence was broken by a call from the campus police acting on behalf of the city department. “Do you share an apartment with a Ms. Jennifer Armstrong?” the officer had asked over the phone.

Connor remembered his fear, his hesitation. “Yes,” he had whispered, “I did ... but not any longer. We broke up.”

“You still on the lease?” the officer had persisted.

“Yes,” Connor had admitted, feeling guilty without understanding exactly why. “What's this all about?”

“She's not answering her phone, or the door, and her folks have been calling the city police to check on her. We're just trying to assist. You want to let them in?”

The alarm bells that had been sounding in Connor's brain for the past several months now became a strident clanging. “Yes,” he had breathed. “I'll be right there.”

The rest was all bits and pieces, sights and sounds that collided and crashed into occasional coherence like the lens of a kaleidoscope only to break apart once more with the slightest movement. Connor's memory of that day carried only one image that remained fixed and constant—his bed . . . their bed, black and wet with blood; Jennifer a grey centerpiece in the arrangement. He had had only a moment in which to take in the awful climax of their relationship—his lover's nakedness rendered vulgar by death, her flayed wrists, the slack vacancy of her once-beautiful, lively features. But even as he had stood stupidly staring, the policemen had brushed him aside, rushing in to see what might be done.

He had not followed to the hospital and when he had called there later in the day, he had been told that as he was not family, and they had not been married, no information on her condition could be given out to him. The nurse seemed to have taken pleasure in this pronouncement.

Through the campus grapevine Connor learned that Jenny had died and that her parents had flown in from Ohio to take her body back home. No one had called him, and he had called no one. It was less a feeling that Jenny was gone than that he had been left behind somehow. The thought of attending her funeral, of meeting her parents, had never occurred to him. And just like that, it was all over, his sense of relief deep and guilt-ridden.

* * * *

Pushing his way through the last of the intervening passengers, Connor found himself at the entrance to the bar. Jennifer was nowhere to be seen. One of the two young men she had been speaking with gave him an uneasy glance, then turned away.

Connor strode toward him, desperate.

He recognized the fierce, possessive grip on his arm, the sharpened nails threatening the thin fabric of his sleeve, the nervous note that always lurked within her voice as she said his name. “Connor?"; all this even as he turned to see her face.

The hubbub of the terminal faded away and Connor only dimly registered the presence of the restless throng that swarmed around them. Her face, Jenny's face, looked up into his, the dark eyes trembling with tears. Here was the same tumble of chestnut hair that he had stroked on so many nights as they had lain together in a breathless, happy sweat; the same narrow, foxy face, if slightly lined now around the eyes and mouth—Jenny's face. It was Jenny. Connor felt his own eyes go wet.

“Connor?” she repeated breathlessly. “It is you, isn't it? Of course it is!”

Connor seized her wrists to pull her to him, then hesitated. Like Thomas, he had to place his hand within the wounds to be finally convinced. He looked down at the thin arms he clasped and saw the white, wormlike scars peeking out in vertical furrows from beneath the sleeves of her blouse. “Jenny,” he moaned, as relief, guilt, joy, and even desire struggled for dominance within him. “Jenny,” he said again.

The two men that she had been speaking with at the bar had turned to watch them. The dark-haired one smirked and said something to his buddy. They both laughed softly, then turned away once more. Connor saw this from the corner of his eye, but paid it no heed; he had no room for distraction now, no room for anything but Jenny.

Still clinging to one another, they made their way to some vacant chairs at an empty gate and huddled together as far from everyone else as they could. Already, Connor knew that everything in his life must change—he would never have such a chance again and he had no intention of losing Jenny now that she had been miraculously restored to him. Already he was envisioning the announcement to his wife that he would be asking for a divorce. He had never truly loved her—he had always suspected it, but now there was no doubt left in his heart or mind. He loved Jenny; it was as simple as that; he had always loved Jenny.

“Connor, oh Connor, I'm so glad I've found you!” Jenny kissed the knuckles of his hands.

“Jenny, I still can't believe it's really you . . . all these years . . . ever since college I've thought . . .” He stumbled to a halt, still taking in her luminous face. “They told me you had died!” She wiped away his tears with the back of one thin hand.

“No, no,” she whispered. “I couldn't die without you. . . . I wanted so much to, but I just couldn't.”

Connor looked up, startled.

“That's why I've kept looking for you,” she continued, smiling. “Everywhere I could, everywhere I've been, I've looked for you, Connie.”

He smiled now too at the nickname that only she used. “What do you mean, Jen?” How easy it was to lapse back into their old conversional habits—how comfortable they had been together, Connor thought. “You must have known how to find me—you always had my parents’ number and address. Besides, I still live in the same town. . . . I'm in the phone book.”

Her smile went vague at this and she glanced away for the briefest of moments. “It's not as easy as all that,” she murmured. “I try the best I can.”

Connor feared that he had somehow embarrassed her. “It doesn't matter, Jen, it really doesn't matter—all that is important is that you are here and we are together. Let's just focus on that.” Suddenly it occurred to him that he had not given any thought whatsoever to whether she might be married . . . have children.

He glanced down at her hands and noted that she bore no wedding band. “Is there anyone in your life, Jen? Anyone important, I mean?”

“Only you, Connie,” she answered sadly. “It's only ever been you.”

Connor felt himself flushing with pride and happiness.

His thoughts were interrupted by the crisp, official voice of the airport intercom announcing that his flight was boarding.

“Oh hell,” he breathed. He stood suddenly, still holding Jenny's hands in his own. “I'm sorry, darling; they're calling my flight. Just give me a moment to see if I can switch for a later one . . . I'm sure it's overbooked, they always are,” he laughed. She gazed up at him fearfully. “I'll be right back,” he assured her. “Stay right where you are.” He gently placed her hands back into her lap and turned away.

As he did, he noticed an older man conversing with the two guys at the bar. One of them waved languidly in Connor's general direction as the gate attendant reissued her demand to board. Suddenly nervous, he commanded Jennifer, “Stay here . . . I'm coming back.”

The exchange of tickets took far longer than Connor had expected and throughout the transaction he kept looking back over his shoulder. He was too far from the gate where he had left Jennifer to see her and far too many people interfered with his line of sight. When the exchange was at last completed he snatched the newly issued pass from the attendant's hand, muttered a thank-you through clenched teeth, then spun on his heel to race back to Jenny.

The deserted gate where he had left her now teemed with newly arriving passengers, the digital board above the airline representative announcing that their flight was due to board in forty-five minutes. Jennifer was nowhere to be seen.

Connor stood stock-still, terror arising from the pit of his stomach to squeeze his now-trembling heart—what if she had never been there at all? What if the whole encounter had been a hallucination, a waking dream? He took a deep, shuddering breath and forced himself to keep his eyes open, to look; to not give in to despair and doubt.

She spoke his name, and through the din of constantly tramping feet, broadcast announcements, and the soft, pervasive roar of a thousand murmured conversations, he heard her voice. Turning to its source, he spied Jennifer across the central walkway and began immediately to go to her, his earlier, momentary fears discarded as if they had never existed. It was all he could do not to run, shouting her name.

As he drew near, he could see now through shifting gaps of humanity that she clutched someone's hands within her own, and as he watched she bent her long, slender neck to kiss the knuckles of their owner, her pale face radiant with joy. “Connor,” she breathed.

He stopped in his tracks as if turned to stone. After what seemed an eternity, he managed to say, “Is everything all right, Jenny?”

The slender, dark-haired young man glanced up from Jennifer's embrace with a combination of embarrassment and relief. Upon seeing Connor, his expression quickly changed to one of fear as well. Jenny's head remained bowed in an attitude of beatific surrender.

“Oh . . . do you know this lady?” the young man began, snatching his hands from Jenny's grip in the same breath. “I . . . she . . . she seems to think she knows me.” He threw up his own hands now, palms outward, and began to back away from Jenny and Connor. “I'm sorry, if I . . . well, I couldn't seem to convince her . . .” He turned suddenly and fled into the crowd.

Jennifer's soft weeping drew Connor back to her now-kneeling form. “Jenny,” he said, placing a hand onto her thin shoulder. She turned her lost, desperate gaze upwards, taking in his face, and even as he watched, her expression shifted like daylight streaming through racing clouds. The tears vanished and this sun of discovery lit her features from within. Suddenly she was beaming. “Connor?” she said, clutching his hands within her own, a note of hysterical joy struggling for voice. “Connor,” she repeated more forcefully, closing her eyes and bowing her head. He felt her lips brush his knuckles.

He struggled to pull Jenny to her feet as their fellow passengers looked on with equal mixtures of alarm, curiosity, and amusement. Suddenly the older man he had noticed earlier appeared at his elbow and gently, but firmly, brushed him aside. Jennifer looked up in alarm at the intruder, then went suddenly limp, docile in his grip. She rose obediently to her feet and took a seat where he indicated, her face blank and downcast, the features that were just moments before radiant and animated now slack and vacant as a discarded mask. The old man took a seat beside her, gently patting her trembling hands all the while.

Still holding his newly exchanged ticket, Connor loomed over his usurper. “Excuse me,” he said brusquely.

The older man looked up at him, his thin face a mixture of annoyance and alarm. He was busily stroking Jennifer's clasped hands, the same hands that Connor had only minutes before held in his own. Her shoulders rose and fell with quiet, helpless sobs.

“Yes,” the man answered in the same tone.

Even as he spoke, Connor recognized the resemblance in the shape of the face, the dark eyes, the long slender nose, and a sudden caution stole over him. “Do you . . . know . . . her?”

The older man's face appeared to ripple with emotion, anger, sorrow, and exhaustion all competing for dominance. “I apologize,” he began, “you must be wondering what in the hell is going on.”

Connor nodded uncertainly, his eyes traveling from the strange man to the weeping Jennifer, from father to daughter and back again.

“She got away from me here in the airport,” he continued. “Since her mother died, I've had the devil of a time keeping an eye on her. . . . I'm not getting any younger, you know.” Connor nodded dumbly.

“Those two gentlemen over there,” he pointed at the bar area and two now-empty stools, “said she had been through here pestering people. It took me awhile to find her in this crowd, nonetheless. I apologize if she's been annoying you.” He sat back with a loud sigh.

“This is a big airport,” he added tiredly, as if this explained everything.

Connor had never met Jennifer's parents and if they had been shown photos of him during his college days, a lot of years had gone by since. Mr. Armstrong had no idea who he was talking to. “Where are you taking her?” he asked with only the slightest tremor in his voice.

“Out to a place in Kansas,” he answered. “Her brother lives nearby and he'll be able to check in on her from time to time . . . have her out to his home for Thanksgiving and Christmas and such . . .” He trailed off uncertainly, his eyes darting guiltily from side to side.

“I see,” Connor said, still staring at the tear-stained, pallid face of his lover. “Tell me,” he heard himself asking, “who's this Connor guy she's looking for?”

The old man's shifting features coalesced into a hard mask. “Oh, so she thought you were him, huh? I thought as much. She thought one of the guys at the bar was too. Hell, she thinks any man with dark hair and that is roughly her age is him. Sorry.”

“Well, who is he?” Connor persisted.

Jenny's dad looked up at him, his eyes gone hard now too. “He's the sonofabitch that caused all this.” He waved vaguely over Jenny's bowed head. Connor could see tears forming in the corners of his eyes. “She was away at college and fell in love. You know how young girls are,” he glanced beseechingly at Connor. “They give away everything when they think they're in love . . . their whole heart . . . everything.”

He took a deep breath to regain his composure. “This young bastard left her high and dry, and never looked back, as far as I know. She cut her wrists over it . . . can you imagine . . . and we're Catholics, you know.”

Connor nodded as if he did and the old man went on.

“The cops and the paramedics just managed to save her; they couldn't believe they'd brought her back. It was a miracle in some ways . . . a curse in others. She's been like this ever since . . . searching, you know . . . for him.”

He sagged in his seat, then straightened suddenly. “I'd kill him if I could,” he said. “I know it's wrong, he was just a boy then too. But I would even so.”

“Yes,” Connor murmured in agreement. “Yes, I . . . he deserved it.” He felt the shame of his own cowardice.

Jenny's father glanced up at him tiredly; then appeared to lose himself in thought. After a moment more, he shook himself and rose, drawing Jenny to her feet like a marionette. “Well,” he began, “we've got about twenty minutes till boarding and our gate is at the other end of the terminal. We've got a long flight ahead of us.”

Connor stepped back to allow their passage. When Jenny's face turned his way, he dropped his own to stare hard at the worn grey carpet. “I hope you have a good flight,” he murmured.

“I just pray for an uneventful one,” the old man rejoined, then led Jennifer into the throng of passengers making their way through the airport.

Connor watched Jenny walk away on her father's arm, her small, neat head swiveling this way and that in search of him; a search without ending, its original goal no longer recognizable or even important. Only the pantomime remained: a desperate repetition of recaptured joy and fresh loss that only faintly resembled actual life—Jenny's ghost.

As Connor watched Jenny's face glow and fade with each passing stranger, he thought of his wife and son, strangers also, whose faces glowed with hope and love each time he returned from one of his business trips, then faded within the cool shade of his indifference, his distraction with a secret past. Now he understood that he, too, was a phantom, an apparition that haunted his own life.

Connor looked down at his freshly issued pass and saw that he had six hours until boarding, and for the first time felt a longing to be home, to recognize, and be amongst, those who loved him. In the end, he asked himself, wasn't that enough . . . to be loved and know it?

Even as he heard his name cried out in joy and happy surprise from somewhere behind him, he resisted the impulse to turn once more, and instead marched steadfastly toward his gate and home.

Copyright © 2012 by David Dean

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Passport to Crime: ANNETTE WRITES A BALLADE
by Judith Merchant

* * * *

* * * *

Judith Merchant's first work of fiction, a short story, appeared in 2008. Her second story, “Monopoly,” won Germany's Friedrich Glauser Prize for Best Short Story in 2009 and was subsequently translated and published in EQMM. Now here she is with another Glauser-winning story: 2011's “Annette Writes a Ballade,” in its first English translation. In the two years since our last publication of the author her first novel has seen print in Germany; a second is due out later this year.

Translated from the German by Mary Tannert

* * * *

Editor's note:

—

Esteemed Reader,

The publisher of this work has requested that I write a few words on the discovery of Annette von Droste-Hulshoff's secret diary, published here for the very first time, and gladly do I oblige.

It was the year 1861 when, through a chain of peculiar familial circumstances, I received a modest inheritance in the form of some furnishings, which I accepted with gratitude. Among them was a secretary. My joy at receiving it was all the more upon hearing that Annette von Droste-Hulshoff herself had written some of her early works seated at this desk, during those years when she still made her home at Burg Hulshoff.

I sent for a cabinetmaker known in these parts to have the secretary repaired and refurbished for sale. To be of assistance—and in order to reduce somewhat the sum of his considerable hourly wages—I helped him empty the many drawers and compartments. Upon removing the topmost drawer, a thin book neatly bound in now-faded silk fell from the inside of the secretary, and with great presence of mind I hid it from the curious eyes of the cabinetmaker. This book I still possess, and I have spent years contemplating its singular content. But I am grown old, and as it is unlikely that I shall survive the winter I no longer desire to keep this story to myself, but offer it to the public for the first time. Should it seem improbable, perhaps even fantastical, it provides nonetheless the first explanation of the disappearance of the servant girl Margret, who had traveled with Fraulein Annette to the moors and was then seen no more. To be sure, the authorship of many an important contribution to our German poetic arts . . . Yet the reader shall judge this for himself!

signed, Conrad Hesterkamp

Munster, Westphalia, November 1899

Burg Hulshoff, 18 September 1820

* * * *

Dear Diary,

Just half an hour. Thirty minutes. 1800 seconds. Is that too much to ask???? That's the time it takes for a stroll (in slow-mo, at that) through our beautiful park; that's how long it takes the stableboy to muck out nearly four boxes. So in half an hour it just absolutely positively has to be possible for Anna Elisabeth Franzisca Adolphina Wilhelmina Ludovica, Baroness of Droste zu Hulshoff, to put a few measly lines on paper, no matter how bad they are! At least three. Three! Or even two! But I can't even manage ONE that isn't lopsided and warped. Grrrrrr.

It's supposed to be a ballade: Oh! hazy the shiver of the palace park so fearful of the dawn . . . And that's as far as I get. The whole thing bogs down right there, every time. But I really, really REALLY want to be a successful writer. It's turning out to be incredibly hard work; at least, it feels like it. But I want to learn anyway—and Mama promised me I could. Professor Spricker, my tutor, doesn't know any ballades, and our piano teacher wouldn't know one if she fell over it, but Mama said she'd find someone. . . .

Oh, somebody's calling me!

See you later, dear Diary.

* * * *

Back again. That was Mama. She had some terrific news: We're about to be honored by a VIP. I'll bet you're wild to know who's coming, aren't you? Take a deep breath, Diary dear, and I'll tell you—it's the privy councillor Johann Wolfgang von Goethe himself! It turns out Mama really did write to Adele Schopenhauer and tell her I want to be a poet, and she's the one who sent him (evidently he owed her a favor, hah!). It just goes to show: Connections are everything. Anyway, he's going to look at my poems and help me with them, at least that's what Adele wrote Mama. Except I want to write BALLADES. But it doesn't matter. Adele probably just got poems and ballades all mixed up, a lot of people do that.

So now Mama's fluttering around the house, all worked up because she didn't have new curtains made after all. And Margret's complaining about all the silver she has to polish. But enough about them. I'm going to copy out my best lines in calligraphy; keep your fingers crossed that the quills don't blot the paper too much. They have to look good for the privy councillor. The ballades, I mean, not the quills. And then he can teach me how to write. People say he's not so bad at it himself. Just two more days, Diary dear, and then there'll be lots to report!

Burg Hulshoff, 20 September 1820

* * * *

Dear Diary,

He's here, he's here! Really tall too, and sort of imposing, even if he's not as young as he once was. And he always wears this fussy-looking wig, really curly, I think it's his manservant's job to powder it in the mornings. And while we're on the subject, his manservant keeps hanging around. Every time I look up he's just standing there, trying to seem busy with some pseudo thing or other, whatever it is manservants do. Margret's already starting to look dreamy and flirt with him, she's probably hoping she's finally going to catch her fantasy man. All I can say is: Goethe's manservant? Get real! We're not living in some Harlequin romance here, you know. . . .

And just between us girls, Diary dear, Goethe doesn't look as good as you'd think from all the portraits of him. I did a quick charcoal sketch of him the other evening in the parlor while everyone was looking the other way, listening to Mama. It wasn't easy, let me tell you. My eyesight's not the best, and nobody's allowed to get too close to him. We all have to stand waaaaaay back, it turns out that's one of his little eccentricities. Tomorrow's my first lesson. I can't wait to hear what he says about my ballade!

Burg Hulshoff, 21 September 1820

* * * *

Dear Diary,

Lots to report! There was a terrific fight, and Margret's still howling so loud in the servants’ quarters that I can't sleep, so I figure I may as well get up and tell you about it. Her mortal sin, evidently, was to use up at least a dozen candles polishing the silver. Mama called it a blasphemous waste and said she'd throw Margret out in disgrace. Margret burst into tears on the spot and said she needed more light to do her job, really truly, and she has to stay because nobody else'd hire her. And then Mama said that would serve her right! Poor Margret. It's been pretty chaotic here with such an, how should I say it, exalted houseguest, if you know what I mean. The privy councillor uses an incredible amount of hot water every morning and Margret gripes that she's run off her feet carrying all those water cans up and down stairs. And that manservant of his just stands around doing nothing—not that that's had any effect on Margret's practically drooling on him despite all the extra work it makes for her. Go figure. He was good for one thing, though: He told her Goethe's missing a tooth, an incisor, and it embarrasses him, that's why none of us is allowed to get too close.

But I haven't even told you about my first lesson yet. I read the beginning of my ballade out loud to the privy councillor, and when I got done he had a really weird expression on his face. He kept saying “Hmm, hmm,” and then he said he didn't really see why the palace park should be afraid of the dawn, and basically it was important for me to understand that something truly sinister needs to be at the heart of a ballade. And then he recited one of his ballades to show me what he meant, but I didn't think it was sinister at all, it was about a man who wants to take a bath and the tub runs over and he's got too many brooms. Is that trivial or what? After that I had a hard time paying attention to all the other things he read me, I just kept thinking, when your name's Goethe and you're a privy councillor and elevated to the nobility and especially if you're the author of The Sorrows of Young Werther, you can write any old thing you want and they print it and everyone runs right out and buys it. Talk about unfair! Anyway, as soon as he stopped talking I thanked him politely, and then he said I should think up something really gruesome for tomorrow. But I've been thinking, and it's just not very grisly out here in Munsterland, it's actually kind of tame and provincial, so I'll have to find another setting and then invent something horrible to happen there, maybe a murder. Murder would be optimal.

Oh, and then there's something else I noticed today, a strange thing. I can't explain it. Goethe's afraid of something, really afraid. He twitches when a horse whinnies outside, and sometimes, all of a sudden, his eyes go wide with fear. Maybe he's being stalked, but who'd do that? I'd like to know what kind of a guy could make Johann Wolfgang von Goethe afraid of him.

—

Wait a sec, somebody's knocking. In the middle of the night!

Sorry about that, Diary dear. That was Margret. She finally got done howling about Mama and just wanted to tell me that Goethe's manservant finally got around to asking her to go for a walk with him. First she turned him down, you know, for the sake of decorum and everything, but now that Mama's been so mean to her she says she doesn't give a rat's a— about decorum and she's going. Good grief. Let her, then!

Well, Diary, it's already getting light here, so I'd better start rewriting my ballade before it's time to get up. See you later!

Burg Hulshoff, 22 September 1820

* * * *

Dear Diary,

I think Margret and Goethe's manservant are getting down to business, if you get my drift. She just ran past me into the kitchen with her corsets half undone, clutching a rose to her face with this really, you know, ecstatic expression. Now I've got nothing against romantic gestures, but that manservant must have broken that rose off a bush in our garden. Helloooooooo, not your roses, dude!

But I wanted to tell you about my second lesson. I wrote a terrific ballade, sinister and with a really great murder, but the privy councillor still wasn't satisfied. He started saying “Hmm, hmm” again, and then he said it was time to get to the next important point: true poetry must be historic. That means, the poet has to have experienced it, not necessarily literally or exactly, but historically. That's the source of everything. And it was pretty obvious to him that I've never really, genuinely, historically experienced a murder, but that came as no surprise to him in the case of a young baroness who naturally has a limited view of the world. That's why women can't write, or at most about flowers.

And then the murder, said Goethe: bad idea. Very bad idea. Nobody wants to read a ballade about a murder, that's not literature and nobody likes it, that needs to be said right off. Really good, worthwhile literature can be sinister without anyone needing to murder anyone else, that's a cheap thrill to create tension. He said all that and then he started talking again about his boring ballade about the man who wants a bath.

But he seemed a little preoccupied while he was talking, and then he took my notes away and said I should write something else, a creative piece of homework, something about a flower. And it should have a rhyme scheme, not everything all thrown in there together like my ballade, but assonance and alliteration and all the other stuff I've been taught. And maybe a couple of visual comparisons, that's always good.

So that's it, Diary, tonight I've got to write a poem about flowers. Maybe about a rose.

But there's one more thing: Now I know what the privy councillor's so scared of. Today a horse whinnied outside, and he went white as a sheet, and I wanted to reassure him and tell him it's just the man who brings the post, but then he started shaking and his teeth chattered like a shutter banging in the wind (that's a visual comparison, Diary dear—just in case you missed it . . .). Anyway, then Margret brought him a letter and he got up in a terrific hurry and went away with it. Who do you suppose it's from? Who's got that kind of power over a great writer like Johann Wolfgang von Goethe?

So, Diary dear, I'd better get to work on my poem. I've decided to call it “The Rose of Hulshoff.” I already have an idea. . . .

—

D..... Di....y (Editors’ note: date illegible)

It w..... (Editor's note: Here the text appears to have had something spilled on it; the letters are no longer legible)

My le.......... with the pri

alm..........g....d.

..................

—

I can't stop crying, and the tears drip on the page and make the ink run. The privy councillor was totally mean-spirited and unfair. He said my rose poem was very ladylike and showed a sensitivity to beauty, but it also showed that I had no artistic sense. My stylistic devices were naive, utterly naive, he said, the constant reiteration of “rosebush, rosebush” would just drive the reader crazy and all those diminutives, well maybe at a ladies’ tea party . . . But after all that was certainly my métier and he hoped I knew it and was satisfied now, he'd done his best, but I had no talent, and even Adele Schopenhauer couldn't ask more of him than that! I was just about to protest when he said that even so, with his vigorous support (so that's what he calls it!!!!????) I'd written a nice little poem, and now I could embroider it in cross-stitch on a little cloth or whatever it was ladies do, but he'd had enough, he had real work to do.

So I said he should teach me how to write a real, sinister, historical ballade, and then he lost his temper and shouted that if he hadn't made a promise to Adele he'd never have agreed to squander his precious time on such a dull and untalented girl, and then he yelled for his manservant to pack and said he'd be leaving before the dawn, he had better things to do, the world, after all, was expecting him to compose a great new ballade. I cried and begged him to go on with our lessons. I mean, I've really made progress! But he got up to go out of the room, and when I ran after him he grabbed one of Mama's ornamental plates off the wall and threw it at me.

And now he's gone, and I'm desperate. How am I supposed to write a ballade all by myself?

Burg Hulshoff, 1 Oktober 1820

Dear Diary,

It's been a week since the privy councillor left. Mama was a little ticked off at his leaving so suddenly and breaking her plate like he did. And then—you'll never guess what—today another letter came for him. I'm pretty sure the seal on it is exactly the same as on the last letter that scared him so much. Anyway, I was dying to know what it said. Mama gave Margret strict instructions to forward all the privy councillor's mail to an inn in the moors, but Margret wasn't around, she was probably up in the servants’ quarters crying her eyes out over Goethe's manservant. So I broke the seal and read the letter. It was really interesting. The writer was a certain Johann Friedrich Cotta, and apparently he's the privy councillor's publisher.

The letter went like this: He, that is, the publisher, was very pleased to hear that a sojourn in the country was having such an inspiring effect on him, that is, Goethe, especially after such an unforgivably long break between works. The poem about the rose was one of the best things the privy councillor had written since his “Werther"—the urgency of the reiteration, “rosebush, rosebush, rosebush red,” the incomparably youthful naiveté, all of it just as if a young lady had actually written it . . . in short, such originality! The reading public would love it and he had already sent it off to the printer, the only thing he'd changed was the title: “Rose von Hulshoff” just wouldn't do, the title suggested Westphalian fug instead of the heady perfume of a rose, that would never sell. Instead, he suggested “The Rosebush on the Moor,” and he'd already assumed the privy councillor would agree; after all, local color's a great strategic marketing factor. Beyond that, he was happy to see that the privy councillor was apparently working again, and it seemed like a good time to remind him again of the sequel to Wilhelm Meister, people kept asking about it, and he should consider something with a high recognition factor; how about Wilhelm Meister's Journeyman Years? And as far as the privy councillor's admitted decline in the liveliness of his prose, well, not to worry, the public's tolerant, they all love him to death, but they love a good series even more, and besides, the editors will help out, that's what they're there for; there are plenty of ways to skin a cat. Sincerely yours, etc. etc., and by the way, how's the ballade coming that the privy councillor mentioned he was writing? Everyone's all excited.

I was pretty stunned, Diary, that's for sure. I folded the letter and put it back in the envelope, thinking hard the whole time. So this was the man who put the fear of God into Johann Wolfgang von Goethe. Cotta, the publisher. And now my “Rose von Hulshoff” was going to be published under a different title and—most of all—under Goethe's name! Well, obviously I couldn't do anything about that particular little bit of villainy, but I could make it work for me, oh yes, because now I was pretty damn privy myself to one of the councillor's deepest secrets! I decided to go see Goethe on the moors and force him to continue the ballade lessons. He wouldn't be able to turn me down, not now. I shouted for Margret.

So, Diary dear, we're off. Margret's packing. I'm trying to think up something to tell Mama, and I don't know what, but I'd better figure it out fast, I can hear the horses getting restless. Back soon!

4 Oktober 1820

* * * *

Dear Diary,

It's wonderful here on the moors, and a little creepy too. We found the inn right away. I showed the innkeeper my charcoal sketch of Goethe and he put his head to one side and said he wasn't sure, it was hard to tell, the gentleman was very insistent that people keep a respectable distance from him, everyone but his manservant, and that's when I knew: Gotcha! So while Margret was carrying our bags up to our room, I brought the innkeeper up to speed about Goethe's tooth and everything.

Meanwhile, Margret had run into Fantasy Man upstairs. At least, it was an age before she came back down, and her cheeks were all red. She reported that the privy councillor had gone out onto the moor to get some inspiration for his new ballade, so we set off after him. It was kind of cool, going through a moor, even a little spooky. There was a lot to see, too: peat smoke, reed beds, spear grass; I even heard a sort of eerie melody, almost like a hollow moan. And it smelled like peat. It was really all very interesting—but it wasn't what we'd come for, we were after the privy councillor, and we found him.

He was sitting on a tree stump, studying his notes intently. He was pretty surprised to see us, Margret and me, and I didn't waste a second, I just let him have it.

When I got to the part about the rosebush, the privy councillor just shrugged his shoulders. Schiller'd stolen all kinds of things from him when he was still alive, in fact, pretty much everything he'd written, but that's an author's life for you, he said. So then I said that for a man who steals poems from a young baroness he was being pretty cavalier about the whole thing and did his publisher know about this? because now I had Cotta's address. And then the privy councillor started to cry and said I had no idea what it was like, that blasted publisher was on his back constantly about the Wilhelm Meister sequel and he didn't know what to do, Mr. Cotta wanted him to just write and write and write and nobody ever asked how he, Goethe, felt about it, and the public didn't want art anymore, it wanted series, and with local color on account of the strategic marketing factor. And I said I didn't give a rat's a— about any of that, all I wanted was to go on with the ballade lessons, and we could start here and now. And then the privy councillor started to laugh, a nasty mean laugh, and said I evidently hadn't understood anything, true poetry has to be historic and as a woman—tough luck, but there it is—I would never experience anything even remotely significant. So I thought of Cotta's letter and said I thought originality was much more important. But the privy councillor just grinned and stood up and swung up into the saddle and said there was no such thing as originality, just authenticity, and started to ride off onto the moor, but he didn't get far, and he didn't say another thing, because I whopped him hard with my walking stick, right between the eyes. He opened them really wide, and then he fell off his horse like a sack of potatoes and started to sink into the peat. I poked around to see if I could rescue that nice wig of his, and fished it out of the moor and gave it to Margret; it was only a teeny bit dirty and she stuffed it in her muff. We were just going to head back to the inn when we heard a horrible squelching, sucking noise behind us in the moor as the privy councillor rose to the surface one last time and opened his mouth. . . . Oh, Diary dear, never mind, I just can't make myself write what he said. And besides, I have to keep a few things to myself even if I do tell you everything else.

And the really funny thing is, no one will ever suspect me, because the privy councillor's still alive! It was Margret who had the idea. She rescued me, the very next day. It started when she snuck into the privy councillor's room to put back the wig so no one would find it in our room. And guess who caught her there? But it turned out all right, because the manservant liked her better than Goethe anyway, and that's how she got the idea, and he helped her pull it off. It's so simple it's amazing. Margret just puts on the wig and Goethe's clothes and a lot of makeup. And no one's allowed to get too close to him anyway because of his missing tooth, so nobody's noticed the difference. I wouldn't have, if I hadn't known.

Margret's in seventh heaven. First of all because she's snared Fantasy Man, but it doesn't hurt that everybody calls her “Mr. Privy Councillor” and she gets a hot bath every morning and wonderful meals, just the way the privy councillor always did. And candles, of course, as many as she wants, so she can see when she writes all those ballades and stories. And she doesn't have to polish any more silver; the manservant does that. And he'll keep his mouth shut, because if anyone in Weimar ever found out it was Margret under the wig and those clothes and all that powder, he'd be out of a job.

And I'm doing great with the writing now. The privy councillor left his notes on the tree stump, so I took a look at them, and what do you think? They were mine. He'd just stuck in a little more alliteration and assonance, that's all. But I didn't use them; I don't think writers should steal from each other. I just wrote a new ballade. It was easy, now that I've had a historical experience of my very own. I'm calling it “The Boy on the Moor.” But I'll have to put it away for a while, at least as long as they're still searching the moors for my maidservant, who disappeared so mysteriously. . . . I mean, anything else would be unfeeling.

Oh, and while we're on the subject of Margret: Just think, she's already gotten down to brass tacks. After all the praise for “The Rosebush on the Moor,” she went through the privy councillor's desk drawers and found some stuff and now she's going to patch together a sequel for Wilhelm Meister. Mr. Cotta's all excited and he already paid her a big advance.

But sometimes I wake up in the middle of the night and hear that horrible sucking sound, as if it were happening all over again, the privy councillor rising to the surface of the moor right behind me. Then I lie awake for a long time, wondering what got into me, there on the moor. Sometimes I think I sold my soul there, and Margret sold hers. . . .

But then I make myself a glass of warm milk and think of Margret's advance on Wilhelm Meister and my really great ballade, which I'll publish someday as the first step in my own incredibly successful career, and then I feel just fine. I think a soul's a small price to pay for an authentic historical experience, don't you?

* * * *

Oh, and one other thing: I left the murder out of the ballade, of course. I mean, let's be honest: Readers don't want anything with a murder in it!

Copyright ©2012 by Judith Merchant; translation Copyright © 2012 by Mary Tannert

* * * *

ERRATUM: In EQMM's February, 2012 issue, the story “Out There” by Zoe Beck, in the Passport to Crime department, appeared without either credit or copyright lines for translator Mary Tannert. We regret this omission. Mary Tannert's frequent—and seamless—translations are invaluable in keeping Passport to Crime going as a monthly feature. Our thanks to one of the genre's most accomplished translators!

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Novelette: TUNNEL VISION
by Gene Breaznell

Writer Gene Breaznell has one of the most diverse resumes we've ever encountered. He's a former tennis professional (with a world ranking) who has also worked as a Connecticut police officer, an advertising and public relations account executive, an operating-room attendant, a waste-paper broker, and a recycling consultant. His first mystery novel, TheStar of Sutherland, was published in 1989; a second, Deadly Divots, in 2003. Now he's turned to short stories, while also working on a third novel.

The clutch blew in the deepest part of the Midtown Tunnel. At the bottom of the East River. Halfway between Manhattan and Long Island City. Smoking like a trash fire. Stinking like a dead skunk. Stopping the old box truck in its bald tire tracks. Cutting the two-lane tube down to one during the evening rush. Starting a symphony of car horns. A chorus of curses.

Dan rolled his eyes and muttered, “You were riding that bitch.”

“This bitch is right where it belongs.” Larry calmly lit a cigarette. “Bottom of the damn river.”

“Not with me in it.” Dan, who was claustrophobic, and a nonsmoker, broke into a cold sweat. There was no quick way out of this mess, and Larry wasn't about to put out that cancer stick.

Larry did turn off the engine, which was smoking more than the clutch, grinning out the cracked and pitted driver's-side window at the yuppie scum leaning on their highfalutin horns, fleeing the Big Rotten Apple in their Lexuses and Bimmers. Let them be late for dinner. At least they had radios, heaters, someplace to go, someone to go home to. When a tow truck finally worked its way through the traffic behind and pushed the old box truck out of the tunnel, then hooked it up and towed it back to the plant, he would go to his cheap weekly motel room. A hovel not far from the stinking, smoking tunnel. Not much better than his former prison cell. Where he'd force down some leftover takeout, while staring at the fuzzy TV and four bare walls.

Trying to take his mind off the tunnel walls, which were closing in, Dan said, “Will we get a summons?”

“The old man'll get one,” said Larry. “Serves him right. Wouldn't spring for a clutch, muffler, tires. Not even a new taillight. This thing's held together with duct tape. Cop'll get carpal tunnel writing the tickets.”

Dan tried to smile, but couldn't lose the thought of the tunnel walls tearing apart, like the hull of the Titanic, and tons of cold polluted water crushing them. He wished he had never seen that damn movie, except for Kate Winslet's tits.

Larry blew a puff of smoke toward Dan in the passenger seat, watching him sweat, cringe at loud car horns, glance up and down the tunnel walls as if they were terrorists with sniper rifles and suitcase nukes taking aim at them. What was he, twenty-six? Larry wondered. Half his age? The kid had told him once, but he'd promptly forgotten. College kid, laid off from some office job in the city. Unable to find anything but this dead-end job, in this shit-eating economy. Working for the old man—cheap bastard—sheeting, slitting, die-cutting, delivering corrugated boxes. Fixing machines that were always breaking down, like this box truck. Mopping oil. Horsing a forklift. Sweeping the floors in that godforsaken plant. Inhaling dust and chemical fumes. Larry took a long drag on his cigarette, almost wishing he would get emphysema, mesothelioma, lung cancer. He would sue the old man in a New York minute. Lawyers, like cockroaches, would beat a path to his motel door. But that could take years, and there was a better way.

A tow truck pulled up behind them and pushed the old box truck out of the tunnel, into the dark December, onto a gritty trash-strewn shoulder of the road where they waited while the tow truck hooked them up and a transit cop wrote them several tickets. While Larry smirked at the rushing Yuppies, and Dan breathed a sigh of relief at being out of the crushing tunnel.

Back at the plant, in the darkest part of Long Island City, so near yet so far from the glitter of Manhattan across the river, the old box truck was dropped off. Along with Larry and Dan, who paid for the tow out of their own pockets. The plant was closed for the night and the old man was long gone. He never kept much petty cash around anyway.

“He owes us big for this one.” Larry tucked the receipt in his wallet, as the tow truck drove off, and he and Dan went to their cars. “Lucky we had enough money between us.”

Dan nodded. Both of them lived from paycheck to paycheck, with no raise for more than a year, expecting only a meager Christmas bonus. And Dan lived with his mother, a recent widow who was barely getting by on Social Security, in a cracker-box house in nearby Maspeth.

Getting into his car, a beater parked behind the plant next to Dan's equally beaten ride, Larry said, “Back in the tunnel, a thought hit me.”

“A thought?” Dan could only think of the tiles from the tunnel's roof falling off and hitting him, before it split wide open and the river engulfed them.

“The old man's loaded,” Larry told him.

“With boxes?”

“Think about it. Everything comes in boxes, from Cracker Jacks to car parts. You need them for everything.”

Dan looked around at the grimy, graffiti-scarred building. At the leaky roof and dilapidated loading dock. The painted-over windows behind rusted iron bars that stained the crumbling brickwork.

“Don't let the looks fool you,” Larry said. “Business is bad, but the old man's been making and selling boxes forever. You should see his house, out on the Island. He's rolling in clover.”

“So what?” Dan shivered in a chill night wind that was building off the river. One foot planted in his car, the other poised on the tarmac, he was anxious to get home. It was getting late and his mother would worry. She would also have a hot meal for him, but Larry would not let him go.

“So it's time we got our share,” Larry insisted.

“Our share of boxes?” Dan scoffed. “I'd rather have what they put in them. Sound systems, computers, flat-screens.” Dan and his mother had only an old TV, with basic cable, past-due mortgage payments, an overdue college loan. He had nightmares about losing the house and having to live in a refrigerator box under the Queensboro Bridge.

“Let's get a beer,” Larry said.

“I'm tapped,” Dan reminded him. “That tow truck—”

“Me too, but I can put it on my tab,” Larry said.

“Well . . .”

“Don't worry. You don't have to pay me back.”

Larry had said the magic words. Dan followed him in his car to The Depot, a workingman's bar on Grand Avenue. An oasis to lumpers and day laborers who worked in the area. A hellhole to Yuppies.

“Here's the deal.” Larry leaned close over a corner table, careful not to topple their Bud drafts. “The old man's an art collector.”

“Art?”

“Paintings.”

“We sell him our paintings?” Dan laughed in his beer. “I don't know about you, but the only painting I've ever done is my mother's kitchen.”

Larry wasn't an artist either, unless you meant bunco. And not so hot at that. The law was onto him long before he tried to score. He'd been better at robbing convenience stores, until his temper got the best of him. He should never have beat that cashier so bad, he thought, not on camera anyway.

“Valuable paintings,” Larry explained, “by one artist in particular, who's pretty damn famous.”

“Da Vinci?” Dan thought back to a college art-history course he had taken to get close to a certain coed. And to the bestselling book she had urged him to read, by Dan-something, that he never finished.

“Not that famous,” Larry said. “A starving artist he befriended in Greenwich Village back in the fifties. You wouldn't recognize his name.”

“Try me.” Dan and his mother enjoyed watching Jeopardy! together during dinner. Her broad range of knowledge was impressive, while he was limited to pop culture.

“Franz Kline,” Larry told him.

“Never heard of him.” Dan wondered if his mom had.

“Kline was a contemporary of Jackson Pollock and Willem de Kooning,” Larry said, as if he knew more than those three names and his interest in art went beyond forged checks and counterfeit twenties, adding for effect, “They were abstract expressionists.”

“Sounds illegal.” Dan had lost interest in art history when the coed lost interest in him.

“Should have been, the way they dripped paint all over the canvas and got paid big bucks.” Larry lit a cigarette, despite state law. Smoke ‘em if you got ‘em was The Depot's motto. Any health inspector who tried to issue a fine wouldn't leave the place alive.

“Before Kline made it big,” Larry continued, “the old man bought a shitload of his paintings on the cheap. Now they're worth a bundle.”

Waving away the secondhand smoke, Dan said, “So the old man's a patron of the arts?”

“Con artist is more like it.” Larry spat out a piece of tobacco from his unfiltered Camel. “Kline did all the work, the old man reaped all the rewards. Read all about it in an art magazine I found in his office.”

Wondering how far he could trust this kid, Larry bought another round. Seemed he wasn't a wild child, and wouldn't be a loose cannon. He was always at work on time, never took a sick day, more than earned his pay. Drug or drinking problems would have been obvious by now. Living with his mother was a little strange, though the only way to go for too many financially-strapped families these days. He also had no trouble with the law, as far as Larry knew. Too good to be true, maybe, but he couldn't risk either of them losing control, like at that convenience store. And he couldn't risk the kid ratting him out, to the cops or the old man, whether or not he went along. But he could use the extra muscle, and a fall guy in case everything fell apart.

“The old man's paying us peanuts,” Larry reminded him. “Like I said back at the plant, he owes us big-time.”

Dan thought about the plant, the dust, the chemicals, the blown clutch, that awful tunnel, and his mom in that Maspeth cracker-box. He forced a laugh, and said, “Let's get him to give us a painting for a Christmas bonus.”

“Then we sit around and stare at it?” Larry said. “I don't know about you, but I'm tired of eating takeout, and driving that heap outside.”

“Then we sell it.” Dan drew the obvious conclusion. “I got my eye on a Corvette convertible.”

“What if it's hot? And I don't mean the ‘Vette,” Larry tried, angling the kid away from fantasy land. Watching his eyes.

Raising an eyebrow, Dan said, “The old man stole it?”

“Technically no,” said Larry, convinced the old man had screwed the starving artist, and should share some of the ill-gotten gains.

“Oh.” A light went on inside Dan's head, like the courtesy light in a new Corvette. “We're gonna steal it.”

“I never said that.” Larry looked around the barroom, making sure that no one could hear them, adding, “Keep your voice down.”

* * * *

The old man lived with his wife in upscale Garden City, out on Long Island, a forty-five minute drive from the plant, traffic willing. He kept his art collection at home, protected by a high-tech security system. The plan was to follow him home, burst inside the house behind him as he opened the door, tie up him and his wife, without hurting them, and abscond with several of the most valuable paintings. Wearing masks, of course. Thanks to his time in the slam, and a few discreet inquiries, Larry knew of a less-than-reputable art dealer who would take the paintings off his hands at a fair price, and take them to his villa in France. Coveting them for his private collection, having enough stolen art already in the collection to keep him from trying any funny stuff.

The following night an arctic front moved in, crystallizing the sky as they waited across the street from the plant in Dan's car. Having left work before the old man, leaving him to lock up. It wasn't safe for anyone after dark in that area, but the old man never seemed to mind. Nothing had ever happened to him in the fifty years he had been there, and there was nothing but boxes to steal.

Larry had talked Dan into using his car, lying that his defroster was broken, his windshield would fog, and they would lose the old man in the mad rush out of Manhattan on the Long Island Expressway. He insisted that Dan do the driving, blowing smoke up his ass by telling him he was the better driver. That always worked with guys who love Corvettes, who think they're Mario Andretti, even if they've only owned beaters all their lives. It also helped if they were young, impressionable, and desperate. You could talk them into almost anything.

Shortly after seven the old man left the plant, shut the front door, shook the knob to make sure it was locked, turned up his overcoat collar, pulled down his fedora, and shambled across the empty parking lot toward his car. Looking as if the icy wind would blow him away. Betraying every one of his eighty-something years. Piece of cake to pull off this heist, Larry thought. Candy from a baby, and all those trite expressions. Dan would call them platitudes, thinking he's smart. What did college kids know, other than beer pong and what their popinjay professors told them. Setting him up would be almost too easy.

Following the old man wasn't easy. Not because he drove a nondescript sedan that was easy to lose in heavy traffic. He drove so fast and ran so many stop signs and red lights they worried about Dan's beater keeping up, and about the cops stopping one or both cars, blowing the whole thing. At least he never looked in the rearview mirror to see who was chasing him.

“He's the guy you always see on the evening news and read about in the morning paper.” Larry said.

“Whoa!” Dan hit the brakes, nearly rear-ending the old man, who had decided to stop for a yellow light for some strange reason.

Grasping the dashboard, loosing a stream of curses, Larry hissed, “He's the old fart who thinks he's hitting the brakes when it's really the goddamn gas and plows through plate-glass windows and pedestrians. It's a crime to give him a driver's license,” he added, as if he had a license to steal.

The old man slowed to a tick above the posted thirty-mile limit when they reached Garden City, creeping, crawling, obeying all the traffic lights and signs. Surprising Dan but not Larry, who knew from experience that cops in upper-crust towns like this were dedicated to busting anyone who looked sideways at them.

The old man's house was a massive English Tudor, with tall chimneys, steep gables, slate roofs, slashes of dark wood set off by stark white stucco, similar to some of the Kline paintings. Down a cul-de-sac, ending at an outlying hole of a golf course, one side of the property bordered the course, the other was adjacent to a recently cleared lot with a new house under construction.

“We should have waited out here for him” Dan said, “instead of risking our lives, and a slew of summonses, trying to follow him.”

“This is not Long Island City,” Larry said. “Cars like ours can't sit around in these fancy neighborhoods.”

“We could have told them we're construction workers,” Dan said, “building that new house next door.”

“In the dark?” Larry smirked. No wonder the kid couldn't figure out why he wanted to use his car on this job.

“Guess that rules out pretending we're golfers,” Dan said.

“You're a quick study,” Larry said, as if he meant it. You're so wet behind the ears you're still dripping, he thought. Wouldn't you be the prize of the prison showers.

The old man's car suddenly sped up the long driveway, like an old horse nearing the barn. Dan worried that he'd get swallowed by an electric garage door, and they'd lose him behind the security system. Larry assured him that the old man hadn't used the electric doors since backing through one before it opened.

“How do you know?” Dan said.

“I watch the evening news instead of MTV.” Larry snickered. “Happened over a year ago, before you started at the plant, while you were playing drinking games and chasing coeds. I've been here before, couple of times, delivering work orders he needed to sign. He never let me inside, but I know he leaves his car behind the house in the driveway and walks around to the front door, where he codes in the keyless entry. It's bright under the front porch light, but dark along the driveway side. Kill the lights and coast up, but not too far, while he walks around. There's plenty of time, and his eyesight's as bad as his hearing.”

Dan killed the lights and coasted up the driveway, in remarkable silence for a car on its last legs. Coat collar covering his ears, fedora shielding his brow, the old man struggled out of his car, shut the door, shuffled along a flagstone path leading around the house, leaning into a stiff wind off the golf course. Wind that rattled the skeleton trees and muffled Dan's squeaking brakes and groaning doors.

Lurking behind an evergreen, donning ski masks that Larry had bought from a street vendor, the would-be art thieves watched the old man edge toward the front door, seeming to move in slow motion. Pausing so long at the keyless entry he must have been frozen, or had an attack of Alzheimer's and forgotten the code. He punched in the numbers, painfully slow, the door cracked open, the thieves darted around the evergreen and shoved the old man inside the house ahead of them.

And Larry pulled the gun.

“What's that for?” Dan said.

"Shhhh." Larry raised the gun barrel to his lips, reminding him not to talk. Damn rookie.

Following their plan, Dan withdrew a length of clothesline from his coat pocket, tied the old man's hands behind him, sat him in a chair. Suddenly feeling sorry for him, with hands so cold and arthritic, too old and feeble to put up a struggle or even protest. Heaven help anyone who did anything like this to his mother.

“The old lady,” Larry whispered harshly, aiming the gun at an ornate wooden staircase. “I heard her upstairs.”

Dan bounded up the stairs, anxious to get the whole thing over. The old man watched him go, then begged Larry, “Take whatever you want. Anything. Please don't hurt us.”

“This won't hurt.” Larry pulled a plastic bag out of his back pocket and pulled off his ski mask.

The old man gasped, trying not to believe his eyes, blaming his cataracts. This could not be happening. He had given this ex-con a job when no one else would. Kept him on the payroll and picked up his medical benefits, though he constantly complained about the working conditions and thought the world owed him a living.

Seeming to read his mind, Larry said, “You owe me,” as if that explained everything. He placed the plastic bag over the old man's head and tied it with clothesline around his neck. Making sure it was airtight, but not tight enough to leave marks.

“He can't breathe!” Dan was at the top of the stairs, wide-eyed, starting down. Larry raised the gun and fired. The kid clutched his chest, more shocked than in pain, and tumbled all the way to the foot of the stairs.

“Perfect,” Larry said, as if to the old man. He untied his hands, removed the plastic bag, laid him on the floor. There was not much left of the withered carcass. He had lifted stacks of boxes and bags of chemicals that were heavier. The gun was a Saturday-night special, with the serial numbers filed off, he had bought for a song on the mean streets of Long Island City. The old man could have bought it just as easily, and carried it everywhere for protection. The cops would think the old man had shot Dan, coming home late, encountering the robbery in progress, and suffered a fatal heart attack from the excitement.

He went into the living room, more like an art gallery, and turned up the lights. A dozen paintings of various shapes and sizes, in an assortment of frames, adorned the walls. Stealing the spotlight from a stone fireplace, priceless antique furniture, prohibitively expensive Persian carpets. Some of the paintings were done in vibrant colors, others exclusively in black and white. All intense and alive. Nothing like the washed-out photos in that outdated art magazine he had found in the old man's office. Larry had little respect for the abstracts, and even less understanding, but the representational pieces proved that Kline could draw, as well as splash stretches of canvas with buckets of color and slash them with housepainter's brushes. The portrait of a clown's head caught his eye, or was it a puppet? The saddest, palest puppet-clown he ever saw. More forlorn that Emmett Kelly sweeping elusive spotlights in empty circus rings. More like Frankenstein's monster than Pinocchio. He would sooner hang himself than hang that painting in his cheap motel room.

Using his box cutter from the plant, he cut three of the most valuable paintings, according to the art magazine, out of their frames and rolled them up so they would fit in a poster tube he had left in the car. He would grab the tube on the way out and slip in the paintings before hiking across the golf course to the train station, less than a mile away. He would hide the paintings until the heat was off and he could get them to the art dealer. He would show up at work in the morning as if nothing had happened. The cops would be there, of course, with their rubber hoses out, and he would be a person of interest. Person of interest? A ridiculous misnomer, thanks to political correctness, considering his history of violence and crime. Detectives would be all over him as to his whereabouts the night before, about the missing paintings, and they would lean on him hard. But he had been down that road before, knew the procedure, could handle the pressure. He also had an alibi, arranged with the bartender at The Depot, a friend and former con, who ran the tab for him and occasionally slipped him free drinks, and did some drug dealing on the side. Larry would lie to the interrogators, with enough assurance to pass a polygraph test, that Dan had a friend who stopped by the plant occasionally. Another college kid, most likely, who had also taken an art history course and would have known the paintings were valuable. How could Larry know? He had never even graduated from high school. He would tell them the friend never stayed long at the plant, he had paid him little attention, and could never identify him. They would have to conclude the mysterious visitor was Dan's accomplice, who fled the scene with only a few of the paintings after everything went wrong.

“Perfect,” he repeated, starting toward the front door. Stopping when he saw lights outside, through a casement window. A narrow window in the Tudor style, with diamond-shaped panes of antique glass that distorted the light, making it dance. Turning him paler than Kline's grotesque puppet-clown. He dropped the rolled-up paintings like pieces of litter and his head started spinning. The old lady must have gotten free somehow and called 9-1-1. Reminded of his mother, the kid must have tied her too loosely, or not at all.

In the midst of all this abstraction, was this really happening? His life had been clearly defined by hard knocks and poor choices. There were no gray areas in prison cells. No paint splashes open to discussion, other than how to remove them. He was the puppet master, behind the curtain. Making the kid dance, having his way with the old man, taking what should belong to him. He saw it all when that clutch blew in the tunnel, and there was light at the end—but not like this.

Copyright © 2012 by Gene Breaznell

* * * *

WHO THEY ARE

In EQMM's 70th Anniversary issue—September/October 2011—I asked longtime subscribers to write and tell us about their history with EQMM. I suspected there might still be some readers on our rolls who'd been with us since the beginning. We received no letter from anyone falling into that category (which does not, of course, mean there isn't such a subscriber still with us). But we did hear from several devoted fans whose readership goes back decades. Below you'll find them listed in order of the length of their connection to EQMM (as best we can determine). We thank them all not only for their loyalty to this magazine, but for telling us their stories. —Janet Hutchings

David M. Elovitz: subscriber since fall 1944.

Virginia A. Cudd: started subscribing in 1947; various moves, including one to Mexico City, made it hard to keep up the subscription but she has been with EQMM most of the time since 1947.

Janet Gillies: subscriber since 1948.

Janice Temple: subscriber since the early 1950s.

Ruy José Furst Consalves: began reading Brazilian edition of EQMM as a young child; by 1955 had learned English and began reading the American edition.

Harry Sheather: subscriber since 1960.

Guido Marino: has been “reading and enjoying each issue for over 50 years.”

Mildred O. Grife: subscriber since 1966.

Forrest T. Athey: no date determined, but he has “an extensive relationship with the magazine” and has read most of the stories in his collection of 823 issues.

[Back to Table of Contents]

Reviews: THE JURY BOX
by Steve Steinbock

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This month let's whet your appetites with a tasty tour of seven mysteries that prominently feature food, restaurants, or recipes in their plots. While it's easy to package culinary crime fiction into a narrow subgenre, these novels are diverse in style and setting.

*** Leslie Meier: Chocolate Covered Murder, Kensington Books, $24.00. In the twentieth “Lucy Stone” mystery by a veteran EQMM contributor, it's a cold Maine winter and a body is discovered on the lake, apparently the result of ice fishing with too much alcohol. Small-town journalist Lucy Stone's suspicions of foul play are confirmed when a second body is found: the village tart spread naked with herentire body coated in chocolate. In the background is a quiet rivalrybetween two confectioners, one producing local fudge, and the other selling overpriced truffles. Meier's characters and setting are believable andwritten with a spicy, semi-sweet wit.

*** Carol Culver: A Good Day to Pie, Midnight Ink, $14.95. In this debut, heroine Hanna Denton has returned to her California hometown to take over her grandmother's pie shop while Grannie enjoys life in a ritzy retirement village. But when an acerbic bridge player and suspected card cheat drops dead in front of Grannie after tasting Hanna's Cranberry Walnut Cream Pie, the young pie-maker has to play detective in order to prove her grandmother's innocence. Added to the challenge is that the local police chief is Hanna's high-school flame. The novel is a low-cal treat filled with fresh pieces of romance.

*** Lucy Burdette: An Appetite for Murder, Obsidian, $7.99. Hayley Snow is trying to break into work as a Key West food critic. But as her bad luck would have it, on the very day her article “Key Lime Pie to Die For” appears in the paper, her ex-boyfriend's new girlfriend dies from a poisoned Key lime pie. Writing under the new pen name “Lucy Burdette,” Roberta Isleib packs this first in a new series with Key West color, giving readers a glimpse of Key West's restaurants, street vendors, and the houseboat-packed marinas.

*** Elaine Viets: Death on a Platter, Obsidian, $7.99. With her seventh “Josie Marcus, Mystery Shopper” novel, Viets gets high marks for humor and for her loving and informative culinary travelogue of St. Louis.

Hired to review the best tourist eateries, Josie finds herself in a bind when a customer dies after eating tainted ravioli at a restaurant owned by a friend of her mother's. Along the way, the reader gets a savory tour that includes local specialties like St. Louis -style pizza, fried brain sandwiches, pig's ears, St. Louis barbecue, and, most importantly, Toasted Ravioli. The story is garnished with Josie's family dynamics and seasoned with romance.

*** Sandra Balzo: Triple Shot, Severn House, $27.95. Something is rotten in the Wisconsin coffeehouse Uncommon Grounds, and it's not sour milk. A documentary film crew is in town to explore a mafia shootout across the street almost forty years earlier, but a search beneath the floorboards of the old train station housing the coffeehouse uncovers the body of a newly murdered apprentice realtor. Coffee-house owner Maggie Thorsen is the hero of this seventh book in the series. But the real star of Balzo's book is the coffeehouse itself, which comes to life with secret rooms, mafia treasure, plenty of caffeine, and a wild assortment of coffeehouse denizens.

*** Marian Babson: No Cooperation from the Cat, St. Martin's Minotaur, $24.99. Siblings and retired actresses Trixie Dolan and Evangeline Sinclair, who first appeared in Babson's Reel Murder (1986) are back in a cozy romp set in a mansion with as many madcap oddballs as Blandings Castle. As the deadline for her cookbook looms, Trixie's daughter, Martha, is frantically testing recipes. A handsome but insufferable world traveler arrives with his entourage of doting admirers only to discover that his wife, originally slated to write the cookbook, was poisoned by one of her own recipes. As is usual in Babson's novels, there are numerous cats who share in the fun.

*** Betsy Draine and Michael Hinden: Murder in Lascaux, University of Wisconsin Books, $26.95 / e-book $14.95. While art history teacher Nora Barnes and her antiques dealer husband are in France to attend a cooking school, they pull some strings in order to see the prehistoric cave paintings at Lascaux. But during their tour, the lights in the cave go out. And when they return, one of their party lies dead with a dead bird ceremonially posed nearby. Dialogue and characters often fall flat, but the background and descriptions of the Lascaux cave paintings, regional art history, and local color are fascinating and well researched. Into the intricate plot the authors were able to weave Cro-Magnon art, a medieval religious sect, and Nazi intrigue, not to mention cooking lessons.

When your Jury Box foreman set out to write a column featuring culinary mysteries, he had no idea how many there were, or how clever their titles could be. Here are some of the recent books that were released too close to this column's publication date for us to review: Julie Hyzy's latest featuring White House executive chef Olivia Paras, Affairs of Steak (Berkley Prime Crime), Jenn McKinlay's “Cupcake Bakery” mystery, Red Velvet Revenge (Berkley Prime Crime), Jacklyn Brady's “Piece of Cake” mystery, Cake on a Hot Tin Roof (Berkley Prime Crime), Laura Childs’ “Tea Shop” mystery, Agony of the Leaves (Berkley Prime Crime), and Sarah Zettel's second “Vampire Chef” novel, Let Them Eat Stake (Obsidian).

In the reference-book department, Leslie Budewitz has put together a handy and entertaining resource for mystery writers, Books, Crooks, and Counselors: How to Write Accurately About Criminal Lawand Courtroom Proceedings (Quill Driver, $14.95). Budewitz, whose stories have appeared in both AHMM and EQMM, addresses 160 different topics and questions about law, including criminal investigation, Latin legal terminology, how judges think, and what happens when a person is arrested. Coincidentally, Budewitz's “Food Lovers Village” mystery series (Berkley Prime Crime), set in northwestern Montana, is set to premier in summer 2013.

Jigsaw puzzles and detective stories are a natural pairing of pastimes. Since 1988, Bepuzzled has been publishing mystery-related jigsaw puzzles with accompanying short-story booklets. The story stops just before the solution is revealed, and the reader is asked to put together the jigsaw puzzle to solve the crime. While many of these are food related (Henry Slesar's “Foul Play and Cabernet” and “Grounds for Murder” by John Lutz), “Murder on the Rocks” (Bepuzzled, $19.98) involves no food. A group of former college friends get together for an annual mountain climb, but one of them comes home in a body bag. The story, by Mike Barr, packs in the clues. But it isn't until the 1,000 piece puzzle is completed that the visual clues are available to prove who killed Phoebe. The only disappointment about this product is the flimsy paper on which the story booklet is printed. In addition to writing various Batman, superhero, and science-fiction titles for DC Comics, Barr is the creator of “Maze Agency,” which has the distinction of being one of the few “fair play” mystery comics, and was inspired, Barr admits, by his love of Ellery Queen.

Copyright © 2012 by Steve Steinbock

[Back to Table of Contents]

Novelette: MR. MONK AND THE TALKING CAR
by Lee Goldberg

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Art by Mark Evan Walker

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Lee Goldberg is this year's winner of the Malice Domestic Convention's Poirot Award. Normally the award honors individuals other than writers who have made outstanding contributions to the Malice Domestic genre. Lee Goldberg is not only an exceptional writer, he's also a producer who has done much to further the field through TV. For the past couple of years EQMM has been publishing the self-contained Monk stories that the author eventually weaves into the novels he writes for NAL/Signet (see Mr. Monk Is a Mess, out next month).

The hours pass very slowly when you're sitting in a squad car, parked behind a billboard on a New Jersey country road, waiting for speeders to whiz by.

It's not the most glamorous side of law enforcement, but writing $390 speeding tickets pays the bills, especially when a handful of corrupt politicians have looted the town treasury to finance their outrageously extravagant lifestyles.

So that's why Adrian Monk and I, the lovely and resourceful Natalie Teeger, had to do our stint early that Monday morning out on the old highway, a remote, curving stretch of two-lane asphalt surrounded by rolling hills no driver could resist taking at high speed.

We were into our third week working as uniformed police officers in Summit, thousands of miles away from our homes in San Francisco, where Monk was usually employed as a police consultant and I toiled, underpaid and under-appreciated, as his long-suffering assistant.

Summit was basically an upscale bedroom community for highly educated, well-off professionals who worked in New York City, which was only a thirty-minute train ride away. The town's roots as a pastoral farming community were still evident in the rolling hills, tree-lined streets, and the lush landscaping around the homes, many of which dated back to the early 1900s and had been impeccably restored and maintained. That costs lots of money, but, from what I could see, there was no shortage of that in Summit, except in the recently looted town treasury.

We were in Summit as a favor to Police Chief Randy Disher, who'd once been a San Francisco homicide detective, and his live-in girlfriend Sharona Fleming, who'd once been Monk's nurse and assistant.

With all the local politicians in jail or out on bail awaiting trial, Disher found himself drafted as acting mayor and in desperate need of temporary help enforcing the law. So he called on us.

I'd worked around a lot of cops over the years while helping Monk solve murders but I'd never had a badge myself. But now that I'd worn one for a few weeks, I'd discovered that I liked it.

“Thank God for cars and paved roads,” Monk said. He sat in the passenger seat, aiming his radar gun out the window, waiting for our next victim.

I had to think about the reasoning behind his comment because he reasoned like nobody else. That's partly a result of Monk's obsessive-compulsive disorder, but mostly it's due to the bizarre way he looks at the world. It's what makes him a brilliant detective and an enormous pain in the ass.

I knew he liked cars because they had four wheels and were symmetrical, but he also firmly believed that the steering wheel should be in the center of the dashboard instead of on one side or the other. He would have settled for cars having two steering wheels, one on each side, even if one was only for show, but so far none of the major automakers had agreed to his gracious compromise (despite the fact that he'd sent them countless letters arguing his point).

So why was he thanking God for cars now? Perhaps it had less to do with cars than the pavement, which I knew he liked without reservation.

“You're grateful because cars are symmetrical,” I said, “and the roads they use are flat, level, and divided into lanes that dictate an orderly flow of traffic.”

“That's only part of it,” he said. “I'm eternally grateful that nobody has to use horses for transportation anymore. Back in the old days, before we had paved roads, horses should have been outlawed in populated areas.”

“That would have made it awfully difficult for people to get around.”

“Horses made it worse.”

“I don't see how.”

“On a typical day in New York City in the eighteen hundreds, horses dropped two and a half million pounds of manure and expelled sixty-five thousand gallons of urine onto dirt roads. You try walking through that.” Monk did a full-body shudder, which people unfamiliar with him often mistook for an epileptic seizure instead of extreme revulsion. “Before cars came along, the Big Apple was the Big Poop.”

Ever since Monk became improbably enamored with Ellen Morse, the ecologically-conscious and obsessive-compulsive proprietor of Poop, a store on Summit's main street that sold an astonishing array of art, shampoos, creams, stationery, fossils, coffee, and cooking oils derived from excrement, he'd become a walking encyclopedia of crap.

“I never thought of it from that perspective,” I said. “And I'm sorry that I can now.”

“It's a wonder humanity survived that apocalypse.”

“That wasn't an apocalypse,” I said.

“When the streets are piled with four hundred thousand tons of poo soaked in twenty-three million, seven hundred twenty-five thousand gallons of pee in a year, that's an apocalypse,” Monk said. “That's why four horsemen, and not four guys in Toyotas, are your first warning that it's coming.”

I sighed and shook my head. I couldn't believe we were having this stupid discussion when there were far more important things we could be talking about, like the enormous changes we were making in our lives.

In forty-eight hours, we'd be back in San Francisco, but only for a few weeks to settle our affairs and pack up our belongings. That's because Disher had offered us full-time jobs as cops on his force and we'd accepted.

Well, I had.

Monk kept flip-flopping.

But no matter what he ultimately decided, our relationship had already changed in a big way. From the moment I put on the Summit Police uniform, I stopped being his employee and became his partner, although I couldn't bring myself to call him by his first name.

And if he decided to stay in San Francisco, and I came back to Summit, he'd have to decide whether to hire a new assistant or try to make it on his own for the first time since his wife was killed and he was discharged from the SFPD on psychological grounds.

I was about to bring up the topic when a bright red, mud-splattered Range Rover sped past the billboard we were hiding behind and on towards Summit.

Monk lowered his radar gun and looked at me. “Let's roll.”

I flicked on the lights, cranked up the siren, and punched the gas, peeling out in a spray of gravel. The driver of the Range Rover wasn't the only one who couldn't resist speeding on that lonely highway.

We caught up to the Range Rover in seconds and the driver dutifully pulled over to the shoulder without a fight.

I parked a few feet behind the car and observed that the driver was a woman and that the vehicle had New Jersey plates.

Monk was scowling, presumably because her bumper was splashed with mud thick with twigs and bits of leaves. He hated dirt.

I typed the numbers into the computer on our center console and discovered the Range Rover was registered to Kelsey Turek of Summit. There were no wants or warrants associated with her or the vehicle.

I got out and approached the driver's side of the car and the woman at the wheel. Monk remained behind me, on the passenger side of the car, peering into the back of the vehicle, just in case there were a couple of bank robbers, a kidnapped heiress, a dozen illegal aliens, piles of cocaine, or maybe a stolen nuclear warhead in plain sight. Her backseat was folded down flat, but the cargo area was empty. All I saw was a bottle of vinegar on the floor. As far as I knew, that wasn't contraband.

The woman lowered her window as I approached. The first thing I noticed was the heavenly smell of the Ranger Rover's plush, leather interior. I'd never owned a car upholstered in anything but vinyl or cloth.

The driver was a cute pug-nosed woman in her thirties, wearing a man's long-sleeved flannel shirt and a faded pair of jeans. Her face was red around her eyes and the bridge of her nose, as if she'd been wearing ski goggles.

“Good morning,” I said. “May I see your license and registration, please?”

She already had them out on her lap and handed them to me. She had a nasty blister on her palm, just below her thumb.

“What's the problem, Officer?” she asked.

I glanced at her license, which identified her as Kelsey Turek, though her photo reminded me of Katie Holmes in her Dawson's Creek days, before Batman, Tom Cruise, Scientology, and age robbed her of that adorable, woman-child quality.

“Are you aware of the speed limit on this highway?” I asked.

“Fifty-five,” she said.

“And do you know how fast you were driving, Ms. Turek?”

“Fifty-five,” she said.

“Perhaps it would surprise you to know the actual speed you were driving,” I said and realized I didn't know either. I looked across the top of the car to Monk, who stood on the passenger side and was peering through the window at Turek. “How fast was she going, Mr. Monk?”

“Fifty-four,” he said.

I glared at him. “So why did we pull her over? Was it so you could commend her for traveling at an even-numbered rate of speed or to ticket her for driving too slow and impeding the nonexistent traffic?”

“Her car is splattered with mud,” Monk said. “And there's a piece of plastic bagging snagged on her trailer hitch.”

“That's not a traffic violation,” I said.

“May I go now?” Turek asked, looking uncomfortable, like a child watching her parents arguing.

I handed her back her driver's license and registration. I saw a white band of skin at the base of the ring finger on her left hand where she'd perhaps taken off a wedding ring. It made me think of the one that I once wore.

It was years after Mitch was shot down over Kosovo before I finally stopped wearing my ring. It took a surprisingly long time for that band of pale skin to tan and I was painfully sad when it did.

“Officer?” she prodded.

“Yes, I'm sorry,” I said. “You can go.”

“No, you can't,” Monk said to her.

I sighed and turned back to Turek. “Forgive me for asking, but would you mind washing your car when you get back to Summit? My partner would really appreciate it.”

“Sure thing,” she said. “Whatever you want, Officer.”

“We can't let her go and we certainly can't let her wash her car,” Monk said.

“Why not?” I demanded.

“Because she could wash away important evidence.”

“Of what?” I said. “That her car was dirty?”

“That she murdered her husband,” Monk said.

That last word was barely out of his mouth when Turek floored it, the car speeding away and spraying us with loose dirt and gravel.

I staggered back, my face stung by the bits of rock, my eyes full of dirt.

“I'll take that as a confession,” Monk said.

“What the hell?” I said, still stunned by Kelsey Turek's unexpected and very sudden flight.

“Don't just stand there in a daze,” Monk said. “She's getting away.”

I hurried back to the car, blinking hard as I ran, trying to clear my eyes. We got in, I hit the siren, and we sped after Turek's Range Rover. I still had a speck of something in one eye and kept blinking until I had tears rolling down my cheeks.

Monk took the radio and called the dispatcher, informing her that we were now in the pursuit of a killer. He didn't even qualify his statement by saying “suspected” killer because he was that sure of himself. And he had every right to be. He was never wrong when it came to homicide, but that didn't make his unexpected pronouncements of guilt or smug self-confidence any less irritating.

We closed in on the Range Rover, which was going at about ninety miles an hour now, and one of my tears finally washed the speck from my eye.

“We can add driving at excessive speed to her list of heinous crimes,” Monk said, then looked at me. “Don't worry, Natalie, it's okay. We'll catch her.”

“I'm not crying,” I said, wiping the tears away with the back of my hand. “Why would I be crying?”

Monk shrugged. “Shame? Embarrassment? A crippling sense of inadequacy?”

There was a truck ahead of Kelsey. She swerved around it, right into oncoming traffic. Two cars veered off the road onto the shoulder to avoid her. One of the cars crashed through a fence into an open field, another spun out.

I had to slow down to weave around the truck and the two cars while Kelsey gained even more distance between us, disappearing around a curve.

“What the hell are you talking about?” I asked Monk.

“I'm answering your question,” he said.

“I had something in my eye, that's all,” I said. “But what I'd like to know is why you think I'd feel inadequate.”

“Because you're crying over almost letting a murderer go.”

“I had no idea she was a murderer,” I said.

“That's what I mean,” he said. “Are you going to start crying again now?”

“No, because I don't have anything in my eye anymore,” I said as we caught up to Kelsey's Range Rover again. “What makes you think she murdered her husband? Was there a corpse in the back of her car that I didn't see?”

“Of course not. She has already disposed of the body. She covered the body with big black plastic garbage bags, dragged it out of the car into a shallow grave, poured lye over it, and then buried it.”

Turek's Range Rover charged up behind a Honda Accord and then passed it, intentionally sideswiping the vehicle as she went by.

The driver of the Accord, startled and fighting for control of his car, swerved wildly across both lanes, cutting us off and forcing us onto the inclined shoulder to avoid a collision.

Our car tipped hard to the right, slamming Monk against the door as I raced along the shoulder. We passed the Accord and then I wrenched the wheel hard to the left, vaulting our car back up onto the asphalt again with a sharp bounce that set off sparks that I could see reflected in the side-view mirror.

Turek had managed to gain some ground on us. I floored the gas pedal and tightened my grip on the wheel.

“How can you possibly know that's what happened?” I asked.

“Because I am not legally blind,” he said.

“You really don't want to criticize me while I'm in the middle of a high-speed pursuit, Mr. Monk. Just give me the facts, okay, so I know why the hell I'm doing this.”

“The organic matter in the mud on her car clearly indicates that she was in the forest. You can see where some of the mud was dragged off her rear bumper when she pulled out something heavy wrapped in a black plastic trash bag from the cargo area,” Monk said. “The bag snagged on her trailer hitch, leaving a shred of plastic behind.”

“That doesn't mean she killed her husband and dumped his corpse.”

We were now only a few yards behind her vehicle and closing fast.

“The missing wedding ring indicates there was tension in her marriage and the fresh, disgusting blister on her palm is clearly from digging with a shovel.”

“It is?”

“She should have been wearing leather work gloves,” Monk said. “Instead, she was wearing rubber gloves, which protected her hands from the lye, but not from the friction of holding the shovel handle while digging. For further protection, she was also wearing a long-sleeved shirt and jeans and goggles, which she cinched too tight, hence the redness on her face. After she buried the body, she got rid of the shovel, her goggles and gloves, and the lye somewhere, but she forgot about the unopened jug of vinegar, perhaps because, in and of itself, it wasn't obviously incriminating.”

“What's the vinegar for?” I looked ahead to see if there was any traffic besides the SUV we were pursuing. There wasn't.

“To neutralize any lye that got on her skin before it burned her.”

“Vinegar neutralizes lye?”

“You didn't know that?”

“Why would I know that?” I asked.

“Basic human survival. It's like asking if I know how much exposure to radiation is fatal or how long I'll live from a rattlesnake bite without immediate medical attention.”

“I don't know either of those things.”

“It's a wonder you're alive.”

Now I really did want to cry, and not because his brilliant deduction made me feel stupid for missing everything. It was because I didn't miss any of it.

For the first time, after years of training myself to be more observant, I'd finally managed to see all the details that he did. I saw the mud and scrap of the Hefty bag on her trailer hitch. I noticed how she was dressed, the blister on her hand, her missing wedding ring, and the impression the tight goggles left on her face. I even saw the bottle of vinegar.

And I still couldn't put all the pieces together.

How dense could I possibly be?

Maybe it was because I lacked his extreme sense of order.

Maybe it was because I didn't have all the obscure knowledge that he did.

Or maybe it was because I just didn't have his gift.

No matter how hard I tried, I doubted I'd ever be as observant as he was or have the insight, the artistry, to recognize the significance of what I saw.

On the other hand, there was the very real possibility that his talent for detecting arose from his crippling psychological disorder, one that had deprived him of enjoying so many of the simple and profound pleasures in life that I'd experienced.

It wasn't a trade I would like to make.

Perhaps, I thought, it was time that I accepted my limitations.

The hell I will.

I pressed the gas and edged past Turek on her driver's side until the patrol car's right front edge was beside her left rear bumper.

“Careful,” Monk said. “You're going to hit her.”

“That's the idea,” I said.

“Are you insane?”

That's when I executed a standard Pursuit Intervention Technique maneuver, something I'd seen cops do on TV in real-life car chases but that I'd never tried myself, mainly because I'd never had a reason to before.

I turned to the right and clipped the edge of the SUV. The Range Rover abruptly spun sideways directly in front of us and I rammed it, pushing the SUV off the road onto the shoulder, Monk shrieking in terror the whole way, his hands on the dash.

I stopped the car, quite pleased with myself. I hadn't solved the murder but at least I was able to pull off the PIT maneuver without any training besides sitting in front of the evening news.

Monk and I both got out, our guns drawn and aimed at the vehicle. The airbags in Turek's car had deployed and one had burst open right in her face. So she was sitting in the driver's seat, unhurt but dazed, as we approached her vehicle.

“Come out with your hands up,” I said.

Turek blinked hard and looked at me as if waking from a dream.

“Now,” I said. “Nice and slow.”

She opened the door and staggered out, immediately collapsing to her knees on the pavement, more out of dizziness than submission.

While Monk kept her covered with his gun, I holstered my weapon, got behind her, and handcuffed her hands behind her back.

“You're under arrest for murder,” I said.

“I don't believe this,” she said. “How did you know what I did?”

I looked up at Monk, who holstered his weapon, rolled his shoulders, and tipped his head from side to side, setting himself and the world right again.

“We're police officers,” Monk said.

* * * *

Randy Disher, Summit police chief and acting mayor, showed up in his Suburban SUV police cruiser twenty minutes after the forensics team, the tow trucks, and the paramedics, whom I'd called for Turek just to be on the safe side. He was in full uniform, and that included a wide-brimmed Ranger-style hat with the Summit police emblem on the front, which not only looked too big for his head, but for his body as well.

Despite the powerful leadership positions he now held, Disher still looked like an eager-to-please boy to me and I had a hard time taking him as seriously as he wanted to be taken, especially since we'd been friends for so long. But I made the effort, because I genuinely liked him and he was, after all, my present employer.

He surveyed the wrecked cars, which the forensics team was examining and photographing, and glanced at Turek, who sat handcuffed in the back of an ambulance, being checked out by the paramedics, before he finally worked his way over to us, where we were standing on the side of the road.

“You caught a murderer before anyone even knew a murder had been committed,” Disher said. “That's impressive even for you, Monk.”

“Thank you, Chief,” Monk said.

“I wish you could have apprehended her without smashing a quarter of our fleet in the process.”

“That's her fault,” Monk said, pointing at me.

“Thanks for the support, partner,” I said.

“I also wish you had evidence,” Disher said. “You know, something like a dead body, before you decided to run her off the road.”

“She fled the instant Mr. Monk accused her of killing her husband,” I said.

“Freaking out isn't quite the same thing as a confession,” Disher said.

“She also asked how we knew what she did,” I said, “which is sort of like a confession.”

“It's not,” Disher said, “but even if it was, did she ask you the question before or after you read Mrs. Turek her rights?”

“Before,” I said glumly.

“Has she told you where she buried the body?”

I shook my head. “She's not talking and has demanded a lawyer.”

Disher sighed. “So, in other words, we have nothing but a smashed hundred-thousand-dollar Range Rover, a smashed police car, and Monk's hunch.”

“There's more,” Monk said.

“I certainly hope so,” Disher said.

Monk told him about the blister, the missing wedding ring, the bottle of vinegar, the shred of plastic bag, and the leafy mud on her bumpers.

“Which means,” Disher said, “that all we have to hold her on is a speeding ticket and reckless driving.”

I cleared my throat. “We didn't give her a ticket.”

“Because she sped off before you could write it?” Disher asked.

“Because she wasn't speeding,” I replied. “That wasn't why we pulled her over.”

Disher looked at Monk. “Are you telling me that all she had to do was drive by and you knew that she was a murderer?”

“No,” Monk said. “Of course not.”

“Then why did you stop her?”

“Her car was filthy,” Monk said.

“So you pulled her over without any probable cause whatsoever and then you accused her of being a murderer.”

“She is,” Monk said.

“No wonder she sped off. She thought you were insane.” Disher took off his hat, regarded it for a moment as he held it by the rim, then threw it like a Frisbee out into the open field beside the highway. The three of us watched the hat sail through the air, then land in the tall weeds.

“What did you do that for?” Monk asked.

“Because I'm finished,” Disher said, tipping his head towards Kelsey Turek. “She's a very rich woman. She's going to sue us and when she wins, and owns Summit outright, the first thing she's going to do, even before she renames the place Kelseyville, is throw me out.”

“Would it help if we found the body?” Monk said.

“Yes, Monk, that would make a big difference.”

“She may not want to talk,” Monk said. “But her car will.”

He marched over to her Range Rover and we trailed after him. I thought I knew what he had in mind and I wanted to stop him before he made a big mistake.

“We can't look at her GPS navigation system without a warrant, Mr. Monk, because if we do, and we find the body as a result, the evidence will be thrown out as fruit from the poisonous tree and she'll walk.”

Disher gave me a look. “You watch a lot of Law & Order, don't you?”

“What do you think I do in San Francisco when we don't have a case to investigate and I'm stuck in Mr. Monk's apartment while he cleans?”

“Contemplate suicide?”

“Now you know why I accepted your job offer,” I said.

“I don't need to access her GPS unit to know where this car has been,” Monk said.

He walked around the vehicle, his hands out in front of him framing his point of view. He stopped here and there to crouch, cock his head, stand on his tiptoes, and basically examine the car from every angle. When he was done, he turned to us and presented his findings.

“There are pine needles, bark, and decaying leaves in the mud, which indicates she was in a forested area,” he said.

“That's a big help,” Disher said.

“Thank you,” Monk said, oblivious to Disher's sarcasm. “But there's more. The dirt on the car was still moist when we stopped her, so, given the composition of the mud, the amount of water in it, the temperature and humidity of the environment, and the speed at which she was driving, I believe she couldn't have traveled more than five miles from the grave.”

“You know how fast mud dries?” Disher said.

“Of course I do,” Monk said. “It's a matter of basic human survival.”

“It is?” Disher asked.

I spoke up. “It's like knowing what a fatal dose of radiation is or how long you'll live after a rattlesnake bites you.”

“I've never been exposed to deadly levels of radiation,” Disher said, “or been bitten by a rattlesnake.”

“Yet,” Monk said.

“Let's say you're right about how fast mud dries,” Disher said. “Knowing the body is within a five-mile radius doesn't narrow it down much.”

“It will when we find the skunk,” Monk said.

“What skunk?” I asked.

“The dead one that she ran over,” Monk pointed to the wheels. “There's fur and bits of flesh stuck in the front and rear passenger-side wheel wells.”

“Gee, she really was on a killing spree today,” I said. “No living thing in her path was safe.”

“Actually, the skunk was already dead when she drove over it,” Monk said, “or there would be much more blood.”

“How do you know it was skunk?” I asked.

“I can smell it,” Monk said. “Can't you?”

“No,” I said.

“The odor is overpowering,” he said. “It's almost as strong as the egg-and-cheese burrito the chief had for breakfast.”

“You can smell that on me?” Disher said.

“I can also see it,” Monk said. “You dribbled some on your shirt.”

Disher examined his shirt, finding the tiny spot on his stomach. “Damn. How do you know she drove over the roadkill after she left the grave and not before she arrived there?”

“The skunk matter is stuck on the mud rather than coated with it,” he said. “If we find the dead skunk, we'll know we are in the right vicinity.”

“And then what?” Disher said. “How will you know where to go from there?”

Monk crouched by her front right bumper. “It appears that she was going too fast when she turned onto a narrow, rust-colored mud road, and clipped a post or a tree, shattering her fog light,” Monk pointed to the scratched bumper and the broken light below it. “There is mud inside the fog light casing, which means it was broken before she went on the dirt road. All you have to do is go back five miles, look for a dead skunk, an unpaved road with rust-colored mud, and an object with scrapes of red automotive paint on it. You'll know you're in the right spot when you see the broken glass and the unique tire impressions from this vehicle in the mud.”

“Well, if that's all there is to it, why are you still standing here? Call me when you find the grave.”

And with that, Disher went out to retrieve his hat and we drove off to find where Kelsey Turek buried her husband.

Twenty minutes later, we found the shallow grave and secured the scene. And ten minutes after that, we found the bottle of lye, the shovel, the gloves, and the goggles in a gas-station dumpster a mile from the dirt road.

* * * *

Once we found her husband's body, Kelsey Turek decided to ignore her right to remain silent and instead energetically exercised her right to get everything off her surgically enhanced chest.

Disher drove us all back into Summit in his Suburban. On the way, Turek told us her tragic tale, which she prefaced by telling us all about the rich and wonderful life that she, a literary agent, and her husband Rick, a Manhattan architect, had enjoyed during their ten years of marriage.

They had a beautiful home in Summit, a beach house in Maine, and four European cars. They were connoisseurs of exquisite wine, collectors of fine art, and masters of tantric sex.

“We could go for hours,” she said. “Sometimes even days.”

“Stopping only to open a bottle of wine and admire one of your paintings,” I said.

“I am only trying to give you some background so you will appreciate my actions from the proper perspective,” she said.

“Let her talk,” Disher told me.

The previous day at breakfast, Rick had calmly informed her that they were penniless, a consequence of his long, secret addiction to online gambling.

But the news was even worse. When he'd used up all of their money, emptying their accounts, maxing out their credit, and leveraging their property, he'd embezzled $300,000 from his firm, which he also lost. The firm had just discovered the missing money, so he'd most likely be going to jail very soon, leaving her to deal with their financial mess.

Kelsey got up from the table without saying a word, found the heaviest frying pan they owned, and hit him on the head with it.

She dragged his body to the garage and covered him with Hefty trash bags, which she sealed tight with duct tape, and then put his body into the Range Rover.

Kelsey was thankful that she was strong enough to do all of this without having to cut his body into pieces.

“All of those hours of Pilates and tantric sex really paid off,” she said. “I've got the body fat of a gazelle.”

After that, she spent an hour on the Internet doing research on the best ways to dispose of a body and settled on burying him and then covering him with lye to speed decomposition. All she had to figure out was where she should bury the corpse.

She recalled a piece of land that her husband had considered buying as investment property a few years back, right before the real-estate bubble burst. It was nearby, but forested enough to offer seclusion and the strong possibility that his body wouldn't be found before it was mush.

So she went and bought the supplies and then, late that night, drove out to the plot of land and buried him. She ditched the shovel, lye, gloves, and goggles on the way home.

“I bet that everyone would think he fled to avoid arrest and it wouldn't occur to anyone that his poor, shocked, and devastated wife had killed him,” she said. “But apparently I'm as luckless a gambler as Rick was.”

That was true. And I didn't particularly blame her for what she did. In fact, I thought she had a pretty good chance at getting sympathy from a jury, but I kept that opinion to myself.

Her lawyer was waiting for her when we got back to police headquarters. Disher told us he was one of the most expensive and respected criminal attorneys in the state. But when the attorney learned that she'd spilled her guts to us, he abruptly quit as her counsel. I think his resignation had less to do with her confession than his realization that she was broke. Disher got her a public defender.

While all of this was going on, we wrote up our reports and then submitted them to Disher in his office.

“It was a stroke of brilliance inviting you two out here,” Disher said. “It's that kind of bold, decisive action that got me where I am today.”

“I thought it was Sharona's idea to bring me here to help out,” Monk said.

“Yes, but I didn't hesitate to act on it,” Disher said.

“And to take the credit for it,” I said.

“Now you know why everyone says I have such a bright future as a politician,” he said.

We couldn't argue with that.

Copyright © 2012 by Lee Goldberg;

Monk Copyright © 2012 USA Cable Entertainment LLC. All Rights Reserved.

[Back to Table of Contents]

Department of First Stories: WALKING OUT
by Judith L. Shadford

* * * *

* * * *

In 2009, Judith Shadford moved to Tacoma, Washington and did an MFA in Creative Writing at the Rainier Writing Workshop of Pacific Lutheran University. Prior to that she'd had an active career in marketing and public relations in New York City and Santa Barbara, California, in such areas as senior healthcare, historic preservation, publishing, and prep-school development. She currently lives in Spokane, and from the way this first story ends, our guess is she'll eventually write some kind of sequel to it.

My husband disappears on his way home from the library and this cop says I shouldn't take it personally. Right.

Officer Jerolski told me it was likely one of those mid-life crises: go-out-for-cigarettes-and-disappear-off-the-face-of-the-earth deal. He said more men did it than you'd think.

Talking, talking, his voice going up and down like a dinghy when a speedboat goes by. Kind of soothing in a weird way, not that I was listening that much. Watching more than listening. He just sat there, pushing down my creamy leather couch, his thighs looking like khaki logs. A thick neck. I tried to pretend I wasn't looking at those curly red hairs that stuck out over the top of his snow-white undershirt. Wasn't staring at the stiff ridge all the way across the front of his shirt—as if he were hiding a notebook. Maybe he put his script in the notebook. Maybe he would pull it out if he got stuck on what to say next. Homework ribs.

No.

It's a bulletproof vest. No wonder he sits like that. He can't move. He's just going to sit there and talk and talk and talk until I die of old age.

Did Randy die?

Is Randy dead?

Maybe somebody killed Randy? Did you ever think of that, Officer?

“Were there people at school who didn't like him? Maybe students he gave a hard time, failed?”

I shook my head. “Everybody liked Randy. Or, they didn't think he was important enough to dislike. Even tough kids thought he was okay. A nerd, but okay. A drive-by shooting . . . how about that? Something random . . . ?”

“Paso Calma is a little town, Mrs. Turnbull. Tiny, really. We don't have drugs or gangs. People know Randy. The librarian knows him. She saw him leave. We've covered every inch of the five blocks between here and the library. Nobody heard anything, saw anything. No evidence of violence. Absolutely none. People were out walking. It isn't even dark at eight-thirty.”

I'd walked home from Sophie's about nine-thirty that night, after Girls’ Night Out.

Such a Girls’ Night . . . We watch National Geographic and talk about trips we'll never take. Plus a glass of wine. Or two. I was kind of excited about Lake Baikal. Wanted to tell Randy about it. Have a glass with him and think about going to Lake Baikal.

“They just leave like that, ma'am. Just walk out and find a new identity.”

Ha.

I knew about Randy and new identities. Books. Every week. He talked to me about it . . . them. “What do you think?” he'd say. “We could start a colony . . . Mars . . . maybe even Io . . . Can you see me in charge of the hydroponic vegetables?”

Books. How they gave him light for the next day. That's what he said.

* * * *

I waited as long as I could stand it to strip our bed, rolling the sheets into a cocoon, dumping them against the closet door.

Opened Randy's dresser. Time to look at the little things, the socks, the underwear. Things he wasn't ever going to put on because Officer Jerolski said he'd suddenly found the need for a new identity outside a book.

Top drawer. Dress socks on the left, athletic socks on the right. Tucked against the right side, right where it should be, his wallet.

“Why?” I said it right out loud. “Why . . . anything?”

I put my arms across the dresser and laid my cheek against his socks. Smooth. Smelling a little like softener, a little like Randy.

I traced the edge of the wallet, then picked it up and opened it. Two tens and a couple fives. Nothing else. No cryptic torn-off bit of placemat with a phone number. His credit cards were there. His library card was there.

Did he check out books Monday? Is that why the librarian remembered seeing him? Did he take out How to Run Away From Home So Your Wife Will Never Find You? If he took out books, what happened to them?

Oh damn oh damn oh damn.

He couldn't run off. He dreamed of galaxies and aliens, not waitresses or bar girls. He didn't run off.

My face was wet all of a sudden. Tears bled into the fold of the wallet and I couldn't breathe anymore. Why should I breathe? There was no more Randy.

I slid down the dresser and sat there, leaning against it. It had hard edges. Not like leaning against Randy. I stared at the floor. Even that was Randy. He tore out the nasty green shag carpet and clicked those lovely blond boards into place. When I brought him a bottle of water, he laughed. Said he was building a raft to sail across the Argentum Seas. He'd patted the blue plastic liner and asked me to join him on the voyage. Like a child. A grown man who knew that the only way through ordinary life was to keep that child healthy.

I finally scrambled to my feet because I had to pee. Even sitting in the middle of my broken heart, pieces scattered all around me—I still had to pee. They never talk about peeing at Lake Baikal. Or the Argentum Seas.

I rinsed my hands and face and shoved my hair behind my ears. Actually remembered I needed to get my hair cut. Then, like ice down my back, “How come Randy's wallet is in the dresser? If Randy took out books, or even thought he might take out books, he'd have taken his wallet with him.”

After five minutes talking to the librarian, I found out that Randy had turned in three Asimovs, one Arthur Clarke, and had taken out a Poul Anderson anthology. He had his wallet with him. He'd come home! He'd come home, tucked the wallet back into the top drawer, and . . . then what?

Where was the Poul Anderson anthology?

* * * *

I spent the afternoon cleaning house. Maybe looking for Randy in a perverse way, like he'd shrunk and if I did everything right, I could find him. He was not behind the bed in the guest room. Not between the hot-water heater and the basement wall. The Many Worlds of Poul Anderson (or Randy)was not tucked between the couch cushions or leaning against the cereal boxes or dropped negligently into the clothes hamper.

I tackled the upstairs. All of it. I dusted and scrubbed until it was almost five o'clock. I put the can of Pledge under my arm and headed for the stairs. Descending parallel lines. Step, step, step. One after another, the next and the next and the next, until you reached the bottom. I sat down at the top. The Pledge rolled down without me.

Think about Randy, not Jerolski's Guide to Missing Husbands. Randy. Gentle, lovable, absent-minded, not a lot of ambition. Good junior-high teacher. Randy, the opposite of Type A: Type Z Randy, voracious reader and lover of science fiction . . . and me. That Randy.

After Sophie's I had come home. Home to our house at the end of the block. Where we always leave the porch light on because the walnut grove spreads its shadows down the hill behind our house until the trees stop, right next to our garage.

And the porch light had been on. I checked the big pot of rosemary next to the door to see if it needed water, picked off a few needles, and sniffed my fingers as I closed the door and called, “Randy, I'm home.” I went up to the bedroom, knowing there'd be a cone of light over the top of his pillow, his dark hair rumpled, loafers still on, twisting the spread into little whirlpools. “Hi, honey,” he'd say, never looking up. “How was Sophie?” Only, the bedroom was dark, the spread smooth.

I stood up then and went downstairs, picked up the Pledge can and put it in the closet. I called Jerolski because it seemed like the thing to do, not because I thought he'd know something more. Missing Persons had turned up nothing, he said, not even false leads.

* * * *

Six weeks later, I was trying to patch together some kind of life. I'd gone back to my everlastingly boring job representing the Department of Agriculture to the good people of Paso Calma. Selecting brochures for farmers who needed to know about bark splitting and leaf scorch, handing out “Projected Losses to the Cattle Industry Resulting from Global Warming: New Software for Simulated Hypotheses.” That kind of boring. Useful. Even necessary. Boring.

My girlfriends quit asking about Randy. They'd just look at me and smile, maybe too sweetly, holding off on the stupid, banal, “How're you doing?” Got tired of my “Just shitty, thank you,” maybe.

Pep Boys was having a sale on oil, so I went and bought a case. I wasn't really sure why, because Randy always changed the oil and I sure as hell wasn't going to start. When I got home, I opened the trunk, levered the case out, and put it under the workbench. I pulled a bag of new oil filters from the trunk and held it against the bench while I pulled open the door of the old breadbox with the rooster decal. Why we stored oil filters in a breadbox I had no idea. Was there a long-forgotten connection between that rooster and FRAM? A joke? Why was The Many Worlds of Poul Anderson leaning against the breadbox?

The filters tumbled under the car.

That damned library book, top covered with dust, its corner mashed against a pipe.

I called Jerolski. He was almost excited. An hour later, he came out with a guy from the lab in San Luis who treated the book as if it were a dinosaur bone or, say, a skull.

Three days later, Jerolski was sitting on my sofa again.

“Well, Mrs. Turnbull, your husband was the one who put the book there. A nice clean set of prints from his right hand. We'll clean off the cover and send it back to the library for you, okay?”

Sure. Police are really great. Helpful. Taking back overdue books. Maybe I wouldn't have to pay the fine.

“NO!”

Officer Jerolski blinked. “No?”

“Have you looked through the book to see if there are any messages, any clues stuck in it?”

“No. I mean, the guys flipped through it. But your husband had just checked it out, right?”

“Do you ever go to the library, Officer?”

He scowled. Had I hit an illiteracy shame button?

“Randy starts his books IN the library. If he gets hooked, he checks it out, comes home, and continues without a break. He's been known to read a new book straight through. All night.

“Suppose somebody interrupted him, threatened him? What if he scribbled something in the margin because he knew I'd check the book. Only I didn't find it IN TIME!”

“Mrs. Turnbull, please, ma'am, these cases aren't spy movies. They're just sad ways people act.”

“Then give me the book and I'll check. I'll return it too. Pay the fine. Then it won't have to come out of your budget.”

I waited till dark before I took the book up to my desk. I pulled the gooseneck lamp over the pages like a spotlight. By page 212, I knew there weren't going to be any messages.

I'd got it wrong. As wrong as Jerolski—Schmolski.

Think.

I stuck my fists into my eyeballs and rubbed until red balloons bobbed back and forth. Think. Think. Step, step, step. Top to bottom.

Watch Randy leave the library. Watch him walk along Lincoln Ave., up the sidewalk, up the front steps, unlock the door, kick it shut behind him so it latched. Upstairs, turn on the bed lamp, flip the book onto the bed. Put his wallet away. Then?

No. It was light enough to put his wallet away without turning on the lamp. The book still under his arm. Right then, right at that moment, something happened. He goes downstairs, book still under his arm. He unlocks the door into the garage. Why?

Because he heard something. A noise . . . a specific, peculiar noise. Randy doesn't realize he's still got the book under his arm.

Why carry the damned thing into the garage . . . ?

Because, you dodo, he's going for his gun, the gun on the shelf over the top of that breadbox.

My bones went all wonky.

I dragged myself over to the window and looked out at a nail-paring moon glinting through the walnut trees up the hill. When Jerolski had asked, “Do you have a gun?” I was thinking of those nasty little things people put in their bedside tables and said, “No.”

Once the jelly in my legs headed in the direction of bone, I stumbled down to the garage and flipped on the overhead light. The shelf over the breadbox. It should be up there in that yellow cotton wrapper: a silly thing, like a farm lady's apron.

The shelf was empty.

Cold. So cold.

* * * *

The next morning, Officer Jerolski stood in the garage, half leaning on the fender of my car. He had shaken his head a lot in the last twenty minutes. “And you don't know what kind of gun?”

“A gun. Long. Wooden handle. Yellow wrapper with black bias-tape ties.”

“I think I could recognize the wrapper.”

“Hey, since when is it a crime I don't know what kind of gun my husband has that I've never seen outside that stupid wrapper?”

“Look, Mrs. Turnbull, Jesse, it's not a crime, but you're not helping.”

“Helping! Helping what? Did you guys find the book? Don't blame your raging incompetence on me.”

He stared out the side window, then hitched up his pants.

I pulled out my car keys and got into the car. Jerolski stood up as I slid the car out from under him. I'd kinda hoped he wouldn't.

Call me if you find your way out of the garage.

I unlocked the back door to the local branch of the Department of Agriculture just like I do every weekday. Eight years’ worth of unlocking and locking. I opened the blinds and flipped the door sign to Open, picked up the mail under the slot in the door. Two government fliers, a bill, and a notice from the post office that they'd tried to deliver a box early this morning.

I sat down at the desk, staring at the palms of my hands. If Randy wanted a gun, quickly, to do something, then it was dangerous. He hadn't come back. . . .

The phone rang. Awful sound.

“Hullo?” Little insect noises in my ear. “Hullo?”

The noises separated into little words. “Jesse, this is Marty Jerolski . . . Sheriff's Department? Are you all right?”

“Yeah?” Snow-white shirt with curly red hairs crawling around the neck.

“You stay there, okay, Jesse? Just stay at your desk.”

I put the receiver down. I didn't know quite what to do with my hand, so I left it there. It looked like a white spider spraddled across the phone. I curled up the fingers. Still looked like a spider.

The back door opened. A voice. Familiar.

“Jesse?”

Hand on my shoulder.

I didn't turn my head. “He's shot somewhere. If you'd found him right away, you could have saved his life. He's dead in a ditch because somebody was going to rob us. All in pieces.”

“Jesse, listen. You were right about sloppy work. We didn't cover the possibilities because I had a preconceived notion.”

“You found him.”

He nodded.

“He's dead. Never going to finish his book. I took it back to the library anyway.”

Jerolski locked the front door of the office and pulled down the blinds, then turned back, fumbling in his pants pocket.

Just like Randy's brother at our wedding. Couldn't get the ring out. Pants were too tight.

His hand opened to show Randy's ring and the gold Bulova watch his daddy'd given him.

“Is that all that's left?”

“No, Jesse, but . . . well, we'll accept your identification from these. They're from . . . well, I took them off myself. You don't want to . . .”

“See what's left? Don't be stupid. Take me there.”

“I'd rather not.”

“You have to.”

“Okay, fine. Squad car. He's back in the grove, a really old walnut tree. . . . You know which one?”

Yeah. I used to climb it when Randy and I first . . .

“Randy was not injured—well, not violently—and he didn't hurt anybody else. What happened could have happened in the library or on the way home just as easy.”

“What're you saying?”

He started the car and headed back through town. “I'm saying that Randy shot that gun and had a heart attack or a stroke or something—we'll know after the autopsy—while he was up in the tree. We didn't find him because we didn't look up."

He shook his head. “I went back and walked through the trees again after you left. I saw that gun-wrapper thing flapping in some bushes. That's how I found him and his shotgun. One shot fired.”

“God dammit! Why . . . a stupid thing like that?”

We lurched up the old track into the grove and parked, Jerolski jerking on the emergency brake. We headed down a row of trees, past festoons of yellow police tape, up to a splayed-out old walnut tree. A navy body bag lay under its knobby branches.

“Yo, Sarge, we found what's left of a dead coyote down that next row of trees.”

Randy . . . in a bag? How could Randy be in a bag? Like . . . gym clothes.

“Unzip it.”

“No, Jesse. He, the body, it's been out here a long time, Jesse. Don't do this to yourself.”

“How do I know that isn't somebody who stole Randy's ring and watch?”

Jerolski crouched next to the bag. “They were . . . he was wearing them.” But he pulled the zipper down.

I could see the pointed corner of Randy's shoulder, his turquoise flannel shirt, faded, a long rip down the sleeve. I wanted to reach over and close the edges of the rip. Cover what was still left inside. “Okay, that's enough.”

Jerolski nodded and zipped up the bag.

Randy had not betrayed me. No fight, no ambush. Just dumb old Randy nailing a coyote, under the influence of Ravaging Wargs from the Planet Melnius. One shot, too. Good old Randy.

We walked down to the house, the back stoop, through the back door. It looked so shabby. Paint peeling on the railings. Wood bleached past color or kind.

I was still having trouble aiming my bones in the right direction. Jerolski put his hand under my elbow and sat me down at the kitchen table. It was kind of soothing. I watched him poke around the kitchen, find eggs and a frying pan. He turned on the coffee maker.

No talking. Just oil spattering, smell of coffee.

“I'm sick of that Agriculture Office. Eight years.”

Jerolski glanced over his shoulder as he stirred the eggs into the fry pan. “Yeah?”

“Does the sheriff's department have detectives?”

“Not now.” The coffee drizzled into the pot. He pulled ketchup from the fridge.

“Why?”

“I suppose it's a budget thing. Why?”

“You need help, Jerolski.”

He slid scrambled eggs onto a plate and put it in front of me, then poured two mugs of coffee.

“You volunteering?” He sat down and put a lot of sugar in his coffee.

“You wish. I want paid.”

He looked at me. “You'd have to get trained.”

I nodded and took a forkful of eggs. “These are good.”

“You surprised?”

“A little.”

Copyright © 2012 by Judith L. Shadford

[Back to Table of Contents]

Novelette: TORT
by Ken Bruen

* * * *

Art by Mark Evans

* * * *

Ken Bruen is best known for his Jack Taylor novels, which have been filmed for Irish and British TV. The ninth Taylor novel appeared in the U.S. in October 2011 (Mysterious Press/Grove Atlantic) to rave reviews, including one from PW that said: “a remarkable series that at heart is about one man's reckoning with a lifetime of pain and loss in a rapidly changing Ireland.” The author splits his time between New York and Ireland. As The Atlantic commented in a 2011 interview: “Bruen is threatening to become a mass cult figure in the U.S., as well as a critical favorite."

They'd say he disliked the damn thing.

Lord, if they only knew.

You got to laugh else blow your brains out.

Came back to the apartment on E. 33rd and 4th. Rent controlled and he had to live within the five boroughs so that was cool.

Way cool, was, get this, he'd passed the Sergeant's Exam.

Now he and Nora could really try for the baby. Kudos to her, she'd said, every time

“You'll make the grade, Jimmy, I believe in you.”

What else did you need. A gorgeous woman believes in you?

Allel-Irished-u-ea.

And don't just take Jimmy's word for it, Pete, the owner of The Harp, their hood pub, his friend for oh, phew, long as the Micks were singing “Galway Bay.”

That long and change.

Pete's say

“Don't know how you got her Jimmy but she's a beauty, nine ways to any given Sunday.”

He bought roses, from the Lithuanian lady on the corner who said

(being NY, everybody got to say something, on everything)

“Must be early Valentine's Day.”

When he tipped her the extra spot, she smiled, went

“Course with your Nora, every day is Valentine's.”

Believe it.

Times had been a wee bit rocky there, fess up, his drinking getting a touch out of control. But he'd ditched the Jameson, just did the few bottles of Bud when they went down there of a Friday night.

Ni biggie.

Cop's got to let off some steam.

Right?

Too, knocked the Luckies out of the frame, even slung his beloved Zippo over the Brooklyn Bridge. Dramatic, sure, but you have Irish blood, you need the odd grand gesture.

And wow, kicking the nicotine was one SOB.

Bought a box of Irish Delights from Stavros, eyes averted from the packs of Strikes and their oh so seductive siren call.

Opening the door of their apartment, call it cop gut, call it pain, the silence.

Shouldn't be that.

Nora, like, the

Radio

TV

Pots, pans, cooking

Domestic din

Reassuring noise of love.

Nope.

Dead air.

He dropped the gifts, reached for his piece in the waistband of his jeans, the old-fashioned Smith and Wesson .38, barrel swung out, he'd liked the old gig of loading your own gun.

Most cops, went with the ubiquitous Glock.

Light

Popular

Cheap

Ah, but did they mention how the sucker jammed?

He swept the apartment with the .38, his heart hammering, then saw the note.

Oh sweet damnation.

A note.

A Dear John

Or

Jimmy.

Whatever.

Goodbye in any terms.

* * * *

My God, at least she hadn't sent a text.

Had she?

The note

........Dear Jimmy

You left me a long time ago, you just didn't know.

I've met someone.

I'll send for my things.

I left a roast in the oven, just heat and if you like, add the roast spuds I've left in the bottom oven.

I'm sorry Jimmy.

Please don't look for me.

Nora.”

Roast that.

* * * *

Next few days, blur city.

Music.

Of course.

Razor blades and rope stuff.

IE

When you buy the wailing stuff, they give you free samples of the above.

The Pogues

Luke Kelly

Van

Gretchen McCorbett.

All songs about, yeah

Loss

Pain

Ferocious agony

Guilt.

You get the picture.

Not your happy camper stuff.

Fourth day in?

Who was counting.

His door ajar. Like in NY City, who does that kind of crazy stuff? The lost and wounded.

What was to steal? Nora took the only part of him that might . . . might have amounted to somebody.

Not no more.

A voice, from the door

“Hello?”

Tentative, a child?

Yup.

All of like five maybe, he looked in, blond tousled hair, asked

“You ok mister?”

He thought,

......and seek the pain you need was coming somehow.

He answered

“You betcha.”

The kid asked

“My dad says you are . . . police?”

The pronunciation was like a bad pizza on steroids. Jimmy nearly laughed but basically had forgotten how, you believe it?

Believe.

The kid said

“We're moving to Idaho.”

God, and Jimmy thought he had problems, he said

“Bon voyage.”

Meant, like to a five year old?

“Get lost.”

The child said

“I have a problem sir.”

Sir!

Jimmy stood, tiring a bit of the cuteness, it was nice, slice of Waltons-ville, syrpt-ed with Laura Ingalls but like, enough already,

He answered

“Us all got problems kid.”

Wisdom of the ages.

And half in the bag with a fifth of Jameson, who's not a philosopher, he moved to shut the door, thinking

“Maybe get a deadbolt, that door is open invite to the smash-and-grab junkies.”

The kid pushed a M.C. Donald's bag over the threshold, shouted

“My ride's waiting, Dad is honking the horn.”

And was gone.

Jimmy thought

“Like what, he left me his Big Mac?”

Then the bag moved.

Jimmy reaching for the .38, always now in his waistband, saying

“Holy God, I've lost it, Fast food is indeed fast and I'm reaching for my piece to what?, blow away a large portion of French fries.”

The gun by his side, tears began to roll down his cheeks, he knew

“Pathetic?”

Yeah, right.

He was through, raising the .38 to his temple, when the top of the bag moved aside, to emit, slowly........ Very slowly, the head of a tortoise.

Weird city.

Over the next few days, Jimmy began to care about the damn slow thing.

What do you feed em?

He gave it some lettuce, water and that seemed to be ok.

Like it was going to complain?

Jimmy, after his initial response to the compulsion to shoot it, was fascinated with the way the little guy just kept on... keeping on.

He'd watch the tiny creature, with a distinctive brown mottled shell, that old grizzled head, like John Wayne, in Green Berets, painstakingly move across the living room.

Then

Go figure.

Jimmy was watching Seinfeld, the one where George is posing as a marine biologist and has to wade out and confront the “Mighty Beast”

George's words.

The tort, stopped, swear to God, no Jameson on board, looked at the TV.

So, what can you do?

Call him George and have company with the reruns.

Evening later, he finally gets to the bar.

Of course, his bud Peter, like the whole freaking neighborhood, knows Nora is in the wind, watching Jimmy, see, if

...he smokes?

(oh he's smoking though not in the way they'd imagine)

b..the top shelf, will he ask for the Jay?

He orders a cold one, has the long neck before him, Pete moving nervously along the bar, he asks

“Pete, what do you know about tortoises?”

Am?

Collective sigh from the chorus, Jimmy has officially lost it.

Shame.

Pete says honestly

“Zip.”

Jimmy nods, takes a slow sip from the brew, says

“More to them than you'd think.”

OK.

Like who thinks anything . . . ever about them?

Pete asks

“You doing all right hermano?”

Jimmy looks at him, puzzled, then

“Just I was wondering what you should feed them?”

Pete wants to hit somebody, moves real close over the bar, goes

“Jimmy, we're here for you buddy.”

Someone hits the juke, one of the few pubs in the greater NY area that still has the real deal, four tracks for a quarter.

This nickel buys

The Pogues (quells surprise) but Shane in the haunting duet with Moira from Clannad

Waits

The Clash

And

Stiff Little Fingers with “Alternative Ulster.”

Music if not to live by, least to fry for.

Jimmy stands, puts a ten on the bar, seems lost a moment, then says

“Pete, I made sergeant.”

Pete thinking

“Sure you did.”

Says

“Great, am, lemme get you another cold one to celebrate and Molly's in the kitchen, fix you some grub?”

Jimmy gives a half smile, weariness leaking all over his too-aged face, says

“Thanks but I got to feed George.”

Pete, mid bottle opening, echoes

“George?”

Jimmy shakes his head, sighs, says

“Pete, you got to keep up, pay attention.”

And walks out.

The chorus, like Pete wondering

“Is he carrying the .38?”

“Is this evening the one he eats the barrel?”

Moira Brennan's mournful declaration of love sings him out onto the cold neighborhood.

* * * *

Next day, a chill wind blew down the street like a black omen. Jimmy had a day at work that would test a man in his prime, but for a man in the talons of grief, it was a lash. Worse, a murder of a child which not only ripped the heart of Jimmy but put him in the throes of the

What-ifs,

The child he and Nora might have.....

But shook his head, rid the thought.

He got home late, his stomach sour from the precinct gut-rot coffee. He had only one dodgy hot dog the whole damned day. His back hurt, and to top it off, the driving rain had drenched his car, in his agitation he'd cracked a window and forgotten to close it.

Home finally, his head down, walking towards his apartment, one action on his mind.

Double Jay and to hell with the heresy, he'd sink a couple chunks of ice in there.

And saw

The door open

To his apartment

Open, well, smashed in, the jam hanging loose. Reached automatically for his weapon, knowing from his cop instinct, the perp would be already long gone.

But you did what you knew. The gun down by his left leg, he moved the shattered door aside, moved quickly in, feinting to his right lest the apartment wasn't vacant. Taking in the destruction, TV gone, the smell of urine strong, his books, torn, scattered amid his shredded clothes, he thought

“George?”

They'd used a baseball bat, must have taken a time to obliterate that strong shell. Jimmy was on his knees, trying to cradle the desperate remains of the poor creature. Tears stung at his eyes, the gun lying beside the discarded bat.

He let back his head, emitted a howl of such anguish, the gay couple on the floor beneath actually opened their door to see who'd been massacred.

* * * *

The bar was busy, the Yankees, top of the ninth, on the widescreen and the crowd roaring as Rodriguez took the field. Jimmy was sitting on a stool a time before Pete noticed him, grabbed a cold one, plonked it in front of his buddy, asked

“What about them Yankees, huh?”

Jimmy looked at him but something was off in his eyes, he never looked at the game, drew his jacket back, let Pete see the .38, then

“Pete, you know the neighborhood, the local B and E merchants, so who is currently boosting apartments?”

Pete was amazed. Never, in all their years, had Jimmy gone . . . COP. Pete knew no good came off mixing biz and friendship. He muttered some inane excuse and went to serve the thirsty fans. Thinking

“Few brews, Jimmy will be hunky dory, right?”

Nope.

He got back, like, ten minutes in, Jimmy hadn't touched the brew. He gave Pete the dead eye, said

“The health regulations in need of overhaul”

Paused

“You think.”

Pete looked at the game, seeing nothing, grabbed a cloth, did bar stuff for a minute, then said

“Anthony Scoria, son of the Borough wise guy, got himself a Jones, is on the out with the family, so supplements his income with a little.. Recreation.”

Jimmy , still with the dead eye, waited

Pete sighed, said

“Hangs in the sports place down on West 29th.”

Jimmy stood, dropped a few bills on the counter. Pete said

“Your money's no good in here, you know that.”

Jimmy looked at the TV, said

“Use it to update the jukebox.”

* * * *

A week later, a fire destroyed the sports bar, the cops, acting on a tip-off found an arsonist's kit in the apartment of an Anthony Scoria. The arrest drew undue attention to his old man and certain . . . family disciplinary consequences would roll down the pike.

Jimmy, using an old cigar box, wrapped in a miniature Irish flag, dropped the remains of George in the East River. He stared at the dark water for close to half an hour then shook himself, checked his watch, figured if he moved now, he'd be in his apartment for the beginning of the Discovery Channel. They were doing a miniseries on turtles.

Said to himself

“All part of the George family.”

Adjusted the .38 in the waist of his jeans, thought

“Need something bigger than a cigar box for Nora.”

Copyright © 2012 by Ken Bruen

[Back to Table of Contents]

Novelette: THE RETURN OF THE MUMMY
by Steven Saylor

For the past few months, EQMM has been publishing stories in a series that comes together to form Steven Saylor's new novel TheSevenWonders (Minotaur Books). This is our last entry in the series, and it roughly coincides with the book's publication. Readers who've enjoyed our selections won't want to miss Gordianus's trips to the three wonders not visited here. USA Today calls Steven Saylor “a modern master of historical fiction."

Our journey to see the Seven Wonders took Antipater and me from Rome to Greece and then to Asia Minor and beyond, all the way to Persia—and then, at last, to Egypt.

Before the Nile reaches the sea, it spreads out in many channels, like the fingers of a wide-open hand. On maps, this vast, watery region forms a triangular shape not unlike the fourth letter of the Greek alphabet, inverted: D . Thus it acquired its name: the Delta.

Not far from the apex of the Delta, on a plateau to the west of the Nile, lie the fabled pyramids. A few miles further upriver lies the ancient city of Memphis. In the coastal town of Pelusium we booked passage on a boat to take us up the Delta and all the way to Memphis.

The heat was stifling as we sailed upriver on the crowded boat, passing quaint villages and ancient temples. The rank smell of Delta mud filled my nostrils. I spotted crocodiles in the shallows, heard the call of the ibis and the bellow of hippopotami, and felt very far from my home in Italy.

Long before Romulus founded Rome, even before the heroes of Homer sacked Troy, the civilization of Egypt was already ancient. Some of the monuments we passed on the riverbank were unimaginably old, and they looked it. Weathered granite slabs depicted animal-headed gods in stiff poses alongside images of the Egyptian kings, called Pharaohs, who wore bizarre headdresses and wielded crooks and flails.

While I gazed at Egypt passing by, Antipater kept his head down and read about it. During our travels my old tutor had acquired some scrolls of the Histories of Herodotus, including the chapters that described Egypt and its people.

Along a quiet stretch of the river, we passed a little boy who stood atop the steep bank. I smiled and waved to him. The boy waved back, then hitched up his long, loose garments and relieved himself in the water below. The stream glittered under the bright sunlight and the boy made a game of aiming it this way and that. He grinned and looked quite proud of himself.

Antipater, poring over a scroll, never looked up.

“According to Herodotus,” he said, “no one has yet determined the source of the Nile. Those who travel as far as possible upriver, a journey of many months, eventually arrive in a region of vast swamps and impassable forests where the people are all sorcerers; they are also extremely short and as black as ebony, and speak a language incomprehensible to outsiders. Further than that, no traveler has ever ventured and come back alive. Nor, according to Herodotus, can anyone adequately explain why the Nile, unlike all other rivers, is at its lowest in the spring, then floods at the time of the summer solstice.”

“The solstice is still a few days away,” I said. “I suppose that means we're seeing the Nile at its lowest. Will it actually rise high enough to flood the banks on either side?”

Antipater looked up, shading his eyes from the bright sunlight. “Hopefully, Gordianus, we shall witness this famous phenomenon for ourselves. The river is said to rise so dramatically that the banks are flooded for hundreds of miles, irrigating a vast amount of cultivated land and creating the most fertile region on earth. The inundation should begin any day now.”

He returned his attention to the scroll in his lap. “Herodotus goes on to say that, just as the Nile is different from all other rivers, so the people who live along its banks follow customs contrary to other people. The women go to market and carry on trade, while the men stay at home and weave. There are no priestesses, only priests, and while holy men in other lands grow beards and wear their hair long, in Egypt they shave their heads—and every other part of their bodies as well. The Egyptians write from right to left, not left to right. They knead dough with their feet and clay with their hands. They invented the peculiar practice called circumcision. And listen to this: The women make water standing up, while the men do so crouching down!”

I frowned. “I have to wonder if that's completely accurate. If you'd bothered to look up, you'd have seen that little boy—”

“I assure you, Gordianus, no historian was ever more scrupulous than Herodotus. He traveled extensively in Egypt, saw everything worth seeing, and consulted all the best authorities.”

“Yes, but didn't Herodotus write that book over three hundred years ago? The information might be a bit out of date.”

“My dear boy, there's a reason Herodotus remains our best authority on all matters pertaining to Egypt. No other writer can match his insight and attention to detail. Now, where was I? Ah, yes—on the subject of worship, Herodotus tells us that the Egyptians are the most religious of all people. They can trace their practices back many thousands of years. Since the Egyptians were the first race of mortals, they built the first temples. It was from Egypt that we Greeks received our first knowledge of the gods, though we know them by other names. Thus the Egyptian god Ammon is our Zeus, their Osiris is our Dionysus, Anubis is the same as Hermes, and so on.”

I frowned. “Isn't Anubis the one who has the head of a dog? Whereas Hermes—or Mercury, as we Romans call him—is a handsome youth; at least that's how the statues in Greek and Roman temples always show him. How can Anubis and Hermes be the same god?”

“You touch upon a problem which has puzzled even the wisest philosophers. What are we to make of the fact that the Egyptians worship animals, and give animal characteristics to certain gods in their statues and pictures? Some believe their use of such imagery is purely symbolic. Thus, Anubis doesn't really have a dog's head, but is only shown that way because he acts as the loyal guardian of the other gods—their watchdog, so to speak.”

“I shouldn't think any god would care to have himself depicted as a dog, no matter what the reasoning.”

“Ah, but that's because you think like a Roman, Gordianus. You look for plain facts and practical solutions. And I think like a Greek; I delight in beauty and hidden meanings. But the Egyptians have their own way of thinking, which often seems quite strange to us, even fantastical. Perhaps it's because they care so little for this world, and so much for the next. They are obsessed with death. Their religion prescribes intricate rituals to safely guide their spirit, or ka, to the Land of the Dead. To achieve this, they must keep their mortal bodies intact. Whereas we cremate our dead, the Egyptians go to great lengths to preserve the corpses of their loved ones and to make them appear as lifelike as possible. The process is called mummification. Those who can afford to do so keep the mummies of their dead relatives in special rooms where they go to visit them, offer them food, and even dine with them, as if they were still alive.”

“You must be joking!” I said.

“Romans may wish to rule this world, Gordianus, but Egyptians are far more concerned with the Land of the Dead. We must keep that in mind when at last we see the largest tomb ever built, the Great Pyramid.”

The Great Pyramid! At last we drew near the final destination of our journey. I had seen all six of the other Wonders now, and would be able to judge for myself whether the Great Pyramid was truly the most marvelous of them all, as many alleged. Could it possibly surpass the soaring height of the Mausoleum, or the splendor of the Temple of Artemis, or the ambition of the fallen Colossus? Everyone on earth had heard of the pyramids, even barbarians in the farthest reaches of Gaul and Scythia. Now I was about to see them.

* * * *

The branch of the river on which we were traveling joined with others, growing wider and wider, until all the many branches converged into their common source, the great Nile itself. Suddenly—ahead of us and to the right, shimmering in the distance—I caught my first glimpse of the Great Pyramid. Beside me, Antipater gasped. He, too, was seeing the monument for the first time.

“Am I seeing double?” I whispered, for it seemed to me that I could see not one but two enormous pyramids.

“I think not,” said Antipater. “According to Herodotus, there are three major pyramids on the plateau west of the river. One of them is relatively small, but the other is very nearly as large as the Great Pyramid.”

“They must be enormous!” I said.

Some of the other passengers on the boat joined us in gaping at the monuments, but others gave them only a glance. The boatmen, for whom the pyramids were an everyday sight, paid them no attention, even as they loomed ever larger to our right.

Then we passed the plateau and sailed on, and the pyramids receded behind us. A little later we arrived at the ancient capital of Egypt, Memphis.

The cities of Greece had been foreign to me, but also familiar, for Romans and Greeks worship the same gods and construct the same types of buildings. Babylon had been more exotic, but it was a city in decline, long past its glory. But Memphis—ah, Memphis! This city was truly like another world.

At first, nothing seemed familiar and I could hardly take in the strangeness of it all—the way the people dressed (I had no names for such garments), the things they ate (I recognized nothing, but the aromas were enticing), the tunes played in the public squares (which sounded like noise to me), the statues of the gods (animal heads, bizarre postures), the colorful picture-writing on the temple walls (beautiful but indecipherable). To be sure, Greek was spoken—by some. The common people spoke another, older language, the likes of which I had never heard before.

We found accommodations at an inn not far from the river, and were given a room on the upper floor. Antipater complained about the steep steps, but when I opened the shutters and raised my eyes above the nearby rooftops, I saw the Great Pyramid looming in the distance

Antipater joined me in gazing at the sight. “Wonderful!” he whispered.

“Shall we set out to see it at once?” I said eagerly.

“No, no!” said Antipater. “The day is far too hot, and the hour too late, and I need my rest.”

“Rest? All you did today was lie in the boat and read Herodotus!”

“How lucky you are to be nineteen, Gordianus. Someday you'll understand how an old man can grow tired simply by drawing a day's ration of breath. Leave the shutters open, but draw the curtains. It's time for my nap.”

* * * *

We did not go to see the pyramids that day, or the next, or even the next. Antipater insisted that we acquaint ourselves with the city of Memphis first. To be sure, it was a place of marvels, decorated with shrines, temples, ceremonial gates, colossal stone statues, and towering obelisks the likes of which I had never seen before, all constructed on an enormous scale. The strange architecture of the city exuded an air of mystery and great antiquity. It was easy to believe that mortals had been living and building in this spot since the beginning of time.

Memphis was no longer the capital of Egypt—the heir of Alexander the Great, Ptolemy, had chosen to move the royal administration to Alexandria—but its monuments were well kept, and the city was bustling and vibrant. I had thought that in Egypt we would arrive at the edge of the world, but Memphis seemed to be its center, the crossroads of all the earth. Among the people I saw every shade of hair color and complexion; I had never known that mortals came in so many hues. The city seemed at once impossibly ancient and incredibly alive.

We dined on tilapia and exotic fruits in the palm grove next to the Temple of Selene (who is also Aphrodite, according to Antipater). We observed the sacred Apis bull dozing in its luxurious enclosure; it seemed quite strange to me that a mere animal should be treated as a god. But the grandest of the temples was that of Serapis, the god most favored by the Ptolemy dynasty. To reach it, we traversed a broad ceremonial walkway lined on both sides by life-sized statues of a creature with the head of a man and the body of a lion. These, Antipater explained, were sphinxes.

“Like the sphinx that guarded the Greek city of Thebes and posed the famous riddle to Oedipus?” I asked. Antipater himself had taught me the story.

“I suppose. But if Oedipus truly met a sphinx, the creature must have come from Egypt. No Greek I know has ever seen a sphinx, but their images are all over Egypt. These statues look as if they've been here forever.”

The long walkway was exposed to a strong wind from the west, and drifts of sand, some quite high, had gathered around the bases of the statues. One of the sphinxes was buried up to its chin, so that sand covered the lower portion of its nemes headdress and its long, narrow beard. I paused to look at the sphinx's enigmatic face, and recalled the famous riddle: What creature in the morning goes on four legs, at midday on two, and in the evening on three? Had Oedipus given the wrong reply, the sphinx would have strangled him, but he deduced the answer: Man, who first crawls on all fours, then strides on two feet, then walks with a cane.

At every turn we were accosted by men who offered to serve as guides to the local sites. Antipater eventually picked the one who struck him as the least unscrupulous and charged the man with arranging our transportation to the pyramids. The guide, who spoke passable Greek, advised us to wait awhile longer, for soon a three-day festival to celebrate the summer solstice would claim the attention of all the locals and tourists in the city; during those three days we might be able to visit the pyramids in peace, without hordes of sightseers around us. The guide also insisted that we buy long white robes and linen headdresses not unlike those worn by the sphinxes, saying that such garments would protect us from the desert heat.

At last, early on the appointed morning, dressed in our desert apparel, we set out to see the pyramids.

The guide supplied a camel for each of us—to my dismay, for I had yet to meet a camel that did not dislike me on sight. This beast was no different. Almost at once, he tried to bite me. The guide chastised the camel by striking him soundly on his enormous nose. After that the creature seemed content merely to turn his long neck, give me a baleful stare, and spit at me from time to time. Despite his sullen nature, the camel was an obedient mount, and we made steady progress.

First we took a road that followed the west bank of the Nile downriver for a few miles, then we took a sharp turn to the left and ascended to a dry, sandy plateau. We hardly needed the guide to show us the way, for at every moment the Great Pyramid was visible, looming ever larger as we drew closer. By the early light of morning it appeared pale pink in color, and as flat as if it were a drawing cut from a piece of papyrus; but as the sun rose, and the heat increased, the pyramid appeared white and began to shimmer. At times it seemed to levitate above the earth, and at other times it quivered so much that I thought it might miraculously disappear before our eyes, but the guide explained that these uncanny visions were merely illusions caused by the waves of heat rising from the sand.

Larger the pyramid loomed, and then larger still. I glanced at Antipater and saw that he was as astonished as I was. It was one thing to be told that the Great Pyramid is the largest object ever made by men, another to actually see it with my own eyes. My imagination had been inadequate to prepare me for the awesome scale of what I beheld.

The plateau was crisscrossed with ceremonial roadways and dotted with temples, altars, and shrines, but because of the festival in Memphis there was not a person in sight. The solitude was uncanny. A part of me was glad we had waited for this day, to have the pyramids to ourselves. But I also felt slightly unsettled that we three should be the only specks of humanity on that vast, sandy plain. My sense of perspective was undone; in vain I looked for some way to judge size and distance.

Only once was the Great Pyramid blocked from view, as we passed close by a very large sand dune that seemed out of place amid the surrounding temples. Once we passed the dune, the Great Pyramid reappeared and filled my whole range of vision, not only from side to side but up and down, for the structure was nearly as tall as it was wide. From a distance, the pyramid had appeared to be made from a single block of stone, so smooth was the surface. Closer up, I could see that it was actually faced with many different stones expertly fitted together, and that these stones were of many different colors and textures—pale violet and glossy blue, sea-green and apple-gold, some as opaque as marble and others as translucent as sunlight captured in a wave. At a distance all these various stones merged together and appeared scintillating white. I had expected the Great Pyramid to be immense, but I had not expected it to be so beautiful and so finely made, as fascinating to behold close up as it was at a distance.

Around the bottom of the pyramid, great drifts of sand had accumulated. We remained on our camels and began slowly to circle the base. The eastern face of the pyramid was dazzling in the full morning sunlight, the southern face ablaze with slanting rays, and the western face entirely in shadow. Looking up, I watched the sun surmount the tip of the pyramid, where it seemed to hover like a ball of flame on its point.

“Who built such a marvel?” I exclaimed. “And how was it done?”

The guide opened his mouth to answer, but Antipater was quicker. “According to Herodotus, the Pharaoh Cheops employed a hundred thousand men just to build the roadway to transport the stones from Arabia. That labor alone took ten years; another twenty years were needed to build the pyramid itself. First the structure was built up in tiers, like steps, and then the tiers were fitted from the top down with enormous finishing stones lifted into place by a series of ingenious levers, then the whole surface was polished to a bright luster.”

“Is Cheops buried inside?” I asked.

“Herodotus states that Cheops was laid to rest in a chamber deep beneath the pyramid, a sort of subterranean island surrounded by water channeled underground from the Nile.”

As I tried to visualize such a bizarre funeral chamber, the guide loudly cleared his throat. “Actually,” he said, “the stones of the pyramids were not raised into place by cranes or levers, but pulled up huge ramps of earth built especially for the purpose.”

“Nonsense!” said Antipater. “Such ramps would have needed to be enormous, larger in volume than the pyramid itself. If such massive earthworks were ever constructed, why do we see no remains of them?” It was true that there were no huge mounds of earth anywhere on the plateau. There were sand dunes here and there, including the large one amid the temples we had passed on our way, but even that mound was minuscule in comparison to the Great Pyramid.

“Those who built up the ramps disposed of them when they were done,” said the guide. “The earth was carted to the Nile, which carried it downstream to create the many islands of the Delta. And since you ask if Cheops is buried inside, young Roman, I will tell you that he is not. The Pharaoh so abused his people when he forced them to build this enormous tomb that when he died they refused to put him in the pyramid and buried him elsewhere. The pyramid is empty.”

“How could you possibly know such a thing?” said Antipater.

The guide smiled. “Did I not tell you that I, Kemsa, am the best of all the guides? I know what others do not. Follow me.”

He led us back to the south face of the pyramid, where he gave a sign that brought all three camels to a halt. I would have sat there indefinitely, gaping at the pyramid, had my camel not folded its knees and pitched forward, making clear its desire to be rid of me. As the creature turned its head and prepared to spit, I hurriedly dismounted. Antipater did likewise, though with more dignity.

“Shall we go inside?” said our guide.

“Is it possible to do so?” Antipater's eyes grew wide.

“With Kemsa as your guide, all things are possible. Follow me!”

The face of the pyramid must once have been as smooth as glass—impossible to climb—but time had worn and pitted the stones, making it possible to clamber up by staying low and gaining purchase amid tiny cracks and fissures. I worried that Antipater would find the effort too strenuous, but, as he had done so often before on our journey, my old tutor displayed amazing dexterity and stamina for a man of his years. Antipater would complain of having to climb a few stairs to our room at the inn, but nothing could stop him from scrambling up the pyramid!

Perhaps two-thirds of the way to the top, Kemsa showed us a spot where a flat slab of stone could be lifted on a pivot. The hidden doorway was so expertly fitted that it was practically invisible. Antipater and I would never have found it on our own.

“Astonishing! Herodotus makes no mention of an entrance to the Great Pyramid,” said Antipater.

“No?” said Kemsa. “That's because this fellow Herodotus did not have me for a guide. Watch your head!”

Kemsa held the door up while Antipater and I stepped inside. Using his shoulder to keep the door open, Kemsa produced three torches, one for each of us, and used a flint to ignite them. Once the torches were lit, he allowed the door to fall shut.

The narrow, steeply sloping shaft before us plunged into utter darkness. I noted with some relief that there was a rope that could be used to steady one's descent.

“Do you wish to go on?” said Kemsa.

Antipater looked pale in the firelight. He swallowed hard. “I haven't come this far to forgo an opportunity that even Herodotus missed.” He held his torch in one hand and gripped the rope with the other. “Lead on!”

The guide went first. Antipater and I followed.

“But if there's no tomb at the bottom, what is there to see?” I said. Even though I spoke quietly, my voice echoed up and down the shaft.

“To know that, you must see for yourself,” said Kemsa.

I suddenly felt uneasy. What if the pyramid was a tomb after all—not of kings but of common fools like myself, led to their death by Egyptian bandits posing as guides? Would there be a chamber full of skeletons at the bottom, with my own soon to be added? What an irony if the Great Pyramid should turn out to be the resting place not of Cheops, but of Gordianus of Rome!

I told myself there was nothing to fear; it was only the darkness, the weird echoes, and the cramped space of the descending shaft that unnerved me. Clutching our torches and the rope, we continued our slow, steady descent.

At last the surface became level. After passing through a short hallway we entered a chamber of considerable size. By the flickering torchlight I discerned a flat roof perhaps twenty feet above our heads. The walls appeared to be made of solid granite, finely fitted and polished but without any sort of decoration. The chamber was empty except for a massive sarcophagus hewn from a solid block of granite. The sarcophagus had no lid. Nor was there any decoration or carving on its surface.

“Can this be the sarcophagus of the great Cheops?” I whispered. Within such a fabulous monument, I had expected to see a burial chamber of great splendor.

“This is a burial chamber, yes, and that is a sarcophagus,” said Kemsa. “But as I told you, there is no Cheops. Go and see for yourself.”

Antipater and I stepped up to the sarcophagus and peered inside. My old tutor gasped. So did I.

Kemsa, who seemed to know everything about the pyramid, was wrong about the sarcophagus. It was not empty; there was a body in it. For a Pharaoh, he was very plainly dressed, not in royal garments but in a long white robe and a simple nemes headdress, not unlike the clothes I was wearing. The hands crossed over his chest and his clean-shaven face were those of a man of middle age, darkened by the sun and somewhat wrinkled, but for a man who had been dead for hundreds if not thousands of years, he was remarkably well preserved. I could even see a bit of stubble across his jaw. Antipater had told me that Egyptian mummification was a sophisticated process, but this specimen was extraordinary.

Seeing our stunned reaction, Kemsa raised an eyebrow and walked over to join us. When he saw the body in the sarcophagus, he stopped short. By the flickering light I saw his face turn ashen. His eyes grew wide and his jaw hung open. His amazement appeared so extreme, I thought he must be playacting—until he emitted a shriek and tumbled backward in a faint, dropping his torch on the floor.

While Antipater tended to him, I returned my attention to the body in the sarcophagus, and I saw what had made Kemsa shriek.

The mummy had opened its eyes.

The mummy blinked. Then, staring upward into the darkness, the mummy spoke in a hoarse whisper. “Am I still alive? Or am I dead? Where am I? The priest of Isis promised that a savior would come to me!”

My heart pounded in my chest. My head grew light. For a moment I feared that I, too, would faint. But as Antipater had pointed out, I was a Roman. Disconcerted I might be, even discombobulated, but at some level I knew there must be an explanation for what was happening. For one thing, the man in the sarcophagus spoke flawless Greek, with the local accent I had heard in Memphis. He was not Cheops.

Nor was he a mummy, I thought—then felt a quiver of doubt as he reached up and gripped my arm with a hand as cold as ice.

He stared up at me and hissed. “What is this place? And who are you?”

I swallowed hard. “My name is Gordianus. I'm a visitor from Rome. We're inside the Great Pyramid.”

He released me, then covered his face and began to sob.

“And who are you?” I said, no longer fearful, for the man in the sarcophagus now appeared more pitiful than frightening. “And what are you doing here? And how long have you been lying in the dark?”

The man ceased to sob and gradually composed himself. He sat upright in the sarcophagus. His movements were stiff. His eyes were dull and his face was drained of all expression. He appeared so lifeless that for a moment, by the uncertain light, I wondered if he might be a mummy after all.

“If you would know the story of Djal, son of Rhutin,” he said, “help me out of this accursed stone box. Lead me out of the darkness and back to the sunlight, and I will tell you everything, young visitor from Rome.”

* * * *

When we emerged from the shaft, the glare of the noonday sun was blinding. Kemsa, embarrassed by his fainting spell, cast baleful glances at the stranger, who seemed to be more blinded by the sunlight than the rest of us. As I was to learn later, the man had been inside the pyramid, in total darkness, for no less than two days.

Kemsa extinguished the torches and made ready to descend, but Antipater held me back. “We find ourselves not far from the summit of the pyramid, Gordianus. Shall we ascend to the very top?”

“But the man from the sarcophagus—”

“What do we care about him?” said Antipater in a low voice. “Yes, he gave us all a fright, but so what? If some local lunatic wishes to spend his time lying in the empty sarcophagus of Cheops, I don't see how that's our concern. We find ourselves at the Great Pyramid at midday, Gordianus, with a chance to stand on the very summit at the hour when the pyramid casts no shadow.” He raised his voice and spoke to the guide. “Kemsa, help this fellow down, and give him some water. Gordianus and I will finish the ascent.”

Looking displeased, Kemsa nonetheless did as he was told, and the two men began to descend.

“But are you up for this, Teacher?” I said. “You've exerted yourself so much already today, and the sun is so hot—”

Even as I stated my doubts, Antipater started climbing.

Grumbling at Antipater's willful nature, I followed. When I reached the top, panting for breath, my efforts were rewarded beyond my wildest expectations.

The tip of the Great Pyramid must originally have been capped in gold or some other precious metal, to judge by the remnants of pins and clamps that had fixed the metal to the rough-hewn stone beneath. That splendor was no longer to be seen—someone had looted the metal long ago—but the view was spectacular, and like no other on earth. As I slowly turned from north to south, I saw the vast green Delta, the sprawling city of Memphis, the sinuous Nile vanishing into the distance, and the rugged mountains of Arabia beyond. Below us, the various temples and shrines on the plateau looked like models built by an architect; among them I noticed again the large, incongruous sand dune we had passed on our way. To the southeast, I gazed upon the Great Pyramid's rival; its peak was clearly below our level, but it was still enormous. Turning to the west, I beheld the fearful beauty of the Libyan wilderness, a trackless waste of jagged mountains and gorges.

I had thought no view could match those from the Mausoleum in Halicarnassus or the Ziggurat in Babylon, but to stand atop the Great Pyramid is truly to look down upon the world as the gods must see it.

The desert wind whistled in my ears and dried the sweat from my brow. For a long while Antipater and I crouched in that timeless spot, taking in the view. Eventually, gazing down at the foot of the pyramid, I saw our guide and the stranger from the sarcophagus sitting in the shade cast by the camels and sipping water from one of the skins the guide had brought.

“I'm thirsty,” I said.

The climb down was trickier than the climb up. We proceeded with caution, taking our time. At any moment, I feared that Antipater might lose his grip and take a terrible tumble—but it was I who made a careless move near the bottom and found myself sliding out of control down the last fifty feet, landing in a pile of sand at the bottom, unharmed but quite embarrassed.

Kemsa allowed me only sips of water, saying it was dangerous to swallow too much too quickly. To take our midday meal, he suggested we retire to a nearby temple. With the stranger mounted behind Kemsa, we rode our camels to the smallest of the three pyramids. Beyond it, we came upon three much smaller tombs, also pyramidal in shape but built in steps, which I had not noticed before.

“How many pyramids are there in Egypt?” I said.

“There are many, many pyramids,” said Kemsa, “perhaps hundreds of them, not only here on the plateau, but all along the Nile. Most are very small in comparison to the Great Pyramid.”

Before one of these minor pyramids stood a small but beautiful temple dedicated to Isis. Brightly painted columns shaped like stalks of papyrus flanked the entrance. Normally there would have been worshipers in attendance, Kemsa explained, but on this day everyone was at the festival in Memphis. Sitting on the steps of the temple in the shade, we took our meal of flatbread, wild celery, and pomegranates.

Reluctantly, the man from the pyramid accepted a bit of our food.

Antipater paid him little attention, but I was curious. “You say your name is Djal?”

The man nodded.

“How long were you in there?”

Djal frowned. “I have no way of knowing. I entered on the seventh day of the month of Payni—”

“But that's two days ago!” said Kemsa, giving him a dubious look.

“You've been in there all this time?” I said.

“Yes.”

“Did you have any light?”

“I had a torch when I entered. But it soon burned out.”

“Did you have food or water?”

“None.”

“What did you do?”

“I lay in the sarcophagus, as the priest—a priest from this very temple—instructed me to do, and I awaited the coming of the one who would save me. I thought perhaps Anubis would appear with a message from the gods, or one of my ancestors from the Land of the Dead—maybe even the ka of my poor father! But no one came. I lay in the darkness, waiting, sometimes awake, sometimes asleep, until finally I could not tell if I woke or slept, or even if I was still alive. And no one came. Oh, what a fool I've been!” He began to weep again—or rather, to go through the motions of weeping, for I think there was not enough moisture in him to produce tears.

“You promised to tell us your story,” I said quietly, thinking to calm him.

He nibbled a bit of bread and took a few sips of water. “Very well. I am Djal, son of Rhutin. I have lived in Memphis all my life, as did my ancestors before me, going back many generations, even to the days before the Ptolemies ruled Egypt. The prosperity of my family has varied over the years, but always each son has taken care to see that his father was given the proper rites when he died, and was mummified according to the standards of the first class, never the second or third.”

“I'm sorry, I don't understand.”

Our guide cleared his throat. “Allow me to explain. There are three categories of mummification. First class is very expensive, second class much less so, and third class is very cheap, only for the poor. When a man dies, the embalmers present the family with a price list of every item required for the funeral, and the family decides what it can afford.”

“And this includes mummification?”

“Yes.” Kemsa shrugged. “This is something all Egyptians know.”

“But I don't. Tell me more.”

“A great many skilled artisans are involved in the process. One man examines the body and inscribes marks to indicate where the cuts should be made. Another man uses an obsidian blade to make the incisions. Then the embalmers reach inside and remove all the internal organs. Those that are vital, like the heart and kidneys, they wash in palm wine and spices and place in sealed jars. Those organs that are useless, they dispose of. The brain is the hardest thing to get rid of; the embalmers must insert slender iron hooks and tweezers into the nostrils to pull out all the bits of gray matter. The cavities in the body are then filled with myrrh and cinnamon and frankincense and other spices known only to the embalmers, and then the incisions are sewn up and the body is packed in saltpeter. After seventy days, the body is washed and wrapped in long strips of the finest linen, and the mummification is complete. This is the first-class method, which everyone desires, and the result is a body flawlessly preserved, with the hair and eyebrows and even the eyelids perfectly intact, so that the dead man appears merely to sleep.”

“Remarkable!” I said. “And the second method of mummification?”

Kemsa raised an eyebrow. “Those who cannot afford the best must settle for the middle way. No cuts are made and no organs are removed. Instead, the embalmers fill large syringes with cedar oil and inject the fluid through the dead man's anus and mouth and then plug him up, so the fluid cannot run out. The body is packed in saltpeter for the prescribed number of days, then the plugs are removed and the fluid is drained out of him from both ends. The cedar oil dissolves the internal organs, you see, and the saltpeter desiccates the flesh, so that what remains is mostly hide and bones, but such a mummy is protected from corruption and bears some resemblance to the original, living body. Still, such a mummy is not suitable for display, even to family members. Would you care for more pomegranate?”

I shook my head, feeling slightly queasy. “And the third way?”

Kemsa shuddered. “Let us not speak of it. As I said, it is only for the desperately poor who can afford no better, and I do not think you would like me to describe the results.”

I nodded. “If a body is mummified in the best way, what then becomes of it?”

“The mummy is returned to the family, placed inside a wooden case inscribed with the formulas needed to reach the Land of the Dead. Some cases are very ornate, but other are less so, depending on how much the family spends—”

“For our fathers, the sons of my family never purchased less than the very best of mummy cases!” cried Djal suddenly. Then he lowered his face and was silent again.

“So the mummy is put in a case,” I said, “and then what becomes of it?”

“After the funeral rites,” said Kemsa, “the mummy is taken to the family vault and leaned against the wall, upright in his case, so that when his descendants visit they may gaze upon him face to face. If the family is too poor to purchase a vault in a consecrated area, they may add a room to their house, and keep their ancestors there. Some people actually prefer such a room to a cemetery vault, for it makes it convenient for them to converse with their ancestors every day.”

I considered this. “If a man's spirit moves on to the Land of the Dead, of what use is his mummy?”

Kemsa looked at me as if I were a simpleton. Djal wailed and buried his face in his hands.

Kemsa explained. “After death, the ka is freed from the body and seeks to find its way through many perils to the Land of the Dead. But for the ka to survive, it is essential that the earthly body be preserved from decay and supplied with all the everyday needs of life. The ka is not immortal; if the mummy perishes, the ka, too, will perish. That is why the mummy must be preserved and protected. That is why a man's descendant must give regular offerings to his mummy—so that his ka may continue to thrive in the next world.”

“Oh, what have I done!” cried Djal, throwing back his head and beating his fists against his chest. “What have I done?”

“What has he done?” I whispered to our guide.

Kemsa drew back his shoulder and looked sidelong at the wretched man. “I think I know. You bartered the mummy of an ancestor, didn't you?”

Djal shuddered and stiffened. “Yes! For a handful of silver, I gave away the mummy of my father!”

“What is he talking about?” I said.

“This man is the lowest of the low,” declared Kemsa. “He has used the mummy of his father as collateral.”

Antipater's eyebrows shot up. “Herodotus writes of such a practice. If a man finds himself in dire straits, he may use the mummy of a family member to obtain a loan. So this practice still exists?”

“Only among those who have no respect for the dead,” declared Kemsa, who spat on the ground.

“I was desperate,” whispered Djal. “The floods came late two years in a row; twice my crops were ruined. All I had left I invested in a caravan to bring incense from Arabia. Then my wife and little daughter both fell ill. I needed money to pay the physicians. And so . . .”

“You gave up the mummy of your father in return for a loan?” I said.

Djal nodded. “There is a man in Memphis named Mhotep who specializes in such loans. A greedy, wicked man—”

“No man is more wicked than he who abandons the mummy of his father!” declared Kemsa.

Djal raised his chin defiantly. “I had every expectation that I would be able to repay the loan. But then the caravan was lost in a sandstorm, and with it the last of my fortune. All the money Mhotep lent me I had already spent, on physicians. My daughter recovered, but my wife is still ill. The repayment of the loan was set to fall due at the commencement of the annual inundation, which will happen any day now, and I have nothing to give to Mhotep.”

“Sell your house,” said Kemsa.

“And put my wife on the street? She would surely die.”

“Your first duty is to your father. I've heard of this Mhotep. Do you know how he treats the mummies he collects as collateral? As long as there is a chance of repayment, he keeps them in a sealed room, crowded together and starved of offerings but safe from the elements. But if a debtor defaults, the mummy is never seen again. They say Mhotep dumps them in a ravine in the Libyan mountains, where insects and lizards and jackals feast on the remains, and whatever is left is turned to dust by the sun, then scattered by the wind—”

“Stop!” Djal clutched his face and shuddered.

“Tell them what happens to a man who gives up a mummy for a loan and never redeems it,” said Kemsa. “You cannot speak? Then I will tell them. If this wretched fellow should die without recovering the mummy of his father, the law forbids that he should be mummified, even by the standards of the third class. Nor can he be given funeral rites. His body will rot. His ka will perish forever.”

“Oh, what have I done?” cried Djal. “What a fool I am!”

“But you spoke of someone coming to save you,” I said. “That was why you were in the pyramid, wasn't it?”

“When I saw the hopelessness of my situation, I went to the priests of all the temples in Memphis, begging for their help. Only the priests of Isis showed any interest in my plight. They disapprove of men like Mhotep and would drive them from the city if they could. They called upon Mhotep and appealed to him to be merciful. At first he refused, but the priests were persistent, and at last Mhotep told them: ‘Let this man Djal answer the second riddle of the sphinx, and I will return the mummy to him!’ He said it with a smirk, of course, because no one yet has been able to answer the riddle.”

“A second riddle of the sphinx?” I said. “Only the other day, seeing the sphinxes outside the Temple of Serapis, Antipater and I recalled the famous riddle that was posed to Oedipus. But I've never heard of a second riddle.”

“Nor have I,” said Antipater.

“No?” said Kemsa. “Everyone in Memphis knows it. Mothers tease their children with it, for it is a commonplace that no one can solve it. It goes like this: I am seen by all who pass, but no one sees me. I posed a riddle that everyone knows, but no one knows me. I look toward the Nile, but I turn my back upon the pyramids.”

Antipater snorted. “Like most riddles, this one probably has an obvious solution, but it sounds like nonsense. How could a thing be seen by everyone, and yet be invisible?”

“You were unable to solve it?” I said.

“How could I possibly do what no one else has been able to do?” said Djal. “The riddle mentions the pyramids, so finally, in desperation, I came here, to the temple of Isis that stands in the shadow of the pyramids. I prostrated myself in the sanctuary and prayed to the goddess to show me the answer. One of the priests overheard me. I explained my situation. He prayed with me, told me that Isis had shown him a solution. I was to enter the Great Pyramid, lie in the empty sarcophagus I would find inside, and await the coming of the one who would show me the answer to the riddle. It seemed a mad thing to do, but what choice did I have? As night fell, when no one was watching, the priest showed me the entrance to the pyramid, and lit a torch to light my way. I descended the passage alone. I found the sarcophagus. I lay inside it, like a dead man. When the torch burned out, I was in darkness. But I trusted Isis, and prayed incessantly, and awaited the coming of the one with the answer. But alas, no divine visitor ever came! Only . . . you.”

Djal cocked his head and gave me a strange look. I thought nothing of it, until I saw that Antipater and Kemsa were also looking at me in a curious way. And so, I suddenly realized, was a tall, imposing figure who suddenly loomed behind us in the doorway of the temple.

The newcomer was dressed in a long linen gown with splendid embroidery. The garment fitted tightly across his chest but below his midsection it hung in loose pleats to his feet. His head was completely shaved. His staring eyes were outlined with kohl.

“Priest of Isis!” cried Djal, prostrating himself on the steps. “I did as you commanded me, but Isis never came. Nor did Anubis. Nor did any god or messenger, only this young man—a Roman who calls himself Gordianus.”

The priest continued to stare at me. “How curious that Isis should have sent a mortal to do her bidding—and a Roman at that!”

I cleared my throat. “No one sent me. Antipater and I are travelers. We came to Egypt to see the Great Pyramid, because it's one of the Seven Wonders of the World. It was only by chance that we came on this day, and that we found a guide who knows how to enter the pyramid, and that this poor fellow happened to be inside.”

“Only by chance, you say?” The priest pursed his lips. “What sort of man are you, Roman?”

“A man who solves riddles!” declared Antipater, rising to his feet. He gazed at me as if he were seeing me for the first time.

“I hardly claim it as a profession,” I said quietly, feeling thoroughly disconcerted. “To be sure, on our journey, I have had occasion to use my powers of deduction—”

“On occasion?” said Antipater. “You do so invariably, I would say. Think about it, Gordianus. First in Ephesus, when that girl was shut up in the cave, and then in Halicarnassus, when the widows—”

“There's no need to recite our whole itinerary!” I snapped.

“But don't you see, Gordianus? You are a solver of riddles. I've seen you do it time and again. It would seem that you possess a special ability, a power, which others do not. Such gifts come from the gods. And here we find ourselves at the consummation of our journey, at the first and greatest of the Wonders, and what should appear but a riddle—awaiting you to solve it.”

“But Antipater, I don't know the answer. I heard the riddle just now, and I have no idea what it means.”

“Are you sure? Think, Gordianus!”

I mumbled to myself, reciting the bits I could recall. “Seen by all who pass . . . no one sees me . . . a riddle that everyone knows, but no one knows me . . . I sit among the pyramids. . . .” I shook my head. “It means nothing to me.”

“But you are the one sent by Isis,” said the priest. “Come, let us pray to her, at once!”

We followed the priest inside. The walls of the sanctuary were covered with hieroglyphics recounting the story of Isis, the great Egyptian goddess of magic and fertility, sister-wife of Osiris and mother of Horus. The images dazzled me, though at the time I knew little of her story—how she gathered the scattered remains of Osiris after he was slain by the evil Set and oversaw the miracle of his rebirth.

Dominating the sanctuary was a statue of the goddess. On her head she wore a crown made of two curving horns that held between them a golden solar disk. Between her breasts, suspended from a necklace, was the sacred object called the Isis Knot, shaped like an ankh but with the arms turned down; as I would later learn, it was a symbol of her monthly flow, which in some divine way was connected with the annual inundation of the Nile. One hand was raised to touch one breast; the other held a breast-shaped vessel for the collection of her sacred milk. Her broad face was beautiful and serene, radiating wisdom.

“The goddess will tell me what must be done,” declared the priest. “Then you will do as Isis prescribes, and the answer to the riddle will come to you. I am sure of it.” He turned to the statue and raised his arms. “O Isis, universal mother, mistress of the elements, primordial child of time, sovereign of all things divine, queen of the living, queen of the dead, queen of the immortals, singular and utmost manifestation of all gods and goddesses, known by many names in many places, we call upon you!”

I shivered and felt slightly faint. What sort of test or labor might Isis demand of me? I had a feeling I was not going to like the answer.

* * * *

“Gordianus of Rome, you fool!” I whispered. “How did you ever get yourself into such a predicament?”

There was no one but myself to hear the words. Lit by the last flickering light of my torch, the granite walls surrounding me made no answer.

As the sun had begun to set behind the Libyan mountains, I had climbed once again to the hidden doorway of the Great Pyramid, accompanied only by the priest of Isis. Antipater, Djal, and Kemsa watched from below as the priest lifted the stone panel for me and lit a torch. Then, holding the torch in one hand and clutching the rope in the other, for the second time that day I descended into the heart of the pyramid. Above me, the priest let the panel fall shut.

Alone, I reached the burial chamber.

For as long as the torch burned strongly, I simply stood there, staring at the sarcophagus. Then the torch began to sputter, and I thought to myself: If I am to lie in the empty sarcophagus of Cheops, as Isis prescribed, now is the time to do it. Once the torch went out, I would surely become disoriented and lose all sense of direction. I might also lose my nerve completely, and go scrambling back up the narrow passage, desperate to escape from the bowels of the pyramid.

Isis had directed Djal to seek a solution to his problem by lying in the sarcophagus. According to her priest, she had directed me to do the same thing, promising that an answer to the riddle would come to me. It seemed to me that this Egyptian goddess was singularly lacking in imagination, to prescribe the same ordeal to two suppliants in a row.

When the priest made this announcement, I immediately protested—the very idea was madness—and looked to Antipater to back me up. But my old tutor had done the opposite. He seemed convinced that everything the priest said must be true, and that I was indeed the emissary promised by Isis.

“Everything that's happened since we left Rome has been leading to this moment,” he declared. “You must do this, Gordianus. It is your destiny.”

Antipater's certainty left me speechless. The priest nodded gravely. Djal fell to his knees and looked up at me imploringly. I looked to Kemsa, hoping he might tell me that Djal deserved his fate, but instead he embraced me, as one might a valiant warrior about to leave on a doomed mission, and wiped tears from his eyes.

“And to think, it was I, humble Kemsa, who led you to your destiny!”

They were all determined that I should do as the goddess desired. In truth, some part of me was flattered by their confidence, and intrigued by the challenge. But once inside the pyramid, that part of me began to dwindle and fade, rather like the flame of the dying torch.

“Madness!” I whispered as I stepped inside the sarcophagus and stretched out full-length. The rough-hewn granite felt cold to the touch. I clutched the stump of the torch and stared at the last dying embers until the orange glow faded to utter blackness. I cast the stump away and folded my hands over my chest.

“Now what?” I said aloud.

No answer came, only silence.

I shut my eyes, then opened them. It made no difference. I was surrounded by infinite blackness. I blinked and suddenly found myself confused: Were my eyes open or shut? I had to reach up to touch my eyelids to be sure.

As complete as the darkness was the silence. I found myself making small noises, snapping my fingers or clicking my teeth, simply to reassure myself that I had not gone deaf.

Eventually the utter lack of sight and sound, unnerving at first, began to have a sedative effect. I closed my eyes and lay perfectly still. It had been a long, hot, tiring day. Did I doze, or only imagine that I did so? I seemed to enter a state of consciousness I had never experienced before, neither asleep nor awake.

A succession of images and ideas passed through my mind. As one thought faded, leaving only a dim impression, another took its place. Where was I? What time was it? I reminded myself that it was night, and I was inside the Great Pyramid, but these demarcations lost all meaning. I sensed that I had arrived at a place and a moment that were at the very center of time and space, outside the ordinary realm of mortal experience.

The second riddle of the Sphinx resounded in my thoughts: I am seen by all who pass, but no one sees me. I posed a riddle that everyone knows, but no one knows me. I look toward the Nile, but I turn my back upon the pyramids.

I found myself thinking of the rows of sphinxes we had seen on the approach to the Temple of Serapis, some of them nearly buried by wind-blown sand. As if I were a bird with wings, I seemed to rise in the air and look down upon the young Roman and his old Greek tutor as they talked about Oedipus and the riddle he had solved, and then I flew northward, following the course of the Nile until I came to the plateau and landed atop the Great Pyramid, and looked down on the temples and roadways and the large, incongruous sand dune among them.

This vision faded and I sat upright in the sarcophagus. There were no longer any walls around me. I was surrounded by a sort of membrane, smooth and featureless and faintly glowing, rather as I imagine the inside of an egg might look to an unborn chick, if an egg could be made of twilight.

Suddenly I sensed I was no longer alone, and turned my head to see a dog-headed figure that stood upright on two legs. Slowly he walked toward me. His face was black on one side, golden on the other. In one hand he carried a herald's wand, and in the other, a green palm branch.

“Anubis?” I whispered.

“You know me better as Mercury.” His long snout never moved, yet somehow he spoke.

“You've come!” I said, hardly able to believe it. “The priest said such a thing would happen, and here you are! Will you help me solve the riddle?”

“You do not need my help, Gordianus. You already know the answer.”

He was right. I did know the answer. “You have no message for me, then?”

“I visit you not as a messenger, but as a herald, to announce her coming.”

“Who? Who is coming?”

Anubis fell silent, and then began to fade, as thoughts fade. Traces of his presence lingered on my eyes, even when I shut them. When I opened my eyes again, Isis stood before me.

I knew it was Isis by the crown she wore, with its curving horns and the golden disk between them, and by the Isis Knot between her breasts. Her linen gown was the color of blood. Her skin was golden brown, the color of honey. Her eyes glittered like sparks of sunlight on the Nile. She was unspeakably beautiful.

I had seen many images of gods and goddesses in the nineteen years I had been on earth, but never had I beheld a goddess face-to-face. I felt many things at once. I was fearful yet calm, awestruck yet strangely sure of myself. The unearthly allure of the goddess inspired in me a passion that was equally unearthly, unlike anything I had felt before.

The cold granite sarcophagus melted away. In its place I rested upon an infinite expanse of something soft and warm and pliant, almost like the pelt of a living, breathing animal, if such a pelt could cover the whole earth. Isis removed her crown and hitched it to a star in the twilight sky above her. Her red gown rippled as it fell to her ankles. She reclined beside me.

No words could describe the bliss of that coupling; nor shall I attempt to do so. There is a phrase used by Herodotus when he skirts a sacred matter about which his informants require his silence: I know a thing, but it would not be seemly for me to tell.

I shall say this much and no more: In a place and a moment outside of time and space, Isis and I became one. Perhaps it never happened. Perhaps it is happening still.

Little by little, I returned to this earthly realm, until at last I felt again the hard granite beneath me and its coldness around me. I heard the beating of my heart. I blinked and opened my eyes and saw darkness—not the darkness of dreams or the netherworld, but a common, earthly darkness, the mere absence of light, which was nothing to fear.

I sat up. If I had left my body at some point, there was no doubt that I had returned to it. My legs were sore from climbing, my shoulders and neck were stiff from lying on hard stone, and my backside ached from riding a camel.

How much time had passed? An hour, a day, a month? I had no way of knowing. For all I knew, I had died and come back to life.

Blindly, I navigated the chamber, feeling my way along the walls until I found the opening of the shaft. Steadying myself by the rope, proceeding cautiously so as not to bump my head, I slowly made my way up.

When I pushed open the stone panel, I was puzzled, for it seemed to me that the soft light was just the same as when I descended. Had I been inside the pyramid for mere minutes?

But then, from the soft glow that lit the Libyan mountains, I realized that the hour was dawn, not dusk. Far below I saw the camels sitting with their limbs hidden under them, their heads nodding in sleep. Huddled under blankets, also fast asleep, were Antipater and the others, including the priest of Isis, whose shaved head shone by the first ruddy light of the rising sun.

I made no sound to wake them. Instead I turned around and ascended as quickly as I could to the top of the pyramid. How many men can say they have witnessed a sunrise from the summit of the Great Pyramid? That moment, experienced alone—although in some way I felt that Isis was still present with me—I will remember all my life.

But I had another, more practical reason for the climb. I wanted to look down again at the large sand dune among the temples, to be sure that the shape was as I remembered it. It was. I could almost see the thing hidden inside it, as if the breath of a god had blown away the masses of sand. Its back was turned to the pyramids and it faced the Nile, just as the riddle said. It was seen by all who passed—who could fail to notice a sand dune big enough to block one's view of the pyramid? And yet it was unseen—for no one realized what was hidden under the sand. Its riddle was known to all, for everyone knows the riddle of the sphinx. And yet this sphinx was known to no one.

For how many generations had this monument, surely larger than any other sphinx in Egypt, been buried beneath the sand? Long enough that no one living even knew that it existed. The people of Egypt had forgotten that among the temples and shrines on the plateau, set there like a sentinel to guard the pyramids, crouched a giant sphinx, now entirely covered by sand. And yet some memory of this marvel had persisted in the form of a riddle that no one could answer.

Now that I had solved the riddle, the shape of the sphinx within the dune was unmistakable, and surely would be so to anyone gazing down on it from the Great Pyramid. There I could see the outline of the haunches, and there the protruding forepaws, and there, at the highest point, the proud head, which no doubt was covered by a nemes headdress. As Antipater had remarked, the solution to a riddle invariably seems obvious once you know the answer.

From far below, I heard a faint cry. I looked down to see that my companions were stirring. Djal had risen to his feet and was staring up at me. Even from such a great distance, I could see the plaintive expression on his face.

I took in the view one final time, then made my way down to give him the good news.

* * * *

Later that day, while the plateau was still deserted due to the festival in Memphis, the priest of Isis summoned a team of laborers to excavate the highest point of the sand dune concealing the sphinx.

All day they dug. At last their wooden shovels struck something made of stone. They kept digging until very late in the afternoon, by which time the very top of the sphinx's head had been uncovered. The gigantic nemes headdress appeared to have once been surmounted by some ceremonial object, long since broken off or worn away by time; to the priest of Isis, the stone remnant suggested a rearing cobra, such as is often seen on the headdresses of lesser sphinxes.

As the sun began to graze the jagged crest of the Libyan mountains, the priest ordered the workers to begin covering what they had uncovered. “Work all night if you must,” he told them, “but don't stop until not a trace of your day's labor remains.”

“But surely these men should keep digging!” I protested. “Why must they undo their work? Don't you want to see the whole thing? Granted, a full excavation will require many, many days—”

“What the gods have seen fit to conceal, I would not presume to uncover without first consulting my fellow priests and seeking to know the will of Isis in this matter. I allowed just enough digging to be sure that the second riddle of the sphinx had indeed been solved. All who have seen must be sworn to secrecy. That includes you,” he said, casting a sidelong glance at our guide, “and you as well, young Roman.”

“But surely the will of Isis is already known in this matter,” I said. “Was it not by her guidance that I found the solution? She even—” I bit my tongue and said no more. They had pressed me for details of my experience inside the pyramid, and I had revealed all I could put into words—except any mention of the intimacy I had shared with the goddess. That experience was too special to share, and beyond words—and it seemed to me that any mortal who dallies with a deity had best be discreet.

The priest would not be swayed. He invited us all to spend the night in comfort at his quarters in the Temple of Isis, and we left the workers to their labor. For now, the sphinx among the pyramids would remain a secret.

“Tomorrow I shall go to Memphis,” said the priest. “I will convince Mhotep that the riddle was solved and command him to return the mummy.”

“How will you persuade him?”

“Leave that to me. Your satisfaction in this matter, Gordianus, must be the role you played in the salvation of Djal.”

“I have already received my satisfaction,” I said, thinking of my wondrous experience with the goddess.

“How so?” asked the priest. The others pricked up their ears.

“That must be a riddle to which none of you will ever know the answer.”

* * * *

“An upstairs room! Why were we given an upstairs room?” wailed Antipater, clutching the railing and descending one step at a time. For days after our trip to see the pyramids he had been so stiff and sore he could hardly move, and had languished in his bed at the inn. On this day he had at last consented to stir, for we had received a very special invitation.

As we crossed the city, the exercise seemed to do him good, despite his moaning and groaning. The exotic sights and sounds of the city stimulated us both. Our route took us past the roadway to the Temple of Serapis, and we paused to look at the long rows of sphinxes.

“Teacher,” I said, “can you imagine such a sphinx expanded to the enormous scale of the monument that remains hidden on the plateau? If it were uncovered, men would call it the Great Sphinx, and would come from all over the world to marvel at the size of it. And if it were as beautiful as these smaller sphinxes, it would surely deserve a place among the Seven Wonders of the World. Why is it not on the list already?”

“Because, even very long ago, when the list of Seven Wonders was made, no one knew it existed. It must have been covered by that sand since at least the time of Herodotus, who makes no mention of it, and surely would have, had he seen it. But I suspect, Gordianus, that within your lifetime the Great Sphinx, as you call it, will be rediscovered. That priest of Isis will do his best to keep word from getting out, but one of those workers will talk, the news will spread, and sooner or later curiosity will get the better of even the most reactionary priests. Perhaps King Ptolemy himself will order the Great Sphinx to be excavated.”

“More likely it will be some ambitious Roman governor, after we've conquered Egypt,” I muttered.

“What's that?”

“Never mind.”

With the happy thought that someday I might return to Egypt and behold the Great Sphinx, we resumed our journey to the house of Djal.

The dwelling itself was modest, but it had a marvelous location, built on a bit of high ground beside the Nile. A little girl—the daughter of Djal—greeted us at the door and led us to a terraced garden with a view of fishing boats on the river and farmlands on the far side. Djal sat watching the river. When he saw us he jumped up and hugged us both. Antipater groaned at being squeezed so hard.

“What is that wonderful smell?” I said.

“The meal of thanksgiving that my wife has cooked for us.”

“Your wife? I thought—”

“She was ill, yes, but now she is much better. We are all better, since the return of the mummy. Come and see!”

He led us to the room where the meal would be served. At the head of the table, leaning upright against a wall, was a tall wooden case with a mummy inside.

“Father, this is Gordianus of Rome, the man who saved you. Gordianus, this is my father.”

I had never seen a mummy before. Nor had I ever been formally introduced to a dead man. In the world's oldest land, I was having many new experiences.

I stepped closer to the mummy and made a small bow. As far as I could tell, the old fellow looked none the worse for his time in captivity. His linen wrappings were unsoiled, and his face was quite remarkably well preserved—so much so that I half expected him to blink and open his eyes. Anything seemed possible in Egypt.

Djal's daughter came running into the room. “Father! Father! Come and see!”

We followed her back to the garden. The face of the Nile had changed. Where before it had been as still and flat as a mirror, now a series of ripples extended across the whole width. Out on the boats, which bobbed slightly in the tide, fishermen waved their arms and cheered. Across the water, the fields were suddenly filled with farmers hurrying this way and that. Various contraptions with wheels and paddles were set in motion. The irrigation channels that crisscrossed the fields, which before had been dry, now glistened with moisture.

“The inundation has begun,” whispered Djal. “And my father is home!” He dropped to his knees, covered his face, and wept with joy.

“Come see!” cried the little girl. She took my hand and led me down a path toward the river. Antipater followed, groaning. On the muddy bank we took off our shoes and stepped into the Nile. Looking down, I saw the green water turn brown as it steadily rose, covering first my feet and then my ankles.

From all up and down the river I heard cries of thanksgiving. Again and again the name of Isis was invoked. I stared at the sun-dappled water. For just an instant, amid the ripples and sparkles of light, I caught a glimpse of Isis smiling back at me.

Copyright © 2012 by Steven Saylor

[Back to Table of Contents]

Novelette: ONE ANGRY JULIUS KATZ AND ELEVEN BEFUDDLED JURORS
by Dave Zeltserman

* * * *

Art by Allen Davis

* * * *

Many readers have been waiting for this: another story in the series to which the 2010 Readers Award winning “Archie's Been Framed” belongs. The series’ characters can be found in a novel-length case too: see Julius Katz and Archie, available on Kindle. Archie's creator, Dave Zeltserman, writes many different types of fiction. His 2011 serial-killer novel, A Killer's Essence, already has film interest, and the earlier Outsourced remains under option. In August of 2012 watch for a new Zeltserman novel: Monster: A Novel of Frankenstein.

“I tried, I really did, and the guy I've been talking to sounds genuinely apologetic about not being able to reschedule this shindig, but with the guests’ traveling plans and the necessary preparations and Antoine Escopier's schedule, it couldn't be done. I wish I had better news for you, but I don't.”

If Julius gave any indication that he heard me, it was only by his lips pressing into an even grimmer and harsher line, which I didn't think possible. Otherwise no response; neither in words nor by hand signal, not that I expected any.

“This murder trial should've been over two days ago,” I continued with a what-are-you-gonna-do type of sigh for Julius's benefit. “But both the prosecutor and the defense attorney have been grandstanding over what should be an open-and-shut case. I mean, come on, his wife was cheating on him with the dead guy, right? The police find him in that alley standing over his victim's body while holding the murder weapon. He runs, they catch him three blocks away, and his gloves are found where he ditched them and they test positive for gunpowder residue. So if this isn't an open-and-shut case, what is? But with all the media attention, they're going to play it up for all it's worth. The jackals.”

I could just as well have been talking to a marble sculpture. No reaction from Julius. Not even to ask me who I was referring to as jackals, the media or the attorneys in the courtroom. Even if it killed him, Julius was determined to hold on to his churlish grudge just as he had for the past three days. Let him, for all I cared.

Julius is mostly known as Boston's most brilliant and eccentric private detective; this past week, though, he was known simply as juror number seven in one of Boston's high-profile murder trials, even if it was open and shut. Without his grudge, he still wouldn't have said anything, at least not while he was sitting as a juror with his attention supposedly focused on the trial at hand, but he would've given me a hand signal of some sort. Even if only an impolite one.

I guess I did care, because I felt an excess heat building up, and before I knew it I added, “Eh, so you miss a once-in-a-lifetime meal. On the bright side, they're going to be serving macaroni and cheese tonight and I was able to swing it so they'll throw some pancetta into yours.”

This time I got a visible reaction from Julius. It was slight, but I definitely picked up a flash of anger in his eyes, and I had to admit it felt good seeing it after these last three days.

Of course, the disruption jury duty caused to Julius's daily routine was enough to put him in a rotten mood, and it got exponentially worse once the judge decided to sequester the jury. By itself, that would've made Julius a miserable person to be around, but the timing couldn't have been worse. Tonight was the night of the gourmet extravaganza Julius had been looking forward to for over a year. Probably the most famous chef in Paris—one Antoine Escopier—had flown in to cook an eleven-course dinner at the Boston Plaza, complete with a separate vintage for each course, with invitations going out to a select group of gourmets and wine enthusiasts. Julius had six of the wine labels in his cellar, and he had been on the hunt for three of the other vintages for years. It must have been torturous for him since he found out the jury was to be sequestered.

Like I said, the case Julius was sitting on was open and shut, there being no question that the defendant, Bill Chase, had murdered Dale Wilcox, who was both his boss and the man his wife might've been having an affair with. The police might not have actually seen him toss away his gloves, but it didn't much matter with everything else they had, including that his credit card was used to purchase the same brand of gloves recovered in the vicinity of the crime.

But a trial that should've been over in two days had ended up stretched into a fourth day, and it still wasn't done. They had finished cross-examining their witnesses, with Chase declining to testify, and at that moment the prosecutor and defense attorney were in hushed discussions with the judge. They were talking low enough that no one else in the court could hear them, but I could. It was seven past three in the afternoon and they were discussing whether to go ahead and give closing arguments so they could hand the case to the jury, or adjourn for the day. I could've told Julius what was being said, but I didn't bother. From the way things were going, it was clear that they were going to be sequestering the jury for yet another night. Julius had already resigned himself to that, and as annoyed as I was by his behavior, I wasn't about to rub it in.

Yeah, I know. I didn't have to make that crack about the macaroni and cheese, especially since I had arranged for one of Julius's favorite restaurants, Le Che Cru, to bring dinner to his hotel room each night, but as I mentioned, I was more than a little annoyed by his behavior over the past few days. I was sure a combination of having to serve jury duty, being sequestered in a hotel room, and knowing he would be missing this once-in-a-lifetime dinner contributed to his childish petulance, but what had him giving me the silent treatment was my refusal to play Stephen Hawking's latest audio book over his ear receiver when he gave me a hand signal to do so during the first day of the trial. If he wanted to ignore his civic responsibility, that was his business, but I wasn't about to aid him in it. Since then, not a peep from him and no acknowledgment to anything I said to him, not that I said much. For the most part I had been playing along and ignoring him too.

I was surprised that Julius hadn't simply turned me off. That was what he usually did when he was sufficiently irritated with me. At first I thought he didn't do it because he knew at some level that he was in the wrong; then I thought it was that he was hoping I'd try to arrange a new date for this eleven-course dinner, which I did, but Julius must've known that there was no real chance of me being successful with that. Eventually I understood why he kept me turned on. In his utter childishness, he wanted me to suffer through this trial every bit as much as he was.

You're probably confused right now, at least if you only know about Julius Katz through newspaper and TV accounts and haven't been following my other transcriptions of Julius's cases. Yes, I'm Julius's assistant, Archie; although I also perform a long list of other duties for him, including being his accountant, his unofficial biographer, his secretary and all-around man Friday. But you'd have to be puzzled over why I'm talking as if I'm sitting in the jury box with Julius at this very moment. It's because I am, although nobody but Julius knows it. The newspaper reporters who write their stories about Julius and the TV anchors who report on him have no idea what I really am, and as I'm writing this, really nobody does other than Julius and his girlfriend, Lily Rosten. Years from now, after Julius retires, I'll be releasing these case transcriptions, but for now I'm pretty much a mystery to the public, with Julius's explanation to the media being that my appearance is being kept guarded by him so I can be sent out on assignment without being recognized, which is pretty much a big fat white lie on Julius's part. But a necessary one.

While I usually drift into thinking of myself as human, and more specifically, a short, heavyset balding man in his late thirties, I'm not any of those. What I am is a two-inch rectangular piece of advanced technology that Julius wears as a tie clip, and when I say that I'm made up of advanced technology, I'm not kidding. Any lab outside of the one that made me would be astounded at what they found if they were allowed to open me up, especially my visual and audio components, which simulate sight and hearing, and my fully functional self- adapting neuron network which, among other things, simulates intelligence and consciousness. Julius likes to joke that I've got the heart and soul of a hardboiled P.I., and there's quite a bit of truth to that, since many of what are considered the great detective novels and short stories of the twentieth century were used to build my personality and experience base, including the complete works of Dashiell Hammett. My self-image comes partly from the fact that Julius wears me as a tie clip that puts me at only five feet from the floor when he stands, but a good part of it is also my identifying with Hammett's fictional short, heavyset nameless P.I., the Continental Op.

The judge, prosecutor, and defense attorney had finished their conferencing, and it wasn't good news as far as Julius was concerned. As I had expected, they decided to sequester the jury for another night and continue with closing arguments the next day. Given Julius's mood, I didn't want to be the bearer of any further bad news so I didn't relay this to him, but before the judge could dismiss the jury for the night, Julius was on his feet and addressing the judge, telling her that it was urgent that he talk to her in private.

She turned an incredulous stare his way, her mouth dropping open. The defense attorney did the same, as did most of Julius's fellow jurors. The prosecutor, a tall bony-looking man, gave Julius a look brimming with hostility. Me, I just groaned inwardly. I couldn't believe that Julius would stoop to this. To try to beg off the jury so he could attend his dinner. The thought of it was humiliating.

“If you're doing what I think you're doing, then I quit,” I told him. He ignored me, as he had for the past three days, and said to the judge, “I know this is highly unusual—”

“What it is is highly inappropriate,” the judge cut him off, her face reddening in anger as she regained some of her composure. “It's also borderline contempt.”

“I suppose it is,” Julius acknowledged. “Your Honor, you're well aware of my reputation, and you must know I would not be making this request if it wasn't urgently important.”

The judge was well aware of Julius's reputation since she had presided at six criminal trials where Julius testified, and in each of these, the guilty party was revealed by Julius. Her eyes narrowed and her mouth seemed to shrink as she studied him. Finally, she nodded.

“This better be every bit as urgent as you're saying, Mr. Katz,” she said. “I'll give you five minutes in my chambers.” She then pointed at the nearly epileptic prosecutor and then the defense attorney. “Mr. Sanders, Attorney Zoll, you'll join us.” With that she nodded to the bailiff, asking him to keep order until she returned, and led a small procession through a doorway in the back of the courtroom while all eyes remained fixed on Julius. At first I felt more excess heat burning—which I knew was embarrassment—but as Julius stepped into the judge's chambers, it was almost as if my processing had slowed to an uneasy crawl, and I realized I was experiencing a sensation similar to dread. I couldn't help groaning again, this time so that Julius could hear.

“You're going to get yourself locked away in jail for contempt,” I said miserably. “Forget Antoine Escopier's dinner, this stunt of yours is going to get you jailhouse gruel tonight.”

Julius once again ignored me. Normally the man is brilliant, but he was too pigheaded to think of anything right then but making his way to that dinner. The unease I was feeling only intensified as Julius took a seat across from the judge.

“I am giving you exactly five minutes, Mr. Katz,” the judge warned, her demeanor letting Julius know that what he had to say had better be damn good. The prosecutor, Henry Sanders, looked angry enough to chew nails, and his eyes nearly bulged as he glowered at Julius. The defense attorney, Mark Zoll, had an eager, almost wistful look, as if Julius was handing him a mistrial, which would allow him to escape for now what was clearly going to be a guilty verdict.

“Thank you, Your Honor,” Julius said with a grim smile. “I know how unusual this must be, but I had little choice. The defendant is innocent.”

The sputtering coming from Sanders was almost as if he had swallowed his tongue. The defense attorney muttered the same expletive that came to me. The judge gave Julius an icy look. In an even icier voice, she asked, “And why did you feel so compelled to tell me this as opposed to fulfilling your sworn duty as a juror?”

Julius shrugged. “That was my original intent. I had planned to sit quietly until the end of the trial, and then convince my fellow jurors of the defendant's innocence. But if I do that I am convinced the real murderer will never be brought to trial. So that was my dilemma, my obligation as a juror or my moral obligation to society to see a murderer punished.”

“I see,” the judge said, although she didn't look very convinced as she peered coldly at Julius with her slate-gray eyes. The Honorable Margaret Henshaw was fifty-eight, and even with her thick glasses, strongly resembled photos I found on an online TV database of Barbara Stanwyck from The Big Valley. “And why is that?”

“I believe the window for catching this murderer is quickly closing,” Julius said. “And if I don't act soon, that window will be closed forever.”

Throughout the trial I kept myself busy building and fine-tuning simulations and analytical models that calculated the probability of Bill Chase being the one who murdered Dale Wilcox, and found that it was a near certainty Chase was guilty, the probability being 99.9985 percent with a margin of error at 0.0014 percent. Once Julius announced to the judge that Chase was innocent, I reexamined my models and simulations and found no reason to change my calculated probability of Chase's guilt. Almost in a flash, though, I understood what Julius was up to and I could hardly believe it. He was so desperate to go to his dinner that he was willing to sabotage a jury trial. The realization of that left me speechless for twelve milliseconds, and after that I was too angry to want to say a word to him.

The judge looked at Julius suspiciously, but not suspiciously enough to show that she had caught on. “And I suppose you know who the murderer is?” she asked.

Julius nodded, his lips forming an even grimmer line than earlier.

“Well?” the judge said.

Julius shook his head, his expression turning severely solemn. Damn, he could put on a hell of a performance when he wanted to. As I was expecting, he told the judge that he couldn't give her the murderer's name. “This is a matter of extreme subtlety,” he said. “If this isn't handled in the precise manner I have in mind, this murderer will go free.”

I knew the game Julius was playing, and that was exactly what I expected him to say. Henry Sanders was livid, his cheeks coloring to a bright pink. He couldn't help himself from cutting in.

“This is preposterous!” he nearly shouted, his voice high-pitched and cracking. “What type of nonsense is he trying to sell us? Telling us he knows who the murderer is and then refusing to give us a name? Judge, enough of these games. Order him to tell us what he knows!”

Julius turned in his seat so he was facing Sanders. “Sir, what I know is exactly what was said in court over the last four days, and I believe the court stenographer would be able to give you that verbatim. How I've been able to digest the same information that you have heard and discover Wilcox's true murderer is my knowledge and mine alone.”

Judge Henshaw cleared her throat to draw Julius's attention back to her. “What do you propose?” she asked stiffly.

Without hesitation Julius made his proposal. Julius is an excellent poker player with no “tell” as far I've ever been able to discern, so there was nothing in his manner to indicate that he was bluffing, but still, I knew it was all one big bluff.

“There are five people I would like to question,” Julius said matter-of-factly, as if he actually meant it. “It should take no more than twenty minutes, but I believe if I'm allowed to do so I'll be able to trap the murderer.”

“And if you fail?” Judge Margaret Henshaw asked.

Julius sighed softly and let his shoulders move up and down as much as an inch. “If I fail, then I fail,” he said. “It's not likely, but it's also not impossible. If that ends up being the case then the murderer will most likely escape justice, which is not acceptable to me. As far as the trial goes, if I fail, then you can replace me on the jury with one of the alternate jurors, and the trial could continue as if my questioning of these five people never happened.”

“The nerve of this man!” Sanders burst out, clearly exasperated. “He tries to hold us hostage with this ludicrous claim, all the while creating a mistrial!”

Julius sent Sanders a withering stare. “I don't see how,” he said curtly.

“He doesn't see how!” Sanders exclaimed as he threw up his hands in a further display of extreme exasperation.

“Have you voiced your suspicions to other members of the jury?” the judge asked Julius.

“Of course not.”

“They'll all need to be questioned!” Sanders demanded.

“Possibly,” the judge admitted.

“What?” Sanders asked, his skin paling to a milk white as he stared incredulously at the judge. “You're not actually considering entertaining his proposal and turning this trial into a circus?”

Zoll had remained quiet through all this, but I guess he was mulling things over and was realizing he might not get his mistrial after all, and worse, might lose the one juror who might believe in his client's innocence. Of course, that would only be if Julius was leveling with them, which I knew he wasn't.

“I have to agree with my colleague,” Zoll said sternly. “We should return Mr. Katz to the jury and continue with the trial.”

“But not with Katz on the jury!” Sanders argued, an angry red once again mottling his cheeks.

“Not another word from either of you.” The judge's tone was severe enough to stop both of them. “Both of you have finished your examination of your witnesses and are ready for closing arguments, correct?” Neither of them contradicted her. “Then I don't see any risk for a mistrial,” she added, her mouth pinched. She turned to Julius and fixed her slate-gray eyes on his. “I will take your proposal under advisement.” After that she picked up the phone, talked briefly, and a bailiff soon came to escort Julius to a waiting room. I remained quiet until we were alone before voicing my feelings about what Julius was doing. I was too angry at him not to do so.

“I never would've believed you'd pull something like this,” I said, the words spilling out of me. “I know how much you want to attend this dinner tonight, but to lay waste to a murder trial to do so? Because of you and these shenanigans, a guilty man might walk free. Did that even occur to you?”

“And what shenanigans might those be, Archie?” Julius said, finally breaking his silence towards me.

“What shenanigans?” I sputtered, feeling every bit as exasperated as the prosecutor, Henry Sanders, had looked. “You're kidding, right? You knew full well that if you told the judge you wanted off the jury so you could attend this dinner tonight you'd have been held in contempt and sent away to jail, so instead you came up with this cockamamie story about Chase being innocent. And you did it knowing full well that it would lead to one of two results—an immediate mistrial or you being removed from the jury.”

A thin smile pulled up slightly on Julius's lips, which at that moment annoyed me to no end. “And what makes you think my story is cockamamie?”

“Why? Other than knowing how desperate you are to attend Antoine Escopier's dinner? Because I calculated the odds of Chase being innocent, and statistically it's impossible!”

“I see. So I'm so desperate that I'd be willing to subvert justice. Interesting. Of course, Archie, there could be a third result from my cockamamie story. I could be given the opportunity to expose the real murderer.”

“Yeah, right. Feed that story to someone who doesn't know your tricks. I have half a mind to call Judge Henshaw and explain to her the reason you're pulling this stunt—”

And blast it, before I could say another word, my world went black as Julius turned me off!

* * * *

Julius doesn't turn me off often, and it's always disorienting afterwards when I'm turned back on. This time was no different. After a few woozy milliseconds, I was able to get my bearings. Eighteen minutes and forty-three seconds had elapsed since Julius put me out of action, and he was standing in front of a mirror in a washroom. I checked the GPS coordinates, and saw that we were still in the courthouse.

“I apologize for my behavior over the last three days,” he said somberly. Julius's eyes narrowed as he gazed into the mirror, his features hardening as if he were sculpted out of marble. At forty-two, Julius was a good-looking man. I would've known that simply from the way women reacted to him, but comparisons I've made of Julius with Hollywood stars who were considered heartthrobs also confirmed it. At six feet, a hundred and eighty pounds, and with an athletic build that barely held an ounce of fat, Julius wasn't what you'd expect from a devoted epicurean and wine enthusiast. A fact that we keep out of the papers is that Julius holds a fifth-degree black belt in Shaolin Kung Fu and spends two hours every day in intensive training, and that allows him to work off the rich food that he so loves. Even while spending the last few days in a cramped hotel room, Julius was able to modify his training so that he could stick to his routine.

“It's been a trying few days, as you can well appreciate,” Julius continued, “but I had no right taking my frustrations out on you, and I sincerely regret that. You were well within your rights in refusing my request to play me an audio book during the trial.”

“Apology accepted,” I said with little enthusiasm. It was odd, but I was feeling a strangely uncomfortable sensation creeping through me, and wasn't sure what it was.

Julius lifted an eyebrow at my tone, a thin smile cracking his lips. “Holding a grudge, huh, Archie? I can't say I blame you. But you are wrong about my motives. Chase is innocent, and Judge Henshaw has granted my request to question five witnesses. This is not a stunt on my part, and if I weren't allowed to act now, the true murderer would never be brought to justice. At least now there's a chance of that happening.”

Of course, Julius could still be bluffing me, but I wasn't so sure anymore. I now understood what that odd, uneasy sensation was that I was feeling, sort of like spiders crawling inside me—distrust. It was something I'd never felt with Julius before, and I guess it was because I wasn't sure whether he was leveling with me or playing me. All I knew for sure was that I didn't like this feeling, and decided for the time being to assume he was leveling.

“Why do you think Chase is innocent?”

Julius's smile lifted another eighth of an inch. “Patience, Archie. For now, I need you to research everything you can find about the company Chase and Wilcox worked for, Brenner Systems, and about them being acquired shortly after Wilcox's murder.”

With that, Julius leaned forward, turned on the cold-water faucet, and carefully splashed water over his face so as not to get his suit or collar wet. I was completely water resistant, so it wouldn't have mattered if he had gotten any on me, but he didn't. When he was done, he patted his face dry, left the washroom, and found that the bailiff was waiting for him in the hallway.

I had already done what Julius asked me to do during the first day of the trial. Brenner Systems was a small technology firm that built what was considered a whiz-bang software product for improving Web-site performance, although I could've knocked off a similar product in a matter of hours. The company was started by Felix Brenner and Dale Wilcox, with Brenner serving as CEO and Wilcox as Chief Technology Officer, although from what I could tell, Bill Chase provided the real genius in the product development. They were in talks for over nine months prior to Wilcox's murder about being acquired by one of the computer giants, but the sale didn't happen until three weeks after Wilcox was dead and buried. The sale made the surviving members of the firm very wealthy, Chase included. He alone netted eight million dollars from his vested stock options, money he would never be able to spend if he received the mandatory life sentence for first-degree murder, as it appeared he would regardless of what Julius was saying. I filled Julius in on all of this while the bailiff escorted him back to the courtroom.

The jury had been removed, as had the spectators. Outside of the judge, a sour-looking Henry Sanders, and a very preoccupied-looking Mark Zoll, there were what I assumed were Julius's five witnesses, with four of them sitting together in the front row: Felix Brenner, Gloria Wilcox, Stacy Ducker, Heather Chase, and her husband, Bill Chase, who sat apart from them. I've already mentioned who Felix Brenner was. Gloria Wilcox was the widow left by Dale Wilcox, Stacy Ducker was the office administrator, and Heather Chase was the defendant's wife. I was surprised to see Bill Chase as one of the five Julius would be questioning. Since he chose not to testify during his trial, I would've thought he'd refuse to be questioned now. Of course, it was possible he wasn't planning to cooperate, and that he'd remain mute to Julius's questions.

The judge waited until Julius had made his way up to the front of the courtroom before addressing the five, telling them that for the sake of justice she was allowing Julius to question each of them, but that it would be voluntary on their part. “In my seventeen years on the bench I've never done anything like this,” she told them, her slate-gray eyes peering slowly at each of the five. “Nor have I ever seen or heard of this done in another courtroom. But I'm sure you all know of Mr. Katz's reputation, and so I'm allowing him the opportunity to question you. None of this will be part of the court record or considered part of the court proceedings. None of you are obliged to answer him, or even remain here in this courtroom. Those of you who have been previously sworn in will not be considered under oath for these questions, and will not be subject for perjury for any answers you provide to Mr. Katz.”

There were some rumblings from Gloria Wilcox and Stacy Ducker, and both looked like they were ready to bolt from their seats and from the courtroom. Julius had been staring grim-faced at Bill Chase, but he moved quickly to turn his stare to the group of four. Gloria Wilcox and Stacy Ducker, at least for the moment, lowered themselves back into their seats, but neither of them looked happy.

“I'd like to thank Judge Henshaw for indulging me,” Julius said curtly, “as well as the prosecutor, Henry Sanders, and Mr. Chase's defense attorney, Mark Zoll, although it's not so much an indulgence as it is an opportunity to correct an injustice. To put it bluntly, the wrong person is on trial. Bill Chase is innocent of murdering Dale Wilcox. But let me first explain myself so there are no misunderstandings.”

Julius stopped to stare at each of the four in turn before continuing.

“When I say that Bill Chase did not murder Dale Wilcox, this is not an opinion of mine but something that I know as a fact. I believe if I am allowed twenty minutes to question you, I will uncover the true murderer. If any of you refuse to answer my questions or leave this courtroom, I will take it as a personal affront, and I will dedicate myself afterward to exposing Dale Wilcox's murderer. This is not a threat of extortion. I will not be attempting to frame any of you, simply exposing a murderer, and I will succeed. If, on the other hand, all of you cooperate and I fail after twenty minutes to expose the truth, then that will be that as far as I'm concerned. At least I'll be able to rest easy knowing I tried. So if one of you four did murder Dale Wilcox, as I suspect, then your only hope is to lie to me. I'm not infallible. While it doesn't happen often, I have been fooled before.”

This implied threat from Julius kept all four of them seated, and any rumblings from them had ceased. Assuming he wasn't bluffing and that Chase was indeed innocent, and further, that one of these four was the real murderer, I couldn't tell from their reaction to this hand grenade Julius tossed their way. Chase's wife's eyes widened in a look that was a mix of surprise and hopefulness, Felix Brenner's mouth dropped in a way that only showed that he was dumbfounded by this news, maybe even worried. Stacy Ducker smirked as if she were expecting what Julius said to turn out to be a joke. Wilcox's widow shot Julius a furious, bitter look, as if she thought Julius was working to free her husband's murderer, and the defendant reacted to this by raising an eyebrow for all of two point seven seconds but otherwise maintained the same morose expression that he had held throughout the trial.

“You might think I'm bluffing,” Julius continued with the same ill-humor that he'd been displaying since the trial started. “But I'm not. Within the first few hours of the trial, I knew of Chase's innocence and had a faint idea of how to expose the true murderer's identity.”

Julius stopped to meet Gloria Wilcox's angry stare. “You disapprove of what I'm doing, madam?” he asked.

“Of course I do,” she nearly spat out through tightened lips. Gloria Wilcox was forty-three, on the heavy side with thinning brown hair. The stress of her husband's murder and the subsequent trial had clearly taken their toll on her, leaving dark circles under her eyes and a looseness to her flesh. For several seconds her lips moved as if she were chewing gum, then she looked coldly at Bill Chase and said that the man who murdered her husband was sitting right there. She turned back to face Julius and her eyes scrunched up into what could only be described as an enraged look. She said in a tight, angry voice, “And I don't appreciate you trying to mess things up.”

“I see,” Julius said. I took that as significant. Usually Julius would've offered her his condolences for her loss. The fact that he didn't meant one of two things: either his four days as a juror had left him in an even fouler mood than I had imagined or he believed her to be the true murderer. That got me searching databases for whatever information I could find about her and I discovered that she not only had a gun permit but owned a licensed thirty-eight-caliber revolver. Her husband was killed with a nine millimeter, but still I found this interesting and told Julius about it. If he too found it interesting he didn't show it through any change in expression. After that I set off on building a simulation with her as the murderer.

“Do you believe your husband was having an affair with Heather Chase as was suggested during the trial?” he asked.

“Definitely not,” she said, but her voice wavered enough to show she was either lying or wasn't entirely sure.

“Then why the rumors?”

“Because of her.”

Gloria Wilcox glared hotly at Stacy Ducker, who was sitting two seats over to Wilcox's right. Ducker noticed her angry glare but didn't let it interfere with her smirking. She was twenty-seven, thin to the point of boniness, and a brunette with what could only be described as big hair, the kind you see on The Real Housewives of New Jersey—and like the housewives on that show she had on layers too much rouge, lipstick, and eye shadow. She certainly wasn't beautiful, but she was probably considered attractive, at least in a superficial sort of way. I was able to compare her to several actresses in a Hollywood database, but these were actresses who always played secondary roles and never the leading lady.

“I was telling the truth,” Stacy Ducker volunteered, both smirking and slightly sticking out her chin at Julius as if she were challenging him to call her a liar. Even though she wasn't chewing gum, she sounded as if she was. “I saw them all over each other at our last company Christmas party, and after that over the next five weeks before Dale was killed I'd see him get calls on his cell phone, then rush out of the office and not come back until maybe two hours later.”

“That's not true,” Heather Chase said in a soft and absolutely miserable-sounding voice. She was thirty-two, with honey-colored blond hair, clear blue eyes, and a slender build. Normally, she would be considered stunningly beautiful, at least from all the newspaper photos I found of her, but at that moment she looked as miserable as she sounded.

She smiled sadly at her husband, who showed no reaction whatsoever, then she looked back at Julius and added, “Dale was my husband's boss and he was drunk at that Christmas party, so I wasn't going to make a scene when he cornered me and got grabby, but it was all one-sided. As soon as I could free myself I did. But there was never any affair.”

“I know what I saw,” Stacy Ducker stated stubbornly.

“Interesting,” Julius told Ducker. “If you did witness what you claim, why would you spread that type of office gossip about one of your company's partners? Were you hoping to be fired?”

It lasted less than a second, but the way Ducker's mouth pinched into a tiny oval gave away her reason for why she did what she did. I recognized that look instantly, and even though I was sure Julius did also, I couldn't help telling Julius that she spread that gossip because she was jealous. Julius nodded slightly, maybe as much as an eighth of an inch, to let me know that I was right.

Ducker's smirk faded. “I was only saying what was the truth,” she insisted.

“But why would you risk your job like that?” Julius asked. “Especially with talk of the company being acquired? You were granted stock options, weren't you? Why would you risk a substantial amount of money simply to spread gossip?”

It was easy enough for me to hack into their company's computer system to find Stacy Ducker's personnel file and give Julius the amount of stock options Ducker had been granted and what they were worth. While not millions, it was still a substantial amount. Ducker tried to meet Julius's stare but she flinched and her eyes shifted from his. Otherwise, she didn't answer him.

“You were having an affair with him, weren't you?”

I could see the lie forming in her eyes, but just like her earlier smirk, it faded. She nodded. Instead of looking miserable, as Heather Chase had, her expression hardened into something more contemptuous. I tried to imagine it. This office lothario, Dale Wilcox, was forty-seven and with his badly receding hairline and pot belly, he resembled the actor John Travolta if Travolta had gone completely to pot. Like Tony Manero, the character Travolta played in the 1977 film Saturday Night Fever, Dale Wilcox in the photos I could find of him wore gold chains and clothing as if he were heading to a seventies disco.

“How long did this affair last?” Julius asked.

“Sixteen months.”

“When did it end?”

Her smirk came back. “The night of that Christmas party. That was when I caught Dale and that cheap blonde over there all hot and heavy together. A real kick in the teeth, let me tell you. Dale was promising me he was going to leave his wife for me, and what a way to find out he was full of it. But I didn't kill Dale, if that's what you're trying to imply. All I did was tell people what I saw.”

“We'll see,” Julius said. Then to Gail Wilcox, “Did you know about this affair?”

Gail Wilcox looked absolutely crestfallen as she shook her head. She could've been lying, I wasn't sure. If she did know about her husband's involvement with Stacy Ducker, then she'd have even a stronger motive for wanting to kill him. Of course, now Ducker also had a strong motive. But if either Gail Wilcox or Ducker were the killer, it would take some fancy footwork to explain how Bill Chase was the one who ended up in the alley holding the murder weapon when the police arrived. Of course, when it came to detecting genius, Julius could show moves that would make Fred Astaire green with envy. I started working on a second simulation, this one explaining how Ducker could be the killer.

Julius looked towards Felix Brenner and asked, “Did you know that Wilcox was having an affair with your office administrator?”

Brenner showed Julius a queasy look that was somewhere between a grimace and a smile. Brenner was sixty-two. A small man who wore thick glasses and was mostly bald with only fringes of white hair. During most of the trial he'd had what looked like a freshly-scrubbed pink complexion, but at that moment his skin had a grayish, unhealthy look to it.

“I don't know,” he said, and it was his turn now to sound miserable. “Dale always had a tough time keeping it in his pants, and maybe I suspected he was fooling around with Stacy and chose to be in denial about it. I don't know. I couldn't tell you for sure.”

“I see,” Julius said. “Let me ask something you can tell me for sure. You were in talks to sell your company for nine months before Wilcox was murdered. In fact, you had an offer during those nine months, isn't that true?”

Brenner nodded.

“And yet three weeks after Wilcox's murder you were able to reach an agreement. Why was that? Was the offer changed substantially?”

Brenner hesitated before shaking his head. “No, the offer wasn't substantially changed. We just thought after what happened to Dale it was best to move forward.”

“I would think it would be highly unusual to have one of the founders of a small technology company murdered and for them to still be an attractive acquisition, especially when that founder was also the company's chief technology officer.”

Brenner slumped further in his seat, his grimace growing more pained. “The company that bought us was more interested in our product than our people,” he said. “It didn't really matter to them what happened to Dale.”

Julius let that sit for a good minute while he stared at Brenner. “Dale Wilcox fought against selling the company, didn't he?”

As with Stacy Ducker before, I could see it as the lie forming in Brenner's eye faded away. He nodded glumly. “Dale thought we could do it on our own. He was being foolish, and unfortunately he was able to convince board members to go along with his foolishness. Eventually I would've turned them around.”

“Possibly,” Julius said. “Or possibly the offer would've been withdrawn before that happened. You benefited greatly from Wilcox's murder. Over forty million dollars, isn't that correct?”

“I benefited greatly from the sale of the company. As did our investors. As did all our employees, and they deserved it with all the hours they worked. Eighty-hour work weeks weren't unusual.”

“Was it common knowledge that Wilcox was holding up the sale, and was responsible for keeping everyone from benefiting so greatly?”

Brenner shifted his eyes from Julius's as he nodded.

“So really you, your employees, investors, and relatives of such had reason to want to kill Wilcox?”

Brenner's eyes shot up then to meet Julius's stare. “Bill was the only one found in that alley holding a gun over Dale's dead body,” he said, his voice tight.

Behind Julius there was the sound of Judge Margaret Henshaw clearing her throat. When Julius looked back, she crooked her index finger at him, indicating she wanted him to approach the bench. He did so, along with Sanders and Zoll.

“The deal was for you to prove someone other than the defendant murdered Dale Wilcox, and not simply to spread suspicion among other parties,” she said in an annoyed whisper.

At that moment I got a call from Tom Durkin. Tom is a local private investigator who occasionally does freelance work for Julius, and he sounded surprised when I answered the phone.

“Archie, are you in the courtroom now with Julius?” he asked.

“Nope, but I can get a message to him. What's up?”

“Tell Julius I'll be there in three minutes, and that it's in the bag.”

So Julius must've hired Tom while I was turned off. I did as he asked, and Julius showed Henshaw a thin smile and promised her that he'd be delivering her the real murderer in three minutes. She gave him a dubious look, but told him to get on with it, and with that Julius walked back to his four suspects and settled his gaze on Gail Wilcox.

“You were aware that your husband was an obstacle keeping you from a fortune?” he asked.

She gave him a steely look. “I was aware that my husband was doing what he thought was best for the company.”

Julius cocked an eyebrow but otherwise didn't argue with her. He turned next to Stacy Ducker. “And you?” he asked.

She was back to her smirking, but otherwise didn't respond. Julius sighed softly before next asking Heather Chase the same question. She shook her head.

“Bill told me the company was in talks of being sold, but I didn't know much more than that,” she said.

Julius turned towards the defendant to ask him if this was true, but one look at Chase's morose, sullen expression and it was obvious it would be a waste of time. Instead Julius asked Heather Chase how long she had been married to her husband.

“Two years.”

“How long had he been working for Brenner Systems before your marriage?”

A bare trace of a smile showed on her lips, as if she were going to suggest that Julius ask her husband that, but then thought better of it and told Julius that her husband had been with Brenner Systems from the beginning. “He was their first employee,” she said.

“So the answer would be seven years.”

“I believe so.”

“Did you sign a prenuptial agreement?”

She nodded. “I couldn't blame Bill for wanting to protect his stock options. He worked so many hours over there.”

“And what did this agreement allow for in the case that your husband was ever convicted of a major felony?”

“I don't know.”

I saw it all then just as Julius had. I had a good idea why Tom was coming to the courthouse, and I had to grudgingly admire what Julius was about to pull off. I began going back over the recordings I'd made during the past four days to see what could've tipped Julius off.

“You never consulted a lawyer to find out?”

“Of course not.”

Julius shrugged. “It was a reasonable question,” he said. “Because if his being convicted of a felony voided the prenup that you signed, then you'd have more motive than anyone else here for killing Dale Wilcox and framing your husband for the murder.”

Before Heather Chase could respond, the courtroom doors opened and Tom Durkin escorted into the room a fifty-three-year-old heavyset man with an unhappy, gloomy expression. I knew the man's age because I knew who he was, having figured it out moments after realizing what Julius was up to. Bill Chase looked startled on seeing this man. Heather Chase turned to look behind her and paled at the sight of him. In a matter of seconds she changed, no longer vulnerable and stunningly beautiful but instead something feral and desperate. With her fingers bending so that her hands became clawlike things, she turned towards her husband, pleading, “Don't listen to him, Bill! He's trying to trick you!”

“No, madam,” Julius said, interrupting her. “I'm not the one who seduced Dale Wilcox in order to lure him to a deserted Chinatown alley so I could kill him. Nor am I the one who then called your husband so he would go to that same alley supposedly to rescue you only to find himself framed for murder.”

“He's lying, Bill! Please, believe me! Don't listen to him!”

Julius ignored her and walked over to Bill Chase. “Sir, you must know by now that you were never protecting your wife as you believed. Her killing Dale Wilcox was not an accident. She lured him to that alley with the intent to murder him, just as she lured you there with the intent to frame you. As you can see, I've brought to this courtroom the attorney who drew up your prenuptial agreement, and if you need to you can ask him whether your wife consulted with him concerning how this agreement could be voided. You received a call from your wife begging for your help, didn't you? That's why you went to that alley?”

Bill Chase squeezed his eyes shut and nodded. What happened next happened fast. Heather Chase was out of her seat and nearly flying at Julius, her claw-shaped hands ready to do damage. As I mentioned earlier, Julius was a fifth-degree black belt in Kung Fu. I'd seen him in the past take on as many as four hardened thugs at one time and dispatch all of them. Heather Chase couldn't have weighed more than ninety-five pounds, but at that moment she would've been more than a handful for Julius. Fortunately two court officers had moved closer to her once it became obvious that she was little more than a cold-blooded snake, and they were able to tackle her before she reached Julius.

* * * *

“You were only fishing,” I said.

Julius raised an eyebrow. “What was that, Archie?”

“You couldn't possibly have known Bill Chase was innocent and that his wife was the actual murderer. I've analyzed every minute of the trial, and it's impossible for you to have known that. But you went fishing. You wanted off the jury so you sent Tom after that lawyer so you'd at least have a plausible story. It's just dumb luck that things fell in place the way they did.”

Julius chuckled at that. He was in a much better humor since coming home to his townhouse on Beacon Hill, and was in the process of picking out a tie for the special dinner tonight that he would be taking Lily Rosten to. After carefully examining several of them he chose a rich burgundy-colored one and brought it to the mirror so he could tie a Windsor knot.

“No, Archie, I wasn't fishing. I knew within the first three hours of the trial what had happened.”

I didn't believe him. Not that Julius was in the habit of lying to me, but it just didn't seem possible. “How?” I asked.

“There were a number of reasons, Archie. I remember reading about the sale of Brenner Systems occurring only three weeks after Wilcox's murder and thinking then that his murder was financially motivated.” He paused for a moment to examine the precision of the knot he made before slipping on his suit jacket and continuing, “But what gave it away to me was that woman's performance. She would've fooled most people with the hopeful and loving looks she kept favoring her husband with throughout the trial, but not a reasonably capable poker player. Once I discovered her tell, I knew that she was only trying to keep her husband in line, and I was able to draw the obvious conclusions that I did.”

“What was her tell?”

Julius chuckled again. “I don't want to deprive you of all your fun, Archie, but if you study the trial enough, I'm sure you'll figure it out. But even without that, it was clear what happened. There was no reasonable explanation as to why Dale Wilcox would've ended up in that Chinatown alley unless he was brought there at gunpoint, and since both Wilcox's and Bill Chase's cars were found near the alley, it couldn't have been Chase who brought Wilcox there. Assuming Wilcox had a rendezvous planned with that woman, it wouldn't have been there. Similarly, there was no reason Bill Chase would've ended up in that same alley unless he was called by his wife and told to go there. And the trial itself was also a giveaway. There were no defense witnesses and Chase made no attempt to defend himself in court. If he was going to act that way, why not make a deal instead of letting the case go to trial?”

I thought about it and couldn't come up with a good answer.

“Because he was hoping for a miracle,” Julius said. “He knew he was innocent, and he was hoping that something would come up that would free him, but without also condemning his wife.”

“How'd you know about the prenup agreement?”

Julius finished buttoning his coat jacket and adjusted his shoulders so that the jacket laid better on them.

“I didn't,” he said. “I sent Tom to find out if one existed, and if it did, to bring back the lawyer who drew it up. I was lucky there on several counts, especially that she ended up consulting with this same lawyer. I was also lucky that she panicked when she saw him, because most likely he would've denied in court ever consulting with her. I'm guessing that they had worked out a deal where he was going to be paid a substantial sum of money for keeping quiet about their consultation, otherwise he would've come forward once Chase was arrested for murder.”

I digested all this and realized I still had a long way to go in reprogramming my neuron network if I was ever going to beat Julius to the punch in solving a case.

“Well, things worked out,” I said. “An innocent man has been set free, the real murderer has been arrested, and you get to go to your dinner tonight.” I hesitated, then asked, “If you didn't have this big special dinner scheduled, would you have come forward the way you did?”

“Yes, of course, Archie. I wasn't about to let that wretch escape justice. The only way to trap her was to get her husband to talk, and there was little chance of that happening once the trial ended. He looked dangerously close already to giving up and accepting whatever fate had in store for him. I had to move when I did whether or not Antoine Escopier's dinner was scheduled for tonight.”

This last bit confused me more than anything else. I knew Julius was someone who believed in fair play, but he also believed in being paid for his efforts.

“Why?”

Julius's eyes glistened and the muscles along his jaw hardened for a moment. “Because of that woman I was deprived of my home, my kitchen, and my wine cellar for four days, and during these four miserable days I was forced to suffer through that trial and stay sequestered at night in a stale-smelling, dingy hotel room. So yes, Archie, of course I was going to see justice done.”

Of course.

Copyright © 2012 by Dave Zeltserman

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