Silver Bullets

by Douglas Greene et al.

  “Yeah,” Leo agreed.

  “Exactly when was that?”

  “I don’t remember exactly.”

  “Birch?” Odd how the name was becoming second nature.

  “It was Saturday afternoon,” she said in a small voice. “I didn’t want to believe it, so I didn’t mention it earlier.”

  Thor turned to Warren. “You said Quinn was throwing up a lot at first. What day of the week would that have been?”

  “Thursday, Friday, something in there.”

  “The mushroom feast was Tuesday,” Mandy said. “So Quinn took his own trip on Thursday.”

  “Here’s what I think happened,” Thor said, and the spreading red stain on Leo’s averted face told him he was close to the truth. Not the world’s most adept liar, Leo had committed a murder of opportunity, not executed a well-laid plan.

  “Quinn was no more sick the day after his trip than you were. He started throwing up because Leo slipped ipecac into his food. Birch came forward and ‘reminded’ Leo about the poison mushrooms. That made Leo the unofficial doctor, which meant Quinn would take anything Leo gave him. So he soaked the amanitas in water and added that to the ipecac. Every day he gave Quinn a little more poison, and every day Quinn got sicker and sicker until he died.”

  “But why?” Birch turned disappointed eyes on the teddy bear man with the curly hair and beard. Her eyes widened and she whispered, “It was you who screamed.What did Quinn do to you?”

  “We were all—everybody was having sex with everybody else,” Leo said, his face burning and his voice a strangled cry. “I—I didn’t want what Quinn was doing to me, but I couldn’t stop him. He—he said later it was something I needed to explore, a side of myself I should—but I didn’t want to. I hated him for making me do that!” Leo sobbed like a child, burrowed into the side of the sofa like a wounded bear.

  When Thor had Leo handcuffed in the back of the black and white, he turned to Birch and said, “Can I give you a ride home?’’

  “Did Pop tell you to say that?”

  “No, but I know he wants you—”

  “He wants me to be something I can’t be,” she said, her voice steady and her eyes dry. “I love him, but I can’t change who I am.”

  Later that night, the sky cracked open. Booms so loud babies woke crying, rain falling so hard that looking through the car windshield was like trying to see through a shower curtain, hard, pounding rain that washed away sins.

  Sam felt his soul lighten as he rammed his way up Rock City

  Road, straight the hell up, no switchbacks. Gutting it out, making his Ford Torino do the work God made a jeep to do. Going after Bobbie come hell or high water, he told himself with a manic grin.

  He loved her, loved her no matter what, loved the way she cocked her head to one side and looked skeptically at him, forcing him to defend his position in an argument. Loved the way her short hair curled at the nape of her neck, loved the stubby little fingers with bitten nails, loved the husky tomboy voice, the shy, eager smile. He wasn’t at all sure he could handle her sexuality, but he was goddamn going to try.

  Making the turn spat gobs of mud into the bushes at the side of the dirt road and had his wheels spinning madly. He rocked back, then pushed ahead and plowed up the hill toward the lights of the Thompson place.

  Making the dash from car to front door had him soaked to the skin. The tepee, battered by the fierce winds, had fallen in the backyard like a downed hot air balloon. He pounded on the door, water streaming from his hat onto the back of his neck.

  A woman answered the door, a baby in her arms. She had long, straight, folksinger hair, parted in the middle.

  She said nothing, just stood there looking at him. No fear, no objection to his presence, just a quietly sad smile on her round face.

  “She’s gone,” the woman said at last. “Birch is gone. Scott took her to the bus two hours ago, before the storm broke.”

  “Gone? What do you mean, gone? Where could she go?”

  “She said something about the East Village,” the woman replied, shifting the weight of her baby onto her hip.

  “How could you let a sixteen-year-old go to NewYork City by herself?” The words burst from Sam before he had time to hear them in his head and realize how strange they were, strange in their implication that the commune was responsible for her.

  “I didn’t want her to go,” the woman said, “but Birch told us you wouldn’t let her come home.”

  “I never said—I just said I didn’t—I couldn’t live with—oh, God, I didn’t mean it like that! I never meant to send her away for good! I didn’t mean—”

  He raised a hand to his face, wiping tears away with quick, boyish swipes. The woman in the doorway put out a hand and gently rubbed his shoulder. He wrenched himself away and plowed through the mud back to his car. All the way back to Woodstock, the windshield wiper blades sang the woeful dirge, Too late, too late, Sam Tate was too late.

  A MATTER OF HONOR

  by Jeremiah Healy

  Kirkus once described Jeremiah Healy as the most consistently successful writer of private eye stories since Ross Macdonald. During his lifetime, Jerry wrote 18 books—13 of them featuring private investigator John Francis Cuddy. Or “the Cuddy character,” as Jerry insisted on saying, the former law professor in him feeling the need to stipulate that Cuddy was, indeed, a fictional character.

  And maybe Jerry was right to make the point. Cuddy was one of the most human of fictional private investigators. A modern knight of old helping those who couldn’t help themselves, while still grieving his wife’s loss so keenly that he communed with her graveside.

  More than half of Jerry’s sixty short stories also featured Cuddy —stories that have been called “miracles of resourcefulness, economy, and compassion.” Crippen and Landru published two collections of those short stories: The Concise Cuddy in 1998 and Cuddy Plus One in 2003.

  The “Plus One” was a Mairead O’Clare short story. Jerry had started the legal thrillers featuring O’Clare under the pen name Terry Devane and couldn’t resist giving folks a taste of the new books.

  A master marketer, always, our Jerry.

  Neither of the compilations, though, included this story—A Matter of Honor. Originally published in Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine, Honor is a particular favorite of mine with roots in Iceland, a place Jerry and I visited together.

  Although he moved on to the legal thrillers, the Cuddy series remained Jerry’s favorite and he was, in fact, working on a new Cuddy when he died in 2014. I know he’d be honored that he and Cuddy — sorry,“the Cuddy character”— are included in Crippen & Landru’s 25th anniversary anthology.

  ONE

  The woman sitting in a client chair across my desk from me laid her handbag in her lap and said, “First thing, I come to Boston now

  from Iceland.”

  I had to admit, it was an attention-getter.

  Then again, so was she. About twenty-five, her eyes shone a pale, haunting blue and her hair a steely blonde, drawn back into a ponytail. The facial features leaned to the handsome side of pretty, but to the smart side, too. Her clothes seemed a little summery for even a sunny October day, though. And, when she’d entered through the door stenciled with “JOHN FRANCIS CUDDY, CONFIDENTIAL INVESTIGATIONS,” and I’d stood to greet her, the top of her head was even with my brow, and I go nearly six-three.

  “My names I will spell for you.”

  I drew a legal pad toward me and let a pen hover in my hand above it. She nodded solemnly, as though about to start a prayer. “F-R-E-Y-D-

  I-S is the first, pronounced fray-dees. In Iceland, we are most named for our father, and so K-A-R-L-S-D-O-T-T-I-R is the last, pronounced karls-dot-tur.”

  Simple enough: Karl’s daughter. I wrote down the names, and, since it seemed important to the woman for me to get them right, I read both back to her as well. Then, “Ms. Karlsdottir, what can I do for you?”

  She shook her head. “In my country, we hav
e many traditions. One is to use first names and perhaps middle names, so please: If you can call me “Freydis,” and I can call you ‘John Francis’?”

  “That would be fine.”

  Another nod. “Iceland, you have been there?”

  “Never.”

  “You should. There is a direct flight—Icelandair—from here to our airport, Keflavik near to our capital, Reykjavik. Which is aid to a second tradition, from the Vikings of ancient days. Our people will—the word we use is ‘sail.’” To go away and come back with skills from job or things for the enriching of our island, yes?”

  “I understand.”

  “My father did just so, to England, and his younger friend the same, but the friend, Hogni Ragnarsson, came here.”

  “Can you spell that one for me, too?”

  Karlsdottir did, and I felt slightly pleased with myself that I’d phonetically gotten it right without her.

  She reached into her bag. “Hogni lives in not-so-good neighborhood

  in your Boston, John Francis, so all we have is postal box for address.” Rummaging now. “But when we send him letter, it returns with no delivery.”

  Karlsdottir sighed heavily and looked at me with those Alaskan huskie eyes. “Sorry. The ‘jetlag,’ yes? I cannot find the envelope.”

  “And, I take it, you cannot find Mr. Ragnarsson, either.” A bleak smile. “That is true.”

  “Freydis, is there a reason you came all this way to look for him?” She gave me a third solemn nod. “My father is now dead.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “No need, please. He was sick with the prostate cancer that went to his bones.”

  I’d had an older uncle who’d suffered that particularly cruel and painful passing. “A difficult way to die.”

  “There is no easy way, I think. But my father left an—’inheritance’?”

  “In his will or estate documents?”

  “Yes, John Francis. An inheritance to Hogni.”

  “And you want to get that to Mr. Ragnarsson.”

  “I must. My sister and I are the only family to do this duty, and she is younger and sick herself, in hospital.” Karlsdottir swiped her right index finger under both eyes, like a miniature squeegee for escaping tears. “So, I have the obligation. As a matter of honor.”

  I put down my pen. “Freydis, have you tried the Icelandic Consulate here in Boston?”

  “There is not one.”

  “Our police, then?”

  A firm shake of the head now. “When Icelandair woman tells me we have no consulate here, I ask her, what I should do? She tells me police in the United States are not like ours, who function as ‘guides’ for tourists and do not carry with them guns.”

  My turn to nod. There wouldn’t exactly be an avalanche of help from the Boston department if Karlsdottir didn’t even know where the guy lived in terms of our police districts.

  She said, “The Icelandair woman tells me to find a private investigator. Like you, John Francis.”

  “She knows me personally?”

  “Oh, no. Sorry. You are the most close one to my hotel.”

  I’ve received more ringing endorsements. “Look, Freydis, this could become expensive for you.”

  “My father was not a rich man, but with my own inheritance from him, several thousand dollars is not the problem.”

  “Have you looked in a telephone directory for metropolitan Boston?”

  “At your airport. The directory is odd to me, because it has the last names, not the first names, in sequence of alphabet. But no Hogni.” If our White Pages threw her I picked up my desk phone. “Let’s

  see if I can save us some of my time and your money.”

  For a change, Karlsdottir didn’t nod, but she did wait politely as a buddy of mine at Verizon confirmed no number for Hogni Ragnarsson, landline or cell, listed or unlisted.

  I cradled the receiver. “Do you have any idea where your father’s friend might work?”

  “No, John Francis. And I am worried true for Hogni. We have not heard from him in many months now.”

  “And that’s unusual?”

  “Impossible. Icelanders always maintain contact—with families, with friends—forever.”

  Family, duty, honor. Quite a trifecta.

  “Okay.” I quoted Karlsdottir my daily rate, which didn’t make her blink. She dipped back into the handbag and found her cash right away.

  As Karlsdottir slid two days’ worth of retainer across my desk, though, she fixed me with those haunting eyes. “One more thing, please?”

  I took her money. “Yes?”

  “I will come with you.”

  “With me, Freydis?”

  “Just so. In your vehicle, or the trains. The ways you will seek for Hogni.”

  “Wouldn’t you rather play tourist?”

  Finally, a smile that wasn’t bleak, and pushed her back over the line from handsome to borderline beautiful. “The air flight was on my cost, the hotel is on my cost, and you are on my cost. The weather is good, and if the police cannot guide me in your city, I will go with you.”

  I thought, there are far worse ways to spend your day, John Francis.

  TWO

  Outside the state office building blocks from mine on Tremont Street, Freydis Karlsdottir said, “We have walked this far, and I cannot enter with you?”

  “It’s not that you cannot enter. It’s more that my expert inside will get nervous if somebody’s with me.”

  Karlsdottir pawed the concrete with her shoe like a bridled horse unhappy to be restrained. “What you do, John Francis, it is perhaps

  not…’legal’?”

  “Not exactly. But it’s very efficient, and no one gets hurt.”

  She glanced around. “Then I will go back to the small place of graves by the church you called King’s Chapel.”

  “I’ll meet you there, Freydis.”

  * * *

  “So, Jimmy, how’re you doing?”

  “I’d be doing a lot better, I didn’t think you’re gonna ask me to do what I think you are.”

  I rested my rump on the edge of his computer hutch. It’s never been entirely clear to me exactly what Jimmy’s real job is nor which agency of the Commonwealth he actually works for. But he has a genuine talent for finding all sorts of things via the computer. A good thing, too, because at six-one, one-thirty, and a dress code like Jughead in the old Archie comics, Jimmy doesn’t make the sort of first impression that would have private companies vying for his services. And he also loves to bet the greyhounds at the Suffolk Downs dog track, which means fresh cash—in this case, some of Freydis Karlsdottir’s retainer—is always welcome.

  Jimmy quickly scanned the room—probably for the unlikely presence of a supervisor actually at work—and then cut to the car chase. “All right, Cuddy, what do you want from me?”

  I set down a sheet of legal pad, the name “Hogni Ragnarsson” block-printed on it and a fifty-dollar bill beneath it.

  Jimmy glanced down. “Screwy name. Swedish?”

  “Icelandic.”

  “You mean, like the Vikings?”

  “Some of them, anyway.”

  “What’s this particular Viking done?”

  “Nothing, far as I know. But I need a residential or business address for him.”

  Jimmy palmed the fifty from under the sheet and swung around to his keyboard. “See what I can do.”

  After clacking and tapping for a while, he said, “No record of a driver’s license or car registration.”

  “I think Ragnarsson came overseas to work.”

  More clacking, the screen on his monitor zipping images left and right and up and down like a video game. “Let’s try the Department of Revenue then, see if he filed—damnit!”

  “What’s the matter?”

  “Shut up a minute, let me cover my tracks here.”

  I’d never seen Jimmy upset with his computer before. It was like watching ice-dancers at the Olympics when one seemed to blame
the other for a spin-out.

  “Jesus,” he said finally. “That was close.”

  “Can you explain it in English?”

  “At your level of software comprehension? Let’s just say that the Commonwealth’s tax collectors put in a new burglar alarm, and it almost caught me climbing in their back window.”

  “Can you keep going?”

  “Yeah, but not with Revenue. You say maybe the guy worked, let’s try the Eye-Ay-Bee.”

  As in “I.A.B.,” or Industrial Accident Board, the state agency that processes employee claims for injuries suffered on the job.

  More clacking and tapping, but slower this time around, like Jimmy didn’t want to trip another alarm.

  “Ah,” he said, “now we’re cooking.”

  I bent over his shoulder toward the monitor’s screen. “Construction site accident.”

  “Four months ago.”

  Which might explain the incommunicado status that worried Karlsdottir. “I don’t see an address for our boy.”

  “No,” said Jimmy with a smug edge in his voice, “but here’s one for the construction company’s headquarters, the construction site itself, and even the poor Viking’s lawyer.”

  Jimmy doesn’t like to print things from his computer for me, so I began taking down the information on the sheet of legal pad. “You’re worth your weight in gold, my man.”

  Jimmy sniffed. “You don’t mind, I’ll take my height in gold.”

  * * *

  When I returned to the cemetery outside King’s Chapel, I didn’t see Freydis Karlsdottir, so I went through the massive, fortress-like doors and into the stark little church itself. I spotted her about six rows up, just sitting as opposed to kneeling, so I moved alongside her pew.

  She looked up, but not startled. “It is like a church in Iceland, this.”

  “How so?”

  “White, clean. And…simple. A place to be reminded that one person is perhaps not so important in the world.”

  “Interesting observation.”

  Her eyes changed focus. “You found data about Hogni?”