Deception

by Lori Avocato

  Sam smiled at me, showing beautiful white teeth. Damn, but he was handsome.

  “You ever think of becoming a historian? Or maybe a private investigator? You’re good.”

  “I’ll stick with the law, thank you.”

  We laughed and it was an easy laugh. For the first time in days, I began to relax.

  “I think, Miss Margaret Alston of the 21st century, we need to further explore our family’s joint history. Maybe one evening over dinner and a wonderful bottle of wine?”

  He had gorgeous brown eyes. I’d never noticed that before, but now they flashed with humor and life. “I think, Dr. Winston, that would be just perfect. For research purposes, of course.” I smiled back.

  “Of course.”

  We clicked our iced tea glasses in agreement.

  ~ * ~

  “You were…are…a wonderful man, Benjamin Winston.”

  “I didn’t do enough for Joseph.”

  “You kept him from prison. He tried to ruin your life. If you and Margaret had been home, you could’ve perished in that blaze. And, your unborn daughter.”

  “My Suzanne.” His face lit up like a brilliant sun at the mention if his daughter.

  “Joseph died because of me. He was alone when he died.”

  “Joseph died because of his anger over what he thought your father did. He allowed that anger to take over his entire life to the point where he tried to ruin your lives. In the end, we can only look to ourselves for our actions.”

  “I suppose you are correct.”

  “It’s time to be with your Margaret, Benjamin, and your Suzanne. They are waiting for you.”

  “Thank you for everything.”

  “You are more than welcome.”

  For some reason, I felt guilt over Joseph Alston’s behavior. He died centuries ago, but his behavior bothered me. Oh, well, I guess we all had black sheep in our family trees.

  Epilogue

  I awoke feeling refreshed, invigorated almost. I hadn’t felt like this in the morning in a long, long time.

  I thought about my date this evening with Dr. Samuel Winston. I hadn’t been on a date in years and had no idea what I would wear. A trip to a wonderful boutique was in order.

  I had done all I could do for Benjamin Winston and for my father during his illness.

  My life needed to move forward, out of the past.

  The thought excited me like nothing had in a long time.

  I raised my toothbrush to my reflection in the mirror in a sort of toast.

  To my future. In the land of the living.

  QUANTUM ROULETTE

  Chris Holmes

  1

  “Who found the body?” Sheriff’s Detective Ken Salazar eyed the corpse slumped backward in the chair, mentally calculating the bullet’s path from the hole drilled into the man’s forehead to its explosion out the back of the skull.

  “A lost hiker heard a gunshot and called 911.” The blonde Forensic Investigator looked up. “Deputies forced entry about an hour ago.”

  Salazar traced in his mind the slug’s probable course out the back of the skull to the opposite wall. He followed his nose and found the bullet embedded in the wood paneling amidst a splatter of blood, brains and metal.

  “Time of death?” he asked.

  Pam Mundy, the FI, knelt beside the corpse’s chair, her ponytail draped over her left shoulder, leaving her neck exposed above the hem of her V-neck scrub suit.

  She caught the gleam in the detective’s eyes and reddened, but maintained her composure. “TOD ninety minutes ago, tops,” she answered evenly. “But take a look at this...”

  Salazar squinted as he bent down to inspect an electronic device, about the size of a cell phone, taped to the left arm of the chair. “Looks like a...a...”

  Pam rolled her eyes. “It’s a garage door opener, Pug. That’s what it is. I’ve got two of them at home. $29.95 from Home Depot.”

  Salazar chuckled. Pug! He’d resented the moniker at first. But in a professional unit as tight as a police squad, you didn’t get to pick your own handle; it was chosen for you by the group.

  “Of course it’s a garage door opener.” How would I know? He lived in a bachelor apartment and parked his car in an open bay.

  He flexed a forefinger over the opener’s action button, poised to push it.

  “Don’t touch that, Pug!”

  Behind him Skip Mulcahy stabbed a bony finger at him, tension creasing his freckled forehead. His Celtic hair, more rust-colored than red, fell in waves to his shoulders. Though he was a paunchy, forty-something surfer who refused to grow up, he had a solid rep as a criminalist.

  The two men inspected a .38 caliber revolver clamped to a small table about six feet in front of the corpse.

  Skip couldn’t stop staring at the gun.

  Salazar arched an eyebrow. “What?”

  “All six bullets still chambered.”

  The detective flipped open his notebook. “You think someone fired it then re-loaded?”

  Skip tugged at his ear. “We’ll have to see what ballistics says—but I don’t think this gun has been fired recently.”

  “How’s that possible?” Salazar took a step backward.

  Skip shook his head. “Can’t say. It’s just what it is, dude.”

  “What’s that?” Salazar pointed to a black device, about the size of a shoe box, taped to the table next to the gun, a power cord snaking from it to a wall outlet. A green LCD light stared unblinking from it toward the garage door opener.

  “Not sure, Pug, but I think that’s how the gun was triggered.”

  Skip fingered a second electrical cord, this one connecting the black box to a small motorized winch clamped just behind the gun. A thin metal rod ran from the winch to the revolver, a small spring connecting the rod to a loop of metal around the trigger.

  Salazar pulled out his notebook, clicked his pen once, and began to write. But he paused, looked from gun to corpse and back, then clicked the pen twice again, finally scribbling something on the blank page.

  He glanced up and caught a glimpse of himself in a mirror by the front door. Reflexively, he straightened his tie and ran a hand through his short-cropped hair. Once jet black, it now—like weeds in an otherwise perfect lawn—sprouted clumps of gray. A jutting jaw stood out pugnaciously. (He had actually boxed—with some success—in college.) But the wearying effects of age and life’s mileage had changed his smooth Latin face into a pallette of crowsfeet, worry lines, and wrinkles. And the deviated nasal septum, never straightened properly after a fight, would forever mark him as a pug. His next birthday would be another ‘0,’ this one the big 5-0. Retirement was just around the next corner. Thank God for retirement!

  He clucked his tongue and pointed to the black box. “Just an easier way to do it, Skip?”

  “You mean easier than just eating the gun? Having to pull the trigger yourself?”

  “Right. With this set-up, you just push the button on the garage door opener, which sends a signal to the...the...”

  “The black box?”

  “Right. It must power the winch motor, which pulls the rod and triggers the gun. BANG!”

  Skip scratched his scrub-bearded chin. “Maybe. But I still don’t get the point of this black box. A simple antenna on the winch motor could activate it directly by a signal from the garage door opener.”

  “Right. Why such a complex system for such a simple task?”

  Salazar nodded. “Unless...unless there’s more to this gadget than meets the eye...”

  Pam broke in. “Are you guys sure this was a suicide? I mean, if the weapon hasn’t been fired…?”

  Salazar shrugged and arched another black eyebrow, higher this time. “What else could it be?”

  “No suicide note.” Pam looked him straight in the eye. “Have you ever worked a suicide case without a note, Pug?”

  “No. You’re right. It’s practically unheard of.” He rubbed his chin. “But maybe there wasn’t anyone this
guy wanted to leave a note for.” He looked around the sparsely furnished, dimly lit room. “I mean look at this place. A couple of rooms, a single bathroom. More a cabin than a house.”

  Skip agreed. “It is pretty damned remote.”

  “Remote! Hell, I took two wrong turns before I found that gravel road outside. The nearest neighbor must be a couple miles away. And the nearest grocery store is—”

  “3.4 miles, exactly.” Pam blinked her green eyes. “I measured it with my GPS on the way in.”

  “What’s your point, Pug?” Skip asked.

  “Simply that this guy was a recluse. He didn’t WANT to be found. I bet that phone over there doesn’t work, there’s no mail on the table and probably none in the box.”

  “Right on all counts,” Skip answered

  “If that lost hiker hadn’t stumbled onto this place just at the moment the gun fired, this guy would still be sitting here with a hole in his head, getting riper by the minute.”

  “I suppose so...” Pam looked dubious. “But I still don’t get it.”

  “Me neither,” Skip chimed in.

  Salazar shrugged. “Let’s get the body to the ME. And this black box...whatever it is...to the Crime Lab.”

  “Roger that.” Skip gave him a mock salute. “But there’s one more thing.”

  What now! Pug glanced at his watch: 4:00 p.m. on a chilly, overcast November day. The weather was as gloomy as this damned house!

  But he followed Skip to a wall-mounted digital clock, with a built-in calendar and a broken glass face. His shoes crunched on slivers of glass, and when he looked down, he noted a small hammer amidst the shards.

  “The date and time appear to have been frozen the moment it was broken,” Skip explained. “2:30 p.m., October 28. A week ago.”

  “What do you make of it?” Salazar asked.

  “I dunno, Pug. What do you make of it?”

  “Don’t have a clue.”

  Pam stopped them. She pointed to the gun. “What’s that spring on the trigger rod for?”

  “That’s easy,” Skip answered. “Once the gun is fired, it keeps tension on the trigger...”

  “Right...in case you want to refire it.”

  Skip started to speak but nothing came out.

  “Right.” Pam’s voice brimmed with sarcasm. “Just in case he wanted to shoot himself in the head a second time. Or maybe a third.”

  Skip peered closer at the triggering mechanism. “Then what is the purpose of this damned thing?”

  Salazar chewed on his lip while he clicked his pen and put it away. “Maybe Pam’s right,” he finally said. “Maybe this wasn’t a suicide after all.”

  Skip could only stare at him.

  “Maybe it just looks that way.”

  2

  Pug pushed through the swinging double doors into the autopsy room of the County Morgue. A shiver crawled up his spine. Why do they always keep it so damned cold in here?

  “To retard decomposition,” he’d been told, “not to conserve electricity.”

  He grabbed a pair of latex gloves from the dispenser mounted on the wall and walked to the only table currently occupied.

  The pathologist looked up. “Hi Pug.”

  It was Jack Youngblood, the Medical Examiner himself. Salazar had learned a lot about this ME over the years, mostly that he was a loner; more comfortable here in the morgue than the in coffee shop; more at ease around dead bodies than living women. But then there was that office gossip about an on-again, off-again romance with one of the FIs...

  “Whatcha got there, doc?” Salazar asked.

  “A dead body,” Youngblood said through his face mask.

  Yuk! Yuk. Always the wise guy. “C’mon doc. Give.” He winked at Pam Mundy standing at the foot of the table taking notes. Her hair was piled on top of her head in some sort of up-do, her eyes as wine-dark as an Irish sea, her face a rictus of attention.

  Youngblood sighed. “An old dead guy. That’s what we got here, Pug. An old dead guy with a bullet hole in his head.”

  “Right.”

  “The only other postmortem finding—” Youngblood closed the gaping Y-incision—“is that most of this guy’s brain is gone out the back of his skull. But I guess you knew that already, huh?”

  “Yeah.” Salazar shrugged off the wisecrack.

  “And,” Youngblood continued, “the man does look markedly dehydrated—and a bit malnourished.”

  “How long since he had food and water?” Pam asked.

  “A week. Maybe ten days.”

  “But that doesn’t fit with my TOD of less than twenty-four hours ago,” she protested. Doubt furrowed her brow. “You don’t mean he just sat in that chair for a week or more before pulling the trigger...I mean pushing that button?”

  Youngblood pulled down his mask. “I dunno about that. I only know what I can observe. And as they say—” he winked and headed for the door—“dead men tell no tales, but their bodies do.”

  Salazar clicked his pen and opened his notebook. He looked at Pam and asked, “What do we know about this guy...about the man, I mean.”

  She read from her notes. “I ran his prints through CODIS. No hits. But I did find a wallet in the back bedroom dresser with a couple of IDs inside.”

  “And?”

  “Robert Walker Jackson. Age seventy-two. A retired professor of philosophy at UCSD. Lived in La Jolla near the University for twenty-five years...before that I don’t know.”

  “What about that place up in the hills where we found him?”

  “Bought it for cash a year ago after selling his La Jolla property. No other employment since retiring. Bank records show plenty of money in savings, and he was getting a generous pension from the University.”

  “What was he doing up there all alone?”

  “Can’t tell from the records. But I found some well-worn hiking boots and a stout walking stick on the back porch. Maybe he was just an outdoor type.”

  “Maybe he was a damned hermit!”

  “Maybe.”

  “Family?”

  “He’s been a widower for twenty years. I couldn’t find a Will, but I contacted the University. The department secretary remembered seeing him at a few faculty functions after he retired. But then nothing. She said he had only one living relative: a daughter in Phoenix. She thought they’d been estranged for some time.”

  “Any contact info for the daughter?”

  “I got a phone number and will ask her to come in for an interview and to ID the body.” She closed the file. “The professor had a P.O. box, but nothing was in it except a few overdue bills. The postal clerk said he hadn’t seen the man in almost a month.”

  Salazar exhaled slowly. “Sad way to end up, huh?”

  “Maybe that’s how he wanted it.”

  Pug shook his head. “Maybe. Let’s see what ballistics has to say about that black box.” He clicked his tongue. “And about the gun that was never fired but still managed to kill him.”

  “One more thing,” Pam said. “I asked the University what his academic interests were.”

  “And?”

  “In addition to his doctorate in philosophy, he also held a master’s degree in physics. He was deeply interested in the philosophy of science. Especially, they said, in the ‘nature of consciousness.’”

  “What the hell does that mean?”

  She shrugged and led the way out.

  3

  Ishmael Markov, Chief Ballistic Technician, enthusiastically greeted them when they came through the door to the Crime Lab. A big man, Markov’s bushy eyebrows—which met in the middle—deep-set, piercing black eyes, and olive complexion betrayed his Slavic background.

  “Hi Maele,” Salazar said. (No one could handle ‘Ishmael’ on a daily basis. Thus ‘Maele’ – pronounced MAY-Lee–became the phonetic compromise.)

  The man was so excited he grabbed Salazar’s elbow with one hand and pumped his hand with the other.

  “Here, here. You come!” Maele said, eye
s glowing like hot coals. “Everything set. Very interesting, this one.” He flashed a toothy smile and headed across the room.

  Salazar winked at Pam and followed.

  At the Ballistic Test Fire area, the two visitors saw the same .38 caliber revolver from the crime scene, this time mounted over a sand-filled test pit, Skip Mulcahy’s evidence tag still attached to the trigger guard. The weapon appeared fully loaded and ready to fire.

  ~ * ~

  Skip himself stood next to the test pit and waved to the new arrivals, his hearing protection muffs draped around his neck.

  “I fire one round earlier,” Maele explained, “to test for match with bullet from house.”

  “And?” Salazar asked.

  “Perfect match. This gun fire fatal bullet.”

  “Right.

  “Next, I unload weapon, check all bullets. No blanks. Firing mechanism in working order.”

  Salazar nodded. “Proves the gun works, that it’s the one that killed the victim, and that the other bullets are all live rounds.”

  Skip rubbed his hands together. “This should be good.”

  Everyone donned protective ear muffs.

  Maele fingered the gun’s trigger and fired.

  Bang!

  Maele looked at his visitors. “Is normal, okay?”

  Salazar agreed. “Yup. Works just like it’s supposed to.”

  Maele next connected the triggering apparatus Skip had brought back from the crime scene: metal rod and spring; power winch and black box; the same garage door opener, set up—precisely as Pug remembered it—on a table six feet away. One power cord connected the winch and the black box, and a second led from the black box into an a.c. outlet.

  “Ready?” Maele’s eyes swept the circle of observers. He pushed the button on the garage door opener.

  No bang.

  He pushed again.

  Still nothing from the revolver.

  Salazar crouched to eye level behind the gun and locked his gaze on the cylinder. “Once more, Maele,” he requested.

  Maele pushed the button. No bang; the chamber never moved.