AHMM, January-February 2008

by Dell Magazine Authors

  But when he arrived the parking lot was empty and Rod stood outside the office, practically hopping up and down.

  "Guys skipped out on you?” Frank asked.

  "No, they paid for their room. Slipped a check under the door early this morning. Then they sped outta here in that big SUV before I could do my inspection. C'mere.” Rod sunk his bony fingers into Frank's arm and pulled him toward the cabins. “See what they done to this room."

  The door to cabin seven stood open, allowing the fetid smell of spilled beer, unwashed socks, and vomit to waft out. The cramped, four-bed room was certainly filthy, but Frank suspected it hadn't been all that much cleaner when the party checked in.

  "I'm goin’ to hafta hire the girl to come in and help me clean this. And lookit that big scratch on the paneling.” Rod nudged him through the doorway and pointed out a fresh mar in the well-seasoned knotty pine. “And they stole one of the quilts. There was a matched set in here."

  That must make cabin seven the Presidential Suite. Amidst the tangled and strewn bedding there seemed to be only three revolting green and gold quilted bedspreads. So the charges were really stacking up against these guys: theft of services for precipitating the need for a cleaning lady, plus burglary for one stolen Vietnam War-era bedcover.

  "I'll see what I can do, Rod. Can you describe the guys?"

  "Big guys, all of ‘em. Early twenties. Short hair and neat clothes, but one of ‘em had a big tattoo on his arm. Some kinda snake or lizard or somethin'."

  Frank stepped back outside, glad of the crisp air. A patch of color in the black and white landscape caught his eye: a ragged square of green and gold fabric caught on the bare branches of a bush. Beside it were two parallel marks in the snow, as if something had been dragged into the trees behind the cabin. Frank followed the trail until it ended in a small clump of woods. There was a wide depression in the snow where something heavy and long had clearly been dropped.

  "That cloth's from my bedspread.” Rod said. “Why'd they bring it out here in the snow?"

  Frank continued to stare at the drag marks. “They wrapped something in it. They left it out here overnight—there wasn't enough room for it in the cabin. Then they put it in their SUV and drove off with it."

  "What was it? Why?"

  "I'm pretty sure what, but I can't imagine why."

  * * * *

  Frank pulled up in front of 120 Center Street, Glens Falls, the address printed on the check presented by one Russell Begley to pay for cabin seven. Stupid crooks made police work so much easier. And there was the black Ford Expedition, meaning Mr. Begley was home. Frank peered into the back of the huge SUV to see if the Joseph statue was still there, but his luck wasn't running quite that good. The cargo area was empty.

  Frank leaned on the bell and the door was soon opened by a tall, well-built young man with an affable face. Was that a shadow of unease when he saw a uniformed cop on his doorstep? If so, he rebounded quickly.

  "Good afternoon, Officer—what can I do for you?"

  "Russell Begley?"

  "That's me,” he smiled.

  "Mr. Begley, you and your friends stayed at the Round Top Mountain Cabins in Trout Run recently, is that so?"

  "Uh ... yeah."

  "You left the room a bit of a mess. Took off with something that didn't belong to you."

  Begley looked edgy.

  "A green and gold bedspread."

  "Oh yeah, right.” The tension drained out of his face. “Look, I'm sorry about that. My friend, he had a little too much to drink, and well, I don't think you'd really want it back now.” He reached for his wallet. “I'm happy to pay for it, and any other damage we caused."

  "That's very cooperative of you, Mr. Begley.” Frank smiled but made no move to take the proffered money. “I'm also interested in knowing the whereabouts of what you had rolled up in the bedspread."

  A fine sheen of sweat broke out on Begley's forehead, and Frank knew he had his man. “In?” the word came out like a cricket's chirp. He cleared his throat and tried again. “Nothing was in the blanket."

  "Oh, I think there was. You dragged it behind the cabin, then loaded it into your SUV."

  Begley was looking like he might toss his lunch right there. “I don't want to talk to you anymore. I want to call a lawyer."

  What a chump! Call in a lawyer for a stupid prank like this. It'd be Easter before they got the statue back if some shyster got in the middle of the process. “Look, Mr. Begley, I'm not interested in prosecuting you for this stunt. I want the statue back. As long as it's not damaged, you have nothing to worry about. Give it back to me and I'll leave."

  Begley's breathing was audible. Finally he spoke. “The statue. Right. The statue that's been on the news. Well, see, I don't exactly have that anymore."

  "Where is it?"

  "We, uh, sold it."

  "Sold it! To whom?"

  "To, uh, a guy. A guy at the rest stop on the thruway.” Begley's words came faster and faster. “He saw it in the SUV, and he liked it and asked what did we want for it, so he gave us a hundred bucks, and we gave him the statue. Because, see, we really didn't want to keep it anymore, after we sobered up.” Begley pulled out his wallet again. “Here, you can have that money too."

  * * * *

  The next week Begley appeared in municipal court to answer the charge of criminal trespass, pleaded guilty, and got probation as a first-time offender. No one went to Attica for stealing chainsaw art. As far as the law was concerned, the case was closed.

  As far as Trout Run was concerned, it was wide open.

  "Why can't you get this guy to tell you what he did with Joseph?"

  That was the question Frank answered all day long, from Bucky and Bob and Earl to people standing in line with him at the post office. Over and over he explained that real life wasn't the same as TV, that he didn't get to knock suspects around until they were reduced to quivering wrecks who told all. Not that he wouldn't have liked to rattle the chain of a guy who brought a three-hundred-dollar-an-hour Albany lawyer to a municipal court appearance. Something hinky there.

  After a particularly grueling session that ruined his lunch at the diner, Frank headed across the green for the relative safety of his office. He stepped on the path that led through the Nativity scene in time to see a lanky boy shoot out of the church, an aqua Tupperware container clutched under his arm like a football. And there, pursuing him like a Jets linebacker, was Myrna.

  "Stop, thief!” Myrna shrieked. “Stop him."

  Frank stepped forward to intercept the boy, who dodged him, slipped, and fell in the snow, the Tupperware rolling to a stop in front of a winded Myrna.

  "What's going on?” Frank asked, holding the elbow of the squirming boy.

  "He stole the chicken salad for the Parish Sages luncheon, that's what's going on,” Myrna said. “I was up late last night making that, and he thinks he can stroll off with it. Well, I've had enough! This has got to stop."

  By this time Pastor Bob had showed up. “Take your chicken salad and go, Myrna. There's no need to create a scene.” He turned to Frank. “Let the boy go."

  Frank released the boy's arm, and he took off like a rocket. “I think it's time you tell me about your theft problem over there."

  "It's Greg Haney's kids.” Bob had run out without his coat and stood shivering as he explained. “They're obviously not getting enough to eat at home with their mother dead and their dad disabled, so they've been stealing food from the church. I've called Greg several times offering to help, even went over there, but his daughter insists they're all right. Greg won't even talk to me. He's stubborn and proud."

  Frank steered Bob toward his office. Neither of them was eager to encounter Myrna right now. “We'll have to call Social Services."

  Bob sighed. “I guess. I hate to get a government bureaucracy involved. We can take care of our own here. Ardyth Munger's been leaving a bag of groceries on the Haneys’ porch every week. She sees Greg in his workroom, but he ignor
es her knocking."

  "Well, obviously that's not enough,” Frank said as they entered the office. “The county social worker will know how to help."

  As Frank worked his way through the department of social services’ automated answering system, he glanced at the papers that had landed in his box while he was out. The state police weekly missing persons report.

  "Your call is important to us. Please stay on the line,” a computerized voice droned in his ear.

  He glanced through the report as he waited. A teenage girl in Buffalo, an Alzheimer's patient in Schenectady. Nothing of interest to him.

  "All lines are still busy. Please continue to hold."

  Frank flipped to the second page of the report. A twenty-three-year-old man last seen a week ago in the vicinity of Lake Placid. Travis Monteith. He read with more attention. “Colleagues report Monteith planned to go skiing for the weekend. He never returned to work. Height: six two; weight: one-ninety; hair: brown; eyes: brown; identifying marks: tattoo of iguana on right forearm."

  "Department of Social Services. How may I help you? Hello?"

  Frank hung up the phone and grabbed his jacket.

  "Where are you going?"

  He brushed past Bob. Humiliation at what he had overlooked and dread of what he would find took away his voice.

  "Frank, should I come with you?"

  "It's too late for that."

  * * * *

  Frank pounded on the door of the Haneys’ house in the late afternoon twilight. “Police. Open up.” To the right of the porch, a one-story wing extended from the house. A soft light glowed behind the sheer curtain of the front window, where a man sat with his head bent. Greg Haney's workroom, but Greg didn't flinch at the racket coming from his front door.

  "Danielle Haney, are you in there?” Frank shouted. “Open this door or I'll kick it in."

  Frank heard shuffling on the other side of the door, as if the girl had been inches away all along. The door swung inward and Frank saw a tall, slender teenager trembling in the hall. He pushed past her and turned right, into the large rectangular room where Greg Haney repaired guns. Low shelves lined the walls, filled with parts and tools easily within reach of a man confined to a wheelchair. At the worktable by the window a man sat, his head bowed, his forehead furrowed, for all the world concentrating on the disassembled gun before him.

  But the work never progressed. The man was made of wood.

  Frank turned to find Danielle and her brother, a big, slack-jawed boy, watching him.

  "Where is your father?"

  "That's a secret!” the boy protested. “Don't tell the man the secret, Danielle, remember?"

  The girl looked much smaller to Frank than she had a few minutes before, diminished by weariness and sorrow and fear. She pointed her brother toward the door. “Let's go in the kitchen, Derek. I'll make you hot chocolate.” Then she glanced back over her shoulder and nodded slightly in the direction of the backyard. “We had to,” she whispered.

  Had to. Had to conceal their father's death because they hadn't called a doctor for him when he needed one? Had to let him die because the burden of caring for him had grown too heavy? And he and Bob and Ardyth and Greg's customers had allowed it to happen; had kept a safe distance, not wanting to trample on Greg's dignity. The north country credo: Don't butt in.

  Frank's fingers felt thick and clumsy as he dialed the state police. The dispatcher kept questioning his requests. Yes, he really did need two crime scene teams. Yes, the second one was to go to the Round Top to look for evidence that Travis Monteith's weekend of drunken partying had taken a nasty turn in cabin seven. He couldn't blame her—she was probably incredulous that any cop could be stupid enough to see evidence of a two-hundred-pound corpse dragged through the snow and mistake it for the signs of a kidnapped statue.

  Frank hung up and put his hand on Joseph's shoulder.

  He had the statue back, safe and sound. But where was the joy?

  * * * *

  Frank watched the choir, clad in down jackets instead of robes, file out of the church and onto the green for the Christmas Eve carol sing. He had a good view of the Nativity. The tourists had all gone home; this event was for Trout Run only. Earl and his girlfriend of the moment held hands. Bucky Reinholz beamed. The Haney kids stood together right up front, Derek in the middle, sheltered by the others.

  "Doesn't it make you happy to see those kids together?” Ardyth appeared at his side. “After all Danielle went through to keep them out of foster care."

  "You and Bob did a great thing, agreeing to help Danielle so that Social Services would let them keep living together at their house."

  "You can share in the credit, Frank. Somehow you made those social workers believe that not reporting Greg's heart attack was perfectly rational."

  "Maybe not rational, but not crazy.” Frank caught sight of Myrna, almost unrecognizable with a smile on her face. He thought again of what she'd said three weeks before in the church office: “No one really needs a chainsaw Joseph.” He'd agreed with her at the time, and now, happily, he understood they'd both been entirely wrong. The Haney kids had had another outlandish task for Joseph, and he, no stranger to extraordinary requests, had accepted it.

  And now Joseph was back with his family. Frank knew he was being sentimental, but he thought Mary looked relieved, grateful that her protector had returned.

  The choir began to sing, running through all the old standards. “Joy to the World,” “Hark the Herald Angels Sing,” “We Three Kings.” Frank hunched his shoulders as the wind picked up. He'd listen to one or two more, then head home.

  "Away in a Manger,” “Silent Night.” Frank turned toward his truck as Bob's voice rang out over the green.

  "We have one more carol that the choir has learned especially for tonight's performance. It's a German carol from the fourteenth century, not very often performed anymore."

  Frank smiled and kept walking. The choir director must've been thrilled when Bob came up with this one.

  And then the music stopped him, the words flowing across the green and carried by the breeze into the starry night:

  "Joseph Dearest, Joseph Mine,

  Help me cradle the child divine;

  God reward thee and All that's thine

  In paradise,"

  So prays the mother Mary.

  Copyright 2007 S. W. Hubbard

  [Back to Table of Contents]

  Fiction: THE VOICE AT THE BARBICAN GATE by Eric Rutter

  Tim Foley

  * * * *

  Old Tom Wainwright paused in his whittling and listened. He'd thought he heard something. But no, it was as quiet as one would expect it to be at this time of night, even in a castle as crowded as this one.

  He sighed and stretched his aching neck. Brushing the wood shavings off his lap, he stood painfully and walked to the far edge of the wall. Nothing stirred in the courtyard below. The men were all asleep, most lying crowded beneath the lean-tos that had been built to shelter them, but some lying out in the open, right where they'd dropped, exhausted, when the day's attack finally ebbed. No harm in it, he supposed sympathetically. Small chance they'd get rained on; it had scarcely rained at all this summer. Although contrarily, a cloying mist had settled over everything tonight, making the night air thick and obscuring the farther sections of the yard in a white murk. But it didn't seem to be bothering the men.

  Tom turned and walked back to his stool at the outer edge of the wall. He paused to gaze out through a gap in the battlements. Nothing stirred in the empty field that had been a battlefield this afternoon—at least as far as he could discern. Between the mist and his failing eyesight, he couldn't see any sign of the village, not even any sparks of campfires ringing it. A few must be there, struggling to burn in the wet night air. There always were; not all of the enemy could fit into the homes and other structures of Hawleyshire. For the hundredth time he imagined some enemy soldier sleeping in his own bed right now, as one must have done every
night for all these past five weeks of the siege. He and his fellow defenders of the castle, meanwhile, slept crowded in barracks and storerooms and, indeed, sprawled on the bare earth itself.

  He looked up and down the wall on which he stood, noting the shadows of sleeping forms and one other sentry, a guardsman pacing slowly a fair distance away. Tom was about to sit down when suddenly he heard the noise again. He recognized it now—the scuff of a footstep on bare earth. It came from down below, outside the castle wall. He leaned out and squinted into the haze. At first he saw nothing, then dimly he perceived movement, a man-shaped shadow in the mist at the base of the wall.

  Quickly he pulled his head back. The man below might have a crossbow, come in the small hours to pick off unwary sentries. Tom listened as the man's measured footsteps drew nearer, surprisingly clear despite the thickness of the night air and the height of the wall, almost twenty feet tall here by the barbican gate.

  Then the footsteps stopped.

  "Can't sleep, old-timer?” a man's voice called up.

  So he'd spotted him. Tom didn't answer.

  "Can't blame you,” the man continued, not shouting, just speaking loud enough to be heard. His tone was casual. “If I was going to die as soon as you, I wouldn't want to waste my time sleeping either."

  Tom smirked. This kind of banter occurred every night somewhere along the wall, the attackers trying to sow fear among the defenders with lies and rumors and threats. This fellow didn't seem very good at it. Presumably he'd meant Tom was going to die soon at the point of a sword. That wasn't the meaning his statement conveyed, not to a fifty-five-year-old man in poor health.

  "Actually, I just came to empty a chamber pot,” Tom replied, matching the man's tone. “Watch your head!"

  He listened hopefully for the sound of feet scuffling quickly to one side, but the man below merely chuckled. “You should save it. You'll be drinking piss before this siege is over. The castle well can't hold out with this drought."

  Tom opened his mouth to reply but stopped. He'd been about to say the well was holding out just fine, but disclosing information about conditions inside the castle was strictly forbidden, on orders from Baron Bradburn himself. Maybe the fellow below was better at this type of banter than he'd thought.