AHMM, October 2007

by Dell Magazine Authors

  The officer shooed Doto into the house to question him. The sergeant stayed with me.

  "You move the shotgun?"

  "It's where I found it."

  "That isn't what I asked."

  I said I'd taken it with me when I went out to look at the corpse.

  "That's called tampering."

  "I call it being considerate. Two carcasses mean double the paperwork for you guys."

  "You said you've been neighbors for years."

  "We didn't speak ten words to each other that whole time. He told me he shot the man. In those circumstances I wouldn't turn my back on my long-lost brother with the weapon in the room."

  "Prints!"

  "If he left any they're still on the pistol grip and the forepiece. I took it by the middle."

  "You one of those private guys used to be a cop?"

  "I got in my thirty."

  He lowered his lids. “You must've started young."

  "Minutes. Not years."

  "I got no time for this. I ought to put the bracelets on you for obstruction and interference."

  "You've got as much time as it takes before the first squad shows up."

  We got on like that until the plainclothes arrived, led by a lieutenant named Sandusky. He had short blond hair and the erect bearing of a Polish lancer, but the eyes in the fifty-year-old face were kind. He glanced at me a couple of times while the sergeant was reporting, then dismissed him and strolled over. He'd been to see the sight, which was now in the charge of the lab rats with their black metal cases.

  "How long you live here, Walker?"

  "Twenty-five years."

  "It's not that big of a town. I'm surprised we never met."

  "I live on the Detroit side. I've met plenty over there."

  "So I heard. I checked you out with Thirteen Hundred. You've worn yourself quite a trough there."

  Thirteen hundred is the street address of Detroit Police Headquarters on Beaubien. I said, “I'm taking a personal day today. Seems I can get into trouble even when I'm just doing the neighborly thing."

  "Don't worry about Futterman. We call him Cop-a-tude downtown. I'd close this one today if they let me. My uncle survived the Warsaw ghetto. Best way to deal with these white supremacist pukes is to arm everyone who went through the Holocaust and put them on the scent."

  "This kid's generation is barely aware we fought a war over there. Maybe he thought it was just a pretty tattoo."

  "Same difference to a man like Doto. If I were his p.d., I wouldn't let a man or woman under seventy on the jury, and I'd try to smuggle in one or two with a concentration camp serial number on their arm. If he saw that swastika before he pulled off. He didn't seem sure."

  "A man has a right to defend himself in his home if he feels threatened, whether it's by a Boy Scout or the Hitler Youth."

  "Damn straight. He says the screen was hooked, and the techies found an open pocket knife when they turned the puke over; small for a weapon, but good for sticking between the door and the frame to slip the hook. But there's been a rash of accidental firearms deaths lately, and a lot of noise about keeping them out of civilian hands. The county prosecutor wants to be attorney general, the attorney general wants to be governor, and the governor wants to go to Washington."

  "That's a lot of weight to put on the back of one little old man."

  "Well, you saw what happened to the Detroit cops just for beating one rotten little recidivist to death with flashlights. We can't carry ‘em that size anymore even here. Have to make do with guns and tasers and sap gloves and batons. We're going out there practically naked. What chance has a private citizen got?"

  "Maybe the puke has a violent record."

  "How can he not? That's not a Happy Face on his cheek."

  The lieutenant cut me loose. Outside, Doto sat in the back of a police cruiser, staring through the grid separating him from the front seat. His head came barely level with the padded rest. He looked nine years old.

  * * * *

  Sandusky's puke didn't have a violent record. He had almost no record at all, and the one he had told a story nearly as sad as Doto's.

  His name was Ryan Lister. He was sixteen and, by all appearances, had been living on the street since his father had booted him out for not contributing to the household income. In February the manager of a Starbucks in Highland Park found him sleeping in a corner of the kitchen when he came in to open up, discovered the latch broken on the back door, and had him arrested for breaking and entering. He pleaded guilty to the lesser charge of illegal entry, spent six weeks in a juvenile detention center, and was released. That was the narrative on Lister's life of crime.

  Doto's first lawyer, assigned by the public defender's office, stood up for him at his arraignment and was gone, replaced by an experienced criminal attorney retained by a Holocaust survivors’ organization that had taken an interest in his case. When the prosecution proposed that Lister had merely sought shelter from the cold in Doto's house as he had in the Starbucks, the defense established that the temperature that night had not dropped below fifty, far warmer than on many of the nights the boy had slept in alleys.

  Throughout the prosecution's part of the trial, the sides played badminton with the evidence:

  —Surveillance records of all the area's known white supremacist groups contained no mention of Lister's ever having been a member or attended a meeting or rally;

  —A medical examiner confirmed that the swastika had been tattooed on Lister's cheek quite recently—had not even had a chance to scab over—indicating that he was a new convert and therefore unknown to surveillance officers;

  —Sergeant Futterman, one of the first Hamtramck police officers on the scene, testified that Doto had delayed reporting the shooting for more than two hours, suggesting the defendant had used the time to dress the scene and concoct his alibi;

  —Amos Walker, neighbor, offered the defendant's explanation that he'd waited patiently for the police to arrive, expecting someone in his neighborhood to have called them to complain about hearing a shot. Yes, Doto hadn't been sure he'd seen the swastika, but under emotional pressure—(Objection; speculation).

  And like that, back and forth.

  The prosecution scored a hit when it seated a licensed psychotherapist whose sessions with Holocaust survivors had convinced him that the unremitting horror of life in the Nazi concentration camps had inured them to violence and human suffering, effectively turning them into psychopaths, without conscience or compunction about striking out against threateners real or perceived. In his opinion based on his research and interviews with the defendant, Doto had been a time bomb waiting for more than sixty years to explode.

  The therapist's testimony infuriated groups representing survivors of Hitler's Final Solution, but the jury stirred and murmured and the judge tapped his gavel.

  When the defense stepped up to bat, reporters speculated that a string of camp survivors would be called to confirm from their own experience that the sight alone of a swastika worn by an intruder was justifiable cause to act in one's own defense; disclosure records revealed that Doto's attorney had been interviewing dozens from the Polish community in Hamtramck alone with that purpose in mind. But he called only one witness.

  On the stand, Doto answered questions calmly, recounting, with the startling clarity of an old man's memory of past traumas, his experiences as a Jew imprisoned in Treblinka. The litany of humiliations and abuses climaxed with an account of his separation from his parents and his younger sister, and the certainty later that they'd been killed in gas chambers, their ashes shoveled from ovens and deposited among those of thousands of others spread for miles around the camp. When the Allies liberated him in 1945, the ten-year-old boy had weighed less than forty pounds.

  He broke down only once, weeping softly when he described his last meeting with his family. After a brief recess, he took the stand again and repeated what he had told me of the shooting, with one exception: He was now in no doub
t that he'd seen the swastika before he fired. His own lawyer defused the prosecution's best cross-question by asking him why he'd told investigators he wasn't sure he'd seen it. He replied that he'd been too upset by the attempted break-in and his own action in response to remember the details clearly at the time. When the shock passed, his memory had returned.

  Summations were brief. The prosecutor recapped the therapist's testimony and reminded the jury that the defendant had changed his story about seeing the tattoo. Counsel for the defense delivered an impassioned plea for a lifelong victim driven at last to a violent act to defend himself and his home.

  The jury deliberated for two nerve-wracking hours. County residents were sympathetic to the homeless in those first weeks following a severe winter, and Ryan Lister's lack of a serious criminal record was troublesome. But in the end that swastika swept up the last holdout. Doto was acquitted.

  I offered him a ride home. On the way he remembered that bottle of Polish vodka we hadn't cracked. He kept it in the freezing compartment of his refrigerator; the liquor smoked when he poured it and tasted like an ice-cold cloud.

  When he left the living room to refill our glasses, I opened a large green cloth-bound album lying on the coffee table. Of course there were no pictures from his childhood, and either his first wife had never been photographed or her successor, who was probably the one who'd assembled the album, had left her out from natural jealousy, but there was a rich record of the couple's American life, with vintage cars and fashions and extinct Detroit-area landmarks throughout and vacations on the beach. Snapshots showed Doto in his Dodge coveralls with lunch pail; relaxing with friends around an old-fashioned beergarden table crowded with longnecks; retired at last from the daily scramble, posing proudly in the doorway of the shop where he'd peddled the product of his artistic talent downtown. I smiled in response to a grin I'd never seen on his face in person.

  His remained; mine faded when I read the sign lettered on the plate-glass display window:

  TATTOOS TO YOUR ORDER

  I knew then, as clearly as if there was a picture there of the pole-axed expression on my face, how I'd come to be a part of it all. I'd helped bear witness to his uncertainty about the swastika on Lister's cheek, corroborating the testimony of the professionals on the scene. I'd done my part to saw a hole in the floor under the therapist's evidence on psychopathic behavior. Anyone can relate to shock. It's a human emotion after all, not the machinelike reaction of a cold-blooded killer. I'd been as useful a tool as the needle in the kit he'd hidden or destroyed after it had served its purpose. I could see him taking pains with his masterpiece, his last work, with no pesky resistance from his human canvas because it was incapable of flinching. Nevertheless, it required all his skill. It would have taken him every minute of the time before he called on me.

  When I looked up from the album, Doto had returned. His face was as flat as paint. He set down our glasses, took it gently from my hands, closed it, and slid it onto a shelf packed with mementos of his life in Hamtramck.

  Copyright (c) 2007 Loren D. Estleman

  [Back to Table of Contents]

  THE MYSTERIOUS CIPHER by Willie Rose

  Each letter consistently represents another. The quotation is from a short mystery story. Arranging the answer letters in alphabetical order gives a clue to the title of the story.

  KRD FXBD X ADP YMZTK XIB LJUDB IEL LE LRUIT EA PRE KRD PXK EJ PRKL RDJ AMLMJD RDOB. LRD YEEWD RDOGDB.

  —FXJLUI OUFEI

  CIPHER ANSWER:A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z

  [Back to Table of Contents]

  WHEN THE WIND BLOWS by James Lincoln Warren

  Douglas Byrne stepped out of the unmarked Crown Vic and got slapped by the searing wind. It barreled down between the high-rise projects of Ocotillo Park like a freight train on a downgrade, whistling and twitching in the dark. Sweat prickled at Doug's temples, at the back of his head, on his upper lip under his mustache, and along the circumference of his stretch waistband.

  So much for cool desert evenings, he thought. Welcome to the party in the oven, another hot night in the City of Antelope Valley. Another night in hell.

  The streetlamps were too far apart and too dim to show much, and the light coming from the windows and doors of the projects cast a faint, jaundiced pall on the cracked concrete and graffiti-smeared stucco. The blinding red and blue beacons of the pair of patrol cars swirled in jarring syncopation, weirdly strobing and coloring the crowd on the sidewalk, paradoxically festive in the grave silence. The only sounds to be heard were the white noise of the gusting Santa Ana winds, the croaking and creaking of the swaying telephone poles, and the low murmurings of the patrol officers.

  A uniform broke away from the crowd and approached him. At first Doug didn't recognize her, then realized he did know her but hadn't seen her for several weeks. He wondered why not. AVPD was small enough that most everybody knew everybody else. What was her name? Doug always had trouble with the young ones—Lizzie would've been about her age by now.

  The officer stopped in front of him, her thumbs tucked in her belt in an unmistakable cop pose. He thought the uniform unflattering enough to women without their trying to look tough. The equipment belt overemphasized their hips. He smirked, aware that his own middle-aged spread would look pretty silly in patrol blues too. He'd look like some fat backwoods bubba, not that the City of Antelope Valley was any different from East Bejesus, Oklahoma, as far as being cosmopolitan was concerned. He remembered her name just in time.

  "Hey, Ortega, where you been?” he asked jovially. “Long time no see."

  Officer Laura Ortega's answer was curt. “Maternity leave."

  "Oh. Yeah. Welcome back, I mean, congratulations,” he said. “I remember now. A little girl, right?"

  She nodded, her lips pursed.

  All right. So she's pissed off at something. None of his business. “So what have we got?"

  She looked away. Her voice trembled. “It's a baby dropped out of a sixth floor window.” She covered her mouth with her hand. Her eyes were wide and moist. “Sorry. Sorry."

  Jesus. His stomach lurched, but he kept it from showing in his voice or face.

  "Did you say dropped? Or fell?” he asked, as gently as he could.

  "I don't know,” she said. “The mother, she's a speed freak and all strung out. Flores is with her now, waiting for you."

  "Right. Why don't you see if you can get some statements? You can use my car.” His car wasn't directly on top of the scene, like hers. He didn't want Ortega to have to look at the remains again. Hell, he wasn't sure he could take a look himself. He knew it would be like seeing Lizzie again.

  * * * *

  The mother, a twenty-year-old blue- and red-eyed addict named Karlee Samms, would have been pretty if she weren't so emaciated. She refused to say anything, wouldn't even deny she had thrown her own four-month-old baby girl out the kitchen window. She would only hold on to her bony elbows and rock back and forth, staring wide eyed at the door of the interview room.

  "Why did you do it?” Doug asked.

  No reaction.

  "Your neighbors said you had a fight with your boyfriend. Was it about Jazelle?"

  Slow blink. “I don't got a boyfriend."

  "Then who did you have the fight with?"

  Shrug. “Nobody."

  "So how'd you get that cut under your chin, then?"

  "Accident. That's all."

  He decided to change tack. “Jazelle was quite a handful, wasn't she?"

  Karlee's eyes misted but quickly dried up, and she resumed rocking.

  "Karlee. Look at me. What made you do such a thing?"

  Karlee stopped, tensed up, and stared at him, panic in her bloodshot eyes, then opened her mouth, made a kind of choking noise, and then only rocked faster.

  She wouldn't talk to the court psychiatrist, either, beyond telling him she wouldn't talk to him. She wouldn't even talk to the public defender. Karlee eventually stopped rocking
, but she continued to be withdrawn and uncommunicative. Separated from the other women at the jail for her own safety, she was put on suicide watch, though she never made an attempt at killing herself, not so much as a gesture.

  Karlee Samms was booked for second degree murder.

  Doug didn't sleep too well that night. He woke several times. He kept dreaming he could hear crying in the next room.

  Karlee was still in custody a month later when the next baby fell to its death.

  * * * *

  It wasn't the same part of town. Jazelle Samms had died in a housing project. Sebastian Loeb, five months old, had fallen from the third story balcony of an upscale condo in a gated community called Villa Escondido. It was a commuter neighborhood, inhabited by bank managers, lawyers, and stockbrokers who rode the Metrorail to their L.A. offices on weekdays.

  But the same desiccating wind was back, brushing Doug's skin like hot ash, tugging at him as if it were trying to tear out his spirit. Maybe it was the wind that made him dizzy, but the vertigo only came when he thought about the kid.

  The street was much better lit here, but the blue and red rotating lights still glowed in the gloom like hellfire. The crowd might have been better dressed than the one in Ocotillo Park, but it loitered just as ghoulishly.

  And Ortega was the first officer on the scene.

  This time her pose was less brave. This time she hadn't been able to hold back the tears. Doug knew she was thinking about her own infant at home with her husband. He wanted to send her home, but she refused.

  "I'm a cop,” she said, scowling, her pride offended. “This is my job."

  "All right,” he replied. “You know what I want. Where are the parents?"

  "They're not here."

  "Then where the hell are they?” He heard the unwanted edge in his voice and felt a twinge of shame. He started again, this time more gently: “I mean, do we have any idea where they are?"