The Shamus Sampler II

by Nick Quantrill

“Jackass says what,” I muttered.

  “What?”

  Yeah, he understood the English language. “Look,” I said, “I’m not dismissing the snoring angle, but why don’t you tell me who you think’s trying to drive you nuts.”

  “Man, I hate to say this, what with you and Katrina so close.”

  Close? Well, she did tend to gravitate to me at gatherings; we both enjoyed my unabashed admiration of her full cleavage.

  “We’re not that close. Go on,” I said, mustering a look of concern.

  “I think Katrina’s involved. She’s messing with my head. I know I’m not crazy.”

  As I said, Katrina’s a cold bitch, and she has been known to get catty with the other officers’ wives. But I’ve personally never had a real problem with her. Maybe it’s my thick skin, or maybe it’s just the amount of skin she bared. But now Jet’s description of her behavior in the past week alone made her sound like a real piece of work. Obviously, some people acted differently when they were around others and their true colors surfaced only behind closed doors. After what Jet told me, I wouldn’t have wished Katrina on any man for more than a night. And I definitely wouldn’t under any circumstances have given her my credit card.

  Nonetheless, I said, “I still don’t see why she’d want to drive you crazy.”

  “She’s itching to go down south. Maybe she figures she can scare me enough to leave while the heat’s still on.”

  “And if she can’t?”

  “Then maybe my days are numbered.”

  Doubtful—you don’t bite the hand that feeds. Unless... “Does she know where you’ve stashed your nest egg?”

  “You think I’m stupid?”

  Jet’s many things, stupid’s not one of them. “Is she sleeping around?”

  “No.” He didn’t even consider it.

  “That sure?”

  “We’re fine in that area, believe me.”

  I refrained from asking if she was a wildcat in bed.

  “Other than Katrina, is there anyone else you can think of that might want to mess with your head?”

  “No,” Jet replied. “Everybody likes me, and the only other person who knows about my nest egg is you, and you could’ve had your half right from the start.”

  “Then help me out here, Jet. I’m just not hearing any good motives. Maybe you really should go see a shrink.”

  Jet narrowed his eyes, but refrained from retorting. He looked around at the other customers again: an indecisive couple stood at the counter, the loner stared vacantly out the dirty window, and the teenagers were still lip-locked. “Just be at my place tonight around 2:30, and keep your eyes and ears wide open.”

  *

  It didn’t matter whether the voices were in Jet’s head or coming from his backyard, he hired me to do a job and I never backed out on a deal. Not that it made much sense to me why Katrina would go to such lengths just because she wanted them to move south. Plus, she didn’t seem bright enough to come up with such a scheme. And despite Jet’s ego, I was sure there were people out there who didn’t like him—every cop’s got enemies.

  Just after two in the morning, I parked at the curb a few houses down from Jet’s place. It was a nice neighborhood; two-story houses with large lots and well-manicured yards. Not the type of homes usually afforded on a cop’s salary.

  The house was dark as I walked past the two-car garage. I ignored the squeaky gate, and hopped over the chain-link fence into the backyard. As I rounded the corner, I heard the cute, yet irritating, cry of a cat. The thing meowed nonstop as though it wanted desperately to be let inside. The Jenkins owned a cat, Myrtle, so I expected to see her pawing at the back door. Through the dim light provided by the quarter-moon, I could see the back door well enough to determine that there weren’t any cats near there.

  The back of the house had six windows, but the one that interested me was on the ground floor just past the back door. It looked in on Jet’s bedroom. He’d told me that the voices sounded like they were almost in the room with him, but since he could never see anyone, and since he always left his screened window open for fresh air, he assumed they emanated from just outside.

  I hurried over to a tree in the middle of the yard, noting that it would provide adequate cover for casing the house. Just as I slid around the trunk, I felt the hairs on my neck stand on end as a sudden chill passed through me. Then, just as quickly as it came on, it was gone. The night air was warm and muggy, so I attributed the chill to jittery nerves.

  As I struggled to put on my second-hand night-vision goggles, I was startled by the voices. “Your days are numbered.” Then, “You can’t escape.” Both phrases were spoken slowly, drawn out. I couldn’t tell the sex or number of voices, though the words sounded like they’d gone through a sound modulator.

  Determined to catch the culprit in the act, I looked through the branches and scanned the entire yard with my goggles. I didn’t immediately see any infrared images, but then suddenly, a figure materialized out of the shadows on the far side of the house. I nearly let out a curse in surprise. I watched as the trespasser walked parallel to the house, directly to Jet’s bedroom window. Suddenly, the intruder vanished from sight.

  I blinked my eyes a couple of times before running half-crouched towards the bedroom. I whipped off my goggles and quickly discovered that the intruder hadn’t performed any magic tricks, but rather had fallen through several inches of dirt into a deep hole.

  I pulled a flashlight out of my pocket and shone it into the pit. The sight that greeted me was tough for even my jaded eyes to take. The intruder lay fifteen feet below in a zigzag pattern that would be impossible for anyone with intact bones. But that wasn’t the half of it—shards of glass pierced countless parts of the mangled body, a large piece wedged in the jugular being particularly gruesome. I held no delusions about the intruder’s chances for recovery. The person that lay before me was dead. I also held no delusions about the person’s identity. Even with her shapely body and flimsy nightgown bloodstained and shredded, I easily recognized Jet’s wife.

  A light appeared inside the bedroom, and a familiar face came into view. “Harden, is that you?” Jet asked. “Is it over? Did you stop the voices?”

  Actually, the voices were still going, but they were quieter now, fading away the way recorded songs often do. With Jet’s bedroom light turned on, it was easy to see that the voices came from an MP3 player attached to the outside bottom of the windowsill. I left it going, knowing better than to handle evidence. I dialed 9-1-1 on my cell, then broke the bad news to Jet.

  While I waited for him to join me outside, I moved to the edge of the hole and studied the window screen. There weren’t any holes in it, and it was securely attached to the window frame.

  Jet decided to remove the MP3 player before the police arrived, not seeing any point in sullying a dead woman’s reputation, and I didn’t argue. We decided it was best just to say that she was out looking for the cat. And Jet and I agreed that my presence would be explained by my being on my way out of my buddy’s house after shooting some pool.

  Turned out Katrina had pestered Jet to dig her a flower garden, and he’d finally capitulated the previous day. Unbeknownst to him, past owners of the property—and we’re talkin’ over a hundred years ago here—had built a fruit cellar below that very spot. Jet had been lucky he hadn’t fallen through when he’d turned the earth, his only saving grace being that he’d never stepped on the garden. The shards of glass apparently were the remains of broken jars from ancient preserves.

  The police determined that Katrina’s death was accidental. No charges were laid. Case closed.

  *

  The next day, Jet showed up in my office. He handed me a check made out for $250.

  I handed it right back.

  “I knew you couldn’t take my money, right partner?”

  “I told you I have bills to pay. The amount’s too small is all.”

  “An hour at the pizza place, then a couple more tal
king to our former coworkers. That’s one-fifty. The way I see it, I gave you an extra hundred in goodwill.”

  “Add three more zeroes to the goodwill.”

  “What? You think you did something to earn the hundred large? Nah-ah, I don’t owe you another cent.” He shoved the check back at me.

  “You owe me more than you know. As usual, I looked the other way, and this is the thanks I get?”

  “Huh? You didn’t have to cover for me this time. She was out to get me.”

  “How come I heard the voices before Katrina came on the scene? It seems to me, you started the player before Katrina went out to look for Myrtle.”

  “You’re getting old, Harden—your hearing’s going. Obviously Katrina started the player right before she fell.”

  “My hearing’s fine. I replayed the recording—I know that the cat cries were recorded to lure Katrina out.”

  Jet’s face paled. “Shit. She was a leach, Harden—would’ve bled me dry.” He seemed annoyed with himself for getting caught. “I thought I’d thought of everything. When did you replay the recording? There’s no way you could have—” Jet realized too late that I hadn’t had any chance to restart the recording before he’d removed the evidence.

  I pulled an MP3 player out from under the leaves of a potted plant on my desk.

  “How’d you get that?”

  “This isn’t yours.” I smirked. “Same brand—just a fun coincidence. The only ‘voices’ on this one are ours,” I said, as I pressed the stop button. “It’s so convenient how all these devices come with a voice recorder these days, don’t you think? Perfect for confessions.”

  Jet’s face sagged in defeat. “I can’t write a check for that kind of money,” he said.

  “That’s okay. Let’s go crack open that nest egg of yours. You drive.”

  Half an hour later, I held a hundred thousand cash in my hands. Jet disappeared shortly thereafter.

  I considered contacting Internal Affairs, but why would I trust them? They’d just find a way to implicate me right alongside Jet, like they had before. The way I saw it, that money lost me my job, so it seemed only fair that I finally had some of it.

  *****

  Nick Andreychuk is a Derringer Award-winning mystery writer. His stories have appeared in numerous publications, such as Austin Layman’s Crimestalker Casebook, Over My Dead Body!, Plan B, Sherlock Holmes Mystery Magazine, Suspense Magazine, Techno-Noir, The Kennedy Curse, and Who Died in Here? His work has been collected in Crime Dealers, Crime Shooters, and Crime Solvers. Currently he is collaborating on thrillers with bestselling author J.A. Konrath.

  Zero Tolerance

  by

  Dana King

  I invited Dana King to submit a short story for the first Sampler. He wasn’t able to make the deadline for that one but managed to submit a great Nick Forte short story for this one. A writer who knows his stuff and promotes other writers deserving a wider audience. He’s my kind of guy.

  My order of two small drinks for Caroline and me didn’t impress the girl working the counter at Taco Bell. I said, “Huh?” to get her to repeat herself.

  “Ain’t no small.”

  “What do you mean, ‘ain’t no small?’”

  “Medium, large, extra-large all we got.”

  I looked at her another second to see if a smile broke out. Nothing. Serious as body crabs. Caroline hadn’t been paying attention—we’d stopped for a couple of cold drinks while Christmas shopping—looked confused, late to the party.

  “What’s the smallest size you have?”

  “Medium.”

  I used a tone I hoped would convey my opinion of someone who couldn’t make the association I was about to describe on her own. “Well, if medium’s as small as you got, give me two mediums.”

  “For here or take out?”

  I looked left to make sure I hadn’t missed anything. Drinks were self-serve, lids and straws next to the dispenser. All she’d give me were cups. “What difference does it make?”

  “Got to say for the computer.”

  I’m not obligated to be a prick all the time; this chick had earned it. “One of each.”

  She slid a finger along the touch screen. Hadn’t looked at either Caroline or me yet. “Can’t be both. Has to be one or the other.”

  “I want one and the other. One here, one to go.” Caroline shot me a look like she wondered who would stay and who would go.

  The Taco Bell-ista caught herself in time to keep from looking at me. “They either both have to be for here, or both have to be carry out. Can’t be one of each.”

  “Look at me.” I fought the urge to go all Chili Palmer on her. “Look at me.” She looked. “Am I not the customer?” Facial movement might have been a nod, which I took for assent. “Is not the customer always right?” Like talking to a dry erase board with a face drawn on it. “I want one to drink here, and one to take with us.” Winked at Caroline so she’d pick up on the joke.

  The girl looked at me with as much comprehension as if I’d said “fly butter tree cock.” “Do you want these for here or to go?” Getting testy about it.

  “To go.” Chick had drained the fun even out of being a bastard. I hoped her boyfriend was a lousy kisser.

  Caroline and I took our drinks to the concourse of Gurnee Mills Mall and parked ourselves. Passed at least half a dozen malls to get here from her mother’s house in Downers Grove. Came here once when she was little—I don’t remember why—and she fell in love with the place. She’d outgrown whatever first attracted her, still insisted Christmas shopping wasn’t “official” until we came here. I spent Wednesday evenings and alternate weekends with her. Driving to Gurnee wasn’t an odious sacrifice.

  She’d been quieter than usual all day. Didn’t appear sick, but she was twelve. The day approached when I’d have to cope with something I hadn’t heard of when I was her age. “Everything okay?”

  “You remember the bat mitzvah a couple of weeks ago?”

  “Sure.” Damn, kid, I’m only 42. I’ll probably remember the only bat mitzvah I’d ever been to for at least another three months.

  “You know Tyler? The girl it was for?”

  I picked up or delivered Caroline and Tyler somewhere at least once a month. “Yeah, I know Tyler.”

  “Her sister’s pregnant.”

  Spit take. “How old is she?”

  “Seventeen. She’ll be eighteen in a few weeks.”

  “She a senior?” Caroline nodded. “You know when she’s due?”

  “The end of June, I think. Maybe the beginning of July.”

  “Well, at least she’ll finish school with her friends.”

  Caroline said, “No, she won’t” and I saw something I’d seen maybe twice before: she was pissed. “They’re throwing her out of school.”

  “Who? Her parents?”

  “No. That stupid private school she goes to. They only let kids whose…farts don’t smell go there. So they’re throwing her out. They said some stupid thing like corrupting the morals of the other kids, which is bulls—” She caught herself, let that be the end of the sentence.

  “Bullshit,” I said.

  “Yeah.”

  “And her parents are going to put up with that?” Tyler’s parents both lawyers, the children of lawyers. The firm they ran among the most powerful in Chicago, twenty attorneys raking in money so Mr. and Mrs. Meier could afford to do civil rights and immigration work, trying to stay on the side of the angels in labor and landlord-tenant disputes and still send their kids to private school. I’d met them both several times and enjoyed it, a likeable couple who knew what people could and couldn’t get away with.

  “I guess they signed some kind of agreement when they put her in there, stuff she couldn’t do,” Caroline said.

  “And the school spelled it right out? ‘Don’t get pregnant?’”

  “Not quite like that, but, yeah. Some moral standards thing.”

  “And Mr. Meier can’t beat it?”

&
nbsp; “Tyler says he says no. I mean maybe, but they’d have to get an injunction or something to delay the headmaster’s decision and I guess all kinds of other crap and Lisa’d be in the papers and on the news and all she really wants now is to be left alone. They’re going to have her tutored so she can get a GED or something, since the school won’t let her graduate.”

  “Maybe they can get her into DG South. North? Which one would she go to?”

  “It doesn’t matter. She doesn’t want to. All her friends are at Yates.” Yates Academy named after Richard Yates, Republican governor of Illinois during the Civil War. Nothing could be allowed to besmirch the Yates name, though successors had done their best to make “Governor of Illinois” fall from the mouth like “whorehouse dishwasher.”

  “You know what really pisses me off?” Caroline said, like what she’d told me already hadn’t been enough. “She’s getting thrown out because of that morals crap, and everyone knows who the boy is, and nothing’s happening to him.”

  I’d heard all I cared to about Caroline’s knowledge of the mechanics of human reproduction for the time being. If she was old enough to understand why someone other than Lisa Meier shared responsibility for her condition, she was old enough to know injustice happened every day, everywhere. She was also young enough to have illusions that injustice could be put right if someone wanted it bad enough.

  My idea of which injustices defied redress might differ from the Meiers’.

  ***

  Oliver Willoughby kept me waiting half an hour. I had no appointment, he was a very busy man—his secretary mentioned that several times—but he’d be willing to make time for the father of a prospective Yates student from out of town who only had today to see him. I hadn’t lied to her. That’s a personal insult to the person who’s been lied to. Misrepresentation is part of my job. My conscience twinged no more than the atoms in a molecule of concrete.

  Arnold Meier had been no help. He appreciated my call and was grateful for my sympathies, but the law had no remedy, and he really didn’t see how he’d need any investigative services, even if it did become a legal matter. Caroline’s a pleasure, he and his wife were delighted Tyler had such a friend, please stop by the house any time.