AHMM, December 2006

by Dell Magazine Authors

  Next morning, Auburn tried to reach Fiona Cremner-Bate by phone but got an answering machine. After watching the end of Jerry Prentice's tape twice more, he headed across town to the offices of Hobart-Royale, the telemarketing firm where Dewey Cossegrin worked. The business occupied an entire floor of the Bossart Tower. Dozens of marketers wearing telephone headsets were working in what looked like a gigantic beehive, each ensconced in a tiny, stark cubicle equipped with a computer.

  Auburn talked with a supervisor, a motherly but businesslike woman named Joyce Saunders. Ms. Saunders had heard the name Cossegrin on the news but didn't recognize it as that of someone on her payroll.

  "Most of our staff work only part-time,” she explained, “and we have a tremendous turnover. A lot of them are college kids. They need a few bucks, they make a few bucks, and they're gone."

  "Could you verify for me that Dewey Cossegrin was working here Tuesday evening? And what hours he worked?"

  She led him past row after row of cubicles to a time clock with the usual wall-mounted racks on either side, one containing the cards of people who were clocked in and the other the cards of people who were clocked out.

  "Cossegrin, you said, with a C? Here we are."

  "Just a minute, ma'am. Please don't touch it."

  Auburn used a pocket forceps to extract the card from the rack and slip it into a borrowed envelope. “I'll give you a receipt for this and get the original back here to you in a day or two."

  "I hope so. Otherwise Mr. Cossegrin won't get paid on time."

  "Who handles these cards besides the workers when they check in and out?"

  "Just me. I put them out every Monday morning and collect them the following Monday."

  "Have you ever been fingerprinted by the local Public Safety Department?"

  She swallowed. “I had to be fingerprinted two or three years ago in order to be bonded as treasurer of my alumni association. I'm not in some kind of trouble, am I?"

  "Do you mind if I check these racks for a few more names?"

  On his return to headquarters Auburn took the time card directly to the forensic lab and turned it over to Kestrel, along with full identifying data on Joyce Saunders, the supervisor at Hobart-Royale. Fiona Cremner-Bate hadn't yet responded to his call, so he left another message.

  Then he got out his list of local firms that handled industrial chemicals or had equipment for filling pressurized gas cylinders. He called eighteen numbers before he found a business where the name he was seeking rang a bell.

  Meanwhile, Kestrel had identified some of the fingerprints on the time card as those of an alien named Achmed Boiduk who had been arrested just a few weeks earlier for speeding in a school zone and driving without a license. Auburn was lucky enough to find Boiduk at the apartment he shared with three compatriots, all engineering students. After putting up a brief show of resistance, Boiduk became extremely cooperative and agreed to accompany Auburn to headquarters to make a statement.

  Auburn conferred briefly with his immediate superior, Lieutenant Savage, before making the trip across the street to the courthouse. Equipped with an arrest warrant and accompanied by Patrolman Dollinger, he arrived at the Cossegrin home a little before one P.M.

  Dewey answered the doorbell. “My mother is lying down,” he informed them, “and I doubt that you can give me one good reason why I should even tell her you're here."

  "I'm not so sure of that. But you're the one we need to talk to. Can we come in?"

  Dewey stepped back into the entry hall and motioned for them to enter with mock politeness. He didn't invite them to sit down.

  "The person who killed your stepfather,” Auburn told him, “gave him a fatal dose of cyanide gas while he was acting out Lord Anthony's death scene. Since we can account for the whereabouts of all the people in the cast at that moment, the killer must have been somebody else who knew both the script and the layout of the restaurant. According to Bish Gardner, you played the part of Igor in some of the shows last year."

  Cossegrin threw back his head and stuck out his chin. “Under the law of the land,” he said, “you can't arrest me or charge me unless you have some kind of proof of wrongdoing. I know I'm not telling you something you don't know. I just want to make sure you're aware that I know it too."

  "You work at Hockaday Tool Rental,” continued Auburn, paying no attention to the interruption, “where they rent propane-operated lift trucks and where you have access to equipment for refilling bottled gas cylinders."

  "I was at my other job at Hobart-Royale when my stepfather was killed. You can easily verify that if you check their records."

  Auburn shook his head. “That's not going to work. I've already talked to Achmed, your buddy with the student visa and the scholarship, who isn't permitted to be gainfully employed in this country. He tells me that sometimes you let him clock in on your card at Hobart-Royale when you don't feel like working. You probably figured he'd keep quiet about doing that Tuesday night so he wouldn't get himself in trouble. But he didn't hold out for long when he found out he could be charged as an accessory to murder."

  "What murder?"

  "Don't play games, Dewey. The murder of your stepfather, Desmond Cossegrin.” Auburn read him his rights.

  Dewey might be maladjusted, but he was far from stupid. His specious show of defiance and self-assurance evaporated like mist.

  "We always hated each other,” he said. “After he married my mother, I was just in his way."

  "He adopted you,” observed Auburn. “Gave you his name."

  "That's because he was a power freak. When I was eight, he tried to smother me with a pillow while I was asleep. He did it half a dozen times, but I always woke up. That's why I have asthma.” He emitted a couple of wheezy coughs, as if that explained everything and even justified cold-blooded murder. “And when the weather is like this...” He took an inhaler out of his pocket and shook it with a back-and-forth movement of the wrist—exactly as the killer on the tape had done before lethally gassing Desmond Cossegrin.

  Before he could put it into his mouth, Auburn lunged for it with both hands. “Sit on him, Fritz!” he told Dollinger. “And hold your breath till I get this thing away from him."

  * * * *

  On the following Tuesday, Auburn and Rochelle Harris had dinner at Weyermueller's, where the theatrical performances had been suspended indefinitely.

  "So the kid almost did himself in?"

  "And us too, maybe.” Now that Dewey Cossegrin was behind bars and the news media were in full possession of the facts, Auburn could speak freely about the case. “There was enough cyanide in that canister to wipe out the College of Cardinals. Which was actually kind of fortunate, because it means that the bruises Dollinger put on him were in self-defense and not from the use of undue force in making the arrest."

  "Maybe,” said Rochelle, “it would have been just as well if the poor kid had managed to remove himself from earthly jurisdiction."

  "No way. Because we get paid to see justice done, and the ‘poor kid’ is the only one of Cossegrin's killers that we can take to court."

  "Killers? Who else—?"

  "Well, that off-duty EMT was partly responsible for his death by breaking his ribs, tearing up his insides, and delaying proper medical intervention. And your friend the shrink is even more responsible if she got his stepson stirred up enough to murder him."

  "She's not my friend,” objected Rochelle. “And there isn't any doubt in my mind that she turned the kid against his stepfather. Like I told you, that's what she does best. Have you seen her Web page?"

  "Never thought to look for one."

  "Well, take a look, and see if her picture doesn't remind you of Godzilla with a migraine. But you're going to see her in person one of these days because the kid's lawyer will put her on the stand and try some kind of insanity plea."

  "I never thought of that either. I wish there were some way the city prosecutor could discredit her testimony. Any ideas?"

&nb
sp; "Off the record—unofficially? Still got that shredder handy?"

  Copyright (c) 2006 John H. Dirckx

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  A LESSON FROM PURPLE by Ann Woodward

  It was a night of imperfect moon and suddenly shifting wind just past the middle of the Fourth Month, a night of warm but unsettled spring exuberance. Clouds, which seemed all the blacker for the light behind them, were edged with golden dazzle and blew raggedly across the brilliant glow. It was not an apt time for sitting in the moon-viewing pavilion. Yet that was where he was taken when he arrived, led by a nervous maid. He was still in rough clothes because when he received her message he was out in the hills north of the city, on a hunting expedition with his friends. He heard the way his feet boomed on the long walkway of planks across the garden pond. He could have walked more patiently, but he did not change the intemperate pace of his steps.

  He was a prince whose older brother had long ago become emperor. Officially, he lived in an extensive apartment in the palace, though there were three houses in the city where he was welcomed as husband. Though not usual, it was common in his time and in his culture for men to have more than one wife, and he supported all these households as well as several unofficial residences of women he favored. The third wife was still very young and lived with her parents, and the relationship had been official for only months; the second was a mild and charming woman who made no demands and was never critical, but she also very seldom had anything interesting to say; the first and most honored in the eyes of his society was the princess served by Lady Aoi as lady-in-waiting. Her father, who headed the government, was an unusually able man from outside the prominent family that supplied almost all ministers and important officials. She it was who could never be happy enough to see him that she forgot the slights and insults she always charged him with, who was likely to absent herself without telling him and stay away for weeks, who could be sarcastic one minute and sweetly agreeable the next, whose passion in both loving and in tirade engaged his mind, his heart, and his raging anger.

  She heard the loud thumping steps, and she thought at once that she had made a mistake. Her tight breathing choked her even more, and she drew herself small behind an opened fan. Her chest hurt, her ribs gripped hard.

  * * * *

  At first he could not find her, she sat in such deep shadow. “You say you are ill again?” he said, regretting the abruptness and harsh tone but helpless to disguise his feelings.

  Her reply was too faint to hear.

  "Have you any idea of the darkness of the track through rocks and woods I have had to travel to get here?"

  Again only a murmur from the shadowed corner, though he thought she had said something about the young wife. He could not have denied that he was spending most of his time with the beautiful daughter of the Minister of the Imperial Household, but he did not know how this wife always knew so much.

  He turned his back, breathed in, threw away his riding crop, and mastered himself.

  "You—” Another deep breath. “I honor you as my principal wife, and when you send for me, I come."

  "This time, at least, from the company of men."

  "Must we argue? When you are ill? What is it?” He had choked off the “this time,” and finally, he approached her and sat on the bare floorboards. A dash of wind stirred waves and splashing underneath them. Dancing points of reflection dipped and swung across the pond. He could see in the dimness that she sat with her face turned away.

  "Are you sure you care to know how I am feeling?"

  "After the trip I have had, I very much do.” He softened his tone, and he leaned toward her. She dipped her head lower behind the fan but turned more to face him.

  "It is a fullness of the throat. I came out here because I couldn't breathe in the house. I am afraid. I feel that I might die."

  "Well, let's see. It could be an excess of yang and that, in the throat, is choler. Or extreme yin and that could be tears. What was it before, when you had the twinge in your side?"

  "Ache, it was an ache."

  "Yes. And Lady Aoi said it was ... too little liquid in the system. Could this be another phase of the same trouble? Let us send for wine, it was wine that helped you then.” He signaled the maid, who hovered just outside hearing, and she rushed off.

  The princess sat up straighter, leaning into the light, which came and went as moving clouds hid and uncovered the moon. “Do you remember that night?” she said in a stronger voice. “We had cups and cups of wine."

  "Cups and cups,” he said, “and you felt wonderfully well afterward. But why don't we send for your companion. She always has good advice."

  "If you like,” she said, the tone cold.

  * * * *

  Lady Aoi at just that time was sitting next to her lowered blind, listening to a visitor she could barely see through the thin reed slats who sat on the veranda outside. He was a young man in the uniform of the palace guards, and she knew him from a trip into the country the previous fall, when he had served among her escorts. He had come to complain of his father and to ask a favor.

  "Could you please speak to your uncle for me? I will not work in that ministry, I will not let my father force me into a life I would find intolerable."

  "It is not your father who forces but simple family tradition. No one of your birth has ever served in a provincial army."

  "I would not be in the army, I would be a warrior for your uncle. I like that life, riding all day, shooting arrows at targets from horseback, living in the open air among men who are active, who do not mind if their clothes become dirty."

  "And sometimes fighting, raiding neighboring farms, wrecking crops, killing children. Will you like that?"

  "It will not be that way, your uncle is a just man. But I will be good at whatever he asks me to do, and I will be loyal."

  "Hmm."

  "I think that serving in a ministry, dictating orders to be copied, writing reports, meeting and discussing—"

  "—will kill you. I know, you said that."

  "I don't think that you understand how desperate I am. I will do anything!"

  Aoi sighed to hear the classic cry of the adolescent in rebellion.

  "Your uncle has no sons, I understand. Perhaps I will let him adopt me. I would not come without assets."

  "You have your own income?"

  "I have the intangible asset of my birth. Though I took your uncle's name, I would still be..."

  "I see. A nice inconsistency. You would repudiate your family yet depend on its reputation and standing."

  Just then two things happened: thunder quite close and the arrival of the maid. Aoi could not at first understand what the message was. The wind howled, the blind blew into the room, rattling and slatting from side to side, and her visitor was saying his final pleas and some hurried politenesses of parting.

  "The prince is here?” Aoi said to the maid, and to the young man, “Yes, yes, I will see what I can do,” regretting it the next instant because she had no wish to rouse the enmity of the boy's father. “Are they still out there?” she said to the maid, and “Such a sudden storm!” as the prince and his wife arrived in haste, just ahead of gardeners with the rain shutters. Hurrying footsteps raced along the veranda in the wrong direction for the main gate.

  "Who was that?” asked the princess.

  "A departing visitor."

  "He won't get out that way."

  "He will soon see his mistake."

  The roar of arriving rain ended the conversation. When the room was secured, a brazier brought to warm the suddenly chill air, and hot wine on the way, the prince turned to Aoi. “I have just been with the Minister of the Treasury. We were up in the hills when I got my wife's mess—"

  "But listen to you!” the princess ground out between tight jaws. “Wasn't it to consult about me that you wanted Lady Aoi?"

  Aoi glanced at her, seeing the sudden turn of her head as the princess recognized that Lady Aoi would not be deceived
any more than the prince was by this sad bid for his attention. Desperately ashamed and unhappy, the princess drew up the edge of one sleeve to hide her face.

  Aoi moved to her side, heard in murmurs what the complaint was, listened as the princess whispered that indeed she now felt more ill than ever, that she was choking and hot and afraid of dying. Aoi agreed that, like last time, wine would be just the thing. She busied herself speaking with the maid and then rearranging the glowing slices of charcoal in the brazier with long bronze fire chopsticks. It would not do to let the princess see that Aoi recognized deception and deplored it.

  Only when he was leaving for his private room did the prince ask Aoi about the son of the Minister of the Treasury, as he had begun to do before.

  "They say you know him."

  "Yes. He was just here, it was he who dashed off in the wrong direction. You will remember that he was one of my guards when I went..."

  "Oh yes. Well, his father is recommending him for the new office I am to head. He says the boy is quite good at figures."

  "Um. I wonder, really, how his father knows anything about him. The mother died when his brother was born, then the brother died, and he was raised by an old woman who has served that family for a long time. Then he lived with his tutor until he went into the guards. He is just barely old enough for that."

  "The tutor says—"

  "Yes, and it is probably true. But he has never lived in his father's house, and they do not know each other at all. He resents his father's control, he has no idea of the life of a government man, and he is frightened of ... everything."

  "Ah. But a son of that house must go into the government, surely he has always known that."

  "Yes, but he says he will not, and he has asked me to place him with my uncle in Bizen Province."

  "He would lose his hereditary income and have no resources at all. Relatives would not dare to help him."

  "I know. He says he won't care, that he has resources, by which he means just that name he intends to give up, and that if he goes to the country my uncle will take care of him. I do not like to ask this. I must think carefully."