EQMM, July 2009

by Dell Magazine Authors

  I wanted, I realized, to take my clothing off. I wanted to leave it behind on the balcony. I wanted my husband's voice to vanish in the sounds of the surf, of the night birds calling, of the crickets sawing away in the darkness. I wanted to walk naked on the beach in the night, beneath the distant sky with its thirty-seven, thirty-eight, thirty-nine stars.

  I didn't turn, though he put his hand on my shoulder. David was shouting at me now. I could feel his breath on my cheek, could see him in the corner of my eye, his face blocking a portion of the sky.

  "Would you hold these please, David,” I said, and held the pack of cigarettes out for him to take. He stopped shouting and snatched the cigarettes and tossed them to the floor, and I took the ashtray off the railing, held it tightly in both hands.

  They took me in the next morning for murder, a crime in that country, as it turns out.

  Copyright © 2009 by Charles Ardai

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  Department of First Stories: BIAS by Chris Muessig

  A couple of years ago, Chris Muessig and his wife relocated from New York State to Cary, North Carolina, where he currently does editorial work for North Carolina State University and occasionally teaches English. His debut story was percolating for years, he says, before he applied himself to it. Its crime was inspired by a rash of gas-station robbery/killings that occurred on Long Island twenty years ago.

  Jack-o'-lanterns lit the crisp evening with their complicit leers, but Frank Creegan sensed a worse mischief coming round. Something else slouched below the dark horizon, pushing the dead ahead of it like a wave.

  Coming up on the intersection of 29A and Drowned Meadow Avenue, he heard yet another call on his scanner. Red and blue lights flashed up ahead at the Usoco station. He cut over to the right, trying to remember who would be on duty at the pumps at 8 p.m.

  He parked on the shoulder. Aside from a familiar white sedan parked at the side of the station, the police cruiser was the only vehicle in the lot. Check that—a huge bicycle leaned by the air pump that jutted from the brick wall between the closed bays.

  Creegan crossed the macadam with a heavy heart. An odd-looking man in an oversized bicycle helmet turned to look at him from the office door. Creegan recognized him as a resident of the adult home near the train station, an odd young soul given to slow-motion tours of the town on his 28-inch dinosaur of a bike. Creegan remembered the red eyes of its oversized reflectors and the swath of the battery-driven headlamp patrolling the dusk—one of God's special sentries.

  Officer Ray Evers stood just inside the office talking into his portable radio. The uniformed patrolman gave Frank a surprised but not unwelcoming look.

  "You doing a double tour, Lieutenant?"

  "No. I was just down the block and heard the squawk. This is my neighborhood. This is where I usually buy my gas. Who's on their way?"

  Evers shrugged. “Everybody. Won't be room to breathe in here."

  Creegan took out his notebook. The helmeted figure beside them shifted from one sneaker to the other with his hands up in front of his chest like a T. rex. This near to the pale chin and cheeks, Creegan saw salt-and-pepper stubble belying the childish mannerisms.

  "Is this man a witness, Evers?"

  "I don't think he saw the shooting, but he did find the body and call 911. I was just around the corner. This didn't happen very long ago."

  "On that phone?” Creegan pointed his chin at the pay phone by the inner door connecting office to work area.

  "No, he used the booth on the corner out there. He was waiting in it when I pulled in."

  "What's his name?"

  "Jeremy Jordan—J.J., they call him."

  "Who's they?"

  "Well, shopkeepers, neighborhood people. You know. He's harmless and keeps to himself, but he tools around."

  "Did he see anybody?"

  "I really just got here, Lieutenant. And he's a little ... addled."

  The benighted one did not seem to know he was being talked about.

  "You see what you can get out of him while I take a look. Excuse me, J.J., I need to get by."

  Creegan was ready for it now. He looked down at the floor as he placed his steps. A thin cordite haze scratched at his throat and nose. As Evers went outside to give Creegan more room, he said, “I asked the dispatcher to get hold of the station owners."

  Creegan nodded and looked over the counter.

  The stitching on the dead man's blue coveralls spelled out Sal, but it was Turgot, all right. He was on his back with his head propped in the corner of the cramped space. Creegan looked down on him with his hands by his sides; then he sidestepped carefully to the right so he could see around the edge of the counter and get a look at the body full-length.

  He squatted down to get an angle on two apparent entry wounds. The lower one was even with the sternum on the left side. It had produced a sopping patch darker than the dark shirt. The other wound was a hand's length above the first, near the collarbone, less bloody. No blood seeping from underneath the body.

  Turgot's face stared past him, not quite emptied of the good nature that had greeted every entrant to the store: “Hello, buddy!” The ghost of amiable welcome overlapped in Frank's imagination with the ringing percussion of confined shots. He raised his right hand and sketched the sign of the cross over the body.

  "I think he was more into Allah,” said Evers from the doorway.

  Frank looked up at him; Evers retreated and began questioning J.J.

  Frank's eyes kept busy, and he stayed in his crouch. A small green pencil, the stubby kind without eraser, was resting on the dead man's left thigh, up near the groin. Frank stood and his left knee clicked. He kept panning the room.

  A blotter-sized calendar covered most of the countertop. The day squares contained appointments, calls, deli orders, and so on, in several different kinds of handwriting. The expired days were marked off with diagonals.

  Someone had scrawled a small swastika on the top edge on the customer's side. The penciled image stood out from what had been three fingers of blankness. Doodling cluttered the other three margins, penned and penciled perhaps by employees as they idled on the business phone—but no other swastikas.

  He read the upside-down entries for that day, and then he returned to the bent cross. No more than a half-inch square, the cursive rounding indicated something hastily done. He took his eyes away and did another three-sixty.

  Evers's sergeant pulled up. The patrolman moved toward the car, pulling J.J. gently after him.

  No casings in sight. Maybe a revolver, or the guy knew enough to pick them up. Or they'd rolled under the motor-oil rack or the soda cooler where Crime Scene would hopefully find them.

  He looked again at the body. The blind gaze was locked on the cubbies behind the counter. Frank's professional self refused to be drawn into the mystery of that deceptive intensity, but he could not help thinking about the history here.

  Turgot had worked at the station for several years, often doing both shifts seven days a week. Frank had never pried, but he guessed much of the man's pay went to an extended family in Turkey. Human industry, blood ties, and then murder setting it all awry—for what? Beer and cigarettes? How much treasure could the emptied cash drawer have possibly held in between the night drops? It would take some doing to balance out this equation.

  Sergeant Mike Monafferi appeared in the doorway.

  "Lieutenant?"

  "I know the deceased, Mike,” Creegan said, which was not strictly true, but he wanted to rationalize his intrusion. “I live less than two miles from here."

  "Whattaya think? Robbery-murder?"

  "Probably.” But he came back to the swastika. “If you don't mind, I'm going to hang around until the investigators get here."

  "There's only one coming from Homicide. Spread pretty thin tonight. Two floaters washed up from the Sound in different spots, and there's that big bloody smash-up on Memorial Parkway."

  Creegan nodded; he'd heard the
radio exchanges, hammer strokes from a dark forge.

  Swastikas: the range brand of madness, which had begun reappearing on the facades of synagogues, Jewish tombstones, and the garage doors of African Americans settling into what had been exclusively white neighborhoods. The crooked marks had been incubating in the playrooms of crackpots. Hadn't Manson carved one into his forehead? A special unit had even been proposed to investigate the rising number of hate-related crimes.

  A third patrol car rolled up, followed shortly by the precinct detectives in an unmarked car. The sergeant went out to them.

  The Crime Scene vans were all over the county, so Evers and a female officer were set to taping off the half-acre lot and bordering sidewalks to keep the gathering tramplers back. A detective began talking to J.J. The other, Ivey Coleman, a guy with a good work ethic, started toward Creegan but was called back by his partner.

  Creegan stayed in the cramped office, continuing to move his eyes methodically across every surface at every level. One of the fluorescents winked and tsked overhead, not helping matters. It was the only sound in the room, although a small portable TV flickered on a side shelf. It was turned down so low that the local news played like a tiny mime show—a quiet, peripheral companion. Maybe Turgot had reduced the volume politely when the killer came in to him. No doubt exterior shots of the station would soon be feeding into the tiny screen, creating a fitful hall of mirrors.

  On the counter, flush with the wall below the window sill, was a small cardboard box filled to the brim with the same type of green pencil that lay upon the body. Frank leaned over and saw that the pencils were presharpened and had been stamped with gold lettering: North Hills Country Club.

  The pencils were obsolete; Peconic County had recently taken over the struggling private course and renamed it High Meadow Golf Club. Crews were already at work on the refurbishment. Apparently, just the one pencil was missing from the box, although several others were displaced into a tiny logjam.

  Past impressions: Turgot rubbing his palms together, then a hand darting out to rearrange some item on the counter, always aligning and making the most of things that fell into his possession—the courtesy pens, promotional calendars, notepads with little logos or tiny letterheads on them, all straightened into a personalized symmetry on the counter, the walls, or the surrounding shelves. Outside, a tall, thirtyish guy with dark hair was crossing the macadam. His overcoat was much more stylish than Frank's. It was the new guy in Lieutenant Stout's crew, Joe Vecchio.

  The son-in-law of a state assemblyman and a law-school graduate, Vecchio was getting a shot at the most prestigious unit in the county. It wasn't the first time Frank had seen one of these preordained climbs up the ladder of influence. Yet, Homicide assignments had never been indiscriminate plums; curried or not, investigators had to demonstrate a proven combination of persistence and intelligence to be considered for that crack squad.

  Vecchio stopped by Monafferi's car. Creegan watched him through the plate glass and was watched in turn as the homicide investigator listened to the others. Vecchio sent Coleman's partner, K. P. Satcher, over to help the uniforms canvass the onlookers and then headed toward the office with Ivey close behind. He stopped in the doorway with no detectable emotion on his square, handsome face."Lieutenant Creegan, headquarters wants you to call the chief of detectives. He's at home.” No self-introduction; no readable tone.

  "I'm not officially here, Detective Vecchio."

  The other nodded tightly but said nothing. What was going on here?

  "All right. In the meantime, I'd like to make a suggestion about the scene.” He made sure he also caught Ivey's eye and ear.

  "Don't worry,” Vecchio said. “I already got the word to defer to you on everything."

  "Excuse me?"

  "The chief wants you to call right away. You can have them patch you through on my radio. This way you can get it straight from the ... source's mouth."

  Vecchio had parked right behind Frank. Chief Dewey picked up after one ring. The long and the short of it was that Frank's old friend wanted him to babysit Vecchio until he could break loose an experienced secondary from the rest of hell night.

  Creegan made believe he had a choice.

  "Okay,” he said, “but if I start this, I want to be in on the finish."

  "Suit yourself, Frank. Just make sure this Vecchio kid don't screw the pooch."

  Creegan hung up the handset. Then he deliberately checked the interior of Vecchio's car.

  Homicide investigators were assigned specific vehicles whose interiors were usually good indicators of their drivers’ habits. This one did not look or smell like a fast-food eatery. Nor was it littered with odds and ends of paperwork.

  A polyethylene file box sat square in the middle of the rear seat, and a fat binder in county colors occupied the passenger seat. The official plastic dividers were outnumbered by paper flaps that stuck out like a rawhide fringe. He flipped it open to the title page and read by reflected light: “Forensics and the Modern Investigator—A Seminar in Advanced Scene Analysis."

  Crime Scene pulled up as he emerged from the car. Creegan asked one of the techs to push the tape line out beyond the corner booth the cyclist had used for his 911 call.

  "I don't think anyone's used the phone since we got here,” Frank said. “I want to keep it that way, and we need to get the tramplers back farther, but not so far they don't feel talkative. I'll have Monafferi block off Drowned Meadow Avenue."

  The tech had worked scenes with Creegan before and just nodded. Like everybody else, though, he was trying to figure out what the hell an off-duty shift commander was doing at a felony murder scene.

  A responder from the volunteer firehouse sped past on 29A, heading west; an EMT vehicle and a pumper were not far behind, flashing by with operatic wails and big, blasting honks, gravitating to their own scene of misrule.

  Vecchio was out of sight as Creegan strode back to the office; but from Ivey's hovering posture, Frank could tell the murder investigator was down taking a look behind the counter.

  Vecchio rose up to his full height just as Frank reached the open door.

  "What do you think?” Creegan asked. “What's your first impression?"

  The other's brow drew down slightly. He said, “Not everybody trusts first impressions.” Did he think he was being tested?

  "I know, but it's a way to start brainstorming."

  "Well, it looks like a robbery gone bad. What was that suggestion you were going to make before you went out for your call?"

  Creegan positioned himself in front of the counter.

  "Here's the way part of this feels,” he said. “Either the shooter or somebody with him reached over real quick and fumbled out a pencil from that box there. He scribbled this little swastika right-handed on the blotter, real fast and sloppy, standing on this side, and then he flung the pencil towards the body, which was already on the floor. See it there on his leg? Maybe not the shooter, but an accomplice who watched his friend pull the trigger and grab the cash and decided on impulse that he had to do his bit."

  Vecchio listened intently. “Okay,” he said. “We can probably eliminate our bike rider from doing any impulsive drawing. He acted out his every move for Evers. He came in to ask the victim to hook on the air hose so he could pump up a soft tire and as soon as he saw the body he backed out, hands up in front of him like this, and ran for the phone booth."

  They looked out into the lot, which was fairly well lighted. Monafferi was still working on J.J., but he seemed exasperated. J.J.'s body stooped in an absent, almost meditative posture. Where's he looking? Frank wondered. Somewhere off to the right where a wooded lot abutted the macadam.

  "That drawing,” Vecchio resumed. “That could have been done anytime after they pulled off last month's sheet. And why couldn't your friend here have had the pencil in his hand when he got shot?"

  "We're theorizing. He was a lefty, though, and he only used pens. He would hand a pen to anyone who was signi
ng a charge slip—can't use pencil for that—and when he wrote a note he always pulled a pen out of his top pocket—usually an insurance company or tree-trimmer's promotional thing. See there?"

  He pointed at the clicker end of a yellow-and-white ballpoint protruding from the pocket in between the bullet wounds. A kind of guilt about this easy summoning of Turgot's mannerisms chafed the edges of his thought process. He pushed through it.

  Vecchio grasped Creegan's familiarity with the victim, but he seemed to have trouble with Frank's intuitive leaps. What could he say, though, to someone who had methodically cleared nearly every homicide he had handled before moving up to command? Frank sympathized.

  "If it had been in his hand,” he said, “I think it would have ended up on the floor, maybe off to his left where his southpaw is stretched out. I know that's in no way conclusive, but I'm sure he wasn't using a pencil."

  He looked over at the box. “That's a fresh supply of pencils. Let's find out how and when they got here. I think it'll help our odds if we get the techs to work hard on the pencil and the box. They'll be all over the blotter and the counter, but I'm hoping the pencils will give us a pristine chronology."

  "But this probably started as a robbery, right?"

  "Well, the killer or killers probably took the money. Turgot's pockets don't look tampered with, but they may have been emptied out, too. We'll see if his wallet's gone when we move him. But whether that was the prime motive, I don't know. That little Nazi logo there makes me think twice."

  "Someone in the shop probably would have erased it or scratched it out if it was made earlier,” Vecchio conceded.

  "Good point."

  Vecchio's eyes went out to those questioning the score or so of neighbors who'd walked over from nearby homes.

  "I told them to start knocking on doors after they get through with the crowd. Are you going to stay with us while we collect evidence?"

  "Yeah, sure; I'll be back in a minute. You stay with it. Ivey here is good with scene work."

  As he hit the outer air, Frank let out a breath and saw it vaporize in the deepening chill. He relieved Monafferi of J.J. and stood side by side with the latter, trying to get in synch with his field of vision. The faraway gaze was aimed toward underbrush with a dark backdrop of adult maples and some pines. Creegan looked harder and saw a void about a jeep's width near the back corner of the parking area. Fire trail?