Miami Noir

by Les Standiford

  “My apologies,” Mackenzie said. “Now.” He shuffled the papers on his desk again. “Let’s try to get back on track.”

  “I mean this respectfully, Dr. Mackenzie, but I don’t think now’s the right time for this conversation. You’re very upset.” Vernon tried to keep his voice upbeat and confident.

  Mackenzie shook his head. “He’s gone. I don’t think there’s anything else we can do.”

  “I could—let me ask some questions.” Vernon nodded. “I’d really like to help.”

  Vernon was so distracted by thoughts of exactly what questions he was going to ask that he almost bumped into a student at the department’s exit.

  “Excuse me,” Vernon said.

  “Are you Dr. Mackenzie?” the boy asked. When Vernon straightened out his identity, the guy introduced himself: “I’m Detective Sheldon. Assigned to the Green case.” A brassy flash of badge from a brown leather wallet. “I’d like to ask you a few questions.”

  “So you would say that you and Dr. Green had disagreements?” Sheldon asked.

  “Well, I, uh, pretty much hated him, actually,” Vernon said.

  The two stood together in the shade of the Australian pines, near the flattened and litter-strewn park that had hosted the powwow. Long sagging filaments of yellow tape bounded an irregular square where Eustace’s body had been found that morning by a Guatemalan groundskeeper.

  “Hated him?” Sheldon squinted. “Why?”

  “We had a disagreement about some research. He took a lot of collaborative material and published it under his own name. Then he slept with my wife. Does that about sum it up?”

  “Your wife, huh? Listen, you saw him last night.” Sheldon pointed to the flattened patch of grass with his chin. “Did he seem depressed to you? Any irrational behavior, that kind of thing?”

  “He was acting rather cranky,” Vernon said. “And he drank a lot last night.” As he said it he wondered if the ghost of last night’s beers lingered on his own breath.

  Sheldon nodded, hands behind his back. He wasn’t even writing anything down.

  Vernon waited a long moment. “So, what do you think happened?”

  Sheldon rubbed his chin. Vernon noticed a small cut from the morning’s hasty shaving. “He came down here because he didn’t like his job up north. Acted cranky. Had a fight with a former colleague,” a nod to Vernon, “in public. Spent the evening drinking cheap beer.” Sheldon walked toward the police tape and Vernon followed. “Wandered out here, saw the futility of his life.” Sheldon turned to Vernon and lowered his voice. “You’d be surprised how many people kill themselves on moonless nights. I don’t know what it is, something about the stars. The immensity of the universe.”

  “He killed himself?”

  “Without a doubt,” Sheldon said.

  Vernon shook his head at the absurdity of the scene—two men in full suits sweating in the subtropical sun. And the world atlatl champion impaling himself on one of his own darts.

  “I want to help you, detective. When you recover the tip of the dart, the stone point, bring it to me. An expert can look at it and tell you who the craftsman was.”

  Sheldon nodded. “I’ll make a note of it,” he said. But he didn’t. “How exactly do these things work, anyway?”

  Vernon arranged to meet Sheldon that evening for an atlatl demonstration—enough time for Sheldon to get the stone point from the pathologist. Maybe enough time for Vernon to figure out a plausible theory for what happened to Eustace Green. Sheldon didn’t seem to be working on one.

  Vernon sat at the plastic table in his underwear, surrounded by charts of the crime scene he’d drawn. His motel room smelled vaguely of mildew and sweat. Thin blades of burning sunlight pierced the drawn curtain and illuminated the unmade bed, the rumpled clothing, the pages he pored

  Several hours after their morning meeting, Sheldon had knocked on the door and showed him an onyx point in a plastic bag.

  Vernon examined it, rubbed the stone through the thin plastic. “That is definitely Eustace’s work,” he said. “He liked to serrate the edges of his stone points like that. Don’t know why, it’s really tough to do.”

  Sheldon nodded. “That’s what Dr. Mackenzie says. Do you think somebody could take one of these darts and just,” he mimed an overhand toss, “throw it?”

  Vernon shook his head. “Not enough mass. It’d be like hitting someone with a wadded-up piece of paper covering a pebble—nothing but a nasty cut. You really need an atlatl to throw it with enough force to hurt anything.”

  Sheldon gave a brief shrug, barely more than a hitch of his shoulders.

  “You still think it’s suicide?” Vernon said.

  Sheldon crossed his arms. “For a minute there I was starting to think you did it.”

  Vernon’s heart stopped.

  Sheldon said, “But you couldn’t kill him with his own dart. Mackenzie said he treated his tools like they were his children.”

  Vernon nodded.

  “The other competitors couldn’t. It’s just Oscar’s Razor—he must’ve killed himself. But why not use his flint knife, cut his wrists? He still had it on him when we found the body.”

  “And he had a gun somewhere, right?” Vernon asked

  “A Charter Arms Undercover,” Sheldon said. “Loaded. How’d you know that?”

  “He waved it at me once, when he came to pick up my wife’s clothes. But stabbing himself with a dart?” Vernon shook his head. “You’d have to be an anatomist to get that right. Who would take that chance? He could’ve just lay there bleeding.”

  Sheldon held up the stone point again. “Look at this thing. Three inches long, sharp as broken glass. The pathologist cut himself on it. It’s more than enough to kill someone.” He tucked the arrowhead into his breast pocket. “Anyway, according to the blood tests, he was seriously drunk. Alcohol thins the blood, you know. He wouldn’t have just laid there bleeding for long.”

  Vernon had watched Green consume at least a dozen cans of beer and pitch the empties into the bonfire. “I’m sorry, but that just doesn’t make any sense. He had women all around him, he’d just won the contest, coming to Florida for a new job—then he kills himself in suicidal despair? I mean, despite the moonless night…”

  “There’s something else you need to understand, doc,” Sheldon said. He hitched his jacket back with one hand and Vernon caught a glimpse of the holster on his belt. “This isn’t exactly the crime of the century. You read the paper? Two nights ago a guy tried to rob a Burger King, shot three people. Still at large. Understand, doc? We’ve got to prioritize.”

  “You can’t just close the case because you’re busy,” Vernon said.

  “Be realistic. A guy from out of town gets drunk and depressed and kills himself. People do stupid things all the time, even when they’re not playing cowboys and Indians. A closed case is a good case.”

  But there are no closed cases in archaeology. How tidy detective work must be, with its filing cabinets full of closed cases. Vernon felt a momentary pang of jealousy.

  “Give me till 6 o’clock to come up with something. We’re still on for 6, right?” Vernon asked.

  Sheldon held out his hands, palms up. “What’s the point?”

  “If Mackenzie sees me demonstrating the atlatl to you, it might put his mind at ease,” Vernon said. “He’ll be there too.”

  After a moment, Sheldon nodded. “All right. But keep it quick.”

  Only a few wisps of hay clinging to the grass indicated there’d ever been a target range here. Vernon found a scrap of the bright police tape. He found a suitable branch and forced it into the ground, took the wooden clothes hanger from the hotel and arranged his suit coat into a makeshift scarecrow. He examined his own Nanticoke atlatl and two four-foot darts, one aluminum and one of fine-grained ash.

  He stood about where Eustace Green had, his back to the targets, and waited for Mackenzie and Detective Sheldon. Fifty feet away, a shadowed line of cabbage palms and twisted sea grape
had born mute witness to the death. At this range, in daylight, Eustace would’ve been able to knock a squirrel off a branch. But he’d been drunk.

  Vernon walked to where Green’s atlatl had lay. According to Sheldon, drunk, depressed, lonely Green had walked out into perfect nighttime solitude, dropped his spear-thrower here, then walked over here. Turned around. Faced—what? The moonless sky? And then Green had yanked his dart with its glittering obsidian point through his sternum and into his heart, fell backward. Vernon sprawled on the grass, acting out the scene. His arms instinctively spread. But Green’s hands had been on the dart’s shaft. Was he trying to press it in further? Or pull it out? The pain must’ve been punishing. Everything he deserved. How long had he lived? Four minutes until brain death, his heart trying to beat around the black razor edges while he attempted to tug the barbs of the dart from his sternum.

  “You’ll catch cold, rolling on the ground like that,” Sheldon said from the shadows.

  Vernon jumped, even though he’d been expecting him. He managed to modulate his scream into a mere howl of greeting.

  “Yeeargh yourself,” Sheldon said. “What’d you want to show me?”

  “Dr. Lemaistre? Is that you?” a voice called.

  Mackenzie emerged from the brush and walked over. Gloom had settled into the clearing much faster than Vernon anticipated.

  Sheldon sighed and tried to read his watch. “Let’s get this over with,” he said.

  Vernon said to the detective, “Eustace lay about here. His atlatl wasn’t beside him—where was it?”

  “Great props, by the way.” Sheldon walked to a patch of ground forty feet from the scarecrow and pointed with his sneaker. “Here. We have pictures of it all.”

  “Right,” Vernon said. “You ever wonder why he threw his atlatl twenty feet away before he killed himself?”

  Sheldon shrugged. “Suicides do weird things. Once I saw a guy who took all his clothes off, even his shoes, folded them up and left them on the beach. He waded out into the ocean and shot himself in the head.”

  Vernon held up his atlatl. “Ever seen anybody use one of these, detective?”

  Sheldon shook his head and stuck his hands in his pockets.

  “It’s not like a gun. You can’t turn it on yourself.” Vernon set the aluminum dart on the atlatl’s hook. “It’s like a bow and arrow—it shoots the dart away from you. Watch close.” He reared his arm straight back and brought it down hard as he could, and the dart snapped forward and disappeared into the gathering shadows. The pulled muscle in his shoulder throbbed.

  Sheldon whistled.

  Mackenzie said, “Stone Age man used it to bring down mammoths. Cave bears. Sabre-toothed cats—all the mega fauna. Wiped it out ten thousand years ago.”

  “Mammoths, huh?”

  “When Cortez invaded the Aztec empire, their warriors still used atlatls,” Mackenzie said.

  Vernon added, “Their darts went right through the Spanish armor. They could shoot farther and straighter than a musket.” He glanced at Mackenzie, who was just another unreadable silhouette.

  “This is a fascinating lecture, docs, but can we speed it up a little? I have work to do.”

  Vernon resisted the urge to roll his eyes. He offered Sheldon the atlatl and the wooden dart. “Here, you try it.”

  After a moment’s hesitation, Sheldon walked over and took the weapon.

  While Sheldon fiddled with the two pieces of wood, Vernon said, “Two steps back. Right there.” He pointed to his suit-jacket scarecrow. “Eustace was standing right about there.”

  “I don’t see your point,” Sheldon said.

  “Ah,” Mackenzie said. That single syllable full of understanding and remorse.

  Vernon waved Mackenzie back, behind Sheldon. “Throw the dart.”

  Sheldon swung the atlatl back and faced the scarecrow.

  “No,” Vernon said. He pointed. “Aim down there. Where the targets were, remember? Nothing but trees.”

  Vernon watched the detective peer into the shadows, then give a little shrug. He cocked his arm and swung forward and down.

  The dart flipped off to the left. The three men watched it pierce the suit-jacket without even slowing down and plow into the ground some forty feet beyond.

  “I’ll be goddamned,” Sheldon said. He let the atlatl fall from his hand.

  Vernon couldn’t have asked for a better demonstration. “See what you just did?”

  Sheldon looked around, his eyes wide. “But I was aiming…” he said, then noticed the atlatl at his feet. His mouth hung open.

  “The same thing happened to me first time I shot one,” Mackenzie said. “Put a dart right through a steel garbage can. What a waste. What a terrible waste.”

  Sheldon stared at the dart’s path. Maybe he was envisioning Green transfixed, the look of surprise on his face, the backward fall.

  “I think that happens because the dart’s not settled just right on the hook,” Vernon said. “The idea of the atlatl’s easy, but actually getting the dart to go where you want, that’s hard.”

  “I’ll be goddamned,” Sheldon said again.

  “Mackenzie and I both saw him with women last night. And what would groupies of the atlatl world champion want more than anything? A quick lesson.”

  Sheldon nodded, but his eyes were still on the scarecrow. “Sure. A quick lesson.”

  Vernon walked over to Sheldon’s side. “She stood here, with his atlatl. Had no idea what she was doing. Aiming downrange, toward the target. He stood right over there,” Vernon nodded at the jacket, “probably rooted her on.”

  “He just wasn’t far enough out of the way,” Mackenzie said.

  Sheldon turned to them. “But she hit him square in the heart.”

  Vernon shrugged. “Luck. You’d have to be a doctor to be able to do that on purpose.” He knelt and touched the fallen atlatl. “Then she dropped the evidence, just like you did.” There must’ve been no sound at all except Green’s body hitting the ground. “Then she ran.”

  “God, it was all just an accident,” Mackenzie whispered. Then he cleared his throat. “We still have the list of registrants.” He put a hand on Sheldon’s shoulder. “You could track them down, right?”

  “No fingerprints—the handle was wrapped with leather. But we can check the list,” Sheldon said.

  Vernon looked at the young detective. You aren’t going to check anything, he thought, because a closed case is a good case.

  Vernon walked behind the scarecrow and plucked the dart out of the ground. Rolled it between his fingers to insure it was still straight.

  “Thanks for the demonstration, Dr. Lemaistre,” the detective said, but he didn’t sound like he meant it. Sheldon stuck his hands in his pockets and slouched, as if in thought. “I better go check on that list.” After a moment, he turned and plodded away through the dark.

  Mackenzie walked over and rested a heavy hand on his shoulder. “Hard to believe it was just a ridiculous accident. Eustace deserved better than that.” He cleared his throat. “Good work, Vernon,” he said. “Come to my office tomorrow morning. We’ll finish up that interview.” He shook his head. “Such a waste.”

  Alone in the clearing, Vernon stared east at the acrylic lights of Miami Beach blazing on the horizon. He hadn’t deliberately planned anything. He’d taken Eustace’s onyx point and set it into one of his own darts, for good luck, he thought. Nothing but luck put Eustace on the range when Vernon had been trying for one more bull’s-eye, despite the dark, despite the beer. He wasn’t sure if he’d aimed or not.

  Vernon tapped his atlatl against his palm. Eustace hadn’t even heard it coming. The dart hit him, he fell down and died without even knowing what happened. Vernon was right, though—the banner stone really did quiet the throw. Technology had reached forward from the Stone Age to silence Eustace Green.

  Vernon pulled his coat off the makeshift scarecrow and stuck his finger through the hole in the cloth. He’d need to get that mended. He walked
downrange, into the trees. His first dart should be here somewhere and he didn’t like the idea of leaving it out overnight.

  No witnesses, a dead man already rotting on a mortician’s table. A detective who was happy to forget anything had happened. A new boss, a new job. A new life. Vernon searched the trees for his dart until he heard something moving through the underbrush. He backed away, into the clearing. Maybe he’d come back in the morning and look for the dart. Or maybe he’d just leave it, stuck in a tree, until the aluminum shaft eventually oxidized. That might take a hundred years. The stone point, he knew, would outlast him. Would outlast even his bones.

  SAWYERS

  BY KEVIN ALLEN

  Perrine

  The boy, Speck, and his father, the sawyer, were wrestling a log onto the sawmill carriage and didn’t see the two strangers when they first appeared at the edge of the clearing. Nor had they heard them calling because of the thumping engine of the Fordson tractor that powered the mill and its screaming saw blade. The boy looked up through the swirling sawdust to idly scan the yard and down the dirt road, and that’s when he saw the man and girl.

  “Look there,” he said.

  The two strangers stood at the head of the log wagon path that led to the road to Perrine, eight miles to the east. The young girl, carrying a suitcase strapped up with a piece of baling twine, stood alongside a much older man with a canvas bag like a sailor’s duffel slung over his shoulder. Both were chalked with dust. The man was lean, sharp-boned, dark, and bristled with a growth of whiskers. The girl was rounder, but a bit frail too, her brown hair tied up under a man’s brimmed hat, in spite of which her nose and cheeks were red and freckled from the sun. She wore a shapeless dress that came down below her knees but clung to her body under her arms and along her chest where she was wet with sweat.

  John Talley beat the sawdust from his bib overalls with a stained handkerchief, pointed to the tractor, and told his son, “Cut that off.” He wiped his hands, sizing up the two, and left a trail in the sawdust and wood scraps as he shuffled across the mill yard toward the strangers. His big voice echoed from the board sides of the two box-house shacks and the slash pine beyond them. He said, “If you folks’re lost, then you done a good job of it.”