The Best American Mystery Stories 2017

by John Sandford

  I start to laugh, and she says how glad she is to have met me, how “inspiring and wonderful” my attitude is. I wish I could tell her I’m just laughing about grammar, and Alice in Wonderland, and the particular rabbit hole I’ve fallen into. Which for the last hour hasn’t been so bad. Then I hear him.

  He’s behind me, talking. “So many visitors,” he says. “How wonderful it is to see the families gathered around.” Sheila is already turning away. If I could only just reach out. Sometimes I can, sometimes a bit of control comes back to force an arm, a hand to function, to do something. Grab at her arm and pull her back and somehow make her understand she has to turn me around so I can see who he is. See if I can tell who he’s looking at, who he is choosing.

  Liz talking as usual, cigarette in hand, smoke circling around her. Politics, probably. The war. One of her grandsons fled to Canada, and judging by the long hair on the young man sitting by her, the peace sign sewn on his ragged army-surplus jacket, this one might be next. She’s told me she’d go too, if she could.

  Mina smiling, so happy. Her family is around her, so many of them. Oh Mina, I think, don’t be happy, don’t let him see how much they love you, kisses, little presents piled on your lap, the orchid on your shoulder, please don’t let him see.

  Sunday

  A month. He has not come in the night. I have not heard him during the day. Is he gone? Is he dead? All I can do is wait.

  There is a glassed-over inner courtyard. They call it the greenhouse. Shiny leaves, bright flowers. The hospital cat loves it in there. Lies on the tiles, stares at the hummingbirds that fly in through the opened skylights. Ruby and emerald feathers, glinting, just out of reach. I’ll go in there for Mina’s sake, to keep her company, but I have to fight to stay awake in the damp, hot air. A heavily pruned lemon, more bush than tree, fills a corner. Mina leans toward the yellow-centered flowers, her nostrils flaring, faded eyes closed. Jenny moves me close enough to catch the scent on the air, sharp and sweet at the same time. Mina lifts her hands, points her curled knuckles toward a smaller plant.

  She turns to me. “Do you remember this one, Rachel? Of course you do. You never forget anything I tell you.”

  Of course I’m the best student she ever had. Never a wrong answer, after all.

  Softer, pure white flowers, their scent a perfume that makes me think of stars and lost nights.

  Back in Mina’s room, she has Jenny take one of the old lab books off the shelf. “Page forty-three,” she says. “Jasminum sambac, you both knew that, didn’t you? You too, Jenny?” Mina wants to think that what she knows, what she learned, what she did with her hands, will last longer than her, will ripple out into the world like the scent of those flowers.

  I watch as Jenny lifts Mina onto her bed for her nap. Slim arms, young strong back, lifting the old woman curled back into herself like the petals in a bud. Jenny’s movements are easy, she’s sure of herself, comfortable now in what she does. She pulls the green covers over Mina’s shoulders. The other bed is empty.

  “Would you like to go outside?” she asks me. I close my eyes for the length of a breath. It’s become our signal for yes.

  The outer courtyard is different. But not different enough. Enclosed on three sides, it opens out toward the east, toward planted cypress trees dark against the yellow-gray hills. I blink twice, three times, quickly. No.

  “All right,” she says, and wheels me around the building to a narrow walkway on the other side. “Here?”

  I close my eyes, open them slowly. Then open my mouth and breathe. We are at a place between pine trees that opens to the west, to the wide gray ocean and the cold wind. There is salt on the air. I’ll taste it on my lips when I’m taken back inside.

  There is a rough stump. Jenny sits down on it. We’re the same height now.

  The worn edge of the letter sticks out of her tunic pocket. She pulls the envelope out now, I see the FREE written in the corner where a stamp would go if the sender wasn’t a soldier on the other side of the Pacific.

  “He doesn’t tell me much.” She chews on her lip. “Trying not to worry me.” Her hands clench shut, crushing the letter. I try so hard to reach out, to pat her arm. Two fingers move.

  “When Brian comes back, he’ll go on his dad’s fishing boat full time. He does write about that. Plans. Where we’ll live. He says he’s glad he’s in the infantry, not on one of the river gunboats, even though that’d be safer. Says he doesn’t want to be on a boat hunting people.” Her head is bent, not looking down the hill to the harbor. Not looking at me. I try again and my right hand moves, slow, so slow.

  Sunday

  Eight days. I can’t call it getting better, but it’s something. We think it is the cold. That it helps, a little, even if unreliably. She brings in ice packs. Only my right hand ever moves, but oh God, to see that. To choose.

  Blue with cold, lifting my hand away from the plastic bag beaded with water. Drops hang from my palm.

  I wanted to surprise Sam and Maggie this morning, imagined the look on their faces, but they didn’t come. It was a different Sunday, the last time they came.

  Sometimes they don’t come, for weeks, or months. Then they do. Then they’re gone again. And if I could wish myself dead I would.

  Monday

  The charge nurse (not Mel, who is on vacation; Mel would have listened) stands on one side of my bed, speaks over me to Jenny, saying the degree of movement is insignificant, an expected transient effect in secondary progressive MS. No reason to call the family. Orders her to stop the cold packs, cites the possibility of spasms and tissue damage. Jenny looks at me and I blink No.

  Tuesday

  The darkness changes, thickens. He is here.

  He says how he’s missed these talks, says so ill, says incompetence, says frustration, says plans in place now, still weak, needs someone won’t struggle, says choice made.

  Says Mina.

  He does not need to touch me to make me stop breathing.

  When Jenny comes in to wake us, leans close to slide me up, my hand becomes a claw catching on her breast pocket, where her pen is.

  “Rachel?” she asks.

  The pen is in my hand.

  I don’t let go.

  “You can’t write, Rachel.”

  No.

  She looks at me, both of us thinking.

  One of us screaming, I don’t know how long how much time.

  She gently loosens my fingers. It doesn’t hurt.

  She makes a grid on the back of her notepad. Shows me.

  Six letters across: a b c d e f

  Four rows. Two letters left over for the fifth row. Her pen moves across them. I blink. Her pen stops.

  mina in

  She thinks I’m repeating, stuttering. She shakes her head.

  danger

  Talking now: “What?”

  I close my eyes Yes, again Yes.

  not crazy

  Her pen stops. “I don’t understand.”

  man patient comes at night tells me

  “Tells you what?”

  that he is killing us

  “Who?”

  It takes too long. She has to leave, to care for her other patients. She doesn’t believe me.

  But when her shift is over, she comes back.

  “I can’t tell them what you said. You haven’t seen anything. You don’t know who he is. They’ll think you’re crazy, we’re both crazy. They’ll fire me. They’ll sedate you. Mel won’t want to, but they’ll make her.”

  No no.

  “How soon?”

  I start to cry. I can no longer form even the shadows of words.

  “If he can’t hurt”—she can’t say what he really does—“Mina, will he go right to someone else?”

  I don’t think so.

  An hour later they’re moving me into Mina’s room. Jenny convinced them by pointing out how I wasn’t sleeping at all. She said it was Noni thrashing around, yelling in her sleep, cursing when she was awake. The effects true
(dark circles under my eyes, tremors), the cause true enough, even though it’s not the reason.

  “I’m so glad you’re here, Rachel,” Mina tells me. “I’ve been afraid they’d move in someone noisy.” She winks at me. “Promise me you’ll be nice and quiet.”

  I grin at her, forgetting for a moment.

  She carefully pushes one of her flower vases closer to my side of the little table between our beds. “Jasmine. You remember. Don’t let on that Liz is picking it from the garden for me.”

  Jenny goes out to the nurses’ station to tell them she’ll wait until I fall asleep. They won’t object, glad of the extra help. She comes back, curls up in the armchair, pulls a blanket over her. Mina’s asleep. I stare through the bed’s side bars at the dark shape of the door. The night-shift aides make their rounds, skipping us, because of Jenny. Then everything quiets down out in the hallways, and in the room.

  I wake up when the door opens, hissing softly across the floor. Then he leans back against it, pushing it most of the way closed. He stops when he sees my wheelchair. He’ll know it’s mine. Can he tell my eyes are open? Can he tell I’m awake? He has to, my breathing is so loud, frantic. Jenny must be waiting for him to do something. He leans over Mina. “Oh, my dear,” he whispers. “How perfect this is.” Is he talking to me? To Mina? Why isn’t Jenny doing anything? My hand is on the cold metal of the bed rail, and I reach past it, shaking, slow, slow as in nightmares. His hands are sliding the pillow out from under her head. I scream at muscles, tendons, nerves, this one time, this one last time, to move, to hold themselves in the air, how can they not hear? He is pushing down on her now, back and elbows stiff. I see the shadow of her small body jerk once, twice. And my hand spasms, knocks one vase against another, glass shattering, and at the noise Jenny flies out of the chair. Before he can turn her arms are around him, and she drags him to the floor. I think I hear his bones break when he falls. I hope I can, over Mina’s gasps and cries.

  Wednesday

  They come in and talk to me. They tell me he’s gone. They’ve taken him away.

  I’m still here.

  JEFFERY DEAVER

  The Incident of 10 November

  FROM In Sunlight or in Shadow

  Edward Hopper, Hotel by a Railroad, 1952

  December 2, 1954

  General Mikhail Tasarich, First Deputy Chairman of the Council of Ministers of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics

  Kremlin Senate, Moscow

  Comrade General Tasarich:

  I, Colonel Mikhail Sergeyevich Sidorov, of recent attached to the GRU, Directorate for Military Intelligence, am writing this report regarding the incident of 10 November, of this year, and the death associated therewith.

  First, allow me to offer some information about myself. I will say that in my forty-eight years on this earth I have spent thirty-two of them as a soldier in the service of Our Mother-Homeland. And those have been proud years, years that I would not exchange for any sum. During the Great Patriotic War, I fought in the 62nd Army, 13th Guards Rifle Division (our motto, as you, Comrade, may recall, is “Not One Step Back!” And o, how we stayed true to that slogan!). I was privileged to serve under General Vasily Chuikov at Stalingrad, where you, of course, commanded the army that, during the glorious Operation Uranus, crushed the Romanian flank and encircled the German 6th Army (which merely months later surrendered, setting the stage for Our Mother-Homeland’s victory over the Nazi Reich). I myself was wounded several times in the butchery that was the defense of Stalingrad but continued to fight, despite the wounds and hardships. For my efforts I received the Order of Bogdan Khmelnitsky, 3rd Class, and the Order of Glory, 2nd Class. And of course my unit, as yours, Comrade General, was honored with the Order of Lenin.

  After the War I remained in the military and joined the GRU, since I had, I was told, a knack for the subject of intelligence, having identified and denounced a number of soldiers whose loyalty to the army and to Revolutionary ideals was questionable. Everyone I denounced admitted their crime or was found guilty by tribunals and either executed or sent east. Few GRU officers had such a rec­ord as I.

  I ran several networks of spies, which were successful in halting Western attempts to infiltrate Our Mother-Homeland, and I was promoted through the GRU to my recent rank of colonel.

  In March of 1951 I was given the assignment of protecting a certain individual who was deemed instrumental in Our Mother-Homeland’s plans for self-defense against the imperialism of the West.

  The man I am referring to was a former German scientist, Heinrich Dieter, then aged forty-seven.

  Comrade Dieter was born in Obernessa, Weissenfels, the son of a professor of mathematics. His mother was a teacher of science at a boarding school near her husband’s university. Comrade Dieter had one brother, his junior by three years. Comrade Dieter studied physics at the Martin Luther University of Halle-Wittenberg, which awarded him a bachelor’s of science degree, and he received a master’s of science in physics from Leopold Franzens University of Innsbruck. He completed his doctorate work in physics shortly thereafter at the University of Berlin. He specialized in column ionization of alpha particles. No, Comrade General, I too was not familiar with this esoteric subject, but as you will see in a moment, his discipline of study was to have quite some significant consequences.

  While in school he joined the student branch of the Social Democratic Party of Germany (SPD) and the Reichsbanner Schwarz-Rot-Gold, which served as the party’s paramilitary wing. But he quit these organizations after a time, as he showed little interest in politics, preferring to spend the hours in the classroom or laboratory. He was, it is asserted, part Jew, and accordingly could not join the Nazi Party. However, since he appeared apolitical and did not openly practice his religion, he was permitted to maintain his teaching and research posts. That leniency on the part of the Nazis could also be attributed to his brilliance; Albert Einstein himself said of Comrade Dieter that he had a formidable mind and was, rare among scientists, a man who could appreciate both the theoretical and the applicable aspects of physics.

  When the Dieter family observed that people like themselves—intellectuals of Jewish heritage—would be at risk in Germany, they made plans to emigrate. Dieter’s parents and brother (and his family) successfully traveled from Berlin to England and from there to America, but Comrade Dieter, delayed in finishing a research project, was stopped on the eve of his departure by the Gestapo, based on a professor’s recommendation that he be pressed into service to assist in the war effort. Owing to his research (concerning the aforementioned “alpha particles”), Comrade Dieter was assigned to assist with the development of the most significant weapon of our century: the atomic bomb.

  He was part of the second Uranverein, the Nazi uranium project, jointly run by the HWA, the Army Ordnance Office, and RFR, the Reich Research Council of the Ministry of Education. His contributions were significant, though he did not advance far in rank or salary owing to his Jewish background.

  Following Our Mother-Homeland’s victory over the Nazis in the Great Patriotic War, Comrade Dieter was identified as one of the Uranverein scientists by our NKVD’s Alsos Project officers in Germany. After fruitful discussions with the security officers, Comrade Dieter volunteered to come to the Soviet Union and continue his research into atomic weapons—now for the benefit of Our Mother-Homeland. He stated that he considered it an honor to assist in protecting against the West’s aggression and their attempts to spread the poisonous hegemony of capitalism and decadence throughout Europe, Asia, and the world.

  Comrade Dieter was transported immediately to Russia and underwent a period of reeducation and indoctrination. He became a member of the Communist Party, learned to speak Russian, and was helped to understand the lessons of the Revolution and the value of the Proletariat. He fervently embraced Our Mother-Homeland’s culture and people. Once this period of transition was completed he was assigned work at the All-Union Scientific Research Institute of Experimental Physics
at the premier Atomograd in the nation: the closed city of Arzamas-16. It was to here that I was sent and assigned the job of protecting him.

  I spent much time with Comrade Dieter and can report that he took to his work immediately, and his contributions were many, including assisting in the preparation of Our Mother-Homeland’s first hydrogen bomb, detonated last August, you may recall, Comrade General. That test, the RDS-6, was a device of 400 kilotons. Comrade Dieter’s team had recently been working to create a fissile device in the megaton range, as the Americans have done (though it is well known that their weapons are in all ways inferior to ours).

  Like most such extranational scientists vital to our national defense, Comrade Dieter was closely watched. One of my duties was to take measure of his personal loyalty to Our Mother-Homeland and report on same to all relevant ministries. My scrupulous observations convinced me of his devotion to our cause and that his loyalty was beyond reproach.

  For instance, he was, as I mention, part Jew. Now, he knew that I had denounced certain men and women in Arzamas-16 for subversive and counterrevolutionary speech and activity; every one of those happened to be, by purest coincidence, a Jew. I inquired of Comrade Dieter if he was troubled by my actions and he assured me that no, he would have done the same had anyone, friends or family, Jew or gentile, displayed even a whisper of anti-Revolutionary leaning. To prove that I harbored no ill will against the Children of David, I explained that one of my former assignments was identifying Jews as part of the ongoing Central Committee’s program to resettle his people in the newly formed State of Israel as expeditiously as possible. He expressed to me his pleasure at learning this fact.