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Copyright ©2008 by Dell Magazines
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Cover by Joel Spector
CONTENTS
Department: EDITOR'S NOTES: NOW THE NOVELLA by Linda Landrigan
Fiction: SMART PIGS AND SOUR GAS by Elaine Menge
Fiction: THE OPPOSITE OF O by Martin Limon
Department: REEL CRIME by J. Rentilly
Fiction: TOM WASP AND THE TOWER OF LONDON by Amy Myers
Fiction: LAW AND ORDER by Jas. R. Petrin
Fiction: PANDORA'S DEMON by Gilbert M. Stack
Department: BOOKED & PRINTED by Robert C. Hahn
Department: THE MYSTERIOUS CIPHER by Willie Rose
Fiction: A PRIVATE BATTLE by Marianne Wilski Strong
Fiction: THE TREASURE HUNTER by Brendan DuBois
Fiction: CODE BLACK by John H. Dirckx
Fiction: MIND GAME by Ben Rehder
Fiction: MURDER IN THE HOLD by Joan Druett
Fiction: CLAUSTROPHOBE by Terry Black
Department: SOLUTION TO THE MYSTERIOUS CIPHER
Black Orchid Novella Award Winner: HORSE PIT by John David Betancourt
Department: THE LINEUP
Department: COMING IN SEPTEMBER 2008
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Department: EDITOR'S NOTES: NOW THE NOVELLA by Linda Landrigan
Our annual July/August double issue allows us to bring you not only more stories but also a selection of those longer stories known as novellas—perfect for the lazy days of summer (does anyone still have those?). Longer than a short story, shorter than a novel, the novella offers its own peculiar rewards and challenges, and it was a favorite form of the great Rex Stout. Last year, AHMM teamed up with the Wolfe Pack, the official Rex Stout/Nero Wolfe fan club, to honor this challenging form with the Black Orchid Novella Award. The first BONA winner appears in this issue: Congratulations to John Gregory Betancourt for taking home the prize with “Horse Pit."
Mr. Betancourt's sleuth, the brilliant but wasted alcoholic Peter “Pit” Gellar, is no stranger to our readers; he first appeared in these pages in “Pit and the Pendulum” in the July/August 2005 issue. Mr. Betancourt is himself a publisher; his Wildside Press publishes mostly fantasy and science fiction, but also mystery and crime novels and the short fiction magazines Weird Tales and H.P. Lovecraft's Magazine of Horror, among others.
When AHMM and the Wolfe Pack launched the Black Orchid Novella Award, our goals were twofold: to celebrate the classic detectives working in the mode of Nero Wolfe, who solved crimes with their wits rather than fists or forensics; and to promote the novella form, of which Stout had been so fond. We were impressed with the variety of novellas that we received and we were heartened to see that the classic detective still inspires writers. Mr. Betancourt's entry stood out for its well-developed plot and for a protagonist that embodies the classic detective ideal while still very much a man of the twenty-first century.
We look forward to the entries in this year's contest.
In the meantime, we welcome two authors to AHMM in this issue. The prolific Amy Myers ("Tom Wasp and the Tower of London") is the author of four different mystery series. Her Victorian chimney sweep also appears in Tom Wasp and the Murdered Stunner (Five Star). Before she began her writing career, Ms. Myers was the director of a London publishing firm.
Texan Ben Rehder ("Mind Game") was a finalist for the 2003 Edgar Award for Best First Novel for Buck Fever, the first of a series featuring a Texas game warden. He recently published a sixth novel in the series, Holy Moly (St. Martin's Minotaur).
Copyright (c) 2008 Linda Landrigan
[Back to Table of Contents]
Fiction: SMART PIGS AND SOUR GAS by Elaine Menge
I remember that Friday in July in great detail, the day I became a murderer. When you've been a law-abiding, good-guy-next-door type all your life, the author of articles on thermodynamics and of only one murder in particular, then the details of the day you kill someone tend to remain vivid. Especially if, like me, you're a mechanical engineer. You could say we're a congenitally detail-oriented breed.
More than anything else, I remember my sweat. I've never sweated so much in my life. Don't ever let anyone tell you high humidity isn't a contributing cause of murder.
I was standing in a cow pasture southwest of Mobile, Alabama, not far from Bayou LaBatre—a swampy swath of land lapped at by the weary waves of Mobile Bay. The ground my steel-toed shoes squished into was like no pasture any farmer in the American heartland would recognize. In some picturesque spots along the Gulf Coast, cows wade in this muck, chew just enough grass to keep alive, enjoy just enough sunny days that dry out their stomping grounds to keep them from developing hoof rot. I'm no vet and don't have a clue as to how those cows, and the few bulls that swagger around that rummy range, survive the malarial conditions. Ninety-eight degree heat, hundred and twenty percent humidity, no shade, and enough mosquitoes to brew a stew so thick you could feed millions.
On the day in question, I kept asking myself, what in the hell am I doing here? Ph.D. in engineering, distinguished teaching career behind me, why was I now standing in a mushy cow pasture, my pale skin sealed with a foul-smelling, carcinogenic bug repellent? Two years earlier I could boast of being chairman of the engineering school of a major New England university.
How to describe a south Alabama day in July? Someone else might think it a mild day hardly worth any weatherman clucking over. For a tenderfoot like me, it was a brain-baker. Not to make excuses.
I'd spent the previous day—six hours of it—in that same boiling hell, and had managed to do so without killing a single soul. That first day, though, my supervisor was safely back in Houston, cooling his large, tough body behind his imposing desk, inside his gigantic office, within our colossal building that boldly scrapes the Lone Star sky. That first day, he wasn't breathing down my neck, and his barking voice was somewhat muted by distance.
My supervisor is Faxon Hall. Can't help thinking that's a made-up name.
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The gas fields around Mobile emit sour gas. Hydrogen sulfide. The stuff is poison.
Plain old natural gas kills if you turn on the gas in your oven and stick your head in. The oxygen in the room is muscled out, and you need oxygen to live.
Sour gas is poisonous to begin with. Let's say you're walking through a sour gas field and there's a pipeline leak nearby. If you aren't wearing a protective mask, depending on the concentration, you can die within minutes.
It's quick. The stuff attacks the central nervous system. Your diaphragm forgets to breathe. Simple.
On account of sour gas, I had to shave my beard. Anyone who works around a sour gas field has to be ready to pull a mask on in a flash, and it's got to seal perfectly against your face. Beards fuzz up the works.
My wife didn't like it when I shaved my neatly clipped beard. The day I buzzed it off, I erased the mustache too. I was sure this shearing would please Greta. She complained about the beard. But she wasn't pleased. I don't have a weak chin, either. She just didn't like the change, seeing more of my wonderfully handsome face. Or maybe she disliked seeing me comply with an order. She does have certain authority issues.
There's no pleasing Greta. She's the one who got me actively seeking a job ou
tside of academe at the late age of forty-five in the first place. “Real engineers,” she volunteered, “make huge salaries.” Why was I ready to accept such paltry remuneration for running an entire university department? Just out of college, even my dumbest students were making more money in a year than I did in five. I should put my name out there, sign up with one of those big petroleum companies.
I didn't want to make the leap, felt nervous about putting my name and brain up for auction in what Greta called the real world. But I was hired right off. Surprising myself most of all, I thrived. I loved working for this oil company, which shall remain nameless. (So many are down on Big Oil lately. That's a debate for another day.)
Anyway, as soon as I let my enthusiasm leak out, Greta walked.
She's an artist, incestuously linked to academia herself. Greta loved the boost in salary, but hated our move to Houston. She also bewailed my loss of position in the academic world. There's a mega-contradiction at her core, I'm afraid. Her likes and dislikes are often one and the same. That I jumped when she whistled for as long as I did says something about me, but whatever condition that hints of, I believe I've outgrown it. Her stiletto heels and the self-assured way she marches into a room, the ultra-confident aura she exudes, no longer attract me.
In the long run, I have liked my loss of Greta. She let me keep the dog. I liked my new job too. Loved it ... until Faxon arrived.
Brad, my first supervisor, was a great guy. I fondly recall the curious arch of his eyebrows, his crooked grin, front teeth overlapping. Brad would show interest in my ideas. If I came up with a good one—unlike Faxon—he didn't try to claim ownership himself. He assigned me a challenging job, designing the facilities for a rig twenty miles off Louisiana's coast.
Just as that project was winding down, Brad transferred to Nigeria, eager for the experience and the higher pay those willing to take overseas assignments earn, I suppose.
Who had to fill the void but Faxon Hall, the most ego-driven blowhard I've met this side of the Ivy League's ivy-strangled walls. A tall guy. Not fat, but big. A big man. He filled up a room when he strode in, drove out all the oxygen.
Faxon took an instant dislike to me. Can't say why. I'm easy-going, not at all one of those obsessive-compulsive anal-retentive types the engineering field is famous for. Maybe I reminded him of someone he hated, possibly one of the little people he'd leapfrogged over on his way up the managerial ladder after first stabbing him in the back. Instead of feeling guilt for being a rat, guys like him transform what should be guilt into disgust for their victims.
Faxon Hall is the kind of guy who will step in front of you in line, and if you make the slightest protest, he ignores you. I've never understood people like him, and feel blessed that I haven't run into many such specimens.
Faxon was from Ohio, but wore belts with big gold buckles and stomped around in pricey peacock-skin boots as if he were a true-blue Texan. From the start, he made fun of my Rockport comfort shoes that are designed to look like dress shoes. They're glorified sneakers, I admit.
Faxon also made fun of my name. I'm a Thomas. Unlike most Thomases in the world, I've never gone by Tom or Tommy. My parents named me Thomas and that's what they wanted me called. For four decades I've had few problems making that understood.
Faxon thought it outlandish that I expected to be called Thomas. When he spoke my name, he'd accent the second syllable. “Tom-ass.” I'd respond by cutting his name to Fax. He'd wrinkle his nose. Clearly, he didn't like his name being clipped, made to sound like a procedure he ordered his secretary to perform daily.
Dear old Fax.
On his first day in our group, he called me into his office. Thumbing through my file, he said, “I see you have a Ph.D. in engineering.” At that, he raised his face to the ceiling and hooted. A raucous, fake-Texan hoot that said, What are you doing here, you hothouse plant? You got no hands-on experience. You're worthless to me, and probably an elitist sissy to boot.
I smiled and nodded at the hoot. My serenity irritated him. He was clearly disappointed that I showed no offense. Whenever he wasn't calling me Tom-ass, he took to calling me Doc. “What's up, Doc?” he'd say. I'd sail a breezy New England, self-satisfied smile back, never letting on how I despised him and his peacock boots.
Come to think of it, Faxon and Greta would have made the perfect couple—a real power couple. I can't help feeling the same about Faxon's wife and me, though you can leave the power part off. How did that creep ever persuade a woman like Kaye to marry him? I suspect the only thing Kaye's been guilty of in her life is one fatal mistake: saying yes to Faxon Hall.
I met her soon after Faxon came on board, since he forced our entire group to attend a getting-to-know-you barbeque at his house, a medium-sized mansion in one of Houston's vulgar northern suburbs. Faxon presided over the grill in lordly fashion, while the real work of this culinary ordeal was borne by Kaye. Something about her reminded me of a vanilla birthday cake I was presented with on the first birthday I can remember. Fresh and sweet and yummy. Blond, she wore a sundress dotted with floral bouquets. The material was old-fashioned, but she made it look bouncy and new.
Kaye greeted one couple after another, full of gracious party smiles. Watching when she thought no one was looking, I saw the words “long-suffering” and “regret” written all over her beautiful face.
We talked no more than fifteen minutes, but it took only one minute for me to like her. Afterwards, I worried I'd said too much. I told her about the offshore facility I was so proud of designing, but let slip that now that the guard had changed, Faxon had put me in charge of—and I supplied a telling pause here—corrosion. I rolled my eyes, showing how little I relished the job. What a comedown. Me—the king of rust. I was heartened when she rolled her eyes in answer, as if we'd agreed on a crucial point.
She said, “Faxon's good at that kind of thing. But don't tell anyone I said so."
"That kind of thing.” Demoting people, she meant. Humiliating them. I'm sure she didn't mean he was good at rust. He didn't know beans about corrosion.
We exchanged another mutual, slit-eyed nod.
Yes, I said to myself. She knows what a snake he is. If I, a complete stranger, have been demoted to seeking out rust, I could easily imagine how far her value might have sunk since their courtship, back when Faxon was all compliments, candy, and flowers. I also grasped why she was still with him. Two of the cutest kids you ever saw—boy and a girl. Messy divorces are bad for children; any divorce from Faxon would be messy. I said a prayer that neither of these innocents would take after Papa.
It was during that party that I explained to Kaye what a smart pig is. As undisputed head of corrosion, I'd been put to the task of learning everything I never wanted to know about smart pigs.
She giggled at the term. She brought her wineglass to her lips and squinched up her pixie nose, as if champagne bubbles were tickling, though the wine was quite flat.
"Not sure why they're called pigs,” I said. “They're fat, cylindrical things, designed to whoosh down the entire length of a pipeline, and they make a squealing noise on the way. A diagnostic tool, sort of like a colonoscopy that tips us off if corrosion's present. There're several types. Smart pigs give the most data. They're packed with sophisticated electronics."
"You mean there are dumb pigs too?” She wrinkled her nose again, clearly delighted with the idea.
"Right. The cheaper ones don't tell as much. Smaller companies use those. We use the smartest of the smart pigs, since we can afford them."
I explained that before zapping one of those fat, expensive pigs through the line, we use smaller test pigs. Made of nothing more than a hard center encased in Styrofoam, they come in graduated sizes. Once a test pig is retrieved, the casing is studied for gouges, anything that might reveal conditions inside the line, like a ballistics expert learning from the gouges on a spent bullet's casing.
A ship's anchor bangs into an offshore pipeline, for instance. The cheap test pig's skin c
lues us about any dents or punctures before we risk slinging our big mama pig down the line.
Preparing a pipeline for the final run of the ultimate smart pig can take two weeks or more. In the morning, you send your first small test pig off and wait until it makes it to the retrieval station where it's pulled out and analyzed. In the afternoon, you send a second pig. The following day, more cheap pigs go, their diameters increasing in size. No way do you send the final pig, the one that's loaded with stuff and makes the snuggest fit with the pipeline's inner dimensions, until you're damned sure it won't get hung up. A stuck pig is a headache you don't want to deal with if you can help it.
"I've heard minding the line on a pig day can be boring,” I told Kaye. “Very soon, I'll find out how boring."
Come to think of it, maybe I talked to her longer than fifteen minutes, since I also related a tragic story I'd heard, something that happened two years earlier just east of our field in south Alabama. This pasture was leased by another company, not ours, and a sour gas line ran down it, buried about three feet, crossing twenty acres.
Two farmhands happened to see a dead cow in the field. What they didn't know was that the leasing company's gas line had ruptured. Approaching the cow, the farmhands would have inhaled a strong, initial hit of gas. After that, they'd smell nothing. The unfortunate thing about sour gas is, if you get smacked by a concentrated whiff, your smeller is instantly knocked out. You might balk at that first rotten egg scent, but once the smeller goes, you think everything's cool. Not long after, you keel over, as dead as the cow whose pulse you were sent to take.
The story was gruesome. Kaye seemed appropriately aghast; my horror story obviously fascinated her.
Just about then, Greta approached Kaye and me. We were still together, only weeks from our final rift. As she wiped barbecue sauce off her fingers with a plaid napkin, Greta smiled and made small talk with Kaye. Meanwhile, I picked up Greta's secret code, meant for me. The question: How much longer must we endure this lowbrow assortment of computer nerds, dorky engineering wizards, and their vacant wives?
AHMM, July-August 2008 Page 1
