The New Adventures of Foster Fade, The Crime Spectacularist

by Adam Lance Garcia

  The two women gasped in shocked amazement. Dr. White lay on the floor beside his desk. If it hadn’t been for one fact, they might have assumed he’d fainted and slumped out of his chair onto the floor.

  But that one fact was the slim, masked figure crawling out of the window behind Dr. White’s desk. The figure wore all black and the mask covering the entire head made it impossible to tell if it were man or woman. Only the malicious, baleful eyes glaring at the two women could be seen.

  Din swiftly reached into her small handbag and withdrew a .22 automatic pistol. “Hold it right there, buddy!”

  Buddy most definitely did not hold it right there. Buddy’s arm lifted. Din saw something black and bulbous in that hand and it was just pure instinct that made her lurch to the side, knocking Miss Frames out of the line of fire even as she squeezed the trigger of her automatic.

  She heard something like angry mosquitoes zipping past her cheek as her two shots smashed into window, knocking the glass out of the frame. And then Buddy was gone.

  Din reached down a hand to help Miss Frames up to her feet. “Who was that?” Miss Frames cried.

  “Damned if I know. See to your boss while I check on something.” Din put her gun away and turned to the wall behind her. She could see sunlight glinting off of two objects embedded in the wall. They looked like extra-long needles. Din looked around, saw a box of napkins on the desk. She took a number of them, using them to pluck the needles from the wall so that she would not get her fingerprints on them. She then wrapped the needles in more napkins to further protect them from any possible contamination.

  “He’s dead,” Allis Frames said dully. She was kneeling next to Dr. White’s body. “There’s no pulse, he’s not breathing.”

  Din walked over and placed a comforting hand on her shoulder. Din noticed that a drawer of Dr. White’s file cabinet had been opened. She thought it a safe assumption that Buddy had come for Williams’ health records. Well, that confirmed that Williams had been murdered as far as she was concerned. But by whom? And why?

  “Look, Allison. Call the police, get them here as quick as you can. I don’t think you’re in any danger but you’re welcome to borrow my gun if it will make you feel safer until they get here. And can I ask you for a big favor? I’d really appreciate it if you didn’t mention to the police that I was here.”

  Allison Frames looked up at Din, tears flowing freely down her face. She managed a small smile. “If you hadn’t rang the doorbell when you did, I’d probably have been in here with Dr. White and gotten killed as well. And you pushed me out of the way when that killer fired that weapon at us. So I owe you my life twice over. Of course I’ll do what you asked. The police will never know you were here.”

  Din squeezed her shoulder. “Thanks, sister. You ever need a favor, you come to The Planet and ask for me.” Din quickly left the office, half-ran through the hallway and out the front door. She was eager to get back to Fade’s lab and tell him what happened and even more eager to put the needles in his hands.

  ***

  “So what happened next?” Foster Fade asked as he held up the needles. He wore rubber gloves that protected his hand from any possible poisons on the needles as well as not befouling any substances on them. Including fingerprints. Din didn’t say anything in response. Fade looked over to where she sat, knocking back a good slug of Black Pony Scotch from the fifth Fade kept in his desk. She poured herself another three fingers. “You wanna take it easy with that. It’s a little early in the day to get tight. Even for you.”

  “It’s after five somewhere in the world. And the day that a couple shots of Scotch puts me down is the day I retire and take the vows.” But Din closed up the bottle and swirled the golden brown liquid around in the glass as she continued. “I’ve come close to getting killed a whole buncha times since I hooked up with you, Fade. That don’t mean I’m getting used to it.”

  “Then maybe you need to find a new line of work.” Fade walked over to his chemical table and placed the needles on their own separate slides and slipped them under a microscope of his own invention. He examined the needles intently. “Hm. Judging by the hole I saw in the back of Williams’ neck this morning I’m positive that these needles are just like the one used to kill him.” Fade looked up from the microscope at Din. “You are extremely lucky.”

  “Tell me about it. What else can you tell from those needles?”

  Fade turned back to his microscope. “No fingerprints but it appears that some kind of residue is on the needles.” He stood up, selected two test tubes. He took both needles, put them into their own tubes. He placed them inside a test tube rack and picked up a Pasteur pipette which he then used to transfer liquids from several beakers and jars into the test tubes. The liquids bubbled. “We’ll let that work for a bit while I tell you about my day.” Fade then related what had happened during his trip to the morgue.

  Din swallowed the rest of her drink. “So who is this Reynolds?”

  “All you have to know is that sometimes I work with the people he still works for.”

  “And just who did you work for before you signed up for this deal? I’ve known you for quite a while now and I know more about what’s going on in China than I do about your life before you came to work for The Planet.”

  “That’s because there’s no reason for you to know. What you do have to know is that Williams used to work for those same people.” Fade passed over the papers Reynolds had given him. “And this is what he used to do.”

  Din read the papers quickly. She looked up at Fade, eyes wide with surprise. “Is this for real?”

  “It is.” Fade turned back to the test tubes. He carefully used a Pasteur pipette to remove some of the liquid in one of the tubes that had turned a milky orange. He placed a drop on a slide and placed it on his microscope. He bent down to look. For perhaps about a minute he said nothing. He stood so still that every muscle might just as well have locked into place. Finally, he looked up. “Interesting.”

  “You want to tell me what’s so interesting?”

  “There’s traces of nitron on these needles. Nitron in gaseous form is used sometimes as a propellant. You say that the gun the killer used hissed when he fired? It didn’t go boom?”

  “Only thing that went boom was my gun as I shot back. His hissed.”

  “That means his gun was custom made. It doesn’t fire conventional bullets so it doesn’t use gunpowder. I’m betting it uses nitron capsules to fire the needles.”

  “Dammit, Fade, what’s going on here? There’s nobody who has a reason to kill Williams.”

  “But killed he was.” Fade held out his hand for Din to give back the papers Reynolds had given him. He struck a match to them and they went up in a puff of white smoke without even leaving ashes. Fade brushed his hands together. “Fancy taking a ride back out to the Williams place?”

  “Sure. We going to talk to the wife and daughter?”

  “Yep. Just give me a few minutes to whip up something here, make a phone call and we’ll be on our way.”

  ***

  “This has been an extraordinarily trying day for us all, Mr. Fade. I certainly hope you have not come to add to our grief.” Emma Williams certainly didn’t look like a grieving widow. In fact, she looked far better than she did that morning. She sat in the library, sipping green tea. Din sat across from her while Fade stayed on his feet. He jammed his bony hands into his pants pockets and rocked back and forth, chewing his gum loudly.

  “It’s not my intention to do so, Mrs. Williams. But I think you can appreciate the unusual circumstances of your husband’s death. That’s why the police aren’t here. And you know why.”

  Emma Williams sipped more green tea. The late afternoon sun filled the library with brilliant golden light. “I take it that you’re referring to my late husband’s previous job.”

  “I’m surprised you admit to it so easily.”

  “And why shouldn’t I? I’m not about to insult a man with your reputation,
Mr. Fade. And I’m pretty sure that you would not have brought it up unless you already knew about it. So why should we even go through the game of me pretending not to know what you’re talking about?”

  “How much do you know?”

  Emma Williams reached for a small inlaid box, opened it and removed a cigarette. She lit it, smoked for a bit in silence before answering; “I suspected George…that was his real name, you know…George Martins. I suspected George was doing something else for a long time. He told me he was in sales and his job required that he do quite a bit of travelling. He even took me on a couple of his ‘business trips’ He would go out in the morning, saying he was going to meet clients and then we would meet up later for dinner and drinks, maybe take in a movie or go dancing.”

  “So you had no idea your husband worked as a professional assassin for the government?”

  She shook her head. “None at all. Oh, I thought maybe there were other women. But George was always good to me. Never raised his hand to me. It wasn’t until he quit that he told me the whole truth. He had to because we had to change our names.”

  “You didn’t have a problem with that?” Din asked, incredulous. “Your husband killed dozens of people and you just shrugged your shoulders and went along with it?”

  “Young lady, the people my husband assassinated were enemies of our country. My husband was a silent soldier who served with no uniform and no official recognition for what he did. I am proud of him.”

  Din started to say something else but Fade cut her off. “Argue politics and morality on your own time. I’m here on important business.” Fade chewed louder, rocked back again on his heels, making them squeak. The noises were annoying but Din was used to Fade being annoying. Emma Williams frowned at him, her wish that he would stop what he was doing apparent on her face. “Namely, to catch a murderer.”

  “Then why aren’t you out doing that very thing?” Elinor Williams walked into the library, looking as elegant as her mother. “The police certainly seem to be doing their job.”

  “The job of the police is to look like they’re doing their job. There will be nobody for them to arrest because they have nobody with which they can hand a motive on.” Fade grinned at the two bewildered women. “There’s an old saying regarding murder: If you know why somebody got murdered then you’ll know who did it.”

  “What gibberish is this?” Emma snapped.

  “Get used to it,” Din sighed. “It’s all he talks. English is his second language.”

  “What it means is simply that when a man turns up murdered, the first thing you need to find out is who had the best or most profitable reason to kill that man. Philip Williams slash George Martins didn’t have an enemy in the world, despite what Miss Williams told us.” Fade turned his baleful colorless eyes on her. Like the eyes of a basilisk they were. “Simply put: you don’t kill a man because he makes cider. It just doesn’t make sense. It also doesn’t make sense that he would still have enemies from his old days as a government assassin.”

  Elinor reached for a cigarette from the box her mother had taken one and lit it, never taking her eyes off Fade.

  “You knew Daddums was an assassin, didn’t you, Miss Williams?” Fade asked.

  “Of course I knew. This family has no secrets from each other.”

  “Yes it does. Every family has secrets.” Fade stopped his gum chewing and rocking back and forth. “Some are really piddling and not worth the time to think about. Others are more deadly. The secret you kept from your father was the one that got him killed.”

  “I’m afraid I’m going to have to ask you leave, Mr. Fade.” Emma crushed out her cigarette and stood up abruptly. A sharp cry escaped her lips. Her fingers were stained a pale yellow at the tips. “What in the world-”

  “Nitron propellant leaves a residue on everything. Doesn’t really last long but just long enough.” Fade pulled his right hand out of his pocket. He held a small silver tube with a nozzle at the tip. “Use the right chemicals, spray them in the air and it’ll make the nitron residue visible.”

  Din jumped to her feet. “Holy jumping Jehosephat! What a story! She killed her own husband!” Then a thought occurred to Din. “Waitamminit. Then who killed Dr. White? I saw the killer with my own eyes and he was a lot slimmer and shorter than Mrs. Williams.”

  “That’s because it wasn’t my mother,” Elinor Williams said quietly. Fade and Din turned to where she stood by the door, a bulbous black pistol on her hand. “All I have to do is squeeze.”

  “I don’t get this!” Din exclaimed. “Why would you kill Dr. White?”

  “I didn’t want to,” Elinor said. “But it was vital we get Daddy’s medical records before the police got hold of them and it proved that Daddy was in perfect health. Time was of the essence.”

  “Still didn’t have to kill him,” Din muttered.

  “Oh, yes she did. Elinor’s never been taught anything else but how to kill people. Isn’t that right, Mrs. Williams?” Fade said this to Mrs. Williams but he looked directly at Elinor.

  “She’s going to demonstrate that in one minute when she kills the both of you.” Emma Williams smiled and this time her smile was not friendly. “Isn’t it ironic? The two of you have created so many headlines but your biggest headline is going to be your sudden and utter disappearance.” Mrs. Williams chuckled.

  “But why kill him? What did he do to you?” Din demanded. She flung wide her arms to take in the mansion around them. “You live like royalty! You’re rich! What possible reason could you have to kill him?”

  “He wasn’t loyal!” Emma roared. “His country needed him to come back and do the work for which he was trained to do and he refused! He laughed and said that now that he was rich he didn’t have to be a government lackey!”

  “And that’s why you killed him,” Fade said. “Your daughter killed Dr. White.”

  “I still don’t get it!” Din exclaimed.

  “You haven’t figured it out yet, Din?” Fade pointed a long finger at Emma. “Sure, Williams didn’t want to go back to killing for a living. But his wife and his daughter didn’t mind. What did you do, Emma? Go and make a deal so that the government could have their hired killer back?”

  “It wasn’t supposed to happen that way!” Emma pointed at her daughter. “She wasn’t supposed to call the police!”

  “You didn’t figure on her turning on you, did you?” Fade laughed. “Elinor did turn out to be a loyal daughter after all.”

  “You didn’t have to kill Daddy, Momma,” Elinor said. “I could have kept him quiet.” She smiled at Fade. “I knew it would only be a matter of time before you caught up to her, Mr. Fade. Take her. She’s my gift to you and the police. Make your case stick and use her to do so.”

  “We’re taking both of you, young lady.” Reynolds stepped into the library, a .45 automatic in one hand. He touched the brim of his hat to Fade. “Thanks for the call, Fade.”

  “We had a deal. You heard enough?”

  “Sure did. I followed your instructions to the letter. Used the skeleton keys you left with the newsstand guy to get inside the mansion. Me and about half a dozen agents who are standing right outside waiting for me to whistle.” Reynolds looked at the astounded mother and daughter. “It’s all over ladies. You come with me and you’ll be treated fairly.”

  “No!” Elinor whirled around, the deadly bulbous needle gun training on Reynolds. His weapon blasted twice. Elinor shrieked, dropped the needle gun and collapsed to the polished floor, blood bubbling from her lips. Emma screamed and rushed to her daughter’s side.

  Din could only shake her head. “I’ll be damned. This will make a helluva story if I can figure out how to write it up.”

  Reynolds took off his hat as he addressed Din directly. “If it’ll help, ma’am…I’d advise that you put both the murders on the daughter.”

  “That’s just not good enough, Mr…Reynolds, right? Mrs. Williams killed her husband and she’s got to stand trial for that. The girl’s a
lready paid for Dr. White’s murder.”

  “So what’s the harm in her taking the rap for a second one?” Reynolds looked at Fade. “Talk to your partner, Fade. Make her see reason.”

  “Not in a million years. Din and I have a deal: I solve the crimes and she writes the stories.” Fade grinned.

  “Miss Stevens, I’m sure you can understand why it wouldn’t be in the best interests of John Q. Punchclock to learn that the United States government has employed their own cadre of trained assassins.”

  “Sounds like exactly the type of thing Mr. and Mrs. America need to know. And as a respected and honored member of the press-”

  “Okay, okay.” Reynolds held up a hand. “Tell you what…you keep any and all mention of the U.S. government involvement in this out and you can have Mrs. Williams to turn over to your local cops. We’ll clean up here, take the needle gun and anything else that can incriminate the government.”

  Din opened her mouth to tell Reynolds where to go and what he could do after he got there when Fade’s voice whispered in her ear. “Don’t push it. He’s giving you way more of break than he has to. As it is, he’ll catch hell from his bosses.”

  “We got a deal, then?” Reynolds asked, holding out his right hand.

  Din shook it. “We got a deal.”

  ***

  The next day, Din burst into Fade’s office with the spanking brand new, hot-off-the-presses morning edition of The Planet, waving it over her head as if it was a flag of victory. “Didja see that headline? CRIME SPECTACULARIST SOLVES THE CIDER KING MURDER by Dinamenta Stevens! Hackrox says it’s already selling like hotcakes!”

  From where he sat behind his desk with his copy of the newspaper, a mug of hot coffee at his elbow, Fade wondered aloud; “Just how well and how fast do hotcakes sell, anyway? Has anybody ever done a definitive study on the speed of-”