EQMM, September-October 2009

by Dell Magazine Authors

  The bullet had hit high, missing Halsey's heart and major vessels. And because he was hit just as he turned out the light, the would-be killer couldn't see to get in another shot. The next day Halsey was awake and recovering in a hospital room at Maine Medical Center.

  The police interviewed the victim as soon as he was able to talk. Everett Halsey insisted he had no idea who fired the shot or even who might have wanted to harm him. Sheila Halsey was contacted in New Hampshire, where she was indeed attending a yoga retreat. She returned immediately. She had gone with a friend who drove, and she had any number of witnesses able to confirm that she never left the facility until she heard of the attack on her husband.

  In fact, the only thing that made the shooting more than a random attack was the stump that Halsey had carved out in his front yard. But who would possibly resort to murder over something like that?

  After they finished with Halsey and his wife the police started questioning the neighbors. I was questioned, too, Marilyn Doughty having informed them of my presence in the neighborhood the day before.

  I described my conversations with each of the three neighbors. I also told the police something else, about the thing that had been bothering me. I remembered it now and told Lieutenant Marchand, who was leading the investigation. It might have been nothing, but it was strange.

  Some hours later, I was allowed to talk to Everett Halsey. He was in a hospital bed with oxygen tubing in his nose, a large plastic chest tube coming out of his left side, and a variety of other tubes and monitor wires attached to various spots. His ginger-colored hair was damp and askew but he seemed alert.

  Up close, Halsey was a big man, with a long, taciturn face and a prominent bony nose. His eyes were deep-set and of a pale, blood-shot blue.

  "Saw you drive up yesterday,” he said in a low, raspy voice after I introduced myself.

  "One of your neighbors called me,” I said. “About the ... thing you were working on."

  He looked away. “Marilyn Doughty, I s'pose. Busybody old maid,” he muttered.

  "Yes."

  He turned back and said sharply, “She saved my life, you know,” as if warning me off the idea that being a busybody was in any way a bad thing. I told him I had heard about his good luck.

  "It hardly seems important now,” I went on, “but yesterday I was interested in the, um, work that you're doing out there in your yard."

  "Oh,” Everett Halsey said with a wave of his big, calloused hand. “That."

  "It's very unusual."

  "Uh-huh."

  He was silent. There was going to be no way around it. I cleared my throat. “Why did you carve a naked woman out of a tree in your yard, Mr. Halsey?"

  Halsey chuckled, then winced. “Well,” he rasped, “that pine had to come down. It was too big. Sheila said it made the front of the house too dark. Gloomy. You know?"

  Sure, I thought. As opposed to the bright, cheerful mood a bit of lewd whittling always brings. “Okay,” I nodded my understanding. “But why the ... you know.” I waved an hourglass shape in the air with my hands.

  Halsey let out a deep sigh. “It's hard to explain. I was gonna cut down the stump, but all of a sudden I started to see her. There, in the wood."

  "See her?” I repeated.

  Halsey shrugged. “I'm no artist, but the feeling came over me to make something. Something beautiful.” His voice lowered with apparent embarrassment at the words. “My wife Sheila and I—we aren't too much alike. She likes art and books and culture ... you know. Me, I've always been just a plain person. Retired last year from Bath Iron Works. Anyway, now that I've been home a lot, seems like Sheila and I—we don't have too much in common. But yesterday I was working out there and it kind of came over me. Inspiration. I worked all day, skipped lunch and never even missed it."

  "But you said ‘I saw her.’ What do you mean by that?” I asked. Something about his words was jangling a memory.

  Halsey frowned. “The shape. It started to remind me of a picture I saw in one of Sheila's books. It was about all the paintings and sculptures they have there in—” He frowned, and snapped his fingers with the effort of remembering. “What's that big museum in Paris?"

  "The Louvre,” I said absently. “You saw her in the wood,” I repeated. I pictured it—the upper torso slightly turned, the graceful droop of one shoulder ... Then it hit me. What the thing out on the lawn was—what that splintered, sappy piece of pine stump was. I recognized it.

  "It's Winged Victory," I exclaimed.

  Everett Halsey smiled, a smile of real sweetness that transformed his long face. He slapped a hand on the side bar of his hospital bed. “That's the one,” he said, nodding. He was an artist, pleased that his work had been appreciated. “Something about how that stump was curved ... I just saw it. I started chipping away and couldn't seem to stop. It was relaxing. It doesn't have the wings, of course,” he admitted.

  "Of course,” I agreed. “The stump's not wide enough.” Now that I thought about it—the resemblance was obvious. The posture of Evelyn Wyatt Szymanski, pointing back to her house, had reminded me of it, too. The angled upper torso with the gracefully arched back, the stance, one leg slightly forward. Everything except—-I glanced at Everett Halsey and frowned. “It's a little more ... endowed, up top, than the Greek one,” I said delicately.

  "Well,” Halsey said, with a self-deprecating little shrug and a smile. His pride was evident.

  So one small mystery was solved: Why Halsey carved the stump. But it left the bigger question. Who would shoot him over it? As it turned out, the information I gave the police led them to the guilty party. This was to the great delight of Boss Hogg, who insists on calling me his “little investigative reporter” now. It makes me want to smack him, but the moniker came with a raise, so I rein myself in.

  It was Drew Richards. When the police went to Richards’ house to interview him they did exactly as I suggested and asked Richards to step outside. They walked him across the street and stood directly in front of Halsey's wooden carving.

  According to the lieutenant, Richards basically lost it right there. He started shaking and sweating and began rambling about how Halsey was out to get him. Halsey was trying to trick him. Into confessing.

  Which is exactly what he did. It turns out that when Drew Richards looked at that headless, armless pine stump of a woman he was reminded of someone, too. Only it wasn't a famous Greek statue. It was his girlfriend. Richards had moved to Witka from Lewiston, arriving on Little Brook Lane with a moving van and all his worldly possessions, among which was a large, commercial-grade plastic container that he buried in the backyard shortly after moving in. Later, the dismembered remains of his former girlfriend, Amanda Deveraux, were discovered inside.

  And what was it that I had told the police? Just this: Drew Richards had been the only person that day who would not look at the stump. Everyone else, complain as they did, couldn't seem to look at it enough. Richards couldn't bear to.

  So everything was back to normal in Witka, or at least as close as we get. Sheila Halsey made Everett cut down the stump after he recovered. Halsey was horrified to hear that some folks thought it was indecent, especially when “folks in France pay to see the same darn thing.” It's funny, though, people here in Witka still remember Halsey's statue and go over to Little Brook Lane to see it once in a while. Everett has it in the shed out back. The visitors include Evelyn Wyatt Szymanski. According to her, her daughter Janie's birthmark began to disappear shortly after she touched “the wood lady.” It's gone completely now. Evelyn, to this day, swears it was some kind of miracle. But I don't know; they say those things just disappear on their own sometimes.

  I do know that as I carved a pumpkin for my front step that Halloween I thought about the power of objects and images. That is what Halloween's about, after all. The power of ghoulish images to frighten away evil spirits, to exorcise demons. Everett Halsey created such an object, one that spoke to each person differently. To some it was a
n artistic inspiration revealed, to others an expression of guilt, or a sick fantasy, and in the end, maybe even a miracle. And to Drew Richards? It was an accusation. One that his own conscience couldn't live with.

  Chalk up one evil spirit, chased out of Witka.

  Copyright © 2009 Maurissa Guibord

  [Back to Table of Contents]

  Fiction: THE WAY THEY LIMP by Clark Howard

  Five-time Readers Award winner Clark Howard is one of the all-time masters of the mystery/crime short story. This autumn, at the BoucherconConvention in Indianapolis, the Short Mystery Fiction Society will be recog-nizing his incomparable accomplish-ments in the field when they make him the first winner of a new award named in honor of EQMM's long-time, beloved contributor Edward D. Hoch. The Edward D. Hoch MemorialGolden Derringer Award for Lifetime Achievement will join many other certificates and plaques Mr. Howard has earned—including, of course, the statuette of Edgar Allan Poe that he won in 1981 for best short story.

  * * * *

  Art by Ron Bucalo

  * * * *

  Angus Doyle was having a late breakfast on the east patio of his gated, guarded estate when his attorney, Solomon Silverstein, arrived.

  "You eat yet?” Doyle asked by way of greeting.

  "No. And I probably won't all day,” the lawyer snapped. “I've lost my appetite. And my ulcer is going crazy. It'll probably perforate."

  "Oh? What's bothering your ulcer, Sol?"

  Silverstein sat and drew over an extra chair on which to place and open his briefcase. From it he extracted four documents folded in blue legal covering. “These are what's bothering me,” he said, placing them directly in front of Angus Doyle's breakfast plate.

  "What are they?” Doyle asked, not touching them.

  "Subpoenas, Gus. Federal grand-jury subpoenas. For Quinn, Foley, Dwyer, and Connor."

  "But not for me?"

  "Not yet."

  Doyle grunted quietly. “What's the grand jury looking at? RICO again?"

  RICO. Racketeering Influenced Corrupt Organizations. An all-purpose federal crime designed to bring down organized-crime operations.

  "No, not RICO. Not this time, Gus.” The lawyer's expression turned grim. “This time it's income-tax evasion."

  "What!” Doyle was taken aback. “I pay my taxes!” he declared indignantly.

  "Of course you do,” Sol said. “On your legitimate businesses. On your up-front operations: the bowling alleys and bars, the laundry and dry-cleaning services, the limo and escort services, the convenience-store franchises, all the rest. But you don't pay income tax on the other stuff: the gambling, hijacking, prostitution—"

  "How the hell can I?” Doyle demanded. “Those things are illegal!"

  "Exactly. And that's what they're now trying to get you for. Income is income, whether it's legal or illegal. Remember a fellow named Al Capone?” The attorney leaned forward urgently. “Can't you see what they're doing? Quinn, Foley, Dwyer, and Connor. Your four top men. Between them, they know everything about your operation. Everything you run, all the front businesses, the payoffs, where the money comes from, where the bodies are buried—"

  "Sol, please. I'm eating,” Doyle said.

  "Do you see my point?"

  "No."

  "Look, they're going to bring in each of your men separately to be questioned by Department of Justice attorneys in front of a secret grand jury. No defense lawyers are allowed, there's no transcript, no rules of evidence apply because the purpose is not to convict anyone, merely to indict.” Silverstein took a deep breath. “Do you suppose I can get a glass of cold milk?"

  Doyle rang a small silver bell on the table. In seconds a white-coated attendant appeared and the milk was ordered. “Sure you wouldn't like something to eat, Sol? Eggs, bacon, O'Brien potatoes?"

  "Good God, no! Do you want to kill me?"

  There was a twinkle of mischief in Angus Doyle's eyes, with just a hint of malice attached to it. Doyle was a stout, almost brutish, ruddy-faced man who could eat anything, and who could, and had, killed enemies with his bare hands. He was Black Irish to the core, and while he valued Solomon Silverstein to a large degree, he had never really been fond of him. In his entire life, Angus Doyle had never really been fond of anyone who was not Irish.

  Sol fidgeted with a corner of the starched white cloth of Angus Doyle's breakfast table. A thin, hyper, dedicated worrier of a man, he was nevertheless a brilliant litigator and appellate attorney who had kept Angus Doyle out of legal harm's way for two decades, and someone whom Doyle had made very wealthy in return. When his glass of cold milk arrived, the lawyer gulped it down in several swallows, then rubbed his stomach as if to spread around its soothing effect.

  "Tell me in plain language what's bothering you, Sol,” Doyle said, continuing to devour the O'Brien potatoes laced with onions and green peppers.

  "Quinn, Foley, Dwyer, and Connor. They will be questioned individually, in secret, and no one except the Justice Department attorney and the anonymous grand-jury members will ever know what they say. But—everything they say can be used to find evidence against anyone they give testimony about."

  Doyle belched. “So?"

  "So, Gus, suppose one of them cuts a deal with the government?"

  "One of my men? Sol, please."

  "It could happen, Gus. One of them gives enough information for the government to find cause to indict you, and you'd never know which one did it. Even they wouldn't know which one did it. You go down. Your entire organization is wiped out. And the government gives immunity to Quinn, Foley, Dwyer, and Connor—so nobody ever knows who the informer was."

  "None of my men would ever do that,” Doyle said confidently.

  "What makes you so sure? How do you know how much the government has compiled on each of them over the years? How do you know how much pressure can be put on one of them? Immunity, Gus, can be an orchid in a field of weeds."

  Doyle stopped eating. His expression grew thoughtful. “All right,” he said quietly, “for the sake of argument, suppose one of them does cut a deal. What happens next?"

  "The government indicts you on numerous counts of income-tax evasion. They prove that you could not possibly have maintained the lifestyle you've established on the legitimate income you claimed on your tax returns."

  "How the hell can they prove something like that?"

  "Paper trail, Gus. The cars you've bought over the years. The Canali suits and shirts you've had made. The Salvatore Ferragamo python shoes you wear. That Girard-Perregaux wrist watch you're wearing that cost five hundred thousand dollars. The yacht you've got docked in Florida. The homes you own in Vail, Barbados, Costa Rica. Vera's jewelry. Doreen's private school in Switzerland—"

  "Okay, okay.” Doyle raised a hand to stop the lawyer's soliloquy, “I get the picture.” He pushed his plate away in disgust. “A man can't even buy gifts for his wife and see that his daughter gets a proper education without the goddamned government sticking its nose into it,” he muttered irritably. After a few moments, he sighed wearily and said, “Assuming you're right, what exactly happens then?"

  "A caravan of federal agents will show up at daybreak some morning, put you under arrest, declare this place a crime scene, evict Vera, Doreen, and all the servants—"

  "How can they do that? This is my home, for God's sake! What right do they have to declare it a crime scene!"

  "Your vault, Gus,” the lawyer said quietly. “Whoever blows the whistle on you will tell them about your vault."

  Doyle's eyes widened to the point of bulging. Beneath his mansion was a lower level which housed an extensive wine cellar, a mammoth gun collection, and a floor-to-ceiling bank-style vault that was one of his most prized possessions.

  "My vault,” he said to Sol Silverstein in a flat, dangerous tone, “is private property. It's where I keep my rare stamp collection, my movie memorabilia collection, my ancient-coin collection, my gem collection, my early American postcard collection, and my baseball-card colle
ction.” Now his voice faltered a bit. “Those things are personal, Sol. They mean a great deal to me. The government has no right to meddle with my hobbies!"

  "That vault,” Sol quietly reminded him, “is also where you hoard money, Gus. I've seen sheaves of currency stacked to the ceiling in a back corner. The government will seize that money and everything else of value in that vault. I advised you not to have it installed, remember? Just as I advised you to have Quinn, Foley, Dwyer, and Connor retain private individual attorneys of their own, instead of having me representing them and you."

  "I like to have everything under one roof, Sol,” Doyle fretted. “Easier to keep track of things."

  "Yes, well, in this case it just made it easier to subpoena everyone with one stop."

  Doyle rose and walked to one end of the patio, from which he could see across meticulously manicured, flower-lined grounds to an eight-car garage behind and detached from the main house. In front of an open port was parked one of his wife Vera's cars, a silver Bentley Arnage sedan. It was being wiped down with a chamois cloth by Harry Sullivan, a quiet but deceptively tough young man who was employed as a driver and bodyguard for Doyle's second wife, Vera Kenny Doyle. Sullivan, known more commonly as Sully, also drove and bodyguarded Doreen, Doyle's twenty-one-year-old daughter by his first wife, Edna Callahan Doyle, whom Doyle had lost to lymphoma when Doreen was only ten. Three years later, with Doreen approaching adolescence, Doyle had seen the need of a stepmother for her; there were, after all, many things of a sensitive, female nature with which even the most devoted single father was ill prepared to deal.