The Best American Mystery Stories 2014

by Laura Lippman (ed) (epub)

  He set out shortly after nine.

  Nish and Paulette’s neighborhood smelled of barbecued suppers, and Patrick, suddenly hungry, had no trouble sneaking around the back of their house. Or was it just Nish’s house now? How the hell does that work, her leavin, her payin rent while he stays put?

  Mature trees and a stone wall kept the yard dark.

  Nish’s pickup was backed in, just below the deck. A townie’s truck, Patrick had called it, always so goddamned clean, neither sign of work stainin it. Cautious of creaks, Patrick walked up the steps. On the deck he glanced back at the pickup: empty lined cab. He sidestepped shovels and the old charcoal barbecue; he peered in the kitchen window.

  Nothing.

  Fuckin foolishness. Go home out of it.

  Turning away, he caught movement inside. The door leading to the basement opened; Nish seemed to be hauling some burden.

  Patrick squinted.

  Nish flicked on a light.

  A racket of snow shovels clanging against the barbecue, of a body thudding the deck, of clothespins spilling: Nish cried out. He hit the outside lights, took a good look, and laughed, opening the window. —Jesus, Paddy, ya got no gift for subtlety.

  Blushing, Patrick wrenched himself free of the barbecue.

  —Door to the deck’s not workin right. Come round the front. We’ll have a drink.

  Nish kept Patrick waiting a few minutes, but he was smiling when he unlocked the door. Patrick asked to wash his hands.

  —You’ve been here dozens of times. You know where everythin is.

  Patrick disliked visiting the bathroom on the upper floor, because he had to pass through the master bedroom. Gives me a chance to look around, though. The sight of the bed, rumpled on one side, neat on the other, made Patrick wince. The bathroom: nothing strange. Nail scissors on the floor, plenty of dust, a few sour facecloths, one toothbrush.

  Paranoid much?

  Patrick dried his hands on his jeans.

  In the living room, he sat on the sofa. Nish gave him one of two glasses of malt whiskey, a three-finger measure.

  Might be a long chat.

  It was a long chat, and mostly in Nish’s voice: writing, women, writing, Paulette. —I’m not—I’m not complete, without her. It’s that simple. And Paddy, I really owe you an apology. Last night—I couldn’t help thinkin—y’all right, or what?

  —I’m after pickin up a stomach flu.

  Patrick stood, wobbled, fell back on the sofa.

  Nish shook his head. —Man up, my son: that’s twice. No, put that fancy phone of yours on the coffee table.

  Patrick did this, feeling agreeable. So obedient: his will and good sense screamed at him, but the noise seemed small, and far away, confined.

  —Lie on your front.

  —I gotta—

  Patrick vomited on a pile of newspapers.

  Nish sighed. —Whenever you’re ready.

  —Flannigan, ya fuckin drama queen. Whadja use?

  —God knows, but it’s easier to buy than weed.

  Patrick’s nausea burrowed. He knew quite well that Nish Flannigan, award-winning novelist and former mentor, had just drugged his drink and now tied him hand and foot with bright little plastic collars he’d purchased at an office supply store, likely getting a few pens and ink for the printer while he was at it. Patrick knew all this, but he hardly cared. He no longer had the will to care. He needed the room to stop spinning, so he could remember how he’d gotten there. One goddamned crisis at a time.

  Nish shouted from the kitchen. —What’s your through line here, Paddy? Are you tryin to rescue the girl, or are you just tryin to piss me off? Because you’ve definitely pissed me off. I had a trip to a bog all planned out. Revise-revise-revise, is it?

  —Wait!

  Patrick rolled off the sofa, ramming his shoulder into the floor. He got himself on his back, and he stretched his neck, trying to see into the kitchen. His own weight crushed his hands; his tears sharpened his vision. Nish booted something that rolled into Patrick’s line of sight, something wrapped in plastic. Roll of carpet, maybe. Except his velvet jacket was tangled up with it. So was Paulette’s red hair.

  Nish returned to the living room, carrying the bush hammer. He dangled it over Patrick’s face, letting it swing back and forth like a pendulum. Long red hairs, stuck to the hammer with blood, tickled Patrick’s lips. Nish dropped the hammer on Patrick’s chest. Patrick’s next vision: a large can of charcoal lighter fluid and a long tube of matches, the tube decorated with pastel-colored Christmas trees. Patrick wanted to tell Nish that charcoal lighter fluid probably wouldn’t do it, and had he thought it through? Nish arranged mail and newspapers around himself and Patrick. Hands shaking, Nish cursed the lightness of the can. He sprinkled paper and flesh. Patrick, gasping, tried to understand.

  Nish lit a match.

  Arms tight to his chest, Patrick shuffled out of the burn unit. Patients and visitors waiting for the elevator tried not to stare at his face. He tried not to notice. The hospital, and his injuries, still felt like another country. Queasy, latest dose of hydromorphone kicking in, he took the stairs.

  Nodding at the nurses, he sat in the chair beside the bed. Unresponsive, a doctor had told him, injured more by the blow to her head and the smoke inhalation than the burns. Her limbs twitched, and her heart monitor beeped too fast, signs of agitation, or pain. Her nurse frowned. From the bedside table, Patrick picked up a book, a fat novel he’d read many times. He knew it well, yet he had trouble recognizing it. Narcotics blocked him, blocked him and changed him, but other forces worked him too: pain, and, despite death, dread.

  The hydromorphone gave him vivid dreams. He dreamt of Nish’s voice and flashing red lights.

  Understanding nothing, Patrick read aloud to Paulette.

  Her heart rate slowed; her twitching calmed.

  CHARLAINE HARRIS

  Small Kingdoms

  FROM Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine

  ON THIS PARTICULAR spring Tuesday, Anne DeWitt was thrown off her regular schedule. Between brushing her teeth and putting on her foundation, she had to kill a man.

  Most mornings Anne was as accurate as a precision watch. Between the moment she rolled out of bed and the moment she got into her car, attractively groomed and dressed, Anne used a total of forty-five minutes. Following a fifteen-minute drive, during which she reviewed the day to come, Anne walked in the front doors of Travis High School at ten minutes before eight o’clock. Her secretary had better, by God, be sitting behind her own desk when Anne’s heels clicked on the office floor.

  But this Tuesday morning was not like most mornings, due to the short struggle and the longer effort of body disposal.

  On the drive to work, she figured he’d scaled the roof while she was asleep, broken in a dormer window in the attic, and let down the attic steps while she was in the shower. (She’d noticed some specks on the carpet under the attic opening. Insulation?) Anne wasn’t pleased that she hadn’t foreseen this possibility, but she tried not to be too hard on herself either. A woman had to sleep. A shower made noise.

  It was her fault, however, that she hadn’t included the attic windows in her security system. She’d rectify that immediately.

  It was Anne’s good luck that she was looking in the mirror. If she hadn’t been, she might have missed the flicker of movement as he came through the bathroom door, might not have realized the man was there until the wire cinched around her neck.

  It was the would-be killer’s bad luck that Anne was standing before the mirror naked, trimming a few errant hairs in her bangs, scissors in her hands. She pivoted instantly, her knees bent, and drove the sharp points upward into his throat, the two blades sinking in with a minimum of effort. Anne never bought inferior steel. Anne’s hand came away, leaving the scissor blades in the double wound to minimize the inevitable leakage.

  As a bonus, the dying man landed on the cotton bathmat with its no-slip rubber backing, which soaked up the trickles of blood.
/>
  Anne squatted by the body as the man died and looked at him intently. She was mildly surprised to discover she knew him: Bert Sawyer, her neighbor of two months, who’d moved in two doors west. He’d come over to borrow her jumper cables a week before. Anne spared a moment to think about that as she got the extra shower-curtain liner, still in its packaging, from the bathroom linen closet.

  She assumed “Bert” had had backers. They’d taken time to set this up, time and money. If Bert had been acting on his own, his preparation was even more impressive. This had been a carefully thought-out plan. None of the kids at Travis High School would have recognized their principal as she smiled at the failure of this plan, at her victory.

  But it had been a victory by too narrow a margin. Anne’s smile faded as she called herself to task. She was alive only because Bert had made stupid choices.

  Why hadn’t he attacked while she was asleep? Why had he waited until daylight, until she was clearly up and about? She stared down at the body, tempted to give it a kick. She was pretty damn irritated about losing the scissors.

  A glance at her wall clock told her she was already running five minutes late, and there was a small spot of blood on her left shoulder. Dammit! She stepped back in the shower and washed herself off in case there were specks she hadn’t noticed, careful not to get her hair wet since she’d already styled it for the day. She didn’t want to spend the extra time to repeat the process.

  As the water beat down, she thought hard about her next step. She was tempted to leave the body where it was until she came home from work, but there was always the chance that they (if there was a “they”) would call the police, concoct some story that might compel the police to check out the inside of her house. Heard screams . . . saw smoke . . . think someone’s broken in . . . any of those might make a conscientious cop insist on checking out the interior.

  Anne puffed out her cheeks in exasperation as she completed her makeup. No, she had to do a certain amount of cleanup. Now she would be late, no doubt about it, and her record at this job had been as perfect as her record at her previous employment. Son of a bitch.

  Her jaw set in a grim line, Anne pulled on rubber gloves and removed the plastic liner from its packaging. Anyone might use rubber gloves to clean, just as anyone might keep an extra shower-curtain liner. Right? Hindered by the small floor space, Anne (who was very lean and athletic) managed to roll the body and the bathmat onto the clear plastic sheet and began securing it from the feet up, using duct tape from a fresh roll.

  She left the scissors in the man’s throat with a pang of true regret. She’d looked at many pairs of scissors before she’d selected those, and she’d used them exclusively to trim hair. That was why they’d maintained their great edge.

  Well, she thought, it was worth it. She’d wiped off the handles, of course. She was sure any tiny snips of her hair that might have adhered to the blades would be too degraded by the time the body was found to be of any use to criminalists. In time she’d acquire some more scissors for the rare self-trim job. Before she covered the dead man’s face, she took another look.

  Like Anne’s, Bert Sawyer’s hair was thick, though his was sable brown, several shades darker than hers. She wondered if Bert’s hair was dyed, like hers; probably. She had another sudden thought, and pushed aside the would-be killer’s hair in a couple of spots close to his ears. Huh. He’d had plastic surgery. She turned his face to the overhead light again, really concentrating on its contours, but there’d been so many faces in those ten years she’d run the school at her previous job.

  And that had to be why he’d come here.

  Anne deployed the duct tape until Bert Sawyer was encased and leak-proof. She cast a critical eye around the bathroom. There was no blood visible to the naked eye on the vanity or the mirror, but she ran a washrag over them nonetheless. All the while she puzzled over Bert Sawyer’s true identity. But she dismissed her concerns after a glance at her watch; twenty minutes late, and the body to dispose of!

  She called her secretary. “Christy, I’m running late today,” she said. Anne’s policy was never to apologize for things she couldn’t have prevented.

  “You are?” Christy, the doughy, fiftyish school secretary, couldn’t hide her astonishment. “You’re sick? Oh, I hope you haven’t had an accident?”

  Anne said, “My car wouldn’t start. It’s running now, but I’m behind.”

  “No problem,” said Christy reassuringly.

  Anne tried not to snarl at the phone. Of course the disruption of her routine was no problem for Christy; but it certainly was to Anne. “I’ll be in as soon as I can. The Meachams aren’t due for another forty-five minutes.”

  “Right,” Christy said. “Oh, and Coach Halsey is in here. I’ll tell him to come back.”

  The baseball coach had never come to her office for a one-on-one before. Anne almost asked what Holt Halsey wanted, but it was hardly Christy’s job to find out, if the information hadn’t been volunteered. “Do that,” Anne said pleasantly and evenly.

  She went into the bedroom to put on her underwear and went back to the bathroom to check her shoulder-length hair, stepping over the corpse on her way. Then Anne put on the outfit she’d laid out the night before: gray trouser suit, well cut, with a darker gray silk blouse. Garnet earrings and a necklace with a garnet pendant, small and tasteful. But then she put on sneakers, grabbing the black pumps she’d selected to go with the outfit.

  Anne bounded down the stairs, passed through the gleaming kitchen with its block of sharp knives, and opened the door to the garage. After placing her high heels on the floorboard of the passenger-side front, Anne opened her trunk, spreading out another plastic sheet (just in case). There was a cheap yellow rain slicker, the kind you could buy in a hanging pouch from the rack of any dollar store, hanging on a hook by the back door. Anne pulled it on, carefully drawing the hood over her chestnut hair. She went back up the stairs to her bathroom to grab the ankles of the plastic-shrouded corpse. Tugging carefully, steadily, digging in her feet, Anne dragged the body down the stairs.

  Bert Sawyer’s head bumped against each wooden step. Anne, who’d heard much worse noises, ignored the sound.

  Getting Bert into the trunk was tricky, but nothing Anne hadn’t done before. When the body was completely inside, she pulled off the cheap slicker and stuffed it in with the body. She went into the house one final time to grab her purse and give her hair a once-over look in the mirror. Finally—finally!—she was on her way to work. She’d been thinking while she stuffed Bert in the trunk, and she’d thought of a good spot to dispose of him.

  The winding roads and pleasantly rolling hills relaxed Anne, as always. The four-lane was moderately busy, but due to Anne’s unwilling delay, there were fewer cars than usual. When she got close to the spot she’d chosen, she drove in the slow lane until the road was clear. Then she whipped right and went down a gravel road just wide enough for her car. Luckily it hadn’t rained recently, or she would have had to make a different choice. But Bert would molder nicely out here. It would only get warmer and damper every week now that spring had arrived in North Carolina.

  At the end of this service road was some sort of electrical relay tower, surrounded by a high gated fence liberally posted with warnings. The gate was heavily padlocked, which was fine with Anne, since she had no interest in gaining entrance. Her car was far enough into the woods to be invisible from the four-lane, and she maneuvered Bert’s body out of the trunk with the facility of experience. As a bonus, the gravel road was slightly raised for drainage, so she was able to roll the plastic bundle into the forest and then drag it through the pines until it could not be seen from the gravel track. After leaving the body behind a copse, Anne grabbed a fallen branch. On her way back to the car, she swept away the swath the passage of the corpse had cut through the winter leaves and pine needles. She was glad the temperature this morning was in the high fifties; she didn’t want to work up a sweat.

  Good enough,
Anne thought as she stood by her car brushing her jacket and her pants. She swung the car around on the apron before the fence, and when she returned to the four-lane she stayed back in the tree line until the road was clear.

  It was less than 2 miles to Travis High School, where Anne had worked for four years—two as assistant principal, two as principal. After she’d parked in her designated parking space, she exchanged her sneakers for the high heels.

  She looked up at the big wall clock as she entered the school lobby. She was now fifty minutes late. Damn Bert Sawyer, and whoever had recruited him. Anne shoved the anger aside. She would have to think seriously about Bert and his garrote later. No one had tried to kill her for three years.

  For now her head should be in its proper place. This school was her kingdom; she was its ultimate ruler. She relaxed because she was within the walls of her domain.

  She got her second surprise for the day when she opened the door to the outer office, Christy Strunk’s domain. Coach Holt Halsey was still waiting for her. This surprise wasn’t exactly either good or bad, but it was unprecedented. Her respect for the baseball coach, who’d come on board two years ago, was not only based on Halsey’s winning record but also on the fact that Halsey seemed to solve his own problems in a rational way.

  Christy looked at her with some apology, and Anne understood that she’d tried to get the coach to return later, with no success. Anne said, “Good morning, Christy.”

  A few brisk steps took her abreast of Halsey, who’d risen from his chair. It didn’t bother Anne at all to look up at him. She was not intimidated by large men. But she hesitated before using his first name, since she’d never done so. “Holt, how long do you need? I have less than ten minutes, if that’ll do the job.”

  The coach nodded. “I only need a few minutes,” he said. She walked over to the inner door, the door to her office, with her name on it. She loved the sight of it, no matter how many times she passed it. That she’d been born neither Anne nor DeWitt made no difference to her pleasure.