"It's warm." I handed him a bottle. "Try to remember about the poem."
"It was written by Coleridge—"
"No, it wasn't. It was written by Shelley."
"How do you know—?"
"I briefly flirted with the Romantics as a response to Grandpa's obsession with Shakespeare. But I won't ask you to take my word for it." I held up the tablet computer I'd brought with me. There was an encyclopedia article, with the poem and its origins.
"Okay, so what does that prove?"
"It means people can know a poem, and not know anything about it," I said with satisfaction.
He stared at me.
I told him who I thought might be responsible for the theft.
Brian shook his head. "It's kind of a long shot, Emma. Really circumstantial."
"Sure, and like you've said, it's not my job to solve this case." I looked at my watch, then pulled my shorts and the rest of my clothes from the back of the chair. "So I don't need to prove anything. But it won't hurt to ask what Lale knows about the members of the tour. She's usually up hideously early, making calls in the lobby. I'll just go have a quick word."
I padded down the hall to the elevator. I always think it's strange, being alone in such a public place, knowing people were asleep in their rooms all around me. It was a little creepy, and I was grateful for the social pretense that let us ignore the fact that we were so close to each other.
Now that was a very Western idea, I reminded myself. A very American idea; other cultures would be made comfortable by so much human proximity.
Or maybe it was just me being paranoid.
I turned the corner. Somewhere, close behind me, a door had clicked shut. The noise, even the very slight vibration, made me jump a mile. I turned around.
Jack Boyle was setting down a suitcase outside the doorway. It was the large blue wheelie bag with the flower decal on it for identification. And the monogrammed initials "S.O."
The one that belonged to Steve Osborne.
Jack knew I recognized the bag.
"Steve still feeling unwell?" I managed to say.
"Yeah. I think he's gonna try to see a doctor today. Get some antibiotics, or something, before we head to the airport. I told him I'd put his bag out for him, poor guy."
The sleeve to Jack's hiking shirt was rolled up. It was damp, and there was a faint pink tinge coloring the white technical cloth.
I forced myself to breathe normally, but my heart was in overdrive. I'd seen a lot of bloodstains in my time.
"Nice of you. Well, see you." I waved a little wave, and forced myself to turn back down the corridor, my pulse still racing.
"Emma."
I turned around, knowing what I'd see. Jack had a pistol trained on me.
I've had guns pointed at me before. Familiarity didn't make it any easier.
"You were staring at my shirt just a little too long. I can't let you go."
"Huh? Shirt?" I shook my head, but my heart was sinking. He knew, or at least suspected, I knew.
"Don't scream; I'll shoot you and be away before anyone hears you. The only way to live is to do exactly what I say." He gestured to the room. "Get in."
I couldn't go in there; it would be all over for sure. I had no doubt that Steve was either dead or dying, and if I went in, I'd soon join him. But I also knew that staying out here, hesitating too long, would end in a similar result.
A movement out of the corner of my eye sent a thrill through me. Things were going to happen very quickly. I had to be ready.
I decided the best thing to do was panic. It seemed like the easiest, most obvious thing to do.
I stepped forward, wobbling, my breath rapid and uneven. "Wha—? I can't . . ."
He reached into his pocket for the key card, never taking his eyes off me. "Shut up. Get in, now." He slid it into the door, shoved the handle down with his elbow, stuck his foot in to keep it opened.
"I can't . . ." One hand flew to my chest, the other steadied me against the wall. I staggered forward a few more reluctant steps, hyperventilating. "I can't breathe. . . ."
Jack grew impatient. He grabbed my left arm and pulled me toward him.
I rushed in, much faster than he anticipated; he stumbled backward. I grabbed his right wrist, jamming his hand—and the pistol—down, against the door jamb. I held on with all my strength, pointing the gun away from us.
Brian ran the last few steps to us and clocked Jack with the empty ice bucket. It wasn't enough to drop Jack, but it was enough to make him turn his head. Brian stepped out, got the angle, and punched him in the head.
Jack went down then. I stood on his wrist and took the pistol. I carefully removed the magazine. Only when I confirmed there was no round in the chamber did I feel like it was safe to exhale.
That's when the shaking started in earnest.
The ruckus drew the attention of all the people who had been asleep nearby. Someone finally called the manager; even if I hadn't the Turkish to explain, the sight of me holding the gun and Brian sitting on Jack Boyle's back was enough to bring help. The manager called the police and Lale, who eventually called the museum.
In the room, we confirmed Steve was really dead. I recognized the red and purple blotches on Steve's face and neck as evidence of suffocation. I told Lale, who conveyed this to the police, explaining I worked with the police at home sometimes.
Confronted with this evidence, Jack broke down and confessed. He and Steve had fallen out when Steve announced that he was getting cold feet. Jack panicked and smothered him with the pillow, which left the telltale hemorrhages—and the bleeding scratch on Jack's arm.
My professional skills and habits had been helpful on this vacation after all.
"How did you guess it was Jack?" Lale asked, afterward. She had dealt very efficiently with the police and the museum representative, and was very glad to have restored the artifacts—and her reputation.
"He kept saying he was only interested in the food on the trip," I explained. "That he was only peripherally interested in the history. Someone who's that historically disengaged doesn't just know that the character of Ozymandias was based on Ramses, or even if he does remember it from studying the poem—" Here I glanced at Brian. "You don't drop terms like ‘Nineteenth Dynasty' casually. I might have been able to put Ramses before or after Tut, but I wouldn't have remembered the dynasty easily, and I'm a professional. He knew more about the history than he was letting on."
"So, they decided to steal the artifacts," Brian said, "because Steve knew from having been on this stop on another tour that they'd bring out the objects for display?"
I nodded. "The plan was for them to travel as if they were strangers. Using the excuse of his illness, Steve snuck out of the hotel and triggered the alarm at Jack's signal, sent by text. Steve, in disguise, took the objects from Jack when we were being crowded by the other group at the cooking demonstration. They had intended to smuggle them out incorporated into a cheap beaded souvenir necklace."
With all the official procedure, we were fortunate to make it to the airport in time to catch our flights home later the next day.
I helped Eugene with his bag, and while waiting for Brian to go to the men's room, saw Harold Campbell waiting for his flight to New York.
"Good trip," he said, jiggling his lighter.
"Yeah." I shrugged. "Up until the end, anyway."
"Oh, no. No, no," he said, looking surprised. "I mean, it was really sad that someone died, but really, all the excitement was just an extension of the trip. I figure you teach the stuff, seeing the sites for you is already in your blood. But for me, it's the people. I tell people I want to see other places to see how people live. But you learn just as much from the crowd you go around with. We're not going to the circus, we are the circus.
"You can go anywhere in the world you like." He found a cigar and stuck it in his mouth, unlit. "But people are still the best show in town."
Copyright © 2012 by Dana Cameron
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THE VOID IT OFTEN BRINGS WITH IT
by Tom Peccirilli | 6167 words
Tom Piccirilli is the author of more than twenty novels, including The Last Kind Words, which received a starred review from Booklist and was called "perfect crime fiction" by best-selling author Lee Child. He is the recipient of two International Thriller Awards and four Bram Stoker Awards, and has been nominated for the Mystery Writers of America's Edgar Allan Poe Award, the World Fantasy Award, Mystery Readers International's Macavity Award, and Le Grand Prix de l'Imaginaire.
Professor Chadwick wants us to call him Hal, and Hal is telling us again why he's a genius. His voice has the mocking quality of arrogance even while he's trying to sound humble and compassionate. The rest of the class, especially the freshman girls, are hanging on his every word as he leans back against his desk, sleeves rolled up halfway, tie loosened, dimpled chin pinched between thumb and forefinger, azure eyes bleeding sincerity.
"All great literature," Hal says, "is about love or the absence of love. In my novels I write about the truth of love. Its pain, its dulcet desolation, and the void it often brings with it. That's my power. That's my gift."
The girls practically coo as they daydream about Chadwick babies and Chadwick money. Cocktail parties on the balcony of an Upper East Side penthouse apartment. The beach house in the Hamptons, the French maid Fifi with downcast eyes, the chauffeur Franz who always tips his cap. The red-carpet premieres, the cable entertainment-show interviews. The Real Housewives of Academia.
Hal has managed to parlay three of his bestselling novels into major Hollywood deals. Unlike the other professors here, Hal isn't losing sleep, desperate for tenure. He doesn't need to lean against a desk and behave in a nurturing manner, attempting to mold our young eager minds. He's doing it, he says, so he can give back. Sometimes he says he's paying it forward. Back or forward, I don't know, but I'm in awe of his people skills.
Jerry the Jock, who came in hoping for an easy "C" so his GPA wouldn't drop below 2.0 and he could stay on the football team, has started a novel. It's about an overbearing father rabbit forcing his bunny son to fatten up on corn beef hash and become a linebacker when the baby bunny would rather be a figure skater.
It's called I Never Tackled Hard Enough for My Father: A Fable.
He read a chapter of the bunny book today and Hal actually commended Jerry for his sensitivity. The jock's eyes got a little smoky. The guy sitting behind him patted him on the back. The girls murmured appropriately.
I'm failing the class. I don't participate enough. I refuse to critique my fellow students. I flop on the in-class exercises. My writing doesn't contain enough of an "emotional and personal component," Hal says. I write about dark things without enough poetic resonance to connect to the reader. Hal says I'm full of literary fireworks without any grounding in realism. He doesn't like my sword-and-sorcery tales. He doesn't enjoy my dark fantasy pieces about witches and midnight sacrifices. He smiles sadly at my crime stories about good men forced to do bad things because of debt, stupidity, and beautiful women.
He suggests I start more simply, with a plot centering on the worst day of my life. I hand in a twelve-thousand-word novelette about a goblin king lost in a hospital looking for the maternity ward so he can steal children and repopulate his underground realm.
The girl sitting in front of me is Beth Moore. I've been crushing on her for six weeks, since the beginning of the semester. She walked into Creative Writing 102 and turned her gaze on me, and we both knew, right then, that I was already infatuated with her and would do nothing but stare at the side of her face all semester long. She wasn't going to speak to me or look in my direction or encourage me in any way. We both understand that the great literature of my life is going to be about the absence of love.
I tried living in the dorms my freshman year and couldn't get any work done. Between the stereo wars, parties, and binge-drinking roommates bounding in at three A.M. with faceless drunk girls crashing across bed springs, my nerves went from bad to shot. Now I have an off-campus apartment, a mother-in-law room in back of the two-floor walk-up. My landlandy, Mrs. Manfreddi, bakes me cakes and pies and doesn't chase me down for the rent if I'm a few days late. She spends most of her time with her spindly, diseased tomato plants in the yard, cursing at them in Italian.
I write, submit to the top magazines, and collect rejections. Sometimes the mailbox is so full that the postman has to bundle my manuscript-stuffed envelopes with twine.
My insomnia is worse now than ever, but at least it lets me stay busy. When I'm not writing I'm working at one of my plethora of part-time jobs. I work the drive-through window of Cabo Wabo Cantina. I rent skates at the Boogie Paradise roller rink and shoes at the Top Tier bowling alley. I pick up extra shifts and bartend at three bars on the weekends.
This is a small college town. I see Beth Moore and her friends practically every night somewhere on Main Street. She either doesn't recognize me or pretends not to know me. Her laughter is breezy and inspiring. I give her extra Wabo fries for free and don't charge her for the skates. I pour her top-shelf scotch. She says thank you with a sweet tremolo of a giggle, but says it turning away, as if she's speaking to someone beside me instead of me. I wave to her back as she heads out onto the rink, the lane, the dance floor.
I head home and study chemistry and calculus and ethics before trying to sleep. But every night ends the same. With me at my desk, staring at the page, being willful and fake. My losers quip dialogue like heroes and my heroes have the maudlin voices and doomed destinies of losers. I type "The End."
In an effort to encourage us to do even better work, Hal suggests we hold a contest. The most popular story written in class from now until the end of the semester will win signed copies of his three novels and passes to the movie version of his current bestseller The Secret Chambers of My Heart. My classmates respond with smiles and giggles and sighs and hell-yeahs. They speak to him like they're his children, and he speaks back to them like he's their father. A humble, compassionate, arrogant, genius father.
They already have his books. And they all had their copies signed on the first day of class, forming a lengthy line around his desk. He touched girls on their wrists very lightly. He shook hands and clapped guys on their shoulders. I sat in my seat and watched the proceedings with a kind of awe. Hal kept asking, "And who shall I make this out to?" One after another they said their names. Hal managed to repeat each name and make it sound solemn. When they were done he glanced at me and with a chuckle asked, "And who are you?"
It's a good question. I figure I'll get back to him on it someday.
Fruggy Fred doesn't like anybody watching him while he reads his story. He asks us not to turn in our seats. He's back there behind me, clearing his throat, the pages in his hand flapping as he trembles. Some people might think his fear is part of his passion. Some people would be wrong. Hal tells him to relax and take his time. Hal promises that everything is going to be all right.
I shut my eyes and listen.
Fruggy's worked hard to lose his holler accent. He sounds New York born and bred. He sounds like everyone else. I can hear him sort of dancing in his seat as he reads his story. All three hundred pounds of him swaying in his seat, heels shuffling, kicking my chair. I know he's got the echoes of a jug band in his head, but he won't let anyone else know it.
He wants everybody to understand that the fat white trash feel love. The fat can be heroic, the fat want to have children, the fat white trash can say the right words at the right times. A throb of sorrow works through his voice. He swallows tears.
I want to slap him. I want to shake him. I want to haul Fruggy to his feet and ask him, How the hell has this happened? Fruggy, how did they get you?
He's settling for the thinnest self-description there is. Fruggy Fred doesn't write about singing Ozark backwoods songs or playing the banjo, which he does extremely well. He doesn't discuss how he came up out of the Missouri holler on a music scholar
ship. How his mother cooks crank, how his sister was killed in Afghanistan. How his daddy died from eating poisoned squirrel. The years at college have murdered his concept of himself. The rush and patter of his classmates has deformed him, made him forget who he is. Fruggy Fred used to be my roommate three years ago when I lived in the dorms. So much has changed.
He goes on about fat. He goes on about pretty girls not liking him. His voice is flat, without melody. There's nothing mellifluous about it. Maybe the jug band is dead in his head. Maybe he can no longer pluck a banjo. They've done it to him. They've filled him full of doubt and fear, something nobody in the holler could ever do.
The fat guy in his story watches the pretty girl turn away from him and walk away into a sunset.
The pretty girls in class are crying. Hal claps his hands. The rest of them follow suit. Soon, the applause is deafening. I finally turn in my chair. Our eyes meet. Fruggy Fred is smiling so widely I can practically see his tonsils. I wonder if he'll ever visit his sister's grave again.
I see Beth Moore every night that week. She's dating a few different guys and these guys all have a taste for Wabo burgers. I take their money and hand them their orders and always let my gaze linger an extra moment on Beth in the passenger seat, snuggled up beside the beau. The beau turns and hands her the fries and she plucks at the box daintily, pinching a fry between two fingers. She eats slowly, letting the fry hang from her mouth the way kids do when they're pretending to be smoking cigarettes. She lips the fry and I tell the beau, "Thank you for visiting Cabo Wabo Burger. Please come see us again soon." The beau ignores me. Beth ignores me. The french fry ignores me.
I watch the car speed out of the parking lot and make a squealing left turn. The brake lights blaze for an instant and then vanish. I shut my eyes and still see the burning red points for a moment, a soccer mom with a bunch of crying kids already at the window. She looks at me as if she wants me to take all her pain away. I'm looking at her with the same expression. We're like that for a while.
ELLERY QUEEN MYSTERY MAGAZINE Page 7
