ELLERY QUEEN MYSTERY MAGAZINE

by Penny Publication

  "The girl's a cop," Laurie said. "And no, Harvey hasn't been arrested."

  "Why not?" Elaine was clearly agitated.

  Laurie put her arms around her friend and made a face at us to say we shouldn't upset her more.

  I wasn't that worried about upsetting her, but I said, "That's a lovely daughter you have, Elaine."

  "What?" She looked up and pulled away from Laurie's support.

  "Nicole. Bright, funny. A real credit to you."

  "Is she all right?"

  "She's fine. We've left her with a guy from Child Services."

  "Child Services?" New panic. "But Wolfgang said he'd look after her," Elaine said.

  "Wolfgang is in the hospital, Mrs. Warren," Sam said. "He was attacked by four men and stabbed several times."

  "No," Elaine said, with disbelief. "No!" she cried.

  I said, "So the Child Services guy is waiting with Nicole at Wolfgang's. They both hope you'll come back tonight to pick her up."

  "How can I do that?" Elaine was more agitated than ever. "Where could we go? If Harvey sees me, I'm a dead woman."

  "You think he's still looking for you?" Sam said.

  "Unless you people lock him away."

  "Elaine," I said, "when we came in, why did you ask if Harvey'd been arrested?"

  "Because he's dangerous, and evil. Look what he did to Laurie."

  "But the police didn't know what he did to Laurie."

  Elaine looked from me to Sam to Laurie. "I just thought . . ."

  "What?"

  "Oh, I don't know. I don't know. I need to get Nicole. But I can't. If he sees me . . ."

  "You think he'll be waiting for you outside Wolfgang's?"

  She thought. "He could be. He probably is. Oh God!"

  "Well, suppose we bring Nicole here for the time being."

  Sam looked at me uncertainly.

  "Would you?" Elaine said. She sounded more hopeful than at any previous time in the conversation. "Will you? Please!"

  12.

  As soon as Laurie's orange door closed behind us, Sam said, "Whitney Moser's not going to let us bring Nicole here. Not with a dangerous guy on the loose who's already threatened to come back to Laurie's."

  "No?"

  "I wouldn't."

  I said nothing.

  "Daddy?"

  "Yes, dear?"

  "What are you up to?"

  "Tell me, if you were Harvey and you were looking for Elaine, where would you wait for her?"

  Sam considered. "Wolfgang's maybe."

  "Once you've seen the cop cars there? Given that Elaine all but told us that he was one of the gang that stabbed Wolfgang."

  "She did?"

  "She expected him to be arrested, honey. Even Wolfgang the extraterrestrial doesn't claim to read minds and if he can't, then the police sure can't. Arrested for what, since Laurie didn't report him?"

  "If he was part of that," Sam said, "then he wouldn't hang around while the cop cars were there."

  "So what would be your second choice as a place to wait for Elaine?"

  "Well," Sam said, "here, I guess. If he thinks Laurie is helping her."

  "And tell me, did you get a chance to look at the cars parked along the street?"

  "Yes. But I haven't called them in."

  I said, "Were the windows of any of the cars fogged up with condensation?"

  13.

  Sam and I got in our cars and drove away.

  Around the corner and then another block for luck. Sam called for a couple of squad cars to join her, stressing that they must do it quietly and must avoid Hincot Street.

  The rain might have brought a lot of people out to the ER but it seemed to have kept most of Indy's malfeasors at home. Patrolling cops were bored. The call for two cars brought five.

  Under Sam's guidance, a couple of them drove up the alley behind 3117 with their lights out. Once they were in place at the end of the street, Sam and the other patrol cars filled the street from its open end.

  I walked back to the corner to watch. While I waited for Sam to give the go, a gust of wind blew my umbrella inside out. Then another gust righted it, but left me with a droopy corner—the umbrella would never be the same again. Was it a metaphor for life? We survive our trials but we're never quite the same?

  Suddenly the six cars leapt into action, lighting the street with head, spot, and blue-revolving lights. Moments later, Harvey's car was surrounded with guns brandished by cops in raincoats. I saw his car's door open a crack. The first thing out was his hands, held high and in plain sight. Once he was standing by the car, even from a distance he looked like he didn't know what had hit him.

  I wondered if Harvey figured that his windows being steamed up would make him inconspicuous because no one could see him in the car. Wrong. His being the only car on the street with opaque windows made it more conspicuous, not less. Poor Harvey. Not one of nature's deep thinkers, at a guess.

  Elaine didn't think Harvey had a gun, but in Indiana you can never be sure. Hence the aggressive posture of the bored police officers. As it turned out, he was as unarmed as he was unaware. They didn't even find his knife.

  While the assembled representatives of law enforcement secured him ready for transfer downtown, I crossed and went back to Laurie's orange door, my umbrella's new flap flapping in the wind.

  14.

  Whitney Moser was sitting on a kitchen chair, concentrating on his phone. Either he was dealing with weighty matters of child protection or he was playing on one of his game apps. Nicole was asleep at his feet, curled up on a nest of mattress leftovers.

  Elaine followed me into the house, but as soon as she saw Nicole she rushed to her and took her in her arms.

  "Mom?" Nicole said as she rubbed her eyes and opened them.

  It would have broken my heart if she'd woken up like that for anybody else.

  Moser and I stepped away and I explained that the abusive boyfriend was now in custody, that Elaine and Nicole could go safely to the duplex where they'd been living or stay with a friend across the street.

  "That's just as well," Moser said, "because I couldn't allow them to stay on here."

  I thought he meant because of the lack of whole beds but that wasn't it.

  "The guy who owns this place," Moser said, "what's his name?"

  "Wolfgang. I'm not sure what his full name is." By now he might have changed it again, to that of someone else whose precociousness he suspected of identifying a fellow extraterrestrial.

  "Well, I've checked the address and he doesn't have any of the permits he needs to run a refuge, especially one with children."

  "I don't think Wolfgang intended this place to become anything formal. He just took in people who asked him for help."

  "Well, he'll have to learn to say no," Moser said, "unless he goes through the authorization procedure. But even if he gets personal clearance, his chances of being approved for one big open-plan room . . ."

  "He means well," I said. "I can't say more than that."

  Moser gave me a card. "Have him get in touch with me if he wants to talk about his options."

  I took the card.

  But my lack of enthusiasm for bureaucracy's facility for stifling generosity must have shown because Moser said, "I'm not one of the bad guys, Mr. Samson."

  "I worked that out before," I said.

  "It's just the way things are."

  15.

  I didn't return to the hospital until the morning. The heavy rain had stopped at last. Impenetrably gray skies were dropping no more than a drizzle.

  Sam met me there, curious to see the guy who was at the center of the action. And I was pleased to see that Nurse Matty was on duty again. Or was it still? "Don't you ever get time off?" I asked her.

  "I volunteered for a double," she said, "which tells you something about my private life."

  "It tells me you're a wonderful, caring person who's probably stockpiling her money in order to open a charitable foundation."

 
; "Me and Bill Gates." She eyed Sam up. "So, who's your friend? Or is this a nonfriend too?"

  "She is, indeed, a friend. As well as being my daughter."

  "The cop?"

  "Yes."

  "And she's your daughter?" Matty tilted her head. "Her mother must be very very beautiful."

  I declined to respond. "How's the patient?" I asked.

  "He's making me a little uncomfortable, to tell the truth."

  "Because of his endless demands for attention and enhanced comforts?"

  "Cut up like he is, he should be restless and trying to get more pain relief out of us. But instead he just lies there."

  "And that's a problem for you?"

  "He watches everyone come and go, and then he smiles a little smile whenever someone takes his blood pressure or fluffs up his pillows."

  "And says thank you, I bet."

  "Every time. It's creeping me out. I'll be glad when we get a normal patient back in that bed."

  "Matty, have you had a personal chat with him?"

  "Personal? Is that man code for something I don't understand?"

  "Asked him about himself, his family?"

  "No." She peered at me. "Why?"

  "Well, don't, if what you like is normal."

  "Okay, now you're creeping me out too." She shook her head. "You know where he is."

  "Yeah."

  "Nice to meet you," she said to Sam and went about her business.

  I led Sam to my nonfriend.

  Wolfgang was not asleep. He gave us a little smile when we came in. "Albert," he said. "And a stranger." He peered at Sam. "Are you two related? Daughter?"

  "Thanks for acknowledging my genes," I said. "This is Sam."

  "How do you do, Sam."

  "Nice to meet you, Mr. . . . Mozart?"

  "Just call me Wolfgang." He turned to me. "I thought you told me your daughter is a police officer."

  "She is."

  He stared at her. "Okay, I can see it now. But there's something . . . more. You're an unusual person, Ms. Samson."

  "Is that unusual-good or just unusual-different?" Sam asked.

  "Good. Definitely good. You will do things in your life."

  "No need to butter her up. She's not here to arrest you," I said.

  "We'll see how it goes," Sam said. "No promises."

  I said, "They're complaining about you out there. They say you should be trying to get more morphine out of them."

  "It's only pain," Wolfgang said.

  "There have been developments since I was here yesterday."

  "Do I want to know?"

  "Probably not, but there will be consequences for you." I sat beside Sam to tell the story of the previous evening. As it went on, Wolfgang looked increasingly weary. Weary and unbelieving.

  "Elaine is responsible for what happened?"

  "I don't know how the law will interpret it, but hers was the big bang from which the rest of yesterday's universe followed."

  "But why? I took her in. I fed her. Her and her child."

  "It was about her, Wolfgang, not you."

  He absorbed this. "Okay. I can see that. I'm thinking narrowly."

  "She was desperate to get rid of her boyfriend. She never intended for anyone to get hurt. And, like yourself, she hasn't had a good experience with the police."

  He glanced at Sam, who said, "So she went to her best friend. She got the friend to ask Harvey, the boyfriend, what it would take to get him to leave Elaine alone once and for all. Harvey said money."

  Wolfgang shook his head slowly, sad about the way human nature plays out. Maybe he was wishing his dad had taken him along to Planet Other.

  "So Elaine and the friend hatched up a plan," I said. "The friend told Harvey that you keep a lot of money around the house. Elaine thought he'd go to your place alone and that between you and the women there you'd subdue him and he'd be arrested."

  I paused while Wolfgang revisited what had happened in his house the previous day. "When I saw the four masked men," he said, "I shouted for all the women to get out. Everyone ran out the back door."

  Except for Nicole. I said, "Maybe Harvey smelled some kind of rat when Elaine's friend became cooperative. But for whatever reason he recruited some friends of his own for the visit to your house. Friends willing to rough you up for some easy money."

  "All wearing those terrorists' masks." Wolfgang shook his head, looking wearier and wearier.

  Sam said, "We have Harvey in custody, Mr. Mozart. I hear that he gave up the rest of the ‘terrorists' in about five seconds."

  "They're sad, silly men," Wolfgang said. "I've been thinking about how they acted when they had me in their car. They were childish and squabbly. And if they needed money so badly, they should just have asked. I'd have given them some."

  "That's not how things are expected to work on Planet Earth," I said. "And chances are it was greed rather than need anyway. For which they'll all go down, for assault with deadly weapons."

  "I won't press charges."

  "What?"

  "I won't testify against them. I should have talked more with Elaine. I should have learned more about her problems. I should have worked out some way to help her. I could have talked with this Harvey."

  "Had him hold your stone and let it make him see the light?"

  "You think I'm crazy, don't you?"

  "I'd say you are otherworldly, but you'd just agree with me," I said.

  Sam said, "Your refusal to testify won't keep them from being charged, Mr. Mozart. They'll testify against each other. The medical records here will establish the injuries. They'll plead out. And they will go to jail. They're dangerous and they need to be prevented from hurting more innocent people."

  I said, "Why wouldn't you help punish idiots who are willing to stab people to get a few bucks?"

  "Because jail is not the answer. We have a higher percentage of our population in jail than any other country in the world and things like this still happen."

  "You could ask the judge to give them twenty-five years of community service."

  Wolfgang sat up in his bed. "I want to talk to them." He looked at me but then settled on Sam. "Can you make that happen, Officer Samson? I need to talk to them. All of them."

  16.

  Sam and I stood in the parking lot before we went our separate ways. "Weird guy, your friend Wolfgang," she said.

  "He's not my friend."

  "Why does he want to talk to Harvey and the other idiots?"

  "I think he believes he can spread peace on earth, one peace at a time."

  "Is he a megalomaniac?"

  "He's got this piece of limestone that he thinks has his extraterrestrial father's handprint on it. Wolfgang believes that people who touch the stone feel better. Maybe even become better people."

  "If they do let him talk to Harvey," Sam said, "they won't let him take a lump of stone into the interview room. They'd be afraid your Wolfgang would just whack him on the head with it."

  "That'd make us feel better, in his place," I said. "But then again you and I are not extraterrestrials."

  "I suppose I should be thankful that you're human, no matter what Mom says."

  "She was never that beautiful," I said. "It was her brains I went for. But then they ran out."

  "Why didn't you tell Wolfgang that he can't run his house as a refuge anymore?"

  "Maybe he'll pass his handprint around Children's Services and they'll sign him up and everyone will live happily ever after."

  "You think?"

  "With him, I don't know what to think," I said. "Will Elaine face charges?"

  "She and Laurie didn't tell Harvey ‘Go stab,' but they provided information knowing it was likely to result in a felony crime. Most judges won't like that much, especially in an election year."

  "Maybe Wolfgang will want to fund a high-priced lawyer for her."

  "Has he got a lot of money?"

  "I have no idea."

  "Will you go back in there now and tell him
that Elaine might be in trouble?"

  "Do you think I should?" I said.

  "Maybe for Nicole," Sam said.

  "Yeah, all right. Good kid, isn't she?"

  "Yeah."

  "Like you," I said. And she didn't even smack me for calling her a kid.

  Copyright © 2012 by Michael Z. Lewin

  * * *

  GONE FISHING

  by Jim Davis | 6704 words

  When Jim Davis debuted in EQMM's Department of First Stories in February of 2011 he said he had more short story ideas for his private detective Bradley Carter. Here we have the fruit of one of those ideas, a case in which Carter goes on a high-tension chase through the Ozark Mountains, a scene familiar to his creator, a veterinarian who lives on a farm near the Lake of the Ozarks.

  I was sitting at a corner table in a smoke-filled biker bar just off Route 16 in northwest Arkansas. My stack of quarters glinted on the bumper under the Stag Beer light that illuminated the stained felt of the pool table. My momma, if she were still alive, would not have approved.

  I nursed a lukewarm Budweiser longneck waiting for Seymour "Tiny" Buckman to hustle twenty bucks off a half-breed kid who was way too drunk to steer his bike back to Oklahoma. Tiny had probably been drinking all day himself, from the looks of it. I was sure of it when he double-tapped the cue ball before sinking the eight ball in the corner pocket. He stared the breed down as he chalked his cue; his glare daring the kid to call him on it. His eyes were red, and his pupils were dilated like he might be on something besides an alcohol buzz.

  The kid reached in his pocket and flipped a wadded-up pair of tens out onto the felt and handed the cue to me. He staggered toward the door without a word. He was listing slightly to the left as he aimed for the opening. He suddenly reeled and fell headlong into the shuffleboard table, scattering pucks and sending up a cloud of Ultra Glide powder. He rolled off and slid under the table and lay still. No one seemed to notice.

  Tiny scooped the money off the table as he staggered over to where I sat. He wore a jean jacket with the sleeves cut out, the armpits wet with sweat, and a pair of Levis so shiny and dark that I would guess they had never been washed since they came off the shelf at Walmart. He weighed at least two-fifty and smelled like a hog eating onions. He reached out a hairy paw, snatched my beer off the table, and chugged it in two gulps. He wiped the foam from his beard with the back of his arm and tossed the bottle on the table, where it spun to a stop. He leaned down into my face and let out a mighty belch. I felt my hair move, but I managed to keep from breathing until he stood back up and said, "Rack 'em."