M.I.A.

by Michael Allen Dymmoch

  “As long as it doesn’t interfere with your grades.”

  “What if it does?”

  “You may have to ask your new stepdad to help you out.”

  “You sound like you’re pretty sure she’ll marry you.”

  “I guess I’m pretty sure she will.”

  Rhiann

  Our street is called Cemetery Road because it meanders in wide switchbacks between two cemeteries situated on broad natural terraces. Below them, the slope drops steeply to the river, and the road zigzags down to Overlook. The Catholics are laid out in the lower curve of one of the meanders, next to their church. Union Cemetery is across the road and straight downhill from us.

  Mickey’s buried there.

  He and I used to sit on our porch, evenings, sharing our days and a cold beer—or hot chocolate, depending on the season—enjoying the peace. He’d told me on more than one occasion that he’d like to spend eternity here. And so he will, in a plot just below our porch. I was able to see it now that the trees had lost their leaves.

  I’d been walking down to visit him, periodically, since he died, to catch him up on how we’re doing. Mickey was a generous man, an old soul. He’d have been happy to hear that Smoke returned, that he and I had found each other. So after I accepted John’s proposal, I headed down to share the news with Mickey.

  And to say good-bye. I could let him go now; I had some kind of closure. All the persons missing from my life were accounted for. I was ready to start fresh.

  It was nearly dark. Jimmy and Beth had gone off to a school dance. John was making a few business calls. I put on a sweater, put my flashlight in my pocket, and took the shortcut. Carrying a pot of red chrysanthemums, I squeezed through a gap in the cemetery fence.

  I put the flowers down. I sat next to the headstone and told Mickey about my summer. About Beth and Jimmy. About John. I said good-bye.

  When I got up to go, I noticed someone silhouetted against the last of the light. As he came near, he reached up and tipped his baseball cap.

  He had just passed me, and I was stepping onto the shortcut path, when he whirled around and grabbed me.

  “You ruined my life, bitch. You’re gonna pay.”

  Rory Sinter!

  “Then I’m gonna finish what I started with your brat.”

  John

  I saw Rhiann leave her house and cross the street to visit Mickey. I wasn’t spying this time; I didn’t mean to intrude. But something made me follow. I took the same shortcut through the cemetery fence and picked my way down between the trees buttressing the slope. I stopped where the path flattened out on the nearly level graveyard.

  In the waning light, I could see two figures among the markers. Rhiann knelt by Mickey’s grave, her back to the road. The second figure was a man moving purposefully in her direction, silent as a ghost.

  I’d seen that shade before, casting a pall over our summer—Rory Sinter.

  Sudden panic made me plunge toward them. Quietly—to warn Rhiann was to forearm him.

  Sinter tipped his cap as he approached her. Her body language broadcast inattention. She nodded and turned to come back home. He pounced on her from behind.

  I ran.

  He started dragging her toward the road. Rhiann struggled briefly, but he had her by the throat. She sagged in his grip. He let her drop.

  As I closed the distance between us, my footfalls seemed to boom across the grass.

  Sinter looked up and froze. The last glimmer of light reflected from the metal in his hand. A gun.

  Fear for Rhiann made me light-headed. Rage spurred me on.

  Sinter said, “Stop!”

  Instead, I lunged at him.

  The gun discharged. My shoulder struck his beltline. He fell back, with most of me on top. A metallic clatter signaled that he’d dropped the weapon.

  We wrestled and flailed at one another, two dark figures against a darker ground. Headstones and markers surrounded us like ghostly witnesses.

  Sinter rolled under me. I lost my balance. He shoved and kicked, and scrambled out of reach, out of sight in the dark.

  I heard his labored breathing and moved toward the sound. I heard him move away, saw his silhouette against the pale background of a headstone. There was a brushing sound as he felt in the grass for his pistol.

  Then a light—like an airport beacon in the darkness—pinned him to a gravestone. He had the gun again. A semiautomatic. He aimed at me.

  The light went off just before the gun did. Muzzle flare marked his location. I charged again and knocked him sideways. But I tripped and lost my balance.

  He must have located me by sound. The cold finger of the muzzle poked my chest. Sinter said, “Move a hair and you’re dead.”

  I lay still as a corpse.

  He yelled, “You with the flashlight. Turn it on yourself and come over here or I’ll shoot this asshole.”

  There was no light. No reply.

  Sinter straddled me and leaned his weight on the gun, digging the muzzle into my sternum.

  Pain cut through the red haze. Carl’s words damped my rage—something he’d told me about semiautos. “You can’t fire them with the slide pushed back.”

  As Sinter peered nervously into the darkness, I grabbed his pistol with both hands—pulled with one, pushed with the other—and rolled. He lost his balance and fell away.

  And I had the gun.

  I couldn’t see him but I said, “Don’t move, Sinter, or I’ll shoot you.”

  And there was light. It pinned Sinter against a monument.

  I said, “Who’s there?”

  Rhiann said, “It’s me, John.”

  Something like despair crossed Sinter’s face. He looked old and evil in the harsh glare. He stared into the light, then at me in the reflection from the marker. He said, “You’re not gonna shoot me.” He started backing away.

  I was tempted, but I lowered the gun.

  He kept looking back as he bolted. Rhiann kept him in the flashlight beam. So we saw clearly—when he ran toward Mickey’s grave—what he didn’t see: the pot of red flowers.

  He tripped on it and fell forward. His skull glanced off the headstone. He landed on the grave, head at a peculiar angle against the marker. His wide eyes didn’t blink. He didn’t move. He didn’t breathe.

  Behind me, Rhiann said, “Oh, God!”

  I turned and took the flashlight from her shaking hand. I realized I was still holding the gun. I put it on the grass and gave Rhiann a little hug.

  “Stay here.”

  “Where—”

  Keeping the light on Sinter, I stepped around to feel his neck for a pulse. A formality. It was obvious from the angle of his head that his neck was broken.

  Rhiann said, “Is he…?”

  “Dead.”

  In the light reflecting from Mickey’s headstone she seemed more shocked than relieved.

  I walked back to her and took her arm. “Let’s go.”

  “Where?”

  “Come on.”

  “We can’t leave him there. On—” She couldn’t bring herself to finish.

  But I understood. “Mickey won’t mind. It’s just until the police finish.”

  “Oh, God.” Rhiann was the toughest woman I’ve ever known, but she started sobbing.

  I held her for a little while, then said, “C’mon, Rhi.”

  She sniffled and nodded, then let me lead her up the hill.

  Rhiann

  We waited for the police at my house. Sheriff Linden picked us up himself and drove us to the cemetery—I couldn’t think of it as a crime scene. He wouldn’t let us talk about what happened until we got there and he had us locked in separate squad cars. If John was worried, it didn’t show.

  I watched the cops go over the grave site with cameras and tape measures, and make diagrams before they took Rory away. Then they walked John—literally—through his version of events. I watched from the other squad car as the sheriff and state police investigator questioned John. And then
they did the same with me. Checking to see if our stories matched.

  It would’ve been terrifying if I weren’t Mickey’s widow. Long ago, he’d explained how police investigations work.

  The investigator’s name was Crowley, and he’d been called in because the deceased had been a deputy sheriff. There was more to it than that, but I knew they wouldn’t tell us.

  When they were satisfied with our version of the tragedy, Crowley drove us home. “You’ll have to come in tomorrow and sign statements. For now you’re in the clear. It looks as if Sinter’s bad acts just caught up with him.”

  John agreed. “Bad karma.”

  Jimmy

  Thanksgiving Day was in the sixties, so Beth and I sat on the porch with John and Steve.

  I’d gotten Ma’s old yearbooks out of the attic so I could show Beth pictures of her dad, Billy, Steve, and John when they were young.

  She paged through the book until she came to the inside back cover, to a drawing of a fat, bowlegged frog with a cigarette dangling from its mouth. The inscription read, “Have a hoppy summer, Rhi. ILU. Smoke.”

  “Smoke?”

  “What they used to call John in high school,” Steve told her.

  “Really? Why?”

  John just shrugged, so Steve told her. She thought it was pretty funny. John looked embarrassed, which Steve seemed to think was a gas.

  Just then, Ma came out to tell us dinner was ready.

  We all filed into the dining room where Ma had set the table with her good china. She’s a great cook, and the turkey looked like straight out of a cooking show.

  After we said grace, Ma said, “John and I are getting married.” She held up her left hand to show us a gold ring with a little jade frog instead of a diamond.

  “Congratulations.” Steve gave her a sad smile and held his water glass up in a toast. “About time.”

  “What’s with frogs?” Beth asked.

  “You know the fairy tale about the frog prince?” John said.

  Beth nodded.

  “Years ago Jimmy’s mother kissed me, and I turned into a human being. We’re finally going to live happily ever after.”

  More from Michael Allen Dymmoch

  The Fall

  How far would you go to save your life and your world?

  After a nasty divorce, single mother Joanne Lessing finally has her life together, and she’s made a name for herself as a photographer. Then, while on assignment, she witnesses a hit and run. Property damage only. No big deal, she thinks. So she does the right thing—calls the cops. Joanne is dismayed when FBI agents arrive with the local detective. They admit the hit and run driver was a mob killer fleeing the scene of his latest hit. Joanne is relieved to find she can’t really identify the hit man.

  But when she sees the killer again while on another assignment, she takes his picture and finds her new life and her son’s future threatened. Caught between the Mob and the FBI, she’s on her own...

  Caleb & Thinnes Mysteries

  The Man Who Understood Cats

  Two unlikely partners join forces to solve a murder disguised as suicide and catch a killer ready to strike again.

  Gold Coast psychiatrist Jack Caleb is wealthy, cultured, and gay. When one of his clients is found dead in a locked apartment—apparently from a self-inflicted wound— burned-out Chicago detective John Thinnes doesn’t believe it was suicide. And Caleb is inclined to agree.

  But Thinnes regards a shrink who makes house calls suspicious and starts his murder investigation with the doctor himself. An attack on Caleb that's made to look like an accidental drug overdose starts to change the detective’s mind.

  Soon, the two men find themselves a whirlwind of theft, scandal, and blackmail. Forced into an unlikely partnership, they’ll have to confront not only a killer, but hard truths within themselves that will change them forever.

  The Death of Blue Mountain Cat

  The art world is the backdrop when a controversial artist reaches the end of his fifteen minutes of fame.

  Native American artist Blue Mountain Cat has a style described as "Andy Warhol meets Jonathan Swift in Indian country." When he's murdered at an exclusive showing in a conservative art museum, Detective John Thinnes has no shortage of suspects. Targets of the artist's satire included a greedy developer, a beautiful Navajo woman, and black-market antiquities dealers. Even the victim's wife merits investigation.

  Thinnes drafts psychiatrist Jack Caleb to guide him through the terra incognita of the art world, and their investigation turns up a desperate museum director, a savage critic, a married mistress, and shady dealings by the artist's partner. Thinnes and Caleb connect several apparently unrelated deaths as they follow leads from Wisconsin to Chicago's South Side and the mystery's explosive conclusion.

  Incendiary Designs

  Arson, passion, and religious fanaticism set Chicago ablaze in the deadliest summer on record.

  While jogging through Chicago’s Lincoln Park, Dr. Jack Caleb runs into murder—a mob setting a police car on fire— with the officer still inside. Caleb rescues the man, but later the cop's partner is found stoned to death. Detective John Thinnes is assigned to investigate.

  Evidence points toward members of a charismatic church, but too many of them die in arson fires before the cops can round them up. When arson kills the apparent ring leader, it's too much coincidence. The remaining cop killers plead guilty; the case seems to be closed. But as Chicago heats up in the deadliest summer on record, it becomes clear that a serial arsonist is still at large.

  A physician friend of Caleb's is implicated when some of the fire victims are found to have been drugged. To exonerate the man, Caleb sets a trap for the killer, and Thinnes and Caleb are nearly incinerated when the doctor's trap brings the case to a fiery finish.

  The Feline Friendship

  When a vicious rapist crosses the line into murder, Detective John Thinnes and his prickly new partner draft psychiatrist Jack Caleb to help them track the killer down.

  When a young woman is brutally raped in the posh Lincoln Park neighborhood, Chicago Police detective John Thinnes catches the case—even though Thinnes hates working rapes. Worse yet, he has to deal with a new female detective who has a chip on her shoulder the size of a 12 gauge shotgun.

  A second victim is murdered, and the rapes become "heater cases." What started as a simple investigation, soon twists around earlier, similar crimes. Tempers flare; the detective squad polarizes across the gender line. Dr. Jack Caleb, a psychiatrist and police consultant, is asked to mediate. But Thinnes's sometime-ally finds himself with conflicts of interest occasioned by their friendship and Caleb's own disturbing case load.

  The investigation ranges from Chicago's Lincoln Park to the northern Illinois city of Waukegan. And the explosive climax explores not only the karma of evil but the beginning of a beautiful Feline Friendship.

  White Tiger

  In Vietnam, white is the color of death. The 1997 murder of a Vietnamese woman in Chicago's Uptown neighborhood brings Dr. Jack Caleb and Detective John Thinnes together to catch another Vietnamese transplant—a deadly criminal known only as the White Tiger.

  The TV news report of a woman's murder in Uptown leaves psychiatrist Jack Caleb flashing back to Vietnam and sends him running to his own shrink.

  Assigned to investigate, Chicago detectives John Thinnes and Don Franchi find the victim's son, Tien Lee, curiously unmoved by his mother's death. Their preliminary canvass of the dead woman's building and neighborhood reveals that Hue An Lee was well liked and well off, and she had never quarreled with anyone but her "good son."

  Attending the autopsy next morning, Thinnes realizes that he knew the victim when he was stationed in Vietnam—twenty-four years earlier. Thinnes is pulled off the case when an anonymous tipster alleges he'd been intimate enough with Mrs. Lee to have fathered her son. But Thinnes can't let go. And when a schizophrenic man shows up at Mrs. Lee's wake, connecting the deceased to another Vietnam vet and to an uns
olved murder in wartime Saigon, Thinnes starts a retrospective investigation of that crime. He solicits Dr. Caleb's help. Tien Lee complicates the case by insisting that the paternity allegation is an insult to his dead mother. He tries to keep Thinnes on the case.

  Dr. Caleb's therapy leads him to relive his own in Vietnam War experiences. When he's brought into the Lee case by a request to help the schizophrenic mourner, Caleb teams up with Thinnes and his partner to discover the identity of the White Tiger and to set a trap for the elusive killer.

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