EQMM, May 2010

by Dell Magazine Authors

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  Dell Magazines

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  Copyright ©2010 by Dell Magazines

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  Cover Image: Larry Goode/Images.com

  CONTENTS

  Novelette: JUST A THOUGHT by Keith McCarthy

  Novelette: THE LIST by Loren D. Estleman

  Novelette: WHEN THIEVES FALL OUT by John F. Dobbyn

  Novelette: A SMALL TECHNICAL PROBLEM by Caroline Benton

  Reviews: BLOG BYTES by Bill Crider

  Department of First Stories: DEVOTION by Will Dunlap

  Department: 2009 READERS AWARD

  Novelette: LITTLE OLD LADIES by Simon Brett

  Novelette: SENORITA CALI by Alonso Cueto

  Novelette: THE WHITE DOOR by Stephen Ross

  Novelette: TRUCK CEMETERY by Ruth Francisco

  Reviews: THE JURY BOX by Jon L. Breen

  Novelette: SNAKESONG by Bill Pippin

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  Novelette: JUST A THOUGHT by Keith McCarthy

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  Art by Mark Evan Walker

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  Keith McCarthy's John Eisenmenger is back this month with a case involving a bizarre psychological defense. Readers who'd like to see more of the forensic pathologist should look for the latest Eisenmenger novel, Corpus Delicti (Severn House), of which PW says: “McCarthy tweaks this spine-tingler with jittery twists, including a shocking ending. The utterly human frailties of the principal characters don't get in the way of their crime solving but only enhance it."

  * * * *

  "They've offered me earplugs."

  Helena looked up sharply from her writing pad. “I'm sorry?"

  His face was neutral. No sign that he regarded his remark as in any way odd. “Earplugs. They've offered them to me."

  "Have they?” She didn't really know what he was talking about.

  "To keep out the noise at night."

  He was nervous, but that was understandable. He was tired, too, and who wouldn't be? On remand for murder, a prison was no place for a good night's slumber; there were always noises in prison at night, always men talking either to themselves or to each other, men crying, men screaming. If you were lucky, it wasn't coming from your own cell; if you were really lucky, it wasn't coming from you.

  "I didn't want her dead."

  "No, of course not, David."

  He was hunched in his chair, contracted so that his arms, straight as sticks, angled down between his knees from rounded shoulders, his head jutting forward like a turtle's. It was difficult to equate the sight before her with the young, successful entrepreneur he had been until a few weeks before. The pictures of him that she had seen had presented her with a man on a roll, who had the answers to all life's problems, a toned body, the arrogance of success behind the gaze. Handsome, with bright blue eyes and perfect teeth, he had photographed well. Now he was shrunken, scared, grey as a goose, watery eyes; his chin and neck were covered in small nicks where he had shaved with trembling hands. He was not built for incarceration and had no training for it.

  He had barely looked at her for the ten minutes she had been in the room with him. Being merely on remand, he was allowed his own clothes, and perhaps it was the light in the room that made them look cheap and shabby. “I love her."

  Lovedher.

  But, having had this thought, she found herself disagreeing with it. True, his wife was dead, and true it was at his own hand, but she supposed that he could still be in love with her. “I'm sure you do, David."

  "She was beautiful. I wouldn't harm her."

  She could at least agree with the first sentence. Alice Codman had indeed been beautiful, with dark eyes, high cheekbones, and an almost Egyptian look. She had been slim and tanned, worked as an interior designer.

  He straightened his back suddenly, stretching and abruptly shivering as he did so. He brought his shoulders back and his hands came out from between his knees. The shaking grew worse and he put his hands on the edge of the table, gripping it tightly.

  "Are you all right?"

  He said nothing. She saw that the fingers of his right hand were badly stained with nicotine. He was still shaking, but less violently now.

  "David?"

  His head was still lowered, but he said in a soft, lost voice, “Yes.” He brought his head up so that she could see his face. He was crying, a torrent of despair. “I didn't kill her."

  "I understand that."

  But did she? The evidence was seemingly incontrovertible, the facts not disputed by the accused. Alice Codman had been killed in her own bed. Asphyxiated, probably with a pillow. A bad enough start, but there was worse, for then she had had her throat cut. Indeed, she had been almost decapitated. A horrible, messy death, and one that, not surprisingly, had left blood everywhere—on the bed sheets, on the wall, on the carpet; even on the ceiling.

  Blood on David Codman, too, because David had been sleeping in the same bed when it happened. Sleeping heavily, apparently, because he claimed not to have known anything about it.

  Not surprisingly, this story had stuck in the throats of the detectives who had responded to his hysterical emergency call the next morning. It had been regurgitated completely when forensics had discovered his fingerprints on the garden shears that lay by her side of the bed. The pathologist had done his best to disrupt the smooth passage of the case from murder to conviction by refusing to confirm that this was definitely the murder weapon—"I'm not willing to go beyond my original statement,” he had insisted. “It's compatible with the bladed instrument that cut her throat, but I can't be certain.” But since the police felt it unlikely that David's wife would have felt the need to cuddle a pair of garden shears during the night, they had allowed him his uncertainties.

  And so David was here, on remand in Gloucester Prison, and Helena Flemming was here also, his defence solicitor. “You're certain that you heard nothing?"

  "Nothing."

  Helena wrote this down while he looked on. “I know it sounds fantastic, but I honestly didn't."

  The police heard such protestations and put them down to stupidity or, at best, a lack of imagination when it came to storytelling. When they came to Helena's ears from the mouth of an intelligent man—and David was an intelligent man, being a member of Mensa and a millionaire at the age of just thirty—she took a diametrically opposed stance. This story might well be fantastic, but it was
n't a fantasy.

  "Fair enough."

  "You believe me?"

  She smiled at this. “If you tell me that it's true then, yes, I believe you."

  Paradoxically, if there was anyone in the room—where the walls were of unplastered brick painted in shiny grey, and the floor was stained and dusty and streaked with scuffs from heavy, rubber soles—who was disbelieving, it was David, who could not accept that here was a potential friend.

  The house had shown no signs of a forced entry. How the police had celebrated that piece of news.

  "In your preliminary statements, you suggested that you hadn't been getting on very well with your wife."

  He sighed. “Not recently, no."

  "What was the problem?"

  "She'd been unfaithful to me.” This was accompanied by an apologetic smile above which his eyes held a questioning look, as if he were hoping that she wouldn't mind too much.

  "She was having an affair?"

  "Yes.” This with a sad sigh.

  "Oh."

  "Until then, I thought our marriage had been a success. I realise now that I was mistaken. She hurt me deeply."

  Helena had begun to write this on her notepad, but she stopped and looked up at him. “Then why hadn't you left her?"

  "I'm a Catholic. There is no room for divorce in my faith."

  But, according to the evidence, there was some for murder. She said nothing for a short while, looking at him while he stared at the window high above her head; a pigeon could be seen through the grime, bobbing silently. She asked the next question because she had to, not because she wanted to hear the answer. “Did you have rows?"

  His attention was back on her at once. “Oh yes. Dreadful ones."

  She could remain silent no longer. “David, these answers aren't helping your case, you know."

  The look in his eyes and the tone of his voice were entirely without guile as he replied, “You want me to tell you the truth, what really happened, don't you?"

  He was right and she had to acknowledge the fact. “Of course."

  And so she dutifully wrote down what he had told her, all the while conscious that he might well be effectively dictating his confession.

  "There's something else I think I should tell you.... “

  He was timid, bashful. She looked at him, at his nervous, silly grin and she experienced something that was not so much a sinking feeling, more one of being sunk. “What?"

  "One of the rows . . . just before it happened... “

  "Yes?"

  "I was a bit drunk and we got to arguing... “

  "About her affair?"

  He didn't actually confirm her suspicions but she took his silence as assent. “ . . . And I hit her."

  She took this in and for a moment there was silence. She decided after a while that she was numb; she had to be, because she ought to have been sobbing by now, waving goodbye to any chance of victory. In a tired voice she enquired of him, “How badly did you hurt her?"

  "I blacked her eye. And she hit the back of her head as she fell backwards."

  "Did she need hospitalisation?"

  "Not overnight."

  "But she went to A&E?"

  He nodded.

  "Were the police involved?"

  "No charges were brought.” He produced this as if it were some form of mitigation. She didn't have the heart to tell him his real position. “Well, that's something."

  Whilst she was writing up her notes, he said sadly, “It's hopeless, isn't it?"

  Careful to keep her face neutral because to give him false hope was not in her nature, she looked up at him and said carefully, “It's not good, no."

  His nod was a thing of collapse, acquiescence to his fate. “But, I didn't do it.” This, a still small voice of protest in the storm around him. “I didn't."

  "Good,” she responded as positively as she could. “It's my job to show everyone else that."

  It was time for her to go. As had become her habit when visiting clients on remand, she fished in her handbag and produced a packet of cigarettes, pushed them across the table to him. He said at once, “No, thanks. I've given up."

  "Take them. You'll find they're useful in here as currency. If you're not smoking, you win both ways because you won't be burning your money, will you?"

  He hesitated still, then abruptly reached out and grabbed them, saying, “Thanks."

  And she remembered. “Have the earplugs worked?"

  "Eh?"

  "Have they helped you sleep?"

  "No.” He looked worn down, almost worn away. “I can't use them. I tried using them before, but I found they made things worse, not better."

  "Why?"

  "Have you ever tried them?"

  She hadn't.

  "After a while, you hear the blood pounding in your head.” He stopped but only for a moment. “It's like throbbing almost. Louder and louder, pulsing like a great engine, smothering you, drowning you, filling your lungs, your nose, your mind . . . “ He was talking more and more quickly but always in the same monotone. “It gets so overpowering and so insistent, that there's nothing else, nothing else at all... “

  "David?"

  She'd managed to stop him, but he didn't speak.

  "David? Are you all right?"

  A weak smile. “Sorry. I'm so tired... “

  "What about sleeping tablets? Surely they'll give you those?"

  "I don't like drugs. Never have. You can do most things without the aid of drugs. They're just a cop-out."

  "You prefer alternative therapies?"

  He nodded.

  "Can't they give you any of those?"

  He sighed. “Apparently not."

  * * * *

  "He did it."

  "He says he didn't."

  "Not everyone you defend is innocent of the crime, Helena. In fact, it would be fairer to say that hardly anyone you defend is innocent of the crime. Most of them aren't innocent of anything, if it comes to that."

  "Thanks, John."

  Eisenmenger shrugged. “Tell me it isn't true."

  "He says he didn't do it. I operate on that basis. I'm not paid to assess the evidence and judge him, I'm paid to do as he asks."

  They were in her office, the sky outside darkening with both the oncoming evening and with rain clouds. An ancient gas fire hissed, whispering to him of Saturday nights from his youth, buttered crumpets and Doctor Who on the television. They were sitting around a dining table that occupied one end of the office; it was piled high with files, many of which were obese and bulging forth their paperwork. John Eisenmenger was Helena's partner both socially and for business; he was a pathologist, she a solicitor. He said, “Well, either he's innocent, or he's mad."

  "Or both."

  Eisenmenger laughed. “I doubt it, Helena."

  She did not see anything funny, though. “Was there nothing at postmortem to help us?"

  "Not a sausage. What happened to Alice Codman is so clear from the pathological evidence it could be used as a teaching case. She was manually asphyxiated first—there are clear finger marks around her neck—and then whoever it was knelt on her chest and tried to cut through her neck with a long-bladed scissorlike instrument."

  "Like the garden shears found at the scene?"

  "As you say, like the shears found at the scene. Right length, right thickness, and smooth-edged. Not quite sharp enough to do the job; couldn't get through the vertebral column. He managed to cut through her tattoo, though."

  She had learned to cope with the careless way he thought about and discussed atrocity, but she had never learned to like it. “Tattoo?"

  "She collected tattoos. One at the base of her spine of a serpent, some Chinese characters on the inside of her left thigh, yin and yang on her right shoulder, and the one on her neck of a spider, just below her right ear. It was recent, I think."

  "She was dead when he tried to cut her head off, wasn't she?"

  He considered this, much as he might had he be
en asked to recall the finer details of a Rembrandt or a Titian. “I think so. There was blood, of course, and lots of it, but if the heart had been beating at the time that her carotids were cut, it would have covered the whole of the back bedroom wall. The photographs show that it was only splashed."

  She tried not to think about the panini she had had for lunch and buried herself in the paperwork. “Forensics say that her DNA is under his fingernails and that there is a partial match for one of his fingerprints on her neck."

  "Men have hung on less evidence than that."

  "But he says that he didn't do it."

  Eisenmenger was a rationalist, could only shake his head. “He's lying, then."

  * * * *

  The Codmans had possessed two properties. One was a large, grade-two listed manor house in Herefordshire, the other a two-bedroom flat in the heart of Cheltenham, just off the Promenade; Alice had met her death in Cheltenham, a property that was probably worth half a million pounds. As they stood outside, looking up at the building, a couple came out. He was dressed in leather, she in too much makeup and too little clothing. The man looked at them and murmured to no one and everyone, “Bloody rubberneckers."

  Helena smiled politely. “Actually, we have business here."

  Perhaps he believed her, perhaps he didn't. “You know what happened up there, don't you?"

  "There was a death, I understand."

  "Bloody massacre, more like."

  "Yes, well... “

  "We've had to endure hundreds of people coming to gawp. What's wrong with people? Ghouls, the lot of them. I complained to the police, but they said that there was nothing they could do."

  "Rest assured, we haven't come to ‘gawp.’ “

  His companion spoke for the first time, and in a sneering, dismissive tone. “The police are never any good, except when they can make an easy arrest. We were burgled last year and their investigation was pathetic. We never heard any more after they'd given us an incident number."

  "Yes, well. As I say, we have business here."

  Helena had an entry card provided by the police but she waited until Mr. and Mrs. Disgusted were well clear and climbing into a Porsche 911 before she used it. Eisenmenger sighed as he watched them pull away. “My mother,” he offered, “would call them ‘new money.’ “