Fanning the six straws out evenly between thumb and forefinger of my closed left hand, I offered the cut stems to the colonel. One corner of his mouth curled in a brief sardonic smile.
"Your Excellency has the honor of first draw,” I stated.
Without hesitation, the colonel of the Line plucked a straw with his left hand. With his right, he drew his army revolver and let it hang at the side of his pants leg. He stepped back.
Next, the cadet. Aleksei studied the five remaining straws, reached for one, then withdrew his hand. Eventually, he too picked a straw. He turned his back and walked off two paces before rounding to cover us with his revolver again.
Vassili's hand hovered over the last four straws. Undecided, he touched one, then the other before finally selecting one. He too stepped back and held his rifle on us.
For his part, Daddy Eroshka reached blindly over and took a straw without looking to see which one he'd drawn.
Two left. One for me and one for the old graybeard.
Garaska locked eyes on me as if I could tell him which one to pick. In great agitation he blew out his breath. In the end, he drew and concealed the cut stalk in his large palm.
I had no choice in the matter. The remaining straw, good or bad, was mine. Like Eroshka, I didn't bother to consider its length. Instead, I carefully maneuvered the cut grass stem so it was now positioned in my left hand between the tip of my thumb and the tip of my first forefinger.
The colonel gave me a skeptical look.
I held my left hand out in front of me.
"Now hold your straws up next to mine."
Five hands came forward.
We all looked at the length of grass each of the other men had drawn. Five stalks were the same length. One was shorter.
"I thought,” said the cadet, “that the long straw was supposed to be the thief, but there are five long ones here."
"My apologies for any small misdirection,” was my reply, “but under the present circumstances, it became a matter of necessity. Here in this room, all claimed to be honorable men, so I cut all six straws to the same length. Only a dishonorable man, such as our thief, would deliberately shorten the length of his own straw to ensure that he did not end up with the long one."
The cadet's hand with the short straw began to tremble.
"If you search him and his belongings, Colonel, I believe you will find your missing money."
The colonel quickly relieved the cadet of his weapon.
"Vassili, I will watch these four. You check Aleksei's belongings."
Vassili stepped slowly back with his rifle still pointed at us, then turned and walked quickly to the pile of cut grass on the dirt floor. With a last look in our direction, he leaned his rifle against the oven and knelt by the cadet's knapsack. Holding the knapsack upside down, he dumped the contents onto the dirt and pawed his way through each item. Nothing. Then he ran his fingers through the pile of cut grass.
I saw the orderly's hands come up with a small leather sack. He twisted his head far enough around to lock eyes with me. “How did you ... ?"
"What have you found?” demanded the colonel.
Vassili clutched his rifle in one hand and returned with the newly discovered leather pouch in the other. The sound of coins jingling inside the pouch with his every step played a symphony to my ears. But then being a trader of goods, money spoke to me in a way that transcended all other languages. And this time, it also spoke to me of my freedom from a painful death.
It was hard for me to read the colonel's face. He glanced from the quantity of coins, which he knew as his own, to the nervous cadet before him.
No one moved and no one spoke for several minutes. And I for one had no wish to intrude on the colonel's thoughts at this moment. In time, he tossed my small bag of coins back to me, then holstered his revolver, placed his arm around the cadet's shoulders, and walked him to the far corner of the hut. They engaged in low whispers.
Daddy Eroshka and Garaska immediately assailed me from both sides with questions and statements, but even though I heard them and made replies, I kept my eyes on the pair of Russian officers in the far corner.
Daddy Eroshka crossed himself twice.
"What kind of sorcery was this, Armenian?"
"No magic, my friend, just logic and human nature."
"In that case, kunak, it is good for us you learned this method at the Sultan's court to the south. Otherwise, I would soon be explaining ‘my little sins’ to Saint Peter."
I risked a momentary glance at Eroshka's face. “The part about the Sultan's court was another of my misdirections. In truth, I invented this so-called method here this morning as a possible solution to our philosophical problem. If it didn't work, we were all dead anyway."
"Remind me not to gamble with you,” Eroshka muttered.
In my other ear, Garaska continued murmuring.
"Truth be known, I almost broke my own straw to make it shorter, but you spoke often of us being honorable men. And even though I may take a few bribes at the river crossing, that hurts no one. And yes, I've stolen a few horses from the Chechens and the Ingush and the Nogai, but that is just the game we play among ourselves to see who is the best of men. In my heart, as all Cossacks know, I am an honorable man. Isn't that so?"
While Eroshka and Garaska vouched for each other's honesty, I listened to bits of conversation from the pair in the corner. As best I could determine, the colonel was subtly persuading Cadet Aleksei that it was in his best interests to write glowing letters of commendation about the colonel's feats in the Summer Campaign they had yet to fight. The colonel would then hold these letters, and at the appropriate time, of course, they would be posted to the cadet's relatives in Moscow. Relatives close to the tsar.
Eventually, I felt Eroshka tugging on my coat sleeve as other thoughts began to bother him.
"Explain something to me, Armenian. When the colonel believed we had stolen his money, he was ready to shoot us and plant our dead bodies in silent graves beneath the steppes, but when it turns out Cadet Aleksei stole the money, then this same colonel wraps his arms around the cadet as if they were old drinking comrades. Where is the justice?"
"Justice is coming, my friend, it will merely take a little while to get here. This colonel is no fool. He knows he cannot hold this theft over the cadet's head forever. Given enough time, the cadet will become emboldened and would soon write other letters, letters critical of the colonel so as to discredit him should the colonel later decide to expose the cadet and the theft."
"What will the colonel do then?” inquired Garaska. “He will lose all advantage."
"It will never go that far,” I replied.
"What do you mean?” asked Eroshka.
In a low voice I gave my answer.
"I suspect Cadet Aleksei will tragically perish at the hands of the Abreks during their Summer Campaign. Until that time, the colonel will keep Aleksei very close at hand."
After a few moments, a smile of enlightenment slowly lit up Daddy Eroshka's face.
"Ah, a truly heroic death for the colonel to tell Cadet Aleksei's relatives back at the Muscovy court."
I nodded.
This colonel of the Line was a survivor, both in the battlefield and in the political machinations of the Russian court. I would do well to study him and learn.
But then I had caught him glancing in my direction a couple of times from where they stood in the corner, as if he were now also taking my measure. I almost grinned.
Copyright (c) 2007 by R. T. Lawton
[Back to Table of Contents]
Department: BOOKED AND PRINTED by Robert C. Hahn
Forensics is still one of the hottest areas of the mystery and suspense genres, inspiring both fiction and nonfiction. One of the defining works of the category was Patricia Cornwell's 1990 debut novel Postmortem. Cornwell's latest novel, Book of the Dead (Putnam, $26.95), is her fifteenth to feature Dr. Kay Scarpetta, formerly the Virginia chief medical examiner, who is now i
n private practice as a consultant, and it has all the elements fans have come to expect and to love: the hands-on forensic work coupled with the latest in high-tech equipment far beyond the reach of ordinary police departments or even the best equipped big city departments; and the return of core characters who flesh out the series, her secretary Rose, investigator Pete Marino, her forensic psychologist boyfriend Benton Wesley, her computer-geek niece Lucy Farinelli, and the despicable Dr. Marilyn Self. And there is the unflappable Scarpetta wearing a mantle of calculating rationality to protect her against her own emotions.
Cornwell wastes little time thrusting the reader into the story with a gripping description of a serial killer at work, then pulling back to view Scarpetta, Wesley, and top Italian officials as they consider the nude, mutilated corpse of American tennis phenom Drew Martin, left carefully arranged in the heart of Rome's historic district.
The killer is quickly nicknamed the Sandman—he is cautious and scrupulously careful to leave almost nothing in the way of clues, nothing, that is, but sand with unusual traces of gunshot residue.
The Sandman may be the one who inflicts pain and death, but Dr. Marilyn Self, TV host, pop psychiatrist, and Scarpetta-hater, is a malignant force who is perhaps even worse than the killer. Dr. Self is kind of like a spider that enjoys watching the struggles of whatever gets caught in her web. That Dr. Self is embraced and lionized by the viewing public would be laughable without the real life examples already on the airwaves.
As the victims pile up—not in Rome but much closer to Scarpetta's own home in Charleston, South Carolina—Scarpetta will need all of her skills and inner resources to crack the scant minute clues and unravel the twisted identity of the killer.
Cornwell skirts close to the edge in this novel, which offers a soap opera's worth of angst and melodrama. Scarpetta and Wesley struggle in their relationship, and Marino fights his personal demons and manipulation by Scarpetta's enemies; Rose faces her own crisis, and Lucy displays a dazzling combination of technological genius and reckless daring.
* * * *
Following his debut in 2006 with The Chemistry of Death, U.K. author Simon Beckett, in Written in Bone (Delacorte, $24), takes a very different but very effective approach to the forensic investigation: His protagonist must work with rudimentary at best equipment. Dr. David Hunter, a London general practitioner turned forensic anthropologist, is on his way to the Glasgow airport to return home when he gets a call from Detective Superinten-dent Graham Wallace asking him to check out a body found in the remote island of Runa in the Outer Hebrides, off the coast of northern Scotland.
* * * *
* * * *
Hunter's laboratory consists of just what he can carry in an aluminum case; he certainly won't find elaborate equipment of any kind on the little village that is Runa. What he does find, inside a rustic cottage far from the village, is a body reduced to a pile of ash and bone—but nothing else in the room damaged by the fire. And for an added macabre touch, there are two unburned feet and one unburned hand protruding from the ashes.
Although Hunter's initial reaction is to call for an SOC (scene of crime) team, ferocious weather sets in that virtually cuts off the little island and its inhabitants from outside contact.
After that it's Hunter, the elements, and a beautifully drawn cast of islanders: the retired and reclusive Detective Inspector Andrew Brody who found the body; the young, enthusiastic Constable Duncan McKinney; the dour Sergeant Fraser; innkeeper Ellen McLeod and her daughter; and the village's benefactors, Michael and Grace Strachan. Also present is Maggie Cassidy, an aspiring journalist from nearby Stornoway who's visiting her grandmother on Runa.
Hunter is no detective, but as he pursues answers to how the unidentified victim came to her end, it becomes obvious that the killer is still on the island and determined to erase whatever clues might remain.
Rich in atmosphere and ripe with suspense, Beckett leads his hero and the reader on a twisting journey where the killer is as treacherous as the rocky terrain and the stormy weather.
* * * *
Dr. D. P. Lyle is a consulting forensic specialist whose entertaining Forensics and Fiction (St. Martin's Press, $23.95) carries both an intriguing subtitle and two warnings. The subtitle is “Clever, Intriguing, and Downright Odd Questions From Crime Writers.” The warnings: It is not to be used for diagnosis or real-life behavior. This book is not to be used as a manual for any criminal activity or to bring harm to anyone.
* * * *
* * * *
Dr. Lyle, an Orange County cardiologist, sifted through more than a thousand queries that cover the gamut from traumatic injuries of all sorts, to poisons and drugs, crime scenes and police, coroners, and autopsies and oddities. Not all of those who queried Dr. Lyle were willing to share their names, but among those who did are an impressive number of respected authors: Jan Burke, Gar Anthony Haywood, Kate Atkinson, Rochelle Krich, and Carolyn Hart.
In many cases, the questioner is seeking to establish the state of medical knowledge and treatment in a particular time or locale. In others they need to know what kind of an injury or wound could produce the particular results they desire. And sometimes, they need to know the unknowable. Among the amusing questions in the section on “Odds and Ends—Mostly Odds” are: Could the ME determine that my character had been eaten by a werewolf? Do zombie killers leave behind forensic evidence? Can my character die from an imagined disease?
The questions may be silly or strange or straightforward, but Lyle's answers are factual and his suggestions practical. The workings of the minds of mystery writers may well be adequately mysterious, devious, and diabolical, but D. P. Lyle's compendium is a welcome aid to the imagination.
* * * *
ALL POINTS BULLETIN: Detroit P.I. Ben Perkins makes his long awaited return to novel-length adventures in his tenth starring role from author Rob Kantner, in Final Fling (Hard Woods Press).
Copyright (c) 2007 by Robert C. Hahn
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Fiction: THE KILLING FARM by Doug Allyn
The great plains buffalo was plodding in a stolid circle inside the corral, horseflies humming above his massive head, mud and dust matted in the curly fur of his coat. Six feet tall at the hump, eighteen hundred pounds of muscle and bone, the bull was shifting course slightly when he bumped against the corral posts, but otherwise he kept to his path, head down, ignoring the woman in khaki coveralls and work boots who was keeping pace with him, step by step, just outside the corral fence.
"What's wrong with him, doc?” Vic Russo asked, as the bull and the woman marched past him for the third time. The squat game farm owner was dressed for a safari in khaki shirt and shorts and high-topped, snake-proof boots. A thin cigar smoldered in the corner of his mouth.
"He's dying, Mr. Russo,” Dr. Frankie McCrae said, kneeling to observe the buff's gait as he plodded on.
"You gotta be kidding,” Russo snorted, examining the end of his cigar. “Looks healthy to me. That bull could go ten rounds with a Sherman tank."
Frankie couldn't argue the point. The bull did appear to be in prime shape. Silky chocolate coat, curved black horns gleaming like polished ebony in the afternoon sun. A magnificent beast, fierce and fearless. And yet...
She glanced around the grounds, trying to collect her thoughts. A gorgeous spring day, the sun sailing high in a cloudless sky. The Buffalo Country Game Preserve looked like a Frontier World theme park transported from Disneyland to the woodlands of northern Michigan. Three stories tall and half a block long, the main house was a soaring fortress built of gigantic pine logs, a Gone with the Wind front porch topped by a widow's walk. All it lacked were brass cannons on the parapets.
Looked a century old, except for long row of luxury SUVs parked beside the building. Top of the line Navigators, Escalades, even a Humvee stretch limo.
"Well?” Vic Russo prompted impatiently.
"Terminal circling is a bovine's final survival instinct,” Frankie explai
ned, watching the buffalo. “In the wild, animals that fall are torn to pieces by predators. As long as they keep moving, they're still alive, even when they don't know it anymore. He'll march till he drops. I noticed his water trough is full, has he tried to drink at all?"
"Mitch?” Russo called to his teenaged nephew. “Did that buff drink any water?"
"Nah,” the kid spat. Dressed in camouflage fatigues, shades and a headband, toting an AK-47 assault rifle, Mitch looked more like a Sandinista guerilla than a hunting guide. “What you see is what you got."
"How long has he been like this?” Frankie asked.
"He wandered out of the woods into the compound yesterday,” Mitch said. “He was acting weird—"
"Define weird,” she interrupted.
"Like he is now,” the kid said, annoyed. “Shuffling along, not paying attention to nothing. He jumped from the gunfire when I chased him into the corral—"
"Gunfire?” Frankie echoed, arching an eyebrow.
"I fired a few rounds near his feet to scare him into the pen,” Mitch grinned, “made him dance a little."
"Trouble was, we already had a yearling bull in there,” Vic added. “He charged the big guy, butted him, ripped open that gash in his side.” Russo pointed a blunt forefinger at a flyblown wound at the rear of the buff's rib cage, matted with dried blood and filth. “Yearling must've been crazy. This buff outweighs him by a thousand pounds—"
"Did the larger bull fight back or react at all?” Frankie asked.
"Nah. Grunted when he got hooked, but otherwise he just kept marching along like he is now."
"They cull their own sick,” Frankie mused. “The young bull sensed this big fella had a problem, tried to drive him away from the herd."
"Jesus,” Vic scowled. “You don't think he's got brucellosis?"
"Not likely. He's too healthy. We wouldn't see behavior like this until the final stages. How long have you had him?"
"I don't know. Sevier! Get out here!"
AHMM, March 2008 Page 9
