Murder at the Beach: Bouchercon 2014 Anthology

by Patricia Abbott

  Frank shook his hand, gestured to Doris. “How are you? This is Doris Glick, my deputy.”

  “Nice to meet you,” Doris said.

  “Where is the evidence?” Matsushita said.

  “Our freezer here is out, so I’ve got it at my house,” Frank said.

  Matsushita’s eyebrows met. “I see.”

  “Don’t worry,” Doris said. “Frank’s freezer is brand new.”

  “I am certain Chief McCormick’s freezer is adequate,” Matsushita said. “But I am expected back on Friday, and I have a long drive back to Seattle. My superior wants to close this case, and we think the arm will help us to do that. Also, we are still cleaning up from the quake and the tsunami. You understand. I am needed at home.”

  “That terrible tsunami,” Doris said. “And all those people washed out to sea. And that nuclear plant. I can’t even imagine it. My sympathies to you and your country.”

  “Thank you, Miss Glick.”

  “It’s ‘Mrs.’”

  “My apologies, Mrs. Glick.”

  Doris flapped her hand. “I’m a widow.”

  “I am very sorry for your loss.” Matsushita bowed, then turned to Frank. “If I may ask, where was the arm found?”

  “Chained to the front of the dock that washed up on Ruby Beach. Didn’t your supervisor tell you?”

  “Of course. But we like to hear firsthand accounts from witnesses.”

  “Me, too,” Frank said.

  “Did you find the arm?”

  “No. A kid found it. Well, his dog did.”

  Matsushita took out a little notebook and jotted something in it. “And the boy lives here in Forks?”

  “He lives on the rez. The Quinault Indian Reservation. On the coast. Junior high kid.”

  “Did he or the dog touch the arm?”

  “No. He called it in right away.”

  “Good. Did you lift any prints?”

  “Not from the arm,” Doris said. “I just got the prints we sent to you.”

  “Your captain said it was a businessman,” Frank said.

  Matsushita nodded. “Very unfortunate. We believe he had joined forces with the ninkyō dantai—I think you Americans call it Yakuza.”

  “Organized crime,” Frank said.

  Matsushita nodded. “We had invited him to come in voluntarily to answer some questions. We planned a meeting for March 15. But, as you know, the tsunami struck March 11.”

  “How are you all doing over there?” Frank said.

  “It is hard work, Chief McCormick. So many thousands of people still have no homes. Schools are disrupted. Businesses are destroyed. We Japanese are a tenacious people, but we are weary. Every time we finish one task, two more take its place.”

  “I know how that is.”

  “You conduct investigations, Chief McCormick?”

  “Small potatoes compared to you. Stolen boats. School mascots dragged into the woods. Tourists re-enacting scenes from Twilight. That kind of thing.”

  “Of course. Not to cause difficulties, but if it is convenient, could we go to your house now? I have a plane to catch in Seattle.”

  “It’s no trouble at all.”

  “Nice to meet you,” Doris called as they walked out.

  “And you, Miss—Mrs. Glick,” Matsushita said. He bowed again.

  In Frank’s basement, Frank and Matsushita piled packages of meat into a laundry basket. Frank said, “I buried the arm under this stuff so my wife wouldn’t find it. She doesn’t like evidence mixed in with her groceries.”

  Frank passed a package labeled “salmon” to Matsushita. When Frank got to the bottom of the freezer, he said, “Agent Matsushita, we have a problem. It’s not here.”

  “I do not understand. How can an arm walk away?”

  “You’re funny,” Frank said. Matsushita blinked. “Never mind.” Frank looked at all the packages again. “What the hell?” he grumbled. He punched up Melanie’s cell. “Hey, baby. Where’s the package of tripe we had in the freezer?”

  “I brought it to the church for the Wildwood Banquet Saturday night.”

  “Why’d you do that? That tripe was evidence. I got a guy all the way from Japan here to pick it up.”

  “You did not put evidence in my freezer again.”

  “Mel, I’m sorry. The freezer at the office was out.”

  “I thought ‘tripe’ was some weird bird Cy Berg shot and gave to you. Serves you right if they cooked it up already, Frank McCormick.”

  “They wouldn’t cook it once they unwrapped it.”

  “Why, what was it?”

  “Tell you later.” He tucked his phone in his pocket. Matsushita’s face was like the clay warriors in those Chinese tombs. Waiting. Frank bared his teeth. He said, “This is awkward, Agent Matsushita. My wife thought the package was meat. She gave it to people preparing a big dinner for the town Saturday night. Fundraiser.”

  “It would be wise to retrieve the arm before any of the cooks open the package.”

  Frank’s cell buzzed. Doris said, “Frank, Tammy Munson called from the church. They unwrapped a package of meat somebody donated—I guess it was Mel—and found the arm inside. Tammy’s pretty shook up. I told her to put it back in the freezer and that you’d come and get it.”

  “On my way.” Frank told Matsushita, “Too late: they opened it. Can you help me get this stuff back in the freezer?” Matsushita handed packages to Frank, who stacked and piled and wedged until Melanie’s groceries were jammed back in the freezer, probably not the way Mel wanted it done, but Frank was able to close and latch the lid. “Close enough for rock and roll,” Frank muttered. “Let’s go.”

  Tammy Munson was white-faced when Frank and Matsushita met her in the church kitchen. “I guess you thought this would be funny, Frank McCormick, but it is NOT.”

  “Tammy, I’m sorry. It was a mix-up with Melanie. The tripe is evidence.”

  “‘Tripe?’ Are you kidding me? Just where did you find an arm, Frank McCormick? You don’t think people want to know when the police chief finds an arm in town?”

  “I didn’t find it in town—”

  “And on top of that, I know for a fact that Melanie asked you not to bring evidence home any more. Poor Mrs. Armitage saw ‘tripe’ on the package and volunteered to cook it. Said she had a recipe from her Grandfather Beaumont in Lyon. She opened it up and fainted right there on the hard floor. Somebody had to take her home.”

  “I’ll go by her house later. Where is the tripe now? Special Agent Matsushita has a plane to catch.”

  Matsushita dipped his head at Mrs. Munson. “My apologies, Miss. It is my fault. Chief McCormick saved the evidence at our request.”

  Tammy blinked at the stranger. She said, “It’s not your fault. It’s the chief’s fault for taking the arm to his house in the first place. Frank, I don’t understand why you don’t just buy a freezer for the station.”

  “Tammy? The package?”

  “Over in the walk-in. Just get it out of here. I’ve got to put my raccoon in the pressure cooker.”

  The other ladies prepping food for the Wildwood Banquet peeked up at Frank and Matsushita over their carving knives. The susurrus of their whispers was like sandpaper on a dry hull. Frank would be the butt of jokes for months after this: “Hey, Chief, how ’bout a little arm and eggs? My treat.” and “McCormick, I hear they got shoulder roast on sale at Thriftway.” Frank sighed.

  Agent Matsushita peeked under the butcher paper. “Yes, this is it,” he said. He zipped the arm inside a heavy-duty rubber sleeve and then placed the sleeve inside his shoulder bag.

  “Can you travel like that? Doris said you need permits.”

  “Of course.” Matsushita patted his breast pocket. “Permits. And now, if you would drive me back to your station, I can return to Seattle and catch my flight.” Matsushita found Tammy and said, “Again, my sincere apologies for the trouble. And my thanks for your help.” He bowed.

  “You’re welcome,” Tammy said. Frank thought
he might try bowing next time Tammy tried to chew him out a new one.

  Back at the station, Matsushita placed his bag in the trunk of his rental.

  “Stay for dinner?” Doris said.

  “Thank you. No.” He shook their hands. “Thank you for your assistance. We can let you know how the case resolves.”

  “Appreciate it,” Frank said.

  “Come back and visit sometime,” Doris said.

  “Thank you. Sayonara.” He bowed. They watched his rental head south on Highway 101.

  Doris said, “That was quick. Don’t waste any time, do they.”

  “They sure don’t.”

  “I’m outa here, Frank. See you tomorrow.” Doris got into her Acura and spit gravel as she left the lot. Frank had asked her a hundred times not to do that. Matsushita hadn’t done that. He’d been careful. Frank frowned. He went inside and sat at his desk. He clicked up something on his computer.

  Then he picked up the phone.

  On Saturday, Frank helped Wally move the new freezer in and the old freezer out. Doris manned the front desk. Frank and Wally had just got the old freezer heaved up to the back of Wally’s truck when Doris called, “Frank, get in here. You better take a look at this.”

  “You good, Wally?” Wally nodded and shut the tailgate. Frank legged it to his desk. Doris fizzled and snapped and popped like she had a short. Frank said, “What’s wrong with you?”

  “Email from Japan. Read it.”

  Frank read: “Thank you for your telephone call. Your assistance in the matter of the arm allowed us to apprehend the suspect when he landed in Tokyo.”

  “What’s all that?” Doris asked.

  “Matsushita wasn’t a cop. He was Yakuza.”

  Doris’s jaw dropped. Frank hardly ever surprised her. It felt good.

  She said, “He was a criminal? How the Sam Hill did you know that?”

  “He had a tattoo. I saw the tip of it when we were pawing through my freezer. At first I figured Matsushita must be pretty high up to keep his job and a tattoo both, since the Japanese don’t approve of tattoos. But then I figured that a country dealing with thousands of dead and missing and homeless and trillions of dollars of damage and a nuclear meltdown and all the other crap they’re dealing with would never fly a guy halfway across the ocean to pick up an arm that took a year to get here.”

  “When did you figure this out?”

  “I started to wonder when I saw that suit. When he held up his badge, I saw his left pinky was half sawed off. Yakuza does that if a guy gets in trouble with his boss or owes somebody money. Plus he called Yakuza ‘ninkyō dantai,’ which is what Yakuza calls itself. The cops call Yakuza”—Frank glanced at his hand— “bōryokudan.”

  “Let me see your hand, Frank McCormick. Cheater. Where’d you learn that?”

  “Google.”

  She gave his hand back. “Why didn’t you say anything to me? Why didn’t you arrest him?”

  “And put him where? In our jail? Deal with extradition? No way. So I called the cops in Tokyo and they called the cops in Misawa. It turns out the chief in Misawa never heard of Matsushita. In fact, he planned to ignore our email until he had time to deal with it. Besides, he had nobody to send and no money to send him with. But he knew somebody in his office was slipping intel to Yakuza because whenever they thought they had a charge that would stick, Yakuza always wiggled out of it.”

  “You don’t speak Japanese. How’d you find all this out?”

  “You know that high school Japanese teacher? The one whose salary we all chipped in to pay until her papers cleared the State department? Hiroko? I got her in here to interpret.”

  “Where was I?”

  “Wednesday? You left at five o’clock like always. I called Sea-Tac after you left. Nobody named Matsushita was scheduled on any plane going west. He could have gone anywhere. He could’ve been traveling under a different name. So I got hold of Hiroko and we called Tokyo. They’re sixteen hours ahead of us but it only takes twelve hours to fly there. I didn’t want to risk their missing him.”

  “So they arrested Matsushita?”

  “Yup, and they’re tracing where our email pinged on its way to them.”

  “Whose arm was it?”

  “Matsushita told the truth about that. It was a guy who was giving fifty percent of his real estate profits to Yakuza.”

  “So why’d they kill him?”

  “He wanted to change their take to ten percent.”

  “Why did Yakuza want the arm back?”

  “The same tattoo artist does all the Yakuza tattoos for the Yamaguchi-gumi syndicate big dogs. It’s a special kind of tattooing. They do it the old way by hand using a metal needle attached to a wooden handle.”

  “I knew that was a special tat. I looked it up. It’s called irezumi. It’s a dying art.”

  Frank said, “Yakuza guys get body tats that cover their arms, back, legs and chest. Costs thousands of dollars and takes years to do.”

  “My little daisy was done in an hour, and I thought that hurt pretty bad. I can’t imagine tattooing on a little jacket.”

  “Doris, you got a tattoo? Where?”

  She looked over her glasses at him. “Need to know basis, Frank.”

  He shrugged. “If Matsushita had peeled off his coat, we would’ve seen his tats. The chief in Misawa figures Yakuza was afraid the tattoo on the arm would lead the cops to the artist, and then he’d identify the senior members of the organization.”

  “But everybody knows who the Yakuza are. Their pictures are on the internet.”

  “Apparently not all of them.”

  Doris mused, “I thought Matsushita smelled too good to be a cop.” Frank waited for the punchline. “He was wearing Eau D’Hadrien. It costs five hundred dollars an ounce.”

  Despite having worked with Doris for fifteen years, Frank was still surprised by all the trivia she had squirreled away. He said, “Okay, I’ll bite: How the hell do you know that?”

  “You think I go home after work and knit? I got a life, too, Frank McCormick.”

  “I never doubted it.”

  Doris lapped her cardigan over her chest. “Last time I went to Seattle, I stopped at Nordstrom’s for the beauty trend show. I got a smell of Eau D’Hadrien. Right out of the bottle, it smells like you’re standing under a lemon tree in the sun drinking orange juice. It wasn’t that good on Matsushita, but it wasn’t bad.”

  “You smelled him.”

  “He was polite and elegant,” Doris said, “and that bowing thing he did? Tammy Munson noticed it too. It’s refreshing. Respectful. People in Japan have a love-hate thing going with their criminals. Did you know there are six fan magazines over there dedicated to the Yakuza?”

  “I did not know that,” Frank said. “But did you know that my great-granddad in Wisconsin met Al Capone? Capone had a hideout in the Northwoods by that big lake—Superior. Granddad told me his father and all the neighbors played dumb any time the feds came looking for Capone.”

  “Why?”

  “Capone was funny. A big spender. If you took care of him, he took care of you. Besides, it was Prohibition, and the only people who liked cops were Sunday School teachers. I guess people still love criminals more than they love cops,” Frank said.

  “Not once they get to know us,” Doris said.

  Frank pulled on his jacket. “Well, you got your new freezer, Dorrie, and Mel’s talking to me again, and Tammy Munson called to say Mrs. Armitage got to thinking about her granddad’s tripe and decided to make it anyway. I might try a little. I might even try a bite of Tammy Munson’s raccoon. You up for a walk on the wild side?”

  “As long as nobody makes me try tsunami surprise.”

  Back to TOC

  Man in the Middle

  Ray Daniel

  Fishing with Wi-Fi is a lot like regular fishing. You sit on the beach, put out the bait (in this case a hotspot called FREEWIFI) and wait. The fish come nibbling, drawn by the lure of free data access for their
cell phones.

  When a fish tries to log into Facebook through my hotspot, I present it with a fake login screen. The fish rolls its eyes and logs into Facebook, giving me its username and password. I store these and connect the fish to Facebook, letting it enjoy its free Wi-Fi. We hackers call this a Man in the Middle Attack, but I prefer to think of it as Fishing for Dopes.

  One of the side benefits of my setup is that the kids today use an internet chat tool called texytext.com. The traffic is unencrypted, so I get to entertain myself by reading teenagers’ texts. So much drama...

  Ashley, stand up for the man.

  The text came through as I was thinking of packing up from Revere Beach and heading home. The tide had been encroaching on the wet sand for the past hour and was threatening to flood my hotspot backpack. I would have ignored it if a girl in a white bikini hadn’t stood at that moment and turned away from the ocean, shielding her eyes from the afternoon sun with her cell phone.

  Okay. Now turn around and let him look at you.

  The girl turned slowly, stopping so that whoever was up there could look at her butt, then continuing the turn until she faced the front again.

  Stay there, this asshat wants to negotiate.

  Negotiate? Who was this girl? I used Ashley’s texytext handle, “ashgirl,” and dove into my database of Facebook accounts. Sure enough I found out that ashgirl had also logged into Facebook, but there her account was an email address that started with the name ashley.greene.

  Ashley sat back down on the wet sand, stared at the water, and chewed on a thumbnail. Angry sunburn blotches marred the pale skin of her back. Her shoulders were okay; apparently she had been applying sunscreen herself, or it had worn off somehow.

  I glanced at the incoming tide, guessed that I still had a few minutes before salt water converted my hotspot to scrap. Opened my Facebook app and logged in as Ashley Greene.

  Okay. Come on up.

  The text had popped up as I scrolled through Ashley’s Facebook feed. A couple of months ago her feed was all grumpy cat memes and complaints about her teachers. A few weeks ago it changed to a chorus of writings on her wall.