The World's Finest Mystery...

by Ed Gorman

  "I see." The doctor shifted from foot to foot. "I wonder what the old people were doing."

  Miss Protheroe shot him a quelling look.

  "I will find out, tactfully, if you really think it worthwhile. I will tell you what I learn if you would be so kind as to return tomorrow."

  When he did come back she was in triumphal mood.

  "It was totally satisfactory. They were all— all— watching the film until 3:15. Then four of the ladies played whist, Captain Freely and Mr. Jones played chess, and the other six played Trivial Pursuit— a new game with us, but very popular. They were all in the lounge, or in the conservatory just through the door, and they were there all the time, until some time after I discovered the body. No one left even for a moment."

  The doctor began his shifting-from-foot-to-foot routine again.

  "That would be most unusual, not to leave even for a few minutes. Old people's bladders—"

  "No one left even for that." Miss Protheroe got quite commanding. "In any case, how long would this… what you suggest… take?"

  "Quite some time," admitted the doctor. "There was comparatively little obstruction… up to ten minutes."

  "You see? And how much strength would be required?"

  "Oh yes, certainly it would require strength."

  "You see? These are old people, doctor. Even Captain Freely, though active, is no longer strong. It's quite impossible."

  The doctor's voice took on a wild note.

  "Perhaps two of them," he suggested. "Or all of them in relays."

  Miss Protheroe rose in wrath.

  "Doctor, that is as disgraceful as it is absurd. A joke in extremely bad taste. To suggest that all of my residents, respectable old people, should gang up to kill a newcomer—"

  The doctor was young, and saw he had gone too far.

  "Yes, yes, of course. I was merely theorizing, getting too fantastical. Point taken, point taken."

  And he signed the certificate.

  Miss Protheroe sensed the excitement in the residents after the death of Emily Mortmain, but there was nothing unusual in that. After any death in Evening Glades there was always excitement, even a sort of exultation: I have survived, she has gone under. Always there was an attempt to disguise it too. Now Captain Freely, if he realized she was in the room, would mutter, "Terrible thing, terrible thing," and the rest would cluck their agreement. Miss Protheroe was not deceived. They were pleased and excited, and if these emotions were more intense than usual, this was not surprising, in view of Emily Mortmain's character. Even her relatives, after the funeral, had seemed cock-a-hoop.

  Amongst themselves they did not talk about the death a great deal, and to outsiders, of course, it was a matter of no importance. Only Miss Willcocks mentioned it, in her weekly letter to her niece (letters which generally remained unread, or even unopened). Miss Willcocks's treatment of the matter, it must be said, was not entirely honest:

  Here we have been greatly upset by the death of Mrs. Mortmain, a new resident. Death is always upsetting, and particularly so in this case, as we had not had time to get to know her. It quite spoiled our Sunday, which up to then had been extremely enjoyable, with a quite thrilling game of Trivial Pursuit, and before that a most entertaining film on television. Did you see it? It was Murder on the Orient Express— so amusing, and with such a clever solution…

  JOSEPH HANSEN

  Widower's Walk

  JOSEPH HANSEN'S Dave Brandstetter was the first openly gay protagonist in a serious mystery series. Hansen has said that he felt gay characters were treated poorly by mystery writers and he wanted to offer a balance. The Brandstetters are among the most stylish and yet quietly realistic of all modern detective novels. Not only does Hansen give us an open look at a gay man, he gives us an equally open look at our culture in general. He is widely known as a writer's writer. "Widower's Walk," published in The Night Awakens, features his other series character, Bohannon, in a polished tale of mystery and murder in a small town.

  Widower's Walk

  Joseph Hansen

  The new kid has overslept and, being not much more than a teenager, could sleep till noon. Bohannon drags on Levis and boots, flaps into a shirt, steps over the windowsill onto the long porch of the ranch house, and heads for the stable building, clean, low lines against the gray background of the drowsing mountains. Horses move restlessly, rumble, and blow air through their big sinuses behind the closed doors of their box stalls. "Buck?" he says. "Seashell? Geranium?" And names the rest as he passes. His own horses and horses he boards for folk in the little town of Madrone, at the foot of this canyon, beside the ocean.

  He raps knuckles on the tackroom door, white-washed planks. "Kelly? Time to get up." No reaction. He knocks again. Silence. He lifts the black metal tongue that serves as latch, swings the door inward, pokes his head inside. "Kelly? Wake up." But the steel cot looks empty. He steps inside. It's empty, all right. But slept in hard, sheets tangled, blankets half on the floor. He glances around in the weak morning light from the single window. Two of George Stubbs's horse drawings on the walls. (Shouldn't there be three?) No boots under the cot. He opens the drawers of the unpainted chest. Nothing. No clothes in the closet. He shuts his eyes and swears. Another one gone.

  He walks back along the sheltered length of the stable building, opening the top doors as he goes. He doesn't turn to see, but he knows heads are poking out to watch him. Hooves move fidgety, hopefully. At the end stall, he opens the whole door and takes Buck's bridle and leads him out. He loops the reins around a post and goes inside the building and gets his saddle.

  "Come on," he says, throwing blanket and saddle over Buck's broad back. "Start you and me off with a ride today." He grunts, bending to cinch up the girth. Buck grunts, too. Bohannon puts boot into stirrup and swings heavily aboard. "Nice long ride." He nudges Buck's ample sides with his heels, and they move out onto the gravel under the rustling trees. "Hell, maybe we'll just keep riding." Buck heads for the gate, which has a wooden arch over it, which holds the single name "BOHANNON" in cutout wooden letters. "Maybe we'll never come back." He leans from the saddle to unfasten the left leaf of the gate and, when they're past it, leans and drags it closed again. Habit. This morning, he wouldn't mind if somebody came and stole the place, horses and all. They'd be doing him a favor. Out on the pitted blacktop road, he reins Buck to the left up the canyon.

  He can't remember how many stable hands he's lost since losing first Rivera— he'd expected that; Rivera had been training all along to be a priest— and then George Stubbs, the veteran rodeo rider who'd come to Bohannon already old, and whom arthritis at last had put into a nursing home. There'd followed drunks and itchy-footed men, green and lazy boys, even one girl, who worked hard but quit to get married. Bohannon promised himself when he hired young Kelly that he'd be the last. If Kelly walked out on him, it would be a signal to give up and sell the ranch to a land developer, the way everybody else in the canyons seemed to be doing. It was all work and no fun anymore. Why prolong the misery?

  He's a couple of miles up the canyon now and no longer on the main track. Buck is paying more attention than he is to his surroundings, and Buck shies. Now, this is not the kind of shy that would unsettle any rider but the newest. Buck is, after all, no colt. He's got fifteen years on him, if not more. And he's heavy. So his shy only almost unseats Bohannon. For a second, the man has to fight to keep upright. At a hard-bitten fifty-two or -three, his reflexes aren't what they used to be.

  "Whoa, what's the matter?"

  But before the words are quite out of his mouth, he sees what's the matter. A man is lying facedown in the road, half in the road, half on the shoulder. "Easy." Bohannon turns Buck's head, and they cross the road, where Bohannon swings down and ties the reins to a tree. He gives Buck's trembling flank a couple of soothing strokes, then crosses the road to the man. He kneels and touches the man, lays fingers lightly on the man's neck below the ear. But there's no need to feel for a pulse: the man is cold. He
's been dead for hours.

  Bohannon was for a long time a deputy sherriff. He knows how to act in situations like this. From his crouch, he looks around him, first at the whole wide scene— canyon, trees, rocks, dry streambed below— then up the slope that climbs to his right. Next, he studies the immediate site. Close to the body. Spatters of blood. Then what's near his boot soles— dried leaves, sickle-shaped eucalyptus, curled oak, pine needles, pebbles, no bullet, no shell casing. Nothing is stuck to the soles of the man's shoes.

  The man is well dressed and not for a rustic place like this but for city life. The suit is dark. There's a necktie. The shirt is white. Where it isn't blood-stained. Somebody shot this man. From the front. Bohannon knows an exit wound when he sees one, and he sees one. Right between the shoulderblades. Not much blood. The man died fast.

  He doesn't touch the body again, or the clothes. It was his job once but no more. He stands, brushes grit off his hands, and looks to the right again. Some way up the slope, among trees, rocks, ferns, and brush, he thought earlier he'd glimpsed metal. He had. He climbs toward it, and his heart sinks when his guess about what it is turns out to be a fact. It is Steve Belcher's battered camper truck. Belcher is a bearded, longhaired Vietnam veteran who lives in the camper and leaves everybody else alone and wishes they would leave him alone. The best luck he has had in his four or five years here is since he took to the canyons. First he'd parked the camper different places in Madrone, and the citizens had moved him on. "On" proved to be a leaky old fishing boat he'd anchored in Short's Inlet, a body of water nobody cared about except some migrating ducks now and then but that everybody got protective about once Belcher had started to live there. Belcher was polluting, wasn't he? A beautiful natural wildfowl habitat.

  So Belcher gave up after making some ugly scenes at town council meetings— he had a rough mouth on him, did Belcher— and he'd taken to the canyons with this rusty camper. He never went into town except to pick up his disability check every month and buy supplies. The rest of the time, he kept out of the way. Except for establishing his campsite once in the Mozart Bowl. Dr. Dolores Combs and the rest of the town's wealthy music lovers damn near had him hanged for that.

  Bohannon's boots crunch across strewn paper and crushed cans and plastic packaging. Coyotes or raccoons have broken open a trash bag, looking for a meal. He hears a noise and looks up, and Belcher is standing, buck naked, in the camper's dented doorway, holding a Browning 9mm.

  "It's me," Bohannon says. "Don't shoot."

  "You woke me up," Belcher grunts. His dirty-blond hair and beard are tousled from sleep. "What do you want? You never give me no trouble. Not you." He narrows mistrustful eyes. "Not yet."

  "There's something down on the trail," Bohannon says, "that shouldn't be there. Put on some clothes. I want you to take a look at it."

  Belcher tilts his head. "What do you mean, 'something'?"

  "A body," Bohannon says.

  Belcher stares. "A dead body?"

  "Shot through the chest. Middle of the night. You hear anything?"

  "Nope." Belcher scratches his beard. "No."

  "You want to answer me?" Bohannon says. "You want to hand me your gun to sniff at?"

  Belcher jerks with surprise. He's forgotten the gun. "It ain't mine." He puts it down inside the camper. "It ain't been fired." His voice is hoarse, and he has grown pale though his skin is like tanned leather. "And I didn't hear no shot."

  "Not yours? It's the kind the Army issues, Steve."

  "Banged against the truck. Middle of the night. Found it there by the front wheel." He kicks into ragged jeans. "Why here?"

  "It's not your lucky day," Bohannon says. "Come on. Have a look at him."

  "I don't see what for," Belcher says.

  "So I can see your face when you say you don't know who he is. I've always trusted you. I want to see if I still can."

  Belcher grunts and comes loose-limbed down the trailer's little metal stairs. His feet are dirty. "I don't want to see no more floppies. I seen enough. I told you that. Hell, Bohannon, I killed enough. Too many. Drives me crazy dreaming about it. I'd never kill again."

  "You still keep your pistol," Bohannon says.

  "I would," Belcher says, "if it would kill ghosts. It's not mine, Bohannon, I told you that. I hate the goddamn things."

  "Come on." Bohannon turns away and starts downhill. "You know Lieutenant Gerard is going to home in on you. You're the obvious suspect." He goes quickly. The underfoot is slippery with morning dew, and he almost falls. "He and I were partners once, and if I tell him I'm sure it wasn't you, it might help." He looks over his shoulder.

  The truck's cab door slams. The starter whinnies.

  Bohannon turns back, loses his footing, falls to hands and knees. "Wait. Steve— don't do this."

  The truck engine roars. Belcher looks out the window. "Forget it, Bohannon. You know what Gerard will do. I'm a homicidal maniac. He's been waiting years to prove that." He lets the parking brake go, the truck rolls backward about a foot, then springs forward. "So long." With old gray tires kicking up duff, Belcher weaves the truck away fast, in and out among the trees.

  Bohannon struggles to his feet. "You're only making it worse," he shouts.

  But maybe not. Maybe there's no way Belcher could do that.

  * * *

  He sits on a stump, lights a cigarette, and waits. He can't leave the body. If instead of riding Buck up here, he'd come in the truck, he could radio the sheriff station. He's just stuck, is all there is to it. Until somebody comes along. And Rodd Canyon is not known for heavy traffic. Whole damn day could pass without a single car. Sure as hell won't any horses be coming by. Not till he gets back down to his place. It's the only rental stable around. He stands up. This is a hell of a note.

  It remains that for forty minutes (he keeps checking his watch), and then he hears an engine, the loose tool rattle and spring squeak of a vehicle. It's a red pickup. Fire patrol. He steps into the road. The driver is Sorenson, whom he's known for years. Sorenson stops the truck. He stares through the windshield at the body on the road.

  "What does that mean?" he asks Bohannon.

  "Means you can use your two-way," Bohannon says, "to let them know down at Madrone, and they can come pick him up. Shooting victim."

  "Get in." Sorenson stretches across and opens the door on the passenger side of the cab. "You know how to use the thing."

  "Do it for me," Bohannon says. "And lie a little, will you? Tell T. Hodges you found him. Leave me out of it."

  Sorenson, blond and sunburned, looking twenty years younger than his age, wrinkles his brow. "What for? You don't want her to know you were riding your horse up the canyon? Why not?"

  "Just do it," Bohannon says.

  "Hey." Sorenson half lies across the seat, craning to see up the slope. "Where's Steve Belcher? He had his camper up there."

  "Did he?" Bohannon says. "Not here now."

  "I wonder why?" Sorenson says. "You've protected him time and again, Hack. But for a shooting? A killing?"

  "Don't drag Belcher into it," Bohannon says. "Just tell them about the body, okay?"

  Sorenson takes the part of the two-way radio you talk into from its hook and puts it to his mouth. There are noises, cracklings, sandpaper voices, indistinct words. He switches those off and talks into the mike. "Sorenson, up here in Rodd Canyon, trail that drops off the main road at the stand of big old eucalyptus trees on the left? Dead body of an older man lying in the road. Shooting victim, looks like." An answer crackles, and Sorenson says, "Ten-four," and hangs up the microphone.

  "Thanks. Really appreciate it." Bohannon is already astraddle Buck and headed back for the main road. "Got to get home. Lost my stable hand again. Work enough for three men waiting for me."

  For an answer, Sorenson gives a short hoot on his siren.

  * * *

  "As a licensed private investigator," Gerard says, "you can't encourage a suspect to flee. You can't aid and abet—"

  "Sh
ut up, Phil," Bohannon says, grinning. "This is my house, and I don't have to listen to you rave. Not here. Sit down. Have a drink."

  Red-faced, Gerard yanks a chair out from the round deal table that stands in the middle of Bohannon's big pine-plank kitchen and drops onto it. He bangs his helmet down on the table. "Naw, I'm serious, Hack. You just stood there and watched him take off. And you let us think you weren't even up there." Bohannon hands him a glass with Old Crow in it. "I can't understand you."

  "Was the man shot with a nine-millimeter Browning?"

  "Nine-millimeter something." Gerard takes a swallow from his glass and makes a face. "How can you drink this stuff?"