AHMM, January-February 2008

by Dell Magazine Authors

  The door flew open and the rest was shouting and shoving and my feet kicked out from under me and two hundred pounds of county law kneeling on my back and the muzzle of a big sidearm tickling the back of my neck. I heard my rights and felt my shoulders pulled almost out of their sockets and the cold, hard, heavy clamp of the cuffs on my wrists.

  I kept my mouth shut, credit me that. I was as sober as a Shaker and met every pair of eyes that locked with mine during the hustle through the crowded diner and out the door toward the radio car, where some kind soul who cared whether I suffered a concussion pressed down my head with an iron palm, shoved me into the backseat, and slammed the door.

  The lot was desert bright, sheriff's spotlights adding candlepower to the pole lamps, the night air throbbing with sirens grinding down and radios muttering and spectators’ chatter and the monotonous drone of official voices ordering the crowd to disperse, go home to your families, nothing to see here. I sat staring at the gridded polyurethane sheet that separated me from the front seat, where a fullback in uniform sat on one haunch with a foot on the pavement, murmuring into a mike, lights twinkling on the Christmas-tree console that divided the bucket seats in front.

  When I got tired of looking at that I stared at the carpeted floor at my feet. I hadn't a chance with a not-guilty plea. The cops would track me through the ICC log and place me at the scene of every hit I'd performed. A good prosecutor would find a way to bring that out in court, even if my knife in Anderson's back wasn't enough. ("Someone picked your pocket? That's your defense?") You can't argue with the record. I was pinned as tightly as my old man in his bar where customers kept going in and never came out.

  I raised my eyes to meet those of the curious pressing in for a closer look before they were manhandled out of the way by the hard men who had taken over the truck stop. One of the pairs of eyes belonged to Liz, looking less tired now, with that smile on her face as she made a gun with her finger and shot me with it.

  I didn't know what it meant at first. Our conversation had taken place on the other side of the flask and came drifting back in pieces. One piece slowed down long enough for me to reel in.

  Her other job wasn't as glamorous as this.

  And as she faded back into the crowd, I heard the rest, as clearly as if she were still speaking: “You don't have to move around. I see just as many opportunities as you do just staying in one place."

  Copyright (c) 2007 Loren D. Estleman

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  Fiction: DEATH TAKES CENTER STAGE by Steve Lindley

  Linda Weatherly

  * * * *

  The wind seldom woke Kubiak, though there were nights when it came off the lake so fierce it not only rattled the windows but pressed through the cracks in their old frames, producing wails too sonorous to be ignored. On those nights, once woke, he could find calm only on his feet, in the dark, staring out at Lake Michigan through one of those windows, watching the storm until the worst of it died down.

  Tonight he stood in the front room at the picture window, as Denise had yet to wake and he didn't want to disturb her, though considering the intensity of the wind he didn't know how he might manage that short of jumping up and down on the bed shouting Native American war whoops. Besides, the large window was best for observation, and he watched the sheets of rain hit the double pane of glass inches from his nose, then roll down in waves, causing undulations in the pinpoints of light that were the streetlamps along Lake Shore Drive seven stories below.

  There was little traffic on the Drive. At one point, a taxi came off of Belmont and stopped directly below, at his apartment building's entrance. The car's rear door opened and a woman got out, stood, holding the door, in the rain, the tails of her coat flapping. She wasn't wearing a hat. Seconds later, a man climbed out behind her, slammed the cab's door shut, and the two ran, shoulders hunched, into the building.

  Well, though he couldn't imagine going out on a night like this, Kubiak supposed it was better to be at the point of arrival than that of departure. The taxi pulled away. Another sheet of water came up hard against the window, slid down in ripples. Then the ringing of the phone behind him broke the room's silence, sounding so unnaturally loud it made him jump. He didn't move at first, stood staring at its outline in the dark, wondering what at this time of night—

  It rang again, and he thought of Denise, moved across the room, and picked up the receiver before it could ring a third time. Purcell was on the other end, the doorman downstairs working graveyard shift. There was a hint of apology in his voice.

  "Mr. Watts and Miss Leigh. They say they're here to see you."

  Kubiak, still in the dark, literally, with the shadows of the storm playing on the walls all around him, told Purcell he didn't recognize the names and to ask them what they wanted.

  A pause, then, “Miss Leigh says she knows your wife.” Another pause. “She says she does Mrs. Kubiak's hair."

  The phone had woken Denise. She had emerged from the bedroom and was making her way prudently down the hall.

  "Who does your hair?” Kubiak called out to her.

  "What?” She found a light switch, clicked on the lamps, blinked. “What?"

  Kubiak blinked against the light as well, squinted at his wife and her hair. “Better send them up,” he said into the phone. “Tell them it's an emergency."

  "What is it?” Denise asked. “Who is it?"

  "Only friends of yours this time, thank goodness. How much trouble can they be?"

  * * * *

  The two sat pressed tight together on the couch, the young man's arm wrapped around the girl's shoulders, her blond hair, damp from the rain, falling in strands over his arm. His hair was dark and shaved skin-close on the sides. They were wearing the same weight of jewelry, except that all of his was pierced into his ears, while hers adorned her nose, lower lip, left eyebrow, and Kubiak could only guess what else.

  The clock above the small bar by the window read two thirty as Denise, in her housecoat, handed them the rum and Cokes they had requested on her offer of drinks. Kubiak might have asked for IDs. Instead, he picked up where the conversation had left off.

  "You're certain she's dead?"

  Miss Leigh nodded. “Yes.” She appeared to need the drink more than her boyfriend did, and she took a good swallow before adding, “I've never seen a dead person before, but I don't see how she could have been anything else."

  "You never touched her?"

  "No, I never got that close. I just sort of ... gaped, then turned and ran back through the theater lobby and out the door."

  "She's dead, all right,” Watts said. “And from the looks of things, there was nothing Barbara could have done for her, if that's the point you're getting at.” The young man hadn't said much so far, but then so far Kubiak mostly had been quietly listening. Kubiak addressed him.

  "Is that why Barbara went and got you? For a professional opinion?"

  "She didn't come and get me. She ran to the El station and called me while she was waiting for the train. I'm the one that told her not to go anywhere until I ... But she's already explained all that."

  She had, indeed, but with the sequence of events so jumbled and the details so sketchy Kubiak would have demanded she run through it three times again had it not been two thirty in the morning.

  From what Kubiak made of it, Barbara Leigh had been a member of a local theater company up until three months ago, when she and the operations manager of the theater they used, a Ms. Janet Rydell, had a falling out. According to Barbara, the agreement to part company had been mutual. Recently, however, Barbara had expressed a desire to return to the theater company. The members of the group had no objections, again that according to Barbara. The only sticking point had been Ms. Rydell. Barbara had been attempting over the past few weeks to meet with Ms. Rydell so they could put their animosities behind them, but so far Ms. Rydell had flatly refused the offer.

  Tonight, during a late night meeting over drinks with the three
core members of the company, Barbara learned that Ms. Rydell was working late, alone at the theater, preparing for tomorrow's full dress rehearsal of the company's latest play. Barbara left the group, determined finally to confront Ms. Rydell, only to find that someone had beaten her to that. Upon entering the empty theater she discovered Rydell's bloody corpse lying stage center.

  "You say you entered through the lobby door?” Kubiak asked.

  "Yes."

  "It was locked?"

  "Yes."

  "Then, you have a key."

  "Well, of course. How else would ... Oh, I see.” She glanced at her boyfriend. She had been doing that. He squeezed her shoulders tighter and she continued. “I suppose I should have given it back to Pamela weeks ago. I just never got around to it."

  "Pamela?"

  "Pamela Lipinski. She's the acting treasurer, and a lead player. She gave me one when I joined my first production. There's a door around back with a doorbell, but the alley is awfully dark, and we work all hours. There was an incident a couple of years back—"

  "So there are a few keys out there."

  "Yes. Four or five that I know of. Mine; Pamela's, of course; and the other three principal members of the company, Mike Morris, Paul Volti, and Jeri Hall."

  "Along with Janet Rydell."

  "Yes. Of course."

  "I don't suppose you thought to lock the door when you left."

  "Yes. Well, no. I mean, it's locked now, but that wasn't how I left it then."

  Another glance at the clock. He envisioned the conversation continuing in circles over breakfast. “Miss Leigh, could you just run that last part—"

  "Old Rydell always wanted to do a one-woman show. I don't suppose at this point she'd mind doing it facedown."

  "When Simon and I left to come here, we made sure to lock the door. But the first time, when I was alone, when I found her ... Well, I just ran. Ran and ran."

  Actually, she had run only as far as the Belmont El stop. She claimed she had been headed back to the bar and her theater friends, but decided instead to go uptown to her boyfriend, Watts, because he would “know what to do.” While she was waiting for the train, she called him on her cell phone to make certain he was home. He asked if she was sure of what she saw, told her to wait where she was, then hopped the Howard Line, and met her at the El stop. She led him to the theater so he could be sure of what she saw. After some discussion, the name of one of her day job clients came up, a very nice lady who happened to be married to an ex-cop. They found a twenty-four-hour restaurant that had a phone book, looked up “Kubiak,” hailed a cab, talked to Purcell, rode the elevator to seven, and ordered rum and Cokes.

  "Was there ever a point,” Kubiak asked, “at which either of you considered phoning the police?"

  "But,” Barbara said, “you are the police. Or at least you used to be."

  "Used to be. And the fact you came to me instead of dialing 911 is not going to sit well with those who still are."

  Watts spoke again. “We already know how this is going to sit with the cops. It's the reason we came to you."

  The young man wasn't bothering to hide his animosity. Kubiak wondered if he naturally was that blunt or if he was simply performing his duty as shield for Barbara. But before Watts could say anything else, Barbara rested her hand on his, and he paused, exhaled, then removed his arm from her shoulders and leaned forward.

  "Look,” he said more softly. “According to Barbara, you were the guy who set the cops straight on the murder of that Lincoln Park doctor last winter. We're not necessarily asking you do the same here, but whoever killed this Rydell is setting up Barbara to take the fall for it. All we want you to do is come with us, see what we saw, and give us some idea of where she stands."

  "I've already told you I have no intention of doing that."

  Watts's calm demeanor as negotiator melted away, and the fire came back in his eyes. Again, before he could speak, Barbara placed her hand over his. Kubiak's words had had an effect on her as well. When he had said them ten minutes ago, they had caused a look of desperation and a threat of tears. This time she showed only a childlike loss of hope. Kubiak was suddenly struck with the thought that if she had been sitting on that couch alone, as shivering wet and frightened as she was, with no one's arm holding her shoulders, he just might have been tempted to go back with her to the theater. Just might...

  Again he addressed Watts, perhaps for that reason. “You've said twice now that someone set Barbara up for the murder. What makes you think so?"

  "Because she didn't do it."

  "That's not an answer to my question. You haven't even given me an indication yet of why you're certain Rydell was murdered in the first place. You say she was lying still and there was blood. People fall. They cut their heads, necks. Neither of you even thought to check for a pulse."

  "Come with us, you'll see."

  "That's still not an answer."

  "Well, it's what we came here to say. Barbara and I have talked this out, and we stand firm. You have to see the point we're at. Right now Barbara is ready to cut and run out of this state, out of the country, and never look back. I'm willing to go with her, sure, but even if the cops never did catch up to us, what kind of life would we have? So I'm saying we stay and fight, find out who did this. Only, it's not my neck in the noose. You can give us an idea of our chances if we do stay, but we need to know for sure. We could describe to you everything we saw and miss the half of it, or you could ask a hundred questions and still ... Well, anyway, what we do is up to us, what you do is up to you. You can call the cops right now yourself, if you want to. Or you can come with us, or wash your hands of the whole thing. Which is it?"

  Watts took one more swallow of his drink, pushed away his glass to signal he was through talking. Kubiak looked at Barbara, who appeared apprehensive but resigned to any decision, looked to Denise, who had been uncharacteristically silent since the arrival of the two guests. Her expression gave no hint of a desire for a private consultation with her husband; she was leaving the decision solely to him. Unusual. He considered what her reaction might be to each of his choices, searched for alternatives, found none, and went for his coat.

  * * * *

  They took his car. Barbara rode in the front with Kubiak; Watts sat in the backseat, leaning forward smack in its center so the reflection of his head took up most of the rearview mirror. Kubiak's only stipulation had been that Denise stay home. For a change, she'd had no leverage to argue otherwise, and while she might have considered a late night run to a crime scene nothing more than an adventure, Kubiak preferred she not tag along when there was yet to be any police presence at that scene, not to mention the fact he was being led to it by relative strangers who still refused to divulge all its characteristics.

  Barbara sat silent, hands folded in her lap, while Watts, gripping the backs of both front seats, muttered a running string of “straight here, turn left up there” directions, despite Kubiak's already having told him twice that he knew where they were headed. He had passed the old Emerald Theatre a hundred times, though he had never been in it. He never had cared for live theater, anyway, certainly never had been curious about the occasional obscure play that would cause the doors of this building, with its cheap bills plastered along its stained brick walls, to be opened a few weekends every few months.

  They were there in minutes, might even have walked the distance had it been a clear summer night. Kubiak parked across the street in a spot slightly more legal than Watts's suggestion. The rain had let up, the wind had died down, and the three crossed the shiny wet street to the brass-trimmed glass doors underneath the darkened marquee.

  Barbara extracted a bulky key ring. Kubiak marveled at the amount of paraphernalia attached to it, wondered how she managed to find a key at all. Inside, the lobby's chandeliers were dark, as were the overheads, so the only light was that coming in through the front doors from the street, the droplets of water on their glass throwing even darker speckles over
everything inside. Barbara led them the ten paces to the doors to the orchestra section, stopped, and let Kubiak enter first.

  The theater proper wasn't much brighter, with the overheads dimmed low and the stage forty rows down lit only by a bare, incandescent bulb burning in a shadeless lamp beside a stack of chairs near the curtain on its right side. A single chair sat smack in the stage's center, and beside it was a flat pile of cloth that just might have been a body. Kubiak began to work his way down the aisle to find out, when Barbara, who had moved off to his left, hit a switch on the light- and soundboard, and a bank of stage lights attached to the front of the balcony over their heads lit the scene on the stage so brilliantly he didn't need to continue, though he did anyway.

  In the back of his mind, he had been entertaining the notion this whole thing might be nothing more than actors pulling pranks on actors. By the time he reached the front row he knew it was anything but. Standing beside the orchestra pit, the stage floor was level with his belt. Janet Rydell's body lay just beyond arm's length, the soles of her sneakers aimed directly at him. She was wearing shorts and a T-shirt and was lying bent, less on her side than on her stomach. Barbara had described her as in her fifties or sixties, and Kubiak would have found it difficult to guess which just now. Barbara also had described her as lying in a pool of blood, though it was hardly that, as Rydell had streaked it all about her in her vain attempts to get up from where she had fallen. It was smeared over her white T-shirt, the pale skin of her legs, arms, and face, crusted in her hair. Bloody smudges on the chair's metal legs marked where the fingers of her left hand had groped for leverage up. But Kubiak's attention was drawn to the bloodstained fingers of her right hand.