"Careful, mashai." Chauhan made sure Mohit was upright, then let go. They looked at each other for a moment. Finally Mohit nodded, once. Chauhan stepped past, up to Farid's door, followed by several of his men. None had any more attention for Mohit.
You are still young, Chauhan had said.
Mohit walked away, not looking back, into the darkening rain and his life, to start over.
©2009 by Mike Wiecek
[Back to Table of Contents]
Fiction: IDENTITY CRISIS by Maynard Allington
Born and raised in California, Maynard Allington joined the air force after high school and served two tours in Vietnam. Later, he earned a degree in law enforcement, but for many years now he has devoted himself to writing both magazine articles and fiction. His three novels, The Grey Wolf, The Fox intheField, and The Court of BlueShadows were all published to acclaim, with the New York Times calling the last “a powerful examination of humanity at its worst and at its best."
Around four A.M. I put on a beach shirt and bathing trunks and took the fire stairs down to the hotel pool. A breeze off the Atlantic stirred the fronds of palm trees lining the deck and I could feel the night dying overhead on the dimmed circuits of stars.
Even before I dropped into a deck chair, a sense that something wasn't right crawled into my nerves and wouldn't let go. For one thing, the pool light was out, leaving a logjam of shadows on the dark pit of water. I spotted a shape trapped among them at the deep end, like an abandoned pool toy, except they don't make pool toys in human form. I swung out of the chair, looking around for the pool lamp switch. The instant I clicked it on, my nerves absorbed a shock.
The little girl, fully clothed in a pink pinafore, floated facedown in the clear light flooding the green water. Her long hair, yellow as sun on straw, fanned out on the surface, and her arms were spread out in a swan dive of arrested motion. Ribbons of blood lay suspended in the marine sparkle from the underwater floodlight, and in one horrific second I saw that they ran like party streamers from a cut throat. She was stone dead, and not by drowning.
* * * *
The poolside swarmed with activity—police, a fire rescue unit, exploding flashbulbs. A handful of hotel staff stood behind police tape, and faces peered down from windows. While the paramedics used a gaff to drag the victim in close, a homicide detective showed up to take charge.
The rescue team lifted the child, dripping, out of the floodlit glare. As they turned the body faceup, the group around it drew back. I saw that the figure wasn't human, but a stunningly perfect replica of a little girl. Even the flesh tones and artificial skin were an eerie likeness. Where the throat had been slashed open, wires and circuitry extruded in a red froth. One of the cops let out a nervous chuckle, more of relief than amusement.
Above the puffed sleeves and lace collar of the pinafore, the girl's features looked vaguely familiar. Finally it hit me. I'd seen them on a poster in the lobby—a nightclub act featuring a ventriloquist named Karen Palmer and her “protege,” Sara Jane. Both were pictured on the playbill, and the dummy could have been a child-sized clone of the live performer. Gone, I remember thinking, were the days of stringed puppets with hinged jaws and varnished faces. This one was a marvel of robotics engineering. Even the blue eyes, sapped of power, had the vacancy of death counterfeited into them.
"Looks like you got a case of vandalism, and maybe theft,” the homicide detective told the night manager. “Not murder."
"Then where did the blood come from?"
The detective lacked only a trenchcoat to be a ringer for Robert Mitchum, the actor from those old noir films of the Forties. He sported the same half-lidded stare, and a dent in the chin like a meteor hit. I watched him pick up an object near the chromed pool ladder and hold it up in the light. It was a vial of what looked to be red food dye.
"There's your blood.” His smile had a wry shadow of contempt, which carried over into his next question. “Who reported the crime?"
"I did.” I gave him my name, Tom Irons, and told him what I knew.
From the start, the vibes were bad between us. He kept staring off to one side and wasn't concealing his annoyance at being called out at this hour to a bogus crime scene.
"Before you close your notebook,” I said, “you might want to dig a little deeper. Whoever slit the throat and poured a coloring agent into the gash was acting out something more than a prank."
"What are you,” he said, “a shrink?"
"Forensic psychiatrist,” I said. “Here for a mystery writers’ conference."
The shrug was Mitchum at the top of his game. Probably he practiced in front of a mirror. I saw he was frowning at my nose. Before med school, I'd boxed in the Marine Corps, and the nose was exhibit one.
"You don't look like a mind bender."
"I can hook on some false whiskers,” I said, “if that'll help."
"What were you doing out at the pool so early?"
I could tell from his tone that I'd been suddenly elevated from witness to suspect.
"Working on a tan,” I replied.
He gave up on me, turning to the night manager.
"Is the ventriloquist staying here?"
"Yes sir."
"Okay, let's bring her down,” he said, tossing a throwaway smile at me like a bone. “She can ID the remains."
By the time Karen Palmer came out through the glass doors beneath the blue canopy, first light was bleeding off the sky to the east like a cut artery. She wore white shorts, a ribbed sleeveless blouse, and high-heeled beach sandals, and I saw that her legs had a nice tan. The instant she caught sight of the childish figure in the sodden pinafore, she let out a sharp cry and ran over, falling on her knees beside it. Sobs shook her body. They say ventriloquists’ dummies, over time, take on a human persona in the minds of performers. She had breathed life into this one until it had become a part of herself, and now she might have been hysterical over a dead child.
"Any idea who could have done this?” the detective asked.
She raised her head, nodding.
"Someone's been stalking me for the last two months. He sends me notes."
"What kind of notes?"
A bloom of color came into her cheeks.
"The early ones were sexually explicit. Lately, they've taken on a threatening tone."
"Did you contact the police where you live?"
"Yes, but they couldn't identify the person."
"If I were you, I'd report this when you get back. Might be a connection."
After the police and fire rescue units had left, Karen remained on the edge of a deck chair, her face buried in her hands. She was clearly distraught, and I felt bad for her. I stepped over to introduce myself and told her I was a forensic psychiatrist.
"I've had some experience in the criminal justice system with stalkers. If you feel up to talking about it, I might be able to help."
She had, I thought, a certain refinement, some imprimatur of class, that made her hesitant to share personal details of her life with a stranger, even a professional. But the strain she was under overrode her reluctance, and she nodded through the film of tears.
* * * *
We spent a good part of the afternoon together, drinking tea under an umbrella at a table in the sun. She'd appeared on national TV and now enjoyed a minor celebrity on the nightclub circuit. The odd part was, I'd talked to one of the conference speakers who had caught her act in the lounge. He said the show was funny, but spiked with graphic jokes. For some reason I couldn't picture her on stage using four-letter words to get a laugh. Against the honey sheen of her skin, the blue eyes were deceptively innocent, and as the afternoon slipped away in the splash of swimmers and the lazy swell of voices, I began to sense a shadow of fragility in her on the other side of the well-bred manner. Several times during our conversation she stopped talking and turned her head sharply, and I caught a darting reflex of fear in the pupils, as if they had picked up some danger lurking out of sight beyond the archipelago
of tables and deck chairs packed with hotel guests.
"Do you have any of the notes this guy sent you?” I said.
"I got one two days ago. It was left at the desk."
She fished the folded scrap from her purse and held it out to me. The handwriting had a manic slant, as if some angry violence were backed up in the fingers squeezing the pencil.
DON'T TRY TO HIDE
FROM ME. I ALWAYS
KNOW WHERE YOU ARE.
"If you want the truth,” she said, “I'm terrified. I think what he did to Sara Jane was a message that he plans to do the same to me. I can feel him out there now, watching us..."
"You did a show last night, didn't you?"
"At midnight."
"If he was the one who mutilated your doll, how did he get his hands on it?"
"I suppose he could have got into my room with a duplicate key."
"Didn't you have the safety latch on?"
"I don't know. I'm always worn out after a late show. When I got back to my room, I just took off my clothes and crashed."
"I guess you can get the doll repaired."
It was the wrong thing to say. The grief twisted across her face again.
"You don't understand. She wasn't just some inanimate thing. She had a piece of my soul. That's the part that was murdered last night. I'm the target. He's coming after me."
* * * *
By evening she was calm enough to go to dinner with me at a beachfront restaurant. After the meal, she wanted to walk on the beach. The last hemorrhage of twilight lay off the horizon, and screeching gulls soared on the currents of salt air blowing off the surf in the cool dusk. Karen had already slipped off her heels, and now she unpinned the gleaming coil of blond hair behind her neck and shook it loose.
We strolled in the windy silence, lulled by the beat of the surf. A few low dunes, planted in sea oats, vaulted back from the beach. Later, Karen stopped walking, her head bent so that shadows blotted out her features. Then she glanced up in the blue darkness, eyes ablaze, and a domineering smile curled into her lips. Wordlessly, she slid her arms around my neck and ground her mouth viciously against mine. The kiss overheated swiftly on some erotic compulsion. I dragged her arms away, staring at her upturned face in the shadows. It was a stranger's face, and I said, “Karen?"
"Don't call me Karen,” she cried. “Karen's a weak, inhibited fool who plays with dolls. I only let her come out when I feel like it. I'm Eva."
The combustible heat in the violent eyes was as turbulent as the Atlantic swells flaring in against the coast behind her, and at that moment I had the whole psychiatric picture.
"Why did you attack Sara Jane?"
She twisted her wrists out of my grasp and flung back an antagonistic laugh.
"I warned her. She's been interfering in our lives for a long time. Trying to come alive. Trying to take my place. Karen would have let her. So I cut her throat and let her drown."
The contorted smile on her mouth was crazy enough for three people, maybe more. Probably the nightclub performer with the bawdy act was one of them. In my practice, I'd diagnosed only one patient with dissociative identity disorder—multiple personality—though it was a condition criminals often tried to fake. I knew she wasn't faking.
It took some doing to coax her back to the car, and by the time we returned to the hotel, she'd let Karen come out to say goodnight.
"Thank you for staying with me today,” she murmured, holding out a chaste hand. “I'll be all right."
But walking back to my room, I knew she wouldn't be all right. There was some suicidal ideation in her fragmented personality, along with a lot of anger, and quiet terror in the form of a stalker trapped in her mind.
In the suite, I called the desk and asked for the nearest crisis intervention center.
©2009 by Maynard Allington
[Back to Table of Contents]
Fiction: DESERT AND SWAMP by James H. Cobb
James H. Cobb's latest novel (from Grand Central Publishing, January 2009) forms part of a series that several thriller writers have contributed to, based on a concept of the late Robert Ludlum's. Entitled Robert Ludlum's (TM) The Infinity Affair, the novel centers on a crashed Soviet aircraft from the 1950s, discovered in the Arctic. For EQMM, Mr. Cobb puts on a very different hat, continuing his series of hot-rodder puzzle mysteries featuring the likeable Kevin Pulaski.
I was wandering around a swap meet with my friend and hot-rodding sage, Kevin Pulaski. As we poked around the displays of intriguing, obsolescent automotive junk, the topic turned to things that aren't there anymore.
"There's some things from the Fifties that I wish were still around,” the former L.A. County deputy said, “like Exner body designs and real chrome. But there's a bunch of other stuff, like bias-ply tires, that're no great loss to anybody."
He paused before a tarp spread with old car parts. Among them was an odd-looking rusty cylinder with a set of mounting brackets and a louvered vent on its side. He tapped it with the toe of his boot and a reminiscent gleam came to his eye. “Yeah, my man, there are some things I definitely don't miss."
* * * *
At night in the Mojave, everything changes. A cease-fire is declared until the next day's dawn and the desert stops trying to kill you. All the little creepers and crawlers that hide from the sun come out and go about their business and the coyotes sing their praises to the coming of the cool and the ten million stars overhead.
Looking across the huddled shape in the sagging bed, I could see a little patch of those bright, bright stars through the far window of the tourist cabin. I was forted up in the bathroom, sitting on what was available. It wasn't elegant, but it was the only hidey-hole that kept me out of sight. It was kind of stuffy too because I'd shut down the cabin's swamp cooler. I wanted to hear them coming.
Idly, I hefted the stumpy Colt automatic in my hand, wondering about how long I'd have to wait. I didn't think it would be for long. I could feel them thinking over in the main building. They'd want to finish the old guy off fast, while it would still sell at the coroner's inquest.
* * * *
It was a race my bad-news ‘57 Chevy hadn't been able to win. Car, the Princess, and I had left Kingman, Arizona, at first light, intending to blast across Route 66 to El Cajon in the narrow band of cool that lingers between dawn and hell in the California high desert. What we hadn't figured on was getting pinned behind a convoy of heavy earth-moving machinery lowboying in to the potash mines south of Barstow.
Now, the two-lane and the dammed-up backlog of cars it carried writhed like a snake in the road shimmer. Chunks of the rusty lava ridges flanking the highway broke off and hovered in the sun-bleached sky like a fleet of flying saucers. The auxiliary cooling fans moaned under Car's hood and she grumbled through her dual exhausts in radical-cammed aggravation, incensed at our snail crawl.
The air stream through the wind-wings might have been blasting out of an open furnace door. I tried to be philosophical about the whole thing, but Miss Lisette Kingman had never studied philosophy.
"Kevin, you're supposed to be the absolute automotive living end. Why can't you install some air conditioning in this thing?"
The Princess sprawled on the front seat beside me, her model's pretty face flushed, her dark ponytail limp, and her short shorts and Kerrybrooke blouse soggy. Only part of it was perspiration, the rest came from the thermos of water she'd emptied over herself. Lisette had been a hot-rodder's girl for a comparatively short time so she didn't realize she was speaking heresy.
Car and I forgave her.
"The compressor would bleed ten or fifteen horsepower out of the mill,” I replied patiently, “not to mention the weight of the unit. On a drag strip, that'd tack a good half-second onto your Estimated Time, easy."
"Which would you prefer,” she arched back, “that half-second or a girlfriend? ... Wait a minute. What am I saying? Forget it."
I chuckled, and slouched lower behind the wheel, my sweat-soaked T-shirt bu
nching across my back. The Princess was learning.
"What about one of those deals,” she pointed at the vehicle running ahead of us. “That's an air conditioner, isn't it? You see a lot of people using them."
The vehicle in question was a red-and-black ‘48 Dodge pickup, ten years old but in good shape. Its cab windows were closed, and something that looked sort of like a sawed-off bazooka was fixed between the top of the passenger-side window and the doorframe.
"Kinda,” I replied. “That's a swamp cooler, the automotive version of the window coolers a lot of the desert stations use. It's packed full of ice and the air scoop catches your slipstream and forces it over the ice and through a straw filter that wicks up the melt water. It's supposed to cool the air down before feeding it into the passenger compartment. They sort of work, but not all that well and they make your wheels look lopsided."
"Which would you prefer, a car that looks lopsided or a ... Never mind! Never mind!” The Princess unbuttoned her blouse, then knotted it closed under her breasts, baring a little more satiny skin.
There can be good in every situation if you look for it.
I edged Car closer to the center line. Squinting through my sunglasses, I watched for the long straightaway and the break in the oncoming traffic I'd need to blast around the road block of lumbering big rigs.
But then the Dodge pickup ahead of me also began a slow, erratic drift to the left. Weaving into the eastbound lane, it drew an angry blast of horn from an oncoming Imperial. The pickup's driver jerkily swerved back, overcorrecting and kicking up dust from the right shoulder of the road.
"What's his problem?” Lisette inquired, sitting up straighter.
"I dunno.” I backed off another precautionary car-length from the slaloming truck. “But something's gone gestanko with this guy.” Through the rear window of the cab I could see the driver's big-eared head bobbing unsteadily on a skinny neck.
"Do you think he's drunk?"
"I dunno,” I repeated. “He seemed straight when he pulled onto the highway back at Devlin station. Could be the heat's getting to him."
EQMM, March-April 2009 Page 7