“We interviewed the entire household staff, everybody from his office, even some of the folks at his country club. He had a lot of competitors and some people who were jealous of him, but it didn’t sound like he’d made the kind of enemies that would kill him. That’s when we began to suspect it was a crime of opportunity, maybe a mugging that got out of hand.”
“Any more of the sensations?”
“Not during any of that. I was starting to chalk them up to overwork, but then the autopsy results came in. I wanted to see them first, before the brass got involved, so I went down to the morgue. It was just what I expected; cause of death was a single bullet wound to the chest.
“I was talking to the medical examiner, asking a few standard questions, when…out of nowhere…I got this jolt of anger that almost knocked me over. It wasn’t like the feeling I’d had at the crime scene, though; this was more like resentment, as if the ME had put me on the spot or botched something I needed. I’ve known that particular doc for a long time, and consider him a friend, and yet I suddenly had this impulse to haul off and belt him as hard as I could.
“I took a step back, and that’s when I saw a body being wheeled down the corridor. It was covered, but I made them stop.”
A moment of silence.
“And you wanna know the funny thing? The body being wheeled by could have been any stiff at all, and yet I knew it was Meriweather. And it was.
“That’s when I realized something…something I couldn’t see…was sending me a message.”
* * * *
“I suppose this is as good a time as any to tell you that I don’t believe in ghosts.”
“You might change your mind once I finish the story, Doc.”
“All right. But one question first: If you’re so sure this is some kind of supernatural being, why did you come to a psychiatrist? Why not go to a psychic, or a paranormal investigator of some kind?”
A long inhalation, and then a sigh.
“I did. Over at one of the universities. He’s a professor of paranormal studies, but he’s also a psychic…or claims to be, anyway.”
“Go on.”
“We talked for a long time, and he suggested that the emotions I was encountering fit the profile of a murder victim’s ghost. Fear. Anger. Resentment—”
“I’m sorry to interrupt, but was the investigation still ongoing?”
“No. This was a few days ago, just after we’d gotten the verdict. The Prof wasn’t like you, though; he hadn’t followed it in the news so I didn’t have to give specifics. The funny part is that he accepted my story completely.”
“Really?”
“Well think about it: He believes in things nobody can see. It’s his business. So he told me that most of the time a ghost is the spirit of a dead person, stuck here on the Earth because they can’t let go of part of their lives. He even suggested that I was being contacted by Meriweather’s ghost because he was a murder victim.”
“What did you think of that?”
“I said it would be a first. But I know those sensations were real, and I had no other explanation for where they might have come from, so I asked him what else they might be. He said it might not necessarily be Meriweather; according to him, some ghosts can be attracted to living people who share the same vices they enjoyed in life. So if the ghost was a gambler while it was alive, it could be attracted by a living person who bets a lot. He said that kind of visitation would fit my case because this particular entity only communicates through emotion—it’s a creature of appetite.
“Then he told me that I have a personality that ghosts would find sympathetic…that they’d like hanging around me because I’m open-minded.”
“Was he the one who said you have an ‘empathetic character’?”
“That’s very good, Doc. Good memory. Yeah, he was the one who said that.”
“Did he say anything else?”
“Yeah…I asked him why a creature of uncontrollable appetites would contact a by-the-book detective and try to help solve a murder. He didn’t want to answer at first, but I wheedled it out of him.”
“And what was the answer?”
“He said that maybe this thing, this entity, was contacting me because it had already tried to communicate with the killer—and failed.”
* * * *
“Okay…so you got some input from this psychic—”
“Hey Doc, I just noticed something: ‘Psychic’ and ‘Psychiatrist’ start with the same syllable. Same spelling, too. Any connection there?”
“None at all.” Subdued laughter. “I was just about to ask you: Did any of these feelings actually help you solve the murder? Everything in the news sounded pretty straightforward.”
“I’ll bet. And did you see me on the news?”
“No…”
“Exactly. You saw a bunch of officers with braid on their caps telling you the city is safe and that the maniac had been caught. Think any of those people had any idea how this case was actually solved?”
“Obviously not.”
“Right. Here’s how it went. We didn’t have much to go on. The gun was old and untraceable. No one had seen anything unusual, at or near the crime scene. The widow didn’t have an alibi, but her window of opportunity was pretty tight to get out to the river, shoot her husband, and get to her next engagement. In the meantime we didn’t have any motive for her to kill him.”
“Until you found the private investigator Meriweather hired.”
“That’s right. We were digging through his phone records, and found that he’d called a PI a few days before he died, and again on morning of. We went to see the PI, and he admitted that he’d been Meriweather’s appointment that morning, the one when he wouldn’t tell his staff where he was going. Meriweather hired him to watch his wife, but he hadn’t even started when the body turned up, so he got as far away from the case as he could.”
“Knowing that his murdered client had believed his wife was cheating on him?”
“PI’s are a funny bunch; some of them would rather go to jail than tell the police a thing. And Meriweather hadn’t given him any money, so he figured he’d just drop it.” Pause. “Yeah, I know; in the movies he’s supposed to swear he’ll find out who murdered his client and start following the widow anyway. That doesn’t happen a lot in real life.
“But he gave us a motive, and so we went and spoke to Mrs. Meriweather again. This time she had a whole room full of defense lawyers—Sanderson brought them in when we asked for a second interview—and we couldn’t even get her to answer whether or not she was stepping out on her late husband. We didn’t really have to, though; she burst out crying and you could tell she was carrying some heavy guilt, maybe just adultery but maybe something worse. We began digging into her story right after that, but something happened as we were leaving that made me think she didn’t do it.”
“What was that?”
“Sanderson spoke to me and my partner privately once the interview ended. He basically walked us to the car, trying to tell us that whatever his old buddy Meriweather might have suspected didn’t mean his wife had killed him. Swearing up and down that their marriage was a good one…”
“Wow.”
“Yeah, wow. I think the ghost thought the same thing, because as soon as we were outside with Sanderson I got sandbagged by another surge of emotions. This time it was really focused, and it was something I don’t experience much.”
“And that is?”
“Jealousy. Full-on, red-eyed, he’s-dating-the-head-cheerleader envy. Luckily my partner was doing the talking, because I just stood there and tried to ride the sensation to wherever it was taking me.”
“Pardon me?”
“I know it sounds strange, but I’ve had snitches point me in the right direction many times over the years, and I’d decided my ghost was a snitch. Ever since the Prof suggested it might be some Jack the Ripper type, I’d been thinking of what else it might be and finally decided it was a dead snitch. I
dunno…somehow that made it less threatening.
“But now I was really trying to listen…and I swear that’s when it finally began to fine-tune the message.”
“How?”
“Simple timing. It had hit me with these feelings at the crime scene and at the morgue, but not when I’d been interviewing Mrs. Meriweather. I mean, why not? She was as connected to this as the scene of the murder, and the PI’s story had promoted her to Suspect Number One. So why not, and why now? Why was it tapping me on the shoulder in the Meriweathers’ driveway?
“And that’s when I figured it out. It hadn’t signaled me during the interviews with Mrs. Meriweather because the real killer had been in the same room both times. It would have been too easy to think it was pointing me toward the widow—but now that I was talking with Sanderson by himself, it let me have it full force.”
“We don’t usually say this in my profession, but that sounds a little farfetched.”
“Of course it does. Until you go over the sensations I’d experienced, and in order: Fear, anger, resentment, and jealousy. I’d made a bad guess that the first three were Meriweather’s reaction to being murdered, but they weren’t. They were the feelings that the killer had for the victim, and the last one was the motive. That’s why the thing didn’t give me a feeling of jealousy until I was almost alone with the killer. Good ol’ lifelong buddy, football teammate, business partner George Sanderson.”
Long silence.
“That’s not much of a case.”
“Oh, no…of course not. It did point him out for me, though, and I began treating him as a suspect while everybody else was trying to prove it was the widow.”
“But didn’t the papers say the connection between Sanderson and the crime scene—that it was a meeting place he and Meriweather had used since high school—came from Meriweather’s mistress?”
“His ex-mistress, actually. That’s why it took her so long to come forward. She was living on the other side of the country, and only heard about the murder in a news story that said we were stumped. It was on TV, and she recognized the rest stop from a few years back. She and Meriweather had been out on a date when Sanderson called him for an emergency meeting. He’d left her in the car while he went off through the trees—Sanderson didn’t know someone could connect him to the murder scene.”
“And he told you he had no idea why Meriweather would be out there.”
“He kinda had to, though; it wouldn’t sound right to say the crime scene was their secret spot for decades, particularly since he was the killer. But I’d connected him to it anyway.”
“How was that?”
“When I dig into somebody’s background, I dig deep. By then I was almost certain it was Sanderson, so I started with his earliest association with Meriweather. I started calling their old high school buddies, and it turns out the spot by the river was a little party location for them way back when. The rest stop wasn’t there then, so it was even more out-of-the-way than it is now.
“That was proof enough that he was lying, but it took Meriweather’s old girlfriend to make it official. We searched Sanderson’s house and found the same caliber bullets as were used in the murder. They were in the bottom of an old backpack in his garage.”
“Now I remember…he’d done a lot of hiking in college and had bought the gun for protection.”
“Right. Sanderson had obviously considered killing Meriweather long before, because he was the one stepping out with Felicia. He’d cleaned the gun, bought new ammo, and had it handy when Meriweather called to ask for a meeting out by the river. Meriweather had just hired the PI that morning, so he didn’t know Sanderson was the guy they were looking for. Sanderson insists he panicked, that he thought Meriweather knew about him and Felicia, and that he feared for his life when he pulled the trigger.”
“But you don’t believe that.”
“No. I think Sanderson was afraid Meriweather was going to find out about him and his wife, but I also think he was tired of blocking for the handsome quarterback. Sanderson was rich, but not like his old high school buddy. I think he really resented Meriweather, and that he was jealous of him, too. Fear, anger, resentment, and jealousy. Just like the spook suggested.
“Anyway, Meriweather probably asked for the meeting—that was the last phone call he placed from his office—just to start getting his divorce ducks in a row if the PI proved Felicia was stepping out on him. I think Sanderson brought the gun just in case, and decided to go ahead once he determined the PI hadn’t started the investigation yet.”
“So what about his confession? Did you feel anything then?”
“That’s what’s strange about it. I didn’t feel a thing. In fact, I haven’t had a single strange impulse since that time in the Meriweathers’ driveway. I took the confession, sat through the entire trial, and…nothing.”
Long silence.
“So how about it, Doc? Am I crazy?”
“Probably not.” Laughter. “Listen: As much as you try to avoid having ‘gut instincts’ about your cases, we humans sometimes pick up on things without knowing it. Ever catch something just as it fell off a table, and then wonder how you knew it was about to tip over? Ever feel like you were being watched, and you looked up to see someone staring at you?
“My point is that there are stimuli all around us, all perfectly normal, that we never consciously detect. I think that’s all that was happening here—with apologies to your psychic. I think you’ve been a cop for a long time, and that something about Sanderson made you suspicious. I mentioned earlier that we all try to assign orderly, logical reasons to the things occurring around us, and I think that goes double for a Homicide detective.”
“I dunno, Doc; some of the cases I’ve worked have been anything but orderly.”
“Touché. So forget what I think, and let’s go with what you know: You never had an experience like this before, and you haven’t had one since solving the case. That alone says this was an anomaly of some kind. And maybe it proves that you sensed something about this particular murder that set you on edge. Doesn’t that make more sense than some vigilante spirit pushing you in the right direction?”
“Maybe…maybe.”
“I might be going out on a limb here, but I think you were looking for an explanation like that when you came to see me.”
“Well, it sure beats being carted out of here in a straightjacket, don’tcha think?”
Laughter.
“Listen: You sound like a pretty well-adjusted individual—which is a little surprising, given how you spend your days. If you want to come back and talk some more, the door’s always open. But I think if you let a little time go by you’ll see that this was a one-time thing, something neither one of us can explain, but that we don’t have to, either—because it won’t happen again.”
“Sounds good to me, Doc.”
“You’ve got my number if anything else pops up.”
“Thanks, Doc. Thanks a lot.”
* * * *
“Hi, Doc.”
“Detective. My answering service said you called. Is anything wrong?”
“You could say that.” Pause. “You know they sentenced Sanderson today, right?”
“I heard he got life. Were you there?”
“Yes.”
“I thought so. You sound…”
“Like I’ve seen a ghost?”
“I wasn’t going to say that.”
“You’d be half right, Doc. I didn’t see one; I heard it.”
“What did you hear?”
“I was standing in the back of the courtroom when the judge pronounced the sentence. There was a little conversation around me, but nothing big, no uproar. I heard it loud and clear. I looked all around me, and I couldn’t see anybody who could have been making that noise.”
“Noise? What noise?”
“Laughter, Doc. High-pitched, mocking…” Deep, shaky breath. “The thing was laughing, Doc, because Sanderson was going away for life. And
nobody could hear it but me.”
“I’m still at the office, Detective. Would you like to come by?”
“Oh, I don’t think so.” A moment’s silence. “You know what this means, don’t you? The laughter? After all that silence? It followed me here, Doc. It’s been with me since that first visit to the crime scene. The morgue, the Meriweathers’ place…heck, it probably listened to our whole conversation. So maybe it’s not such a good idea, me meeting with you right now. Or anybody, for that matter.”
Loud click.
THE FIVE ORANGE PIPS, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
When I glance over my notes and records of the Sherlock Holmes cases between the years ’82 and ’90, I am faced by so many which present strange and interesting features that it is no easy matter to know which to choose and which to leave. Some, however, have already gained publicity through the papers, and others have not offered a field for those peculiar qualities which my friend possessed in so high a degree, and which it is the object of these papers to illustrate. Some, too, have baffled his analytical skill, and would be, as narratives, beginnings without an ending, while others have been but partially cleared up, and have their explanations founded rather upon conjecture and surmise than on that absolute logical proof which was so dear to him. There is, however, one of these last which was so remarkable in its details and so startling in its results that I am tempted to give some account of it in spite of the fact that there are points in connection with it which never have been, and probably never will be, entirely cleared up.
The year ’87 furnished us with a long series of cases of greater or less interest, of which I retain the records. Among my headings under this one twelve months I find an account of the adventure of the Paradol Chamber, of the Amateur Mendicant Society, who held a luxurious club in the lower vault of a furniture warehouse, of the facts connected with the loss of the British barque Sophy Anderson, of the singular adventures of the Grice Patersons in the island of Uffa, and finally of the Camberwell poisoning case. In the latter, as may be remembered, Sherlock Holmes was able, by winding up the dead man’s watch, to prove that it had been wound up two hours before, and that therefore the deceased had gone to bed within that time—a deduction which was of the greatest importance in clearing up the case. All these I may sketch out at some future date, but none of them present such singular features as the strange train of circumstances which I have now taken up my pen to describe.
The Detective Megapack Page 102