by Isaac Asimov
Her father pushed open the door and brushed past her. He set down the case he’d used to carry his rope and took his pistol from beneath his jacket. With his free hand he reached out to touch her cheek. “You a good girl, Alma. You did jus’ fine,” he whispered.
Then he went to the door of the apartment’s only bedroom and opened it. Alma followed and was beside him when he clicked on the light.
There were twin beds in the room, and a middle-aged couple had been asleep. The woman awoke when the light went on and sat up, clutching the bedclothes around her. She stared wide-eyed at Alma and her father; then her gaze focused on the large black revolver he held, and her mouth started to open.
“Jus’ keep you mouth shut, woman. Don’t you say nothin’,” Alma’s father ordered, and moved forward, holding the pistol ready.
It took only a few minutes to wake the man and tie and gag the pair with strips torn from a sheet. When he was finished, they were lying on their sides with their arms and legs drawn up behind them and bulky gags covered their mouths. All they could do was watch while he and Alma searched the closets and dressing table for valuables.
Alma and her father took turns carrying their loot to the car in the parking garage. Each carried an armload of clothing, a suitcase stuffed with linen, or a small appliance — nothing that would be worthy of notice if they were seen, and which could be explained as donations if they were challenged. He saved the color television for last.
“Alma, honey,” he said. “I gonna tote this-here television to the car.” His pistol was gone from sight, and he now held a long, thin carving knife she’d seen him pick up in the kitchenette. “There’s only one thing left for you to do here, honey, then I want you t’ meet me at the car.”
“Yes, Papa.”
“You ‘member how I use’t’ butcher hogs back home? I’d hang ’em by their heels an’ cut ’em quick an’ deep?” He made a pantomiming gesture with the knife.
Alma wet her lips and hugged herself to keep from trembling.
“Yes, Papa.”
“Well, I want you t’ go into that-there bedroom and do for those folks. If we don’t shut them up, they’ll tell on us quick as you can spit. They’d have your ol’ pa in prison for sure. You don’t want that, do you?”
“No, Papa.”
“That’s my girl,” he said, wrapping the fingers of her right hand around the handle of the knife. He gave her a gentle push toward the bedroom doorway. “I’ll meet you at the car. You’d best hurry...”
“Oh!” Silvia broke in. “How horrible! No wonder the child feels so terribly. After butchering those helpless people, even if her worthless father did tell her to do it, it’s no wonder her conscience won’t let her rest.”
I put my arms around Silvia to give her strength. “You don’t understand,” I said. “Alma’s father was identified by the robbery victims and is serving a long sentence in the state prison. When Alma entered the bedroom with the knife in her hand, the people whimpered and cried for mercy behind their gags. She wasn’t able to force herself to kill them as she’d been ordered to do. She let them live. That’s what she’s sorry about.”
Grand Exit
by Leo R. Ellis
Brett Delane left the key in the front door lock as he hurriedly stumbled down the darkened hallway. Upon entering the study he snapped on the desk lamp. The shaded glow revealed a figure crouched against the wall, the figure of a man, a man who held a gun.
Brett gasped. He opened his mouth to speak, but instead he groaned and fell back against the desk, half doubled over, clutching his middle.
The intruder moved out of the shadows and became a man, barely out of his teens, dressed in tight pants and a soiled jacket. Scraggly hair hung around his ears. He held the gun pointed.
Still doubled over, Brett worked his way around the corner of the desk and slumped into the leather chair. He reached for the desk drawer.
“Don’t go for a gun, dad,” the man said.
“Medicine — my medicine.” Brett ignored the gun, thrust across the desk, as he feebly lifted out a vial and fumbled off the top. He placed the vial against his lips and swallowed a tablet with effort. Brett collapsed back in the chair, his eyes closed, his face a deadly white.
The man stared at the slight, silver-haired Brett behind the desk. The gunman’s trigger finger tightened but there was no shot; instead, the man looked back at the open window. His eyes swept across the pictures on the study wall, photographs of Brett Delane in many of the character roles he had played on the stage.
A moan brought the gun muzzle back across the desk again. Still the man did not fire. He brushed his hair back in a nervous, unsure gesture.
Brett’s eyelids fluttered open and his eyes focused across the desk. “What do you want?”
“Loot, man — loot.”
“Take what I have then and get out.”
The man shook his head. “It don’t work out that way now, dad. I figured to blow when I thought you were gone, but you messed things up by coming to life again. Now I’ve got to blast you.”
Brett sat upright. “You can’t mean you’re going to kill me!”
“You get the idea real good. I don’t like witnesses — witnesses get a guy pinched.” The man raised the gun and Brett collapsed in the chair. “Cut the faking,” the man said angrily. “You ain’t dying. I saw you take your medicine.”
Slowly Brett opened his eyes. “But I am dying,” he said in a low voice. He reached out and touched the vial. “This medicine has kept me alive so far, but someday, someday — poof.” He gave a sardonic chuckle. “Perhaps it would be a blessing if you did shoot me. It would be sudden, no drawn-out suffering.”
“This ain’t meant as no favor, pop.”
Brett nodded slowly. “Death is something to dread when it comes slowly. But murder, now that would be a more fitting climax to the career of Brett Delane.” Brett leaned forward and pulled himself to his feet. “Yes, then I would have headlines for my obituary — Noted Actor Dies in Mystery Slaying. Very nice.”
The man backed away. “Man, you’re a nut.”
“No, I’m an actor. It is highly important to an actor to make a grand exit, you see.” Brett raised his arm. “I want my final scene dramatic, packed with emotion and suspense.” Brett dropped his arm. “No actor could ask for more, and since I am to die anyway, I feel that murder would serve as an excellent vehicle in which to frame my passing.”
“Man, you are a N-U-T, a real, genuine filbert.” The man’s gun had drooped, but now it snapped back up as Brett started for the door. “Stand where you are, dad. You ain’t leaving.”
“But I insist this scene be done right. I’ll need the proper wardrobe and I want to get my maroon dressing gown. I don’t suppose you would allow me time for a shower first?”
The gunman jabbed the gun while he clawed at his face with his free hand. “You can’t be that nutty,” he yelled. “Nobody could be nutty enough to fix up for his own murder.” He stopped and his eyes narrowed. “I get it, you’re pulling a fast one. You’ve got this setup rigged somehow.” His eyes darted around the room and stopped at the desk. “A tape recorder — you’re putting this down on tape.” The man dashed across the room.
“I use that machine to study my diction,” Brett said calmly. “You’ll find it quite empty.”
The gunman shoved the recorder to the floor. He made sure the telephone was firmly in the cradle, then ran back to run his hand over the wall. “I got it now, the room’s bugged. You’re trying to stall me until the cops get here.” He whirled and pointed the gun. “It won’t work, I’m going to blow your head off right now.”
“Please, not the head. Shoot me in the body. And there are no hidden microphones.”
The young man’s mouth worked as he tugged at his long hair. “You’re trying to sucker me into some kind of a trap. You want me to kill you, but I’m too smart for that. I’m not buying any murder rap.” He ran to the window and threw one leg over the sill. �
�You’ll have to die a natural death on your own, dad.” The man slid outside and disappeared.
Brett Delane had finished the second of his two telephone calls when the front door opened and his wife entered. Brett kissed her on the cheek. “Frightfully sorry I had to leave the dinner so abruptly, dear. I should have known that blasted curry would tie my stomach into knots, and I had left my ulcer medicine in the desk drawer.”
Brett helped his wife with her coat. “We had a prowler,” he said. “It was quite a dramatic scene, and I gave a magnificent performance. You’ll hear all about it when the reporters get here. Now be a good girl and hold them while I shower and put on my maroon dressing gown.”
Hunting Ground
by A. F. Oreshnik
It had rained earlier in the day. Dark gray clouds filled the sky and seemed to press ominously close to the ground. Gusts of chill northern wind chased dead leaves across the damp grass. Without exception, the wire frames that had been set up to hold floral wreaths at some grave sites had been blown over, spilling dying flowers and brightly colored satin and nylon ribbon onto the wet grass or muddy, raw earth.
Wilson Block stood with the collar of his dark topcoat turned up and the brim of his black hat turned down against the cold. The weather was terrible, but even on sunny days cemeteries were cheerless places. During his sixty-three years, Wilson Block had buried over forty wives, so he was an expert on cemeteries. Mount Calvary outside Buffalo, St. Louis’ Oak Grove, San Diego’s El Camino, and a few dozen others had received business as a result of his activities.
There had been a time when almost every grave had an elaborate headstone or piece of statuary sitting atop it. Now that was seldom permitted except in the older sections. One was allowed to mark a loved one’s location in the new areas, of course, but the stones usually had to be small and flush with the ground. Grass-cutting equipment could then be driven directly over the graves, thereby reducing maintenance costs to the minimum. It was all very unfeeling, and Wilson Block was repelled by it. Although he was a multiple murderer, he was not insensitive.
He held a silver-mounted, ebony walking stick in one gloved hand. He had owned it for over thirty years. There was a time when he had strolled jauntily along the boardwalk at Atlantic City, spinning the stick like a baton. When he had gone to New York City to visit his broker he had liked to stride purposely through the financial district, gripping the head tightly and reaching out to tap the sidewalk every fifteen or twenty feet. Now, however, the stick had become less of an ornament and more of a necessity. He would never walk anywhere unless he had the stick to lean upon and furnish support.
The woman was standing beside a fresh mound in the next section. She was about forty, five-foot-two and weighing a rounded and matronly 130 pounds. Her long, dark hair had a streak of gray. Because of the ban against large markers, Wilson Block had a clear view of the woman despite the fifty yards that separated them.
This was her fourth visit to the grave site in a week. She always came alone and never seemed to know what to do with herself. Sometimes she’d stand, shifting her weight from one foot to the other; sometimes she knelt and pulled out the weeds that were taking root.
After seeing her for the second time, Block had waited until she left, then approached the grave. There was no marker yet, but he was sure she had lost a husband. The woman’s nervous activity was the tip-off. He had noticed that women stand quietly beside children’s and friends’ graves, but seem driven to movement by a dead spouse. Perhaps it was because they were merely spectators of the lives of children and friends, while the loss of a husband left a giant void in their lives that had to be filled.
Block had no way of knowing how accurate his theory was, but its application had made him extremely wealthy. It was a tool that worked for him and that was the only test that mattered.
When he had committed his first murders forty-odd years before, he had found his victims through lonely-hearts advertisements in newspapers and magazines. Soon, however, this became both time-consuming and dangerous. Many amateur fortune hunters and inept murders began to compete with him for the more promising victims. This was hardly satisfactory, so he was forced to look for something different.
He found his next method of selection by chance. He had moved to a new city — immediately after a funeral — and had wanted to establish himself as a young widower as quickly as he could. There was a church a few blocks from the home he had rented, so he began attending services. Within a month he had been introduced to half a dozen widows and twice that many spinsters. All he had to do was choose.
Churches made an excellent hunting ground; nevertheless, they still fell short of being perfect. For one thing, the women he met were seldom wealthy or even comfortably well-off. The spinsters were invariably almost destitute; and the widows, even those who had collected modest insurance claims, as often as not had spent the money before Block got to them.
Despite the weakness of churches. Block might have continued to use them if it hadn’t been for the invention of the computer. Before computers, it had been a simple matter to give himself a new name and insure his wives, carefully selecting a different insurance company each time; but as soon as electronic data-processing became widespread, the companies began to pool their claims information and investigate beneficiaries more carefully. It was no longer possible to change his identity every time he moved, and it was no longer safe to collect the insurance of his wives. If he did either, the new electronic marvel would quickly single him out for human attention.
He could no longer marry a woman for her own insurance money, so he had to do it for her former husband’s. What better place to find a fresh widow than a cemetery? He figured, and that’s where he began to stalk them. If a woman had an insurance policy of her own, and most of them did, he always had her sign it over to a charity or close relative, thereby alleviating the possibility of suspicion later. He took whatever real estate, stocks, or cash there might be and considered the loss of the woman’s insurance money as a necessary operating expense.
The woman at the grave in the other section straightened her shoulders and seemed to take a firmer grip on her handbag. Wilson Block had wondered how long she was going to stand there. He was chilled to the bone. He turned and started down the walk toward her at the same moment she left the grave and began to walk in his direction. He timed it so that they reached the intersection at the same time and turned toward the entrance together.
The woman seemed a bit startled to find him walking beside her. She glanced up at his face and then quickly away.
“You do not have to be frightened,” Block said. He had a very deep and mellow voice that women had always found comforting. “I have been visiting my wife.”
The woman nodded without saying anything, but she made no effort to increase her pace. Then, as they reached the entrance, she blurted, “My husband is buried here,” and hurried away.
Wilson Block watched her go. As first contacts went, that had been about average. What was unusual, however, was the fact that he had found her very attractive. No woman had stirred him quite so much since he was in his twenties. Another positive factor had been the woman’s clothing. Her coat, shoes, and handbag had been new and very expensive, but they hadn’t been so new that they could have been purchased with sudden, recent insurance wealth. She had been used to comfortable living even before her husband died.
The following day Wilson Block exchanged a few more words with the woman, including their names. She was Mrs. Elizabeth Ayer and her husband had been dead a month. So far, so good.
Within a week, Block was riding back to the city in her car instead of using a bus or taxi. He had a perfectly fine sedan of his own, but he never used it at times like this unless his target didn’t have transportation.
He invited her to lunch one day and she accepted. From then on, his progress was swift. Block had always been able to fascinate women. He played whatever role they seemed to need. He prided himself that
all of his wives had died happy. Soon there was no more “Mr. Block” and “Mrs. Ayer.” It became Will and Betty.
He found her to be a thoroughly charming woman. Unlike all of his previous conquests, she didn’t exert a silent pressure to be entertained, and she didn’t whine about her misfortune, or try to play upon his sympathy. She held up her end of every conversation with ease and seemed to make every effort to have him feel comfortable.
The day Wilson Block took her hand in his and said, “Betty, I love you and want you to marry me,” he meant every word. He always did. Acting is believing.
Neither of them had relatives or friends, and they had only a few acquaintances. There was no need to delay the wedding for the sake of appearances. Betty never even suggested it. Wilson had already filled the void left by her dead husband. He was sure she saw marriage as the next logical step.
Wilson also told her he’d like to move to another town. This way, as he explained it, they could leave the past behind them, and their honeymoon cottage would also be their new home.
“A wife’s place is wherever her husband wants to be,” she answered and kissed him.
More from habit than design. Block checked to see if the new community had a medical examiner. He found that it did. Had he been planning an immediate murder, that would have been a problem. He far preferred cities and towns with elected and untrained coroners. A coroner will often diagnose brucine or strychnine poisoning as a heart attack, but no trained medical examiner would. For a medical examiner, Block had always had to arrange carefully staged accidents, something he found extremely bothersome.
Happily, for once in his life he wanted a wife more than a funeral. Betty was everything his other wives had never been, and he suddenly realized she was everything he needed. He was sixty-three. He had all the money he would ever need. It was about time he retired, and he couldn’t pick a better time. Betty hung onto his every word, catered to his every whim. He’d never had it so good.