EQMM, November 2008

by Dell Magazine Authors

  He wiped away some of the sweat that was running into his eyes. Tears were running soundlessly down Rebecca's face.

  "We all agreed, the rest of us, to claim he'd got caught in the crossfire. After what had happened, no one was going to want to tell the truth."

  "Except you,” Rebecca said.

  "This is different.” He nodded towards the children. “They needed to know."

  "Why?"

  "So they can understand."

  And his hands reached down towards his rifle.

  * * * *

  Not long after first light, a police helicopter, flying low over the forest, reported a woman and two children standing in a small clearing, waving a makeshift flag.

  Armed officers secured the area. Rebecca and the children were escorted to the perimeter, where paramedics were waiting. Anderson was found lying inside the tent, a dark cagoule covering his face, his discharged weapon close at hand. At the hospital later, after she had rested and the medical staff had examined her, Rebecca slowly began to tell Resnick and a female liaison officer her story. The children were in another room with a nurse and their maternal grandmother.

  Later still, relishing the chance to stretch his legs, Resnick had walked with Kiley the short distance through the city centre to the railway station. Already, a rush edition of the Post was on the streets. It would be national news for a moment, a day, page one beneath the fold, then a short column on page six, a paragraph on page thirteen. Forgotten. One of those things that happen, stress of combat, balance of mind disturbed. Rebecca had told the police her husband's story, as well as she remembered, what he'd seen, the attack at night, the confusion, the young Iraqi girl, the fellow soldier caught in the crossfire and killed in front of his eyes. He hadn't been able to sleep, she said, not since that happened. I don't think he could face going back to it again.

  "Not what you wanted, Jack,” Resnick said, shaking his hand.

  The 15:30 to London St. Pancras was on time.

  "None of us,” Kiley said.

  "We'll catch that game some time."

  "Yes. I'd like that."

  Kiley hurried down the steps onto the platform.

  He phoned Jennie Calder from the train. In a little over two hours’ time he would be crossing towards the flats where Mary Anderson lived and climbing the stairs, “Welcome” on the mat, but not for him, her face, when she opened the door, wet with tears.

  * * * *

  AUTHOR'S NOTE: Any Notts County supporters reading this will forgive me, I trust, for playing fast and loose with the details of the club's highly successful FA Cup run in 1990/91. Manchester City not Charlton Athletic. Come on, you Pies!

  (c)2008 by John Harvey

  Reviews: THE JURY BOX by Jon L. Breen

  My very first “Jury Box” column back in January 1977 led off with mysteries in translation: two of them, by Poul Orum and Hansjorg Martin, bookending a novel by Janwillem van de Wetering, a Dutchman who usually wrote in English. Until very recently, I would have been amazed to have enough mysteries in translation to fill a column. Now, as another annual round-up approaches, no fewer than 28 new novels from 11 languages clamor for attention. For the statistically inclined, the breakdown by language follows: Afrikaans 1, Dutch 1, French 2, German 3, Icelandic 1, Italian 3, Japanese 2, Norwegian 2, Russian 2, Spanish 4, Swedish 7. The selection below considers nine books representing seven languages.

  ***** Arnaldur Indridason: The Draining Lake, translated from the Icelandic by Bernard Scudder, St. Martin's Minotaur /Dunne, $24.95. This thoughtful, intricate, and beautifully executed combination of police procedural, spy novel, semi-inverted detective story, and essay on the human condition confirms the high reputation of a multiple-award-winning writer. In the present, dour and depressive Erlendur Sveinsson, a police inspector obsessed with missing persons, leads a team seeking the identity of a decades-dead skeleton found in the titular lake, which is receding as a result of an earthquake. The parallel back story recounts an Icelandic student's days in East Germany during the Cold War. Involving characters, historical perspective, and the gradual revelation of secrets make this one of the best novels of the year.

  **** Fred Vargas: This Night's Foul Work, translated from the French by Sian Reynolds, Pen-guin, $14. Commissaire Jean-Baptiste Adamsberg, an eccentric Paris detective with an assortment of equally quirky subordinates, inhabits a house allegedly haunted by the ghost of a murderous nun while investigating the more-than-meets-the-eye killing of a pair of drug dealers. Among the other elements in this wildly but gloriously plotted novel: a new recruit who speaks in verse, ritualistic killings of stags, a police station cat with seemingly super-feline powers, a serial- killing nurse, and grave robberies of recently deceased women. Vargas won't appeal to every reader, but those who bail out early will miss some of the most original writing and puzzle-spinning in recent memory.

  **** Andrea Camilleri: The Paper Moon, translated from the Italian by Steven Sartarelli, Penguin, $13. In the best book I've read from a consistently rewarding series, Sicilian Inspec-tor Montalbano investigates the murder of a pharmaceutical salesman (now known by the am-biguous euphemism “informer") who has complicated relationships with several beautiful women, including an unusually clinging sister and a mistress whose elderly schoolteacher husband ostensibly knows and approves. All the series attributes—the humanly flawed and likeable central character, his humorous dealings with colleagues, the intricate plotting, the surprising but credible climactic twists—are stronger than ever.

  **** Leonardo Padura: Havana Gold, translated from the Spanish by Peter Bush, Bitter Lemon, $14.95. The novels about Cuban cop and wannabe writer Mario Conde form one of the finest contemporary detective series in any language, notable for their lyrical style, vivid background, and ongoing paean to friendship. In 1989, the sentimental Conde falls in love (the reader suspects un-wisely) while investigating the murder of a young high school teacher with close relationships to her students. The British translator, in an otherwise excellent job, continues to mangle the lingo of baseball, which unlike cricket is not played on a pitch.

  **** Asa Larsson: The Black Path, translated from the Swedish by Marlaine Delargy, Delta, $12. Cruelly damaged but remarkably resilient lawyer Rebecka Martinsson and domes-tically contented police detective Anna-Maria Mella return in another psychologically complex and masterfully constructed case, which begins with the body of a young woman found in an ice-fishing ark (or moveable cabin) on a frozen Swedish lake and comes to involve the troubled circle of a brilliant but socially maladjusted mining en-trepreneur. Larsson is an extraordinary talent, who brings her characters and background to vivid life and accomplishes major shifts in time and viewpoint without losing the reader.

  *** Carlo Lucarelli: Via Delle Oche, translated from the Italian by Michael Reynolds, Europa, $14.95. As a 1948 Italian election approaches, Commissario De Luca, a dedicated cop with Fascist baggage, believes the death by hanging of a Communist brothel bouncer is murder, but political considerations in the Bologna police insist on suicide. The third of a trilogy, this novella-length case is well told and historically informative.

  *** Karin Alvtegen: Missing, translated from the Swedish by Anna Paterson, Felony & May-hem, $24. Sibylla Forsenstrom, a homeless woman from an economically privileged but emotionally deprived family background, manages to work a middle-aged businessman for dinner and an overnight stay in a posh Stockholm hotel, but becomes a fugitive murder suspect when he is found dead and ritually mutilated. In a deftly constructed psychological thriller, the author juggles the reader's responses to the obvious question: Did she really do it? The solution includes a bizarre and maybe original motive for serial murder.

  *** Asa Nonami: Now You're One of Us, translated from the Japanese by Michael Volek and Mitsuko Volek, Vertical, $14.95. Noriko, against advice of her family and friends, marries on the condition that she and her husband will continue to live with his large and well-to-do suburban Tokyo family, including a near-centenarian
great- grandmother, an invalid grandfather, a mentally handicapped brother, and three generations of serene and oddly upbeat women. Noriko's gradual and horrified exploration of the family secrets begins as suspenseful variation on the modern gothic and ends as a chilling specimen of non-supernatural horror.

  *** Baantjer: DeKok and Murder on Blood Mountain, translated from the Dutch by H.G. Smittenaar, Speck, $24. At the request of the Belgian police, the aged inspector and his younger partner Vledder attend the Amsterdam funeral of a Dutch citizen found floating in Antwerp's Scheldt River. DeKok disrupts the burial giving chase to a man he knew to be dead, beginning a case that will take him out of Holland for the first time. This is a comfortable series and something of a throwback: brief, neatly plotted, with continuing characters who change little from book to book. Internal evidence suggests the translator has done some up-dating of the 1985 original.

  The anthology of Italian crime stories Crimini (Bitter Lemon, $14.95), edited by Giancarlo De Cataldo and translated by Andrew Brown, includes contributions from Camilleri and Lucarelli (see above), both non-series and the latter especially impressive, along with eight contemporaries. Most of the 18 stories in Paris Noir (Serpent's Tail, $14.95), edited by Maxim Jakubowski, are by British or American writers, but contributions from Marc Villard, Jean-Hughes Opel, Dominique Manotti, Dominique Sylvain, and Romain Slocombe have been translated from the French by Lulu Norman and Ros Schwartz.

  Among the reprints is one of Georges Simenon's best and most typical novels about his famous Parisian cop, first published in France in 1953 and in the U.S. in 1975: Maigret and the Man on the Boulevard (Penguin, $13), translated from the French by Eileen Ellenbogen.

  (c)2008 by Jon L. Breen

  [Back to Table of Contents]

  Novelette: CANDLES ON THE CORNER: by by Janet Dawson

  Janet Dawson's last EQMM story, “Slayer Statute,” featuring series character Jeri Howard, earned a 2004 Shamus Award nomination for best short story. She returns with another entry in the Howard series. This time out the Oakland P.I. investi-gates the hit-and-run death of a child. Ms. Dawson has penned nine Jeri Howard novels. She's a former newspaper reporter who later joined the staff of UC Berkeley.

  Twelve candles, one for each year of Emily Gebhardt's life, stood in a row on the grassy strip between sidewalk and curb. Each evening, Emily's parents lit fresh candles. The flames flickered like beacons in the darkness, burning out long before morning.

  At each end of the row were plastic vases filled with fresh flowers—roses, tulips, iris, daffodils—in Emily's favorite colors, pink and yellow. A pink umbrella, its handle lengthened by a broomstick stuck into the ground, sheltered a small easel from the spring rain. The easel held a color photograph of Emily and a newspaper clipping.

  The shrine—that's what it was, really—had been on the corner where I stood for the past month. I stepped up to the easel and examined Emily's picture. I saw wide blue eyes, a cheerful smile on a round face, and brown curls tied back with pink and yellow ribbons. Emily had been a pretty girl poised on the verge of adolescence, just twelve years old. She'd never see thirteen.

  I turned from the shrine and looked out at Grand Street. Emily's parents had spray-painted slogans on the pavement in the middle of the intersection. They'd done so without the blessing of the Alameda authorities, who'd nevertheless let the words stay there, to be gradually worn away by rain and the tires of passing vehicles. I read the messages, painted in eye-catching Day-Glo pink and yellow: “Slow Down,” “Drive 25,” “Children Crossing,” and “Emily Died Here."

  Emily's parents said most people in the neighborhood seemed protective of their makeshift memorial. But not everyone respected the shrine. Several times the Gebhardts had arrived with fresh flowers and candles to discover all the items missing. Not vandalized, just gone. Each time, they simply rebuilt the memorial to their daughter.

  I'd read the police report and talked with the investigating officer. On a Wednesday afternoon in April, Emily and two friends had just been released from the confines of the nearby middle school. They were crossing Grand Street at this corner when Emily dropped something. She went back to retrieve it.

  The witnesses all agreed on one thing—the vehicle that raced down Grand Street and smashed into Emily was going much too fast for a residential area, much faster than the twenty-five miles per hour limit posted all over Alameda. The impact tossed the girl into the air. She died a short time later.

  Now there were candles on the corner.

  The vehicle didn't stop after hitting Emily. The driver sped down Grand Street and hung a left on Otis Drive, narrowly missing other pedestrians and cars, weaving in and out of traffic as it raced past the nearby shopping center. At Park Street the vehicle ran a red light and left squealing brakes in its wake. A few moments later a vehicle traveling at a high rate of speed crossed the drawbridge at the southern end of the island that is Alameda. Once it reached Doolittle Drive, the vehicle vanished. Perhaps the driver had turned right on Island Drive, or continued south, toward Oakland International Airport, or detoured onto Hegenberger Road or 98th Avenue to cut over to the freeway.

  When it came to a description, the witnesses diverged widely, as witnesses do. People saw a flash of silver, gold, blue, green, brown, red. No one was sure whether the vehicle was big or small, a car or an SUV, what make or model. No one offered a description of the driver's gender or appearance. No one could recall license-plate numbers or letters, or whether they were California plates. No one knew where to find the vehicle or the driver who'd been at the wheel.

  Emily Gebhardt's parents grieved, full of sadness, anger, and frustration, dissatisfied with the slow progress of the police investigation. They wanted answers. They wanted someone to blame, someone to pay. So they came to me, Jeri Howard, private investigator working out of Oakland. I wasn't sure I could give the Gebhardts what they wanted. But in the face of that much raw pain, I had to try.

  I took a small digital camera from my purse and shot photo-graphs of the intersection, from different angles, then pictures of the shrine. As I lowered the camera, a woman came out the front door of the big two-story Victorian house on the corner. She stalked across the lawn toward me, a decidedly belligerent look on her face.

  "Are you one of those people who's been leaving this stuff here?” she demanded. I guessed she meant the easel, the flowers, the candles on the corner.

  "Why? Are you one of those people who's been removing this stuff?"

  She looked nonplussed. I looked her over. She was in her mid forties, blond hair coiffed in a head-hugging style, lots of makeup, and flinty hazel eyes. She rethought her opening and dredged up a smile that curved her lips only slightly. “Look, I own this house. I'm tired of those people leaving this stuff in my yard."

  I glanced at Emily's shrine. “It's here for a reason."

  "I know why it's here.” She sounded exasperated and glanced dismissively at the shrine. “But it's been a month."

  "A month is a short time when you've lost a child.” That's the loss many people never get over.

  The woman's mouth tightened. “There's such a thing as excessive grief."

  Okay, I was ready to declare her winner of the insensitivity sweepstakes. I guess she figured now that their only child's funeral was over, the Gebhardts should just get a grip and go on with their lives.

  "Did you remove the items?"

  "I just put my house on the market,” she snapped. “The real-estate agent's showing the place to prospective buyers. This stuff looks tacky and garish. Do you see my problem?"

  "You certainly have one. You didn't answer my question. Did you remove the items?"

  She glared at me. “Who are you? Why do you want to know?"

  I handed her one of my business cards. She held it gingerly between thumb and forefinger as though she was afraid she might catch something.

  "A private detective? Surely those people didn't hire you to find out who took the stuff. For God's sake, those p
eople need to get a life."

  I bit back the words that sizzled on my tongue, instead asking the question again. “Did you remove the items?"

  She backed away from me, sputtering angrily. “It's my property. You tell those people I want that stuff gone, permanently. I've complained to the police and they won't do anything. Next I'll be talking to my lawyer.” She turned and stalked back to her house, slamming the front door for good measure.

  Talk about excessive. Her reaction to the shrine was just that. Why was she so discomfited by the memorial? Who was she? I could find out easily enough from the Alameda county property-tax records. I glanced at the For Sale sign near the woman's front walk, noting the name of the real-estate agent and firm.

  "Don't pay her any mind."

  I turned and saw a man walking a dog. The man had white hair and a stiff, arthritic gait. The dog, a sturdy brindle mongrel, was white around the muzzle, as elderly as the man who held her leash. Cataracts clouded the dog's eyes, but the old man's eyes were sharp behind his glasses.

  "Who is she?” I gestured at the house on the corner.

  "Peggy Blaine,” he said. “She owns this house. I'm Fred Sutton. I live next-door, with my daughter and her family. Peggy's nice enough, most of the time. But she's got a mouth on her when she gets going."

  I hauled out another business card and introduced myself to Fred Sutton and his dog Aggie, who very much liked being scratched between her floppy ears. I told Mr. Sutton I was looking into the hit-and-run that killed Emily Gebhardt.