AHMM, October 2006

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AHMM, October 2006 Page 8

by Dell Magazine Authors


  Eisenmenger asked gently, “You got the potassium from a school, I take it."

  She nodded. There was a long pause before she found her voice. “I saw the potassium shortly after I'd realized who he was. It took a long time to cut up the potassium and put it in the capsules. A lot of after-hours work in the fume cupboard, but it was worth it."

  Eisenmenger's attitude was clinical, as clinical as hers, as he suggested, “You chose the painkillers because he took them intermittently. It might be days, weeks, before he took one again. It was just bad luck that you happened to be the last carer to see him alive; it was more likely that you wouldn't be."

  Helena asked, “Why did you go on caring for him?"

  She frowned, as if she herself didn't know. “I suppose because I wanted to be somewhere near when it happened, to be a little more involved ... I don't really know."

  "He recognized you, didn't he? Why didn't he say something?"

  "He knew that he knew me, but he didn't know from where. I said that I'd used to work in an office near his, when he'd had the Internet company. I could see that he didn't quite believe me, but he could never place me. We only use our first names to the clients, you see."

  "It was a horrible way to kill someone."

  She became angry, and Helena found the combination of this and the tears to be almost frightening.

  The anger of the wronged.

  "My daughter lived for five days with seventy percent burns over her face and upper body. My granddaughter's head was crushed. My unborn grandson—the pathology report kindly sexed the fetus—never even had a life. Those are horrible things to do to anyone."

  "An eye for an eye?"

  "Hunt's selfishness ended the lives of three people—four, if you count my husband. He was never the same again, never really learned to cope. I have nothing left. What I did to him doesn't even begin to make up for what he did to me."

  "He'd only had just a little over the limit."

  Her scorn was majestic. “And that makes it all right, does it? Just a little over the limit? Only just broke the law? Only just failed to miss the car, and only just killed three people?"

  "He went to prison..."

  She was becoming angry, her voice rising. “For three years!"

  "Yes, I know..."

  She had had enough of Helena's liberal views, found the taste one of spittle. She shut her up with a brief, “I only wish now that I'd had the courage to watch while it happened."

  They were cowed by her certainty.

  She stood up and then she sighed. The anger was gone and there remained only contentment.

  "Let's go and tell the police what I've done."

  Copyright © 2006 Keith McCarthy

  [Back to Table of Contents]

  BOOKED & PRINTED by Robert C. Hahn

  This month, three gifted writers continue to stretch their characters and their talents in ways that entertain and impress.

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  Laurie R. King has been insistent that her historical mystery series of books featuring Mary Russell and Sherlock Holmes are Mary Russell novels, not Sherlock Holmes novels. And her contemporary series featuring Kate Martinelli is a separate creation altogether. What then do you make of THE ART OF DETECTION (Bantam, $24), which ingeniously folds what can only be described as a Sherlock Holmes short story into a Kate Martinelli mystery?

  Like the best of King's work, The Art of Detection is richly textured with layers that include fascinating historical details about the San Francisco Bay area as well as amusingly barbed portraits of a group of modern Sherlockian enthusiasts.

  One of the world's foremost Sherlockians, Victim Philip Gilbert is found dead in one of the inactive battery sites ringing San Francisco Bay, in an emplacement called Battery DuMaurier. Gilbert's prize possession was a manuscript that might be either a clever pastiche or an incredibly valuable unknown Doyle manuscript featuring a Sherlock Holmes American adventure.

  Followers of King's Mary Russell series will know that Russell and Holmes visited San Francisco (Locked Rooms, 2005), and thus the discovery of a manuscript of a Holmes's story that takes place during his sojourn there is entirely credible. For fans of King's Martinelli series, however, there is the realization that “Sherlock Holmes is a fictional character,” thus the frisson of the story within the story as King unveils both Martinelli's murder investigation and the Holmes's manuscript that Gilbert possessed.

  So King's novel is a murder investigation by Holmes within a murder investigation by Martinelli, or else it is an examination of a possibly real, possibly spurious Doyle manuscript and the small but intriguing group of Sherlockians that may include the murderer Martinelli is seeking. Whichever way the reader chooses to take it is fine entertainment that demonstrates King's consummate ability to continue to stretch the boundaries of genre fiction in new directions.

  Linda Barnes has taken her Boston P.I. Carlotta Carlyle into some tight places before, but what is Carlotta doing in Colombia in HEART OF THE WORLD (St. Martin's Minotaur, $24.95)?

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  One of the most appealing aspects of Barnes's Carlotta Carlyle series of novels has been Carlotta's difficult relationship with her “little sister” Paolina. Paolina, a troubled Colombian child has appeared in most of the eleven books in the series, and she and Carlotta have both grown during the relationship. Now Paolina has reached her teen years, and neither her troubled mother, Marta, nor anyone else is as close to her as they should be. So when Paolina goes missing, Marta assumes she's run off to Carlotta, and Carlotta assumes she's run off with her current boyfriend. The truth is much worse. Paolina has been enticed or kidnapped and is being transported to Colombia. Finding her will test all of Carlotta's skills, all the favors she can call in. And that still might not be enough when Carlotta discovers that Paolina's father, a Colombian rebel and drug lord, may be involved, even though he was presumed to be dead.

  Barnes is too savvy to resort to facile clichés as she explores aspects of the U.S. involvement in the drug trade and drug wars in Central America or the complex internal struggles that have riven Colombia. The result is an absorbing adventure, more thriller than mystery that explores pre-Columbian religion and artifacts, American complicity in the troubles besetting Colombia and Carlotta's complex relationships with those closest to her.

  This is one of the best in a series where neither hero nor author is afraid to tackle issues or bad guys, and the real winner, every time out, is the reader.

  James Sallis is a versatile and prolific author of novels, essays, criticism, and poetry. Even within the genre of crime fiction he shows remarkable range as his two latest offerings attest.

  Best known to mystery fans for his Lew Griffin novels, which are set in New Orleans, last year he delivered Drive (Poisoned Pen), a small gem of noir fiction set mostly in California and Arizona that packed considerable punch into its emotionally charged 150 pages.

  CRIPPLE CREEK (Walker, $23) is Sallis's second mystery featuring reluctant Deputy Sheriff Turner, following Cypress Grove in 2004. Set in rural Tennessee, Turner is a former cop, ex-con, ex-social worker whose “temporary” job as a deputy sheriff assisting the new “acting” Sheriff Don Lee has turned into a semipermanent arrangement that seems to suit everyone.—until the sheriff arrests a speeder passing through town. The stranger has a surprise in his trunk—a bag with just over $200,000 in it. Subsequently, the stranger is busted out of jail, and Don Lee and another citizen are busted up. Turner is not about to let that assault go unanswered, and he persues the escapee to Memphis, where he discovers a connection to organized crime. Inevitably, Turner's retaliation leads to an escalation of the violence.

  Turner's found a haven in Tennessee with a solitude sometimes shared with a girlfriend and sometimes with a family of possums as well. In Cripple Creek he learns more about his estranged family, more about his fellow townspeople and most importantly, more about himself.

  In lean, sp
are prose Sallis sketches his hero and the small town whose inhabitants have their idiosyncrasies but are so comfortable in their skins that you feel you would recognize them on sight. The Memphis-area bad guys are not taking on hick lawmen but savvy, if reluctant, warriors. Sallis is one of the most gifted stylists on the mystery scene, and his best novels have an organic wholeness that makes them seem perfect from start to finish. Cripple Creek is one of his best.

  Copyright © 2006 Robert C. Hahn

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  ALL POINTS BULLETIN: From Harcourt this July, Ed McBain's LEARNING TO KILL ($25) serves up twenty-five short stories written between 1952 and 1957, containing themes and techniques that McBain would later develop into the 87th Precinct titles. Susan Oleksiw's newest novel, A MURDEROUS INNOCENCE ($25.95), featuring Chief of Police Joe Silva, debuted in hardcover by Five Star this April. Julia Spencer-Fleming has had a prolific year, with two new titles out this summer from St. Martin's Minotaur: IN THE BLEAK MIDWINTER ($6.99, May); and TO DARKNESS AND TO DEATH ($6.99, June) JoAnna Carl's latest chocolate-covered cozy, the chocolate bridal bash ($6.99), was released by Signet Mystery this August. Also published by Five Star, FREEZE ME TENDER ($25.95), a Las Vegas caper from Michael A. Black, was out in March.

  [Back to Table of Contents]

  BOXES OF HELL by Elaine Menge

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  Drew Morrison

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  Getting into the inside corners wasn't easy. Audrey dropped the crayon on her dining table and held the box up to assess her progress. It was ten inches square, pearly white except for the inside walls and bottom on which she'd been scribbling for the past half hour with all the shades of red and orange in her 64 Crayola Crayons carton.

  She pulled the lid toward her, inside face up, and ran her forefinger across the rows of crayons. What would the ceiling of hell look like? She wanted the exact color of fire but settled on an ordinary red crayon.

  As she worked, a shank of hair dropped across her eyes. Her hair was an unusual grayish brown that lent her an air of maturity beyond her years. She'd found that a valuable quality to project when, in her late twenties, she became head reference librarian at the local college. Despite her youth, people trusted her ability to track down the information they were after, no matter how obscure. Now in her mid thirties, Audrey cherished a secret power in her work. She liked knowing where to find any little fact that could be found, data largely inaccessible to the rest of humanity. She knew exactly what she was doing.

  She opened a watercolor tin, dipped a brush into a glass of water, and swished its bristles on the orange rectangle, then tried a spot in one of the hard to reach inner corners. The color took. She began shoving the cheap brush into the corners as if stabbing the enemy.

  When the corners were finished, she fitted the lid onto the box. How would he open it for the first time? Would he put the thing on a table, sit down? Or might he stand over it? She smiled and pretended to be Kirk. He's just torn off the paper. Shakes the box—so light, so obviously empty.

  Audrey pushed the lid up with her thumbs. The reds and oranges blazed in her face, battling tongues of fire. She could feel the heat.

  "Perfect,” she said. She'd wanted to create a certain environment. Hell, to be exact—the place where Kirk belonged. Of course, being such a clod, he might toss out this little gem like any piece of junk mail. Pretty fancy junk mail though. He'd have to wonder.

  One might not have much effect. But a series?

  A loud thump sounded outside, another car door slamming, another rude, gurgling muffler cranked up. She went to the living room windows and opened the miniblinds. As always, two dilapidated vans squatted in front of her house, blocking her view of the street, her neighborhood—one faded blue, the other dirt white, parked dangling tailpipe to dangling tailpipe. To her left, in front of Kirk's house, hunkered a worn Oldsmobile and a wrecked Cadillac, both sporting cracked windshields. The brake light frames on the Caddy were sprung out. Every time someone drove away in that bomb, pieces fell off. Audrey boasted to her coworkers that she could start a spare parts business in her gutter.

  On the other side of the vans, the Olds, and Caddy, a rusty gray truck burped and shuddered in the middle of the street. Its driver, the loud door slammer, fool enough to think his geriatric wheels might keep pace with his anger, abruptly hit the gas and shrieked off. Halfway down the block, the engine crapped out.

  Audrey would laugh if she didn't feel so trapped. A year ago, she'd taken a big step and bought a house in this modest neighborhood on Jewels Avenue, but hadn't enjoyed it one month before Kirk moved into the rental property next door. Her beef wasn't just the vans, bombed-out cars and boats, or the constant stream of well-heeled and not-so-well-heeled customers coming to pick up recreational drugs. Living next to Kirk was like battling a case of chronic acne. Once one problem area slacked off, a new zit popped up. For days it would be quiet, then for months she'd be awakened by shouting in Kirk's back yard—Kirk himself, usually—yelling at Brown Dog. If his chocolate Lab were yellow, she guessed he'd call him Yellow Dog. At least Kirk knew his colors.

  Brown Dog was barking now. Audrey went into her bedroom and raised a slat at the window, stood on tiptoe. Abandoned among the weeds were two pirogues, scores of white plastic buckets, stacks of lumber, metal scaffolding. A pen occupied the middle of the yard, and Brown Dog stood at its near end on his hind legs. His front paws beat the fencing as he barked at a squirrel coolly perched on Audrey's pecan tree.

  Brown Dog wasn't too bad when he stayed in his pen at night, but lately—and this was the newest problem—Kirk and his girlfriend left the house around midnight, and when they did, Kirk let Brown Dog loose on the front porch. From the minute Kirk left until the time he returned from his late shift as bartender at a local dive, around four A.M., Brown Dog barked at anything that moved. Audrey hadn't enjoyed a full night's sleep in weeks.

  Doris, the older lady who lived on the other side of Kirk, also complained. Kirk explained to her that he needed to leave Brown Dog out front to guard his house. Protect his stash is more like it, Audrey responded to that bit of news. Kirk didn't realize what a wasted effort it was either. Any moron could bribe that animal with a bologna sandwich, and Brown Dog would give him the keys to the front door.

  Kirk's voice boomed. Audrey sneered behind the blinds. There he was, swaggering into the yard. To hear his voice you'd think him the usual sloppy Louisiana redneck with a pot belly and torn undershirt, but Kirk was always nicely turned out in pressed Western-style shirts, tight slacks, and polished cowboy boots. To look at him, you wouldn't think this person kept three air conditioner units on his front porch or that he'd once nailed a live speckled trout to his door.

  A friend of Audrey's, upon seeing Kirk once, proclaimed him cute. Audrey said she'd be happy to fix the two of them up, except that closing-in-on-forty Kirk liked his girls extra petite and just the legal side of underage. His current romance, Star, was twenty and looked sixteen. At least that's what the lady next door said.

  Star. What a name, Audrey thought, almost feeling sorry for the slight, pretty girl when she happened to catch a glimpse of her going up Kirk's front walkway. She had such an avid, yet uncertain expression in her eyes, was so obviously infatuated with Kirk, and too young to know better.

  Audrey hadn't been much older than Star when she met Bret in graduate school and fell in toxic love. Of course Bret, a comparative lit major, was nothing like Kirk. They met at a philological club meeting, the speaker's topic, Sophocles’ Antigone. They dated. She liked him well enough, but if he never called again, she wouldn't miss a beat. Then, one day as she walked across campus on the way to class, she happened to catch sight of Bret about twenty yards ahead. He emerged from Greenlaw Hall into the sunlight and paused on the elevated steps. She was ready to call out a hello but instead simply watched him as he adjusted a book under his arm and calmly surveyed the landscape. His eyes didn't appear concerned to see anything or anyone in particular. He was magnifice
ntly aloof, utterly inaccessible. His dusty blond hair reflected the sun's fresh morning rays. Audrey became acutely aware of being a mere observer. It was as if, suddenly, she didn't exist.

  From that moment, she was hopelessly smitten.

  In time, her face betrayed her, just as Star's was doing now. That avid, uncertain, hanging-onto-every-word face. It took awhile, but once Audrey's unconditional devotion became obvious, detached Bret ran for the hills.

  So Audrey felt a connection to Star, as she did for her own younger self who'd suffered so much after the break-up with Bret. But just as often, Audrey detested the girl—the little fool—who more than once happened to be the one to pick up the phone when Audrey called to complain about the noise, the dog, the vans. With a world-weary tone nearly as vacant as Kirk's, Star answered, “You'll have to talk to Kirk. That's his business. I don't know anything about it. I'm just visiting."

  Now, with pinpoint beams of focused hatred, Audrey spied Kirk through the blinds as he slapped heavy-handed pats onto Brown Dog's happily panting, empty head. She, too, had once thought Kirk good looking—until the first beer can landed on her lawn.

  And then there was the issue of Kirk's minions. A whole troop of people slaved for him. They mowed his lawn, did odd jobs. Once a month, three young women in tie-dyed tops and short, severely distressed denim skirts drove up in a gray bomb and cleaned his house. He paid them well, she'd heard, no doubt with his cocaine earnings. (Probably handed out baggies of the stuff for bonuses.) The most annoying thing about these women was that they obviously weren't doing the job just for cash. They exuded an attitude, almost joyous of helping Kirk. From the moment they arrived and marched up the front walkway, their faces seemed imbued with a sickening dedication.

  A loud cranking rumble sounded. Audrey made her way back to the living room window. The blue van was gone, leaving an empty slot. One of Kirk's minions must be off to greater things. The minions, who parked their vans and used the front of her house as a staging area for sundry handyman jobs, did change faces over time. As each got jailed for one felony or another, a new crop of minions came in.

 

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