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ALFRED HITCHCOCK MYSTERY MAGAZINE
January-February 2007
Vol. 52, Nos. 1 and 2
Dell Magazines
New York
Cover by Michael Gibbs
CONTENTS
FICTION
EASY MONEY by Jas. R. Petrin
THE CHRISTMAS CLUB by Gilbert M. Stack
A MURDER IN MARCUS GARVEY PARK by G. Miki Hayden
MOTHER BRIMSTONE by James Lincoln Warren
SANGRIA by Gary Alexander
BLOOD MONEY by David Edgerley Gates
NO PICNIC by Mitch Alderman
NOT THE TYPE by Eve Fisher
HUMBUG by Steve Hockensmith
DAUPHIN ISLAND by L. A. Wilson
MOON CAKES by I. J. Parker
EVERYTHING IN ITS PLACE by Dennis Richard Murphy
TAKEDOWN by Richard F. McGonegal
DEPARTMENTS
GUEST EDITORIAL by Jan Burke
BOOKED & PRINTED by Robert C. Hahn
THE MYSTERIOUS CIPHER by Willie Rose
REEL CRIME by Steve Hockensmith
Click a Link for Easy Navigation
CONTENTS
GUEST EDITORIAL: THE CRIME LAB PROJECT by JAN BURKE
EASY MONEY by JAS. R. PETRIN
THE CHRISTMAS CLUB by GILBERT M. STACK
A MURDER IN MARCUS GARVEY PARK by G. MIKI HAYDEN
MOTHER BRIMSTONE by JAMES LINCOLN WARREN
BOOKED & PRINTED by ROBERT C. HAHN
SANGRIA by GARY ALEXANDER
BLOOD MONEY by DAVID EDGERLEY GATES
THE MYSTERIOUS CIPHER by Willie Rose
SOLUTION TO THE MYSTERIOUS CIPHER
NO PICNIC by MITCH ALDERMAN
REEL CRIME by STEVE HOCKENSMITH
NOT THE TYPE by EVE FISHER
HUMBUG by STEVE HOCKENSMITH
DAUPHIN ISLAND by L.A. WILSON
MOON CAKES by I. J. PARKER
EVERYTHING IN ITS PLACE by DENNIS RICHARD MURPHY
TAKEDOWN by RICHARD F. MCGONEGAL
COMING IN MARCH 2007
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GUEST EDITORIAL: THE CRIME LAB PROJECT by JAN BURKE
You see them on television every night of the week. They draw millions of loyal viewers and consistently rank at the top of the ratings charts. Forensic science dramas are hot. Students, picturing themselves leading lives filled with Hummers, high heels, and halter tops as they work in chrome-and-glass palaces festooned with high-tech equipment and futuristic holographs, are enrolling in forensic science classes by the thousands. But how do real life crime labs compare with their fictional counterparts?
For ten years, the adult son of a woman in Arizona was missing. She received a call one day—his remains had been identified. His remains were found three months after he went missing but in a neighboring county, which did not receive the missing person's information from the county in which she lived. Over nine years passed before someone found the time to review the old case, years in which she suffered unspeakable anguish.
There is a human price we pay for not funding our labs, one that can't be measured in dollars. Imagine this case multiplied by half a million. A Department of Justice study reported that U.S. crime labs faced backlogs (evidence unprocessed 30 days after being submitted to the lab) of over 500,000 cases in 2002. Most believe the number has climbed much higher in the years since that report was completed.
The vast majority of American forensic science labs and medical examiners’ offices are housed in aging and inadequate facilities. They are understaffed, under funded, using outdated equipment, and are struggling to keep up with overwhelming workloads. According to a study by the American Society of Crime Lab Directors, one out of four labs do not have the computers they need to process evidence. Many labs lack adequate storage space for evidence.
Because of staffing shortages, the Maryland State Police had not yet taken a sample of the DNA of a man convicted on a minor drug charge before he escaped from prison, even though several months had passed after he had been incarcerated. While a fugitive, he committed three murders, a rape, and four assaults before he was caught again. Had the DNA sample been taken and processed when he was first in prison, it would have shown that two years earlier, he raped and murdered two women—one 60 years old, the other 88—before being arrested on the drug charge and likely would have been held in a higher security facility.
Backlogged cases are not merely units of work. They represent victims and their families left without answers, innocent people held in custody, the guilty free to commit other crimes against new victims. They represent unknown threats to public health and safety, compromised homeland security, and more.
Aware of this gap between reality and public perception, thousands of crime fiction writers, readers, and other concerned individuals have joined the Crime Lab Project, a nonprofit organization dedicated to seeking increased support for forensic science and to raising awareness of the problems and challenges that face forensic science agencies. We work closely with highly regarded forensic science organizations to ensure that we stay abreast of important issues and support legislation that will be the most effective in solving problems.
CLP members believe forensic science is worth funding and deserves greater backing. While we recognize that forensic science is not a miraculous discipline that can solve every crime, it can—and does—work wonders in many areas of our lives. We all know that in many cases it can help prove guilt or innocence. It can bring comfort and closure to the families of victims by helping to identify the dead, whether that be a missing person's lone skeleton found in the woods or one of thousands of remains found after a mass disaster. It can tell us if someone is too drunk to be operating a vehicle. Forensic science can help us to learn what has happened at a crime scene, or tell us why a seemingly healthy person suddenly collapsed and died.
Forensic science is also a vital part of national security efforts. It plays a key role in product safety. It allows a medical examiner to alert the Center for Disease Control to outbreaks of deadly disease and previously unsuspected causes of accidental deaths. It allows us to know if someone who wants to adopt foster children or work with our children at their schools has a record as a sex offender under another name. It can tell us if someone who wants to drive a truck containing hazardous materials or who wants a job at an airport has a criminal background.
It pays to have good crime labs. When labs process evidence more efficiently, we not only save dollars in potential losses of life and property, but also by helping detectives to carry out more accurate and speedier investigations, by saving the costs of continuing to keep someone in custody and delaying trials while awaiting evidence, and in many other ways. When crime labs are underfunded and inadequately staffed, we are also more likely to see the kinds of problems that result in lab scandals and costly lawsuits over lab errors.
Crime labs throughout the country are facing these problems. The difficulties are not limited to one region or a few states. Readers of crime fiction often resist this notion because we think we know how the system works. If someone we love dies unexpectedly, a medical examiner will be on
hand to invest hours of investigation time and won't let any faint hint of wrongdoing escape his or her highly trained notice. Our police, we are sure, fingerprint everyone taken into custody and run these prints through a computer that will let us know if the suspect is wanted in Wichita for auto theft or in Brazil for terrorism. A DNA sample taken from a bullet found at a crime scene will produce a holographic image of the suspect within about ten minutes.
Sadly, reality is a far cry from this. A few more examples from recent news stories:
The fingerprint systems of the FBI, the State Department, and Homeland Security are not currently interoperable. Many jurisdictions are not using automated fingerprinting systems at all and do not have the resources to be able to enter the fingerprints they take from suspects into the FBI's national database. In Kentucky, an audit showed that more than half of the 300,000 people arrested in the state in 2005 never had their fingerprints entered into state and national databases. In Iowa, a similar audit showed that 40 percent of the more than 4,000 people jailed in Des Moines were never fingerprinted. Recent stories of fingerprint backlogs have been reported in Florida, Massachusetts, and Missouri, and other states.
Although higher funding has been allocated to DNA in recent years—and it is sometimes funded as if it is the only form of evidence—DNA work is only about five percent of what labs do, according to the American Society of Crime Lab Directors. Still, no one doubts its value. Because DNA evidence is being gathered at far greater levels than before and states are expanding mandates for their databases, testing is increasingly backlogged. Many prosecutors feel lucky if DNA evidence is ready by the time their case comes to trial. This means that in many jurisdictions, DNA is not being used to solve crimes.
A severe shortage of firearms evidence examiners has contributed to under utilization of a new national database system and slows processing of evidence in many murder cases. FBI statistics show that firearms were used in 66 percent of murder cases in 2004. In one Texas lab, a single firearms examiner was responsible for processing evidence from 45 other counties.
In many jurisdictions the coroner needs no legal or medical background and may need only be 18 years of age and a resident of a county for a year. He or she may have less than 40 hours of training and be in the position of deciding whether an autopsy should be performed. Many are without computers of any kind for record-keeping. Forensic pathologists are in short supply and often overworked. Bodies may need to be shipped hundreds of miles away for autopsies, a process which may compromise evidence.
The CLP will be holding seminars and workshops throughout the country, and we hope you will attend one if we are in your area. Our Web site will give you information about our activities, as well as forensic science legislation, news, and needs. Sign up for our mailing list to receive information and updates. You'll find many of your favorite writers on our list of supporters.
Although we appreciate donations to the CLP and the CLP Foundation, membership in the Crime Lab Project is absolutely free, as is our mailing list and news list—all we ask is that our members take action, such as putting a link on a Web site or blog, e-mailing or calling congressional representatives to ask for support for key legis
www.crimelabproject.com
[Back to Table of Contents]
EASY MONEY by JAS. R. PETRIN
"Got to be easy money being a shy,” Moody said. “Loan it out, rake it in, get rich fast. Know what I'm sayin'?"
"Nobody wants to borrow from a shy,” Blue said.
"People do, though, all the time."
"I don't."
"Sure, but that's you. If you had to borrow money, if you had no choice, and if you had to get it on the street, the question I'm asking is, who would you go to in this town?"
Blue thought a minute. He took a swallow of beer, leaned back from the bar, and folded his arms across his hollow chest. Above his head, on the TV, the Yankees’ Derek Jeter caromed one off the Green Monster at Fenway Park. Below the TV, a timid soul poked his head in the street door for a look, thought better of it, and backed out again.
"In that case,” Blue said grudgingly, “I'd go to Skig—Leo Skorzeny."
"Leo Skorzeny?"
"That's the guy."
Moody shifted on his tall stool, and it wobbled, the legs not quite even. The bar was the Rob Roy on Agricola Street. Moody had discovered the Rob Roy on the previous night, just a short walk from the station after arriving in Halifax on the train. He liked it immediately. The seedy look of the place, the hard-edged clientele, the way you could sit and let things drift or get into a conversation with someone you barely knew, like he was doing now. A place you could learn something.
But it was tough learning anything from Blue. Probably easier to pull teeth.
"So this Skorzeny, what kind of a guy is he?"
"What do you mean?” Blue eyed him guardedly.
"What kind of guy is he to do business with?"
Blue rolled that around a minute. “At one time, he could be rough."
"How rough?"
"I heard,” Blue said, “somebody told me this, Leo Skorzeny broke Jack Willimet's arms one time. This was because Jack got stuck after his wife dumped him—she was the money in that relationship, and when she took off, Jack didn't have squat. He missed some payments. Leo went around to his apartment and broke both of his arms."
"Interesting,” Moody said. “A guy here in the bar last night mentioned something similar to that.” He picked his beer glass up off the bar and squinted at it as if to make sure there was nothing questionable in it. “Some guy did business with a shy had a name like that, got in pretty deep, and got his legs broke."
"Couldn't've been Willimet,” Blue said, “it was definitely his arms. I got it from Rico, runs the Tall Ship over there on Argyle Street, and he got it from a customer.” He raised his hands to deflect a potential argument. “Could've been Skorzeny, though. Anyways, it wouldn't've happened if he'd paid back the money. If he'd done that, then he would've been fine."
"So you'd still go to this guy Skorzeny?"
"Leo? Sure. I probably would."
"Why?"
Blue raised his glass, swished the contents around, set it down again, hunched his shoulders.
"First of all, Leo's been around a while. He's a pretty old guy now. I don't know if he could break your arms if he wanted to. And because—the point I'm basically trying to get at here, if you wouldn't keep interrupting—they tell me he's sick. Guys on the street are saying he might not last long."
Moody lifted his face, sharply interested.
"Oh yeah?"
"Yeah. That's the word. That he could kick off any time. Drop dead in his tracks. Some serious health problem he's got."
Moody said, “So your point would be...” He pushed his glass away, raised his eyebrows at Blue, teetered on the stool deliberately and expectantly a few times.
"My point is,” Blue went on, “if you went to Skig for a loan, and he packed it in, then you might be able to walk away from it. It might be that easy."
"Nothing's that easy."
"No?"
"Come on. Even if the guy kicked off, you'd have to deal with somebody else. Somebody who took over the business. That's how these things work."
"If you say so."
Blue seemed to pull back into himself, his chain of logic derailed and questioned. Across the room, someone shouted at the barman that if he didn't get quarters for the pool table, get them now, he was going to bust something up.
"Look,” Moody said, more conciliatory this time, “I hear what you're telling me. But how do you figure it? How could you walk away?"
Blue took a sip of scotch. Cleared his throat in a superior way.
"I don't say you could, necessarily. I just say it might be possible. You got to know Leo. He's, well, kinda unique. He don't operate like most of them. He's got no partners, no organization. And since his wife died, no family either. There's nobody, far as I can see, to pick up the business if somet
hing was to happen to him. And if he's dying ... well, you figure it out."
"So, he's always been like this? A loner?"
"He had a guy once, did the heavy lifting. The guy died. Cops were all over Leo, they didn't like the look of it, but they couldn't prove nothing, and that was the end of it."
Moody ordered another Sleeman. When the beer came, he drank a good long slug of it, set the glass down, and did some thinking. Finally he smiled. He seemed to have learned something useful, after all. He said, “So how long has this guy Leo got, do you think?"
* * * *
Leo studied his businesslike visitor dispassionately, as if from a great height, his eyes half closed. The two of them were sitting at Leo's chipped and faded Formica-topped kitchen table. He knew why the guy was here. He worked for the Tuitte brothers. The brothers were out of Bar Harbor, two men Leo knew well, and he thought they were idiots. While the Bar Harbor guy talked—his name was Jakes, or something?—Leo poured himself another rye. The pain was bad again, down low in his gut. The pills helped a little, but the rye tasted better.
Mr. Bar Harbor, ignoring his own drink, finally got down to it: a proposition.
The Tuittes had learned, he said—he didn't say where—that Leo's health wasn't all that good. They wanted Leo to know they sympathized. They also wanted him to know they were pushing up the coast from Maine, buying out guys like him, and paying top dollar. They wanted to come to an arrangement. A cash deal for a flat-out takeover. As an incentive, Leo, if he thought he could manage it, could stay on as a consultant for fifteen percent net over a nonrenewable three-year term.
Three years, Leo thought. He should be so lucky. But let the guy talk. He had learned it was better to do that when a guy had been storing up things to tell you. Let him run with it, get it out of his system, and he might say more than he meant to.
Leo had no intention of selling his business.
"You want to talk numbers?” Mr. Bar Harbor said.
"Sure,” Leo replied. He shifted in his chair and winced, a pain with a fiery edge to it scissoring through his abdomen. His voice, which always had been rough, was huskier than usual to his own ears, and he cleared it with a kek-kek sound.
AHMM, January-February 2007 Page 1