“Lie down on the floor,” Wilson told me. “Face down.”
“There’s no reason to kill me.”
He frowned; it was the first time I had spoken. “What?”
“There’s no reason to kill me,” I repeated. “Just tie me up and get out of here. I’ll say I never found you.”
“Shut up.” He was fumbling in a drawer with the hand that didn’t hold the gun. After a moment, he pulled out a large carving knife. Suddenly I felt a bit like a corned beef myself. “Lie face down, I said.”
I did so, slowly and reluctantly. “On the other hand, three people know where I was going today. If I disappear, they’ll start looking. You’ll have no head start at all.”
“I said shut up.” I heard him open the back door, but from my face-down position on the cold linoleum I couldn’t see what he was doing in the doorway. Something vigorous and noisy with the carving knife.
He stepped back in and I saw clothesline dragging at his feet. Well, that wasn’t so bad. You don’t rope a dead man.
He tied me up, or rather down, as if he’d done it before. My hands were behind my back. The rope around my legs turned through the central post of the kitchen table, so even if I stood up I would have had to take the table with me to go anywhere.
Wilson put a kitchen chair down in front of me and sat, gun pointed casually at the wall. “How did you find me?”
This was the tricky part. If I told him the truth—about Dr. Daylee’s quest for border-crossers—he would never believe it. Could you blame him? I didn’t want to think about what he would do to force the “truth” out of me.
I wish the cops had given me back the letter from Dr. Daylee.
So, it had to be a lie. The problem was, I didn’t know enough about him to offer a convincing lie. I didn’t know why he was on the run, or from where, or even what his name was.
“Come on,” he said impatiently. “How did you find me?”
Pleading ignorance was the only possibility. God knows, I ought to be able to make that convincing.
“My boss gave me a list of addresses to check. That’s all. How he found out about you, I have no idea.”
“Who’s your boss?”
Wilson had already pulled my wallet and seen my business cards: Marty Crow of Crow Investigations. “He’s my big brother. James Crow.”
“Who hired you?” It was hard to read his face, lying prone. I tried to roll over and he stopped me with a foot on my back. “Lie still. Was it my wife who hired you?”
“Daddy?” The little girl was in the doorway.
Wilson stood up and stepped in front of me, as if that could block the girl’s view of a man lying on the floor. “Finish packing, honey.”
“Can I take my bicycle?”
“We can’t fit it in the car, May. I’ll buy you one when we get to our new town.”
“Where will that be?”
“It’s a surprise. Go pack your clothes.”
He turned back to me. “I have to pack, too. I’m going to have to gag you.”
“Double-detached deviated septum.”
He frowned. “What?”
“I have a double-detached deviated septum,” I lied. “Can’t breathe through my nose. You cover my mouth up, and the next time your daughter comes down, she’ll see a bright blue corpse with his eyes bulging out.”
Wilson thought it over. “This is a dead end street. You yell and no one will hear you.”
“I won’t yell.”
“But I’ll hear you. Then I’ll have to take a chance on gagging you.”
“I’ll be quiet.”
He nodded and headed for the stairs.
I spoke fast. “My brother knows where I am. If I don’t come back, he’ll come looking this evening. You’ll have no lead time at all. But if you tie me up, I promise I won’t tell anyone I found you.”
He looked down at me, not buying it. “And pass up the reward?”
“I wouldn’t get the reward anyway. My stinking brother would. The guy who sent me out here with no gun.” I was getting quite angry at Brother Jim Crow, which was a good trick since he didn’t exist.
“Okay,” said Wilson. He was facing the hallway again. “You behave yourself, and I’ll leave you tied up in the cellar. Take you a couple of hours to untie yourself. That seem fair?”
“Sure.” I wished he would look me in the eye when he said that. “How long have you been running?”
“Man,” he said. “Didn’t they tell you anything?”
“They never do,” I said, bitterly.
“It’ll be two years in June. That was when my ex-wife’s new husband got a job offer five states away. They wanted to take my daughter. Said she could fly out once a year to see me, for God’s sake.”
“So you took off.”
“Not at first. I told them I was going to a judge to keep them from taking May away. The next thing I know I was arrested for sexually assaulting my daughter. Pure lies. When I made bail, I grabbed May and ran.”
I didn’t know how much of that to believe, but I was in no position to argue. “That’s a tough break.”
“Damned right. Now, I have to go pack.”
After he walked out, I turned over on my back, which twisted my legs into a knot. I stared at the cracked white ceiling and wondered where the door to the cellar was. I hadn’t seen one outside and I hadn’t spotted one in the hallway.
“Why are you making faces like that?”
I looked at the doorway. It was Mabel, alias May. “I was just wondering if this house has a cellar.”
“Nope. Our last house did. That was in Huntingdon, Pennsylvania. But this one doesn’t.”
“How many houses have you lived in with your dad, May?”
She sat down in a kitchen chair, swinging her legs and watching me. “Daddy says not to talk about where we lived before, or the spies will find us. Are you a spy?”
“Spy?”
“They come from the bad countries. Mama’s new husband works for them. He sent spies after us. That’s why I can’t tell anyone who I really am. Are you a spy?”
“Me? No.” I shifted around, trying to take the weight off my roped hands. “I’m just a poor guy stuck in the wrong place.”
This little girl was my ticket out. She had to be. I figured I had only one chance with her. If I picked the wrong approach, she would run off and tell her daddy and that would be the end of that.
And the end of me.
So what to do? Tell her to run to a neighbor’s house and call the cops? Why would she?
I could tell her I had come to rescue her and take her back to her mom. But for all I knew, her father treated her like a saint and her mother used to beat her black and blue.
I had a glimmer of an idea. Whether she loved him or feared him, maybe she could plead my case; convince dear old Dad to let me live. If I could scare her with the idea that her father was going to kill me, she might beg him not to.
“I hope you like your new home,” I told her.
She shook her blonde curls. “I’m tired of moving. I hate going to new schools all the time.”
“Would you rather live with your mother?”
“My mother is a drunken tramp.” There was no emotion in her voice. This was just a phrase she had heard often. What does your father do? He’s a salesman. What does your mother do? She’s a drunken tramp.
“Do you know what’s going to happen to me?” I asked May.
She stopped swinging her legs. “No. What?”
“Your father says he’s going to leave me in the cellar.”
She frowned. “I told you, we don’t have a cellar.”
“I know. What’s really going to happen is, your father is going to murder me.”
Her eyes went wide. “Really?”
“He’ll probably shoot me. Once everything’s packed up, he’ll send you out to the car. You’ll hear a noise like a big balloon popping. That’ll mean he just shot me in the head.”
She made a f
ace. “That’s yucky.”
“It sure is. I hope you don’t have to see it. Of course, maybe if you tell your dad you don’t want him to kill me—”
“May, what are you doing down here?” Wilson was standing in the doorway.
She spun around, startled. “I finished packing, Daddy.”
“Good. Take your things out to the car.”
She hurried out, and for the first time, I thought that maybe she was scared of him. God knows I was.
“What were you saying to my daughter?” He was standing directly over me, his hard-toed workboots inches from my head.
How to keep him calm? “Just asked her how she’s doing.”
“Oh.” Wilson’s shoulders seemed to relax a bit. “She’s fine.”
“Yes, indeed.” Anything to please. “She seems pretty well-adjusted for a kidnap victim.”
“Kidnapping?”
Uh oh. Mistake. He was white with rage. “Kidnapping? I didn’t kidnap her. I’m her father, for Pete’s sake. May is a victim of her mother, and that slut’s new husband, and their sleazy lawyer. That’s why we had to run.”
“Sorry. I was using the term loosely. I can see that you wouldn’t hurt anyone.”
“Mmm. Yeah.” He was looking away, toward the hallway where May had disappeared. “Don’t talk to her anymore. You got that?”
“Yes, sir.”
For the next hour, I had no one chance to talk to anyone. I just lay there, with my face toward the door, trying to maintain some feeling in my legs, and struggling to free my hands. No luck.
In the hall, I could hear father and daughter carrying down suitcases and other heavy objects and marching out to their truck. From the speed of it all, I suspected they had been living half-packed, always ready to be gone in a few minutes. A hell of a way to live, I thought.
Of course, any way of living was preferable to a bullet in the head, so who was I to criticize?
Wilson was back. He stepped over me silently, like I was a bump in the floor, and turned off the corned beef on the stove. Next he opened the refrigerator. I watched his back as he loaded food into a canvas grocery sack. A recycler, how nice. If you’re going to be murdered, you want it to be by someone who is ecologically aware. I could see the pistol wedged in his waistband, under the sweater.
“All set to go?” I asked.
“What?” He seemed startled to hear me speak, as if he’d forgotten I was still alive.
“Your daughter knows you’re going to kill me.”
He straightened up and spun around to look at me. “What? What are you talking about?”
“I told her you were going to murder me as soon she was out of the house. If you won’t let her come back in, she’ll know you killed me.”
Wilson put down the bag. He was red in the face and his arms were trembling. “You bastard! You had no right to do that!”
The ropes were cutting into my wrists. “I’m not sure etiquette is relevant,” I said. “I’m fighting for my life here.”
“You have no right to come between a man and his daughter like that!” He kicked me in the ribs, hard enough to take my breath. “You have no right to say her father is a murderer!”
“Even if it’s true?” I gasped. “I know there’s no cellar, so what else can I think?”
Wilson stood, staring down at me, thinking through his options. He pulled the gun out of his waistband, clicked off the safety.
Hell.
“She’ll know. Even if you muffle the sound, May will know you killed me. If you won’t let her back into the kitchen, she’ll know you scattered my brains on the walls in here.”
Wilson put the gun down on the counter. He walked back to the table and sat down hard, like his legs wouldn’t hold him. Two years of running had just about emptied his tank. “Tell me again,” he said.
“What?”
“Tell me what you’ll do if I don’t … don’t.…” He couldn’t say it out loud, couldn’t admit that he had been prepared to kill me. I felt a surge of optimism.
“Untie my legs,” I told him. “Lock me in a closet. You can let May see that I’m still alive. It’ll take me a few hours to break out of the closet, so you’re guaranteed that much time. But I promise you, I won’t tell anyone I saw you at all. Why should I? You’re doing me a favor, which is more than my lousy brother ever did for me.”
Wilson was nodding, half-convinced. “There’s a closet upstairs I can lock you in. You can kick your way out if I tie your legs up loose.”
“Sounds perfect.”
He bent under the table and started to untie my legs. I took a deep breath for what seemed like the first time in hours.
“Daddy, no!”
Neither of us had heard her come in. Little blonde May, standing next to the counter with the big black gun in her hand.
Wilson tsk-tsked as if she had spilled her milk. “May, put that down.”
“You can’t let him go, Daddy.” She was going to shoot—couldn’t he see it in her eyes? “He’ll tell on us!”
She raised the heavy pistol with both hands, aiming at my head with unblinking eyes.
I stared back, and raised my head and shoulders as far from the floor as I could.
“May, honey—”
I dropped my head. She fired.
I swear I saw the bullet leaving the barrel. It burned past me and tore into the sink cabinet behind my head.
May screamed as the recoil nearly broke her wrists. Wilson ran forward and pulled the gun away. Then he knelt down and hugged her. There were tears in his eyes. “Oh baby, it’s never right to kill anybody. Not anybody.”
* * *
Dr. Daylee smiled as he closed my report. “Very satisfactory. Do you think this man—James Hecker?—was guilty of assaulting his daughter?”
“Let a jury figure that one out,” I told him. “But I do know he left a few details out in what he told me.”
“Such as?”
“Such as breaking his wife’s jaw while they were still married. Such as threatening the life of her new husband.”
“Oh.” The school superintendent seemed disappointed that all the loose ends wouldn’t be neatly tied up. “Well, you did an excellent job, Mr. Crow. I’ll send you another list of students next week and you—what’s this?”
I had handed him a fat envelope. “My final exam. I summarize all the work I’ve done for you, and conclude, based on the sample, that there’s no need to continue.”
Daylee scowled. “That’s not for you to say. Besides, it isn’t true. We found this man Hecker.”
“But he was living within the school district,” I pointed out. “His daughter had every right to go to that school. I’ve mailed copies of the report to your school board. I don’t think they’ll want to spend more money on private eyes once they read it.”
He glared at me, looking like he wished corporal punishment was legal. “You had no right to do that.”
“Funny, Hecker said that too.” I stood up. “Goodbye, Dr. Daylee. I’ve learned my lesson.”
He was still scowling. “What lesson is that?”
I admit I had my speech prepared. “That everybody thinks they’re the star of the movie, but they disagree as to what kind of movie they’re in.”
“What the devil are you talking about?”
“Take Hecker. He thought he was the hero in some Hitchcock film about a man running from the cops. His daughter thought she was the disguised princess in some fairy tale. And you—”
“Me?”
“I thought you saw yourself as the client in a private eye flick, but that’s not it, is it? This is supposed to be a western and I’m the gunfighter you hired to clean up the town.”
Daylee looked half-amused. “Assuming there’s any validity to your theory, cleaning up a town is not such a bad ambition.”
“Maybe not. But it isn’t for me. You see, all the time I was watching the kids, I felt like the truant officer in some Little Rascals movie. And I don’t like being th
e bad guy.”
I headed for the door.
“Mr. Crow?” Daylee was leafing through my report. “Where will you be if I have any questions?”
I grinned. “Playin’ hookey.”
ROBERT LOPRESTI is a New Jersey native who has lived in Washington state for a quarter of a century. He has had about fifty short stories published, including winners of the Black Orchid Novella and Derringer Awards. Previous stories about Atlantic City private eye Marty Crow have been nominated for the Anthony Award and been turned into radio dramas by the Midnight Mystery Players. His novel Such a Killing Crime was published by Kearney Street Books. This is his fifth published story of the year, and that’s a personal best.
Her Haunted House
by Brendan DuBois
I was early so I parked my rental car in front of the haunted house and tried to get some work done before my real estate agent showed up. This small neighborhood in Mullen, New Hampshire, was both foreign and familiar to me, like seeing your best friend from high school twenty years later: you see shadows and features that are familiar, overlaid by new life, new experiences. Here, I recognized two houses on either side of the haunted house—though they now bore different paint schemes—and I saw the narrow street to the left that I had played on many years ago. The pine and oak trees were larger, there was new shrubbery here and there, but the place was not foreign to me.
Yet the old large farmhouse and barn that had belonged to my grandparents down the narrow street was gone. In its place, and covering the pasturelands where grandpa had raised a few milk cows and some horses, were plain two-story homes in dull pastel colors, looking like they had been designed by an architect who learned his craft from a mail-order school.
The haunted house, though, pretty much looked like it did when I had last seen it, nearly forty years ago. It was an old Victorian, with peeling yellow paint, lots of impressive scrollwork and woodcarvings along the roof and beams, and a wide porch that was reached by a set of stone steps. The stone steps were uneven and crooked. I remembered them well. I still didn’t like them. On either end of the severely pitched roof were brick chimneys. A sign from a local realtor was plugged into the sloping lawn, at an angle, like it didn’t want to be there. I didn’t blame it, though it was odd, I know, to have traveled so far and so long to see this place up close.
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