Death Sentences

by Otto Penzler

“The only thing that argues against it is: What became of the weapon? It wasn’t one of the objects in this room. I hardly think, having eliminated the threat to his freedom and acquired what he came for, he’d stop to put the weapon back. If, on the other hand, he brought it with him, it becomes a coldblooded act.”

  “Fingerprints.”

  “I was trained to think like a murderer. I’d wipe them off rather than take the chance of being seen on the street carrying a bronze vase or a marble bust.”

  “DNA.”

  “Possibly. As I said, I’m far from current.” He hooked on his spectacles. “Wasn’t Lloyd interviewed recently by a television crew?”

  “Yeah. Big to-do when a network van rolls into a town this little. Some kind of reality show like Hoarders, only high-end: rich collectors. It was what you call a pilot, hoping to become a series.”

  “Not an unlikely procession. In many cases, the only difference between a wealthy bibliomaniac and somebody’s mother-in-law living in an apartment full of old newspapers and empty pop bottles is the size of the investment.”

  “Sort of a nutjob Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous.”

  Sharecross looked pained.

  “I’d hate to see that adjective applied to Lloyd. The reason I brought it up …”

  “For once we’re neck-and-neck. I’ll see about getting that TV footage and we’ll compare it to the crime scene. If the picture’s sharp enough, we’ll see what was in that gap—if Mr. Fister didn’t overhaul the library in the meantime.”

  “I doubt it. It looks the same as the last time I visited him, and as we’ve discussed, he had the foresight to prevent an extensive reorganization.” The bookseller’s tone was wistful.

  “Cheer up, Avery. One morning you’ll hop out of bed, rarin’ to give your place a good old-fashioned spring cleaning.”

  “That’s the pep-talk I’ve been giving myself for thirty years.”

  “I can’t believe it. I can’t sleep nights thinking I’ll be murdered in my bed.”

  “Don’t concern yourself, Birdie,” said Uncle Ned. “It ain’t as if everybody in town ain’t dreamt about it as long as they knew you.”

  Carl Lathrup used his gavel. “That’s enough of that, Ned. Miss Flatt has the floor.”

  “She ought to take a mop to it now and again. I been stepping in the same wad of Billy Fred Muster’s gum since I voted last.”

  Billy Fred, chewing in the back row of chairs in the crowded town hall, shook his head. “That’s a lie, you old coot. Lincoln’s been dead since before gum was invented.”

  “Pipe down, the both of you.” Birdie gave her girdle a mighty tug. “We used to have a nice safe town to raise our children in. The last week alone, the murder rate’s gone up a hundred percent.”

  “That’s because last week it was zero,” Chief Dockerty pointed out. He stood near the door with his thumbs hooked inside his Sam Browne belt, his belly pushing out around them.

  Lathrup pointed the gavel his way. “Since you feel like talking, Chief, maybe you can bring this special session up to date on the progress of your investigation.”

  “Mr. Sharecross and me—”

  “And I,” corrected Neil Bonn, principal of the elementary school and a substitute English teacher.

  “Well, Mr. Bonn, I didn’t know you was putting your heads together when I wasn’t present.” Dockerty grinned. “Mr. Sharecross and I are expecting an express package from ZBC headquarters in New York City sometime today. The program director’s sending us a DVD of that TV pilot they shot in Mr. Fister’s library back in March. With any luck, it’ll tell us what book the killer stole.”

  “And what good will that do, I’d like to know?” asked Birdie. “While I’m at it, what’s the purpose of inviting a shopkeeper into a homicide investigation? My nephew Roy, the Eagle Scout”—she stared around the room over the tops of her half-glasses, while the title sank in—“has a badge in tracking, and would seem to me the more appropriate choice, this incident being apparently beyond the talents of the police force we all pay taxes to support.”

  Dockerty untucked one of his thumbs to rest that hand on his sidearm; not that he had any intention of blowing Birdie Flatt out from under her Dolly Parton wig. “Apart from his background, which we all seem to keep forgetting, Mr. Sharecross knows books. Once we’ve established which book Mr. Fister was killed for, he’ll be able to narrow down the suspects to those collectors who specialize in that particular area. Even if the killer wasn’t one of them, they’d be the ones he’d approach to sell the item. I’ll be talking to them all.”

  “I hope you’re right, Chief.” Gordon Tolliver, publisher of The Good Adviser, rose to his considerable height. “I’d like to feature some good news for a change; something more diverting than Sherm McDonough’s quest for pre-Colombian Indian arrowheads.”

  “As opposed to pre-Colombian European arrowheads,” put in Neil Bonn, who taught American History in a pinch.

  “Go ahead, make fun.” Sherm McDonough left off plucking cockleburs from his socks to address the congregation. “I’ve got an offer of a thousand bucks from the Smithsonian for a Clovis point I found up on Superstition Overlook.”

  Lathrup rapped the podium. “We’re drifting away from the reason for this gathering. Where is Avery Sharecross?”

  “Oh, he’s busy,” Dockerty said. “Nobody ever accused Avery of laziness and sloth.”

  “Busy doing what?” pressed the head of the council. “Sifting through clues, analyzing evidence, interrogating suspects? The citizens of Good Advice have a right to know how their trust is being invested.”

  The chief returned his thumb to his belt, shifted his weight from one foot to the other. “I can’t answer for him right this minute, but when I talked to him this morning he was rearranging his inventory according to the Dewey Decimal System, whatever that is.”

  “There!” Sharecross gripped Andy Barlow’s shoulder, making the deputy chief wince. He hadn’t much more flesh in that area than the bookseller had in his whole body—which Chief Dockerty could lose from his middle without anyone noticing.

  Andy hit PAUSE. The picture on the computer monitor in Dockerty’s office froze.

  “Can you zoom in?” Sharecross asked.

  “Sure.” Andy played an adagio on the keys. The shelf in question filled the screen.

  “We lucked out there.” Andy reached back to knead his bruised flesh. “Not all of the TV networks have gone over to Blu-Ray. Ten years ago this would’ve been on videotape, and good luck identifying the printing on the spine from Mrs. O’Leary’s cow.”

  Sharecross shushed him, sliding his thick spectacles down to the tip of his long nose, back up to the bridge, and back down halfway, like a Chinese cleric manipulating beads on an abacus. At length he straightened, returning them to their customary place.

  “Something?” Chief Dockerty was a patient man, but he and the bookseller seemed to live in parallel universes where the value of time fluctuated like foreign currency.

  “L’Exploration d’Descubrimientos en Nuevo Espano. Gentlemen, I’m dumbfounded.”

  “Me, too,” Dockerty said. “I don’t know if you’re speaking Latin or Swahili.”

  “Castilian Spanish, in which I assure you I am no expert. Roughly translated, it’s The Exploration of Discoveries in New Spain; published, if memory serves, in Madrid in 1545.”

  Dockerty whistled. “Anything that old’s got to be worth something.”

  “Not necessarily. Age is not a factor in evaluating a book; if it were, every ancient family Bible in North America would be worth thousands, but no one ever throws them away so they’re common as clothespins.

  “Nor is rarity, although this particular item certainly qualifies. I doubt more than ten copies were issued, handset in wooden type for the court of Philip II of Spain. Condition is often a factor, but not in this case: Missing its covers, and even significant pages from the text, would hardly affect its value. Demand, gentlemen; that thing that drives cap
italism tips the balance in this circumstance. I know of ten billionaires who would bid energetically against one another to lay hold of L’Exploration in any condition and, from what I see here, this copy is complete, and as close to pristine as you’re ever likely to find.”

  “This is a murder investigation, not a meeting of your book club. Come to the point this side of when they invented gunpowder.”

  “Actually, the Conquistadors were well-equipped in that—”

  “Avery!”

  “Sorry. If I were the murdering kind, I would certainly give it proper consideration in this case. This book was written by Hernando Cortez, conqueror of Mexico. Considering the paucity of copies and the stature of the individuals to whom it was presented, it’s more than likely Cortez delivered them in person. He would have held this book in his hands.”

  Dockerty slid his Stetson to the back of his balding head.

  “I don’t see it myself, but I can understand where some folks might covet it at whatever the cost. Give me a list of those folks and I’m on the way.”

  “I’ll get right on it. Verne Platt knows his way around the computer at the library. He can Goggle—”

  “Google,” corrected Andy.

  “He can Google the title and find out who’s most interested. This could make your career, Chief. The suspects must have access to millions in cash.”

  “I like my career as it is. Nice town, decent wages, four acres I can grow sunflowers and entertain my grandchildren, when we have ’em. Be a nicer place with one less murderer in it.”

  “You’re a good man, Chief.”

  “You sell him this book?”

  “I wish I had; I could have retired, if I hadn’t already from the police department. He must have found it on the Net, despite his distrust of it, or on one of his buying trips. I’m surprised he didn’t share the discovery with me. Half the fun of collecting is rubbing other collectors’ noses in your best acquisitions.”

  “Maybe he’d just got it.”

  “Which may narrow the field further, to others who were interested at the same time. How about the autopsy?”

  “Busted skull, extensive brain damage, death close to instant as I guess it ever comes. Doc Simms has the Latin, for the record. Leather fibers in the cavity—left by the weapon, most like; if Fister was wearing a leather cap at the time, it hasn’t turned up.”

  “I doubt Lloyd owned anything as casual as a cap. His taste ran to three-piece suits and a freshly blocked felt fedora. Sap?”

  “I hate to think it. It means the killer came prepared.”

  “I never put it aside. Lloyd was sane as a carpenter’s level, but he’d do anything to guard his collection.”

  “Including fight to the death?”

  “Including that. Love is the strongest motive of all.”

  “Well, it’s a big book and he was killed in broad daylight. Maybe someone saw whoever it was lugging it away.”

  “At almost a thousand pages, each of them thick parchment, it would be heavy as well. Those clasps are solid iron, to reinforce the binding.” He pointed at the thick horizontal ridges on the top and bottom of the spine of the book onscreen. “If he left on foot, he’d be one tired man—or woman, if she’s built for it—by the time he got where he was going. Perhaps someone saw somebody who looked worn-out so early in the day.”

  “Could be. Andy took pictures of the driveway, but the only tread marks there belonged to Fister’s Land Rover, which is still in the garage. If it was a sneak thief, he wouldn’t want to advertise his coming with the sound of a motor.”

  “If it was a sneak thief,” Sharecross said. “Call it an old cop’s hunch, but I’ve got a sinking feeling it was someone we know.”

  Deputy Chief Barlow rapped on the frame of Dockerty’s door, which had remained open as long as he’d had the office. “We got a ping on that door-to-door,” Barlow said. “Gordon Tolliver saw something.”

  Dockerty dumped his half-eaten Big Mac back into the sack and wiped his hands. “Go ahead, Andy. Keep me in suspense. I’m just the guy who fights the council for your annual pay raise.”

  “I was wondering who to thank for that extra dime an hour. If you let me finish, I would’ve told you he’s waiting outside.”

  “Prod him in. I don’t know why we even had this conversation.”

  Tolliver entered, ducking his head from instinct. The top of the doorway gave him two inches’ clearance, but it was a tall doorway. At the half-century point he looked in good shape, no extra fat, and a fine head of brown hair.

  “I didn’t think anything of it until Andy told me you were looking for a man who looked tired and might have been carrying a large object,” said Tolliver, folding himself into a captain’s chair. “I was taking down last week’s front page from the window. A small-town newspaper tradition, Chief. The point is to tease people into paying to read the stuff you jump to an inside page.”

  “I wondered about that. It always seemed to me the opposite, plastering your wares out in full sight for free.”

  “No danger of that, Chief. Ever since I left my old newspaper job, it’s been my dream to publish my own. It’s a challenge, especially today, with the Internet and all. I struggle to keep myself in paper and ink.”

  Dockerty nodded sympathy, resisting the urge to strangle the rest of the story out of him. You had to be a diplomat in Good Advice, where you kept running into the same people day after day. “Tell me what you told Andy.”

  “I’d just peeled off the tape when I saw a man hurrying past the window. He was red and panting, as if he’d run a long way, and carrying something under one arm.”

  “What was it?”

  “I didn’t see. It was on the side opposite the window.”

  “Anything else? A sap?”

  “What’s a sap?”

  “A blackjack, but not that necessarily. Some kind of blunt object that might be used to crack open a man’s skull.”

  “I saw nothing like that.”

  “Sure?”

  “Someone running around town swinging a bludgeon would leave an impression, don’t you think?”

  “You’d be surprised what folks don’t notice. They can’t all be eagle-eyed journalists. Recognize him?”

  “I’d never seen him before, and I like to think I know everyone in town. It’s part of my job.”

  “Know him again?’

  “I think so.”

  Officer Floyd Debner, a part-timer, had studied art at the University of New Mexico. He listened to Tolliver’s description and sketched a rat-faced man with bulging eyes, his mouth hanging open to show a set of teeth only an orthodontist could love. Dockerty had copies made for distribution. He showed Avery Sharecross the original.

  The bookseller climbed down from a wobbly stepladder to accept the drawing. His corduroy jacket was smeared with sooty dust; he’d been reorganizing the shop for a week but the chief couldn’t see that he’d made a dent in the chaos.

  “The story checks,” Dockerty said, as Sharecross studied the sketch. “The newspaper’s halfway between Fister’s house and the bus station. The killer wouldn’t hang around town a minute longer than he had to.”

  “That’s logical. This man would attract notice.” He slid his glasses back up to the bridge of his nose. “Does he look familiar?”

  “He does, but I’ll be goldarn if I can place him.”

  “Was it at the Gaiety Theater, possibly?”

  “Why the Gaiety?”

  “Orville Potts, the manager, has a weakness for crime films. Many of them feature Steve Buscemi.”

  He snatched back the picture and stared. “I’ll be—”

  “Have you heard back on fingerprints?”

  “Got the results from the state police lab this morning. I’m glad we took yours. I was able to eliminate those, and a couple of other sets belonging to folks who knew Fister well enough to visit. We’re working on the rest.”

  “You dusted the library ladder?”

  “
First thing, seeing as how high up that book was shelved. All we got was Fister’s.”

  “Gloves?”

  “They leave marks, too, not that they’re unique, like fingerprints.” He shook his head. “And he didn’t wipe it down, neither, or we wouldn’t have found Fister’s.”

  Sharecross looked at a wall calendar featuring a cartoon caterpillar wearing spectacles. He might have been peering into a mirror. “This is Wednesday, isn’t it?”

  “Comes around every week about this time. Why?”

  “The Good Adviser comes out today. I think I’ll go down and buy a copy.”

  “Why? It’ll just be full of this case, with that picture on the front page. You won’t learn anything there you don’t already know.”

  “I agree.”

  The rodent features he’d just been looking at stared at him through the tall window beside the door to the newspaper office, on the ground floor of a false-front building as old as statehood: PUBLISHER IDENTIFIES KILLER read the headline on the front page taped to the plate glass.

  “Avery! What brings the owl out of his barn?” The publisher got up from his desk to shake the visitor’s hand. He towered over the bookseller.

  “The quest for information; an experienced journalist like yourself shouldn’t find that unusual, and you know more than most. Didn’t you mention once you wrote a book column before you came here?”

  “The El Paso Times. The feature was discontinued. I was told there weren’t enough readers interested in books. Does that sound oxymoronic?”

  “Stupid’s more appropriate. Did you ever visit Lloyd Fister’s mansion?”

  “Quite recently. He was kind enough to grant me an interview about his TV appearance. Tragically, he was killed before I could run the article.”

  “Have you ever been fingerprinted?”

  “Odd question. As a matter of fact—no, I haven’t. I wasn’t in the military and I don’t own a firearm. I’m happy to say I’ve never been arrested.”

  “Well, never’s a long time. It eliminates one of the sets of prints the police couldn’t identify. Did you discuss Fister’s collection?”