Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine 02/01/11

by Dell Magazines

  “I can’t thank you enough, Mr. Lyman,” said Culver, pumping his hand. “I’d recommend you to anybody.”

  “Thank you, sir,” said the detective. “Matt and I are always ready to take on any assignment. Just remember that prevention is better than the cure.”

  The banker frowned. “I don’t follow.”

  “You should’ve come to me when you received that first warning letter. Then we could’ve taken steps to ensure that you were never given that beating. It’s always much more satisfying to nip a crime in the bud. That way,” said Lyman, pointedly, “the only person who gets hurt is the villain.”

  Copyright © 2010 by Edward Marston

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  Fiction

  POWDER GOES HUNTING

  by Michael Z. Lewin

  “This satisfying, intelligent private eye novel unfolds with expert timing,” Publishers Weekly said of Michael Z. Lewin’s first novel in the Albert Samson series, Ask the Right Question, which first saw print forty years ago. Now it’s back in print in paperback, available at backinprint.com and online bookshops. Another popular Lewin character, Indianapolis cop Lieutenant Leroy Powder, takes the lead in this new story, which compels our attention in the quiet way we’ve come to expect Powder tales to do.

  Lieutenant Leroy Powder slowed his car as the house numbers got close to 1228. Although off-duty and dressed in civilian clothes, in truth he considered himself to be at least as on duty as when he was running roll call, no matter what his paymasters might say. He was hunting criminals. Tracking them. Getting evidence. Working out how to catch them.

  It wasn’t something he did much these days. Mostly he, and the officers who worked under him, just responded to evening events on Indianapolis’s North Area swing shift. Sure, sometimes there were things to be deduced or discovered, steps to be taken, conclusions to be drawn. But most of the time it was less heady. Securing crime scenes, finding witnesses, reassuring disturbed members of the public.

  Such things were important. Of course they were. And there were also better and worse ways to do them. Here, however, Powder was being positive in his policing. He was being proactive. It was like being a detective again, but without reopening that whole can of worms.

  The neighborhood Powder was cruising was not luxurious, but its eighties ranch houses had well-established yards. Maybe the houses were closer together than new-builds of the type these days, but the residents were also closer to the center of town than they would be in houses built now. The development’s modest but comfortable properties were an easy commute to North Area. And at the same time, they were near to good roads that led into the countryside. They were a good fit for the kind of criminal Powder was stalking.

  And, indeed, two of his criminals lived here. One at 1228 and the other only a few houses away and just around a corner.

  Powder had five criminals on his list. Well, technically they were suspects, but nobody with half a brain could think of them as anything but self-advantaging, selfish liars and defrauders of the public purse. Criminals.

  When Powder spotted 1228, he pulled up across the road. He took an envelope and a clipboard from his passenger seat. He put on a Colts cap and a pair of sunglasses. Then he got out and went to the door and rang the bell.

  It was answered by a woman in a bright red-and-white gingham pinafore. How many wives—even those without their own jobs—wore that sort of thing these days? It was sort of nice to see: rather reassuring and traditional. Powder hadn’t often talked about personal things with Barry Haller, but even so he had the impression that Haller was a traditionalist where women were concerned. That they should be homemakers and child-raisers, cake-bakers and churchgoers, present-buyers and clothes-finders. PTA members and neighborhood morals-vigilantes? Lordy, it bored Powder just to think about it. He wondered if it bored Mrs. Haller too. Maybe she took regular drags on the cooking sherry.

  Still, she opened the door to the stranger halfway, rather than peeping through a crack. That meant she was confident in her own house. And maybe trained in martial as well as marital arts? Or was it that she held a pistol behind the door in the hand Powder couldn’t see?

  “Hi, ma’am,” he said. “I have a letter for Barry Haller that he needs to sign for.” Powder held up the clipboard. The envelope was resting on it.

  The woman tilted her head. She frowned, but just for a moment. “I’ll sign for it,” she said. “I’m Mrs. Haller.”

  “Oh, I do wish you could, ma’am. Unfortunately it needs to be signed for by Mr. Haller himself.”

  “Well, he’s not here right now.”

  “Is he expected back soon?” Powder looked at his watch.

  “I’m not real sure.”

  “I could wait. I mean, out there, o’ course.” Powder gestured to his car. “Or I could come back later on.”

  “It may be a long time.”

  Powder’s faced wrinkled in sympathy. “He hasn’t split the sheet with you or nuthin’ like that, has he, ma’am?”

  “Oh no. Good heavens. He’s just out, with some friends.”

  “This time of day? Well, nice for some.”

  “Confidentially,” Mrs. Haller said, “I’m not really supposed to say where he’s gone.”

  “Ah,” Powder said with a smile. “It’s a secret. Out gettin’ you a fancy anniversary present? Or is it your birthday?”

  “No, no.”

  Her statement was meant to be a finish to the conversation but Powder just stood and waited.

  In a way, it was sad that doing nothing more than maintaining eye contact could intimidate the woman. But there it was. When she saw that Powder wasn’t going to leave, she shrugged and said, “Between you and me, it’s the first day of deer season.”

  “Ah.”

  “He managed a day off from work to go to Hancock County with some of his buddies.”

  “I got it now, ma’am,” Powder said, truthful in more ways than one, because he’d been recording the conversation on a small recorder taped to the underside of his clipboard. “Well, tell you what. Why don’t I just go back to base and find out if you can sign for the letter yourself after all. I’ll explain the situation to my boss. I expect she’ll understand.”

  The boss Powder was referring to wasn’t really his “boss” but she did understand.

  Although Carol Lee Fleetwood worked in the Indianapolis Metropolitan Police Department’s headquarters downtown, she was now a civilian. A paralyzing bullet near her spine ended her short but distinguished field career, even in this age of ramps and access. Still, in Holland they hire blind police officers because they’re better at telling recorded voices apart, and as soon as Fleetwood had regained consciousness she declared her determination to continue police work. She might not be blind, but she was smart. There had to be a place for smart in IPD, as it was then. IMPD now. Somewhere.

  “Somewhere” eventually turned out to be in Human Resources, formerly known as Personnel. And once she found her slot there she rose to become, effectively, the top dog—some said bitch—in IMPD HR. Politically sensitive—and vulnerable—officers of high rank might establish the department’s general personnel policies but it was Fleetwood who made the policies work—if they could work. She wasn’t quite able to make silk purses out of any old policy-sow’s ear, but she had a track record for making purses of cotton or even satin from the basest policy materials. Nowadays it seemed that HR could hardly do without her.

  “Roy Powder,” she said when he walked into her office without knocking. She gave him a smile that crossed the years. “Well, well, well.”

  “Long time no wheel your chair,” Powder said.

  “You never wheeled me.”“It did sometimes feel like it was the other way round, I admit.”

  They had worked together for a while in the then Missing Persons Department. They had also shared some personal time. But that was long ago and in another emotional country.

  “How ar
e you adjusting to work in the provinces?” she asked.

  Powder’s assignment as a roll call lieutenant was, in career terms, a demotion. He was no longer a detective and, more important to the many who couldn’t stand him, he no longer worked downtown at Indianapolis’s law-enforcement hub. But like Fleetwood, Powder had an intense commitment to effective policing. Even the most political members of IMPD would be hard put to assign him somewhere he didn’t think he could improve. “North is good,” he said. “I like getting the chance to help the kids become better policemen.”

  “And policewomen.”

  A flicker of a smile indicated that Powder’s failure to include both genders had been intentional, intended to provoke just the response from her that it had gotten.

  Fleetwood sighed, perhaps reminded of Powder’s downside. “So what brings you here that you couldn’t have sent in on a postcard?”

  “It’s all e-mail these days. When was the last time you got a postcard?”“I was trying to talk in language that wasn’t too up-to-date for you, Roy.”

  “Ah, I was being matronized. But I’m into the new technologies now, Chair Girl. I admit, I hesitated at first, but then I decided if you can’t beat ’em, join ’em. And now I love all the new machines. We can do so many things easily that were hard or impossible in olden times.” From a pocket he brought out the recorder that had been under his clipboard. He placed it on her desk.

  When she refused to ask what it was and what it was for, Powder looked around the small office. Then looked around it again.

  “Lost some marbles?” she asked.

  “I just figured you’d have another wheelchair somewhere. For visitors to use, so we could all speak on the same level. No?”

  “I don’t need to tower over you to fire your ass,” Fleetwood said.

  Powder allowed himself a grin as he took one of the conventional chairs that was available for visitors.

  “So are you well, Roy? I mean physically. I can’t believe they’ve invented a cure for what ails your mind.” Fleetwood leaned back and the wheelchair she sat in tilted with her.

  “Me? Oh yeah, sure. And you? Walkin’ tall?”

  “As ever.”

  “As a matter of fact, you are looking good.”

  “Despite the added years?”

  “I don’t pay attention to years. You just look . . . settled. Yourself.”

  “I like what I do.”

  “And you haven’t ballooned up like a lot of you cripples do.”

  She laughed, but only because she knew him well. “And you wonder why your career has dipped rather than risen? Or maybe you don’t.”

  “I figured if I dropped in to see you, you’d make me the next chief.”

  They both knew she didn’t make anyone into anything, although her recommendations for hiring and firing were almost never ignored.

  “If you’re ambitious, why not run for sheriff?”

  “I’m better as an appointee than as a candidate. Think about it. As chief I could make so many more men—and women—into better cops.” He waited. “Don’t you think?”

  A tiny shake of the head indicated that she wanted to move on. “So what can I do for you, cowboy?”

  “It’s what I can do for you,” Powder said.

  “I’ve heard that from you before. Thanks but no thanks.”

  “Listen to this.” He withdrew a small remote-control unit from a jacket pocket. He pushed a button. The digital recorder on Fleetwood’s desk came to life.

  Together they listened as Mrs. Barry Haller said, “Between you and me, it’s the first day of deer season.”

  “Ah,” Powder was heard to respond.

  “He managed a day off from work to go to Hancock County with some of his buddies.”

  “I got it now, ma’am.”

  Powder stopped the playback. “Want to hear it again?”

  “What is it, Roy?”

  “Officer Barry Haller’s wife telling me that Officer Barry Haller is out hunting deer today.”

  “So?”

  “He called in sick with flu.”

  She waited.

  He said, “Haller’s flu is a special strain, Deer Flu. I was thinking maybe you’d want to consider working on a vaccine.”

  “This Haller is one of yours at North?”

  “Yes.”

  “And you want me to do what?”

  “String him up. Not because he’s such a bad guy, but because he’s way not the only one. We get an outbreak of flu—or whatever they decide to call it—every year when deer season starts. There’s a department-wide blip. It happens at other times, too. Squirrel, turkey, rabbit, even crow season. There are disproportionate claims of illnesses when each hunting season starts. Deer hunting with firearms is the biggest blip, though you can see the starts of the early and late deer-with-archery seasons, too, if you look for them.” He nodded with his lips tight and took an envelope out of another pocket. “It’s all laid out here. The effects are all statistically significant. It’s costing the department serious money in overtime to replace the missing men—and women—or it results in less effective police cover when we decide not to replace those who are missing.”

  Fleetwood felt the thickness of the envelope Powder had given her. “What’s with the recording?”

  “Evidence. There are four other guys out today on my roll call, one of them around the corner from Haller. But this was the only confession I managed to get.”

  “Hardly a confession.”

  “Testimony, then.”

  “It wouldn’t ever stand up in court, Roy. It’s just a woman saying something. If it’s true, it’s self-incrimination as an accessory without being cautioned. And if it isn’t true, it isn’t true.”

  “I’d get you pictures of the guys coming home with twelve-point bucks on their roofs if I could. I tried last year, but either they didn’t bag any or they left the bodies somewhere else.”

  “Lot of them go straight to professional skinners.”

  “If you say so. I’ve never much seen the attraction of shooting Bambi.”

  “My dad was a hunter.”

  “And you were too, right?”

  “Some.”

  “What do you do now? Sit out in the yard with food on your hand and get the wild creatures to come to you? Then strangle them?”

  “I leave strangulation for the workplace, Roy. So how long have you been working on this?” She held up the envelope.

  “How long have I been working in the North?”

  “Jesus.” Powder had been a roll call lieutenant for years now, first at Northside and then, after reorganization, at North.

  “Roll call lieutenants have to keep an eye on manning levels. And womanning levels.”

  “And Peyton Manning’s levels?” But she shook her head slowly. “It isn’t evidence.”

  “I’m not taking it to court. I’ve brought it to you.”

  Two nights later, Powder responded to what was apparently a routine burglary run. He was driving north on College just past midnight when the dispatcher called that a break-in at a convenience store had been reported by a neighbor. The store was out east on 56th. Powder got there within five minutes. Another police cruiser was just coming to a stop ahead of him. Sanford Billings got out as Powder pulled up behind. Billings unclipped the flap over his gun and waited.

  In a moment, Powder was beside him. “See anything?” he asked.

  “Nothing from the front,” Billings said. “All dark.”

  “Not very convenient for a convenience store to be closed.” Powder looked at the building. The store seemed to have been developed on the site of a former gas station, not least because it was set at forty-five degree angles to both the roads that made up the intersection. The length of the building and some residual structural signs suggested there had once been two repair bays. There was no sign now of where the pumps had been and the forecourt was no longer covered. It was just a parking lot. No civilian cars were parked on it. But even as
a convenience store, it was old-fashioned, the kind of place that the 7-Elevens had long driven out of business in most parts of the city—and world?

  “I’ll go around back,” Powder said.

  “I’ll check the front,” Billings said. “And I expect we’ll have one or two of the other guys here before long.”

  It had been a quiet night. Almost any call that wasn’t a domestic drew several patrol cars, officers looking for a bit of action. As Powder headed around the side of the store he unclipped the flap over his own gun but drew his flashlight.

  After pausing at the back corner, he discovered another small parking lot, also empty. The edge of the lot was abutted by a grassy slope that led up to a few trees and the backs of some houses. If it was a neighbor who had called, chances were the neighbor lived up there.

  Carefully he studied the fringes of the lot until he satisfied himself that there were no people lurking in shadows. You could never know for sure, but . . . He began to walk along the back of the building.

  His flashlight revealed trash cans and a few decomposing cardboard boxes of uncertain contents. Halfway along he found a back door. It had been forced open. A glance inside revealed only darkness. On his radio he told everyone on his frequency where he was and that he would wait for backup before he entered the building.

  With the light off, he studied the wall beyond the open door. There seemed to be nowhere to hide, so if anyone was still on the scene, he was inside.

  Or she, Powder thought. He smiled, for Carol Lee.

  In the darkness, he tried to hear any sounds that might be coming from inside the store, but all he could hear were ambient street sounds from outside. Then there were some doors slamming and faint voices. These belonged to arriving patrol officers. Someone would be coming round the mountain soon, no doubt.

  And, indeed, Powder heard footsteps behind him moments later. As he turned he expected to see Billings approaching. Instead it was Barry Haller.