The Best American Mystery Stories 2017

by John Sandford

  He droned on. “Ah, sinful nation . . . They have forsaken the Lord, they have despised the Holy One of Israel, and they are utterly estranged.”

  “Amen.”

  His head rose slowly and he looked at the ceiling, but failing in seeing his God, he allowed his eyes to slip to me, standing in the center aisle with my hands on my hips.

  “Hi, Sam.”

  He slowly focused, raising a cheap Hi-Point semiautomatic from Daniela’s head and pointing it directly at me. “Stay where you are or I’ll kill you.”

  I tipped my hat back, making sure he could see that I didn’t have a weapon in my hands. “I wouldn’t do that if I were you.”

  His face split in a creeping, sick smile, his skin flushed and his nose running freely. “You aren’t me.” The grin widened to where I could see his black teeth. “I’m chosen.”

  Over the years you get a feeling in these situations, an idea of how they’re going to play out—and I was getting a bad one on this. It was the certainty that was disconcerting, a snakelike stillness that led me to believe that it was a heroin cocktail that Sam was on—both shaken and stirred.

  “He speaks to me.”

  I started down the aisle but stopped when he forced the muzzle against Daniela’s head again, his dark eyes flicking away for the briefest of instants.

  “Don’t you hear him?” The smile was still there as his face caught the light from the emergency halogens that shone through the stained glass. “He says that I have to make a sacrifice for this country. We’ve lost our way and the only way it can be redeemed is with blood.” He wiped his nose with his gun hand but then pushed the weapon back against the woman’s head. “He’s talking to us now . . .”

  Watching his finger tighten on the trigger, I turned slightly to the right to hide the movement and dropped my hand to my sidearm. The angle was bad, and I was going to have to clear almost up to my shoulder before firing, but I didn’t see anything else for it.

  “I hear his voice!”

  I froze and slowly turned my head to the left, where I could see that Double Tough, having moved along the far wall for a better position, was holding both his hands out so that Erlanger could see he meant no harm.

  “I hear him, brother!” The undisputable zeal in my deputy’s voice must’ve been acquired over the years in his fundamentalist upbringing. Erlanger didn’t move, but his hooded eyes opened a bit as Double Tough continued to advance, shouting his testament as he came. “Out of the heavens he let you hear his voice to discipline you, and on earth he let you see his great fire.”

  When DT was within twenty feet, the addict pulled the 9mm away from the young woman’s head and shakily directed it in my deputy’s general direction. “You . . . You need to stop where you are.”

  Double Tough swung his arms wide and spun in a circle, all the time looking up at the ceiling and ignoring the gun pointed at him. “Is that you, Lord?” He stopped spinning, faced Erlanger, and stared at the peak of the church, the mottling of his skin looking like a caul. “You can hear him too, brother, can’t you?”

  The addict began nodding his head and looking up at the same spot. “I do hear him.” The semiautomatic dropped a little, now wavering between Double Tough and me as he glanced my way. “I do!”

  DT’s head snapped back up toward the ceiling, and his face turned back and forth before he cupped a hand to his ear. “How have we offended thee, Lord?”

  Erlanger actually moved forward, forgetting his hostage in his eagerness to receive the message. He repeated, “How have we offended thee?”

  My deputy crept a little closer with his hand still at his ear, now only ten feet away from the deeply disturbed man. “You demand a sacrifice?”

  Erlanger beamed as his eyes cast about, and he cried out in triumph, once again placing the muzzle of the Hi-Point against Daniela’s head. “I told you, I told you all!”

  “No. Wait, brother. Wait!” Double Tough’s hand shot out. “He demands a different sort of sacrifice . . .” The same hand returned to his ear, and his face rose to the rafters. “What can we do to remove the offense?” He stood there motionless for a moment, and I even found myself leaning forward along with Erlanger to hear what my deputy might say next. “And if thine eye offend thee, pluck it out?”

  Erlanger didn’t move.

  Agonizingly, DT reached up and began prying at his face, screaming as his voice rebounded against the confines of the church walls. He thrashed against the banister that separated him from the altar and turned away, caterwauling, and finally plucking the furious bright eye from his face, he held it heavenward. “Here it is, Lord!”

  He turned slowly, revealing the empty socket in his damaged face as Erlanger stood straight with his rotten mouth hanging open, his head shaking back and forth.

  “Here, take it! It’s seen enough of this world’s woes and mis­chiefs!” Double Tough lowered the ghastly trophy, and examining it with the remaining eye before looking skyward, he stumbled forward until he was within arm’s reach of Erlanger. “What’s that, Lord?”

  By this time the drug addict was shaking and had completely forgotten his hostage and scrambled backward against the pulpit.

  “It is better for thee to enter into life with one eye rather than having two eyes to be cast into hellfire?” DT’s hand thrust forward, giving Erlanger a closer look at the dislocated orb as he held the vivid eye out to the addict until it seemed to loom larger and larger. “Brother, he wants you to have it!”

  Dropping the gun, Erlanger turned and tripped over the stairs in search of the back door, finally finding it, and clawed at the knob as Double Tough casually threw a leg over the banister and moved steadily toward him with the proffered offering. “Wait, he wants you to have it!”

  Turning to look at his tormentor, the addict wailed and pressed his back against the door, sliding down it, leaving a grease mark as he sank. Finally, as my deputy was only inches from reaching him, he screamed, managed to get to his feet to yank the door open, and disappeared into the snowy night, his terrified cries trailing after him.

  Double Tough stepped toward the doorway and watched the mostly naked man through the skimming flakes. “Say what you want about those heroin addicts, they can really move when they want to.” He continued to peer into the darkness where outside we could hear shouting as the assembled manpower moved in and apprehended the culprit. It was then that DT turned, popped the orb into his mouth for lubrication, swished it around, and then, spitting it out, tipped his head back, thumbed a lid up, and redeposited the glass eye.

  He turned and winked at me. “God bless us, every one.”

  WILLIAM KENT KRUEGER

  The Painted Smile

  FROM Echoes of Sherlock Holmes

  He was an odd child to begin with. After he received the book as a Christmas present, things only got worse. Eventually his aunt was beside herself and sought my help.

  I have an office in Saint Paul, in a building that was grand about the time Dillinger was big news. It’s long been in need of a facelift. One of the things I like about it is that I can see the Mississippi River from my window. Another is that I can afford the rent.

  Although she’d called ahead and had explained the situation, when she brought in the boy, I was still surprised. He was small, even for a ten-year-old. But his eyes were sharp and quick, darting like bees around the room, taking in everything. I welcomed the woman and her nephew, shook their hands, and we sat in the comfortable easy chairs I use during my sessions.

  “So, Oliver,” I said. “I’m very curious about your costume.”

  “My name is Sherlock. And this is not a costume.”

  “Your aunt has told me that your birth certificate reads Oliver Wendell Holmes. You were named after the great Supreme Court justice.”

  “I prefer Sherlock.”

  “All right. For now. Tell me about your attire. That hat is pretty striking, and your cape as well. Tweed, yes? How did you manage to come by them?”

&n
bsp; “I made them myself.”

  I looked to his aunt.

  She nodded. “He taught himself to use my sewing machine. And he does a fine stitch by hand too.”

  In our initial phone conversation, she’d told me her nephew had been tested in school and had demonstrated an IQ of 170. I’m generally leery of quantifications of this kind, but it was clear the boy was gifted.

  “When did you become Sherlock Holmes?”

  “I’ve always been Sherlock Holmes. I just didn’t realize it until I received the volume of Conan Doyle at Christmas.”

  “Always?”

  “Just as you’ve always been Watson.”

  “But I’m not. You know that. My name is simply Watt.”

  “Are you not the son of Watt, therefore Watt’s son?”

  “Clever,” I admitted with a smile.

  “I’m not crazy, Watson,” he said quite calmly. “Not delusional. I’m well aware that Sherlock Holmes is a literary fiction. I’m simply the mental and emotional incarnation of that fictional construct, the confirmation that the literary may sometimes, indeed, reflect a concrete reality. The name Sherlock feels suited to me. But all this is something my aunt has difficulty accepting. I understand.”

  “You get made fun of,” his aunt said to him, a situation that clearly caused her distress. “The other kids at school pick on you. Doesn’t that bother you?”

  “I’m the object of ridicule because they’re not comfortable with who they are. They work hard at creating just the right image, and I threaten that. It’s the same with adults. If you weren’t so insecure in your own circumstances, Aunt Louise, you would see me for who I am instead of who you want me to be.”

  “That’s a rather harsh judgment, Oliver,” I said.

  “Sherlock,” he reminded me. “And I would say the same about you, Watson.”

  “Oh?”

  “Your office is on the third floor of a building that houses enterprises of a less than robust nature. Your shelves are full of books on psychology that haven’t been read in a good long while. You spend a lot of time sitting at your desk and staring at the river, wishing that instead of becoming a child psychologist you’d gone to sea. You’ve recently separated from your wife. Or perhaps divorced. And you’d like desperately to find a woman who understands you.”

  “I beg your pardon?”

  “The building speaks for itself,” he explained. “The dust on your shelves is evidence that you seldom reference your reference materials. You’ve arranged your office so that the best view—the river—is in front of you, and only a very dedicated individual wouldn’t be constantly seduced by that wistful scene. Your walls are filled with photographs and paintings of great ships at sea. Your left ring finger still bears a strip of skin much paler than the area around it, indicating that until very recently you wore a wedding band. And in your wastebasket is the latest issue of City Pages folded to the personal ads section.”

  Though I was shaken by the accuracy of his observations, I did my best not to show it. From that point on, I conducted a fairly standard intake interview. The boy’s parents were deceased, killed two years earlier when their car slid off an icy road while they were returning from a New Year’s Eve party. His parents had both been successful attorneys.

  At the end, I spoke with his aunt alone. I told her I thought I could help the boy, but that it might take some time. She agreed to bring him back for sessions twice a week.

  I walked her out of my office to where the boy sat waiting in the hallway. I explained what his aunt and I had decided. He didn’t seem upset in the least. I bid them goodbye, and the woman started away. But the boy held back and, before catching up with his aunt, whispered something to me in a grave voice.

  I returned to my office and stood at the window, looking down at the street, watching them get into the woman’s old sedan and drive away. The whole time, the final words the boy had spoken to me ran through my head: One thing you should know, Watson. Moriarty is here.

  I’m a bit of a dreamer. That’s why my wife left me. Well, one of the reasons. And so, truthfully, I was inclined to be sympathetic toward Oliver Holmes, who, like me, and despite his protestations to the contrary, was someone wanting to be someone else. I found myself looking forward to our next visit three days later. When Oliver showed up, his aunt simply dropped him off, saying she would be back in an hour. She had errands to run.

  We sat in my office, and I asked how his days had gone since I last saw him.

  He cut to the chase. “I’ve been worried about Moriarty.”

  “Tell me about him.”

  “You know who he is, Watson.”

  “I’ve read my Conan Doyle,” I said.

  “Then you understand the evil he’s capable of.”

  “Is this really Moriarty or another instance of some kind of—what did you call it? ‘A concrete reflection of a literary reality’?”

  “Moriarty is not the source of all evil, Watson. But his malicious intent here is quite real.”

  “So he’s up to something?”

  “What a stupid question, Watson. Of course he’s up to something. The real question is what?”

  “You’ve seen him, then?”

  “Of course.”

  “Can you describe him to me?”

  “I’ve never seen him except in disguise.”

  “If he was in disguise and you’ve never seen him otherwise, how do you know it was him?”

  “A wolf may don sheep’s clothing, but he still behaves like a wolf.”

  I sat back and considered the boy.

  “Do you play chess?” I finally asked.

  “Of course. Since I was four.”

  “Care to play a game?”

  “On my aunt’s nickel? Isn’t that a bit unfair to her, Watson?”

  “Tell you what. I give every client one free session. We’ll count this as your free one.”

  He shrugged, a very boylike gesture, and I went to a cabinet and brought out my chess set.

  “Carved alabaster,” he said, clearly impressed. “Roman motif.”

  “I take my chess seriously.”

  We set up the board and played for half an hour to a stalemate. I was impressed with how well he conducted himself. I’m no slouch, and he kept me on my toes. Mostly, however, it afforded me an opportunity to observe his thinking. He was aggressive, too much so, I thought. He didn’t consider his defense as carefully as he should have in order to anticipate the danger inherent in some of his bolder moves. He was smart, beyond smart, but he was still a child. I could tell it irritated him that he didn’t win.

  “Tell me more about Moriarty,” I said.

  “I believe he killed my parents.” It was an astounding statement, but he spoke it as a simple truth.

  “Your aunt told me they died in an automobile accident.”

  “Moriarty was behind it.”

  “To what end?”

  “I don’t know. Ever since I realized he was here, I’ve been observing him. I haven’t quite deciphered the pattern of his actions.”

  “Observing him how?”

  “How does one normally observe, Watson? I’ve been following him.”

  This alarmed me, though I tried not to show it. His brashness, if what he told me was true, was the kind of heedless aggression I’d seen in his chess play. Though I didn’t believe in Moriarty, whatever the boy was up to wasn’t healthy.

  A knock at the door ended our session. His aunt entered the office.

  “Could I speak with you alone?” I asked.

  “I’m in a bit of a hurry,” she said. “Perhaps next time. Come on, Oliver. We’ve got to run.”

  When they’d gone, I was left with a profound sense of uneasiness. Whatever was going on, I couldn’t help thinking that the boy was heading somewhere dangerous, dangerous to him and perhaps to others. Frankly, I wasn’t sure what to do except bide my time until our next visit.

  “Would you care to see him, Watson?” the boy asked. “Mori
arty.”

  His aunt had dropped him at the door to the building, and he’d come up alone. He’d insisted on a chess rematch, and while we’d played I’d probed him more about his obsession with that fictional villain.

  “I’d like that,” I said.

  “Meet me at six this evening at the corner of Seventh and Randolph.”

  “I beg your pardon?”

  “Do you want to see Moriarty or not?”

  “I do.”

  “Then meet me.”

  “I’ll have to discuss this with your aunt.”

  “No.”

  “Oliver—”

  “Sherlock, damn you!”

  “Oliver,” I replied firmly, “there are lines I won’t cross. I can’t connive with you behind your aunt’s back.”

  “I’ll make a deal with you, Watson,” the boy said, having calmed himself. “Meet me tonight, this one time. If you’re not convinced that there’s danger afoot and that Moriarty is the source, I won’t insist anymore that you call me Sherlock.”

  I considered his proposal and decided there was nothing to lose. I certainly didn’t believe in Moriarty, and so this might be a way to crack through the boy’s wall of resistance.

  “Six,” I agreed.

  He was there to meet me and got into my car when I pulled to the curb. He directed me a couple of blocks away to an apartment building in a working-class section with a view of the old brewery. We parked well back from the entrance, sandwiched inconspicuously between two other cars.

  “What exactly are we watching for?” I asked.

  “At six-fifteen you’ll see.”

  I talked with him while we waited, asked him about his aunt.

  “She’s a bit dull,” he said. “Not like my mom and dad were. She feels trapped, but I believe she does her best.”

  “Trapped?”

  “In her life, in her marriage.”