The Mammoth Book of New Comic Fantasy

by Mike Ashley

  “Alice is our daughter. She turned four last March.”

  Martin nodded. “And your ex-wife brought Alice over on Friday,” he said, to put Rosen back into the thread of his narrative.

  “I see Alice two weekends out of the month. That’s the way the lawyers set it up.”

  “I see,” Martin said.

  “After Candice dropped Alice off, I took her to the park.”

  “Which park? Saunders or Treewood?”

  “Treewood. Alice loves that big slide they have. The one that comes down out of the oak tree.”

  Martin nodded. “I know the one. Go on.”

  Rosen sighed heavily, then turned from the window to face us. “I usually sit on the bench next to the water fountain. It’s near the slide, of course, but sometimes I can’t see my little girl when she’s behind a tree or something. She moves around so much that she’ll usually pop into sight within a minute or two. After a bit I got worried. I walked around and still didn’t see her. She had been kidnapped.”

  Martin frowned. “Usually, it turns out that the child is with the other parent. Especially in cases such as yours.”

  “I got a ransom note on Saturday.” He sounded as though it were something to be proud of.

  “Can we see it?” I asked.

  Rosen glanced at the floor. “The police have it.”

  “What’s it say?”

  “Five hundred thousand dollars. Small bills. They would be in touch to set up a meeting. The usual.”

  Martin’s eyes travelled over the room, noting the quality of the furniture and the expensive curios sitting on tables. His gaze went back to Rosen. “Can you afford it?”

  He nodded, paused, then nodded again jerkily. “Barely. I’ll have to liquidate everything.”

  “So someone knew your worth,” Martin observed.

  Rosen’s eyes fastened on Martin. “How so?”

  “From what you’re saying, they had a pretty good idea of how much money you could raise, if push came to shove.”

  “I . . . I hadn’t thought of that. Couldn’t they have just guessed? Or picked a number out of thin air?”

  Martin shrugged, which shifted my position slightly and caused my knee to send out fresh waves of pain. I let out a muted buzz. “Sure. Half a million dollars is a nice, tidy sum of money,” he agreed.

  Rosen nodded. “All I have.”

  “So Alice was taken Friday. You received the ransom note Saturday. Has there been any other communication?”

  “No.”

  “Typically the best time to do anything is when the kidnapper makes pickup on the ransom. The only other thing we can hope for is that the ransom note itself will provide the police with some clue as to your daughter’s whereabouts.”

  Martin questioned Rosen closely for another ten or fifteen minutes, filling in small gaps in the chronology, but without learning anything important. He also got the ex-wife’s address.

  The doorman saluted as we passed on the way out. “You take care of that li’l fella, Cap’n,” he said. “Looks like that door got ’im good on the way in.”

  Martin still didn’t get it. His conscience is armor plated. Nothing less than a direct hit makes an impression on him.

  We debated seeing the ex-wife next, but decided to go by the police station first. Pete Sims is an old friend of Martin’s and will usually let us know the inside story on anything going on.

  We made an obligatory stop on the way in. Marie, the closest thing Martin has to a steady girlfriend, works up front. He collected a kiss on the cheek before Marie bent to speak to me. “Has Martin been mistreating you again, Victor?”

  “Oh, yes! Terribly,” I told her. “He only feeds me twice a week.”

  She smiled. “I think I’ve got a head of lettuce that’s going bad. Want me to save it for you?”

  “What color is it?” I asked.

  “Still green . . . mostly.”

  “Wait until it’s black and purple and slimy all over. That’s when they taste best.”

  Marie is a brave woman – she only nodded. “Another few days should do it.”

  “I’m drooling.”

  “Don’t you dare,” Martin protested. “This is the last clean shirt I’ve got. If you slobber on it, I’ll . . .”

  “You’ll do no such thing,” Marie said, reaching out and stroking my side gently. “Victor’s a sweet little guy.”

  “Unless you’re a Chihuahua,” Martin said. “Marie, I hate to run, but I need to speak to Pete for a few minutes.”

  She pouted, knowing full well that the sultry look she was turning on Martin would melt him in his shoes. “And I thought you were here to see me . . .”

  Martin beat a hasty retreat. “God, that woman does wicked things to my hormones,” he muttered as he carried me down the hall towards Pete’s office.

  “She never laid a hand on you,” I noted.

  The corner of his mouth twitched as though he were trying to keep from smiling. “Touché.”

  Pete was sitting behind his desk, reading a report. Half-eaten, a fast food burger lay on its wrapper within easy reach. Two empty wrappers lay next to it. His feet were propped atop all the layers of paperwork that lay in untidy piles across his desk. His head bobbed up when he heard us come in, then he frowned. “What the devil is wrong with your leg, Victor?”

  “It hurts.”

  He ran his fingers through the ruins of what had once been a full head of red hair and slid out of his chair. “Well, hell, I reckon so.” Gently, he touched my knee, then nodded slowly. “Let me try something.”

  Squatting down, he began rubbing his hands together briskly. “This will hurt a bit.”

  I steeled myself. “I’m ready.”

  His palms were palpably warm from being rubbed together. He placed one on each side of my joint and began to press, quite hard. Slowly, he rubbed each hand in a circle, using the other to steady my leg. He alternated hands in this manner several times. The first cycle actually felt good. Then the pain started to build. When I started buzzing, he glanced up and met my eye, but continued to rub. “Steady, Victor.”

  Amazingly, the sharp-edged pain abated quickly. In its wake, it left only a dull ache. Comparatively, though, it was an improvement. “Pete, have you ever considered becoming a doctor?”

  He grinned at me. “Why would I want to go and do a thing like that? I’m just now getting good at being a cop.” He grunted as he pushed himself to his feet. He carries a perpetual paunch, much the way that Martin had been carrying me – as baggage he would rather do without, but has come to love. At least, I assume Pete loves his belly, he feeds it enough.

  He maneuvered back around his desk and flopped into his chair. “So . . . what can I do for you? It’s too much to hope that this is a purely social call.”

  “The Rosen kidnapping this past Friday,” Martin told him.

  Pete snorted. “Should have known you’d make it hard on me. Why don’t you fellows ask me about a homicide instead? That way I’d have it right here on my desk, instead of having to tromp all over the building.” His face twisted into a grimace. “Okay, sit tight. I’ll be back in a minute.”

  “Martin?” I asked after Pete had maneuvered his bulk through the door. “Do you suppose there’s anything good to eat under Pete’s desk?”

  Martin wrinkled his nose in distaste. “From the looks of things, I don’t think anyone’s swept under there in years. If you want to have a look, you’ll have to get down and do it yourself. I’m not about to go rooting around under there. My fingers would probably rot and fall off.”

  “Really?”

  His face paled. “Victor! You wouldn’t eat a part of me, would you?”

  I sighed. “I guess not. I’d be guilty of biting the hand that feeds me.”

  Martin was still trying to decide whether to kill me when Pete returned and tossed a pile of loose papers into Martin’s lap, next to my feet. “We seem to be short on file folders around here, so don’t lose any of that stuff,
okay?”

  There wasn’t much to read, and it didn’t add anything substantive to what we already knew. Martin scowled. “It’s odd that nobody saw anything.”

  “You’d be surprised how little people notice in a public place. Unless the kid was putting up a fight, most people would assume that she was leaving to go home. Hell, even if she were fighting, they’d assume she was throwing a tantrum. These things were a lot easier back when kids were polite, quiet, and obedient. These days . . .” he shrugged.

  Martin nodded. “Did you check out the ex-wife? If she came for the child, I imagine Alice would go quietly.”

  “I didn’t do any of the questioning. This is Norm Pasky’s case – remember him? Anyway, unless it becomes a homicide I’m staying out of it. Let’s hope it doesn’t become one.”

  Martin plucked the ransom note out of the pile of papers by its edge. “Any way to trace the note?”

  Pete shrugged. “I’d guess not. These days the paper and the type face and so forth don’t tell you much. Any laser printer can do a roman pica easier than you can tie your shoes. There should be a lab report in there, but I doubt that it’ll do you any good.”

  Martin shuffled through the stack until he found the report, scanned it, then looked back up at Pete. “You’re right. Nothing worth trying to follow up.”

  “All you can do is talk to his ex. Other than that . . . wait.”

  Candice Rosen – she still used her married name – lived in a modest rented house in a decent neighborhood. It was late afternoon and the setting rays of the sun colored the houses on her street an angry reddish-orange.

  Martin parked at the kerb and carried me to the front door. She answered the bell so quickly that I got the impression she had been waiting by the door, perhaps for news of her daughter. She accepted Martin’s explanation of who we were and what we wanted without comment, then invited us in.

  “I must apologize for the house looking as it does. We . . . I didn’t ask Cal for very much in the way of furniture when we divorced.”

  I looked around the sparsely furnished living room, comparing it mentally to the threadbare relics Martin calls furniture. “Ma’am, I think it looks just fine,” I told her.

  She looked at me closely. “You speak?”

  I took no offence; her tone was genuinely puzzled. “My name is Victor, ma’am. I work with Martin.”

  “What are you?”

  I’ve never found a satisfactory answer for that question. Martin’s uncle had been a crew member on a space ship that landed on my planet. He saw me and decided that I would make a unique pet. Unfortunately, he went to his grave without telling anyone exactly which planet he had taken me from, so I have no way to go home. “In a way, ma’am,” I told her, “I’m a kidnap victim, myself. I’m the only one of my species on Earth and no one has gotten around to trying to classify me.”

  “You’re the only one? I thought there were hundreds of other aliens on Earth. Surely there’s another one like you, somewhere.”

  “Not the one who counts,” I said, thinking of my beloved Wanne, my para, hopefully safe back on my home world.

  “I’m afraid I don’t understand.”

  I have learned to imitate the human sigh. There are times when no other sound can communicate the proper emotion. “Don’t worry, ma’am. It will be all right. Perhaps someday I’ll get to go home.” But this carried its own pangs – the thought of leaving Martin left me feeling hollow. Ah, if I could only have both Martin’s friendship and Wanne’s love, that would be the best of both worlds. In a way, I was relieved not to have to make the choice.

  Martin, tiring of a story he had heard many times, broke in. “Mrs Rosen, we’d like to ask you a few questions, if you don’t mind.”

  She glanced back down at me, as if still uncertain as to how I fit in, before answering Martin. “Certainly. I don’t know if I can be of much help, though.”

  “You dropped your daughter off at your husband’s place on Friday afternoon, is that correct?”

  She nodded. “Yes, Cal has her every other weekend.”

  “What time was that?”

  “About four, maybe a little after.”

  “And he took her to the park?”

  She shrugged. “I don’t know. I wasn’t with them, but she does love to go there.”

  “So you don’t know what they do over the course of a given weekend?”

  She shook her head. “No, not ahead of time. Alice usually tells . . . told . . .” she sniffed and dabbed at her eye, but otherwise maintained her composure, “. . . me about it after he brought her home on Sunday evening.”

  “Have you been contacted by the kidnappers?”

  She shook her head. “So far, they’ve only sent the one note, and that went to Cal.”

  “If you don’t mind my asking, are you and your ex-husband on good terms?”

  She closed her eyes, remaining silent for a moment or two. “I suppose that depends on which of us you ask, I thought we were doing fine. Then one day he asked me to move out. He said we had grown apart. I didn’t feel that way, but what can you do? A relationship takes two people to make it work. I left.”

  “Was there someone else?”

  “I don’t know. I never tried to find out. I was too stunned to think things through at the time. At this point it’s moot.”

  “Do you still love him?” I asked gently.

  She shook her head; too quickly. Then she nodded slowly. “Yes,” she whispered.

  “And you’d like for the three of you to live together again,” I added.

  She nodded.

  Martin was looking at me oddly, but kept silent. “Ma’am?” I asked.

  She met my eye, but still said nothing.

  “Did the police ask you if you had taken Alice?”

  “They seemed to think it was possible that I had her. I don’t. I wish I did, though. If nothing else, I’d like to know if she was all right.”

  Proper human body language is to nod sympathetically when something like this is said, but my body is too stiff to flex in that way. “I understand. Sometimes I wish I knew whether Wanne was all right.”

  “Wanne is . . . someone special to you?”

  “Forever.”

  Martin was getting restless. “Mrs Rosen, strictly speaking, we’re working for your ex-husband, but since you and he are working towards a common goal, I’d like to leave my card with you. That way you’ll have a phone number where you can reach us if anything happens you think we should know about.”

  She took a deep, uneven breath. “All right.”

  Then Martin realized that, since he was holding me with both arms, he did not have a free hand. “Um, Victor . . .” he began.

  “Hold still,” I told him and reached for his wallet with my tongue. Candice Rosen’s eyes went wide as she watched my tongue slither around to Martin’s back pocket.

  He grimaced, then said quietly, so only I could hear, “Dammit, Victor, that tickles!”

  Once I had his wallet free, I used my hands to extract a card, which I then held out to Candice. She accepted it gingerly.

  As I slid his wallet into the outside pocket of his jacket, Martin said, “If anything happens, feel free to call us at any hour. Victor never sleeps.”

  She looked at me. “Seriously?”

  “I spend my time reading. Once Martin goes to bed the house is very quiet and I find that I can concentrate more easily.”

  She glanced around her. “I know what you mean about it being quiet. This house feels entirely different without my daughter in it.”

  I hadn’t intended for her to make that connection. “I’m sorry. We’ll do what we can to get her back for you.”

  On the way home, Martin was unusually quiet. I waited until we were inside his apartment before speaking. “What’s on your mind?”

  His lips compressed in irritation. “Don’t you think you were laying it on a little thick with that maudlin act? I kept wondering if I should be playing a violi
n.”

  “I would have thought that it was obvious. I was taking her pulse, emotionally. It was a little overblown, I’ll grant you, but in her state of mind, she’s only receptive to three emotions – sadness, fear, and worry. I played on the sadness. It worked.”

  Martin carefully placed me in a semi-recumbent position on the couch. “Okay, I’ll accept that. You seem to know more about human psychology than most shrinks, but I wish you’d warn me before you launch into a fishing expedition like that.”

  Carefully, I began to probe my knee with the tip of my tongue. The swelling was no worse and may even have subsided a bit. Pete’s magic rubbing routine appeared to have helped. “Martin, I have to play these things by ear, the same way you do.”

  He flopped into the recliner, grumbling. “All right, all right. So what did you determine?”

  “She doesn’t have the girl.”

  He rubbed his jaw a moment while he thought. “Can you prove that?”

  “Not exactly. The evidence is too circumstantial to stand up to a rigorous examination.”

  Martin snorted. “Try me.”

  “Well, for one thing, she didn’t know where Cal and Alice were going. If she didn’t know they would be at the park, then there’s no way she could have taken the girl.”

  “That’s the flimsiest excuse for logic I think I’ve ever heard.” He held up his fingers and ticked them off. “One, she could have followed them to the park. Two, Alice could have mentioned that she was going to ask her father to take her to the park. Three, she herself could have suggested the idea to the child. Four, it’s possible she could have an accomplice, perhaps a boyfriend, who would help her stake out any number of places where they might go. Five . . .”

  “Martin, all of those are reasonable theories. There’s only one problem.”

  “What’s that?”

  “Candice Rosen doesn’t have the girl.”

  “Then where is she, garbage breath?” Martin demanded.

  We talked and argued and discussed and wrangled and generally beat the subject to death until Martin was too tired to stay awake. Unable to leave it alone, I sat in the dark and mulled it over after he had gone to bed. He was quite correct, of course, it wasn’t a question of where Alice wasn’t, so much as where she was. There were an infinite number of places where she wasn’t, and my conviction that she wasn’t with her mother, while useful in a legal sense, was useless in the practical sense.