EQMM, December 2007

by Dell Magazine Authors

  Bonner didn't drink anymore, but he used to. In the early years of Lindsay Hamilton's homicide investigation, nearly every day after work he'd buy a six-pack and head to the Snake's house. He'd sit in the car, pop the top on a beer can, and watch the house for hours, waiting for Snake to make a mistake. He never had. Bonner had eventually been forced to give up his off-duty vigils of Snake's house just about the time he'd been forced to give up alcohol.

  Bonner hefted the trashcan liner over his shoulder and headed for the parking lot where he'd left his ten-year-old Lincoln Continental. Once inside the car he paused to inhale a ghostly whiff of cigarette smoke. He had recently quit smoking, too. Now he found himself yearning for a cigarette and wondering why he'd bothered to give them up. As soon as Bonner pulled into traffic, he realized he was heading away from the party and toward the freeway. Perhaps it was better this way. Why delay the inevitable?

  Traffic was light and twenty minutes later Bonner pulled the Lincoln up to the curb in front of the house and turned off the ignition. He forced himself out of the car, not bothering to lock the door. He made his way to a flowerpot that stood near the side door, tilting it to one side to retrieve the key. He knew it was a bad idea to leave a house key outside. It was an invitation for bad guys to step inside and help themselves. But the key was a convenience, especially when you locked yourself out of the house. Bonner had learned that lesson firsthand back in the days when he drank too much. Besides, this key had been lying unmolested under the pot for years.

  Bonner unlocked the door and stepped inside. The house was dark and smelled of dusty furniture and dirty dishes left too long in the sink. Both signaled that a woman no longer lived here. Despite the odors, he decided against opening a window. He didn't want to disturb the neighbors. He hadn't had a drink in a long time, but tonight he felt like having a pick-me-up. He opened the refrigerator door and found a beer waiting for him. He twisted the cap off the bottle, took a swig, and then walked into the living room, where he sat in the easy chair in front of the TV, quietly reflecting on what he was about to do.

  He wondered what it was like to die. Did you find yourself standing before a tunnel bathed in white light with your loved ones beckoning for you to cross over some imaginary line? Or was it just like in the movies? Fade to black and then—finito.

  Bonner had thought long and hard about his decision. While he was still on the job he would not have contemplated such an act. It would have brought negative attention to the department, something he would not have allowed himself to do. Now he was no longer on the team. The prospect of ending his overwhelming feelings of hopelessness outweighed any loyalty issues he may have once had. On balance, he knew he'd made the right decision.

  He reached beneath his jacket, slid the Berretta from its holster, and laid it on his thigh. He'd have only one shot. His aim had to be perfect. He didn't want any hand-wringing over a brain-dead survivor. He wondered if his party had started yet, if anybody had noticed that the guest of honor wasn't there. Quinn would notice, of course, but by the time his partner's curiosity transitioned into concern it would be too late.

  Bonner hoisted the gun and racked the slide. A moment later, he heard the sound of a car and saw headlights pierce the thin curtains of the living room windows. He tensed, wondering if it was a neighbor turning around in the driveway. The headlights went out. His pulse thundered in his ears as he heard the sound of footsteps slowly moving up the sidewalk, stopping at the front door.

  Bonner's holster was silent as he leaned forward straining to hear if the person would go away. Perhaps he had aroused his partner's suspicion back at the station and Quinn had followed him here. Damn nosy kid. It would just be Bonner's luck to have him spoil the plan now.

  A moment later the door swung open. For an instant Bonner froze as light flooded the room.

  "What the hell? How'd you get—"

  "Hey, Snake. Party's over."

  Bonner saw Ed Mason's eyes open wide in terror as he aimed the Berretta at the mail carrier's heart and fired.

  (c) 2007 by Patricia Smiley

  [Back to Table of Contents]

  BLOG BYTES by Bill Crider

  Sherlockians (and everybody else) will enjoy Scott Monty's The Baker Street Blog (www.bakerstreetblog.com), which contains all sorts of delightful Sherlockian tidbits and sometimes their relationship to current events. Monty is also the webmaster for another recommended Holmes site, The Baker Street Journal (www.bakerstreetjournal.com). The Journal is “the preeminent publication of scholarship about Sherlock Holmes.” Bonus: the site has a link to “I Hear of Sherlock Everywhere,” a podcast from “a world where it's always 1895.” Monty and Burt Wolder talk about everything that's new related to Sherlock: historical issues, current events, or anything else. Required listening for Sherlockians and informative for everybody.

  I read Bill Peschel's blog regularly. His Writer's Almanac (www.planetpeschel.com) has all kinds of information for the day it's published, including names of writers who were born on that date and writers who died on that date. It has a Quote of the Day, and a section of always interesting links.

  Readers of this magazine should be well acquainted with Steve Hockensmith, whose blog can be found at his website (www.stevehockensmith.com). He doesn't blog as regularly as I'd like but when he does, he always hassomething interesting to say. Bonus: Sometimes “Big Red” Amlingmeyer contributes to the blog.

  And so I won't be neglectful of the group blogs like the ones I've mentioned here before, let me recommend Femmes Fatales (femmesfatales.typepad.com) maintained by Donna Andrews, Dana Cameron, Charlaine Harris, Julie Wray Herman, Toni L.P. Kelner, Marlys Millhiser, Kris Neri, Mary Saums, and Elaine Viets. You never know what topic will inspire them to write. It might be the mummy of Queen Hatshepsut, a trip to Greece, or the hardest part of a novel to write. Whatever the topic, this blog's always worth your time.

  Another group blog worth your time is Writers Plot (www.writersplot.typepad.com), perpetrated by Sheila Connolly, Lorraine Bartlett, Doranna Durgin, Jeanne Munn Bracken, and Leann Sweeney. Whether it's Leann's musings on why she's addicted to Court TV, Sheila Connolly writing about word play, or one of the other regulars opining on whatever strikes her fancy, you'll find something of interest. And just in case you have plenty of time on your hands, there are links to the authors’ individual blogs as well as to other blogs they read.

  Bill Crider's own peculiar blog, Bill Crider's Pop Culture Magazine, can be found at billcrider.blogspot.com

  Copyright (c) 2007 Bill Cryder

  [Back to Table of Contents]

  Fiction: A RUN THROUGH THE CALENDAR by Jon L. Breen

  Jon L. Breen has been EQMM's book reviewer for decades, and over the years he has also contributed a number of original short stories to this magazine, including pastiches and parodies of classic mystery writers. He favors the traditional mystery for his own creative work—mostly fairly clued whodunits. A retired librarian, he currently lives in Fountain Valley, California, with his wife Rita.

  Detectives Berwanger and Foley enjoyed speaking to groups, and the depart-ment enjoyed letting them. They put a human face on law enforcement, and they could adjust their delivery to any audience, from grade school kids to college students, from service clubs to writers’ groups. Eventually, their presentation, set up like a two-man comedy act, became so famous locally that they were in constant demand. “We'd like to schedule a police speaker for our next meeting,” callers to the department's community relations desk would say. “But only if it's Berwanger and Foley.” The chief had offered more than once to let them switch full-time to P.R. duties, but the longtime partners demurred, insisting that unless they continued to work cases on the street, they could no longer claim to be cops.

  "Keeps the act fresh,” Foley said.

  Berwanger was the lead talker, Foley the designated interrupter. Their favorite kind of audience, next to the school kids, was published and prospective mystery writers who wanted the real lowdown o
n police procedure. On this particular evening, before an eager group of thirty such, they were in top form.

  "Every cop knows there's no such thing as a whodunit in real life,” Detective Berwanger pontificated. “There are cases where you don't know who did it, sure. There are cases, too many of them, where you never find out who did it, but not cases where you have four or five equal suspects to choose among like in a story."

  "There was the Fitzgerald case,” Foley said, poker-faced.

  Berwanger looked at his partner as if annoyed by the interruption, then smiled at the audience as if to say, Look what I have to put up with. “Well, that was close, I'll grant you, but not really a whodunit for long. I mean, we wrapped it up pretty fast, didn't we?"

  Foley shrugged, and his partner took it as permission to continue. “Now another thing you don't get in real life is the so-called dying message. I don't mean to suggest there haven't been cases where somebody gets to the victim just as he's popping off and he manages to gasp out the name of the person who killed him, or even to write something down with his last ounce of energy. Sure, that'll happen—not very often, but it stands to reason it'll happen sometimes. But in a case like that, the victim wants to make it clear, or what's the point? Cases where the victim leaves some kind of cryptic message you have to puzzle out—well, let's just say I've never known it to happen."

  "Except in the Fitzgerald case,” Foley said.

  Berwanger paused and glared at his partner in mock irritation. “Technically, that wasn't really a dying message. The point I'm making, ladies and gentlemen, is that when you write your fiction and guys like us are reading it, we accept the conventions of the genre you're writing in—"

  "What's a genre?” Foley asked.

  "Please, don't embarrass me. My point is, we know you're going to have multiple suspects and esoteric clues, and we'll go along with you happily as readers, just so long as you don't make any serious errors in police procedure. That's when you'll lose us. And that's what we came to talk about tonight. Now does anybody have any questions?"

  A hand shot up in the first row.

  "Yes, ma'am."

  "Tell us about the Fitzgerald case."

  Berwanger turned to his partner with a puzzled expression. “Why would they want to know about the Fitzgerald case?"

  Foley shrugged. “It was kind of interesting."

  "But not at all typical of our work.” He sighed with exaggerated resignation. “Still, if that's what you want, I'll give you a rundown on the Fitzgerald case. Bernard Fitzgerald was CEO of his own software company and an extremely wealthy man. Early in the company's history, he pretty much quit coming to the office, working almost entirely from home. He managed to keep full control of every aspect of his operation by computer or telephone. The first week in July a couple of years ago, he was found murdered in his home office at about five o'clock in the afternoon. His housekeeper, who had been out shopping, found him seated at his desk in front of his computer screen. The latest company sales graph, covering the last year, was kind of lying on the computer keyboard, as if he'd been studying it when he died. There was a gaping hole in his forehead, which proved to be made by a slug from a .45-caliber handgun. The weapon was not on the scene.

  "Our crime-scene team were able to gather several pieces of physical evidence. When a recently fired weapon was found later in the home of our suspect, technicians were able to match the slug found in Mr. Fitzgerald with others test-fired from that same weapon through markings on the slug picked up on its trip through the bore of the gun. The tech folks call these lands and grooves, sort of like stalactites and stalagmites. The suspect was also tested for GSR—that's gunshot residue—and could be shown to have fired a gun. Unless you're writing a historical, never have your fictional cops do a paraffin test—that went out with rubber hoses—and whatever you do, don't have your cop pick up the weapon with a pencil stuck in the barrel. That could mess up the lands and grooves and make future ballistic testing pointless. It'd be as bad as having your cops stop for doughnuts every other chapter."

  "I like doughnuts,” Foley said.

  Berwanger looked at his partner pityingly and continued. “While our suspect had cleaned up after committing the crime, we were able to find microscopic blood residue on the suspect's clothing that matched that of the victim. To summarize, by the time we went to trial in the Fitzgerald case, the proper suspect had been brought to book by solid routine police work. Are there any more questions?"

  Several hands were in the air, and two of the audience spoke at once.

  "Where was the whodunit?"

  "What was the dying message?"

  Berwanger sighed in comic exasperation. “That won't help you keep your police procedure authentic, and that's what we're here for."

  "Better tell ‘em the whole story,” Foley said, “or they'll never invite us again."

  "Okay, okay, if you insist. The last message his secretary got from Fitzgerald, at four in the afternoon, was that he had an appointment with a relative, so would be out of touch for a while. He didn't name the relative but said something really strange. He said it was somebody who ran through the calendar. The secretary told us he often made funny little remarks like that, so it was nothing out of the ordinary. He liked to pull people's chains over unimportant things, though if anything was really important he'd make it crystal clear. He was a puzzle fan, she said, did the newspaper crossword every morning before he did anything else.

  "Now, like I said, Fitzgerald was very, very rich, but he had no children of his own and no living siblings. He did have two nieces and two nephews who would share equally in the bulk of his estate when he kicked off. Naturally, they all had an obvious motive and were the first people we wanted to check out.” Berwanger turned to his partner. “Okay, Foley, you've been standing there so smug, kibitzing and watching your partner sweat. Here's where you get to go to work.” He turned back to the audience. “My partner's quite an actor. He can do good cop or bad cop with a minimum of preparation, and he does the greatest drag act you ever saw at the annual Bluecoat Follies. In the interrogations to follow, I will be me, and Foley will take the role of the person being interrogated."

  Berwanger cleared his throat. “We first visited the victim's nephew, Barry. No, not Barry Fitzgerald, Barry Montgomery, the son of one of Fitzgerald's sisters.” He turned to Foley. “You have a very nice place here, Mr. Montgomery."

  "Why, thank you, Officer. I certainly like it.” Foley had transformed himself into a smiling, ingratiating go-getter bristling with nervous energy.

  "When did you last speak with your uncle?"

  "Oh, must have been last Christmas. We were on good terms, but we weren't often in touch."

  "What sort of work do you do, Mr. Montgomery?"

  "I'm in advertising. Account executive with Weedham and Reap, here in the city."

  "You've been pretty successful at it?"

  "I think so. Have you seen the ads for Happy Rest Funeral Park? Their slogan, ‘Quality of Life, Even in Death'? That's one of mine."

  "You must be doing pretty well. Is that an original Andy Warhol on your wall?"

  "Yes, it is."

  "Have much debt?"

  "Well, some, like anybody else these days. Ex-wife, you know how that is."

  "Actually, I don't. So were you at your office Thursday afternoon?"

  "No, I had the day off. I was at the movies all day."

  "Can you prove that?"

  "Gee, I don't know."

  "Did anyone see you?"

  "I was alone, and I didn't see anybody I knew. I can show you my ticket stub."

  Foley pantomimed passing something to Berwanger, who examined it. “This shows you went to see Million Dollar Baby at twelve-thirty P.M. Figure ten minutes for trailers. That picture runs maybe two hours. You're out well before three o'clock, and your uncle wasn't killed until after four."

  "I didn't leave the movie theater until five-thirty."

  "But your ticket says
—"

  "Look, after the first movie, I went in to see another one, okay?"

  "And did you buy a ticket for that one?"

  "Of course not. Look, you know what these multiplexes are like. They never check which movie you bought a ticket for. It's no big deal to sneak into a second movie or even a third. They don't care. They make all their money off concessions anyway."

  "I guess that's right. So you had something to eat at the movie?"

  "Hell, no. I'm not paying those prices."

  "Mr. Montgomery, your uncle told his secretary he had an appointment with a relative who ran through the calendar. Does that mean anything to you?"

  "Well, I guess we all run through the calendar, don't we? Working our tails off from January to December? But it has no special meaning to me. You might check out my cousin Vera, though. You'll enjoy it, even if it's a dead end."

  At that point, Detective Foley, without donning any drag, changed from hyperactive adman to indignant young woman very conscious of her beauty.

  "Miss Willing, to begin with I have to ask: Is that your real name?"

  "Yes, it's my real name, Vera Willing, and I know what you're getting at. You think I'm some kind of sex pro, like a stripper or porno actress or prostitute or something. Well, I'm not. I'm really a very modest person. Taking off my clothes for a magazine layout in Pentup was an honor, a well-paid compliment to me and my body, but it was a one-time thing. Do you realize how many women from all walks of life have posed for Pentup? And I assure you it was done in extremely good taste. It was very classy."

  "To get to the point, at the time your uncle died, he said he had an appointment with a relative who ran through the calendar. We've been trying to figure out what that means, and someone suggested that you were Miss January two years ago in Pentup."