EQMM, November 2007

by Dell Magazine Authors

  "I'll cut you in half if you move, I swear I will. I'll do it for Dolly. Owen, call the police."

  * * * *

  7.

  The following Wednesday I was once again the guest of the Holy Angels Bocce Society. The afternoon off was a little bonus from Tessa for getting Dolly's killer. As a further reward, she'd taken me as her partner in the practice match. Or maybe that was a reward for Enzo and Emilio, our opponents, who were beating the pants off us, so to speak.

  The game was interrupted by the arrival of a tall, thin man in black, Father Colin Walsh. He beckoned me over to an idle court, and Tessa nodded her release, maybe thinking she'd do as well without me. I handed my beer to Enzo and walked over.

  "You visited me in my garden, and here I am in yours,” the priest said in greeting.

  "How did you find me?"

  "The man at the store knew where you'd be. McNab's."

  That raised the question of how Walsh had found McNab's. He didn't make me ask it.

  "I was speaking to a friend of yours on the police force, a Lieutenant Craney. He was nice enough to let me know that Father Mullins has nothing more to fear in the matter of Dolly Vasti's death. He told me where you worked. I thought I'd come by to thank you myself."

  As far as I could see, I'd done nothing for Fathers Mullins and Walsh that required a thank you in person. Some other errand had brought the priest, something he'd tell me about when he was ready.

  "You did a fine job,” Walsh added, “speaking as one inquisitor to another. What made you first suspect Mr. Maniman?"

  I told him the thing that should have been the first piece I placed and instead had been one of the last. “You may not have heard, but Dolly Vasti said something before she died. ‘The sin of Judas.’”

  "I'd not heard."

  "The police thought she meant her husband's betrayal of her with another woman."

  Walsh spotted the problem more quickly than I had. “But the sin of Judas, his damning sin, wasn't betrayal. It was despair. He despaired of God's forgiveness and so hanged himself. You think Dolly meant Mr. Maniman?"

  "He despaired of ever having the woman he loved,” I said.

  "Despaired so hard he lashed out at her. And he's hanged himself, like Judas, only more slowly."

  We listened to the distant rumble of traffic and the nearer clack of wooden balls. Father Walsh still seemed reluctant to tell me why he'd come, so I asked a question that had been worrying me.

  "How big a problem is this sexual abuse by priests?"

  The Irishman came out of his thoughts with a start. “There's only been the one complaint about Father Mullins."

  "But there've been others, about other priests. When I showed up at your rectory, you assumed I was another victim. So did Theresa, your receptionist, when I called."

  Father Walsh gave me a reappraising look, one I hadn't gotten in a while. “However big the problem is,” he said carefully, “the archdiocese has it in hand. Justice will be done. You can depend on it."

  It was clear to me that Walsh believed what he said. I wondered how well he understood the bureaucracy in which he was placing so much faith. In the end, I decided to trust him and his judgment. I thanked him for coming by, giving him one last chance to tell me why he'd made the trip.

  He ran a hand through his red hair and said, “There's something I wanted to ask you, Owen. I've no idea what happened at that seminary out in Indiana and no real desire to know. But I did want to ask you whether you've ever thought of taking up your studies again."

  "For the priesthood?"

  "Exactly. The work grows every year, and the workers fall by the wayside. I could definitely use a man like you in the work I do, though I couldn't make you any promises there. What I could do is say a word to the archbishop on your behalf."

  "Please don't trouble yourself,” I said.

  He sighed. “At least think about it. If not the priesthood, think about doing something else with your life, something more than you're doing now. This sin of Judas we've been discussing, the sin of despair, we can any of us fall into it. It can cut us off from the future as surely as it has poor Mr. Maniman."

  "I'll think it over,” I said.

  "Good man. Maybe a private inquiry bureau would be the answer. Recent events have created a vacancy. The Owen Keane Detective Agency, you could call it. Your motto could be ‘Unanswerable questions discreetly answered.’ Good luck to you, Owen."

  To both of us, I thought, and returned to my game.

  (c)2007 by Terence Faherty

  [Back to Table of Contents]

  * * * *

  "I've never been so scared in my life!"

  * * * *

  [Back to Table of Contents]

  THE BEST REVENGE by Brendan DuBois

  * * * *

  Art by Mark Evans

  * * * *

  An author who alternates non-series thrillers with his Lewis Cole novels (featuring a writer sleuth), Brendan DuBois has been contributing to EQMM since 1986. Many of the New Hampshire author's stories involve forces that seem larger than the characters striving against them. His new novel is Twilight (St. Martin's, 11-07).

  * * * *

  When I got off shift, I decided to keep my uniform on. I've found that wearing the uniform means quicker service and answers to my questions at the hospice where Mom is staying. Part of the secret alliance between healthcare workers and cops; we both see the worst in people on a daily basis, and try to look out for each other as much as possible. Which is why a lot of cops are married to nurses. However, most nurses are still female, and I'm blissfully heterosexual and have yet to find a male member of the medical establishment that I can put up with for more than five or six months, much to Mom's dismay.

  As I parked my car in the near-empty lot and walked up to the building, I thought again about that choice of words: staying. Nobody in that building was living. Living meant staying put, building a life, going on with things. At the Wentworth County Hospice, the residents were just waiting to go places, places that weren't talked about in polite company.

  I nodded at the staff—all young and vibrant looking, like ambassadors from the land of Good Health—and made my way to my mom's room. There was a little cardboard sign on the door that said “Jacqueline Powers,” though only lawyers and doctors ever called her Jacqueline. “It's Jackie, thank you very much.” Her room's on the east side of the building and has a good view of Porter Harbor, the sole working harbor in the state of New Hampshire, and Mom turned and gave me a weak smile as I came into the room.

  "Stephanie, so glad to see you,” she said, stretched out on her bed, a small writing table across her lap, cards laid out in solitaire. Mom is seventy years old and most of her life has had bright red hair, which she has always been proud of and which she has passed on to her sole daughter and two sons. Today, what was left of that blazing mane was hidden by a light-blue scarf wrapped around her head. She had on a Porter Police Department sweatshirt, and on the nightstand next to her, her favorite bits of jewelry. As she's lost weight, the rings and bracelets have kept on slipping off and she won't put them away. She insists on keeping them in plain sight, even though I've warned her that her jewelry might get stolen.

  When I had told her that, nearly a month ago, she had smiled sweetly and said, “The bastards wouldn't dare."

  Knowing my mother, she was probably right.

  "Hi, Mom,” I said back to her, kissing her forehead, the first of several evidence-gathering ploys I've come to use. A cool and slightly moist forehead meant she was having a good day. Hot and dry meant a bad day. Today seemed to be a good day and I took one of the chairs in the room, looking for other bits of evidence, and there it was: In the small trash bin next to her bed were chocolate-bar wrappers. I felt a small tingle of encouragement. Mom has always been one for keeping secrets, from how she met my dad (now living with a male sculptor in Key West) to how she became interested in police work (she was the first female officer and detective in m
y own department in Porter) up to and including the present day and the malignancy that was raising merry hell with her innards.

  "Don't you fret,” she had said, and I had ignored, but even the doctors weren't much help in keeping me informed. I think she frightened them as well, for all I got from them was vaguely optimistic tales of radiation and chemo and future surgeries, if current trends continued in their course, blah blah blah.

  I had given up fighting Mom over this; now she was residing at the hospice, where they bused her over once a day to the cancer center at the Porter hospital and then took her back, where she ate what she could and tried to keep up her strength during her bouts of nausea and vomiting, and where I tried to be the good daughter.

  So today she dealt out her cards and said, “How was your shift today? Anything interesting?"

  I shook my head. “A motor-vehicle accident in the morning, another in the afternoon, and I served two warrants, one for passing bad checks, the other for non-payment of child support. Was able to catch up on a lot of paperwork."

  "You still studying?"

  "Sergeant's exam's not for another six months, Mom."

  She gave me her patented mom look. “I know how you operate, Stef. Always at the last minute. Look, hit the books now, you'll be that much more prepared when the time comes."

  I smiled. “Okay. I'll dig into them tonight."

  She flipped a card. “Liar,” she said, which caused both of us to laugh.

  Another flip of the card. “You've been to the house lately?"

  "Yesterday, Mom. Mail is all caught up, lawn got mowed last week, and the plants are still alive."

  "Good ... You know,” she said, her voice wistful, “I have such a pretty view here, but nothing like what I have at home, especially from the rear deck. The state forest, all those tall evergreens, the birds, even the occasional deer. Sweet God, I can hardly wait to get out of here, get back to where I belong."

  "And when's that, Mom?"

  "Soon,” she said, lying with ease. “Soon enough, and sooner still if you kill off my plants."

  We laughed again, still another good sign, and then when I was going to ask her how her day had gone—the usual tale of the bus trip, the radiation dose, the vomiting battle either won or lost—she surprised me by saying, “I'd like to ask you to do a favor for me."

  "A favor? Sure."

  She flipped another card. “A special favor. One that has to be quiet, between us. Don't tell your brothers, all right?"

  I looked to her nightstand, which had four framed photos on it. Two were family portraits of my older brothers, Don and Lee, with their respective wives and children, or sisters-in-law and nieces and nephews, depending on your perspective. Don was a software engineer and Lee sold insurance. Both lived hundreds of miles away, and while I loved them as much as a sister could, I found them both exceptionally dull, and was secretly glad that we only got together during the holidays.

  The third portrait was a framed shot of me, soon after being sworn in as an officer, with my own long red hair tucked up under my uniform cap, and with a serious expression on my face that looked as if I had received an enema an hour beforehand and desperately needed to get to the bathroom before trouble ensued.

  The fourth, a black-and-white, was of Mom in her own Porter Police Department uniform, sitting on the edge of an office desk, laughing. I always liked that pic. Even with the severe-looking uniform of the day, Mom looked seductive sitting on the desk, legs crossed, with a ready smile and a cute bod that filled out the uniform pretty well. Another of Mom's secrets—I gathered that she was quite the va-va-va-voom gal when she was younger, but I only heard those tales from the old-timers at the department. Never from Mom.

  Anyway, I looked to Mom and said, “All right. A favor. Just for you. Our secret. What is it? Want to make a break for it? Get down to Rio for the holiday?"

  That brought another smile, and I felt really damn good this visit—right up until the favor was asked.

  Then I didn't feel so good at all.

  * * * *

  Mom reached over to her nightstand, opened up a drawer, pulled out a thick file folder. She passed it over to me and I looked at the name, the date—more than forty years ago!—and then looked back to Mom and said, “This is a case file. From the department."

  "Yes, it is,” she said.

  "But you shouldn't have it. It shouldn't have left the records department."

  A faint shrug. “Some people still remember me back there, Stef. They don't mind bending the rules a bit."

  I let it sit in my lap, as if ignoring it would make it go away. “What's the case?"

  "Mimi Summers. Died in August nineteen sixty-seven. My very first unattended death as a patrol officer."

  "What happened?"

  Mom went back to her cards. “Cause of death was officially ruled a suicide. But I've always thought otherwise."

  I checked the date again. “You were ... what ... six months on the job then?"

  "After working as a dispatcher and jail matron, that's right. Before they finally let me into their little boys’ club and let me carry a gun and handcuffs."

  "But you wouldn't have handled the case,” I said. “The detectives would have worked it. Right?"

  She looked up at me. “True. But I was first on the scene, Stef. I made the first canvass of the neighborhood, talked to the first witnesses. Sure, the detectives took it away from me in less than an hour ... but that was my first, and it was mine. And now I'm asking you for a favor."

  "What's that?"

  "I want you to take a look at the case file."

  "What for?"

  "What do you think?” she shot back. “This case has bugged me, Stef. Bugged me for years. And I always wanted to take another look at it, one more in-depth look, to dig up what really happened ... and I always kept on putting it off, putting it off. Well, I don't want to put it off anymore ... and since I won't be leaving these charming accommodations any time soon, I need your help."

  "Mom..."

  "Don't ‘Mom’ me,” she said sharply. “Take a look, that's all I ask."

  "You haven't told me why, Mom."

  "Christ on a crutch, Daughter, do I have to spell it out for you? There's no statute of limitations on homicide. You know that."

  The case file felt like a chunk of lead in my lap, freezing me in place. I took a breath, thought carefully of the next few sentences I was going to say. “You want me, a patrol officer in the department, not assigned to the detective division, to look at a forty-year-old case to determine if it might be a homicide. Is that what you're asking?"

  Her face had the pleased look I had seen as a daughter in the fifth grade successfully reciting the Gettysburg Address from memory in front of a school assembly. “Yes, Stef, that's exactly what I'm asking."

  I waited another moment, waited for that sweet temper of mine that goes along with my red hair to subside, and I said, “Sure, Mom. I'll do that."

  "Thank you,” she said.

  "No problem,” I said, which was a lie, for at that moment I was damning her, the Porter Police Department, and those rogue cells in her body that were betraying her.

  * * * *

  I resisted the urge to open the file then and there, and said, “Mom, tell me what happened. Your own words. All right?"

  Her eyes glittered some, like those of an old veteran once more being called to duty. “Sure. My first unattended death. Never forgot it. I was assigned to foot patrol, down by Harborside. This was nineteen sixty-seven, long before the urban renewal, long before the Navy cut back its presence at the Navy Yard. So it was a rough stretch of town, Stef, much rougher than anyone can remember. All those pretty tourists that go down there now ... they wouldn't have lasted more than five minutes back in the bad old days."

  "On the job just six months, and you were patrolling by yourself? In Harborside?"

  "You forget, Stef. I was the first woman patrol officer. The very first ... and the department was de
termined to make me quit. So I had the crap assignments, right from the start. Overseeing the drunk tank on weekends, when the floors were slick with vomit and piss. Working the eleven P.M. to seven A.M. shifts ... and being called in for mandatory overtime when you kids had some school function I wanted to go to. And working Harborside by myself, with the druggies, drunks, sailors on the prowl, and assorted losers vying for attention. All designed to push me out. From the chief to the detectives to the other officers. They all wanted me gone.” She gave a harsh laugh. “Guess it didn't work, did it?"

  "What happened that night?"

  From the nightstand she grabbed a cup of water, took a long drink. Another tiny victory. She said, “It was past closing time. About three A.M., if I remember. This woman came up to me on the sidewalk ... Doris Mooney. She was worried. Her roommate hadn't come home yet. Mimi Summers. Seems Mimi worked at the Virgin Mermaid, a bar on Ceres Street. It was a Sunday night ... and Mimi usually closed up. But she hadn't come home and Doris was worried.” She paused and said, “Well, Doris was also drunk and probably high on weed at the time, but the two of them had an after-hours party they were going to. And it was never like Mimi to miss action like that."

  "So you went to the bar."

  "Yep."

  "What then?"

  "Got in, saw the poor girl in the center of the barroom, dead. Hanging from the rafter, rope around her neck, barstool tipped over on the floor. My very first dead body ... and you know what I remember?"

  My fingers traced the edge of the file folder. “No, what do you remember?"

  "The smell ... the smell of death. Just filled that little room. And her roommate, how she screamed and screamed and screamed ... until I dragged her out and cuffed her to a lamppost, just to get her out of the way. And then I made a call from a call box, and then the big boys came in, did their thing, made me do a canvass of the area and talk to neighbors, take their statements, and a week later, I saw the little story in the Porter Herald. Death ruled a suicide. That's it. Asshole detectives didn't have the courtesy to tell me in person. I had to read it in the damn paper."