by B K Stevens
“He didn’t say he’d hidden it.” I strained to remember his words. “He said he’d put it away. Somewhere ‘nice and safe,’ he said, some place ‘nice and simple.’ And, right at the end, he said the place was ‘perhaps a little too plain, a little too self-evident.’” The words had a familiar sound to them. I thought of the smile that passed across Spat’s lips just before he died. Then I thought of the bookcase at his apartment. Damn, I thought. “Carlson,” I said, “I’m an idiot.”
“Yeah, I’ve always suspected that,” he agreed. “Any special reason for bringing it up now?”
“It’s Poe,” I said. “Remember? He didn’t fit in with the other authors—he wasn’t a hunter. I was trying to figure out why Spat liked horror stories. But Poe didn’t just write horror stories. He wrote detective stories—he damn near invented the detective story. A detective can be like a hunter—Poe’s detective, anyway.”
Carlson squinted. “He shot animals?”
“No, but he hunted for things—he found things.” I could feel myself getting excited. “There’s this story, ‘The Purloined Letter.’ That business about being a little too plain, a little too self-evident—I’m pretty sure that’s word-for-word from the story.”
“So Wayne died with a quote,” Carlson said, impressed. “Classy.”
“It’s more than that.” I had to pace to stay calm. “In the story, someone steals a letter, and the police search his place for it. They do all the things you just talked about—tapping on floorboards, taking the plumbing apart. No luck. Then Poe’s detective waltzes in and finds the letter right away. Know where it was?”
Carlson looked uneasy. “Not inside a dead animal. Please don’t say it was inside a dead animal.”
“No.” I smiled. “It was in a letter rack. Nobody noticed it, because nobody expected him to hide such a valuable letter in such an obvious place.”
“The gun racks in Spat’s apartment,” Carlson said, perking up. “But they’re empty.”
“Those gun racks, yes.” I took out my phone. “There’s a proverb—if you want to hide a tree, put it in a forest. Well, if you want to hide a gun, put it on display at the American Firearms Association.”
*
Jackson Haywood unlocked the office that night, and we found it—the quiet Beretta .32, hanging in plain sight but eclipsed by the more elegant weapons surrounding it. Our technicians confirmed that it had been fired recently, that it matched the single bullet found in Karen Dodd’s chest; they even discovered a trace of McDonald’s special sauce on the trigger. Confronted with this evidence, and with Wayne Spat’s deathbed statement, Randy Dodd panicked and confessed, pleading for a deal.
Maybe he didn’t have to. Our case was plausible, but not foolproof. Someone smarter and stronger might’ve toughed it out all the way to a hung jury. But Randy Dodd wasn’t all that smart, or all that strong. He’d spent too many years lounging in his easy job, enjoying the fancy title he got because he was married to an important woman. Karen Dodd had the real brains in that family, the real guts. If she’d pulled that stunt with the rabbit—and I felt sure she had—she’d inspired him. She’d shown him how easy it was to lie to the press, to manipulate a way onto the front page. She’d planted the idea for her own murder. Her husband decided to emulate her, to take his one shot at fame and fortune of his own.
Three months later, I ran into Charlene Gorshin at a bail reduction hearing. The hearing went my way, I felt good, so when she asked me to lunch, I accepted.
“It’s not too late, Dan,” she said. She was even thinner now, her neck so scrawny that her head seemed almost detached from her body. Just looking at her made me nervous. “We’d love to have you as a script consultant. ABC’s being a pain in the ass, claiming their mini-series is the only authoritative one because they’ve got Jacqui Liston playing herself and Carlson spewing police dirt. Carlson may never come back, you know—he auditioned to host True Crime Videos, and I hear he and Jacqui are an item. They split a pizza at Spago and went to an AIDS benefit together. Anyway, if you’d sign on with us, it’d shut ABC up quick.”
“Sorry,” I said. “So, you’re doing a mini-series? What happened to the reality show?”
She sighed. “Fox. Karen Dodd’s mother got custody of the kids, so she got the show—Without Them. Damn! I wish I’d copyrighted that title. At least we’re doing better than NBC. All they’ve got is a movie-of-the-week called The Eyes of Helen Quinn, the tragedy as seen from the receptionist’s point of view. And Jackson Haywood’s hitting the lecture circuit, PBS is doing a special on media exploitation of violent crime—everybody’s cashing in. Why not you? You solved a big, important murder. People want to know about it. What’s so terrible about telling them?”
“I’m not saying it’s terrible. I don’t choose to do it. That’s all.”
“Like hell that’s all.” She speared a hardboiled-egg slice from her salad, pushed aside the yolk, and nibbled at the white. “That sounds very nice and liberal, but I don’t buy it. It’s not just what you ‘choose’ to do and what I ‘choose’ to do. You’re judging me. So tell me what I’m doing wrong.”
“I’m not sure I can.” I searched for a way. “Two days after Wayne Spat died, Jackson Haywood got a letter from him. Remember how Spat came up to Randy Dodd at the funeral home? I thought Spat was trying to blackmail him. He was, but not for money. He knew Dodd killed his wife but promised to keep quiet if Dodd told the press she was all wrong about gun control. We asked Dodd, and he confirmed it.”
She stared at me. “So?”
“So a woman was murdered, and Spat knew who did it. He could’ve brought the killer to justice. He could’ve tried to get rich. But he just wanted to get good press.”
She thought it over. “Sorry, Dan. I still don’t get it.”
I tried again. “That anonymous call you got about the sex tape—a man’s voice, muffled? Five other reporters got the same kind of call that day. Ever wonder who made those calls?”
“Some chatty cop,” she said, shrugging.
“I don’t think so. I think it was Randy Dodd.” I dipped a French fry in ketchup. “I’m pretty sure.”
“Randy? You think Randy wanted people to know about that tape?”
“I think he hoped to watch it on 60 Minutes. Think about it, Gorshin. A politician’s husband making a sex tape, with a woman he hardly knew. It’s so massively stupid that I could hardly believe it. Then it hit me. He did it on purpose. The tape made the story more spectacular, and that meant more publicity, bigger royalties. True, millions of people would see him cavorting around naked, but he didn’t mind. He might’ve thought it’d be fun.”
“That’s weird,” she admitted, “but I don’t see what it has to do with you making some honest money as a script consultant. Nobody’s asking you to cavort around naked.” She arched an eyebrow. “At least, not on 60 Minutes.”
I let that pass. “It’s not just one thing. It’s the voyeurism, partly, but it’s more than that. The boundaries are getting blurred, Gorshin—between what’s public and what’s private, what’s image and what’s real, what’s decent and what isn’t. People can’t tell the difference any more. Something’s wrong. I can’t say just what it is, but that’s all the more reason I shouldn’t get involved. I shouldn’t help blur the boundaries. I should stay on my own side, where I know what I’m doing.”
“You’re nuts,” she said, almost affectionately. “You’ve got some tiny ethical reservations, so fuzzy you can’t articulate them, and as a result you’re passing up the biggest payoff of your life.”
I shrugged. “I drew my regular pay the week I arrested Randy Dodd. And I get extra satisfaction from picturing him sitting in his cell, reading the papers, seeing other people snatch up the deals he committed murder to get. I call that a nice image.”
“I call it pretty shabby,” she said. “Wouldn’t keep me warm at night.”
“Speaking of what keeps you warm at night,” I said, “how’s Jim Bixby? I hear you
two have gotten cozy, ever since he signed on as a consultant with CBS.”
She sat forward. “Strictly temporary. He’s got roots here, and I’ve got damn-near-definite offers from two stations on the coast. So there are no long-term possibilities. And I happen to be free tonight. How about you?”
I smiled. “I’m still figuring out my involvements. I don’t know what the long-term possibilities are there, either, but we’re still seeing the marriage counselor. Officially, we’re still trying.”
She threw her napkin down on her plate. “So that’s it. I offer you a fat consultant’s fee, and you say a cop’s salary is plenty, thanks. I offer you a whole night with me, and you say you’d rather twiddle your thumbs until your next meeting with some bitch who probably hasn’t given you any action in months. Fine. See you around, Lieutenant. I’ve got to revise my screenplay. The way I see it, Carlson solved Karen Dodd’s murder, and you were just the bumbling old fool who slowed him down. That’s how my viewers will see it, too.”
I lifted my glass in a salute and smiled. “You’ve got me trembling,” I said.
THE END