Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine. Vol. 130, No. 1. Whole No. 791, July 2007
- Автор: Хох Эдвард Д., Кобб Джеймс
- Год: 2007
- Язык: английский
- Год: Dell Magazines
- ISBN: 0013-6328
- Жанр: Другие детективы
Электронная книга - «Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine. Vol. 130, No. 1. Whole No. 791, July 2007». Краткое содержание книги:
“When you’d made sure of the dark, you got out of the Studebaker and chocked its rear wheel with the bag of ice from your car. You’d left it in the backseat where you could grab it easily. Then you reached back into the Studebaker, started it, released the parking brake, and put the automatic transmission in drive.
“With the engine just idling, the Stude didn’t quite have enough power to ride up and over the ice chock wedged under its wheel. But man, that ice was melting. You wiped your prints off the shift lever and brake handle and you were careful to slam the string tied to the ice bag in the Studebaker’s door. Then you got back in your car and you peeled out, real loud and showy, so that everyone in that turnout would remember you leaving and when.”
I chuckled softly for effect. “You must have been sweating blood, praying that no peeping Tom would look into that Golden Hawk before you got yourself safely situated on that barstool. Nobody did, and after about twenty minutes, the Studebaker’s idling engine pulled the car over the melting ice and rolled it off the edge of the overlook.
“As it did, the string closed in the door pulled the ice bag after the car. And, like you figured, the bag was torn away by the brush on the hillside, becoming just another piece of road trash in the sticker bushes. The couple of inches of string caught in the door would be disregarded as irrelevant and the water stain on the ground from the melting ice would evaporate.”
I was within grabbing range now. “And it did, just not fast enough.”
You could see the trapped animal welling up in Freemont’s eyes. For all of his attempted cunning he really wasn’t a very good killer. But he made the effort. “This is crazy! I don’t know what you’re talking about!”
“Doc,” I said gently, “the coroner’s checking the body for torn scalp follicles and he’ll be paying real close attention to bruising and blood-pooling discrepancies. And while you wiped off the outside of the Stude’s dome light, we’ve got a real good set of your prints from the inside of the housing. The backseat of your car is damp from where you laid the ice bag, and we’ve got a plaster cast of the blurred tire track made by the car riding up and over it. Our crime lab will be able to match the string caught in the Golden Hawk’s door with that tied to the bread bag and probably to a hunk you’ve got laying around your house somewhere.”
I gestured with the bread slices I still held. “The lab's also going to be able to match the recipe of the breadcrumbs adhering to the inside of the bread bag with what’s in your garbage can. They can probably even match the baking batch and the individual loaf.”
I tossed the bread down on the paving. “That’s gonna be more than enough for the D.A. to bind you over. Now you can be smart or you can be stupid. Which do you want?”
“I want to talk with my family’s lawyer,” he said dully. He was going to be smart.
“Suit yourself.” I unhooked my handcuffs from the back of my belt. “You can call him from the Hall of Justice.”
There was some pink in the gray over the San Gabes and a few more birds were waking up as we led him down the road towards Car.
We’d take him in so the detectives could catch the credit and the paperwork. Then the Princess and I would drive out to her place or mine. We’d grab a shower, a little sleep, and maybe get back to what we’d started up on the hills.
I guided Freemont with a hand on his shoulder while the Princess trotted along beside us. “Why kill her?” she asked conversationally. “You had it all, the money, the medical degree, the future. Why mess it up?”
Sometimes if you hit ’em just when they’re in shock from the arrest, when they’re in that strange moment of emotional relief because their guilt’s out, sometimes they’ll pop open.
“Dorothy wanted to get married,” he murmured, sounding very young and very lost. “And I wasn’t ready. She said she’d gotten pregnant. She’d make it ugly with my family, a breach of promise... She’d ruin my chances with the practice that was taking me on... It just seemed easier for her not to be there anymore.”
“Not really, man,” I replied. “Not really.”
© 2007 by James H. Cobb
Skin Deep
by Renée Yim
The following tale belongs to our Department of First Stories as the pseudonymous 29-year-old writer’s first work of fiction ever to see print in any language. But it also belongs to Passport to Crime, for the author was born in Lyon, France, of parents from Cameroon, West Africa. She worked as a podiatrist, using her free time to translate articles from English to French, before taking courses at a Parisian writing school and trying fiction.
Translated from the French by Mary Kennedy
Friday, September 21, 10:00 A.M.
Antoine was sitting in the back office reading the fax from his accountant. He sighed and removed his glasses. Things looked serious. He rubbed his eyes, then held them closed for a minute, half hoping it was just a bad dream that would go away when he opened them again. But it was no use. There it was: “...declare bankruptcy...”
His little company was struggling. That he could live with. But to see it disappear altogether was like walking with a bad limp for seven years, then waking in bed one morning to find both legs amputated.
Back in June 1998, his best friend and associate, Mathieu, had found a space in this small renovated building. In a flood of energy, the two of them had fixed it up. They had faith in their project: literary publishers and booksellers. Antoine Dufour and Mathieu Planchon were striking out on a great adventure. Six months later, the Dufour-Planchon Bookshop opened its doors in Paris.
The firm, clear sound of the shop door opening brought Antoine back to the present. He and Mathieu were having a book signing for the release of Yasmine Azoul and Hinda Wafi’s book Skin Deep, about two Muslim women and their differing lifestyles. He raised the blind and glanced quickly into the shop. A tall young man wearing a cap was stepping through the door. Yasmine was sitting behind a wooden table listening to a customer. Was it small talk, flattery, or curiosity? Mathieu was meticulously arranging the display of new releases in the shop window. Antoine picked up the stack of letters that needed to be mailed before noon and emerged from the back office, doing his best to hide his distress.
As he gave Mathieu the bad news, Antoine noticed the face of the young man with the cap twist into a grimace. He watched the beanpole of a man move, book in hand, toward Yasmine. At his approach, the cheerful expression on Yasmine’s face faded. When she reached for the book he held out, thinking he wanted her autograph, he spat on it, flung it in her face, and cried out, “Miscreant!” Spouting insults, he turned on his heels and, proud of his performance, left the shop.
Antoine and Mathieu rushed over to Yasmine with surprising speed. The same anxious cry sprang from both their throats at once. “Are you okay?”
“...Yes,” she murmured.
Yasmine felt her throat tighten. Her eyes, almost wild, followed Mathieu's hand as it picked up the object of aggression. Such violence over a book! “That’s no reason to assault someone,” she continued in bewilderment.
11:30 A.M.
That jerk had certainly succeeded in upsetting Yasmine, but she’d shown herself to be brave, thought Antoine, as he slipped some coins into a stamp dispenser at the post office. He was checking to make sure he had all the letters that had to be mailed when, suddenly, a deafening blast resonated throughout the building. Three hundred meters away, the shop window of Dufour-Planchon had been blown to pieces. Someone had thrown a bomb.