Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine 03/01/11 Page 5

  “Are you nuts? We’ve got no authority out there.”

  “We’re packing all the authority we need,” Larkin said, slapping the butt of his Glock automatic. “There was a motor launch back at the boatworks. We’ll commandeer it, run them down, and bust them both.”

  “For what?”

  “Assaulting a federal officer,” Larkin said grimly, backing the SUV around, making a U-turn. “Falk already attacked me in front of witnesses. If I rough up the Markovic woman, he’ll try it again, guarantee it. And it’ll be the last mistake that half-breed ever makes!”

  Matting the gas pedal, Larkin roared back toward the boathouse. Clutching the armrest, Ridley stared at his partner. Larkin’s eyes were wide and wild, so consumed with rage he could barely keep the speeding SUV on the road.

  Ridley knew he should tell him to slow down, knew he should get the hell out of the car and run like a scalded dog. But he didn’t.

  Because back at the bar, Larkin said one true thing. Grabbing the woman was their only chance now. They had nothing left to lose.

  From the surveillance satellites wheeling high overhead, the Great Lakes looked like the Spanish Armada had risen from the deeps to take a hard run at Chicago. Over two hundred sailing vessels were strung out in a twenty-mile skein for the annual Mackinac Regatta. Battling the stiff onshore winds, the boats were veering and bucking like a herd of wild mustangs thundering over the plains.

  As the leaders began rounding the tip of the Michigan mitten, a small trimaran began threading its way through the fleet, skillfully avoiding any interference with the racing craft.

  Focused on maintaining headway against the wind, the racers paid no attention to the Penny. She was clearly not competing, since her course was more easterly, bearing toward the Ontario shore. And the couple nestled in the stern were obviously in no hurry at all.

  Roaring into the boatyard, the two feds piled out of the SUV while it was still rocking, pistols drawn. Larkin was hoping for some static from the old man, but he was nowhere in sight. The wounded dog growled at them from the doorway, but made no move to rise as the agents sprinted past her to the powerboat moored at the end of the dock.

  Leaping into the launch, Larkin fired up the motor as Ridley freed the mooring lines and scrambled aboard. Gunning the powerboat out of the cove, Larkin tossed his binoculars to Ridley.

  “Find ’em!” he shouted over the howl of the engine. “They’re out here somewhere!”

  But all the damned sails looked alike to Ridley, as Larkin roared out into the bay, plowing through the outer ring of racers, leaving sailboats rocking in the launch’s wake, earning curses and shaken fists.

  And then he spotted them! The bat-like craft was already a third of the way through the northbound fleet, bearing northeast.

  “There!” Ridley yelled, lowering the glasses, pointing out the Penny. Falk spied the powerboat at the same time, and stood up to shield the woman.

  “Federal officers!” Larkin yelled, pulling his automatic, firing a round in the air. “Halt where you are!”

  Luke started to winch down the Penny’s sails, but didn’t move quickly enough for Larkin. The fed opened fire again, and these weren’t warning shots. He was aiming at Luke, shooting to kill. Wild slugs kicked up tall splashes on both sides of the Penny as Larkin struggled to steady his aim in the bucking motor launch. Other racers were shouting now, veering their crafts away from the gunfire.

  Letting go of the wheel, Larkin stood up, grasping his weapon in a two-hand hold. Leveling his sights on Falk, he began squeezing the trigger—and a halo of red mist suddenly sprayed from his right ear. Stumbling sideways on rubber legs, Larkin toppled out of the launch, plunging into the waves with his pistol still clutched in his fist.

  Ridley stared at Luke and Aliana, who were clearly unarmed. Then he wheeled around, scanning the other boats around him, filled with stunned, staring witnesses.

  There wasn’t a weapon in sight. Yet his partner was sinking slowly into the deep green waters, dead as a stone, a look of utter surprise frozen on his face.

  Ridley hadn’t drawn his own weapon and made no move to now. Instead he raised his hands in the air, circling slowly to show he meant no harm. Taking the wheel of the launch, he brought the boat about, heading back to the spot where Larkin had gone under.

  The dozen yachtsmen who saw Larkin fall assumed he was just a drunk, that the whole scene was some kind of crazy charade. They looked on, waiting for him to flounder to the surface, sobered by the icy lake.

  When he didn’t, several men leapt overboard, trying to find him. But they were too late. Larkin was already far below and still sinking. A yachtsman dialed 911, but it would take nearly an hour for a police boat with divers aboard to motor out to the fleet.

  In the furor, nobody noticed the trimaran moving off, working its way through the racing boats on an easterly course.

  “I don’t understand,” Aliana said, manning the helm while Luke reset the sails. “What happened back there?”

  “Somebody saved our lives,” Luke said, measuring the distance with a practiced glance. “Damn. That was one helluva shot. Eighteen hundred yards at least.”

  “But it couldn’t have been Deacon. I sent him back to Detroit.”

  “Then maybe it was someone else. My grandfather taught me everything I know, including how to shoot. He was a sniper in Korea, won the Silver Star.”

  “We must go back. They’ll arrest him.”

  “I don’t think so. At this distance there’s no way to tell who did what. Whoever fired that shot took Larkin out in front of a hundred witnesses to make sure we couldn’t be blamed. He opened the door for us, Aliana. We have to go through it.”

  Back at the boathouse, Gus settled into his deck chair with Razz at his feet, sipping a beer, watching the last sails vanish over the horizon. He’d already used Luke’s acetylene torch to reduce his ancient ’03 Springfield to slag and ashes. It was a pity to destroy such a fine old weapon, but he’d watched C.S.I. on the TV. The police could do wondrous things with evidence nowadays. Like tracing a gun to the man who fired it. Destroying the weapon was a prudent move. Gus might be getting on, but he still had his wits about him.

  And he still had a few skills. He hadn’t killed men at a distance in many years, but the terrible arts a man learns in his youth are embedded in his bones, impossible to forget, even when he wishes he could. As Luke found out after Iraq.

  His grandson and Aliana would do well in Cree country. She was a pretty little thing and very intelligent, a trait far more useful than beauty.

  He even admired her evil temper, so much like Kathleen’s. Living with such a woman might be difficult at times, but it would never be dull.

  If the law did come for him, it wouldn’t matter much. Any trouble would be only temporary. His true love and most of his friends were already in the next world. He knew more people there than here.

  When he was a boy with the Cree, the old ones said a man nearing the end of his time would hear an owl call his name. A foolish superstition.

  Here on the Point, Gus often heard owls, horned owls and great grays hooting deep in the forest. They never spoke to him. Only to each other, in their own tongue.

  But in the gathering dusk, as the shadows settled gently over the lakeshore, he found himself listening to the wind whispering through the tall pines.

  Waiting for the cry of an owl to pierce the soft silence.

  Hoping to hear his name.

  Copyright © 2011 Doug Allyn

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  Fiction

  Cheating the Hangman

  by Judith Cutler

  Fans of this historical series featuring early 1800s Reverend Tobias Campion won’t want to miss Judith Cutler’s two novels starring the sleuth: 2008’s The Keeper of Secrets and 2009’s Shadow of the Past. The British author also has two recent novel-length installments in her Lina Townend antiques-dealer series, which frequently appe
ars in EQMM at short-story length. See Ring of Guilt, Severn House Publishers (February 2011) and the earlier Silver Guilt.

  Of all the days in the Church calendar, Easter is surely the most important—when the Master I serve defeated death that we might all be saved. This particular Easter Day I was given the joy of celebrating Holy Communion twice over—once with my own dear friends in Moreton St. Jude and once at All Saints, Clavercote. The incumbent of this parish, never very assiduous in his duties, had recently and at the shortest of notice informed the bishop that he was about to travel on the Continent for the sake of his health. Why, with Europe in its present state, the Reverend Dr. Nathaniel Coates did not choose to repair to Bath or to Cheltenham, no one knew. Suffice it to say that the church in his care was but half full, and there was surprisingly little joy in the voices raised in the Easter hymns.

  Having blessed them all and offered what I hope were comforting words, I mounted my faithful Titus and set off for the village I now thought of as home—although my parents, in the vastness of their Derbyshire estate, would have disagreed. The shortest route was through the woods of Lord Wychbold’s estate, though the rides were badly maintained and the byways little more than rabbit tracks. Lord Wychbold, a man in his seventies, led the quietest of lives, receiving no visitors and only venturing out if he considered the occasion was pressing. Perhaps if he had set a better example, more of his estate workers would have been in church today.

  Comprehensively losing my way, I resolved to follow what seemed the most recently trodden path in the hope that it would bring me to a clearing where I could orientate myself by the sun, the overhead canopy being far too thick for the early spring rays.

  Despite the chill beneath the branches, there was a hum of insects: flies. And a sickly smell that spoke of death. Thinking an animal had died in a trap, I dismounted and led Titus very slowly, keeping my eyes peeled, lest he or I be similarly caught.

  Alas, the corpse I found was all too human. And it was not caught in a trap. In a dreadful parody of what we had just been celebrating, a man hung on a tree, nailed by his ankles and wrists, a deep gash in his side. But for a loincloth and a crown of thorns, he was naked. Even a local could not have recognised him, for his face was beaten to a pulp. There was a great deal of dried blood.

  “You have done well to find your way back here, Tobias,” Dr. Hansard said, trying in his kind way to distract me from the horror we faced. We had brought with us my former groom, Jem, whose new post as village schoolmaster had not rendered him too grand to assist Dr. Hansard whenever there was a need. Now he was carrying what was once an old tabletop, adjusted to carry either the living or the dead in need of the doctor’s skills. For Edmund was developing an extraordinary prowess in examining bodies to help determine the cause of death, a process at which I found myself totally unable to assist.

  We had brought a couple of trusted men to assist us in the grisly task of removing the corpse from the tree. Hansard and I placed them under the most solemn oath not to reveal what they had found, but I was sure that by the time we were back in Langley Park, Dr. Hansard’s residence, our activities would be all the way round the two villages and probably others besides.

  I was deputed to break the news to Lord Wychbold. A surly butler showed me into a shabby morning room. After near on twenty minutes, Wychbold entered the room, reading my card. “The Reverend Tobias Campion! My idiot of a butler did not tell me a man of the cloth had called! What can he be thinking of, to leave you cooling your heels in here? Pray, come with me to my library, which has the advantage of a fire, and join me in some sherry and biscuits.”

  Only when we were seated, one each side of a fitful fire, did I break the news to him.

  “A corpse? In my woodland? And in such a state? Dear God, how can that be?”

  His face went so grey I wished Edmund had been there to administer restorative drops. But a sip of sherry did much to improve his colour, and he was soon able to speak quite rationally, offering me the help of all his estate workers to search for the evidence so beloved of my friend.

  “Dr. Hansard insists that he wants but two or three of your most trusted men,” I said. “And they must work with the utmost discretion—we do not want to frighten away the killer.”

  He rang for the surly butler and gave his orders.

  “You told Lord Wychwood the method of the corpse’s death?” Edmund expostulated, slapping his glass down so hard the port slopped over the rim. “Dear God, Toby, I took you for a man of discretion. Surely you know the rumours surrounding the old reprobate? That in his youth he was a member of the Hellfire Club, and most assiduous in its vilest practices? Of all the men I can think of, he is the one most likely to have been involved in such a sacrilegious parody!”

  Mrs. Hansard laid a calming hand on his arm. When we supped informally, she never retired while we men drank our port, instead sipping a glass of champagne and joining in the conversation. “My dear, even if you had personally sewn Tobias’s lips together, and employed only blind and dumb men to assist you, the news of the man’s death and the manner of it would have reached his lordship before nightfall. At least Tobias was able to observe how he received the news.” Her bright eyes prompted me.

  “His colour was poor, his breathing shallow. I feared for his health, and indeed cursed that I had forgotten to take some of your restorative cordial when I went on my errand. But a sip or two of sherry restored him.”

  “So he was shocked,” Jem said.

  Edmund nodded. “Did you at any point feel that his shock might have its roots in guilt?”

  I considered. “I thought he was simply as appalled as any man might be. And I cannot think differently now.”

  “Very well. We have,” he continued, “a victim aged between forty and fifty, I would say, strong of build. So whoever overpowered him and killed him must have been even stronger.”

  “Who would choose such a dreadful method of execution?”

  “An interesting choice of word, Tobias. You would be right, had the victim actually been killed on that tree. But when Jem and I examined the corpse, we came to believe that the man was killed first—that knife thrust into his side. I will spare you and your ticklish stomach the details, my friend,” he said with a laugh. “However, even assuming the man had expired, it would not have been an easy task to lift him and nail him in place.”

  “A dead weight,” Jem observed, with a dry smile.

  I asked bravely, “How do you know he was dead before he was crucified?”

  “Apart from that wound? Well, you may have observed that there was surprisingly little blood from his hands—very well, Maria, I will not ruin an excellent supper by making Tobias cast up his accounts. I will just say this, Tobias—we are sure, Jem and I, that there is a sexual motive to the crime. An element of revenge, I would say.” He looked meaningfully at his wife and said no more.

  Mrs. Hansard, however, was a redoubtable woman. “Do you imply that a female avenged herself by stabbing and then mutilating—?”

  Jem overrode her. “We are sure a woman was at the heart of the problem. But not as the killer, unless she were an Amazon indeed. Even her jilted or outraged lover would surely have needed assistance.”

  She nodded sadly. “So we need to find the betrayed young woman.”

  “If only Dr. Coates were here to consult,” I said. “I suppose that in his absence we must refer to the verger.”

  Maria smiled enigmatically. “If you and Tobias are going to Clavercote in the chaise, my love, perhaps you will take me as your passenger. An old friend of mine, the widow of a steward at a noble house, has retired there to share her son’s house. I think it is time to pay her a visit.”

  The verger at All Saints, a man of few smiles, insisted that he had no forwarding address for Dr. Coates. He was entirely uninformative, in fact. If any villagers had hurriedly quit Clavercote, if any strangers had been in the neighbourhood, he knew not—and seemed to care less. Frustrated, Hansard and I retired
to the tiny inn, hunched round-shouldered on the edge of the village. Perhaps the landlord would offer us information as well as ale.

  We were just abandoning our attempts to squeeze more than a monosyllable from the sour-faced man, and were waiting for the chaise to be brought round, when a party of riders trotted by. Mine host, forgetting the claims of his existing customers, was all at once full of smiles and forelock-tugging, clearly recognising members of the ton from forty yards’ distance. But it was not his toadying that brought the party to a halt.

  One of the riders wheeled his horse and brought it back to where I stood. “Tobias, you whelp—what in Hades are you doing outside a foul drinking-den like this?”

  I was ready to faint with shock. I had been estranged from my father for many years, ever since I took Holy Orders, and had never dreamed to see him in this neighbourhood. But from somewhere I drew enough strength to bow low, and to kiss the hand he extended. “Father! Sir, may I present Dr. Hansard? Edmund, Lord Hartland.”

  Both, one from the height of his magnificent horse, the other an equally proud pedestrian, bowed with great civility. Neither eyed the other with any pleasure.

  With less haste, the other riders had turned their mounts and gathered round us. I recognised one as Lord Ewen, whose estate adjoined Lord Wychbold’s. He greeted me far more cordially than my father had done, bidding me to sup with them that very night. “And your friend, too,” he added with a careless smile. “You must both join us for dinner and a hand of cards. It’s a bachelor establishment, Campion, so do not expect more than a mutton stew.”

  “I regret that I am engaged, my Lord,” Hansard said, as I knew he would, since his love of gambling had once near ruined him and he no longer played whist for so much as a matchstick. “A friend of my dear wife’s . . .” he murmured.

  “Another evening,” Ewen declared with a smile. “Campion shall furnish me with your address.” He nodded to me. “We sup at six-thirty.”