Small Felonies - Fifty Mystery Short Stories (24 page)

That's not a toy, that's some kind of weapon . . .

Bang!

A projectile just as large as a baseball this time. More of the window frame disappeared, leaving a gaping hole in the wall. From outside, Mrs. Webster could hear the Potters, their neighbors to the north, shouting in alarm. For some reason, hearing the Potters enabled her to act. She ran to where Jackey was crouched, caught hold of his arm, pulled him toward the door.

On the workbench, the gray thing was the size of a portable TV set. She thought she could see it pulsing as she and Jackey stumbled out.

Bang!

Bang!

On the street in front, she stood hugging Jackey against her. He was trying not to cry. "I didn't mean to do anything, Mom," he said. "I didn't mean it. I only wanted to see how it worked."

Bang!

Flames shot up from the rear of the house, from the back yard: the big oak tree there wore a mantle of fire. People were running along the street, crowding around her and Jackey, hurling frightened questions at them.

"I don't know," she said. "I don't know!"

And she was thinking:
Where did it come from? How did it get here? Who would make a monstrous thing like that?

Bang!

Bang!

BANG!

The projectile that blew up the Potters' house was the size of a cantaloupe. The one a few minutes later that destroyed the gymnasium two blocks away was the size of a basketball. And the one a little while after that that leveled the industrial complex across town was the size of a boulder.

The thing kept growing, kept on firing bigger and bigger projectiles. By six o'clock that night it had burst the walls of the Webster house, and most of the town and much of what lay within fifty miles north-by-northwest had been reduced to flaming wreckage. The National Guard was mobilizing, but there was nothing they could do except aid with mass evacuation proceedings; no one could get within two hundred yards of the weapon because of the radiation.

At six-thirty, half a dozen Phantom jets from the Air Force base nearby bombarded it with laser missiles. The missiles failed to destroy it; in fact, it seemed to feed on the heat and released energy, so that its growth rate increased even more rapidly.

In Washington, there was great consternation and panic. The President, his advisers, and the Joint Chiefs of Staff held an emergency meeting to decide whether or not to use an atomic bomb. But by the time they made up their minds it was too late. Much too late.

The thing was then the size of two city blocks, and still growing, and the range of its gigantic muzzle extended beyond the boundaries of the United States—north-by-northwest, toward the Bering Sea and the vast wastes of Russia beyond . . .

(With Jeffrey M. Wallmann)

I
t was a few minutes past three o'clock when Christine Taylor parked her compact on San Lorenzo Way, in front of the Morris home and directly behind a dusty Ford station wagon with a personalized license plate that read O HENRY. Both cars seemed out of place in the forested elegance of St. Francis Wood, one of San Francisco's wealthier neighborhoods.

She took the packages of Beauty Express cosmetics from the seat beside her, closed the car door with her foot, and started up the broad flagstone path that led to the Morris veranda. The house was set apart from its neighbors by stands of eucalyptus and landscaped gardens and lawns; dwarf cypress and shrubbery grew along the veranda and the side walls. The overall effect was of a small country estate rather than a house on an urban street.

When Chris neared the veranda, peering around the tiered boxes so she could see where she was going, she caught a glimpse of the small discreet sign that said TRADESMEN USE SIDE ENTRANCE. Although she was not a tradesperson in the strictest sense of the term, and had been admitted through the front door three days before, when her first visit here had produced a sale to old Mrs. Roberta Morris, she felt it would be proper to make the delivery at the side entrance. Besides, Mrs. Morris suffered from an inflammation of the joints called
 
brachial radiculitis, coupled with muscle spasms of the trapezius—the old lady had explained this to Chris in great detail—and consequently spent most of her time upstairs in her bedroom. Her live-in maid handled most household matters. Turning onto the path to her left, Chris made her way around to the north side. A thick screen of oleander bushes partially obscured the side entrance from the path, so that you couldn't see the door until you were within a few feet of it. The boxes of cosmetics further hampered her vision; Mrs. Morris had bought over fifty dollars' worth of lotions, powders, and makeup.

A half-dozen paces from the entrance, she felt the boxes start to slip in her grasp. She was so busy trying to keep them balanced that she didn't hear the door open or see the man who came around the oleanders on a sudden collision course.

When they ran into each other, the impact sent her sprawling onto the lawn and the packages flying. She landed on her hip, without damage to anything except her dignity, but a startled "Ouf!" came out of her. She pushed onto one knee and stared up at the man standing on the path.

He was tall, middle-aged, distinguished-looking, dressed in a chalk-striped suit and carrying a black doctor's satchel. He looked almost as amazed as she felt. He also looked harried and preoccupied; running his free hand through his salt-and-pepper hair he asked in a peremptory manner, "Who are you?"

"Aren't you going to help me up, Doctor?"

"Oh—yes, of course. Sorry." He extended his hand. Chris took it and let him pull her to her feet. He looked at her, at the packages strewn over the lawn out toward the front of the house. His distracted manner reminded her of her father, who was a resident physician at St. Theresa's Memorial Hospital here in the city.

"Is Mrs. Morris ill?" she asked him.

"Yes, but it's nothing serious." He glanced again at the packages, but when Chris bent to restack them he made no move to help her. "Are you making a delivery?"

"I was about to, yes. Beauty Express Cosmetics. May I ask what's wrong with Mrs. Morris, Doctor? Is it the brachial radiculitis again?"

He raised an eyebrow. "How do you know about that?"

"She told me about it the last time I was here."

"I see. Well, you're right—that's the problem."

"I hope it doesn't put her back in her wheelchair," Chris said. "She says she hates it when her trapezius muscles get so bad she can't walk."

"It probably won't come to that. I gave her something to relieve the pain." He looked at his watch. "If you'll excuse me—" And he started away along the path.

Chris finished stacking the boxes, lifted them in her arms, and hurried after him. When she caught up she said, "I might as well leave too. If Mrs. Morris is ill, I don't want to disturb her."

The tall man nodded distractedly.

"Are your offices near here, Doctor?" she asked him.

"Yes, they are."

"Then you've done some work at St. Theresa's."

"That's right, I have."

"My father is on the staff there, so you probably know him. Vincent Taylor."

"Why, yes, I do know Vincent. An excellent man."

"I think so too," Chris said. "I'll mention that we met. Doctor—?"

"Hoskins." They had reached the sidewalk and he started toward the dusty station wagon. "Sorry again about bumping into you, Miss Taylor," he said over his shoulder. "Have a good day."

"You too, Dr. Hoskins."

Chris moved over to her compact and stood watching him get inside the station wagon and drive away. As soon as he had disappeared around the first curve, she tossed her packages into the backseat and ran back up the driveway. When she reached the side entrance she opened the door, not bothering to knock first, and went inside.

It took her less than thirty seconds to find Mrs. Morris and her maid. They were in the sitting room, bound to a pair of wing-back chairs and gagged with handkerchiefs.

Swiftly she untied them. She paused long enough to determine that neither of the frightened women had been harmed, then she hurried to one of the downstairs extension phones to call the police.

"There's been a robbery at Number 79 San Lorenzo Way in St. Francis Wood," she told the officer who answered. "The man responsible claims to be a doctor, but he isn't. He just drove off in a Ford station wagon with a personalized license plate that says O HENRY. If you hurry you probably can catch him before he gets too far away."

"T
hey did hurry," Chris said to her father that evening, "and they caught him about twenty minutes later, over in Golden Gate Park. The station wagon didn't belong to him; he stole it this morning from a parking lot downtown. His real name is Hammond, not Hoskins, and he's a professional burglar who specializes in robbing wealthy homes. The police found five hundred dollars in cash and all of Mrs. Morris's jewelry in the doctor's satchel."

"But how did you know he was a thief and not a doctor?" her father asked.

"He made me suspicious right from the first. So I maneuvered him into saying two things that convinced me he was neither a doctor nor an invited guest of Mrs. Morris."

"What two things?"

"I said I hoped Mrs. Morris' brachial radiculitis wasn't serious enough to confine her to a wheelchair again, because she hated it when her trapezius muscles got so bad she couldn't walk. He said it probably wouldn't come to that. But there isn't a doctor alive who doesn't know that brachial radiculitis is an inflammation of the shoulder joints, not the leg joints—or that the trapezius muscles are in the upper back—and that it wouldn't confine anybody to a wheelchair."

"What was the second thing?"

"You were, Dad. I got him to say he'd done some work at St. Theresa's, and then I said my father, Vincent Taylor, was on the staff there and he must know you. He said he did."

"Ah," Philip Taylor said.

"And if I needed any more proof, there was that license plate on the station wagon. O HENRY. It's doubtful a doctor making a house call would drive a car with a personalized license plate and no caduceus."

Her father nodded. "Now tell me why you were suspicious enough at first to go on and bait your verbal traps."

"Two reasons," Chris said. "When he knocked me down he didn't ask if I'd hurt myself; he didn't even offer to help me up. A real doctor wouldn't have been that careless. But it's the other thing that really made me suspicious." She reached out and took his hand. "Dad, if you'd been attending a woman like Mrs. Morris, would you have left the house by the tradesmen's entrance when the front door is much closer to the street where you'd left your car? No. And no other physician would either. The front door is always the proper entrance for a visiting doctor."

Philip Taylor shook his head admiringly. "You're quite a detective, you know that?"

"Not really, Dad. It was all a simple matter of house calls."

"House calls?"

"Sure," Chris said, smiling. "The burglar picked this day to make his, ran into me as I was making mine, and made the mistake of pretending to be a doctor on a medical one. You don't have to be Sherlock Holmes to figure out that that's one house call too many."

T
hey just came and told me I'm dying. I've got first and second degree burns over sixty percent of my body, and the doctors—two of them—said it's hopeless, there's nothing they can do. I don't care. It's better this way. Except for the pain. They gave me morphine but it doesn't help. It doesn't keep me from thinking either.

Before the doctors, there were two county cops. And Kjel. The cops told me Pete and Nicky are dead, both of them killed in the explosion. They said Kjel and me were thrown clear, and that he'd come out of it with just minor burns on his face and upper body. They said he hung onto me until another boat showed up and her crew pulled us out of the water. I don't understand that. After what I did, why would he try to save my life?

Kjel told them how it was. The cops didn't say much to me about it, just wanted to know if what Kjel said was the truth. I said it was. But it doesn't make any difference, why or how. I tried to tell them that, and something about the light and the dark, but I couldn't make the words come out. They wouldn't have understood anyway.

After the cops left, Kjel asked to see me. One of the doctors said he had something he wanted to say. But I wouldn't let him come in. I don't want to hear what he has to say. It doesn't matter, and I don't want to see him.

Lila is in the waiting room outside. The same doctor told me that, too. I wouldn't let her come in either. What good would it do to see her, talk to her? There's nothing she can say, nothing I can say—the same as with Kjel. She's been sitting out there sixteen hours, ever since they brought me here from the marina. All that time, sitting out there, waiting.

They have a word for it, what she's doing.

Deathwatch.

The pain . . . oh God, I've never hurt like this. Never. Is this how it feels to burn in hell? An eternity of fire and pain . . . and light? If that's what's in store for me, it won't be so bad if there's light. But what if it's dark down there? Christ, I'm so scared. What if the afterlife is dark, too?