Small Felonies - Fifty Mystery Short Stories (29 page)

Now he was deep among the tall trees—he wasn't sure exactly how far he had come or how long it had taken him—and the only sounds were the occasional cry of a bird, the hum of the wheelchair's motor, the liquid whisper of the tires tracking through wet leaf mold. Ahead was a brushy deadfall, which a man with legs could have penetrated but the wheelchair could not. He turned laterally along it, found the remnants of an old path at its end, and maneuvered his way into a large, grassy glade.

It was peaceful there, serene. The old man smiled faintly, remembering another glade in another wood decades earlier:

Martha sitting beside him, and the touch of her lips, and the softness of her hair. Then the smile faded, blotted out by another memory—the still-vivid image of the night on the rain-slick street. He blanked his mind again. He had become quite adept at blanking his mind the past eighteen years.

The old man rolled across the glade. Through the trees on the far side he could see the dull gray reflection of water. He changed direction, moving diagonally to where the ground sloped upward and the undergrowth was thinner. There he found himself at the edge of a steep, twenty-foot embankment, looking down into a small vale that contained an even smaller pond. Three wild ducks floated placidly in the pond's center, like a child's toys in an oversized wading pool. Patterns of leaves and water lilies rimmed its edges.

He sat watching the ducks. One of them lifted up, spreading wings that slapped and rippled the surface, and soared away into the overcast sky. Free, he thought. No chains on him. Free.

He lowered his chin to his chest, sighing softly. When he raised his head again a few seconds later, he noticed movement far down to his left, in the trees close to the pond. A young man and a young woman came into view, hands clasped, moving along the shore in his direction.

Lovers, the old man thought—and then realized with sudden alarm that the girl was struggling, trying to free herself of the young man's grip. The youth kept moving forward, half-dragging her now. In the forest hush the old man could hear her voice, shrill and frightened: "Please, please, let me go. I won't tell anyone about you, I swear I won't!"

The youth swung around, caught her shoulder with his free hand, and shook her roughly. "Shut up! You hear me? Keep your mouth shut!"

"Don't hurt me, please don't hurt me—"

He slapped her openhanded, with enough force that the sound of it reverberated like a pistol shot. "I'll hurt you plenty if you don't keep that mouth of yours shut."

Watching, the old man felt an almost forgotten rage well up inside him. His right hand gripped the wheelchair's arm. If I had legs! he thought impotently. If I could walk and use my body! He craned his head forward and shouted, "You, down there! Leave that girl alone!"

Both their heads jerked around and they stared upward, locating him. The girl cried, "Help, help!" not realizing he was in a wheelchair. The old man strained futilely in the contraption, like someone straining against unbreakable bonds.

In a frenzy the youth released the girl and then hit her with a closed fist. She fell and lay still. He fumbled under the jacket he wore, and the metal of a handgun flashed in his right hand. Brandishing the weapon, he ran to the embankment.

The old man did not touch the chair's control panel. He sat with his lips pulled in against his teeth, eyes bright and hard as they followed the youth's struggles up the rocky, root-tangled slope. As he came closer, the old man saw that he was in his early twenties, tall and bony, with a wild tangle of reddish hair—and knew then that the youth was Rusty Jaynes, one of two young thugs who had gone on a brutal crime spree in the area. The other fugitive had been captured by state police two days before. The old man knew all this because one of the few hollow pleasures he had left was television.

Jaynes, panting, reached the top of the embankment and stood five feet from the old man, pointing a snub-nosed revolver at him. He wiped his mouth on the sleeve of his jacket before he said, "A cripple, a damned old cripple in a wheelchair. You got some moxie, grandpa, yelling at me that way."

"Let the girl go, Jaynes," the old man said.

"So you know who I am. Well, that's just too bad for you."

"Let the girl go," the old man said again. "Take me as your hostage—that's what you've got her for, isn't it?"

Jaynes laughed shrilly. "Man, you're something else. I'm gonna push you in that chair? A hostage in a wheelchair?"

"Then shoot me now and have done with it."

"If that's the way you want it, grandpa—"

The old man pressed down hard on the wheelchair's forward control button. The chair rolled ahead so abruptly that Jaynes was startled into momentary inaction. At the last second he tried to dodge, squeezing the revolver's trigger at the same time. An echoing roar hammered in the old man's ears; the bullet sang past his head. And then the chair's raised metal footrest struck the youth on one shin and pitched him off balance, sent him toppling backward down the embankment.

Jaynes made a screeching sound that cut off when his body jarred into the earth; the revolver popped loose and arced to one side. The old man managed to brake inches from the edge of the slope, in time to see Jaynes roll and slide down over the rough ground. The youth was trying desperately to check his momentum when his head cracked against an upthrust rock; then he went limp. Moments later his body came to a sprawled rest near the bottom. There was blood on the side of his head, blood at one corner of his mouth. He did not move.

The old man reversed a few feet back from the edge. He sat stoically in the heavy silence, looking toward the girl. There was no way he could get down to her, nothing he could do except to wait. Long minutes passed, five or more, before she began to stir, and it was another two before she sat up and rubbed her jaw. She seemed dazed, disoriented.

Some of the tenseness went out of the old man. He shouted, "Girl! Up here, girl!"

He had to call out a second time before her head twisted around and she looked his way. Then she seemed to remember where she was, what had happened to her; she got jerkily to her feet, poised for flight.

"It's all right," the old man told her. "He can't hurt you now. Look below me, on the slope—you can see him lying there."

The girl located Jaynes, stared at his sprawled body for a few seconds before her gaze shifted upward again to the old man. Fear gave way to confusion, and finally to understanding and relief.

"Get the police. I'll wait here. Hurry, now. Run!"

She hesitated, as if she wanted to say something to him. Then she turned and ran swiftly along the edge of the pond, back into the trees where she and Jaynes had first appeared.

Sitting there after she was gone, waiting, the old man wondered what the police would say when they arrived, if any of them would recognize his name. Probably not; eighteen years was a long time. The news people would make the connection, though: Ben Frazer, the crippled old man who had miraculously saved a young woman's life and brought about the capture of a dangerous felon, was the same Ben Frazer who had for thirty years been a lieutenant of detectives in the state capital—the officer they had called "Bulldog" because of his refusal to let go once he had his teeth into a case.

Funny, but he hadn't thought of that bulldog business in a long time. All his life, until that night eighteen years ago, he had been tenacious; then the bulldog in him had simply let go, given up. For almost two decades he had lived with a single purpose: to find a way to get out from under the watchful eyes of his two daughters, and then find a way to end what remained of his life. That was why he had come into these woods today; that was what he had been thinking of, sitting here watching the ducks. If it hadn't been for the appearance of Jaynes and the girl, he would have pressed down on the Forward button and sent himself over the edge. It would have been Bulldog Ben Frazer, not Rusty Jaynes, lying broken and bloody down there now.

He thought of the girl, the look on her face just before she'd fled. And for the first time since Martha's death and his own paralysis, he felt as he once had. Useful to others and to himself. Tenacious. Unchained.

A small smile curved the corners of his mouth. There would be no more thoughts of suicide, no more self-pity. He could wait now, in peace, because in a way he was already free . . .

(With John Lutz)

K
erry Maitland, who had been standing at the Fine Watches and Jewelry counter for the past five minutes, thought that this was one of the few times she was glad to be ignored. And glad to seem like just another browser taking up space. Because she wasn't browsing. Nor was she there to buy anything.

The heavy-set woman on her left kept studying a velvet-lined tray full of 24-carat gold rings, all of them with expensive jeweled settings. The salesperson behind the counter kept studying the woman and trying not to look impatient. And Kerry, feigning interest in a modest cameo locket, kept covertly studying the pigeon's-blood ruby ring in the nearest corner of the tray. The ruby had been cut cabochon—in convex form and not faceted—and in its deep purplish-red depths you could see a six-rayed star. It was a very valuable stone.

There was a good deal of milling about in the area, and a good deal of noise, too, as other customers began to besiege the salesperson with demands for attention. Finally, in self-defense, she let some sort of her impatience show through and asked the heavy-set woman to please make up her mind. A little snappishly, the woman said she was trying to do just that.

At which point an irritable-looking man suggested in a loud voice that the woman quit being so selfish and let other people take their turn. The woman glared at him and told him to mind his own business. He glared back and told her to go fall down the escalator. She made an indignant squeaking sound, then appealed to the salesperson, who was already making a half-hearted effort to restore order.

While all this was going on Kerry plucked the ruby ring out of the tray, palmed it, turned from the counter, and dropped the ring into her coat pocket as she started away. Without looking back, she hurried through the crowd toward the escalators. She was not quite halfway there when the tall man materialized beside her and laid a heavy hand on her arm. "Hold it right there, lady," he said in an undertone. Kerry stiffened. "Who are you? What do you want?"

"The name's Cassidy," the tall man said. He was bland-featured, except for a pair of canny brown eyes, and dressed in a conservative suit and tie. "Store security officer. You better come with me."

"Come with you where? You have no right—"

"Look lady, just come along. It'll be easier for both of us if you don't make a scene."

He steered her to the escalators, still holding tightly onto her arm. Kerry didn't try to resist; there would have been no point in it. They rode to the fourth floor, and from there took an elevator to the fifth where the credit department and managerial offices were located. At the end of a long hallway Cassidy knocked on a door marked Cassidy knocked on a door marked Lawrence Tinker, Assistant Manager, opened it, and ushered her inside.

The only occupant was a chubby bald-headed man in his forties, with pointy ears like Mr. Spock. He peered at Kerry from behind a cluttered desk, frowned slightly, and said, "Well, what have we here?"

"Shoplifter," Cassidy told him. "I spotted her an hour ago, down in Perfumes; she swiped a bottle of the eighty-dollar-an-ounce French stuff."

Tinker raised an eyebrow. "Is that so?"

"Yep. I wondered if maybe she had other plans, too, so I decided to follow her a while and see. She hit Men's Sundries next, for a pair of silver cufflinks. Then she went up to Fine Watches and Jewelry and nailed a fancy ruby ring. I figured it was time to move in then, before she managed to slip away."

"Where are these items now?"

"In her right coat pocket."

Biting her lip, Kerry said, "This isn't what you think. I'm not a criminal . . ."

"Please put the ring and the other things on my desk," Tinker said. "Then let me have your purse."

Kerry did as ordered. Tinker picked up the ring first and peered at it as if trying to estimate its value. After which he opened her purse, rummaged through the keys, tissues, compact, and other items inside, and finally withdrew her wallet. He thumbed through that, too, and spent some time studying her driver's license.

"You're married, I see," he said. "And you live on Waverly Drive; that's in Forest Hills, isn't it?"

"Yes."

"A nice address." His eyes seemed to take inventory of her coiffed red hair, her alpaca coat, her smartly styled wool suit, her Gucci shoes and bag. "You're obviously not poor, Mrs. Maitland; yet here you are, guilty of shoplifting."

Kerry averted her eyes. "I didn't want to take those things," she said in a small voice. "It's just that I . . . I couldn't help it. It was a compulsion."

"Have you had compulsions like that before?"

"I . . . yes. Not very often, but . . ." She broke off and shivered.

Tinker was silent for a time. Then he asked Cassidy, "What do you think, George?"

"Well," Cassidy said, "could be she's one of these rich types that does it for kicks; we've had them in here before. But she doesn't fit the pattern. She's either telling the truth—a klepto—or she's a pretty clever pro. Either way, it looks like we got a tiger on our hands."