I stopped the Prelude at the boulders and got out. There was some dried blood on one rock, but no pieces of tissue thanks to whatever insects had scoured the area. I found some scuff marks where I remembered crouching for cover and some more where someone had hefted something off the ground. Sidestepping downslope about twenty feet, I saw a disturbed section of earth. Some creatures bigger than insects had dug into the shallow grave. What was left of a face and throat ended at the collar of the green windbreaker.
I climbed back up the slope, wiping my hands on my haunches even though I hadn’t dirtied them. I sat in my car and thought about it. Tried to think through it. Then I turned the key in the ignition and headed back toward town.
4.
“Cuddy?”
“Chief.”
Doppinger looked up at me. His right arm was in a sling, his left hand hanging up the telephone next to the living room chair he’d been sitting in the night before.
I said, “Sorry to be interrupting.”
“No. No, just making some...” he waved at the phone, “arrangements. You heading back to Boston?”
“Shortly. Thought I ought to report something to you first.”
“What’s that?”
“I found a body.”
He blinked. “Where?”
“Fire Road Number Eight.”
“Eight?”
“Yeah. The killer conned me into thinking I was on Seven yesterday by switching the signs.”
Doppinger hung his head and shook it. “That Moddicky. Always thinking.”
“I also put a phone call in to Garcia.”
“Garcia?”
“That parole officer you called about Moddicky and his blockmates.”
“Oh. Right.”
“He gave me a bunch of names and addresses. Seems you were right. A photo’s on its way, but I’m pretty sure the guy I met as Frank J. Doppinger out on the fire road is Joey Benson, one of the other inmates released just before Moddicky.”
“Benson, you say?” Doppinger took a breath. “Yeah, figures Moddicky’d use somebody he knew to set up his little game.”
“Yeah, it does. But why did Moddicky kill him, do you suppose?”
Doppinger started to shrug, then remembered his sling. “Take out a witness.”
“A witness to what?”
Doppinger straightened a little. “To your being approached by the guy.”
“You figure that’s why Moddicky decided to switch the signs and hide the body, too?”
“Who knows? Moddicky was an odd one, Cuddy. Maybe he got off on burying things.”
I waited a moment. “Nobody said anything about the guy being buried, Chief.”
Doppinger’s eyes clouded.
I said, “I think the killer approached the guy I met and paid him to impersonate Frank J. Doppinger and feed me the song and dance that got me out on that fire road. The killer wanted the arrow to point toward Moddicky, but not too clearly too soon. Otherwise, the level of protection you should have mounted at your house yesterday might have been uncomfortably high.”
The voice got raspy. “What are you saying?”
“You needed a way out of the marriage, preferably death over divorce so you’d get to keep this house. It was sharp of you to mention your talk with the parole officer to Perrault and me. Even sharper to admit he’d told you about other blockmates of Moddicky, ‘Bennett’ instead of ‘Benson.’ But Garcia also says he gave you names and addresses.”
“Moddicky pulled a double con on you, Cuddy. He’s still got you believing it.”
“No, Chief. The double con the killer had in mind couldn’t work with Moddicky directly. He knew you and hated you. But it could work with Benson, a blockmate Moddicky could have known but probably never buddied up to, never told how Frank J. Doppinger brought him down. You hired Benson to get me into it. You would have had to snatch Moddicky a couple of days ago, though. To be sure nobody would come forward with an unshakable alibi for him once he was dead. Tell me, Chief, where did you stash him?”
“You’re blowing smoke up your own—”
“Anyway, you did stash Moddicky out here someplace, alive. You watched my meeting with Benson, picking him off when you saw us shaking hands, knowing he’d already told me everything you wanted me to hear. Then you waited for me to slink off before burying Benson and switching back the signs. Nice touch, by the way, to tell the boys you’d be in your garden. Made them beep you instead of telephoning and let you show up at the station in soiled overalls, fresh from Benson’s hasty grave.”
Doppinger’s left hand dropped to the outside of his thigh, rubbing it. “You can’t prove any of this, Cuddy.”
“Here at the house last night you shot Moddicky with your service revolver and your wife with the Winchester you’d used on Benson. Then you probably fired a round through the rifle with Moddicky’s dead hands around it and another through your sleeve with something to catch the powder burns.”
The doll’s eyes got colder as a snub-nosed revolver appeared from under the seat cushion.
“It won’t wash, Chief.”
“Sure it will, Cuddy. You came to the station yesterday, claiming this Benson was your client. You were in with him and Moddicky all along.”
“I’m not even armed.”
“I put a throwaway in your hand, and nobody will know you weren’t.”
“Perrault and Lacy will know.”
“What?”
“They frisked me before I came in here.”
“They...?”
From the kitchen door, Perrault’s voice said, “Put it down, Chief.”
From the porch window, Lacy leveled a shotgun. “Please, Chief.”
Doppinger’s eyes went around the room, through the walls and around the house. Measuring something. Maybe his losses.
He dropped the snubbie on the floor and used the hand to cover his face instead.
A Matter of Principle by Seymour Shubin
© 1994 by Seymour Shubin
Wynnewood, Pennsylvania resident Seymour Shubin has a new satire for us that will probably strike a chord with users of the Northeast’s beaches — and anyone who gets hung up on a matter of principle...
I don’t know what got into Midge after all these years, three years to be exact, about the beach badges. After all, we’d been buying them all this time. But now, the first day of our first weekend of the season, as we walked to the beach and saw the sign that said you could buy the badges at the little kiosk outside the township police station or from the “beach-badge girl” who patrolled the beaches, Midge said, “It’s all wrong, I’m not going to do it.”
Actually I’d been hearing this from the time they’d first introduced beach badges here.
“Beaches should be free, they should belong to everyone. It’s a disgrace; they put a gun to your head to let you use Nature’s beach and ocean.”
But we would always buy them — “season” badges, since we rented a room almost every weekend, and it came out cheaper than the daily or weekly badges. But almost immediately after we would come on the beach, Midge would point out all the people who didn’t have badges displayed on them.
This time, though, there was something in her voice, her look, that said she really meant it.
“We’re not doing it this year, Harry. It’s really become a matter of principle.”
“Midge, I don’t need this aggravation.”
“Don’t be a doormat, Harry.”