“I think everyone will understand my situation has been perfectly terrible,” Andrew said. I’m sure I was not the only one to notice that with the notion of tenure, his emotions were suddenly completely convincing.
“The committee, the dean, everyone...”
I laughed, a miscalculation, but I couldn’t help it. There’s a kind of willful naivete I find irresistibly comic.
Andrew started as if he’d been struck. “This whole business was your doing!” he cried. He actually stood up at the table. He was right, of course, but I can’t say I rate him highly in quickness of perception.
“Control yourself, Andrew. I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
The words poured out. “That skull,” “your laugh,” “Eva!” But I’ll spare you the full and unabridged text. I remained calm, courteous; I really was extraordinarily calm and courteous that day. I ignored the personal aspersions and said, “There’s no reason for you to panic about the meadow, Andrew. For the price of a few aerial photographs we can set everyone’s mind at rest. I just thought the process of trial and error would be good for the students.”
Hugh Boyd began sputtering, but the lieutenant — I think that was his rank, trooper ranks are different from city police, you know — asked, “Aerial photography?”
“You hadn’t thought of that? Archaeological trade secret, I guess.” I was well into my explanation of how ruins, foundation trenches, and graves can be spotted from the air, when Andrew lunged across the table and — there’s no other appropriate word here — attacked me.
I still haven’t decided whether that was deliberate or not, I mean, a deliberate ploy to suggest unsoundness of mind or just a total failure of self-control. In any case, Andrew Donaldson was held for psychiatric assessment, and three days later I had the painful satisfaction of pointing out a small oblong, visible in a properly enhanced aerial photograph of the meadow. When excavated, this telltale depression proved to contain my Eva’s body.
After the trial, I asked for custody of the old skull, although this was a somewhat delicate matter, the state troopers having some suspicions about the source of the original find. Then one of my graduate students became intrigued with the resemblances to known Adena skulls; she wanted to examine both the site and the skull more thoroughly. It was with difficulty that I dissuaded her; in professional conscience, I could not let her build her thesis on a hoax. Finally, as expected, the Pequots got involved. I had some delicate negotiations with their heavyweight lawyer before they settled for three other bona fide eastern-woodlands relics from the historic period.
When interest dies down, I will quietly relabel #2456 and return her to my collection. Or perhaps I will take her home and rebury her somewhere in the Ohio valley. Perhaps I will do that; I think I will.
Her people believed in an afterlife and provisioned themselves well for it, tempting grave robbers and that better class of thief, the archaeologist. But after the great favor she’s done me, I don’t feel I can leave #2456 to dream away her eternity in my mahogany cabinet. She can even have some grave goods; I have extra specimens that will never be missed. And even if they were, I feel a sense of obligation, for I understand now that even the bones of one’s beloved are sacred. I understand that every time I slip into the old cemetery to lay some of Eva’s wild-flowers on her grave.
A Puzzle in Poesy
(Who pets the Beagle? Who sips the Beaujolais?)
by Mort W. Elkind
© 1998 by Mort W. Elkind
Continued from page 17
Hammett pets the Beagle. Poe sips the Beaujolais.
Not Enough Monkeys
by Benjamin M. Schutz
©1998 by Benjamin M. Schutz
Author of the Leo Haggerty private-eye series, which has brought him both the Edgar Allan Poe and Shamus awards, Benjamin M. Schutz is, by day, a clinical and forensic psychologist. In his new crime story, he gives us a look at his tantalizing and creative profession — a career that appears to inspire muck of his fiction-writing.
“Dr. Triplett, Dr. Ransom Triplett?”
I looked up from my exam-covered desk. A young woman hugging a fat file stood in the doorway. I guess just looking up was enough for her, because she entered arm outstretched, hand aimed at the middle of my chest, and said, “I’m Monica Chao, I have a project I’d like to interest you in.”
I rose from my chair, intercepted her hand mid-desk, and nodded to the empty chair on her right.
“I’ve just come from the state penitentiary. I’ve been talking with some of the staff there and we believe that a terrible miscarriage of justice is going to happen.” She hoisted the file onto the desk, where it landed with a thud and lay still as a corpse.
“Actually, the miscarriage is ongoing. Dr. Triplett, they have an innocent man on death row there. He is going to be executed the first of next month.”
“And?” I asked.
“And I want you, no, I hope you’ll be willing to help me prove this. They’re going to execute an innocent man.”
“Excuse me, Miss Chao, how old are you?”
“I beg your pardon.” She stiffened in her seat.
“What are you, twenty-four, twenty-five — twenty-six at the most? Am I correct?”
“I fail to see the relevance of my age.”
“Humor me. Am I correct?”
She thought about it for a minute. “Close enough. Let’s just leave it at that.”
“First time to the penitentiary, yes?”
She nodded.
“And lo and behold, you found an innocent man there. Ms. Chao, the prisons are full of innocent men; in fact, they are filled with nothing but innocent men. I have been practicing forensic psychology for almost twenty years; I have yet to meet a man in prison who did the crime. One million innocent men behind bars. Amazing. No wonder crime is on the rise. All the villains are still on the streets. Please, Ms. Chao, no innocent-men stories. I don’t know what brought you to the prison, but the innocent-man story gets the inmate an hour, maybe two, alone with a lawyer. An attractive woman like yourself, they probably had a raffle to see who’d get to look up your skirt.”
She slid one hand down from her lap to smooth her hem across her thigh. Satisfied that I was merely rude, she was about to fire a response.
I put up my hands in surrender. “Please, Ms. Chao. I get calls or visits like this all the time. If you want to interest me in a project, bring me something truly rare, a culpable convict, a man who says he did it, or better yet, the rarest of all — a remorseful man, a man tortured by guilt over the horrors he inflicted on other people. For that you have my undivided time and attention.”
I looked down at the exam I had been grading. Her chair didn’t move.
“I don’t know what else you have going on in your life, Dr. Triplett, that could be more important than saving an innocent man’s life, but I’m not going to let you run me off with your cynicism.” She pushed the file toward me. “Don’t read it. It’s on your head. If they execute an innocent man how will you explain that you didn’t have time even to look at the file?” Her jaw was determined but her eyes glistened with oncoming defeat.
“I’m going to do everything I can for my client. He is not going to die because I didn’t turn over every rock or look into every corner.”