Kehoe stared wide-eyed at Joshua. “You mean…”
Joshua nodded. “Karl Spearing couldn’t stand to hev people huntin’ his land. He’d do anythin’ to keep ’em away, even shoot at ’em. So I don’t believe he wuz after bear when he set that trap.
“It wuz put there to catch a man.”
Three Blind Rats by Laird Long
Laird Long (b. 1964) is a prolific Canadian writer whose stories have appeared in a wide range of print or on-line magazines, including Blue Murder, Handheldcrime, Futures Mysterious, Hardboiled, and Albedo One. His story “Sioux City Express” from Handheldcrime was included amongst the top 50 mystery stories of 2002 by Otto Penzler in the anthology The Best American Mystery Stories-2003. In this brand new story, he demonstrates how criminals can use the latest technology to commit the perfect crime – if only an impossible crime hadn’t got in the way!
Pinero said, “Marciano or Lewis – who’d you take in that one?” He lowered his Ring Magazine and looked at McGrath, watched the little man down his fourth cup of coffee of the morning, rub his grey face.
McGrath played around some more with his Blackberry, his right eyelid twitching as he stared at the glowing screen. “I told you, I don’t follow boxing. It’s too violent.” Thumbs flying like a twelve-year-old video-gamer chalking up kills on God of War, he added, “You should see all the great features on this thing.”
Pinero raised his magazine again, recrossed his feet on top of his desk. “You’re gonna get radiation poisoning from all those gadgets of yours,” he warned, taking some satisfaction in his partner’s stricken expression.
Pinero was young, liked to wear his clothes flashy, gel his jet-black hair into a subtle Mohawk. But despite all that, he considered himself old-school, less concerned with the geeky forensic fantasies of criminal investigation, than the pavement-pounding, door-dusting street solving of it. And he was good at it, like his father had taught him.
“Pretty soon we’ll be able to break cases without ever even leaving the office,” McGrath stated. “Like fighting a war by remote control.” He tilted his empty mug against his lips, almost choked on the plastic stir straw.
McGrath was well past the age when most cops were puttering around their Victoria condos, bald as a bagel and just as rubbery. But he’d carved out a niche for himself in the Department by becoming a tech-savvy guru, an indispensable computerized tool in the 21st-century assault on crime.
The men’s mutual loathing went back to the first day they’d been paired together in Homicide. Pinero despised McGrath’s foul coffee breath and chronic health whining, his holier-than-Intel attitude. While McGrath didn’t envy Pinero his smooth good looks and muscular physique; he detested him for them, in fact. And the young detective’s apparent indifference to all things chip-driven earned him a special place of contempt in McGrath’s ebook.
Pinero was two weeks away from transfer-bait for trolling John’s with the Vice Unit – and both men were counting the days, one on his Dukes of Hazzard wall calendar, the other on his Outlook software.
Sergeant Bugler walked into the Squad Room, barked, “McGrath, Pinero!” They looked up. “Got a job for you two.” They waited. “Lenny ‘The Rat’ Laymon’s been found dead.”
It was a skid row bungalow bordered by a boozecan on one side and a crack house on the other; smack-dab in the middle of the sour armpit of Vancouver – the downtown eastside. Inside: the nude body of Lenny Laymon, curled up in a fetal ball on the bottom of his bathtub, like a rat in its hole.
Pinero stared at the hunk of limburger on the toilet lid, gestured. “That a joke?”
McGrath slurped java out of a paper cup. “Air freshener, more likely.”
Constable Mullings laughed. “The Rat did like his cheese.”
The two detectives and the uniformed cop looked down at Lenny’s sunken body. The water had still been running from the showerhead when the girl had discovered him, both he and the water ice-cold by then. Even with the long soak, Lenny still looked dirty, the yellow skin on his hairless body going blue, backbone spined like a Stegosaurus. His eyes and mouth were wide-open, back of his blonde-fringed head a bloody mess.
“When’d the girl find him?” Pinero asked Mullings.
“’Bout an hour ago,” the Constable replied, wiping a big, red nose with a big, red hand. “She couldn’t reach him on the phone all of yesterday, so she decided to pay him a visit this morning.”
“How old is she, anyway?”
“Fourteen.”
“How’d she get in?”
“Had her own key.”
Pinero mauled a hunk of bubblegum. They could hear the girl, Kristal, crying away in the next room, lamenting a life gone down the drain: a con artist, fraud artist, sneak thief, pickpocket and stool pigeon.
“Look what I found when I made her empty her pockets,” Mullings added, pulling something out of his jacket. He held it up. It sparkled in the light of the bare bathroom bulb.
“A diamond ring,” McGrath said, taking it from the Constable and examining it.
“Rock’s gotta be at least one-carat,” Mullings guessed. “She claimed Lenny gave it to her – like anyone’d believe The Rat was gonna pop the question, eh – then finally admitted she’d found it on Lenny’s dresser and palmed it, after she found the guy soaking in the tub.”
“It’s got ZJ stamped on the inside of the band,” McGrath stated.
“Zammy Jewelers,” Pinero responded. “They’ve got a store in the Centre Mall-make their own rings. And right now I’m betting they’re at least one bauble short of a glitter palace.”
He pulled a couple of Kleenex’s, a pair of latex gloves out of his pocket. He set the Kleenex carefully down on the grimy tile floor and knelt beside the tub, dressed his hands in the throwaway gloves. He ran a finger along the bottom of the tub, up to and around Lenny’s body. He poked the corpse.
McGrath turned his head and spoke to the two guys from the Fire and Rescue Service who were lounging in the doorway, “Looks like an accident, huh?”
They nodded.
“If it was anyone but The Rat, we wouldn’t even be here,” he grumbled, fingering what he suspected was a cellphone tumor growing behind his right ear. “Hey, I heard you guys get Workers’ Comp now, if you develop lung cancer, or have a heart attack twenty-four hours after a fire. That right?”
The guy with the Stalinesque mustache nodded, smiled a self-satisfied smile. “You’re darn right it is. The Union got the legislation passed a couple of months ago, eh.”
“I just started smoking again myself,” the other firefighter joked.
“Cops should have something like that,” McGrath groused. “I’m sure I’m getting cancer from using my computer and cellphone all day, in the line of duty. My doctor even said-” He halted his grievance when he saw his partner tilt Lenny’s stiffened body face-up, so he could check out The Rat’s other profile.
Pinero dug around in Lenny’s right ear. “Gimme a pair of tweezers, someone.”
He was handed a pair, and everyone watched as he pulled something out of Lenny’s oversized ear. He held the small, brown object up for inspection. “How many guys take a shower with their hearing aid still in?” he asked.
McGrath was working his wireless keyboard like the Chicago Stadium organist when Pinero reemerged from Robbery. “There was a heist at the Zammy Jewelers store in the Centre Mall last night alright,” he informed his partner. “Estimated loss: four hundred grand.”