Pinero held up Lenny’s jacket, fingers covering the logo.
“But Lenny hadn’t bought the new one yet,” McGrath went on. “It only came out in September, just before the start of the season. The jacket we found at his house still has the old logo on it…”
Pinero moved his fingers aside.
“… a smug-looking cartoon moose holding a hockey stick, a frozen pond in the background.”
Matthew glanced at Bertrand; Bertrand glanced at Matthew.
“It’s like the man in the video knew Lenny wore a Moose jacket, but when he recently purchased one, he unknowingly got a slightly different moose than the one Lenny sported,” McGrath said. “It’s tough to keep track of all these marketing gimmicks, isn’t it?”
“And while I was taking note of Mick E. Moose’s facial expression,” Pinero clocked in, “Detective McGrath was taking note of the zipper on the jacket – the zipper tongue, specifically. It looked wider, shinier than the narrow black one on Lenny’s jacket. Reason?” He plucked it out of McGrath’s shirt pocket, held it up.
Everyone looked at the glinting tongue, waiting for it to speak.
McGrath interpreted. “We ran it through the Lab. It can be used to mesh metal teeth together alright, but it’s also a device used for what’s called ‘facial provocation’. A device developed by a certain spy agency which shall remain nameless, that can be purchased on the black market or rigged up at home by a real tech expert. A device that when triggered throws up a preprogrammed, made-to-specs image-almost like a hologram, except more realistic. In this case, a preprogrammed image of Lenny Laymon’s face, masking the face of the real man who entered that mall and hid in it until after closing, then shut down the Zammy Jewelers security system and the mall security cameras just long enough to rob the store and make his escape.”
Gum chewing. Foul, ragged breathing. Twin sets of teeth grinding.
“Someone wanted to pin the robbery on Lenny; someone with technological expertise. Someone who didn’t know The Rat was already dead when he was supposedly knocking over a jewelry store.”
Pinero said, “I talked to the warden at Stony Mountain, Matthew, asked how you spent your five years. He said you were a royal pain in the ass the first three, until you discovered the computer lab your last two. They had to almost drag you out of there when your sentence was up. Boning up for crime in the new millennium, eh, Matthew?”
A single finger – the middle one – in the upright and locked position, was the Kolvin response.
Pinero slapped it aside. “And guess who was doing exactly the same thing fourteen hundred miles away in the William Head pen? Your twin brother Bertrand. You guys might hate each other, but you still think alike, like identical twins will.”
“You’re the one tried to frame me and Lenny for the jewel heist,” Matthew snarled at Bertrand, “hacking into his computer and planting that phony email, his ugly mug on your stinking face, that ring at his place!”
“You’re the one tried to pin a murder rap on me,” Bertrand snarled back, “hacking into Lenny’s computer and planting my face in his webcam, your voice-our voice-threatening him, limping around like you were me!”
They launched themselves at one another. Mutually assured destruction.
Sergeant Bugler walked into the Squad Room. Detectives McGrath and Pinero were at their desks eating, yammering, the crumbs and insults flying. “Well, Bertrand Kolvin just signed his confession to the jewelry robbery,” she informed the pair, “admitting to trying to frame his brother and Lenny Laymon for the job. Apparently, he doesn’t want to face a possible murder charge.”
Pinero stuck a pencil behind his ear, chewed corned beef and said, “Lucky we found that zipper tongue in his condo, along with enough computer equipment to stock a Radio Shack. He tossed the Moose jacket, but I guess the tongue was just too valuable – for other jobs and other frames.”
“You think Matthew will confess to murdering Lenny?” Bugler asked, hands on her hips.
“Maybe, once we break his alibi. We know where he was the morning Lenny was killed-faking a limp in front of Lenny’s house to implicate his brother, just to be on the safe side in case there were any witnesses around. Like ones in the sky that he may or may not know about.”
“How do you think he killed Lenny?”
McGrath fielded that one in a spray of coffee cake. “We’re guessing he just caught Lenny in the bathroom and overpowered him, slammed his head against the tub, killing him instantly. He worked it out to look like an accident, but he set his brother up to be the fall guy just in case it was ruled foul play. There’s no such thing as a perfect crime, after all, Sergeant.”
Bugler nodded. “But it was actually Bertrand going into Lenny’s house the night after the murder, right? He says so, anyway.”
“Right,” McGrath confirmed, picking his teeth. “He was planting that diamond ring to really tie Lenny into the jewelry heist. He never even saw the body – just heard the water running and assumed Lenny was taking a shower. That two man limping oddity, along with the ‘dead’ Lenny going shopping mystery, of course, is what made us realize there was a frame going on-in this case, a double frame.”
Bugler gave her head a shake. “Instead of working together, like good twins should, they were working at cross-purposes – and didn’t even know it.”
Pinero nodded, belched. He interlaced his fingers behind his head and propped his feet up on his desk, almost toppled over backwards. “Yup. They were going to fix The Rat for what he did to them-each in their own way – so why not kill two jailbirds with one stone by framing each other for their crimes at the same time?”
Bugler let out a sigh. “Well, thank goodness that unlike the Kolvins, you two work so well together.”
McGrath spluttered Java. Pinero untangled hands and feet and shot upright. “Huh!?” they gaped.
“So well, in fact,” Bugler continued, smiling, “that I’ve canceled your transfer out of Homicide, Detective Pinero. This is one pairing that’s just too valuable to split up.”
Death and the Rope Trick by John Basye Price
The legendary Indian Rope Trick is such an obvious choice for an impossible mystery that I’m surprised it hasn’t been used scores of times. In fact, I’m only aware of this one story which in itself has been tucked away in the pages of the London Mystery Magazine for over fifty years and never reprinted.
I have been unable to trace much information about John Basye Price, who was born in 1906. He followed in his father’s footsteps in his interest in zoology and was for many years a biologist and science teacher at Leland Stanford University. He published several learned papers on his chosen subject, but just once or twice dabbled with mystery fiction, of which this is a particularly cunning example.
On the plane en route to Central America my uncle and I paused for a moment, then lowering our voices we resumed our conversation.
“But, Uncle Edward,” I asked, “what can this Dr Marlin hope to gain from all this? He must know he can’t do what he claims.”
“He sounds like a monomaniac with delusions of grandeur, who may become violent when his demonstration fails,” my uncle replied. “That’s one reason I asked you to come with me.”
“One reason?”
“Yes, Jimmy, the other is I need someone I can trust-absolutely.”
Filled with curiosity at the summons from my uncle, Mr Edward Dobbs, Chairman of Western University’s Board of Trustees, I had joined him at the airport, but we had no time for conversation until we were in the plane and on our way.