James Hall - Miami Noir

“Yeeargh yourself,” Sheldon said. “What’d you want to show me?”

“Dr. Lemaistre? Is that you?” a voice called.

Mackenzie emerged from the brush and walked over. Gloom had settled into the clearing much faster than Vernon anticipated.

Sheldon sighed and tried to read his watch. “Let’s get this over with,” he said.

Vernon said to the detective, “Eustace lay about here. His atlatl wasn’t beside him — where was it?”

“Great props, by the way.” Sheldon walked to a patch of ground forty feet from the scarecrow and pointed with his sneaker. “Here. We have pictures of it all.”

“Right,” Vernon said. “You ever wonder why he threw his atlatl twenty feet away before he killed himself?”

Sheldon shrugged. “Suicides do weird things. Once I saw a guy who took all his clothes off, even his shoes, folded them up and left them on the beach. He waded out into the ocean and shot himself in the head.”

Vernon held up his atlatl. “Ever seen anybody use one of these, detective?”

Sheldon shook his head and stuck his hands in his pockets.

“It’s not like a gun. You can’t turn it on yourself.” Vernon set the aluminum dart on the atlatl’s hook. “It’s like a bow and arrow — it shoots the dart away from you. Watch close.” He reared his arm straight back and brought it down hard as he could, and the dart snapped forward and disappeared into the gathering shadows. The pulled muscle in his shoulder throbbed.

Sheldon whistled.

Mackenzie said, “Stone Age man used it to bring down mammoths. Cave bears. Sabre-toothed cats — all the mega fauna. Wiped it out ten thousand years ago.”

“Mammoths, huh?”

“When Cortez invaded the Aztec empire, their warriors still used atlatls,” Mackenzie said.

Vernon added, “Their darts went right through the Spanish armor. They could shoot farther and straighter than a musket.” He glanced at Mackenzie, who was just another unreadable silhouette.

“This is a fascinating lecture, docs, but can we speed it up a little? I have work to do.”

Vernon resisted the urge to roll his eyes. He offered Sheldon the atlatl and the wooden dart. “Here, you try it.”

After a moment’s hesitation, Sheldon walked over and took the weapon.

While Sheldon fiddled with the two pieces of wood, Vernon said, “Two steps back. Right there.” He pointed to his suit-jacket scarecrow. “Eustace was standing right about there.”

“I don’t see your point,” Sheldon said.

“Ah,” Mackenzie said. That single syllable full of understanding and remorse.

Vernon waved Mackenzie back, behind Sheldon. “Throw the dart.”

Sheldon swung the atlatl back and faced the scarecrow.

“No,” Vernon said. He pointed. “Aim down there. Where the targets were, remember? Nothing but trees.”

Vernon watched the detective peer into the shadows, then give a little shrug. He cocked his arm and swung forward and down.

The dart flipped off to the left. The three men watched it pierce the suit-jacket without even slowing down and plow into the ground some forty feet beyond.

“I’ll be goddamned,” Sheldon said. He let the atlatl fall from his hand.

Vernon couldn’t have asked for a better demonstration. “See what you just did?”

Sheldon looked around, his eyes wide. “But I was aiming...” he said, then noticed the atlatl at his feet. His mouth hung open.

“The same thing happened to me first time I shot one,” Mackenzie said. “Put a dart right through a steel garbage can. What a waste. What a terrible waste.”

Sheldon stared at the dart’s path. Maybe he was envisioning Green transfixed, the look of surprise on his face, the backward fall.

“I think that happens because the dart’s not settled just right on the hook,” Vernon said. “The idea of the atlatl’s easy, but actually getting the dart to go where you want, that’s hard.”

“I’ll be goddamned,” Sheldon said again.

“Mackenzie and I both saw him with women last night. And what would groupies of the atlatl world champion want more than anything? A quick lesson.”

Sheldon nodded, but his eyes were still on the scarecrow. “Sure. A quick lesson.”

Vernon walked over to Sheldon’s side. “She stood here, with his atlatl. Had no idea what she was doing. Aiming downrange, toward the target. He stood right over there,” Vernon nodded at the jacket, “probably rooted her on.”

“He just wasn’t far enough out of the way,” Mackenzie said.

Sheldon turned to them. “But she hit him square in the heart.”

Vernon shrugged. “Luck. You’d have to be a doctor to be able to do that on purpose.” He knelt and touched the fallen atlatl. “Then she dropped the evidence, just like you did.” There must’ve been no sound at all except Green’s body hitting the ground. “Then she ran.”

“God, it was all just an accident,” Mackenzie whispered. Then he cleared his throat. “We still have the list of registrants.” He put a hand on Sheldon’s shoulder. “You could track them down, right?”

“No fingerprints — the handle was wrapped with leather. But we can check the list,” Sheldon said.

Vernon looked at the young detective. You aren’t going to check anything, he thought, because a closed case is a good case.

Vernon walked behind the scarecrow and plucked the dart out of the ground. Rolled it between his fingers to insure it was still straight.

“Thanks for the demonstration, Dr. Lemaistre,” the detective said, but he didn’t sound like he meant it. Sheldon stuck his hands in his pockets and slouched, as if in thought. “I better go check on that list.” After a moment, he turned and plodded away through the dark.

Mackenzie walked over and rested a heavy hand on his shoulder. “Hard to believe it was just a ridiculous accident. Eustace deserved better than that.” He cleared his throat. “Good work, Vernon,” he said. “Come to my office tomorrow morning. We’ll finish up that interview.” He shook his head. “Such a waste.”

Alone in the clearing, Vernon stared east at the acrylic lights of Miami Beach blazing on the horizon. He hadn’t deliberately planned anything. He’d taken Eustace’s onyx point and set it into one of his own darts, for good luck, he thought. Nothing but luck put Eustace on the range when Vernon had been trying for one more bull’s-eye, despite the dark, despite the beer. He wasn’t sure if he’d aimed or not.

Vernon tapped his atlatl against his palm. Eustace hadn’t even heard it coming. The dart hit him, he fell down and died without even knowing what happened. Vernon was right, though — the banner stone really did quiet the throw. Technology had reached forward from the Stone Age to silence Eustace Green.

Vernon pulled his coat off the makeshift scarecrow and stuck his finger through the hole in the cloth. He’d need to get that mended. He walked downrange, into the trees. His first dart should be here somewhere and he didn’t like the idea of leaving it out overnight.

No witnesses, a dead man already rotting on a mortician’s table. A detective who was happy to forget anything had happened. A new boss, a new job. A new life. Vernon searched the trees for his dart until he heard something moving through the underbrush. He backed away, into the clearing. Maybe he’d come back in the morning and look for the dart. Or maybe he’d just leave it, stuck in a tree, until the aluminum shaft eventually oxidized. That might take a hundred years. The stone point, he knew, would outlast him. Would outlast even his bones.

Perrine

The boy, Speck, and his father, the sawyer, were wrestling a log onto the sawmill carriage and didn’t see the two strangers when they first appeared at the edge of the clearing. Nor had they heard them calling because of the thumping engine of the Fordson tractor that powered the mill and its screaming saw blade. The boy looked up through the swirling sawdust to idly scan the yard and down the dirt road, and that’s when he saw the man and girl.