Mike Ashley - The Mammoth Book of Perfect Crimes and Impossible Mysteries

The twins were placed in Interrogation Room 104. It was the first time they’d met since they’d been busted five years earlier, and much like that time, it didn’t go well. They attacked one another on sight.

“Sit down and behave yourself!” Pinero commanded, shoving Matthew into a wooden chair, sending him and it skidding into the wall.

The brothers glared at each other, twin faces of hate.

Pinero kicked off the proceedings, talking about Lenny “The Rat” Laymon’s fateful tumble in the tub. “It looks like an accident, it smells like an accident – a guy taking a shower makes a wrong step and one-and-one-half-gainer later, he’s cold as a Coho. Happens all the time, right? No signs of forced entry, violence, lube on the porcelain, nothing incriminating like rat poison lying around.” He paused. “But does it sound like an accident? You didn’t know Lenny had a hearing aid installed two years ago, did you, Bertrand? Because you were doing five for a crime Lenny stooled you on.”

Bertrand folded thin arms across a bony chest, tilted his fine, blonde head up in a haughty manner that would’ve done the CEO of a Crown Corporation proud. “I didn’t know, and I don’t care. I’m glad the little rat’s dead, but I had nothing to do with it.”

“Then how come your face shows up on Lenny’s webcam-your voice threatening to do him bodily harm-only a couple of days before the guy’s soft head met hard surface in a love embrace?”

“What!? That’s preposterous!” Bertrand wailed.

“What!? That’s preposterous!” Matthew mimicked, an octave or two higher.

Bertrand lunged at him. Pinero, McGrath, and Bugler wrestled the two siblings apart, planted them firmly back in their chairs again.

McGrath struggled to catch his breath, mop up and strain into a cup his spilled coffee. Then he said, “We have surveillance pictures of a man entering Lenny’s house-easily picking his lock-Lenny coming home, the man exiting, right around the time of Lenny’s death. A man limping rather badly. That puck to the knee back in junior hockey put a permanent crimp in your stride, didn’t it, Bertrand?”

“Thanks to my brother, yes,” the man sniffed.

“I was aiming for his balls,” Matthew gritted. “But they were too small a target.”

Bertrand ignored him, said to McGrath, “I was home in bed when Lenny died, nowhere near his rat hole.”

“And what about the mystery of a man caught on a surveillance camera, entering a mall, eighteen hours after he’s supposed to be dead?” Pinero intoned. “How’s that possible?”

The Kolvins went stone-faced.

Pinero leaned into Matthew. “You emailed Lenny about a ‘job’ – Meatman. Was it the Zammy Jewelers job at the Centre Mall? A diamond ring was found at Lenny’s place – a down payment maybe, before the loot was fenced?”

Matthew snorted. “I told you dickheads already I had nuthin’ to do with that job.”

“Funny thing about that surveillance video, though,” McGrath interjected, tonguing the rim of his coffee cup. “Detective Pinero noticed something strange about the jacket ‘Lenny’ was wearing in the video. It’s got a Manitoba Moose logo on it – the new logo, that is: a stylized angry moose baring its teeth, set against a background of trees.”

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.”