Брендан Дюбуа - Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine. Vol. 51, No. 7 & 8, July/August 2006

“Nope. A single retelling is all I can face. Everybody ready? Berkham, it seems, has a contract with a consortium of Midwestern medical schools to transport bodies, some left by will to science, some collected for a nominal sum from small-town communities without funds or willingness to bury derelicts and paupers, some from sources the guy wouldn’t identify. They even have a special refrigerated truck for that purpose with bays, I think the guy said, to carry up to eight stiffs at a crack.

“Anyway, the blizzard held up a run out south and west in Illinois from Thursday on, and the driver seems to have spent his time stranded in Moline getting oiled. Sunday morning early, after the roads opened again, he started off with a hangover toward Chicago coming in on I-88. Going over the Rock River bridge, he hit a patch of ice. The truck went into a skid, plowed off the road and down an embankment, rammed a tree, and dumped four dead bodies and one live one out into the snow. The driver ended up in the hospital with a drunk driving citation, the vehicle was more or less demolished, and Berkham Truck Rentals had a major crisis on its hands with none of its regular people available to help.”

“Poor Jason,” Cathy said.

“Right. He drove out there behind the shift manager in a normal refrigerated truck, and together they loaded the bodies into the rear. Then the shift manager buzzed off back to Chicago as fast as he could and left your cousin to deal with bringing the bodies in at a safe, slow pace. That’s all we know for sure, except that Jason showed up very late with one of the back doors of the truck flapping open and only three bodies in the truck.

“So — carelessness. Jason apparently just fumbled around and acted defensive and hostile, and the night manager blew up and paid him off out of petty cash.”

“He was out of his mind,” I said, referring to Jason.

“Rather he was confused and depressed and at the end of his tether, don’t you think?” Mom has a definite way of putting people like me in our places when we say stupid things. “His parents had virtually disowned him, remember. His one confirmed emotional anchor wasn’t speaking to him. The girl he had a crush on here in Appleton didn’t return his interest. His college goals seemed unattainable after seven semesters. He was out of money and wasn’t thinking rationally—”

“And he’d just spent several hours first wrestling frozen stiffs up a snowy embankment into a truck and then driving two hundred miles with them as his only company,” Dad added.

“Yes. It’s hardly difficult to see how he might come to have morbid or desperate ideas, such as staging a car fire. As he informed me this afternoon, his car insurance and license plates were expiring and he had no money to renew. What he said to Kirsten in all of our hearing is the key, I think. He needed attention. He just wanted people to pay attention to him.”

“Poor Jason,” Cathy said again. “Poor dumb, crazy mutt.”

Some final observations by your novice in crime:

Didn’t the whole affair seem a little melodramatic? After the fact, absolutely. While it was going on, though, it was dead serious.

Would Jason actually have pulled the trigger when he held the stud gun to his head? Maybe not, since it seemed just as likely that he was ready to cut and run.

Was I glad I put the matter out of doubt? Yep.

Did he do jail time for all the mischief he caused? Ninety days in Wisconsin, suspended sentence in Illinois, approximately a million years of community service and big bucks in fines, which his parents refused to pay, so the Lindners did.

What about Liz Clarke? She stopped being a sucker for Kirsten and got on with her life.

Kirsten? Went on being Kirsten. That type always does.

Did Jason and Cathy iron out their differences? Well...

The second year after I graduated, winter of ’03, I was home in Chicago working at a brand-new occupation, and on my way to an assignment, my route took me past L & L Construction over near O’Hare. For three days I fought it off, but curiosity finally took control, and so I pulled my car up in front of the place and went inside on the fourth morning, not knowing what I was going to find. Probably strangers.

The first thing I noticed was a rather faded, dog-eared sign in lettering I thought I recognized:

NO SMOKING!!

(THIS MEANS YOU, CATH)

And the next thing I saw, off behind a counter, was the head and shoulders profile of Cathy Lindner seated at a computer terminal. We Carrs are pretty impossible not to recognize, once seen, so when she looked around I just said, “Hi. How’s the head architect?”

She stood up and came toward me before replying, “Slightly, well—” A gesture. “Hello, Steve Carr! I saw your father I don’t know how long ago, and he told me you were getting married.”

“Got married.” I nodded, then took a good look at her left hand for a reason, since even without the gesture she’d made, I would have caught on that she was possibly seven months pregnant.

“Me too.”

I was honestly afraid to ask, so I waited.

“Yes. To Jason. It’s legal for third cousins, and not regarded as dangerous, you know. I guess the fact is, I was Jason’s big problem — maybe you remember — and when I stopped being a problem for him, he basically stopped being one for himself. And it’s great being married to your best friend.”

I agreed, then asked, “So what’s he up to now — more mischief?”

“Some.” She smiled. “Mainly, he’s been learning the business from Dad for the past three years. Dad’s sixty-eight, you know, so one of these days, very soon I think, we’ll have to change the sign out in front from L & L to H & H.”

It seemed a good belated ending, at least for what to me was just the beginning — not that Carr Investigations and Security had to change anything about its name when it signed me on.

Copyright 2006 S. L. Franklin

The wish first occurred to Judson Wick while he was attending the opera.

An opera box was not his normal milieu, but he could not pass up the chance to escort the elderly widow who glittered with diamonds and influence; so, masking his lack of interest and knowledge, he kept an attentive look on his handsome, if rather bland, face and bent his sleek, dark head in response to the widow’s frequent nudges. It was during such a moment, when he did focus on the performance, that the wish occurred to him. He smiled ruefully and dismissed it.

It came back to him the next day, during his yearly lunch with the manager of Wick Industries. The man always recited lists of figures — this year they showed the declining value of the company’s stock — and reminisced at irritating length about the years when Judson’s father had built and run the company. It was Judson’s practice to keep his manner aloof and unconcerned; but this time, when the manager made pointed references to “the leisurely life,” the manner began to show fine cracks, like battered safety glass — until the moment was saved by the sudden return of the wish.

That evening it returned once more when, as a guest of the director, Judson attended the opening of a Broadway play and the party that followed. He ate smoked oysters and listened while the rave reviews were read aloud; over the rim of his champagne glass he watched the director, with whom he had gone to school, standing in the spotlight of success, and the wish came back so forcefully that the champagne soured in his throat and he left the party.

He barely had returned to his apartment when the doorbell rang. His spirits lifted at the thought that the red haired actress had changed her mind about a nightcap, but the person at the door was not female, and the hair was quite gray. The suit was gray too, in both color and spirit, drooping on the man’s shoulders and rounding over his knees. Everything about him seemed tired and sad except for his tie, a strip of vivid orange silk that ran down his shirtfront like a tongue of flame. “Good evening,” he said. “I am advised by my firm that you have some property for sale.”