Lisa Atkinson - Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine. Vol. 131, No. 5. Whole No. 801, May 2008

When Ms. Shank failed to answer the ring, Diane called her supervisor.

And when the neighbor lady came over to open the house for the police, they found the homeowner lying at the foot of the stairs, with strangulation marks around her scrawny neck. Red marks, red as the ink in her pen.

When informed of the identity of the victim, the chief of police — who had been receiving his own regular envelopes from Ms. Shank for years — exclaimed, “Good God, this will be the longest suspect list in history!” He didn’t add what else he was thinking, “And the most sympathetic jury, too.”

If they catch me, it will have been worth it.

Arnold Sullivan sat in his studio apartment and stared at the hands that had held the bitch’s neck and squeezed. It had been the most satisfying few moments of his life. Again and again he reviewed in his memory how he had lunged, how she had gasped, and how she had looked as life struggled out of her.

“I have finally figured out who you are,” she had said to him on Sunday.

He had put down the grocery sacks and asked politely, “Excuse me?”

She’d put a finger to her nose. “Who is that grocery delivery boy, I kept asking myself, because there was something about you that looked so familiar. And now I know. You’re Sam Sullivan’s older brother, aren’t you?”

The grocery “boy,” who was seventy years old, said simply, “Yes.”

She had smiled her vicious smile, the one she used every week when she handed him a dime. One dime. As if he were ten. As if it were 1928, instead of 2008. It was also the smile his brother Sam had said she’d had on her face when she read his essay aloud in class, the one in which Sam confessed to his feelings for another boy. She had encouraged them to write passionately, tell something secret and deeply true, and she had promised nobody else would ever see it.

It had been 1957. Sam was a small boy, physically, and a naïve one socially. Arnold remembered his brother as being a sweet and innocent thirteen years old, too trusting for his own good.

Three hours later, Sam had hanged himself in the basement.

She had worn that smile at his funeral.

“You’re the older brother of that gay boy, aren’t you?” she’d asked him this past Sunday. “I wonder what your parents did wrong, that they would have one son who killed himself and another who didn’t amount to a hill of...” She’d pointed triumphantly to the contents of one of the grocery sacks. “...beans.”

And so he’d lunged. With these hands.

The same hands that had cut his brother down before their parents could see Sammy like that. He hoped he had left fingerprints on her neck. He thought he might like to get caught, so he could tell the world what kind of person she was. Maybe they didn’t know. Maybe they’d be surprised.

Marvin Frolich read over his reporter’s story about the murder of the retired teacher. They still hadn’t arrested anybody, because there were just so many likely suspects, including himself. The district attorney had confided to Marv, “You know, even if we find who did this and bring him to trial, the defense attorney will have a field day proving how many other people hated her. And that’s all any jury will need to acquit based on reasonable doubt.”

Marvin edited the article gently, with faint pencil marks, remembering how harsh red ink could appear.

His secretary came in to take it from him.

“What did you say?” she asked, when he muttered something.

“Ding, dong,” he said, with profound and unashamed pleasure. “Ding. Damn. Dong.”

© 2008 by Nancy Pickard