Джо Горес - Mostly Murder - A Short Story Collection

“And when I came down from the second floor,” exclaimed Bowman, “she was right beside that door, with the key in her hand. She said she heard a shot, and I believed her. But—”

“Well, well, well,” interrupted Hoffe softly. “The little stepdaughter had motive, means, and opportunity — the classic big three for premeditated murder.”

Merrilee had paled. She whirled back to the mirror and pressed her face against it, making a double image of herself. “Stop it,” she cried, “all of you! I did hear a shot, just like I said! And I heard Daddy in here talking with someone, but I couldn’t hear the words.” She faced them again, pale features contorted. “You can’t prove that Daddy planned to—”

She stopped, mouth gaping, as Eric Stalker’s rich, sardonic tones filled the room. “A tender — if drunken — scene.”

They looked at the corpse, then at the TV. Merrilee’s bed was wide, opulent, with a trail of scattered masculine and feminine garments leading to it across the floor. On it, two naked people were leaping guiltily apart.

“The tape was in the safe,” explained Hoffe from the VCR machine. “He had his own kid’s room wired for pictures.”

“Stepkid’s,” corrected Bowman almost lasciviously.

On the screen, boy and woman had gotten tangled up in each other and the black satin top-sheet had fallen on the floor beside the bed. Stalker entered the frame.

“You — out.”

The boy scrambled to his feet. “Hey, old man, I ain’t scared of you!”

“You should be. Now get out before I—”

“Jerry, do what he says,” said the film Merrilee.

“Stop it!” shrieked the real Merrilee.

“We've gone through it,” said Hoffe. “Now it’s your turn.”

On the screen, the boy stormed out with his clothes, slamming the door behind him. Stalker was staring at Merrilee as she hastily pulled on a robe over her nakedness.

“I’m cutting off your allowance, Merrilee.”

She tried to embrace him, fawning. “Daddy, I’m sorry. I don’t know what came over me. I had too much to drink and — you can’t!”

He shook her off. “I can and will. It was important to your mother that you be a decent person. I’ll revoke the trust if that’s what it takes to—”

Merrilee slammed her hand down on the VCR controls and the screen went blank. She turned to glare at the others. “All right, he’d taken my allowance and was threatening to revoke the trust. But he promised that if I straightened up he’d give it all back to me!”

“But tonight at dinner he told all of us that he wasn’t giving us one damned thing,” said Hoffe.

“It could have been any one of us,” breathed Norliss.

“Or all of us,” said Bowman.

“Sure — or none of us,” Merrilee added sarcastically.

Hoffe merely laughed.

What was it that Holmes told Watson? That when you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth? Of course, our suspects’ stories should have told you who I, the murderer, am — as well as why I did it. But if you’re still confused, remember those three classic elements of premeditated murder: motive, means, and opportunity.

“What are you laughing at?” snapped Bowman.

“You all act like this is one of those board games,” said Hoffe. “Colonel Mustard in the kitchen with a noose. But this is real murder, not—”

“Do you know who did it?” demanded Norliss.

“I’m a detective, aren’t I?”

“The police will be here any minute.”

“I didn’t call them yet. No use going down unnecessarily.”

“For — murder?”

“Nah, little girl — for taking a bribe. As for murder—” Hoffe began pacing beside the desk again. Their eyes followed him. “Was it Hoffe, the corrupt cop? No, I had to smash the French doors to get in here and Norliss was with me when I did. Which takes care of him, too. We alibi each other.”

Bowman broke in. “If you’re saying it was me—”

“You couldn’t profit from his murder — you’d still be ruined. And why give him a quick and easy death when he might face a long and lingering one? Besides, Merrilee was at the study door when you came downstairs.”

Heads swiveled back to Merrilee, cowering against the now-silent TV.

“Merrilee, the disaffected stepdaughter,” said Hoffe. “Motive, means, opportunity. Even had a key to get in here.” He grinned. “But the door was bolted on the inside, her key couldn’t do her any good. It’s just like she said. How’d she put it’ ‘Or none of us?’ Yeah. Or none of us.”

“But... but there wasn’t anyone else,” Norliss said.

“Sure, there was,” Hoffe told him. “Stalker blew himself away.”

But you knew I was the killer all the time, didn’t you? Because I was the only person who could have done it, from the moment I shot the bolt on that door. I warned you that no one could be eliminated as a suspect.

Who was I talking to just before I died? Why, to my own image in the mirror on the back of the door, of course. I even saw myself and the room reversed, if you will remember — pen in my left hand, inkwell on the left corner of the blotter, the picture and the safe door open to the right-hand side, the French doors to the left of the safe.

Hoffe, in repeating the scene after they broke in, listed each item in its proper place. The gun was ten feet from the desk — where my involuntary death spasm threw it. That spasm knocked over the inkwell. There were powder bums because I put the muzzle against my chest before I pulled the trigger.

Yes, I committed the perfect crime.

“Almost,” said Hoffe. He was holding the sheet of paper on which Stalker had been writing just before his death. On the opened envelope was written: To be opened one year after my death. “Lucky I don’t believe in dying wishes,” he added.

Then he read aloud from the letter:

“ ‘To whom it may concern: When this is read, I will be dead a year — by my own hand. Last week I was told I might have cancer, and yesterday confirmed the diagnosis with a specialist. Inoperable. Since I do not wish to be reduced to ridicule by pain and fear, I am ending it now, arranging it so that one of my so-called friends will be convicted of my murder. A conviction each of them more richly deserves than I do this death sentence passed upon me by nature.’

“That’s a matter of opinion,” said Hoffe.

There was the snap of a cigarette lighter. Stalker’s note started to bum. Each person already had his own videotape.

Damn! I should have foreseen that none of them would honor the last wishes of a poor, dying, betrayed man.

It was one of the Victorian novelists, I believe, who said that when you go into an attorney’s office, you will have to pay for it, first or last.

What I have realized only too late, alas, is that this holds tree even if you’re the attorney.

At eleven p.m., Spiro Gounaris, a hawk-nosed man carrying fifty years and forty extra pounds, locked the door of the second-hand store which fronted his treasury book. He crossed the sidewalk to the phonebooth, as he had done for six nights in a row. As he dropped his dime and tapped out the Federal Prosecutor Task Force number, Raptor came bopping along in shades and a floppy beret — on my way home from an early gig, man.

Unlike the previous nights, Raptor saw no other pedestrians on the street. Gounaris was saying, “Seven-thousand two-hundred and eighty” into the phone when Raptor pressed the muzzle of the short-barreled .357 Magnum against the back of his head and pulled the trigger...

At three minutes to midnight, Raptor walked into a gas station three miles away and laid five twenties with a note clipped to them on top of the pump the night man was locking up.