Lawrence Block: Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine. Vol. 137, No. 2. Whole No. 834, February 2011

Oh well.

Powder beckoned Haller to lean in close. “I haven’t heard anything from inside the building and there’s no getaway car waiting back here. Probably whoever did it is long gone. Even so.”

Haller nodded. Both men drew their weapons and Haller also took out his flashlight.

Powder turned his light on, took a breath, and headed into the dark void. “Police,” he called. “Stay where you are.” He dodged to one side and crouched. With gun and light he scanned the room.

Haller took the other side, his flashlight too searching for danger.

They found none.

By the doorjamb Haller discovered a row of three switches. He flipped them all.

The room flooded with light, showing it to be a large storeroom, with a desk, a computer, and a file cabinet against the wall opposite where they’d just come in.

There was no one in the room besides the two policemen.

“Clear,” Haller called.

Each man took a door that led off the room on the end away from the desk.

“Clear,” Powder called, finding a toilet.

“Clear.”

Then together they approached the main passage into the public’s area of the store. They entered quickly and cautiously, and rapidly they searched up and down the aisles of goods. There was no one in the store.

Powder moved in the direction of the main entrance, intending either to open it for the officers standing outside or indicate through the glass that there was no one untoward on the premises.

“Hang on a sec, Lieutenant,” Haller said.

Powder turned. “What?”

The younger, taller man approached and leaned forward. Quietly he said, “It’s good to have backup you can trust, isn’t it?”

After a moment, Powder said, “What’s that supposed to mean, Haller?”

“Leave my wife alone.”

“What?”

Haller held Powder’s eyes for another moment. Then he stepped around and unbolted the entrance door. “Nobody home,” he said to the three officers outside.

“We have to stop meeting like this, Roy,” Carol Lee Fleetwood said in her office the next day.

Powder smiled and sat down.

“No, I mean it, Roy. I can’t have you coming here all the time. What is it now? A statistical analysis of how many officers call in sick every Super Bowl Sunday? The World Series? The Pride Parade?”

Powder’s smile vanished. “I want to make you a better non-cop,” he said.

Fleetwood sighed. She looked at her watch. “Two minutes.”

“Oh for crying out loud.”

“One fifty-five. Fifty-four.”

“Barry Haller threatened me last night.”

“He what?”

“He clearly threatened that one day he wouldn’t back me up when I needed him to.”

“Did you record it?”

“No. And I’ll take care of the threat. But the point I’m making is that he knew I’d been checking up on him. He said, ‘Leave my wife alone.’”

“His wife?” Fleetwood gave Powder a look that asked whether there was more between him and Haller’s wife than had previously been advertised.

“Don’t be stupid. I’m saying that Haller knew his wife told me — me and not an anonymous letter deliverer — that he was off hunting deer. I’d never met the woman before, and it’s not like I was wearing my uniform.”

Fleetwood considered this. “Funny glasses? A fake beard?”

“Sunglasses and a Colts cap.”

“Maybe she described you well.”

“Because I’m so distinctive? You and I both know that without my uniform I’m just an average-looking guy in late middle-age. Nobody would look at me twice.”

Fleetwood considered this.

“I wasn’t there long and she never really saw me — I didn’t give her any reason to.”

“You can’t be sure.”

“So I’ve come in to ask whether someone in this office told Haller that I reported him for taking unauthorized time off.”

Fleetwood rocked forward. “You’re accusing me?”

“Not you. But I have legitimate cause to ask who else might have seen the report I left with you.”

“Not who might have seen it. Who might have tipped off Barry Haller.”

“Yes.”

“No one.”

“No one saw it?”

“No one in this office tipped off Barry Haller.”

“Just like that? No thinking about it? No reviewing where the report went after I left? Who had access? What time people left the office?”

“Just like that.”

Powder studied her face. Then he got up. “Okay.”

“Okay?”

“If you say no way, then it’s no way. So there has to be some other explanation.”

“Just like that?”

“Just like that. I can help cops do their jobs better. Maybe I’m overreaching to try to help you non-cops.”

“Okay,” Fleetwood said. “And I will give your report some thought.”

“I’ll be back.”

She frowned, trying not to repeat that she’d just told him not to keep coming to the office.

“I’m preparing a report on absenteeism on Valentine’s Day. Why can’t they just say it with flowers?”

Powder was making a joke. Fleetwood didn’t laugh. He left.

Powder did some gardening after he got home from seeing Fleetwood. He no longer had a plot of land on the edge of the city but there was soil and some sunshine on two sides of his little house. It was enough to make do with, as were so many other things in his life.

Anyway, Powder’s gardening wasn’t about the fruit or the flowers. He gardened when he had something to think about. Today that something was Barry Haller.

Part of the mystery was how Haller knew it was Powder who’d visited his house and found out about his hunting trip. If he hadn’t learned this from someone in Human Resources, then from who?

And then Haller had threatened him. To imply that Powder might find himself without backup in a dangerous situation was about the worst threat one policeman can make to another without brandishing a weapon. What was that about?

Both the threat and its premeditated nature were puzzling. Claiming to be sick in order to take a day off to murder deer was bad — irresponsible — but it was misdemeanor territory rather than felony land. Even Powder wouldn’t lock Haller up or fire him. Some community service, maybe. Emptying bedpans at a hospital for a month or two? Helping out at a deer sanctuary?

The target of Powder’s report was a general attitude rather than any particular offender. Which Haller couldn’t know, fair enough, so maybe he thought he’d been singled out. But even so, to threaten a superior and senior officer? Overkill, surely.

Many weeds died but Powder still did not find the missing bit of the Haller puzzle.

Neither did he find it at the beginning of the shift that evening. Discreetly, Powder gave Haller special attention as he went through the assignments, alerts, messages from on high, and the rest of the appetizers, entrées, and desserts on the day’s roll call menu. He also watched Lyndrick, Wear, and Dubinski, three of the other four “criminals” on his list. Connick, the fifth, was absent. He was in the hospital with a hiatal hernia. Supposedly. It was Larry Wear who was Haller’s neighbor. They hadn’t struck Powder as special friends in the past and today they didn’t sit at the same table. Did they hunt together? Powder didn’t know. When he’d rung the bell at Wear’s house, no one had answered.

And Lyndrick and Dubinski? No answer at their doors, either. Who knew? Powder was stuck for ideas about how to proceed.

And he continued to be stuck until a call came through from a woman in a condo off College just north of Broad Ripple. She was worried about a prowler in the hallways that connected her unit to others.