Doug Allyn - Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine. Vol. 131, No. 3 & 4. Whole No. 799 & 800, March/April 2008

“You don’t know anything, Mr. Raines.” He shut his eyes and took another deep breath. “Now, please, please, please get the hell out of my office.”

“Look...”

“Get out!” he bellowed.

Then he started to cry. He didn’t weep or wail or bawl but tears ran in a zigzagging line from beneath his glasses. I watched him for a second. Then I left, because there didn’t seem to be anything else to do.

At the Union Avenue precinct, I found my way to the evidence room, bribed a desk clerk with two twenties for another look at the catalog of possessions removed from Don McAllister’s home, and then went to the fourth-floor Robbery — Homicide bullpen. Elswick and Johnson shared a cubicle, their desks pressed against each other. They were lounging, Elswick drinking a Dr Pepper, Johnson eating microwave popcorn. When they saw me, they exchanged smiles as if I were a private joke between them.

“If it isn’t the pot-bellied Sam Spade,” Elswick said.

“Did you know that Don McAllister was a serious amateur photographer?”

They exchanged looks and then Johnson shrugged. “So what?”

“None of his cameras and equipment are in the evidence locker or in your report. Were they at the scene?”

“Listen to him,” Elswick said. “He talks like a cop.”

Johnson stroked his moustache. “If they were at the scene, they would have been in our report, wouldn’t they?”

“Robbery might be the motive for McAllister’s murder.”

“You think so, huh?” Elswick finished his Dr Pepper, belched, crumpled the can, and pitched it in the trash. “You’re wasting your time, Raines.”

Johnson tapped a Manila folder on his desk. “Autopsy report. Pancreatic cancer, late stages.”

It was my turn to ask so what.

“Mark McAllister had another motive for murder besides having his heart broken by his deadbeat dad,” Johnson said.

“The kid wanted his inheritance quicker than his father wanted to die.”

“How was Mark McAllister supposed to know that his father had cancer or that there was any inheritance at all? He hadn’t heard from him since he was two years old.”

Elswick winked at Johnson. Johnson grinned at me.

“Talk to your client, Raines.”

“Meaning?”

Elswick gave me a hard look. “Meaning get the hell out of here and quit wasting our time.”

Instead of listening to their advice, I went to Riverside Park, where the last picture in Don McAllister’s portfolio had been taken. Something about that photograph troubled me and chafed at my nerves, although I didn’t know why. The subject was no different from the others. Maybe it was the intensity of his focus on the little boy, a reaching desperation that seemed as vivid as the trees, the sunshine, and the shadow, or maybe it was the bland faces in the background, anonymous, unconcerned onlookers to what felt like a horrible crime.

It was nearly a perfect spring afternoon. The skies were rich blue, the clouds lazy and puffy, the breeze from the river just cool enough to take the bite out of the afternoon sun. Harried mothers sat along the edge of the playground, talking quietly to each other as throngs of children ran towards the swings, the jungle gym, and slides. A few suited and bright-faced professionals from the offices downtown drank Starbucks coffee or ate their lunches in the shade of oak trees. Lovers, young and otherwise, held hands. I showed McAllister’s photograph around, asked if anyone recognized him. A few of the regulars did, but none knew his name, just that he’d come to the park to take pictures. There was no sense that anyone had been alarmed by his presence or aware that his camera lens had been focused on their children.

It was a useless trip but a gorgeous day, so I lingered in the park, enjoying the sounds of laughter, the fresh green grass, the clean smell of the air coming off the water. These days I spent most of my life in dive bars, low-rent strip clubs, grimy jails, and trash-strewn ghettos. It was nice to know that there was a different, brighter world to which I belonged. I found an empty park bench, stretched my legs, told myself for the hundredth time that I needed to get outdoors more often, start taking walks or jogging. I was still telling myself that I was going to start tomorrow when my cell phone vibrated in my pocket. My first reaction was to slap at a bug. I’d owned the phone for six months but still forgot that I had it.

“What the hell’s wrong with you, Charlie?” Bernie Koskov, the attorney I’d contacted for Mark McAllister, yelled. “You forgot how to return a phone call?”

“I forgot to check my messages.”

“No wonder you’re a nickel away from declaring bankruptcy.”

Koskov was a good friend and as good a defense lawyer as could be found in Memphis, but the man nagged even more than my ex-wife had. “What’s up?”

“What’s up, he asks,” Koskov said. “I just wanted to thank you for throwing me a dog of a case for which I’m not going to get paid a penny. You keep it up and I’ll be as poor as you.”

“Tell me.”

“Our client got a heartfelt letter from his father about three weeks ago. No return address on the envelope. But you know what was inside?” He didn’t wait for an answer. “A letter from Don McAllister explaining that he had cancer and only a few months to live. The letter went on to explain that our client was going to inherit a decent sum of money. There was also a certified check for three thousand dollars, good-faith money or a peace offering, I guess. That means our client had a financial motive for killing his father. It means I can’t play the abandoned-son card to get him a lesser sentence, and it means that I’m going to lose a murder case, something that I never, ever do.”

“Jesus.”

“Him, I could have gotten off.”

Then he hung up. I sat in the park another second, my face burning, feeling as stupid as I ever had in my life.

“I should have told you,” Mark McAllister said. “But I figured you’d think I was guilty if I did.”

I balled my hands into fists to stop myself from slapping him. “You were right.”

“I ain’t no saint, but I wouldn’t kill my own natural father.”

“The only reason you came to find him was the money.”

He scratched at a scab on his knuckle. “I owed some people back home, and they weren’t happy about it. These were some real tough old boys.”

“How much?”

“Twenty grand.” He smiled and then I really wanted to hit him. “I sort of lifted some of their product and put it to my own uses.”

“Why did you punch your father? He refuse to give you the money?”

He looked down at his hands and his face reddened. “He told me he was gay,” he said, his voice genuine for the first time since I’d met him. “He said that’s why he left my mother. The thought of it... I don’t know. I lost my temper.”

“You went back and killed him.” I held up a hand to stop him before he could spin another web of B.S. “Forget it. I’m through with you, but why me? Of all the private investigators in Memphis, why did you pick me?”

He smiled again. “Your ad in the phone book looked cheap. I thought I could afford you.”

I promised myself that I was just going to stop by the Refugee for a quick beer before heading home, but I walked through the door at six o’clock and was still there when the late local news came on at ten. A quick drink had turned into a dozen slow ones, and I squinted at the fly-specked and beer-splattered television, trying to focus my eyes. The first five minutes of the news was the usual drone of disaster — roadside bombings in Iraq, earthquakes in Indonesia, a plane crash in Italy. Then the anchorman cut to breaking local news. Two men had been gunned down outside of a Brooks Road strip club. The cops were withholding the victims’ names, but both were said to be associates of the Montesi crime family. The reporter went on to point out that these men were the latest victims in a series of murders and speculated about a brewing gang war, the first in Memphis in thirty-five years. Then the story ended. After a couple of appropriately serious headshakes, the anchorman brightened and teased a story about an Arkansas pig farmer who hit a half-million-dollar jackpot at the Horseshoe Casino down in Tunica.