Doug Allyn - v108 n03-04_1996-09-10

“Turn off the road here,” he said. “Do it now!”

I braked and eased the Jeep onto the hard ground. We headed west toward the canyon. The layered red shale loomed ominously before me.

“Sonny, what’s going on?”

“Shut up!” he said. “Just keep driving.”

The Jeep bounced and rocked slightly as it rolled over the desert floor. We neared the canyon rim. He looked at me.

“I’ll take the letter,” he said.

“The letter?”

He bumped the end of the shotgun barrel against my temple.

“Don’t get smart. Pull up over there and give it to me.”

I coasted to a stop near the edge of the canyon. He prodded me again with the barrel, and I took the letter out of my inside pocket and gave it to him.

“Get out,” he said, reaching over to shut off the ignition and pull out the key.

I slipped out the door, and he directed me backwards about ten feet, then told me to stop. He scrambled out himself and came around the Jeep, still pointing the shotgun at me. There was a hot wind blowing from the southwest. A devil’s wind.

“Who else knows about this?” he asked, indicating the letter.

“Uncle Dede,” I said. “Others, too. Now, what’s going on?”

“You can’t lie for crap,” he said, removing the contents of the envelope and glancing over them. He reinserted everything. The corner had Dr. Hardy’s return address printed on it, and Sonny tore it off.

“Have to pay him a little visit,” he grinned. Then he took out another kitchen match and squatted on his haunches, the shotgun tucked under his arm. With quick glances from me to the letter, he snapped the match with his thumbnail and lit the envelope. I watched as the yellow flame trailed the black semicircle of expanding ash over the white paper. He dropped it to the desert floor and the flame consumed the last part, leaving only a smoldering wisp of smoke and crumpled carbon.

Sonny stood up.

“What you got planned for me, Sonny?” I said. “An accident?”

I knew if I tried to run he’d get me in the back before I’d gone ten steps.

“I ain’t got no choice now, Rick,” he said, licking his lips. “Can’t afford to let that letter get out. Too bad I couldn’t have found it while you all were at the wake.”

“The burglary? It was you?”

He nodded.

“But why?” I said, desperately trying to keep him talking. Trying to prolong whatever time I had. “What does it all mean?”

He exhaled slowly and raised the shotgun to his shoulder. Then he hesitated.

“McKitrick was gonna disinherit Carol,” he said. “Told me so right out here that day we met. He knew all the time she wasn’t really his blood. Been buying my silence all these years. But now, with that young filly of his pregnant, he’d decided that it didn’t matter no more. He was gonna get rid of her. Cut her off without a cent, and I couldn’t let that happen.”

“You couldn’t?”

He scratched his cheek. “Move over toward the edge of the rim,” he said, gesturing with the barrel.

My feet felt leaden as they scuffed over the dusty surface.

“Why, Sonny?” I yelled. “Why couldn’t you let that happen?”

“Ain’t you guessed by now, boy?” he said. “I’m her real daddy.”

“Sonny, wait,” I said. “It wouldn’t have made any difference. Carol would have gotten what was coming from her mother’s estate anyway.”

“Just like them Indians are getting their fair share, huh?” Sonny grinned ruefully at me as he raised the shotgun again and pointed it at me. “You don’t know much about going up against a rich man, do you, boy? And I reckon you ain’t gonna have no more time to learn.”

My legs felt too weak to run. Paralyzed with fear, I closed my eyes. The shot came and my knees gave out, and I rolled in the dirt, anticipating the terrible pain. Suddenly I heard a gurgling sound and realized I wasn’t hit.

Sonny was. He staggered convulsively in front of me. The shotgun discharged explosively, scattering a cloud of dirt off to the right.

Another shot, and Sonny’s body jerked violently for a few seconds as he curled over and fell in a twisted heap. I ran forward and pulled the shotgun from under him. Jim Buck came running up carrying his 30–30 Winchester. I cradled the dying man in my arms.

“Rick, you all right?” Jim asked. “I was out patrolling when I saw you...”

Sonny’s body shook again, and he brought a darkly stained hand up and looked at it.

“Dark blood... Hit my liver,” he said haltingly.

“I’ll call for an ambulance,” Jim said, turning to run up to his squad car.

“No,” called Sonny. “Got to hear... this...” A couple more labored breaths and Sonny told us that he’d killed McKitrick and planted the Sig Sauer in Joe’s truck.

“Saw it outside the bar.” His mouth twisted in a pitiful attempt at a smile. “Seemed a neat way to tie things up.”

“Why’d you do it, Sonny?” Jim Buck asked.

Sonny’s eyes darted from Jim to me. Then he shook his head. “Tell Carol I’m...” He started to whisper to me, then his mouth dropped open and a blood bubble spread over his lips, not bursting until I moved his head. His hands fell limply to his sides. “What’d he say?” Jim asked. I shook my head. “Wonder why he killed McKitrick?” Jim said.

The scrap of the envelope with Hardy’s return address stirred in the hot wind, then fluttered out over the edge of the canyon and disappeared. “I guess that’ll be his secret,” I said.

© 1996 by Reginald Hill

Readers may be surprised to find the creator of police detectives Dalziel and Pascoe turning his band to the private-eye story, but Reginald Hill has always ranged freely across genre lines in his sixteen-year career as a mystery writer. His latest creation, black P.I. Joe Sixsmith, is as irreverently portrayed as most of Mr. Hill’s other characters, and the result, as usual, is uproariously funny.

“Hello.”

“Who’s that?”

“It’s Joe, Aunt Mirabelle.”

“You sure? Why didn’t you say so before?”

“Because it’s my phone in my office, Aunt Mirabelle. I always answer it.”

“Not when you know it’s me ringing you don’t, boy.”

Joe Sixsmith sighed. As a leading light among the black P.I.’s of Luton who’d served their time as lathe operators, he felt entitled to a little respect.

“What do you want, Auntie?”

“You know Mr. Tooley’s funeral?”

“We talked about it last night. You said it couldn’t be till next Thursday ’cos they’d had a rush on at the crem and I made a note and said I’d definitely be there. Remember?”

“Of course I remember. Well, it’s this afternoon. Half-past three.”

“Today? But you said...”

“I know what I said. And I told that funeral director friend of yours it was a crying shame that folk had to be kept lying around so long, especially when they’d only got one frail old sister who’d travelled all the way from Belfast to sort out the effects and had neither the money nor the strength to be travelling back home and back here again in space of a week...”

“Yes, Auntie,” said Joe, risking an interruption. “You said all this. So what’s changed?”

“Mr. Webster from the parlour rang this morning to say there’s been a cancellation and did we want it?”

“Lou said a cancellation? Of a funeral? You sure?”

“Don’t you start again, Joseph. Just be here three o’clock sharp. Don’t want that old lady going home saying they don’t know the meaning of good neighbourliness here in Luton.”

Joe grinned broadly as he replaced the receiver. It was true that for many years Mirabelle had undoubtedly been a good neighbour to old Mr. Tooley, making sure that he continued to be well fed even when, as often happened, he contrived to lose most of his pension at his much-loved dog track by halfway through the week. But this argosy of Christian charity to a miserable sinner was in risk of foundering on the rock of old Miss Tooley, the grieving sister, who, so far as Joe could judge, had no intention whatsoever of travelling home to Belfast and back in a week. On the contrary, she seemed more than content to more than fill her brother’s place, resting in his flat with Good Neighbour Mirabelle coming round with three hot meals a day, in between which she spent most of her time on the Good Neighbour’s line, pouring out her woes to her numerous acquaintance back in Belfast.