Bill Crider: Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine. Vol. 131, No. 1. Whole No. 797, January 2008

This sudden feeling made him turn away. He went to scrape the grill top clean, watching the counter customer out of the corner of his eye. Sam tensed as he saw the man reach over near the register — only to pull a yellow Best Burger napkin down off the stack.

The customer clicked the top of a ballpoint pen and scratched down something on the napkin quick, no more than a word or two or three. Sam had to look away then or else be caught snooping.

When he casually turned back toward the counter, the pen was gone. The napkin too, almost as though he had replaced it on the stack. The customer’s hands rested still and empty on the chrome-edged Formica.

The bell jingled over the door and the young man walked inside. He blinked a bit and glanced around — his first time here — then nodded to Sam and stepped to the takeout counter. “How’s it going?” he said.

Up close, the man was not as young as he had appeared. He wore a light black jacket over a blue shirt and khaki pants. Someone, probably a girlfriend, had taken care to snip his hair short and tight so that it stood up on his skull in pinched clumps like little black flames.

The customer seated at the counter didn’t look up.

“What can I getcha?” said Sam, working his hands into the towel that hung from his belt.

The man went rummaging through his pockets, finding a torn slip of paper. “Uh — a Double-wide Best Burger, rare, extra mayo, hold the pickles, hold the cheese.”

“Sandwich or meal?” said Sam. “Meal comes with fries and slaw.”

“Meal, I guess.”

“For a dollar more, you get two half-pounders. Today’s special. Comes with a side order of Lipitor and a chair to nap in.”

The man smiled and gave what amounted to a courtesy laugh. “No — just the one, thanks.”

“One Double, still mooing, mayo, no picks, no cheese.”

Sam turned to the grill and was reaching for the plump patties in the grill-side cooler when the counter customer said—

“I’ll have the same.”

Sam stopped and looked back at him. The takeout man looked too, for the first time, Sam expecting an electric moment of recognition on his face. But there was nothing. Just an amiable nod from the takeout man to the customer on the stool next to him, stranger-to-stranger. The counter customer nodded back and looked at the grill.

Sam took up two cool patties and played them down side-by-side, hitting the cooking surface with an immediate crackle of meat on heat. Sam didn’t like what he was feeling. He had seen the customer’s gun tucked under his arm when he’d first sat down. He’d seen his eyes, which looked prepossessed, and somehow — almost — familiar. Sam decided to forget about him, or else try. He focused on the takeout guy.

“First time here?” Sam said, turning back.

“First time, yeah.”

“Best burger in seventeen counties.”

“So I’ve heard, so I’ve heard.” The man drummed his fingers on the glass over the display counter showing mugs and T-shirts featuring the Best Burger logo: a friendly hamburger with arched eyebrows and stick-thin arms holding up a sign that read, “EAT ME.”

Sam said, “You work at the pen?”

The man stopped drumming. He looked down, checking himself, wondering where upon him it was written.

“Your car,” said Sam. “The blue state tags. We get a lot of guards loading up before and after shifts.”

The man nodded, relieved. “I’m not a guard, though,” he said.

“I know. Your shoes.”

The man looked down at them. “You’re pretty good,” he said.

Sam gave him a friendly shrug before checking on the burgers. The coolness had run out of them and he flattened each with the spatula, spilling juice for them to simmer in. Rare , he remembered, plucking up two pairs of buns and going at them with mayo from the tub. “Another busy one up there tonight, huh?”

“You could say.”

“About how many votes they run through them?” When Sam said “volts” it came out sounding like “votes.”

“I don’t know exactly. I think two thousand’s the number.”

He laid the buns out on the stainless ledge in front of the grill and said, “That’d be enough.” Execution nights were generally slow. A feeling of unease settled over the entire region, like the threat of bad weather. “Which one is it tonight?”

“Uh — Mossman? Sonny Mossman.”

“Mossman. Oh, yeah. I remember. The little girl, wasn’t it?”

“A couple of girls, I think. And two grown women. But they got him for the girl.”

Sam nodded. “They came round here afterward. That’s how I remember. Asking questions.” Sam flipped the burgers as he spoke, the patties hissing in protest as they were turned. “He’d been in here that night.”

“Here?” said the man, with more surprise and unease than Sam expected. Almost with concern.

“The very same night.” Sam laid up the spatula over the front lip of the grill and leaned back against the serving ledge. “How’d they get him? Fingerprints, wasn’t it?”

“One fingerprint. In the trunk of his car. And, like, two strands of her hair.”

“Didn’t he confess, though?”

“At first. Then he recanted. They couldn’t use it — I forget why.”

“Reading him his rights, maybe.”

“I don’t know. They never found the murder weapon either. Dredged three lakes around here, trying to turn it up.”

“Right, right. Didn’t make any friends of the fishermen that week. What was it?”

The man squinted in confusion. “What was what?”

“The weapon.”

The man shrugged. “Got me there.”

They both kind of nodded quietly, ready to quit the topic for something more agreeable like the weather or sports.

“A claw hammer,” said the customer at the counter.

The man turned to him. He stared, and Sam stared. “You said...?” said the takeout man — not because he hadn’t understood him, but because he never expected it. Because he knew more was coming.

“It was a claw hammer.”

It was quiet then except for the sizzle. Sam put things together, first slowly, then all at once. The shoulder holster, the eyes.

“I remember you,” Sam said. “You were heavier then.” Words escaped before he had time to properly consider them. “You had pictures for us. Asked me where he sat...” His voice tailed off, the memory returning full-bloom.

“He sat right here,” said the detective. “Right in this seat.” He laid his palms flat against the countertop and looked around the diner. “This place was one of his compulsions. He said he could never pass by without stopping in. Best Burger was his favorite food.”

He said this last part looking at the takeout man from the penitentiary, who appeared stricken. He hadn’t moved.

“He stopped here that night. Parked right outside and sat down here and ordered himself a Double-wide. He ate his burger and drank a large Coke. The girl he’d snatched, her name was Kelly-Louise Traynor. Six years old. She was still out in his trunk. Still alive.”

Ice shifted in his glass. Otherwise nothing moved.

Sam said, “You were the one who caught him?”

The detective squinted, having gone off thinking about something else.

“He had hidden his car somewheres,” said Sam, more and more coming back to him now. “Tried to clean it. Finding it is what did him in.”

“Fourth finger, right hand.” The detective showed them, rubbing his with the pad of his thumb. “On a fire extinguisher Mossman kept in the trunk. Two blonde hair strands in the carpet.”

“Two thin strands,” said Sam. “The difference between him being up there... or being out here.”

“Being right here,” said the detective, occupying the killer’s seat in front of him.