William Rabkin - The Call of the Mild

“How bad is it?” Henry said.

“How bad can it get?” Lassiter said. He started towards the mansion, assuming that Henry would keep up with him. They blew past the front door and continued along the exterior of the building.

“What does he think he’s doing?” Henry said.

“ ‘Bringing justice to an unjust world,’ ” Lassiter said. “Or something even dumber. You can ask him yourself. He’s been demanding to speak to you.”

There was a window open at the far end of the building. Lassiter stopped short, but gestured for Henry to walk up to it.

Henry peered into the open window. The room was enormous, the size of Henry’s whole house, and furnished in nautical antiques. Across a huge desk Henry could see an elderly man in a wheelchair. He’d never met Oliver Rushton, but he’d seen enough pictures in the paper to recognize him. Standing over the lawyer was Officer Chris Rasmussen. He was pointing a gun at Rushton’s head.

Henry had to think fast. He should have formulated a plan of action on the drive down, but the situation was so insane he couldn’t bring himself to believe it until he saw it for himself. Now he had to improvise.

“Officer Rasmussen,” he said with as much authority as he could muster. “Report.”

“I came to interview Mr. Rushton,” Rasmussen said, snapping to attention. “He was unwilling to speak to me, so I was required to use force.”

“That’s very good thinking, Officer,” Henry said. “Excellent initiative. Then what?”

“He still won’t talk!” Rasmussen wailed, sounding close to tears. “I’ve been asking and asking, but he won’t tell me anything! And I keep trying to remember what you told us about interrogation techniques, but I forget!”

“It’s okay, Officer,” Henry said. “I don’t think we covered that in class.”

“You’re just saying that to make me feel better!”

Henry could see Rasmussen’s hand shaking; he was clearly about to snap. Rushton, on the other hand, looked completely in control.

“I’ve tried to explain to the officer that I haven’t heard of the woman he’s inquiring about,” the lawyer said. “I’m willing to look at a picture, if you have one.”

“She called you!” Rasmussen shouted.

“She called my offices,” Rushton said. “As I’ve explained, many people work here, and she could have been calling for any of them. Or she could have misdialed. I have offered to let you go over my phone logs for the day in question, to see if her call shows up. What else can I do?”

“You can tell the truth!”

“I am telling the truth,” Rushton said. “The sad fact is that one of the lawyers in the firm might well be involved in these crimes. That person may have killed one of my own employees. As soon as the lawyers return from their retreat, I promise to urge them to cooperate fully with your investigation.”

“You’re stalling!” Rasmussen’s finger was tightening on the trigger. Henry had to do something fast.

“Officer Rasmussen, you will stand down now,” he commanded.

“I can’t!” Now there were tears in Rasmussen’s eyes. “This is all my fault, Detective Spencer. Ellen Svaco was involved in some kind of crime ring in my own town, and I missed it. And I missed the redial thing, too. You tried to teach me, but I was too stupid to understand any of it, and now I’ve messed everything up. I’ve got to make it right!”

“This isn’t the way, Officer,” Henry said. “You can’t fix one crime with another crime.”

“That’s what you said when I was in school, but how do I know this isn’t something that’s much more complicated in grown-up life? Nothing is like it’s supposed to be!”

Rasmussen was about to explode. Henry had to do something fast. He wanted to dive through the window and knock the gun out of his hand. He wanted to tell the officer what a fool he was making of himself. If it had been Shawn in that room, he would have.

But of course his own son would never have been in such a ludicrous position. For all that Shawn pretended not to listen to Henry’s advice, the fact was he always absorbed the important parts. He had allowed Henry to mold him into a man. Chris Rasmussen had never had anyone to do that for him.

“Officer,” Henry started, then softened his tone. “Chris. We had forty-five minutes together twenty years ago. Forty-five minutes with a crowd of other children. And you took that brief meeting and built your entire life around it. Do you have any idea how proud that makes me?”

Henry could see sunlight glinting off the tears in Rasmussen’s face. “Proud?”

“I’m only sorry I wasn’t able to be there for you all along,” Henry said. “I wish I had. I always wanted a second son. I hope you’ll allow me to consider you that now.”

Rasmussen’s hand trembled furiously. And then the gun dropped to the floor.

“Clear!” Henry shouted, and the office was full of police officers in body armor. Henry’s last sight of Rasmussen was just a scrap of flesh buried under a mountain of black uniforms.

Henry was about to rejoin Lassiter when Rushton called his name. He turned back to see that the lawyer had moved towards the window.

“I hope you meant what you said about cooperating,” Henry said to him.

“My devotion to the cause of justice is as strong as yours, even if we express it in different ways,” Rushton said. “I suspected that something was wrong in my firm, but until today I didn’t realize just how bad it was. And that concerns you as well.”

“Me?”

“I heard you mention you have a son,” Rushton said. “He’s a detective, isn’t he?”

“Technically,” Henry said, feeling a cold shiver of fear run down his spine.

“Then there’s something you need to know.”

This time there was no chance that Gus was going to lose sight of the rest of the hiking party. Shawn hadn’t even needed to bring up his notion of roping them all together; no one moved out of anyone else’s view. Gwendolyn and Balowsky walked together, staring at each other. At one point, Gwendolyn, her eyes fixed firmly on Balowsky’s face, hit a rock with her foot and tripped. She fell to the ground, rolled, and popped back up-never looking away from the other lawyer.

Even though there were two people on watch all night long, one of them had managed to slip away in the night and set the trap that took out Savage. If the killer could strike this quickly and this invisibly, what hope did the rest of them have?

From their place at the end of the pack, Gus and Shawn examined Gwendolyn and Balowsky. They both seemed completely consumed in studying each other for treachery.

“One of them is a pretty good actor,” Shawn said. “I wonder if Helstrom needs a new member in his troupe.”

“If only I had shared my watch with someone besides Savage, since he clearly wan’t the killer,” Gus said. “I would have known if whoever was staying up with me had sneaked off to set a snare. That would have narrowed the suspect pool down to one.”

“How much could you actually see when you were on watch?” Shawn said.

“I could see you sleeping,” Gus said. “I could see you sleeping peacefully all night long.”

“You mean you could see whatever was in the direct firelight,” Shawn said.

“That, too,” Gus said. “But mostly I could see you sleeping.”

“Yes, the clever and subtle dig has been heard and now acknowledged,” Shawn said. “But my greater point was that it was really dark in the camp. If Savage had slipped away on your watch, are you sure you wouldn’t have seen him?”

“I’m pretty sure he wouldn’t have stepped into his own snare,” Gus said.