Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine 09/01/12 (5 page)

But had her eagerness gotten her
killed?

Miss Emmaline thought not, because they hadn’t closed their deal. She
hadn’t given Sherry the map with the lab coordinates so she wasn’t a danger to
anyone yet. I didn’t think so either, but for a different reason. Sherry wouldn’t
have gone to that lonely turnout to meet anyone she didn’t know. Certainly not a
Gauthier or anyone connected to downstate gangs. Whoever she’d met there was someone
she trusted.

My phone buzzed, breaking into my thoughts. I checked the screen.
It was a text, from Zee.
Sherry’s apartment. We need to talk. Now.

I
knew the way.

 
Sherry’s condo is part of a new, ultramodern complex
built on the bones of an old lumber baron’s mansion, a block from Old Town, the
original heart of Valhalla. The place felt like a rabbit warren to me, too many
people packed into hyper-
efficient little boxes. Sherry said she liked hearing
her neighbors fighting at night or gargling in the morning. Said it made her feel
like she was part of a family.

To me, the place was a glorified motel with
yuppie transients for tenants. It would only feel homey to a foster child who
couldn’t tell the difference.

The front door was ajar. I eased in, then
stopped, frozen by a sudden flood of memories. The faint scent of Sherry’s perfume.
The bland, beige IKEA furniture that had come with the place, and would soon pass to
someone else. Sherry should have been sitting at the Swedish birch-and-glass desk,
scanning her laptop for breaking stories.

But now she
was
the story.
And my partner Zina Redfern was at her desk, riffling through her papers. The laptop
was gone, probably being analyzed in the basement lab at Hauser Center.

Zee
swiveled in the chair to face me. She wasn’t happy.

“I called the office,” she
said. “The desk sergeant said Rob Gilchrist talked to you, then you disappeared.
Without saying where.”

“Gilchrist didn’t know anything useful. He’s not the
guy.”

“Damn it, that’s not your call, Dylan. You shouldn’t have talked to him
at all—”

“You could have chewed me out over the phone and saved me a trip,
Zee. What have you got?”

“Officially, the investigation is progressing. Off
the record, you’d better take a look at this.” She handed me a thin sheaf of
papers.

I glanced through them. Colored bar graphs and percentages. The
business heading on the front page was BetaPhase Genetics. “What is this?”

“A
DNA test, of sorts,” Zee said, watching my face. “It’s not for paternity. It’s for
genealogy.”

“I don’t understand.”

“Sherry apparently learned she was
pregnant about ten days ago, and had her doctor administer this test. For paternity,
you have to supply DNA from the father. For genealogy, nucleotides from the fetus
are enough to do the trick.”

“I still don’t—”

“The test can determine
the father’s ethnic heritage without his cooperation,” Zina continued. “It’s obvious
what she was looking for. Gilchrist is Nordic. Apparently the other candidate
wasn’t. The test results are at the bottom of the page.”

I checked it. It was
a ragged bar graph, a mix of northern and southern
European. The only bar that
stood out was Native American, 24%.

“That would be you, right?” Zee
said.

I stared at the graph, didn’t say anything.

“The baby’s ethnicity
was Native American to the twentieth percentile, so the father would be roughly
double that. Forty percent, give or take. That means he’s almost certainly Metis,
Dylan. You’d better talk to me.”

I still didn’t say anything. I felt like I’d
been kicked in the belly.

“Look, this test isn’t definitive,” Zee pressed,
“but a paternity test will be. If something happened with you two, you need to get
in front of it—”

“Nothing happened.”

It was her turn for silence. “So .
. . this isn’t you?” she said. “Is that what you’re telling me?”

“Did you find
anything else?” I asked.

“Sherry had an appointment with her OB/GYN for
Thursday.”

“For a checkup?”

“More than that. Her doctor pleaded patient
confidentiality, but I bluffed her. Off the record, Sherry was scheduled to
terminate her pregnancy. That’s what I’ve got. What have you got?”

I thought
about lying to her again but knew I’d make a hash of it. I walked out, instead. So
enraged, my whole world seemed to be bleeding red around the
edges.

 
Every cop has a neutral look, a mask we wear on duty. It’s
called a cop face. It’s supposed to conceal emotions, from fear to fury. Mine must
have slipped as I pulled into Max Gillard’s driveway.

He was raking a few
errant leaves from his bedraggled front lawn as I rolled up. His welcoming smile
turned cautious as he walked over to greet me. He glanced around to be sure the
neighbors weren’t watching—then he pulled an ugly brute of a revolver from the small
of his back, aiming it straight at my head.

“Get out of the car, Dylan.” He
tossed the rake aside.

“What are you doing, Max?”

“It’s game over and we
both know it. Now get out, walk ahead of me into the garage. Don’t do anything
sudden. Or stupid.”

He eased the hammer back to full cock to underscore the
point. A quick read of his eyes changed my mind about trying to bluff him. The gun
muzzle gaped wide as a railroad tunnel.

I marched ahead of him into the
garage. He hit a button, the garage door closed, then it was just the two of us in
an empty box of a room. A tool bench along one wall, a concrete floor. A dangerous
place.

Desperate men often kill themselves in garages, a final courtesy to
their families. Easier for the survivors to clean up the mess.

The same would
be true for a murder.

I turned to face Max.

He looked red-eyed and
haggard, like he hadn’t slept in a month. Needed a shave. He was wearing a U of M
T-shirt and faded jeans. Despite the weather, he was barefoot. I didn’t know what to
make of that. But the weapon in his fist was rock steady, aimed at center mass.
Military style. Any wound would be fatal at this range.

“I’ve covered enough
crime scenes to know the drill,” he said, brushing his thinning hair back with his
free hand. “I know the head games too, so skip the bushwa. I’m at the end of my
rope, Dylan. I’ve got nothing left to lose. Clear?”

I nodded.

“Tell me
what you know.”

“I know you killed Sherry, Max. I didn’t until I drove up, but
I do now. I don’t know why.”

“It was a mistake. A bad one all
around.”

“She was pregnant. It was your child, wasn’t it?”

“Another
mistake,” he said grimly. “We weren’t really involved.”

“Apparently you
were.”

“Not the way you think. We were on an out-of-town assignment, closed up
the hotel bar, both of us pretty hammered. Maybe she felt sorry for me, I don’t
know. It was all wrong, but I was so desperate. . . .”

He waited for a
comment. I didn’t say anything.

“It was never about sex with her, anyway,” he
said. “It was just another way to be the center of attention. Even for a few hours
on the road with a has-been cameraman. It didn’t mean a thing.”

“Until she
turned up pregnant.”

“She called me at home, late. Asked me to meet her at the
turnout. All very hush-hush and melodramatic.”

“She was being careful, Max,
protecting you. If Milano found out, he’d can you in a New York second.”

“She
shouldn’t have told me at all! I wouldn’t have known. It was all just a soap opera
to her.”

“Maybe she thought you deserved to know.”

“To know what? That
with my whole life falling apart, one small miracle happens and she was going to
brush it off like a breadcrumb?”

“What did you expect her to do, Max? In her
situation—”

“What about
my
situation! My wife is dying, I’m a quarter
mil in the hole for medical bills, we’re losing the house—”

He looked away,
swallowing hard, his jaw working. But the gun never wavered. He was on a tightrope,
stretched taut across the abyss, only a word away from killing me. Or
himself.

Or both of us.

“Just tell me what happened, Max. I need to
know.”

“She said she was getting rid of it,” he said, looking away a moment.
“She didn’t ask what I thought, or what I wanted to do. Everything is falling apart
and—I snapped, I guess. Lashed out. I’ve never laid hands on a woman in my
life.”

“You didn’t lay hands on her, Max,” I said, straining to keep my voice
even. “You smashed her larynx with a kill strike.”

“Reflex from the army. A
heartbeat later I would have cut my arm off to take it back. But I couldn’t. I
can’t. There’s no going back now.”

“Or for me, Max. People know I’m
here.”

“Actually, I’m counting on that,” he said, his eyes locking on
mine.

“There’s no way out for me, I get that. But I can’t just quit, either.
None of this is Margo’s fault, but if I go to jail, she’ll lose everything. She’ll
die in some charity ward.”

I swallowed a surge of bile in the back of my
throat. I knew where this was going. It was in his eyes.

“Somebody has to pay
the tab for Sherry,” he continued. “That’s on me. But somebody has to see to Margo
too. And I only know one way to do that.”

“To hell with you, Max! I won’t help
you. It won’t work anyway.”

“Then we’ll both die for nothin’. I’ve already
made my choice, Dylan. I thought it would be hard but it’s almost a relief. I’m
already in the wind, almost gone. If I have to take you with me, I will.”

He
fired a round. Point blank. The bullet ripped past my ear like a thunderbolt! I
flinched, but managed to stand my ground. Max’s eyes were glittering with battle
madness. He fired again! And then once more! Punching a hole through the wall,
exploding a window behind me. And somehow I stood there. Didn’t
move.

That’s three,
I thought.
He doesn’t want to kill me and
he only has three rounds left—

But he was way ahead of me. Flipping
the revolver’s cylinder open, he spun it hard and snapped it closed. Then he aimed
straight at my head and pulled the trigger.

Click!
The hammer fell on
an empty chamber. My knees turned to water.

“Damn it, Dylan, you’ve the
devil’s own luck!” he cackled. “Your odds—”

Pure reflex: I drew my weapon and
fired two shots, a double tap to the torso, dead center. The impact sent Max
stumbling backward into the tool bench, then he dropped to his knees.

I was so
enraged I almost fired again. Probably should have. His gun was still in his fist.
But he didn’t seem aware of it anymore.

Blood was bubbling from his mouth. He
thrust his face upward, keening for a few final breaths. His eyes met mine and I
could read his desperation.

Kneeling beside him, I took the gun out of his
hand, grasping his shoulder to keep him from falling. He sighed, and I realized his
eyes had lost focus, as though he were staring off into some immeasurable distance.
Perhaps he was.

In the space of a single breath, he was gone.

I eased
him gently to the concrete floor. A part of me hoped he choked all the way to hell.
But he’d been a brave man once, a man who ran into shellfire to get a picture. With
his world crashing around him, he’d lashed out in a moment of fury. And in that
split second . . . ?

God.

Whatever mistakes Sherry and Max had made,
they’d paid a terrible price for them. And the worst of it was, it was for
nothing.

Sherry died trying to save the career she wanted so desperately, and
Max died trying to provide money for his wife’s care. It wouldn’t happen.

The
syndrome is called suicide by cop. A desperate man provokes a shootout with police,
hoping to go out in a blaze of glory. But insurance companies recognize it for what
it is. And they don’t pay off for suicide. Period.

Max’s wife wouldn’t see a
nickel. And Sherry would be dismissed as another ditzy blonde with a messy love
life. Unless . . .

I rose slowly to my feet, looking around me, evaluating the
garage as a crime scene. I could hear sirens in the distance. Valhalla isn’t
Detroit. Gunfire in a quiet neighborhood triggers 911 calls. I had a few moments,
not much more.

A minute later the first prowl car came howling down the street
with lights and sirens. It screeched to a halt in the driveway. Two Valhalla
patrolmen came boiling out with weapons drawn. I knew them both, but I stepped out
of the garage very slowly anyway. Holding my badge in plain view, I placed my weapon
on the ground. And then things started happening very quickly.

 
The
shooting occurred inside Valhalla’s city limits, but with a local officer involved,
the state police took over jurisdiction. I spent the rest of the day in a Hauser
Center interrogation room with a tag team of detectives from downstate, Bendix and
Coughlin.

I knew Dan Bendix from the winter hockey leagues. He played forward,
liked to body check along the boards. Big and burly, with scars on his knuckles,
he’s a genuinely tough guy. His questions were sharp, but fair. He had nothing to
prove.

Coughlin was the opposite. A runty Irishman from Lansing, he had
freckles, red hair, and an attitude to match. He’d gotten his gold shield a few
months earlier and felt compelled to play bad cop. He tried too hard, shouting
questions at me like I was some mutt off the street, sneering at my answers. He
called me a liar. Twice. I let it pass.

He was right, actually. But his
punk-ass attitude made lying to his face a lot easier.

I hated Max for what he
had done, but none of it was his wife’s fault. He threw his life away to get the
money for Margo’s care, and I made certain that she got it.

To do that, I had
to eliminate any suspicion that his death had been a “suicide by cop.” And I did. By
making him the villain of the piece.