Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine. Vol. 102, No. 4 & 5. Whole No. 618 & 619, October 1993

Anomalies by Stephen Wasylyk

© 1993 by Stephen Wasylyk

Stephen Wasylyk belongs to that rare breed of writers who devote their time exclusively to the short story. He attributes this partly to having grown up “with a volume of 0. Henry’s works in one hand,” but also to the fact that with a novel one must live with the characters one creates for a much greater length of time. Mr. Wasylyk prefers to move on to entirely new creations, as he has done in most of the more than six dozen short stories he has had published, including this new entry for EQMM...

Deep in her lower back, persistent pain gnawed away, bringing the mental image of a TV commercial with twisting ropes and lightning bolts. Her job, the doctor said. Not so. The pain had been there ever since Allan had run off with that malnourished sex object with the big eyes. Sitting behind this teller’s window had nothing to do with it. Not being able to get her life into gear did.

Funny. Still thinking like Allan, who had always said cars came with automatic transmissions, but life came with a gear shift. You had to select the proper gear at the right time and do it smoothly. Great gear shifter, Allan. All she’d managed so far was loud grinding noises.

She squirmed, braced one foot against the partition under the counter to ease the pain, and smiled as she passed the deposit slip to the woman. The next patron stepped into view: elderly, gray hair curling from beneath a battered cap pulled low over his eyes. New. Never seen him before.

She glanced at the slip he slid toward her.

Oh Lord.

DON’T LOOK AROUND OR MAKE A SOUND. PUT THE MONEY IN THE BAG WITH THIS SLIP.

Oh, Lordy, Lord, Lord. The way she was sitting, she couldn’t reach the silent alarm with her toe. Wait until she tried to explain that.

Tellers must he alert at all times.

Practiced fingers slid a wad of bills into the small paper sack along with the note and pushed it toward him. She looked up in time to see the thick tubular muzzle appear over the edge of the counter, the eyes below the bill of the cap fired with a deep, unholy glee.

“Goodbye, Helga,” he whispered.

She jammed her foot against the partition and went over backward just as the gun coughed, the bullet a hot whisper passing over her face; rolling under the protection of the counter as the pistol coughed again.

Her mind was numb. Ice filling her stomach. Noises penetrated: Grace shrieking her name from the booth beside her, a man in the lobby shouting indignantly as he was knocked from his feet, a woman screaming, That man!

Her eyes focused slowly on the dun-colored carpet, the stains and wear magnified, the ice in her stomach now working up toward her heart.

He called me by name. How did he know? Just the initial on the nameplate. Not just a holdup. No. He came to kill me.

Why?

They didn’t believe her, of course. Not uncommon for someone who had just escaped death to believe she’d been singled out. Called her by name? He must have been in before, heard a customer say something like, “See you tomorrow, Helga.” She must have done something to provoke him. She hadn’t? Oh well, these people weren’t wired very tightly, you know. He must have thought she did. No question he was short in the mental department. Most of these people knew that bank robbery was a federal crime and generally avoided adding to the charge.

That silencer. Intriguing detail. They’d have to hit their computer to see if it showed up elsewhere.

She was seated behind the manager’s desk in the small office. Cowper, the senior federal agent, perched on the desk and looked down at her. Dark hair gray at the temples, a face no one would ever pick out of a crowd, gray business suit. Marlowe, his junior partner, leaned against the wall, her hands behind her. Long brown hair with the hint of a wave, thin face with a wide mouth, white blouse and the feminine version of Cowper’s suit. The tape recorder on the desk hummed.

Harry Roth duplicated Marlowe’s pose against the opposite wall, noting the pale face of the woman behind the desk and the hands so tightly clasped in her lap that the knuckles were white. Remarkable woman. No hysterics. He’d seen men who needed a tranquilizer shot. It was there, though, in the face and hands, and couldn’t be controlled forever. Cowper didn’t see it. He was going down one road and she was going down another.

He glanced at Marlowe, caught her looking at him with an appeal in her eyes. As junior member of the team, she could do nothing.

He grunted as he pushed himself erect. “I think that’s enough for today. I’m taking this woman home. She can sign her statement and answer any further questions tomorrow.”

Cowper appeared to be on the verge of objecting, looked at Roth’s expression, and smiled.

“Of course. I hadn’t realized we were being so insensitive.”

Insensitive is newspeak for stupid, thought Roth.

He took Helga’s arm and led her out of the office, where she was immediately pounced upon by Michelle Buford, the branch manager.

“Helga,” she said in a kind voice, “go home and rest. The bank will arrange for you to see Dr. Bostov—”

“I’ll be right back,” said Roth.

He joined Maguire and Polansky to become one of a trio reflected in the plate glass by the grayness of a dim fall morning: Roth of medium height, at least a month overdue for a haircut and wearing a rumpled suit that sagged because he’d never regained the weight he’d lost after his wife died a year ago; Maguire tall and thin, with styled hair and a suit that sagged through style rather than weight loss; Polansky short and broad, dressed better than both, hair trimmed and tie knotted precisely.

“The sexy manager said she had a good look at him,” said Roth. “Take her in to talk to the composite man. We’ll compare what she and Mrs. — ” He turned to Maguire. “What’s her name?”

“Helga Vivaldi.”

“—what they each say. If they agree, fine. If not, we’ll go somewhere in between.”

“Why bother?” asked Maguire. “Bank jobs are for the Feds.”

“Tell me who uses a silencer. A rejected lover? Someone whose toes she mashed when the bus lurched? Why should he anticipate shooting at all? Everyone knows tellers give up the money with no fuss. You don’t even need a weapon. Just a note.”

“You really think it was a hit? Why? Buford says Mrs. Vivaldi lives alone in an apartment, doesn’t own a car, doesn’t go anywhere or do anything except take an accounting course at the university twice a week—”

“Magoogan—” Roth never remembered names. Except his own, and many were convinced he sometimes had trouble with that. “—look at Miss Bedford.”

Maguire grinned. “Buford. It’s a pleasure.”

Michelle Buford wore a very stylish business suit with a very tight, mid-thigh skirt that showed off very long, shapely legs. Her blond hair appeared to be a frazzled halo. Roth didn’t quite approve. How she dressed was her business, of course, but in banking, confidence was the name of the game. Those old bankers with their starched white shirts and somber clothing knew that. People had to be uneasy about trusting their money to someone dressed like a high-priced call girl.

“—to her, a woman like Mrs. Vivucci couldn’t possibly generate enough emotion in a man for him to shoot her. Miss Bufoss lives in a very small world. You, Powloski—”

“Polanski,” he said automatically.

“—while Maginness here talks to Mrs. Vivandi, dig up what you can on Our Gal Helsa. Someone wants her dead, we better move fast.”

“The Feds won’t like it,” said Maguire.

“The bank job may be federal, but no federal statute covers assault with a deadly weapon. That’s ours. If all he wanted to do was to kill her, he could have mugged her or used the old hit-and-run, but if she died in a holdup, we’d never consider her the target at all. Now that he’s missed, everything’s changed. He has to finish the job any way he can, not only to earn his money but to get rid of a witness. That cement head Cowpen doesn’t realize that. He’s running the investigation by the book. Get moving.”

She sat in his car the way she’d sat in the office. Straight, with hands clasped in her lap. Nice-looking woman, thought Roth. Brown hair cut short and obviously cared for at home. Full, round face but with a lot of character. Sensibly dressed in a very subdued tweed with a little green bow at the throat of the blouse. He wondered at corporate policy that made Miss Jiggles a manager and left this one as a teller. People would be far more inclined to trust their money to her.

Must have the fastest reaction time in the world. By the time almost everyone who saw a gun pointed at them realized they were about to be shot, they were dead. Yet she’d made a pro miss. Faster than a speeding bullet. Superwoman.

He cleared his throat. “I agree with what you said. The robbery was a cover. He was hired to kill you, but hit men don’t come cheap. Who has enough money to hire one?”

She shook her head. “My Uncle Dennis is wealthy but he has no reason to want me dead. Neither does my Aunt Stephanie. Or my cousin Roger, for that matter. He lives in Hawaii.”

“Are you in your uncle’s will?”

“If I am, it’s only because he feels a family obligation and it certainly wouldn’t be much.”

“How about a rejected lover or jealous wife?”

She smiled. “Only in my dreams.”

“Dead people can’t testify,” he said thoughtfully.

She half turned to face him. “Testify to what? A crime? The only violence I’ve seen was a young woman slap a man on the bus, and that was no crime, believe me. I saw what he did. This has been a very dull week, Lieutenant. Duller than usual. Until today.”

Her apartment was on the second floor of a converted three-story brownstone; one of a long row that seemed to stretch to the suburbs. He wasn’t surprised. The tree-lined street and stately homes retained only an aura of once-gracious living, but she’d prefer that to the slick anonymity of a high-rise or condo.

Double doors with etched glass at the head of wide marble steps opened into a foyer, the hallway that once led to the rear now closed off by a door to create a first-floor apartment.

He jerked a thumb at the door, eyebrows raised.

“Mrs. Longwood,” she said. “She owns the building. Eighty years old and moves faster than I do.”

He followed her up the stairs and continued to the next flight when she stopped at a door, key in hand. He looked up the long flight.

“I know the man upstairs only to say hello. Quiet. Out most of the time. Mrs. Longwood says he owns a small business a few blocks away.”

Roth climbed the stairs and found another flight behind a door. Bare pine, not carpeted oak. The metal door at the head led to the roof, one of many stretching away on all sides like a flat black desert broken only by chimneys and occasional TV antennas belonging to those still holding out against cable company promises of wonderful new vistas of entertainment.

The door could be opened from the roof only with a key.

Back on the second floor, he found the door of her apartment open for him. He looked down into the street through the wide windows at the front, then at the postage-stamp backyards and high fences through the narrow ones in the kitchen in the rear. No means of access.

“Nice place,” he said.

She said, “Thank you,” thinking he was referring to the furnishings she’d selected so carefully. He really saw none of them but referred instead to the feeling of harmony and comfort.

“Now that you’ve had a chance to think a bit more, is there anything else you noticed about the man that you haven’t mentioned?”

“No — ah, I—” She raised one hand to stroke her throat, holding the elbow with the other, as though debating the wisdom of saying anything at all. “He, well—” The words came with a rush. “He had a young neck.”

He smiled. He knew what she meant. Women had long ago discovered that cosmetics can camouflage an ageing face, but little could be done with a neck once the skin sagged and the creases and wrinkles appeared.

He asked to use her phone.

The operator at the local FBI office said, “We don’t have a Merlin. Perhaps you mean Marlowe.”

He grunted assent. Marlowe had a nice telephone hello.

“I’m telling you this rather than Coupon—”

“Cowper,” she said.

“—because he’s a cement head. What we have here is an anomaly. An old man with a young neck.”

She spoke very slowly. “What the hell does that mean?”

“It means that all parts of a human body age at the same rate. Those two things on your chest won’t always stick out like that, you know—”

She sounded as though something she’d swallowed had gone down the wrong way.

“—and when you see an old man with a young neck it means—”

“Face makeup.” She choked the words out.

“You’ve got it. Now, I’m sure your computer can’t pull out anomalies, but you can scan through a few open cases where a silencer was used and see what turns up. Call me at the office.”

He hung up and dialed Maguire. “Is Dolly around?”

“You mean Dorothy. Yeah, she’s here.”

“Tell her I want her to spend the night with Mrs. — ” He fumbled for the name. “You know who. I’m at her apartment. I’ll wait until she gets here.”

He thrust his hands into his saggy hip pockets and regarded Helga thoughtfully. “A policewoman is coming over.” He lifted a hand as she started to protest. “I know, you don’t need anyone. I think you do. I don’t know why he tried to kill you in the first place, but I do know he’ll try again because he has no idea of what you might have noticed about him. Like having a young neck. Understand?”

She nodded, no doubt in her mind that if she objected, the policewoman would camp outside her door.

“Dolly won’t bother you or get in your way. Now, you’ve had a bad day so far and people have been pushing and pulling at you and you need rest, so go into the bedroom and try to relax.”

She’d wanted to tell him to stop ordering her around. She’d wanted to tell him she’d decide if she needed protection. Instead, she’d marched into her bedroom, closed the door, leaned back against it, and looked around at the familiar intimacy of the room.

This is your life, Helga Vivaldi.

Who would want her dead? Not Uncle Dennis, that dear old man. Confined to a wheelchair and not knowing if he’d see another spring, he still said, “I promised your father to look after you, Helga.”

The closest they’d ever come to an argument was when she insisted on finding a job on her own, rather than taking the one he’d offered in his corporation. “Just like your father,” he’d said. “Stubborn.”

And Aunt Stephanie? Without her support, she couldn’t have made it through the shambles of her life after Allan had left. Cousin Roger? He probably never thought of her from one Christmas card to the next. Mrs. Longwood because she was a day late with the rent? She giggled at the thought. And broke into tears.

She sat on her bed, her face buried in a soaked handkerchief. Not knowing why she wept. Perhaps because of the feeling of failure Allan had left her with. Perhaps because she had nothing to look forward to but more empty years behind the teller’s window. Perhaps because she had no children or perhaps because Uncle Dennis would never see another spring.

If she’d led a soap-opera life, it might make sense, but about the only one who might want her dead was herself.

Why had she bothered to duck?

She heard the door open, voices, and then the door close.

Roth was gone. In her mind, she saw him shuffling down the hall. She felt more lonely than ever.

“Make it short and fast,” said Roth.

“Her maiden name was Stuttgart,” said Polanski. “Her father was a professor at Penn and her uncle is Dennis Stuttgart. Made a fortune in real estate. No brothers or sisters. A cousin Roger who is following in his father’s footsteps in Hawaii. She was divorced from an Allan Vivaldi three years ago. Late marriage and a short one. Evidently he married her for her name. Thought the uncle would see that his nephew-in-law was taken care of, and maybe pass on some of his money when he died. He conned Helga but he didn’t con Uncle Dennis. When he found out he was on his own, he took off with a cocktail waitress who earned big tips—”

“How’d you learn all of this so fast?”

Polanski grinned. “She was divorced, right? Who knows more than a divorce lawyer? He told me what he knew and gave me the name of the family attorney, who filled in a little more. Wouldn’t tell me if she was in the will, but hinted that if she was, it wouldn’t be enough to get the wife and son upset, so her uncle’s money doesn’t look like the reason someone wants her dead.”

Maguire handed him a sheet of paper. “This is what the world’s sexiest bank manager came up with.”

The face was full — old and lined, eyes narrow.

Maguire handed him another. “Since she said she had a better look at him in profile—”

The nose was slightly hooked, the jaw heavy, the brow low. Profiles aren’t that easy to change.

“Okay.” Roth leaned back in his chair. “Here’s what we do next. Poslowski, you know where she goes. Look up all incidents during the last few days along her routes where she may have seen something in her travels she doesn’t know she saw. Then check with the bank to see if there is a bad odor coming from that branch. When some people have a lot of money flowing under their nose, they can’t resist dropping a few bills on the floor so that they can pick them up when no one is looking. Macrory, you go over what’s on the books in the whole area and look for an anomaly. Since you didn’t major in English, I’ll explain that an anomaly is a deviation from what would ordinarily be expected. Understand?”

“No,” said Maguire.

“Don’t worry about it. You’ll know one when you see it.”

He waved them out of the office as the phone rang.

“Roth,” said Marlowe, “I found an anomaly, or what seems to be one, but it’s as far as I can go on my own without being fired. An elderly man walked into a restaurant in Cleveland six months ago. No one paid any attention to him until he pulled out a silenced pistol and put a couple of slugs into a well-known criminal attorney who was having lunch with a female friend. The only reason we looked into it was we thought it was related to organized crime. We still do.”

“Where’s the anomaly?”

“He took off on a ten-speed, which made sense considering how the streets are jammed during the lunch hour. The bicycle was found more than a mile away. The anomaly is that one witness, whom no one paid any attention to, said he pedaled out of there so hard and so fast that anyone as old as he was should have been dead of a heart attack within a few blocks. Now, we either have an elderly man in great shape or—”

“A young one made up to look like one. Like the guy in the bank. You should take this information to Cowpull—”

“Cowper.”

“—and tell him it would pay to look into more of these open cases. Couple more anomalies and he could get to be a big hero and get promoted out of your life before your boobs begin to sag.”

She was still laughing when the phone went dead.

Dorothy was young, with deep russet hair pulled back and gathered with a clip. The slim body was the kind Helga had always wistfully admired; encased in washed jeans, white blouse, dirty trainers, and a man’s leather jacket.

She toured the apartment and settled on the sofa after placing her pistol at her elbow.

Helga recognized it. Glock. She could feel the weight and balance as clearly as if she held it. Uncle Dennis was into handguns and she’d gone shooting with him many times.

You have a natural talent, Helga. You should take up competition shooting as a hobby.

What she should take up as a hobby is shooting Allan, she’d thought. One toe at a time and then the fingers before working her way into more vital body parts. Her uncle asked why his inoffensive remark brought on a fit of hysterical giggling.

“Let me tell you how his mind works,” said Dorothy. “He could have sent someone else, but he asked for me. I know why. Six months ago a guy with an Uzi blew out the window of a car three inches from my head. Psychiatric counseling notwithstanding, it was a long time before I could stop shaking when I thought how easily it could have been my skull shattering into a thousand pieces. I’ve been there and I know how it feels, so if you want to get drunk, jump up and down and scream, or chew up the bedclothes, you go right ahead. It will be between you and me.”

Helga looked at Dorothy’s slim, tapering fingers and then at her own, much blunter and shorter. “He seems to have a lot of authority.”

“He does. He’s the head honcho for this district. You’re lucky. He happened to be in the vicinity when he heard the call and stopped in. Ordinarily, he’d let Maguire and Polanski handle it, but something stirred him to take over.” She smiled. “Maybe you caught his eye.”

“Hardly likely,” said Helga drily. “I’ve never been an eye-catcher. He couldn’t even remember my name.”

“He doesn’t remember anyone’s, including the commissioner’s. He calls me everything from Dolly to Dawnie. Before his wife died, we’d hear him mutter about calling Jenny or June or Janet. Her name was Jane.”

They both laughed.

“None of us mind. We wait to see what variation he’ll come up with next. That’s about the only fault he has. You may not have noticed, but with a haircut and a suit that fits, he’d be a good-looking man.”

Helga didn’t tell her she’d noticed.

“Absolutely nothing,” said Polanski. “Even with long-range radar for eyes, she couldn’t have seen anything, and the bank says the branch is squeaky clean. Buford may be sexy, but she’s hell on wheels at her job.”

Roth had seen someone pass his office door. His mouth tightened. “I thought I’d given orders to keep Mola out of here.”

“Hard to do. He’s a reporter—”

“He’s a worthless piece of scum. So’s his editor. Dammit—”

He broke off, eyes narrowing. Mola. Three days ago, a man had been found shot in the head, slumped over the wheel of his car in the short-term parking garage at the airport. The attendant, a retiree working part-time for minimum wage, remembered checking out an air force major at just about the time the M.E. had fixed for the time of death.

Made sense. The man would have allowed the major to walk up to him in the deserted garage without giving it a second thought. Service people were supposed to shoot your country’s enemies, not you.

Made even more sense when the retiree swore one of the major’s chest decorations showed the green, brown, and white of an ETO campaign ribbon, something he was very familiar with since he’d earned one himself. Except the major would have been born after World War II and certainly never fought in that theater.

But given the bad light and elderly eyes, the retiree might have been mistaken. Until Roth found that no officer of that rank or description could be placed anywhere near the airport at that time on that day. Not active, in the reserve, or in the National Guard.

Okay, the uniform had to come from somewhere, but no theatrical or uniform supplier had a record of selling or renting one recently.

Mola, the reporter, had found out about the attendant. He’d agreed to keep his mouth shut, but the next day his newspaper carried a story headlined BOGUS AIR FORCE OFFICER SOUGHT IN AIRPORT SLAYING, and naming the retiree as the witness. The moment Roth heard, he’d sent a car to the retiree’s house. Dead. Same gun used in the parking garage. The killer must have picked up a very early edition.

Testimony to the power of the press.

“Could be,” Roth muttered to himself.

He called Helga and asked if she’d seen an air force officer in the last two days.

She said she hadn’t seen an air force officer in the last two years.

“Are you sure?”

“Of course I’m sure! I know an air force uniform when I see one!”

He took the phone from his ear and stared at it. Feisty when her common sense was challenged.

Still, the ribbon and the young neck were anomalies that had to connect. Had to be the same man.

“Second time around,” said Polanski as he pushed open the door of the small costume shop. “Doesn’t he think we did it right the first?”

“If he did, we wouldn’t be here,” said Maguire.

The clerk was eighteen or nineteen, short and round, a pad of brown hair sitting on the top of his otherwise shaved skull. He looked up from a loose-leaf notebook on the counter.

“Back again! I told you yesterday, we don’t carry military uniforms, so we couldn’t have rented one.”

Maguire laced his fingers and propped an elbow on the counter. “Doesn’t look as though you rent much of anything.”

“I haven’t been here long enough to judge. I’m just a dumb kid working my way through college. As long as I get my check at the end of the week, I’d be happy if no one came in at all. Gives me more study time.”

“You do have blue uniforms, though,” said Polanski. “Maybe something that could pass as an air force uniform.”

“Well...” The clerk rubbed his jaw. “They’re sort of like bus driver’s or security guard’s but you could decorate one up.” He slid open a drawer behind the counter. “Have almost anything you want in here. Want to be a general?” He held up a pair of silver stars clipped to a card. “You couldn’t get into the Pentagon, but it’s just a costume, right?”

“Okay,” said Maguire. “See if you rented one of those.”

“I don’t have to look. I know I didn’t.”

“Humor me. Go check them out.”

The clerk disappeared through a door at the rear of the shop. He returned wearing a frown.

“Something missing?” asked Maguire.

“Not missing. Out of place. Like to keep everything in order, so when I started here I arranged all the costumes according to size. The forty-four was moved into the thirties.”

“If you didn’t move it, who did?”

“Could have been Mr. Kendrick. He owns the shop but he only comes in three or four times a week to see how things are going. Tell you the truth, I don’t think this place makes a dime. I think he runs it as a tax write-off.”

“What size does he wear?”

The clerk scrubbed his jaw again. “I’d say a forty-four.”

Polanski pushed a pad at him. “His address.”

When knuckles tapped at the door, Dorothy motioned to Helga to stay where she was. Holding her pistol straight down at her side, she made sure the security chain was fastened and unlatched the door with her other hand.

It burst open with a crash, tearing the chain anchor from the jamb and knocking her off her feet, the pistol skittering across the rug toward Helga.

The capped, gray-haired man leaped through the doorway, pistol thrust before him with both hands. Surprise at seeing Helga across the room, rather than sprawled behind the door, froze him for a moment. His eyes flicked to Dorothy, now perched warily on hands and toes like a sprinter poised for the starter’s signal.

To Helga, he seemed to read the situation and settle down, swinging the silenced pistol toward Dorothy as the more dangerous of the two.

She dove from the sofa, scooped up Dorothy’s pistol and fired.

The man jerked backward into the hall, his gun coughing and chipping plaster from the ceiling.

Someone shouted. Footsteps pounded up the carpeted stairs.

Roth appeared, gun in hand, jammed a shoe down on the man’s wrist, and tore the pistol from him.

Someone, she didn’t know who, or much care, wrapped Helga up in big arms just as she started screaming she’d shot Allan.

It hadn’t been Allan at all, of course. Just something triggered by the stress, the psychologist explained. She had nothing to worry about because whatever feelings she’d harbored about him, she’d shot the man only to save herself and Dorothy. Understand? No, but she didn’t tell him that. When she pulled that trigger, she was certain she was shooting Allan. Knew better now, of course. Funny thing, the mind.

Maguire had explained the rest. The man dead in the airport parking garage; the air force major. No one had hired him. He was simply getting rid of another witness like the retiree who had spotted him. She hadn’t known she was a witness, of course. She’d never seen anyone wearing an air force uniform, just as she’d told Roth.

Neither had anyone else, said Maguire. Roth realized it didn’t have to be a real air force uniform at all. Just similar in cut and color and decorated with a major’s oak leaves and chest ribbons. No one would have spotted the deception if the retiree hadn’t noticed the ribbon, and at that, only three people had seen it and two of those were dead.

Turned out what she had seen was a man carrying it in a transparent garment bag on a hanger slung over his shoulder. She’d no idea the bag held anything but an ordinary suit. Didn’t matter, though. He couldn’t risk her calling the police after reading the story in the paper and saying, I saw a man carrying an air force uniform. Interested?

It all sounded very complicated. Roth might have explained it better, but she hadn’t seen him since The Day My Niece Became a Heroine, as Uncle Dennis proudly called it. Oh, well—

She turned to check the apartment before she left for work.

No more teller’s window. The psychologist had indicated she’d suffered lasting trauma. Good for him. Personally, she had no qualms about going back to one, but if they wanted to give her a new job in check processing along with a raise, she’d be a fool to argue. And her back would undoubtedly appreciate a more comfortable chair.

She locked the door. Mrs. Longwood had tsk tsk’d a great deal about the cost of repair, but the new chain was far stronger. As if a killer breaking down her door again was something to be expected.

She looked up at the third-floor stairs and felt a chill. Imagine having a man living above you who killed for money. He’d smiled at her when he passed by in the hall, carrying that uniform. Smiled, while thinking, Now I have to kill you.

She’d been so angry about that, she wished he’d died, but that had passed. He’d limp for the rest of his life. Revenge enough.

She shuddered and walked quickly down the stairs.

Harry Roth was waiting on the sidewalk.

Her eyes widened with surprise. “What are you doing here? I haven’t seen you since— I thought—”

She’d thought he’d disappeared into outer space like every man she’d ever been interested in except Allan, and life would have done her a favor if it had rocketed him into permanent earth orbit.

“Busy cleaning the thing up. FBI, the U.S. Attorney, the D.A., all those people. The man committed a lot of very nasty crimes out of his little shop of horrors.”

Maguire stood to one side of the steps, Dorothy to the other, along with a heavy set man she’d never seen before.

“Is this a reception committee?”

“In a way. We checked on Allan, you know. Just routine, covering all possibilities.”

“But he lives in Pittsburgh — he couldn’t—”

“No, he couldn’t.” Roth cleared his throat. “Someone shot him three weeks ago. This is Detective—” Roth looked at the heavyset man.

“Redford,” said the man.

“—from the Pittsburgh police department. He’d like to talk to you—”

“He was shot at extreme range with a nine-millimeter pistol,” said Redford. “A witness said it appeared to be a woman. We thought he had to be mistaken because women — well, you don’t generally come across women who handle a pistol real well. Lieutenant Roth tells us you’re an exception.”

He held open the door of a car at the curb. “It won’t take long, Mrs. Vivaldi.”

Dorothy went with them.

“What do you think?” asked Maguire.

Roth sighed. “I don’t know. I hope not. Probably can’t prove it anyway. Damn. Sometimes I wish my brain would take a holiday. The doctor said she was screaming she shot Allan because she’d always wanted to shoot him, but he admitted that if she really had, it could be sitting in the front of her mind and when she pulled the trigger, she relived the moment. But what do I know? All I know is when you shoot someone, you don’t scream you shot someone else. It’s—”

“An anomaly?” asked Maguire.

A particularly bitter one, but Maguire couldn’t know that.

“A damned shame,” said Roth softly.