Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine. Vol. 103, No. 3 & 4. Whole No. 625 & 626, March 1994

© 1994 by Jeremiah Healy

One of the most popular of present-day private-eye writers, Jeremiah Healy recently received a nomination for the Shamus Award for best short story from the Private Eye Writers of America for his story “Rest Stop” (AHMM, May, 1992). In this new adventure, a very clever con man lures sleuth John Francis Cuddy to the backwoods of Tutham County...

1.

Once you’ve heard it, there’s a sound you’ll never mistake for any other. My first time, in Vietnam, I thought crazily that it was the whumping noise my mother used to make with her broom cleaning a rug over the clothesline. After that, though, I knew what it was. The sound of a high-velocity bullet impacting human flesh.

Frank J. Doppinger’s hand was wrenched from mine, the slug lifting and dropping him akimbo on the ground at the edge of the old firebreak. I’d arrived at this spot after driving an hour from Boston, after passing through Tutham Center, and after six miles of paved rural lane. Enjoying the foliage, I’d carefully watched for the sign screwed to a little post saying Fire Road #7. On the fire road, the acorns launched by the front tires of my Prelude had whacked vigorously at the undercarriage of the car, and I’d spooked a pheasant at the first curve. It was shaping up to be a nice fall day in the country.

Until somebody shot my client out of our handshake.

I was cowering behind a rough-cut boulder, probably pushed up and over by the bulldozer that made the firebreak long ago. I wasn’t fully conscious of picking it for cover or getting to it. I also couldn’t place where the shooter was on the ridge wall across the little valley below the fire road, but from the report of the weapon and the size of the hole in Frank J. Doppinger’s green windbreaker, I knew the Smith & Wesson Bodyguard over my right hip was significantly outgunned.

I counted to ten, heard nothing further, and took it up to thirty. Then I crawled and crab-walked from boulder to log and log to stump until I had circled around to the Prelude. I opened the door, climbed up and in, and started the engine. Then I backed out as fast as reverse would take me, the acorns this time sounding like bullets against the chassis and scaring the hell out of me. Again.

I fishtailed onto the main road and drove headfirst for Tutham Center six miles away.

2.

They were both in their thirties. Lacy, the guy in uniform, was tall, blond, and baby-faced. Perrault, the guy in plainclothes, was short, dark, and bearded. Lacy’s uniform wasn’t particularly well kept, the “Tutham Police” patch the only part that looked clean, much less ironed. Perrault’s plainclothes were plain to the point of homespun, a jaunty lumberjack who’d stumbled into the police station.

Lacy rested his rear end on the edge of the interrogation-room table. Perrault turned a folding chair around and sat on it backwards, forearms on the top of the backrest. From the smell of the air, the room probably doubled as a cafeteria.

Perrault handed me back my ID. “So, Mr. John Francis Cuddy, private investigator, you just left him there?”

“That’s right.”

Lacy snorted. “Glad I ain’t a client of yours.”

Perrault had a French-Canadian veneer over his English. Lacy came on like a hick. An interesting variation on the Mutt-and-Jeff routine, if I’d been in the mood for it.

“You sending a unit out to find him?”

Perrault smiled. “We’re just a wide place in the road, Cuddy. We don’t got that many units to spare, send them out on a wild-goose chase.”

“You won’t have to chase this one. He was shot dead.”

“And you claim he’s from around here.”

“He claimed it. He came to see me in Boston last week, but just briefly. Said he might be back in touch. Then I get a call from the guy to come out and see him.”

Lacy said, “You drive fifty mile on a phone call?”

“The guy said he couldn’t come to Boston again easily.”

Perrault ran an index finger along his moustache. “And?”

“And the guy gave me a retainer in Boston.”

“How much?”

“Three hundred. In cash.”

Perrault and Lacy exchanged knowing glances.

Perrault said, “Cash is always nice.”

Lacy said, “So you agree to meet this feller on a firebreak.”

“He said he didn’t have a car, but he could hike to it.”

“Why couldn’t he just ask you over to the house?”

“He also said he didn’t want anybody to know he was seeing me.”

Perrault broke in again. “So the guy gives you directions over the phone.”

“Yes. He tells me, come to Tutham Center. Take the road west out of town till you see the turnoff for Fire Road Number Seven. Then go along it about two hundred yards to a clearing.”

“And you agree to see a guy in the woods.”

“Yes.”

“Without you check him out first?”

“Perrault, he said he didn’t want anybody to know he was hiring me. He gave me a retainer. I did check directory assistance, no telephone number registered to the name. Look, have you heard from that unit yet? They should be—”

Lacy said, “Just hold your horses there, boy. You ain’t even told us the name of your deceased client yet.”

He was right. “Sorry. It was Doppinger, Frank J.”

Lacy’s eyes got wide. Perrault’s arms came off the backrest. Both looked at each other, then back to me.

Perrault said, “Lou, get a unit out there. Fast. And get the chief.”

Lacy got up. “But it’s Saturday, Reg. He’ll be out tending his vegetables.”

Perrault just barely kept the knife out of his voice. “So, you beep him, Lou. That’s why he carries the thing.”

Lacy left and slammed the door behind him.

I said, “You know this Doppinger, then?”

Perrault tugged on his beard and told me to shut up.

Twenty minutes later, Lou Lacy came back in with a hulking guy in his late forties. This one wore blue denim overalls and a chamois shirt, both materials dirt-caked and grass-stained. He had a craggy face, no discernible hairstyle, and a pair of cop’s eyes as dead as a plastic doll’s.

The introduction consisted of, “I’m chief of police for Tutham. Let’s hear it. From the beginning.”

After I caught him up to where I’d left off with Lacy and Reg Perrault, the chief said to Lacy. “Let me know when the unit reports in from number seven.”

Lacy started to say something, then thought better of it. “You bet, Chief.”

After Lacy left, the chief tucked his right hand into the strap of his overalls just below the clipped-on beeper. “This Doppinger give you any reason why he didn’t want folks to know about him seeing you?”

“Not over the phone. After I met him on the fire road, though, he said it was about his wife.”

Perrault took in a breath. The chief glanced at him, but Perrault’s face was neutral.

The chief said to me, “What about his wife?”

“I’d told Doppinger when he saw me in Boston that I didn’t do domestics, and he’d told me it had nothing to do with that. But then out on the road, he said his wife was fouling up his life, that he could see her filing for divorce pretty soon, and that he didn’t want her taking the house he’d worked so long to own.”

Perrault started paying attention to the floor.

The chief’s eyes never left me. “But you say you’d told him in Boston—”

“Right, right. And I told him that on the road, too. He smiled and said, ‘Well, just a misunderstanding, then,’ and told me to keep the three hundred.”

The chief shook his head, as if to clear it. “The man tells you, ‘Keep the money’?”

“Yes.” It sounded stupid to me, too, but there it was.

“Then what?”

“Then Doppinger extends his hand to me, and I take it, and somebody on the other side of the valley busts him out of his shoes.”

“And you just left the man.”

“I’ve seen the dead before, Chief. Big hole, eyes open, pieces of his lung—”

“I’ve seen dead people before too, Cuddy. But—”

There was a knock at the door.

“Yeah?”

Lou Lacy stuck his head in, a confused look on his face. The overalls shambled out, closing the door behind him.

A minute inched by. I was pretty sure that Perrault wouldn’t tell me anything with or without his boss there, so I just tried to relax.

The chief came back into the room alone, crossing his arms and latching onto both straps of the overalls for lateral support.

“Our people just drove out Fire Road Seven, Cuddy.”

“And?”

“Nobody.”

It took a second to register that he meant, “No body.”

I said, “What?”

“The unit drove the length of the break. Three times down and back. No corpse, no blood, no nothing.”

“Chief...” I took a breath, started again. “Chief, there has to be.”

“There isn’t.”

“Look, I was standing there, shaking hands with the guy, for Christ’s sake. Frank J. Doppinger is dead.”

“I don’t think so.”

“Why, because—”

“Because I’m Frank J. Doppinger.”

“Oh.”

The three of us moved into the chief’s office, the nameplate centered on his desk saying “FRANK J. DOPPINGER” in brass relief. Next to the plate was a stand-up frame, a photo of a woman maybe ten years younger than the chief. Doppinger and Perrault were sipping coffee from Styrofoam cups. I hadn’t seen Lacy since he stuck his head in the interrogation room.

Reg Perrault said, “Cuddy, why you figure anybody would want to fake a murder?”

“It wasn’t fake.”

“Your client was.”

The chief spoke to the framed photo. “The part about the wife wasn’t fake.”

Perrault didn’t say anything, so I didn’t either.

Doppinger said, “Ellen and I have been having... problems, Cuddy. She’s thinking about getting a divorce. Already went to see a lawyer down to Worcester. Reg, this remind you of anything?” Perrault acted like he wasn’t sure what the chief meant.

Doppinger said, “Sorry, Reg.” Then to me, “Detective Perrault and Ellen were in school together.” The farmer turned back to the lumberjack. “Does Cuddy’s story remind you of one of our cases, Reg?”

Perrault said, “The double con.”

I said, “The what?”

The chief said, “Reg?”

Perrault licked his lips. “Four, five years ago—”

Doppinger said, “More like seven or eight.”

A nod. “There was this guy out here, running a double con. Name of Moddicky. Rudolph Moddicky. He impersonated guys who really existed and worked in stocks, bonds, whatever. Then he’d con the elderly with that con, using a real guy’s rep to get inside, then ripping them off. We — the chief, caught him.”

Doppinger said, “By coincidence. Pure luck.”

Perrault made sure the chief was finished. “The guy copped a plea but drew some heavy time anyway. He played his cards close in the joint, got out with a lot of good time credit.”

I said, “When?”

Doppinger said, “About two weeks ago. Back when he went away, Moddicky made the usual threats about getting even, so I put a routine request in to the parole officer for notification-upon-release. I got a call from his P.O. saying Moddicky was coming out.”

I thought about it. “You have a mug shot of him?”

Doppinger picked up his phone and mumbled into it. We waited while somebody just outside his door opened and closed a file cabinet, then came in. Lou Lacy.

Lacy seemed angry as he handed a manila folder to Doppinger, who said, “Thanks, Lou.” Doppinger waited until Lacy was out of the room before sliding the file across the desk to me.

Something must have shown on my face, because Doppinger said, “Lou’s mama was one of the people Moddicky screwed.”

I opened the folder. Stapled to the cover was the front and profile of a slim young man with tailored haircut, wide-set eyes, and winning smile. “Not my client. He was pushing fifty and burly, kind of sad-looking.”

Doppinger said, “Like me.”

I didn’t answer.

The chief said, “I think when I talked to that P.O. he said a couple of other guys were released from Moddicky’s cellblock right before him. A Shaw, maybe a Bennett and an Olsen, too. Reg, can you run them for me?”

“Got a name for the P.O.?”

“Garcia, I think. Male.”

“I’ll get on it right away, Chief.”

Doppinger stood up. “I think maybe I ought to be heading home.”

Perrault was clearly trying to figure out a nice way to ask a difficult question. It came out, “You want some company?”

Doppinger said, “I’m hoping I don’t have any company stopping by.”

Perrault said, “Chief—”

Doppinger held up a meaty hand. “We don’t know there’s any connection between the client Cuddy says got shot and Moddicky coming hunting. I’m not about to gather all our wagons around the wrong spot if there is a connection and Moddicky’s hunting something else. Reg, whyn’t you take Mr. Cuddy here down to the motel and settle him in.”

Perrault looked in my direction.

Distracted, Doppinger turned to me. “Sorry. That three hundred buy us your time for the night?”

I said, “Sure, Chief.”

3.

Reg Perrault directed me to the only motel in town. I checked into a stale, dark room with two double beds. The clerk directed me to the only restaurant in town, a fifties diner with chrome counter-stools (sporting padded swivel seats) and a Formica countertop (sporting dated jukebox selectors). The diner had a license, so I mixed a little alcohol from a glass with the cholesterol from my plate.

Back at the room, I thought about why the body wasn’t where it was supposed to be. When that didn’t get me anywhere, I tried the TV. An old Mannix episode was in commercial as the first siren screamed by outside. I was opening the door of the Prelude when the second cruiser blew past a minute later.

It wasn’t that hard to find. Kind of out in the woods and down another country lane, but I just had to follow the noise, then the bubble lights bouncing off the treeline once the drivers pulled to a stop.

A guy wearing a six-inch Colt Magnum but no uniform stopped me at the edge of the driveway. I told him who I was and suggested he tell Doppinger, Perrault, or Lacy that I was there. He left me and came back just as an older man parked a four-wheel-drive Subaru behind me. The older man got out slowly, carrying the sort of little black bag doctors used to take on house calls.

The doctor and I followed Magnum up the driveway and around the cruisers toward a beautiful farmhouse. About ten feet from the porch, we reached Lou Lacy, kneeling beside a man lying on his stomach. A Winchester rifle, with scope, nestled in the grass near the sprawled arms of the man on the ground. He had a tailored haircut and wide-set eyes and broken teeth where he’d kissed a rock falling. He also had an entry wound between his shoulder blades and two exit wounds where his lungs would hang.

The doctor didn’t pause, but Lacy looked up and shook his head negatively anyway. He was grinning as he did it.

Inside the front door, Perrault was standing next to the body of a woman lying face-up on the carpet. Given the entry wound at her cheekbone, the exit wound in back would cost you your dinner. The hair color and one eye told me she had been the woman pictured on Doppinger’s desk.

Magnum left us. After glancing down at the woman, the doctor continued over to Frank Doppinger. The chief was sitting in an easy chair, still wearing the same shirt and overalls. At his right bicep, blood seeped into the torn sleeve. The palm of his left hand covered something north of his nose, but I didn’t see anything red streaming between the fingers.

I looked at Perrault.

Very quietly, he said, “Chief was in the kitchen. Heard the front door kicked open and then the rifle. By the time he got into the living room, Moddicky out there was on the porch.”

Perrault shook his head. “Chief got him once and spun him, then Moddicky got off a grazer and the chief got him twice more, last one in the back as Moddicky was going down.”

I watched the doctor talking to Doppinger and cutting at the right sleeve with a pair of small scissors. The chief’s left hand was down now, and he looked at me.

I turned and left the house.

At first light, I was in the Prelude and slewing onto Fire Road #7. It was dead quiet as the autumn sun broke the tops of the trees.

Driving to the end of the break, I couldn’t find the spot from the day before. I even got out at the one gathering of boulders that looked close, but not quite right. Other than some recent tire tracks, there was nothing to indicate anyone had been there in weeks.

I drove back out in the still dead quiet, finally realizing that something was out of kilter. I stopped the car at the main road and thought about it.

Acorns. There were no acorns ricocheting off the undercarriage.

I did a three-pointer and went back up the firebreak. The ground was clear, nothing in the ruts. Squirrels, maybe?

Leaving the car, I walked a hundred feet in each direction, studying the foliage pretty carefully. Acorns fall from mighty oaks. No acorns because there were no oak trees. None.

I went back to the main road and checked the little sign for Fire Road #7. There were a couple of fresh scratches in the screws holding the sign to the post.

I continued up the main road to Fire Road #8 and tried it. Acorns within fifty feet. The boulders beyond that, exactly where they should be. Double con; the client masquerading as Frank Doppinger met me on Fire Road #8 masquerading as #7.

I stopped the Prelude at the boulders and got out. There was some dried blood on one rock, but no pieces of tissue thanks to whatever insects had scoured the area. I found some scuff marks where I remembered crouching for cover and some more where someone had hefted something off the ground. Sidestepping downslope about twenty feet, I saw a disturbed section of earth. Some creatures bigger than insects had dug into the shallow grave. What was left of a face and throat ended at the collar of the green windbreaker.

I climbed back up the slope, wiping my hands on my haunches even though I hadn’t dirtied them. I sat in my car and thought about it. Tried to think through it. Then I turned the key in the ignition and headed back toward town.

4.

“Cuddy?”

“Chief.”

Doppinger looked up at me. His right arm was in a sling, his left hand hanging up the telephone next to the living room chair he’d been sitting in the night before.

I said, “Sorry to be interrupting.”

“No. No, just making some...” he waved at the phone, “arrangements. You heading back to Boston?”

“Shortly. Thought I ought to report something to you first.”

“What’s that?”

“I found a body.”

He blinked. “Where?”

“Fire Road Number Eight.”

“Eight?”

“Yeah. The killer conned me into thinking I was on Seven yesterday by switching the signs.”

Doppinger hung his head and shook it. “That Moddicky. Always thinking.”

“I also put a phone call in to Garcia.”

“Garcia?”

“That parole officer you called about Moddicky and his blockmates.”

“Oh. Right.”

“He gave me a bunch of names and addresses. Seems you were right. A photo’s on its way, but I’m pretty sure the guy I met as Frank J. Doppinger out on the fire road is Joey Benson, one of the other inmates released just before Moddicky.”

“Benson, you say?” Doppinger took a breath. “Yeah, figures Moddicky’d use somebody he knew to set up his little game.”

“Yeah, it does. But why did Moddicky kill him, do you suppose?”

Doppinger started to shrug, then remembered his sling. “Take out a witness.”

“A witness to what?”

Doppinger straightened a little. “To your being approached by the guy.”

“You figure that’s why Moddicky decided to switch the signs and hide the body, too?”

“Who knows? Moddicky was an odd one, Cuddy. Maybe he got off on burying things.”

I waited a moment. “Nobody said anything about the guy being buried, Chief.”

Doppinger’s eyes clouded.

I said, “I think the killer approached the guy I met and paid him to impersonate Frank J. Doppinger and feed me the song and dance that got me out on that fire road. The killer wanted the arrow to point toward Moddicky, but not too clearly too soon. Otherwise, the level of protection you should have mounted at your house yesterday might have been uncomfortably high.”

The voice got raspy. “What are you saying?”

“You needed a way out of the marriage, preferably death over divorce so you’d get to keep this house. It was sharp of you to mention your talk with the parole officer to Perrault and me. Even sharper to admit he’d told you about other blockmates of Moddicky, ‘Bennett’ instead of ‘Benson.’ But Garcia also says he gave you names and addresses.”

“Moddicky pulled a double con on you, Cuddy. He’s still got you believing it.”

“No, Chief. The double con the killer had in mind couldn’t work with Moddicky directly. He knew you and hated you. But it could work with Benson, a blockmate Moddicky could have known but probably never buddied up to, never told how Frank J. Doppinger brought him down. You hired Benson to get me into it. You would have had to snatch Moddicky a couple of days ago, though. To be sure nobody would come forward with an unshakable alibi for him once he was dead. Tell me, Chief, where did you stash him?”

“You’re blowing smoke up your own—”

“Anyway, you did stash Moddicky out here someplace, alive. You watched my meeting with Benson, picking him off when you saw us shaking hands, knowing he’d already told me everything you wanted me to hear. Then you waited for me to slink off before burying Benson and switching back the signs. Nice touch, by the way, to tell the boys you’d be in your garden. Made them beep you instead of telephoning and let you show up at the station in soiled overalls, fresh from Benson’s hasty grave.”

Doppinger’s left hand dropped to the outside of his thigh, rubbing it. “You can’t prove any of this, Cuddy.”

“Here at the house last night you shot Moddicky with your service revolver and your wife with the Winchester you’d used on Benson. Then you probably fired a round through the rifle with Moddicky’s dead hands around it and another through your sleeve with something to catch the powder burns.”

The doll’s eyes got colder as a snub-nosed revolver appeared from under the seat cushion.

“It won’t wash, Chief.”

“Sure it will, Cuddy. You came to the station yesterday, claiming this Benson was your client. You were in with him and Moddicky all along.”

“I’m not even armed.”

“I put a throwaway in your hand, and nobody will know you weren’t.”

“Perrault and Lacy will know.”

“What?”

“They frisked me before I came in here.”

“They...?”

From the kitchen door, Perrault’s voice said, “Put it down, Chief.”

From the porch window, Lacy leveled a shotgun. “Please, Chief.”

Doppinger’s eyes went around the room, through the walls and around the house. Measuring something. Maybe his losses.

He dropped the snubbie on the floor and used the hand to cover his face instead.