Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine. Vol. 131, Nos. 3 & 4. Whole Nos. 799 & 800, March/April 2008

A Man Is Knocking at the Door by Rodolfo Pérez Valero

Cuban Rodolfo Pérez Valero was one of the seven founding members of the International Association of Crime Writers in 1986. He has won the CubanNational Prize for Crime Litera-ture three times and the SemanaNegra Prize for Best Short Storyfor this tale and for three others. He is currently a writer for Univision Network News.

English translation by the author.

The drizzle is just a sticky dirty dust that dulls the outlines of things as the man hurries to the porch, goes straight for the door, and pushes the button. From inside, the muffled sound of the bell strikes him like a long-gone memory that surges in a dream. Silence. A glance at his watch... a hand to his cheek. The faint shadow of his recently shaven beard gives a virile touch to his young face.

Nobody opens. The man rings again and stays still to catch any sound. He looks at the door, he looks at both sides of the street, he looks at his watch. He’s uneasy now. He raises his hand to the bell but a metallic click stops him. The man is aware that the peephole is open and he’s being watched.

“What do you want?”

It’s the cracked voice of an old woman. The man takes the wallet out of his pocket, opens it, and flashes it at the peephole.

“Police. Would you mind opening up?”

A pause. Something tense, uncomfortable, arises between the man and the eye that’s watching him. At last, the peephole is closed, the latches are released, and the door is opened. A woman in that indefinite transition from sixty to seventy years old examines him from head to foot as her hands squeeze a little white handkerchief.

“Are you Maria?”

“Marina,” she corrects him.

“Yes, Marina. That’s it. Can I come in?”

The woman nods. The man steps in. She closes the door and with an outstretched hand invites him to proceed to the next room. She follows behind, offers him a rocking chair, and chooses a place for herself on the sofa. He brings out a cold, studied smile. The woman continues to press the handkerchief in her hands.

“You’ll excuse me for the delay and for asking first,” she begins, “but with that killer around I don’t open to any man I don’t know... Well, you’re a cop...” She stares at the trendy clothes and the hair that’s a bit too long. “But, I mean, you look too young to be a policeman.”

“I just graduated,” he explains, keeping the same smirk, which suddenly flits away from his lips as he bends towards her. “And we have information that the perpetrator of those crimes may be coming here. They’ve sent some cops to the area, and the captain dispatched me to this house.” His voice becomes grave when he adds: “You know that, up to now, the victims have always been old women... elderly, I should say... and generally, they live alone. Do you live alone?” The woman nods. “That’s why the captain sent me here: to protect you.”

The woman fights to put forth an unworried smile: “But how did you get that information — that the man is coming here?”

“He told us himself.” The young man smiles with pride. “You’re a woman, older, you live alone... and you do have some fine possessions, don’t you?”

“Yes... some jewels I kept from when my husband was alive, and a few presents my grandson has given me. But how could that man know such things?”

“Maybe he makes some inquires before choosing his victims. It’s not hard. People talk too much in a neighborhood. You just have to go to the market and listen. It’s amazing the things you hear down there. They talk about everything: themselves, their relatives, neighbors.”

The whisper of the rain creates a strange intimacy between the young man and the old woman. He, now sure of himself, studies her openly. By the order of the house, the woman seems to be a clean person, but her hair could be better cared for and so could the apron that, over the dress, presses her sagging flesh. She evades his cross-examining look and fixes a loose curl before she asks him, “What do you know about the murders?”

The man glances at the ceiling, shrugs, and then decides to give away some unimportant information: the victims stay home alone almost the whole day; they all have a degree of economic security; the killer steals their jewels, money, and other possessions; until now he hasn’t broken in, perhaps he has come through a window, but it’s supposed that the victims themselves have opened their doors to him; he surely takes advantage of some subterfuge to make them let him in.

The woman is trembling, but her curiosity proves to be greater than her fears.

“And when he gets in, what does he do?”

The young man enjoys the interest his words cause.

“By the traces he’s left, we know that he hasn’t been in a hurry to kill, nor, after he kills, to go; he searches thoroughly, looking for the really valuable things he can carry off.”

“And why does he—”

“He kills the old women so as not to be identified. With a simple kitchen knife, the victim’s own knife.”

“He must be crazy.”

“Maybe not. Remember that he doesn’t kill just to kill, but to rob. He may be sane, and have an entirely normal appearance.”

“Oh, so you don’t know what he looks like?”

“No, nobody’s seen him.”

The woman keeps silent, as if wondering about what she’s heard. Her hands, uneasy, discharge their tension on the handkerchief.

“You now! You haven’t really explained how you got to know he’d come around here.”

The man smiles. Then he takes his cell phone out.

“Excuse me for a second.”

“Yes.” She watches him. “You are very young for a cop.”

“Don’t you worry,” says the man as he dials. “Trust me.”

The woman casts her eyes down to the handkerchief in her hands.

“Lieutenant, it’s me. I’m at Marina’s house, as you ordered me.” The man holds on a minute and turns back to the woman: “Your relatives... Do they come every day?”

“No, my son’s not coming until tomorrow.”

“No,” reports the man at the telephone. “She’ll be alone the whole night.” He stands quiet for a few more seconds and then says: “Yes, it’s okay. I’ll stay here till it’s all over.” He closes the cell phone. “Are there any other doors in the house?” he asks the woman.

“Yes, the one in the kitchen to the yard.”

“Can we see it? We must close everything to prevent access.”

The woman gets up. She manages to control the alteration in her face and hands.

“Come along,” she says and starts walking down the inner corridor.

The man follows behind. He’s watching the woman’s disordered hair. On each side of the corridor there’s a closed door, which the man examines as they pass. They both get to the kitchen and she points to the open door.

“Let’s get it closed,” he commands with decision. She holds back. “It’s necessary,” he insists.

“I never close it until I go to sleep,” the woman assures him. She looks outside. “It’s raining so hard!” She hesitates a few seconds but finally closes the door and fastens the two latches. Then she notices that the man is sweating.

He seems to understand what she is thinking.

“Could you give me a glass of water?” he asks. “It’s hot.”

The woman takes a glass from the cupboard, opens the refrigerator, fills it, and hands it to the man. As he drinks, his eyes scan the kitchen, passing over other details and stopping at a point.

“Those two knives are like the ones he uses.”

“It’s awful,” says the woman, and shakes again.

“Thank you for the water.” He hands back the glass and, cautiously, he adds: “Those rooms, are the windows closed? Aren’t there attractive things that could be seen from outside and attract a robber?”

“Yes... My son has brought some presents, but the windows... I closed them when the rain started.”

The man becomes still and brings out his cold smile once again. She seems to doubt. “I suppose you want to check them?” He nods. “Well, come on, there are two bedrooms, one’s empty, the other is where I sleep.”

They go back along the corridor. She leads the way. She gets to one door, opens it, and steps aside to let him in.

“Excuse me for asking you this again,” she persists, “but you have not explained why you are so certain the killer is going to come here.“

As he goes to the window and checks it, he explains that at the last crime scene they discovered traces of pen strokes on the telephone message pad. The police had managed to decipher what was written on the missing page above. And they were able to determine that it wasn’t the murdered woman’s handwriting nor even that of one of her relatives. There were some addresses...

“...among them, this number, this street, this block. And, as you live alone...”

“The killer made a mistake,” comments the woman when the man comes out of the room and they both go to the other door. The woman opens it. “This is my room,” she says, and steps aside.

The man takes two steps across the threshold. From there he glances at the closed window and his eyes roll down to the bed, where he takes in several necklaces and rings, apparently gold, and money, a lot of money. He also notices that the doors of the wardrobe are open, the drawers are pulled out, and everything is in a mess, as if someone had just made an exhaustive search.

“What’s that?!” he asks and, advancing, he discovers, horrified, two feet that stretch out under the other side of the bed.

“That’s Marina,” says the woman behind him and stabs him once and then again, while grabbing him strongly by his hair and pulling his head back. His painful cry is lost like a crazy whisper in the rain hammering against the window. His legs don’t hold him anymore and he falls down. The woman removes the apron, cleans her hand, wipes the knife, and drops both weapon and apron on the still-shaking body. Then, with the white handkerchief, she cleans the door handle and goes straight to the jewels and the money on the bed.

Outside, it rains.

Story and translation © 2008 by Rodolfo Pérez Valero