Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine. Vol. 137, No. 2. Whole No. 834, February 2011

Powder Goes Hunting by Michael Z. Lewin

“This satisfying, intelligent private eye novel unfolds with expert timing,” Publishers Weekly said of Michael Z. Lewin’s first novel in the Albert Samson series, Ask the Right Question, which first saw print forty years ago. Now it’s back in print in paperback, available at backinprint.com and online bookshops. Another popular Lewin character, Indianapolis cop Lieutenant Leroy Powder, takes the lead in this new story, which compels our attention in the quiet way we’ve come to expect Powder tales to do.

Lieutenant Leroy Powder slowed his car as the house numbers got close to 1228. Although off-duty and dressed in civilian clothes, in truth he considered himself to be at least as on duty as when he was running roll call, no matter what his paymasters might say. He was hunting criminals. Tracking them. Getting evidence. Working out how to catch them.

It wasn’t something he did much these days. Mostly he, and the officers who worked under him, just responded to evening events on Indianapolis’s North Area swing shift. Sure, sometimes there were things to be deduced or discovered, steps to be taken, conclusions to be drawn. But most of the time it was less heady. Securing crime scenes, finding witnesses, reassuring disturbed members of the public.

Such things were important. Of course they were. And there were also better and worse ways to do them. Here, however, Powder was being positive in his policing. He was being proactive. It was like being a detective again, but without reopening that whole can of worms.

The neighborhood Powder was cruising was not luxurious, but its eighties ranch houses had well-established yards. Maybe the houses were closer together than new-builds of the type these days, but the residents were also closer to the center of town than they would be in houses built now. The development’s modest but comfortable properties were an easy commute to North Area. And at the same time, they were near to good roads that led into the countryside. They were a good fit for the kind of criminal Powder was stalking.

And, indeed, two of his criminals lived here. One at 1228 and the other only a few houses away and just around a corner.

Powder had five criminals on his list. Well, technically they were suspects, but nobody with half a brain could think of them as anything but self-advantaging, selfish liars and defrauders of the public purse. Criminals.

When Powder spotted 1228, he pulled up across the road. He took an envelope and a clipboard from his passenger seat. He put on a Colts cap and a pair of sunglasses. Then he got out and went to the door and rang the bell.

It was answered by a woman in a bright red-and-white gingham pinafore. How many wives — even those without their own jobs — wore that sort of thing these days? It was sort of nice to see: rather reassuring and traditional. Powder hadn’t often talked about personal things with Barry Haller, but even so he had the impression that Haller was a traditionalist where women were concerned. That they should be homemakers and child-raisers, cake-bakers and churchgoers, present-buyers and clothes-finders. PTA members and neighborhood morals-vigilantes? Lordy, it bored Powder just to think about it. He wondered if it bored Mrs. Haller too. Maybe she took regular drags on the cooking sherry.

Still, she opened the door to the stranger halfway, rather than peeping through a crack. That meant she was confident in her own house. And maybe trained in martial as well as marital arts? Or was it that she held a pistol behind the door in the hand Powder couldn’t see?

“Hi, ma’am,” he said. “I have a letter for Barry Haller that he needs to sign for.” Powder held up the clipboard. The envelope was resting on it.

The woman tilted her head. She frowned, but just for a moment. “I’ll sign for it,” she said. “I’m Mrs. Haller.”

“Oh, I do wish you could, ma’am. Unfortunately it needs to be signed for by Mr. Haller himself.”

“Well, he’s not here right now.”

“Is he expected back soon?” Powder looked at his watch.

“I’m not real sure.”

“I could wait. I mean, out there, o’ course.” Powder gestured to his car. “Or I could come back later on.”

“It may be a long time.”

Powder’s faced wrinkled in sympathy. “He hasn’t split the sheet with you or nuthin’ like that, has he, ma’am?”

“Oh no. Good heavens. He’s just out, with some friends.”

“This time of day? Well, nice for some.”

“Confidentially,” Mrs. Haller said, “I’m not really supposed to say where he’s gone.”

“Ah,” Powder said with a smile. “It’s a secret. Out gettin’ you a fancy anniversary present? Or is it your birthday?”

“No, no.”

Her statement was meant to be a finish to the conversation but Powder just stood and waited.

In a way, it was sad that doing nothing more than maintaining eye contact could intimidate the woman. But there it was. When she saw that Powder wasn’t going to leave, she shrugged and said, “Between you and me, it’s the first day of deer season.”

“Ah.”

“He managed a day off from work to go to Hancock County with some of his buddies.”

“I got it now, ma’am,” Powder said, truthful in more ways than one, because he’d been recording the conversation on a small recorder taped to the underside of his clipboard. “Well, tell you what. Why don’t I just go back to base and find out if you can sign for the letter yourself after all. I’ll explain the situation to my boss. I expect she’ll understand.”

The boss Powder was referring to wasn’t really his “boss” but she did understand.

Although Carol Lee Fleetwood worked in the Indianapolis Metropolitan Police Department’s headquarters downtown, she was now a civilian. A paralyzing bullet near her spine ended her short but distinguished field career, even in this age of ramps and access. Still, in Holland they hire blind police officers because they’re better at telling recorded voices apart, and as soon as Fleetwood had regained consciousness she declared her determination to continue police work. She might not be blind, but she was smart. There had to be a place for smart in IPD, as it was then. IMPD now. Somewhere.

“Somewhere” eventually turned out to be in Human Resources, formerly known as Personnel. And once she found her slot there she rose to become, effectively, the top dog — some said bitch — in IMPD HR. Politically sensitive — and vulnerable — officers of high rank might establish the department’s general personnel policies but it was Fleetwood who made the policies work — if they could work. She wasn’t quite able to make silk purses out of any old policy-sow’s ear, but she had a track record for making purses of cotton or even satin from the basest policy materials. Nowadays it seemed that HR could hardly do without her.

“Roy Powder,” she said when he walked into her office without knocking. She gave him a smile that crossed the years. “Well, well, well.”

“Long time no wheel your chair,” Powder said.

“You never wheeled me.”

“It did sometimes feel like it was the other way round, I admit.”

They had worked together for a while in the then Missing Persons Department. They had also shared some personal time. But that was long ago and in another emotional country.

“How are you adjusting to work in the provinces?” she asked.

Powder’s assignment as a roll call lieutenant was, in career terms, a demotion. He was no longer a detective and, more important to the many who couldn’t stand him, he no longer worked downtown at Indianapolis’s law-enforcement hub. But like Fleetwood, Powder had an intense commitment to effective policing. Even the most political members of IMPD would be hard put to assign him somewhere he didn’t think he could improve. “North is good,” he said. “I like getting the chance to help the kids become better policemen.”

“And policewomen.”

A flicker of a smile indicated that Powder’s failure to include both genders had been intentional, intended to provoke just the response from her that it had gotten.

Fleetwood sighed, perhaps reminded of Powder’s downside. “So what brings you here that you couldn’t have sent in on a postcard?”

“It’s all e-mail these days. When was the last time you got a postcard?”

“I was trying to talk in language that wasn’t too up-to-date for you, Roy.”

“Ah, I was being matronized. But I’m into the new technologies now, Chair Girl. I admit, I hesitated at first, but then I decided if you can’t beat ’em, join ’em. And now I love all the new machines. We can do so many things easily that were hard or impossible in olden times.” From a pocket he brought out the recorder that had been under his clipboard. He placed it on her desk.

When she refused to ask what it was and what it was for, Powder looked around the small office. Then looked around it again.

“Lost some marbles?” she asked.

“I just figured you’d have another wheelchair somewhere. For visitors to use, so we could all speak on the same level. No?”

“I don’t need to tower over you to fire your ass,” Fleetwood said.

Powder allowed himself a grin as he took one of the conventional chairs that was available for visitors.

“So are you well, Roy? I mean physically. I can’t believe they’ve invented a cure for what ails your mind.” Fleetwood leaned back and the wheelchair she sat in tilted with her.

“Me? Oh yeah, sure. And you? Walkin’ tall?”

“As ever.”

“As a matter of fact, you are looking good.”

“Despite the added years?”

“I don’t pay attention to years. You just look... settled. Yourself.”

“I like what I do.”

“And you haven’t ballooned up like a lot of you cripples do.”

She laughed, but only because she knew him well. “And you wonder why your career has dipped rather than risen? Or maybe you don’t.”

“I figured if I dropped in to see you, you’d make me the next chief.”

They both knew she didn’t make anyone into anything, although her recommendations for hiring and firing were almost never ignored.

“If you’re ambitious, why not run for sheriff?”

“I’m better as an appointee than as a candidate. Think about it. As chief I could make so many more men — and women — into better cops.” He waited. “Don’t you think?”

A tiny shake of the head indicated that she wanted to move on. “So what can I do for you, cowboy?”

“It’s what I can do for you,” Powder said.

“I’ve heard that from you before. Thanks but no thanks.”

“Listen to this.” He withdrew a small remote-control unit from a jacket pocket. He pushed a button. The digital recorder on Fleetwood’s desk came to life.

Together they listened as Mrs. Barry Haller said, “Between you and me, it’s the first day of deer season.”

“Ah,” Powder was heard to respond.

“He managed a day off from work to go to Hancock County with some of his buddies.”

“I got it now, ma’am.”

Powder stopped the playback. “Want to hear it again?”

“What is it, Roy?”

“Officer Barry Haller’s wife telling me that Officer Barry Haller is out hunting deer today.”

“So?”

“He called in sick with flu.”

She waited.

He said, “Haller’s flu is a special strain, Deer Flu. I was thinking maybe you’d want to consider working on a vaccine.”

“This Haller is one of yours at North?”

“Yes.”

“And you want me to do what?”

“String him up. Not because he’s such a bad guy, but because he’s way not the only one. We get an outbreak of flu — or whatever they decide to call it — every year when deer season starts. There’s a department-wide blip. It happens at other times, too. Squirrel, turkey, rabbit, even crow season. There are disproportionate claims of illnesses when each hunting season starts. Deer hunting with firearms is the biggest blip, though you can see the starts of the early and late deer-with-archery seasons, too, if you look for them.” He nodded with his lips tight and took an envelope out of another pocket. “It’s all laid out here. The effects are all statistically significant. It’s costing the department serious money in overtime to replace the missing men — and women — or it results in less effective police cover when we decide not to replace those who are missing.”

Fleetwood felt the thickness of the envelope Powder had given her. “What’s with the recording?”

“Evidence. There are four other guys out today on my roll call, one of them around the corner from Haller. But this was the only confession I managed to get.”

“Hardly a confession.”

“Testimony, then.”

“It wouldn’t ever stand up in court, Roy. It’s just a woman saying something. If it’s true, it’s self-incrimination as an accessory without being cautioned. And if it isn’t true, it isn’t true.”

“I’d get you pictures of the guys coming home with twelve-point bucks on their roofs if I could. I tried last year, but either they didn’t bag any or they left the bodies somewhere else.”

“Lot of them go straight to professional skinners.”

“If you say so. I’ve never much seen the attraction of shooting Bambi.”

“My dad was a hunter.”

“And you were too, right?”

“Some.”

“What do you do now? Sit out in the yard with food on your hand and get the wild creatures to come to you? Then strangle them?”

“I leave strangulation for the workplace, Roy. So how long have you been working on this?” She held up the envelope.

“How long have I been working in the North?”

“Jesus.” Powder had been a roll call lieutenant for years now, first at Northside and then, after reorganization, at North.

“Roll call lieutenants have to keep an eye on manning levels. And womanning levels.”

“And Peyton Manning’s levels?” But she shook her head slowly. “It isn’t evidence.”

“I’m not taking it to court. I’ve brought it to you.”

Two nights later, Powder responded to what was apparently a routine burglary run. He was driving north on College just past midnight when the dispatcher called that a break-in at a convenience store had been reported by a neighbor. The store was out east on 56th. Powder got there within five minutes. Another police cruiser was just coming to a stop ahead of him. Sanford Billings got out as Powder pulled up behind. Billings unclipped the flap over his gun and waited.

In a moment, Powder was beside him. “See anything?” he asked.

“Nothing from the front,” Billings said. “All dark.”

“Not very convenient for a convenience store to be closed.” Powder looked at the building. The store seemed to have been developed on the site of a former gas station, not least because it was set at forty-five degree angles to both the roads that made up the intersection. The length of the building and some residual structural signs suggested there had once been two repair bays. There was no sign now of where the pumps had been and the forecourt was no longer covered. It was just a parking lot. No civilian cars were parked on it. But even as a convenience store, it was old-fashioned, the kind of place that the 7-Elevens had long driven out of business in most parts of the city — and world?

“I’ll go around back,” Powder said.

“I’ll check the front,” Billings said. “And I expect we’ll have one or two of the other guys here before long.”

It had been a quiet night. Almost any call that wasn’t a domestic drew several patrol cars, officers looking for a bit of action. As Powder headed around the side of the store he unclipped the flap over his own gun but drew his flashlight.

After pausing at the back corner, he discovered another small parking lot, also empty. The edge of the lot was abutted by a grassy slope that led up to a few trees and the backs of some houses. If it was a neighbor who had called, chances were the neighbor lived up there.

Carefully he studied the fringes of the lot until he satisfied himself that there were no people lurking in shadows. You could never know for sure, but... He began to walk along the back of the building.

His flashlight revealed trash cans and a few decomposing cardboard boxes of uncertain contents. Halfway along he found a back door. It had been forced open. A glance inside revealed only darkness. On his radio he told everyone on his frequency where he was and that he would wait for backup before he entered the building.

With the light off, he studied the wall beyond the open door. There seemed to be nowhere to hide, so if anyone was still on the scene, he was inside.

Or she, Powder thought. He smiled, for Carol Lee.

In the darkness, he tried to hear any sounds that might be coming from inside the store, but all he could hear were ambient street sounds from outside. Then there were some doors slamming and faint voices. These belonged to arriving patrol officers. Someone would be coming round the mountain soon, no doubt.

And, indeed, Powder heard footsteps behind him moments later. As he turned he expected to see Billings approaching. Instead it was Barry Haller.

Powder stared at Haller for an uncomfortably long moment. But it was too dark to see if Haller had anything on his mind besides his job. Funny, though, that Haller should be here. His assigned patrol area was miles to the west.

Oh well.

Powder beckoned Haller to lean in close. “I haven’t heard anything from inside the building and there’s no getaway car waiting back here. Probably whoever did it is long gone. Even so.”

Haller nodded. Both men drew their weapons and Haller also took out his flashlight.

Powder turned his light on, took a breath, and headed into the dark void. “Police,” he called. “Stay where you are.” He dodged to one side and crouched. With gun and light he scanned the room.

Haller took the other side, his flashlight too searching for danger.

They found none.

By the doorjamb Haller discovered a row of three switches. He flipped them all.

The room flooded with light, showing it to be a large storeroom, with a desk, a computer, and a file cabinet against the wall opposite where they’d just come in.

There was no one in the room besides the two policemen.

“Clear,” Haller called.

Each man took a door that led off the room on the end away from the desk.

“Clear,” Powder called, finding a toilet.

“Clear.”

Then together they approached the main passage into the public’s area of the store. They entered quickly and cautiously, and rapidly they searched up and down the aisles of goods. There was no one in the store.

Powder moved in the direction of the main entrance, intending either to open it for the officers standing outside or indicate through the glass that there was no one untoward on the premises.

“Hang on a sec, Lieutenant,” Haller said.

Powder turned. “What?”

The younger, taller man approached and leaned forward. Quietly he said, “It’s good to have backup you can trust, isn’t it?”

After a moment, Powder said, “What’s that supposed to mean, Haller?”

“Leave my wife alone.”

“What?”

Haller held Powder’s eyes for another moment. Then he stepped around and unbolted the entrance door. “Nobody home,” he said to the three officers outside.

“We have to stop meeting like this, Roy,” Carol Lee Fleetwood said in her office the next day.

Powder smiled and sat down.

“No, I mean it, Roy. I can’t have you coming here all the time. What is it now? A statistical analysis of how many officers call in sick every Super Bowl Sunday? The World Series? The Pride Parade?”

Powder’s smile vanished. “I want to make you a better non-cop,” he said.

Fleetwood sighed. She looked at her watch. “Two minutes.”

“Oh for crying out loud.”

“One fifty-five. Fifty-four.”

“Barry Haller threatened me last night.”

“He what?”

“He clearly threatened that one day he wouldn’t back me up when I needed him to.”

“Did you record it?”

“No. And I’ll take care of the threat. But the point I’m making is that he knew I’d been checking up on him. He said, ‘Leave my wife alone.’”

“His wife?” Fleetwood gave Powder a look that asked whether there was more between him and Haller’s wife than had previously been advertised.

“Don’t be stupid. I’m saying that Haller knew his wife told me — me and not an anonymous letter deliverer — that he was off hunting deer. I’d never met the woman before, and it’s not like I was wearing my uniform.”

Fleetwood considered this. “Funny glasses? A fake beard?”

“Sunglasses and a Colts cap.”

“Maybe she described you well.”

“Because I’m so distinctive? You and I both know that without my uniform I’m just an average-looking guy in late middle-age. Nobody would look at me twice.”

Fleetwood considered this.

“I wasn’t there long and she never really saw me — I didn’t give her any reason to.”

“You can’t be sure.”

“So I’ve come in to ask whether someone in this office told Haller that I reported him for taking unauthorized time off.”

Fleetwood rocked forward. “You’re accusing me?”

“Not you. But I have legitimate cause to ask who else might have seen the report I left with you.”

“Not who might have seen it. Who might have tipped off Barry Haller.”

“Yes.”

“No one.”

“No one saw it?”

“No one in this office tipped off Barry Haller.”

“Just like that? No thinking about it? No reviewing where the report went after I left? Who had access? What time people left the office?”

“Just like that.”

Powder studied her face. Then he got up. “Okay.”

“Okay?”

“If you say no way, then it’s no way. So there has to be some other explanation.”

“Just like that?”

“Just like that. I can help cops do their jobs better. Maybe I’m overreaching to try to help you non-cops.”

“Okay,” Fleetwood said. “And I will give your report some thought.”

“I’ll be back.”

She frowned, trying not to repeat that she’d just told him not to keep coming to the office.

“I’m preparing a report on absenteeism on Valentine’s Day. Why can’t they just say it with flowers?”

Powder was making a joke. Fleetwood didn’t laugh. He left.

Powder did some gardening after he got home from seeing Fleetwood. He no longer had a plot of land on the edge of the city but there was soil and some sunshine on two sides of his little house. It was enough to make do with, as were so many other things in his life.

Anyway, Powder’s gardening wasn’t about the fruit or the flowers. He gardened when he had something to think about. Today that something was Barry Haller.

Part of the mystery was how Haller knew it was Powder who’d visited his house and found out about his hunting trip. If he hadn’t learned this from someone in Human Resources, then from who?

And then Haller had threatened him. To imply that Powder might find himself without backup in a dangerous situation was about the worst threat one policeman can make to another without brandishing a weapon. What was that about?

Both the threat and its premeditated nature were puzzling. Claiming to be sick in order to take a day off to murder deer was bad — irresponsible — but it was misdemeanor territory rather than felony land. Even Powder wouldn’t lock Haller up or fire him. Some community service, maybe. Emptying bedpans at a hospital for a month or two? Helping out at a deer sanctuary?

The target of Powder’s report was a general attitude rather than any particular offender. Which Haller couldn’t know, fair enough, so maybe he thought he’d been singled out. But even so, to threaten a superior and senior officer? Overkill, surely.

Many weeds died but Powder still did not find the missing bit of the Haller puzzle.

Neither did he find it at the beginning of the shift that evening. Discreetly, Powder gave Haller special attention as he went through the assignments, alerts, messages from on high, and the rest of the appetizers, entrées, and desserts on the day’s roll call menu. He also watched Lyndrick, Wear, and Dubinski, three of the other four “criminals” on his list. Connick, the fifth, was absent. He was in the hospital with a hiatal hernia. Supposedly.It was Larry Wear who was Haller’s neighbor. They hadn’t struck Powder as special friends in the past and today they didn’t sit at the same table. Did they hunt together? Powder didn’t know. When he’d rung the bell at Wear’s house, no one had answered.

And Lyndrick and Dubinski? No answer at their doors, either. Who knew? Powder was stuck for ideas about how to proceed.

And he continued to be stuck until a call came through from a woman in a condo off College just north of Broad Ripple. She was worried about a prowler in the hallways that connected her unit to others.

The officer taking the call was one of the ND72 patrols, Valerie Muntz. Powder arrived shortly after to back her up as well as to observe how she handled the call. On the job little more than a year, Muntz appeared to be a high-fives female officer — one who seemed more comfortable with rough-and-tumble calls requiring chases and searches than with mundane matters requiring sensitive dealing with the public. Since most calls about prowlers didn’t lead to shootouts Powder decided to see how patient Muntz would be this time.

The member of the public turned out to be perfect for the purpose. Mrs. Jacqueline Fredrick was in her early seventies and spoke slowly and carefully.

“So what exactly did you see, Mrs. Fredrick?” Muntz said.

“It’s not what I saw. It’s what I heard,” the woman said. “It was a man and he was mumbling to himself.”

“Mumbling?”

“Making low and threatening sounds that weren’t really words. I know everyone in this building, by name. I recognize their voices. There’s just nobody who sounds like that. And it wasn’t a visitor, because there are no cars parked in the visitors area outside. I can see it clearly from my living room.” Mrs. Fredrick nodded when she finally finished this statement, to punctuate and affirm it.

Powder stood well behind Muntz and said nothing.

“So you didn’t see anything,” Muntz said.

Mrs. Fredrick looked exasperated. “It’s what I heard. I just told you.”

“What about condo security?” Muntz asked.

“What about them?”

“Did you report your suspicions?”

“Tell them? All they do is play cards all night.”

“So you didn’t report what you heard to them?”

“Of course I did. The man I spoke to said I shouldn’t worry, they’d take care of it. Well, I can see their office from my kitchen window. Neither one of them left their building.”

“And how long ago was that?”

“Must be forty-five minutes now.”

“So you heard the prowler...?”

“A few minutes before that. Look, Officer, are you going to search the building for him or not?”

“Well, I certainly didn’t see anybody as I came into the building.” Muntz turned to Powder. “Did you, sir?” She raised her eyebrows, knowing that Mrs. Fredrick couldn’t see her do it.

“No one, Officer Muntz. Nor did I pass any doors that looked like they’d been forced open.”

“Me neither,” Muntz said, latching on to something she hadn’t thought of for herself. She turned back to Mrs. Fredrick. “So I’m not sure what I can do, ma’am. Would you like me to get someone to call you for an appointment to look over your apartment’s security?”

“I would not, young woman,” Mrs. Fredrick said. “What I want you to do is search this building and find the intruder.”

“That doesn’t seem appropriate to me, since you didn’t see anyone. But we’re happy to look around as we leave.”

“I think your attitude is highly cavalier and irresponsible.”

“Excuse me?”

Powder could hear the frown on Muntz’s face, though he couldn’t see it.

“Very off-hand. How will you feel if you leave now and in an hour’s time you hear that somebody in this building has been robbed or murdered?”

Muntz paused before she answered this. “I would be upset, of course, ma’am. But you hear a strange sound that could have been somebody’s radio or maybe even from the TV next door. How much time am I meant to spend looking in shadows for that? Your own security people aren’t worried. If you don’t think they do the job, then complain to your condo committee. We’re here to help, but we’re not exactly going to call in the National Guard because you heard something.”

It was then that Powder got an idea about Barry Haller.

“Well!” Mrs. Fredrick said. “I’ve never been spoken to like that in my life.”

“No offense meant, ma’am,” Muntz said, “but if that’s the worst you’ve ever heard, you’ve had a pretty lucky time of it.”

Powder intervened. “Mrs. Fredrick, I’m sorry that Officer Muntz has been impolite.” He stepped forward.

“I wondered whether you were just along for the ride,” Mrs. Fredrick said to Powder. “Listening to all that... Outrageous. I pay your salaries.”

“Now just a—” Muntz began.

Powder put a hand on her shoulder. To Mrs. Fredrick he said, “Officer Muntz will be disciplined and I will see to it that she attends classes to help her learn how to be more polite in the future.”

“Well,” Mrs. Fredrick said, but her tone made it clear she liked this change of direction.

“Meanwhile, Officer Muntz and I will search through the public areas of the building. Before we leave, we’ll stop back and tell you what we’ve found, if anything.”

“Thank you,” Mrs. Fredrick said. “Officer...?”

“Lieutenant Leroy Powder, ma’am.” He gave her a card. “Don’t be shy about calling again if you see, or hear, anything suspicious. We’ll knock on your door in a few minutes.”

When she and Powder were out of earshot down the hall, Muntz said, “I can’t believe you bending over like that for a time-waster like that old woman.”

“That time-wasting old woman pays for your salary, Muntz. And your pension. And for your sick days. And for your personal days, once you’ve been working long enough to get some.”

“Yeah, but...” Muntz wasn’t happy. “What if somebody’s out there getting shot just because we’re in here chasing shadows?”

“You’ve made a fundamental mistake, Valerie.”

“Oh yeah? What’s that?”

“You walked into this building and you came to this woman’s apartment. Right?”

“So?”

“And because you didn’t see anybody on the way, you act like you’ve searched the place.”

“I have.”

“Work it through. Nobody left the building after she heard what she heard. She watched from the window.”

“Right.”

“And when you came in, nobody was coming down as you were going up.”

“Exactly.”

“So tell me what happened if Mrs. Fredrick was right and she heard somebody in the hall. Where’d he go?”

“I don’t know.” Muntz felt her exasperation growing. She’d heard about the spots Powder put people in sometimes. She’d just never been on the receiving end before.

“Think about it,” Powder said insistently.

“Okay... then he went into one of the apartments. He lives here.”

“Reasonable. But Mrs. Fredrick says he doesn’t live here.”

“Then he vanished in a puff of smoke. I don’t know.”

“That’s true. You don’t.” He waited while Muntz stared at him. Finally he said, “What if the prowler went up instead of down?”

“There are only two floors, Lieutenant.”

“There’s a roof.”

“Why would a prowler go on the roof?”

“Why does a prowler prowl and mutter to himself? I don’t know. But I think we should go ask him, don’t you?”

And, as if to make the point as clearly as if it were a training exercise, Powder and Muntz did indeed find a man passed out at the top of a stairwell that led to the roof. From the smell of him he was almost certainly drunk. The empty bourbon bottle by his side was another clue.

How and why did he get into the building in the first place? Why did he go up as high as he could? There was no way to tell and they couldn’t ask him because his sleep was deep. But hey.

“You,” Powder said to Muntz, “will stay with this member of the public until the ambulance gets here.”

“Oh for—”

“When he is safely loaded aboard, you will go to Mrs. Fredrick. You’ll explain what happened, and apologize sincerely and profoundly to her. I will come back tomorrow to ask her how you presented yourself. What she says will have an effect on your future.”

By this point, Muntz had gone quiet.

“After your apology, you will follow the ambulance to the hospital and you will stay with Citizen Doe until he wakes up. You will ask him what he was doing in the building and how he got in. These are important security issues. You will not leave his side until you learn the answers to these questions. And you will make no stops on the way to the hospital. Do I make myself clear?”

Powder left home early the next afternoon and he did, indeed, stop to talk with Mrs. Fredrick.

“That girl policeman came by this morning,” Mrs. Fredrick said. “She looked terrible.”

“Remorse at having been rude to you, I expect,” Powder said.

“Well, I don’t know about that. But she did apologize. I offered her a cup of coffee, or a place to lie down for a nap, but she went on her way.”

“She’s on duty again tonight.”

“I hope she manages to sleep during the day. The poor thing looked exhausted.”

“Did she tell you about the prowler?”

“She said he thought he was somewhere else.”

“A different building?”

“Chicago. He has mental problems, it seems. There was a number in his pocket that the hospital called. He walked out of a facility in Illinois. They have no idea how he got here, and your young officer couldn’t find out how he got into the building. A bit worrying, but it doesn’t sound like it’s going to happen again soon.”

Powder nodded slowly as he absorbed this information. Muntz seemed to have followed instructions. It would be interesting to see how she behaved at roll call.

“Would you like a cup of coffee, Lieutenant?” Mrs. Fredrick asked. “And I have some fresh chocolate chip cookies...”

But Powder declined the offers apologetically. He had a second stop to make. This one was at the house of Barry Haller.

Although he was in his uniform he carried his baseball cap and his clipboard, just in case it was Mrs. Haller who opened the door. They would help remind her that he’d been there before. His sunglasses were missing, but only because he’d left them on his car seat and squashed them.

As things turned out, Mrs. Haller did answer the door, but this time she was the one wearing the sunglasses. Big ones. They completely covered her eyes and the area around them.

“Oh,” Powder said. The big shades caught him by surprise.

“You.” Her voice indicated surprise, too.

“You recognize me then?”

“I’m not a total dummy, no matter what...” She left that sentence hanging and spoke a different one. “I didn’t expect you to be coming back here, Lieutenant.”

“No? Why not?”

She frowned. Stuff was going on inside her head but all she said was, “I just didn’t.”

Today’s blue-and-white gingham pinafore was as fresh and bright as the red-and-white one was last time, but the woman herself seemed neither bright nor fresh. The disjointed way she stood in the half-opened doorway struck Powder as saying she didn’t care how she presented herself this time. Or was that too much to read into posture?

Either way, he wanted to take a look at her without the sunglasses. It was not a sunny day. “Would you take those sunglasses off for me, please, Mrs. Haller?” His best commanding tone of voice.

“No.”

“Why not?”

“I’ve got conjunctivitis.”

Did she? Or was something more anatomical swelling up in the darkness? Oh well, he’d tried, and if you don’t ask, you don’t get. “Who called you a dummy, ma’am?”

But this time Mrs. Haller wasn’t prepared to allow herself to be shifted away from her own agenda. “What do you want, Lieutenant? Got another letter to deliver? Because if you do and it has to be signed for, you can stick it where the sun don’t shine.”

Underneath the sunglasses? If he’d had an envelope he’d have given it a try. However, he said, “I’m sorry that I deceived you the last time I came to the door.”

“Me, too.”

“So it’ll be cards on the table today. I’m here because I want to speak with Barry, man-to-man and away from the prying eyes and ears we have around the station.”

“He’s not home.”

“Well, I could wait for a while.”

“He’ll be at work tonight. I don’t know if he’s coming back before then or whether he’s going to get a bite while he’s out.”

“What’s he doing?”

“I don’t know where he is or what he’s up to.”

“You don’t mind not knowing?”

“I’m used to it.”

“Not hunting?”

“I don’t know, all right?”

“Look, Mrs. Haller, when I came here the last time it was because I suspected that Barry was one of our officers who regularly takes unauthorized time off to go hunting. I no longer suspect that and I want to apologize to him.”

Powder couldn’t see if Mrs. Haller blinked a couple of times at this, but there was certainly a gap before she responded. “Well, he still isn’t here. You want me to give him the message, or what?”

“You see, quite a few of the guys and gals who work for IMPD, they like to hunt. And they like to get out there on the first day of the season, while the deer are still plentiful and haven’t been scared away from the easiest places to find them. But although Barry took the first day of the season off, I looked at his individual attendance record. And it doesn’t show a pattern of taking off seasonal starts. Not like some other officers whose records I’ve been looking at.”

Mrs. Haller waved her hand with what Powder took to be mild exasperation or confusion. “What’s all that supposed to mean?”

“Does Barry go hunting a lot?”

She considered for a moment. Deciding if she was allowed to say? Then, “Yeah.”

“Does he have a dog?”

“What?”

“A dog. A hunting dog.”

“No. We don’t have any pets.”

“But does he hunt between the middle of March and the middle of April?”

“How am I supposed to know that?”

“Think back, around Easter time this year?”

Powder watched as she remembered Easter. Eventually she said, “Well, yeah. I guess so. There’s always something in season.”

“That’s true. But between mid March and mid April the only hunting that’s in season is if you’re running a dog after opossums and raccoons.”

“After...?” She shook her head. “I don’t know anything about possums and raccoons.”

“Does he ever bring the game he bags back home?” When she frowned, Powder said, “You know. To eat or to skin?”

“No. Because I don’t want dead bodies lying around my house. Which he knows, and he respects my wishes.”

“Or maybe pelts from animals he’s killed that were cleaned elsewhere?”

“No.”

“How many rifles does Barry have?”

“One.”

“Just one rifle for killing deer, squirrels, rabbits, crows, turkeys, everything?”

“How many does it take? I don’t know. Maybe he has a dozen more down in the basement, next to his power tools and the ham radio. I don’t go poking around in his stuff.” After a moment she added, “And he doesn’t poke around in my stuff.”

“May I come in and take a look — at Barry’s stuff?”

She sighed and then shook her head. “No, I don’t want you in my house.”

Powder waited.

“Look, Lieutenant, I want to be helpful here, but I don’t see the point of all these questions.”

“I’ll explain in a minute. First, may I ask if you know that all the deer that are killed in Indiana by legitimate hunters must be checked at an official deer check station, within forty-eight hours of the kill?”

“I’m getting a headache now,” she said. “What are you talking about?”

“I’ve contacted all the state’s check stations and Barry has never checked in a deer kill. Not this year or last year or the year before. Or a turkey kill, because turkeys have stations, too.”

“Why are you telling me all these things?” Mrs. Haller’s agitation was growing.

“Maybe he’s just a bad shot.” Powder turned his eyes away from her. He found a small dark hole just over the top of the doorframe. He spoke to the hole. “Or maybe, Mrs. Haller, maybe Barry has not gone hunting at all. Not for deer, not for turkeys, not for foxes, not for coyotes, not for rabbits, quails, pheasants, or green frogs. Not for anything that has a season here in Indiana.”

“What?”

“Did you get all that, Barry?” Powder said, addressing the camera directly. “Because if you missed anything, we can go through it again tonight at the station. Maybe we should do a few runs together. See what we can manage by way of giving each other backup.”

“It just shows how statistics don’t prove anything by themselves,” Powder said in Carol Lee Fleetwood’s office the next afternoon.

“Does it?” Carol Lee said wearily.

“What statistics prove all depends on what you ask them. You see, I was looking for Deer Flu and I found it. And Haller showed all the signs. The symptoms, if you will. But if I’d gone through his individual attendance history before I went off half-cocked because he called in sick this time, I’d have seen it. It’s all there, plain as day.”

Fleetwood knew he wanted her to ask what “it” was. She sat and waited.

Finally Powder said, “Haller is off duty on a Monday every three weeks. Every single Monday on a three-week cycle for more than two and a half years. Now a lot of those Mondays fitted in with his time off on rotation, but he’s also traded days with people — more than anybody else on his shifts. This time, the Monday just happened to coincide with the start of deer season and maybe that’s why he couldn’t get anybody to trade with him. So in a backwards kind of way it was Deer Flu that got him. He didn’t have any personal days left, or any vacation, so he called in sick.”

“But not so he could go hunting?”

“The hunting was a story for his wife — who I think he beats up, by the way. What can we do about that?”

“Has she made a complaint?”

“No.” So Powder knew the answer to his original question. He left it and went on with his discoveries. “At first I thought these Mondays might be for something personal, like an affair. But mistresses are more flexible than that, aren’t they? And maybe more demanding. Has to be a Monday, every three weeks? Doesn’t sound like a mistress to me. What do you think?”

Fleetwood stared silently.

“Ah, not willing to go public on your knowledge of mistress behavior. Got it. Smart. Never admit anything. Well, for Haller, it wasn’t that. But the other thing that bothered me, besides the Mondays, was how he knew it was me who came to the door at his house the other day. Well, you know that bothered me. I came here to ask about it.”

“To make accusations,” Fleetwood said.

“And I’m sorry for that. Yeah, sorry, sorry. My apologies to you and your dedicated staff, because it was nothing to do with you guys. The thing is, it also wasn’t because Mrs. Haller recognized me. I finally worked out that the next most likely thing was that Barry put in a camera at his front door, and that’s what it turned out to be.”

“What for? Security?”

“Just the right question,” Powder said. “Have you ever thought that maybe you’re wasted stuck here in this office?”

Fleetwood tilted her head and waited.

“Ah, ah, it’s because you’re wasted that you are in this office. Well, getting back to Haller, it’s not just the expense of putting a surveillance camera in. Or maybe more than one — maybe he has them all around the property — because they’re not as expensive as they used to be, what with webcams and all that. The bigger question was your question. Why would he put them in? Who might come to the door that he wanted a record of? It wasn’t just in case I happened to show up trying to catch him out, now was it?”

Fleetwood again sat silently. But she was interested. He could tell she was.

“So what could he be up to that required him to go away for the day every third Monday and that also required him to have unusually tight security in a house in an ordinary residential development?”

This time Powder out-waited her. Fleetwood said, “I know you want to tell me, Roy, so why don’t you just get on with it.”

“Turns out Officer Haller needed those Mondays to make deliveries of hydroponically grown skank to his connection every three weeks, north of Lafayette. Good stuff for top dollar. They raided the warehouse where it grew on the edge of Muncie this morning — it’ll be all over the news tonight. Lots of exaggerated numbers about street values, no doubt, but it was a big operation. Long flat building about fifty feet on a side, with heat and lights. The growers got around the tell-tale sign of unusually large electricity consumption by making most of it with their own generators. Of course, Barry didn’t do the farming himself — that was his brother. But Barry did the delivery runs because it impressed — and scared — the buyers to have a cop in the loop.” Powder paused for a moment. “Don’t you find it surprising that the powers that be don’t celebrate how nowadays in this country we’ve liberated ourselves almost completely from dependence on foreign-grown weed?”

“I’ll try to remember to send around a memo,” Fleetwood said, although her face showed that she was impressed at what Powder’s number crunch had turned into.

“Well, we don’t really have to worry about Mrs. Haller getting beaten up anymore, because Barry will be spending all his time away from home now. There are a lot of lessons to be learned here, you know.”

“Oh yeah?”

“I really try to help my officers to become better cops, you know that. But it’s a lesson to me, because there’s no point trying to make a ‘better’ cop out of someone who isn’t a ‘good’ man in the first place. Or woman.”

“True enough,” Fleetwood said.

Powder got up. “And I hope you’ve learned your lesson and will become a better non-cop from it.” He didn’t wait for her to respond this time. “Because Haller shows that you really must not rush to take punitive action against all those other guys — and gals — who seem to have been afflicted with Deer Flu. Give me a chance to check out their individual absentee records first. See you around, Carol Lee,” he said, and he was gone.

Copyright © 2010 by Michael Z. Lewin