Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine. Vol. 67, No. 3. Whole No. 388, March 1976

Ricochet by Bruce M. Fisher[4]

In the May 1974 issue of EQMM we published a story by Bruce M. Fisher titled “Story with Two Endings.” Indeed the story did have two endings, one in the human-interest school, the other in the deductive-detective school. We invited readers to let us know which of the two endings they preferred and were amazed that, excluding two of the many letters we received, exactly one-half of the readers preferred the first ending and one-half preferred the second. Of the two other letters, one reader liked both endings and one reader didn’t like either. You can’t have a more perfect tie than that.

Now we bring you a new story by Bruce M. Fisher, one written unequivocally in the deductive-detective tradition but with a strong vein of human interest as well...

Janet Morlin laid the bolt of her single-shot .22 caliber rifle aside and smiled at her plump little husband across the table corner. He was mumbling again. He had been mumbling like that ever since her sister Carmel, a professional model, had made those oh-so-correct television commercials for Wetherson’s. Not that there was anything between Ben and Carmel, though it helped to pretend that there was. “What did you say, dear?” she asked.

For a moment the pale blue eyes in his pale round face were blank, then his fatuous smile reflected the love of five happy years of marriage. “I said ‘a penny for your thoughts.’ I do believe you’ve oiled that bolt three times since we started cleaning the guns.”

“Have I?” She shook black shoulder-length hair and wriggled her shapely body in the enticing way that delighted him. “It’s just that I’m so happy with you, Ben. Sometimes I can hardly stand it. If anything happened to you, I’d just die. I know I would.”

“Nothing’s going to happen to me,” he said. “Foresight is my guardian angel. I see things coming before they happen. But in any case, you’re well provided for.”

He couldn’t know, of course. No more than he could realize the chance warning his words conveyed. “I wish you wouldn’t talk like that,” she said, reaching for the cleaning rod. “As if money was all that mattered.”

“It matters a great deal.” He wiped pieces of his slide-action .22 repeater with a dry cloth. “While you’re alive, that is. It gets you what you want. But when you’re dead — well, you can’t take it with you.”

No, you can’t, she agreed silently, her heart-shaped face angelically smooth as she returned to the ever-increasing puzzle of sending him on his way.

It had to be a hunting accident. That way, the police might suspect murder done but they could never know. If she carried it off flawlessly, she might even gain sympathy from it, because it was an accident and everybody makes mistakes. Also, accidental death would double the amount she would gain from his life insurance by virtue of the double-indemnity clause.

And this fine suburban house with its lush carpets, cut-stone fireplace, spacious rooms, and polished woodwork was worth over $60,000 alone. There was Ben’s savings in cash and bonds, no small amount. The expensive furniture, all the house contained. Hers, if she could carry it off.

But how in the world could she rig a foolproof hunting accident when the law stated that all hunters must wear blaze-orange vests while in the woods?

It was a color that did not appear naturally in the wild. It was light-reflecting, brilliant, unmistakable. Ben never went hunting without his orange vest and always insisted that she wear hers too. To shoot him while he was wearing it was practically a confession of murder. Accidents happened, but to “trip” and shoot him dead would make a mighty thin story indeed.

Was there no way to nullify that glaring vest which distinguished living man from all other objects in the autumn woods? She had racked her brain for weeks and hadn’t found the answer.

“It was a pleasant surprise, your cousin Wilfred asking us out to the farm tomorrow,” she said.

Studiously, Ben reassembled his rifle. “I was pretty surprised myself, but the outing will do us good. You’ve been looking a trifle peaked lately.”

“Oh?” She lowered her long lashes. Ben hadn’t suspected a thing last year when, at her suggestion that small-game hunting might prove a good relaxation for them, he had bought the rifles.

Divorce was out of the question. Ben would simply kick her out at the mention of it, without a cent, without alimony, without anger. Disgust, perhaps, but no anger. Twenty years in Wetherson’s, staid importers of teas, spices, and other commodities, had taught him a remarkable degree of composure and self-reliance. He was a hard decisive man under that exterior, and nobody’s fool.

Yet she must have, above all else, freedom. She was sick of Ben’s soft middle-aged body, so unlike the few lean, hard, passionate young men she had known before marriage. She was sick of the theater, of hearing music she didn’t understand, when her soul craved a rousing, reckless movie; of conversing with a select group of friends on subjects beyond her comprehension when she yearned for livelier companionship; of the tedious little parties she hostessed for Ben in their home; of the housework, everything, even the wretched credit cards and the tiny runabout car.

“It will be lovely out in the country now,” she said, putting her rifle in its case. “I especially like the view across the hills from that height of land behind Wilfred’s fields. I feel like an eagle standing there, so free and unrestrained—” She stopped, not wanting to give the wrong impression.

“It makes me feel like an eagle too,” he said. “The sense of power, the mastery—”

He tightened the screws of the slide-action grip. “To each his own. I daresay that Cousin Wilfred, if he looks at all, is content merely to admire the beauty of the view. That’s why he dreams his life away on thirty cleared acres of land in the bush while I sit on the board at Wetherson’s.”

“Yes,” she agreed. “To each his own.”

Ben zipped his rifle case shut with a tearing sound that almost made her jump. “Have you any cartridges, dear?” he mumbled. “I find I’m completely out.”

She had forgotten them while shopping, of course! How stupid of her. Had a guilty conscience made her forgetful? He couldn’t go hunting without shells. “I’ve only got ten,” she said. “Bream’s. Bream’s will be open yet, I imagine.”

He glanced at his watch and sighed. “Possibly. But they stock very limited ammunition.” He rose, put a cap on his head, and went out to the car, a stuffy self-important little man with a dignified stride.

She put the gun-cleaning equipment away, wiped the table top, and sat down to coffee and a cigarette, thinking.

If she could put a knoll or a ferny hummock between them to hide that orange vest, could she mistake his thinning brown hair for a rabbit hopping through the brush? No, he’d be wearing that bright-red hunting cap. How about shooting him in the woods and taking his cap and vest back to Wilfred’s house as if he hadn’t worn them? No, that wouldn’t do either...

Her thoughts ran in circles as she stared blindly at the pale-green kitchen wall. Her cigarette burned to ash in the bronze tray and her coffee grew cold; she hardly noticed when Ben returned and put a weighty little box into the pocket of his gun case.

“I should have got them uptown at noon,” he mumbled. “Bream’s had nothing but hollow point in long rifle size. I don’t like them in the repeater. The only solid bullets they had were .22 shorts, and shorts aren’t powerful enough.” He stepped toward her. “I wish you’d listen, sometimes.”

“Oh, I’m sorry.” She looked up, smiling. “What did you say?”

“I said— Never mind, it doesn’t make much difference. Is there any more coffee?”

But next morning, driving the forty miles from the city to Wilfred’s place, Ben seemed unusually quiet and preoccupied. After several attempts to make conversation, Janet gave up and watched the autumn scenery. It was a perfect October day, still, sun-drenched, silent — and all the more so when they arrived at Wilfred’s farm. Just the kind of place you might expect ten miles from the highway, at the end of a gravelly road through the bush: piles of firewood, logs, and pulpwood between the old house and the weatherbeaten barn; a few cattle grazing in the fields; the forest flaunting autumn whichever way you turned; the solitude pressing on you, enhanced by the feeble plume of wood smoke rising from the chimney into the clean still air.

Wilfred, a rangy bachelor with a long bony face and black hair graying at the temples, came striding around the house with a basket of shiny apples. He grinned at Janet hesitantly.

“I’m glad you asked us out, Wilfred,” she said, smiling at him.

“I’m glad you came.”

She frowned, suddenly uneasy. Had Ben lied about Wilfred phoning him at the office? Was it the other way about? Or had she imagined his brief hesitation? Yes, she must have...

They had tea, scones, and honey in a large bare-looking kitchen whose only concessions to modern living were the telephone, radio, and refrigerator. As the men talked, she became aware of tiny echoes whispering in the lonely house and she thought of the ratty little apartment where she and Carmel had been raised by a befuddled mother who neither knew nor cared which end was up.

Mother was long gone, and a good thing too. Carmel had made it on her own, was a success, and still free. But she, poor fool, had married for money, for the security money would bring...

“I’m after a porcupine this time, Wilf,” Ben was saying. “I’ve never seen one close up.”

“You’ll find them on the ground as much as in trees this time of year,” Wilfred said — then, unwittingly, cleared the path for murder: they must see the cattle and his new pasture before he left for a co-op meeting.

He led them outdoors, down the bark-littered lane between the woodpiles, past the barn to the pasture gate. Here, leaning on the rails, pointing to various plants in the thick sward, he talked at length about the advantages of improved grass and legume mixtures.

His monologue, the stillness, the mellow warmth of the sun, made her drowsy. She yawned at the glorious scarlet and gold of the forested hills, and then found herself staring at the salt lick Wilfred had put out for his cattle.

A tapered blue block, hard as stone, weighing about fifty pounds, it lay on its side three feet inside the barbed-wire fence. The round hole in the larger end, two inches wide and five inches deep to accommodate the picket from which the cattle had butted it, faced her like a dark eye.

She looked away, and found her gaze drawn irresistibly back. An idea began to form. She shivered, tugged away, and followed the men back up the lane to see the cattle.

When they returned to the house, she felt like crying because she knew she couldn’t do it. It had all been wishful thinking, brought on by childish resentment. She must have been crazy to think such thoughts! Thank God she had come to her senses in time!

Ben, out in the back yard, target-practicing with his slide-action repeater and new box of shells, was a good gentle man, worthy of better than she. She would be a better wife from now on. The minute Wilfred left, she would give Ben some indication of her new regard, might even hint about the children he had so long desired.

But when Wilfred did leave for his co-op meeting, bouncing down the dusty road in his battered old truck, she found Ben’s attitude subtly changed. He was balanced on the balls of his feet, a trace of the bulldog in the line of his jaw. “Wilf’ll be gone four hours, I imagine,” he said, with obvious satisfaction.

He was looking at her in a curious manner; not at her eyes or her face, but, it seemed, at her head. Where had she seen that disconcerting gaze before — that intent yet unfocused gaze, as if he were looking through her to some object beyond? Nervously, she turned and entered the house.

“Come on,” he said, following. “Let’s take our guns and get going.”

“I don’t feel like hunting now,” she said.

“Oh, come on,” he urged, and there was something in his voice that made her draw back from him, a hint of breathlessness, of hidden excitement.

“All right then,” she said, and went to get her rifle from its case. She put a bullet in the chamber, the other nine in her slacks pocket. He loaded his repeater and worked the slide action, advancing a cartridge to the chamber, cocking the firing-pin in readiness. She preceded him through the door.

She was blinking against the autumn sunlight when the realization hit her. Not for one minute had she fooled him with her deceitful wifely acquiescences and loving smiles. He knew her for what she was. He meant to kill her!

A dozen rushing thoughts supported this conviction against the incredulity of Ben doing such a thing:

This was the first time he had not insisted that they wear their blaze-orange vests!

If his hair was brown as a rabbit’s, hers was black as a porcupine’s! He had mentioned a porcupine to Wilfred in order to set the stage for murder!

He had phoned Wilfred from his office, not vice-versa, to get them out here, and he seemed to have known Wilfred would be at a meeting!

He had, in public, been increasingly attentive and loving of late, to show people how happily married they were.

It had all begun when Carmel made those commercials for Wetherson’s. There had been something between them all along. It was Carmel he wanted!

He saw things coming before they happened, he said. Did that mean he knew what she intended when he had bought the rifles?

Her scalp seemed ready to lift from her skull with the fear that rose inside her, but not by the twitch of an eyelid did she show it. Holding the trigger back, she cocked her single-shot rifle silently, to be on even terms without his knowing. If he points that rifle at me just once, she thought, I’ll drill him through the foot!

She couldn’t kill him. Nobody would believe a story of self-defense against kindly respectable Ben.

Instantly, she realized a startling disadvantage. Being right-handed, she shot more naturally toward the left. A time-consuming half turn was necessary to shoot to the right. She couldn’t take that chance. Casually, going down the slope from the house, she stepped around him.

In a way it was the final test, because he was right-handed too. A few paces later, when he stepped to her right in turn, there was no doubt left in her mind. She knew, and knew also that it was useless to balk or run. He could shoot her here just as easily and claim accidental discharge of the gun. And he would get away with it.

She forced in a ragged breath, pretended to stumble on the rough ground, and again came up on his right. A few seconds later, he copied her movement. “Will you quit shuttling around?” he mumbled. “What’s gotten into you anyway?”

“I’m sorry,” she said. “I just wanted to be on the sunny side.”

The sunny side! Even as she said it she realized his plan — he was fixing their relative positions now so that when they entered the woods later she, on his left, would be blinded by the barred sunlight of the bush and he would have perfect vision.

It seemed impossible that this was happening in this perfectly peaceful countryside. Yet accidents did happen on soporific days like this. That boy last year, mistaken for a partridge. The man shot while eating lunch because some idiot thought the waxed paper from his sandwich was the flag of a deer. In each case, the culprits had merely had their licenses revoked for three years

She sneaked a sideways look at Ben. He seemed flushed. That might be because of the red woollen shirt and cap he was wearing, but it didn’t explain his intense expression. A cold light glinted on the blued barrel of his rifle with every step he took.

Fear became terror. His rifle! she thought wildly. She must get it away from him!

She could hardly walk for the trembling of her legs nor think for the roaring in her ears. They passed the barn in silence. At the pasture gate the salt lick caught her eye and she stopped.

“Oh,” she gasped. “We forgot our vests! Wait, I’ll get them!” She propped her rifle against the fence and raced back toward the house, her shiny hair bouncing.

“We don’t need them this close to the house!” he shouted after her.

“The law says we do!” She charged into the house and donned her own vest before grabbing his and trotting back to him.

“Here.” She passed it to him and held his gun, backing slowly away while he tied the tapes...

“Damn you!” she cried when he looked up, his rifle firm in her hands. “Kill me, will you?” She thumbed the safety off and crouched low, the rifle pointed at his astounded face.

“What!” His eyes bulged in disbelief. “Put that gun down, you fool!”

“I’m not that big a fool,” she said, and fired...

She wiped the rifle free of fingerprints with his fallen cap, then made his hands grasp and fondle it, and gave his wrists a flip to drop it beside him. No murder. An accident. But only if the picket hole in that salt lick fifteen feet away carried the mark of a ricocheting bullet.

It was ticklish. A bullet fired into that round-bottomed cavity would return with undiminished velocity and nearly, even possibly exactly, on the same line. Breathing shallowly, she lay on the grass beside Ben, aimed her rifle, fired, and knew the soundness of her scheme when the bullet screamed back, inches over her head. She rose and walked the distance to the house, ejecting the spent shell into the long grass on the way.

She cleaned her rifle thoroughly and returned it to its case with the remaining shells from her pocket. She removed her bright vest and folded it neatly over the gun case. She brushed the front of her sweater and slacks, washed her hands, and sat down to wait. Ben had gone hunting. She must not find him too soon.

Time crept by. The kettle moaned briefly and was silent. Gradually, her heart resumed its normal beat.

She had done what she wanted to do. A perfect job. Not the keenest policeman nor the smartest insurance investigator would detect the ruse. The bullet in Ben’s head would carry the marks of his own gun. Even the orange vest he wore was no longer a drawback but a prop, verifying an accident. But if she didn’t have an excuse for staying in the house, she might be in trouble.

She put wood in the cast-iron stove and cleared a space on the oak cupboard to make and roll out pastry for pies. She peeled the apples Wilfred had picked, found brown sugar in a bean crock, and searched the shelves for spices. Soon, flushed with heat, a towel about her waist, she began humming to herself.

When she ran out of pie plates, she made a pan of apple dumplings and swept the worn linoleum of the floor. Eventually she went to the pantry window and looked out. She saw Wilfred’s cattle standing in a semicircle beyond the salt lick, motionless, staring at the dead man with heads lowered.

It was all the excuse she needed. Minutes later, she was flying back from Ben’s stiffened form. With shaking hands and voice, she phoned the county police.

When the cruiser came and the two policemen got out, she let nervous tension pass for anguish by making an obvious struggle for composure.

She didn’t mind the younger officer with the notepad and pen but she feared instinctively the big heavy man with the dark saturnine face and cold gray eyes which swept her from head to toe. “Mrs. Morlin? What happened?”

She told them. She hadn’t known a thing until the curious behavior of the cattle drew her attention. She led them to the spot with awkward steps. Yes, they knew Wilfred. They knew everybody in these parts.

They studied the layout, the position of the body, before the big cop knelt and held Ben’s wrist for a moment. He scrutinized Ben’s face. “He didn’t shoot himself. No powder burns. That your husband’s rifle, ma’am?”

“Yes, that’s Ben’s gun.”

“Another hunting accident?” the young cop asked.

“I don’t see how. He’s wearing the orange, and the bush is two hundred yards away. Could have been hit by a stray bullet, but the chances are a million to one against. This looks like murder.”

He stood up, dark and massive. “A big-game bullet would have ripped his head apart. That hole suggests .22 caliber rimfire ammunition. Did you see any strangers, hear any shots, ma’am?”

“None. But I was indoors all afternoon.”

“Indoors? On a day like this? Why?”

“It was Ben’s idea. He wanted to shoot a porcupine and said I should bake some pies for his cousin. We were to go hunting when he returned. Toward evening was better for rabbits, he said.”

“You also own a .22, then?”

“Yes, of course. A single-shot. It’s in the house.” Anxiety gripped her. Would they never notice that salt lick? Must she take them by the hands and lead them to it, show them the leaden streak in its cavity? “I wouldn’t have noticed firing anyway. Ben was always shooting, at anything and everything. Tin cans, bottles, rocks, stumps, anything in sight.”

“A plinker, eh? It’s a dangerous habit. So when Wilfred left, you two were alone?”

“As far as I know.” Her breath caught in her throat. The man’s granite eyes were searching the immediate vicinity, stopping, appraising, moving on, remote with thought. They passed the salt lick, wavered, and returned. Her knees almost gave way with relief.

The cattle straggled off when they let down the rails of the gate. The big policeman examined the stone-hard block, sighted along it, checked the elevation caused by its tapered sides, and shook his head doubtfully. He pursed his lips, peered into the deep cavity again, and returned to Ben’s body.

Her nerves tingled. Would he buy it? If he didn’t — but how could he doubt the evidence before his eyes?

He glanced at her, then, rubbing his jaw, stood behind Ben and studied the block from that direction. He drew his revolver, aimed at the dark hole in the salt lick, and held the pose for several seconds. He nodded slowly and reholstered his gun.

“I’ll be damned,” he muttered. “An accident. A stupid freak accident. Straight as a die. Because he didn’t think.

“That hole looks like a bull’s-eye from here. A real temptation to any plinker. I guess he didn’t realize it’s shaped like a miniature cannon, and round-bottomed to boot. You can see where the bullet struck inside and came back to kill him. I’m sorry, ma’am.”

“Oh, my God,” she whispered. “He should have known better than to shoot at a thing like that. If he had only thought—”

“They never do.” The young cop replaced the gate rails...

Wilfred, home from his meeting, stood silent near the pasture gate, looking from Ben to Janet to the policemen.

The older man, picking up Ben’s rifle, said, “The most dangerous caliber ever made.” He ejected the empty shell, then a live one onto his palm. “Cheap ammunition and lack of recoil promotes carelessness. Yet these little bullets—” He stopped; suddenly wary, his gray eyes piercing. “Hollow point?” He held the cartridge out between thumb and forefinger. “Hollow point! This man was murdered!”

“Hollow point?” Janet swayed, chilled to the heart.

“Mushroom. It would disintegrate on impact, fired into the picket hole of that block. It wouldn’t return in a solid chunk to drill that hole in his forehead. Somebody else did that. In as pretty a set-up as I’ve ever encountered.”

He jumped the gate lightly for so big a man. He turned the cavity of the salt lick toward the sun for keener inspection, and came back slowly, staring at her. “I make it a single mark, in and out from the bottom. No flaking signs of splattered lead. That indicates a solid slug. Do you use solid bullets, ma’am?”

There was no sense denying it against those they’d find in the pocket of her gun case. “Yes,” she said, her entire body numb.

“And you heard no shots? This is a quiet day. A secluded place.” He emptied Ben’s rifle, counted the cartridges. “Ten. All hollow point. Only one shot fired after loading. Not necessarily by him nor at any particular target. One shot had to be fired from this gun to make it look like a freak accident.”

“But that first bullet!” she gasped. “The fired one! It must have been a solid bullet! Left over from a previous box! It could have been—” her voice trailed off.

She was caught. They wouldn’t find a solid bullet in Ben’s head.

She looked down at him, saw the brown blood crusted on his gray forehead, then looked to the glowing hills around, serene under the blue October sky.

The older policeman’s face softened with something like regret. He stepped forward, cupped her elbow gently. “Please, ma’am—”

She jerked away. “Take your hands off me!” she cried, and stalked toward the waiting cruiser with blind fury in her heart against all men who mumbled.

Look what Ben’s mumbling had cost her. Real bars this time.