Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine. Vol. 131, No. 1. Whole No. 797, January 2008

Two Thousand Volts by Chuck Hogan

Chuck Hogan debuted as a novelist in 1995 with The Standoff, a book that was adapted for film and translated into fourteen languages. The Blood Artists followed in 1998, and 2004 saw the release of his Hammett Prize-winning thriller Prince of Thieves. The Boston author recently adapted Prince of Thieves for film, for Warner Brothers and director Adrian Lyne. His latest crime novel is The Killing Moon, due in paperback this month.

It was a diner off the interstate exit, pushed back from the road to make room for a truck turnaround.

The customer with the handgun inside his jacket sat on the first red-padded stool at the front counter, the seat closest to the takeout register. He had come in alone, ordered a Coke. Other than turning to watch every car pulling in, he sat there as patiently as night waiting for day.

Sam, the grill man, worked out in front. He lifted off two half-pounders of cooked patty meat and tucked them into prepared rolls, wrapped them up tight in a square of wax paper, and then dropped them into a yellow Best Burger To-Go sack. He thumbed three or four yellow Best Burger napkins off the top of the stack next to the register and stuffed them into the sack before folding and curling down the top. The moves were routine, automatic, normally requiring no thought — except that Sam could feel the counter customer eyeing him. The woman he was serving paid and thanked him and carried her burgers out the door.

The counter stool croaked, metal grating against metal, and Sam thought the customer was turning to watch the woman leave. She wasn’t much to look at from behind, but she was a woman.

A green sedan came rolling up outside, tires popping gravel. The young driver took off his sunglasses and carefully laid them upside-down on the dash before getting out. Sam saw that the customer was still turned toward the front windows.

Sam knew then that the customer wasn’t watching the woman.

This sudden feeling made him turn away. He went to scrape the grill top clean, watching the counter customer out of the corner of his eye. Sam tensed as he saw the man reach over near the register — only to pull a yellow Best Burger napkin down off the stack.

The customer clicked the top of a ballpoint pen and scratched down something on the napkin quick, no more than a word or two or three. Sam had to look away then or else be caught snooping.

When he casually turned back toward the counter, the pen was gone. The napkin too, almost as though he had replaced it on the stack. The customer’s hands rested still and empty on the chrome-edged Formica.

The bell jingled over the door and the young man walked inside. He blinked a bit and glanced around — his first time here — then nodded to Sam and stepped to the takeout counter. “How’s it going?” he said.

Up close, the man was not as young as he had appeared. He wore a light black jacket over a blue shirt and khaki pants. Someone, probably a girlfriend, had taken care to snip his hair short and tight so that it stood up on his skull in pinched clumps like little black flames.

The customer seated at the counter didn’t look up.

“What can I getcha?” said Sam, working his hands into the towel that hung from his belt.

The man went rummaging through his pockets, finding a torn slip of paper. “Uh — a Double-wide Best Burger, rare, extra mayo, hold the pickles, hold the cheese.”

“Sandwich or meal?” said Sam. “Meal comes with fries and slaw.”

“Meal, I guess.”

“For a dollar more, you get two half-pounders. Today’s special. Comes with a side order of Lipitor and a chair to nap in.”

The man smiled and gave what amounted to a courtesy laugh. “No — just the one, thanks.”

“One Double, still mooing, mayo, no picks, no cheese.”

Sam turned to the grill and was reaching for the plump patties in the grill-side cooler when the counter customer said—

“I’ll have the same.”

Sam stopped and looked back at him. The takeout man looked too, for the first time, Sam expecting an electric moment of recognition on his face. But there was nothing. Just an amiable nod from the takeout man to the customer on the stool next to him, stranger-to-stranger. The counter customer nodded back and looked at the grill.

Sam took up two cool patties and played them down side-by-side, hitting the cooking surface with an immediate crackle of meat on heat. Sam didn’t like what he was feeling. He had seen the customer’s gun tucked under his arm when he’d first sat down. He’d seen his eyes, which looked prepossessed, and somehow — almost — familiar. Sam decided to forget about him, or else try. He focused on the takeout guy.

“First time here?” Sam said, turning back.

“First time, yeah.”

“Best burger in seventeen counties.”

“So I’ve heard, so I’ve heard.” The man drummed his fingers on the glass over the display counter showing mugs and T-shirts featuring the Best Burger logo: a friendly hamburger with arched eyebrows and stick-thin arms holding up a sign that read, “EAT ME.”

Sam said, “You work at the pen?”

The man stopped drumming. He looked down, checking himself, wondering where upon him it was written.

“Your car,” said Sam. “The blue state tags. We get a lot of guards loading up before and after shifts.”

The man nodded, relieved. “I’m not a guard, though,” he said.

“I know. Your shoes.”

The man looked down at them. “You’re pretty good,” he said.

Sam gave him a friendly shrug before checking on the burgers. The coolness had run out of them and he flattened each with the spatula, spilling juice for them to simmer in. Rare, he remembered, plucking up two pairs of buns and going at them with mayo from the tub. “Another busy one up there tonight, huh?”

“You could say.”

“About how many votes they run through them?” When Sam said “volts” it came out sounding like “votes.”

“I don’t know exactly. I think two thousand’s the number.”

He laid the buns out on the stainless ledge in front of the grill and said, “That’d be enough.” Execution nights were generally slow. A feeling of unease settled over the entire region, like the threat of bad weather. “Which one is it tonight?”

“Uh — Mossman? Sonny Mossman.”

“Mossman. Oh, yeah. I remember. The little girl, wasn’t it?”

“A couple of girls, I think. And two grown women. But they got him for the girl.”

Sam nodded. “They came round here afterward. That’s how I remember. Asking questions.” Sam flipped the burgers as he spoke, the patties hissing in protest as they were turned. “He’d been in here that night.”

“Here?” said the man, with more surprise and unease than Sam expected. Almost with concern.

“The very same night.” Sam laid up the spatula over the front lip of the grill and leaned back against the serving ledge. “How’d they get him? Fingerprints, wasn’t it?”

“One fingerprint. In the trunk of his car. And, like, two strands of her hair.”

“Didn’t he confess, though?”

“At first. Then he recanted. They couldn’t use it — I forget why.”

“Reading him his rights, maybe.”

“I don’t know. They never found the murder weapon either. Dredged three lakes around here, trying to turn it up.”

“Right, right. Didn’t make any friends of the fishermen that week. What was it?”

The man squinted in confusion. “What was what?”

“The weapon.”

The man shrugged. “Got me there.”

They both kind of nodded quietly, ready to quit the topic for something more agreeable like the weather or sports.

“A claw hammer,” said the customer at the counter.

The man turned to him. He stared, and Sam stared. “You said...?” said the takeout man — not because he hadn’t understood him, but because he never expected it. Because he knew more was coming.

“It was a claw hammer.”

It was quiet then except for the sizzle. Sam put things together, first slowly, then all at once. The shoulder holster, the eyes.

“I remember you,” Sam said. “You were heavier then.” Words escaped before he had time to properly consider them. “You had pictures for us. Asked me where he sat...” His voice tailed off, the memory returning full-bloom.

“He sat right here,” said the detective. “Right in this seat.” He laid his palms flat against the countertop and looked around the diner. “This place was one of his compulsions. He said he could never pass by without stopping in. Best Burger was his favorite food.”

He said this last part looking at the takeout man from the penitentiary, who appeared stricken. He hadn’t moved.

“He stopped here that night. Parked right outside and sat down here and ordered himself a Double-wide. He ate his burger and drank a large Coke. The girl he’d snatched, her name was Kelly-Louise Traynor. Six years old. She was still out in his trunk. Still alive.”

Ice shifted in his glass. Otherwise nothing moved.

Sam said, “You were the one who caught him?”

The detective squinted, having gone off thinking about something else.

“He had hidden his car somewheres,” said Sam, more and more coming back to him now. “Tried to clean it. Finding it is what did him in.”

“Fourth finger, right hand.” The detective showed them, rubbing his with the pad of his thumb. “On a fire extinguisher Mossman kept in the trunk. Two blonde hair strands in the carpet.”

“Two thin strands,” said Sam. “The difference between him being up there... or being out here.”

“Being right here,” said the detective, occupying the killer’s seat in front of him.

Sam didn’t like him having to say that. He couldn’t see how this involved him.

“You’re heading up to watch?” asked Sam. “You on your way up there now?”

“Me?” said the detective. He shook his head. “I’m on my way home.” He looked past Sam to the grill. “Just stopped off here for a bite to eat.”

Sam went silent then. After a moment he returned to the grill and the cooking meat. He pressed down with the spatula, bleeding off juice, before remembering he had done that already.

The burgers were ready. He lifted off the sizzling patties, one at a time, laying them onto the waiting buns. The clock on the wall said a little before six. Sam, who could normally juggle seven separate orders in his head, was having trouble focusing, and had to look back at the takeout man. “That was — no cheese?”

The man went back into his jacket pocket for the slip of paper, found it, unfolded it, turned it right-side up. He cleared his throat before speaking. “No cheese. No pickles.”

Sam focused on the torn paper in the man’s hand. “It’s not for you?”

“No,” answered the man. He tried to look casual.

Sam swallowed. He looked over near the detective. “And yours?”

“No cheese. No pickles. Exact same.”

Sam turned back to the open-faced burgers. He covered up the patties with the mayonnaise-slathered buns. He had the feeling he was being made part of something he wanted no part in.

He prepped two meal orders of fries and slaw, one going into a plastic serving basket lined with paper, the other into a Best Burger To-Go sack. He brought the two burgers around, side by side, not knowing what to do. He set them down before the two customers.

Sam said, “Which one do you...?”

The takeout man said nothing.

The detective told Sam, “You choose.”

Sam hated him for saying that. He looked at the takeout man, who wouldn’t meet his eye — then he wrapped one burger and dropped it into the sack, laying the other down in the basket of fries. He set the basket meal in front of the detective. The takeout man paid cash and asked for a receipt.

“Don’t forget napkins,” said the detective.

Sam, rushing now, thumbed six or seven yellow Best Burger napkins off the top of the stack and stuffed them into the bag and rolled the top shut. He wanted the takeout man to leave now.

The takeout man did leave. The detective didn’t turn to watch him go. He waited until the bell over the door stopped ringing and the engine started up and the tires rolled back popping over the gravel. Then he took the sandwich into his hands. Sam saw it still steaming, saw the bottom of the bun already sagging with grease. He watched the detective bite in deep, and felt a tang in the back of his own throat, almost sick-making. He saw grease and juice run down over the man’s fingers, dripping into the basket, and then he had to look away.

Cooper drove the Ford sedan up the interstate back toward the penitentiary. He hadn’t cared at all for that cop in the diner. Trying to make him feel bad. Cooper’s job sucked, no question. He worked at the pen because it was a night job and they reimbursed half his tuition. But as to job satisfaction, there was zero. Cooper wasn’t out catching killers. He did what he was told. They sent him out to pick up a sandwich — and he was happy to do it. Happy to get away from there, even just for thirty minutes. Drudgery pervaded the pen like a factory choking on its own pollution. So what did he have to apologize for? That he wasn’t rich? That he had to work to make a better life for himself?

A claw hammer.

He was angry. He’d had to put the sack into the trunk, which was the last thing he’d wanted to do after listening to that cop — open a car trunk — but it was his boss’s order. Cooper would be passing protesters on the way back inside, and they weren’t to see the food or anything else that might set them off.

He almost regretted stealing those few fries out of the bag — at the same time wishing he had some more. The Coke was handy, stuck into the cup holder at his side, so he righted the steering wheel with his knees and popped the clear plastic top off the cup and took a few sweet sips. He was returning it and trying to squeeze the cover back on when he thought he heard a thumping inside the trunk. It stopped his heart for a second. Like that feeling that someone is hiding behind you in the car.

For a moment he imagined he were Mossman, driving into the woods with someone bound and gagged in his trunk, knowing what he was going to do to them...

The penitentiary exit surprised him and he looked down and saw that he was doing eighty-one. The wheels squealed as he took it too fast.

Early protesters were indeed assembling with their signs and bullhorns and candles — ready to make a night of it. How good it must feel to stand for something, he thought. To commit oneself to a lost cause. To gather with other like-minded souls and lock arms and sing songs under the stars. Wallowing in futility. Championing it, actually. How wonderful it must be to fight only losing battles. How safe and how comfortable. To posit yourself squarely on the side of peace and good. How brave the sand on an eroding beach.

They stared through his windshield as he slowed near the front gates. Cooper was nobody to them, but the sedan was a prison vehicle, and so one of them — a woman wearing a black robe, her hair drawn back fiercely into a long white-gray whip — pounded once on the roof over his head, so startling Cooper that his foot hit the gas pedal, jerking the vehicle forward, almost running over three people.

They scattered out of his way pretty fast after that. He thought about stopping and walking back to confront them. Not with cant, but with food. Passing around the bag of French fries, one to each. And then asking them, Is this really whose last supper you want to be at?

He parked inside the safety perimeter and stood before the trunk with keys in hand before opening it and finding the food sack tipped over onto its side. Grease soaked the side of the bag, leaving a dark oily stain on the carpet lining the trunk, and Cooper erupted suddenly, unleashing a string of bitter curses into the prison night, even though it wasn’t his fault and it wasn’t even his car.

Sonny Mossman looked up from where he sat on the slab bed of his special holding cell. They had just shaved his head and one leg. A Restraint Team guard entered in full kit — riot helmet, spit shield, lineman’s gloves, breastplate, jump boots — with two others backing him, their steel batons extended. The Restraint Team ran the Death Tank because some cons lose it at the end. They go screaming like a virgin to the flaming stake. But not Sonny.

The lead guard brought him a familiar yellow paper sack all grease-soaked on the bottom and one side. He set it on the shelf with the Coke and then stood there a moment looking at Sonny through his goggles. They think it’s their job to eye-rape you. They backed out and closed the tank door and Sonny stood and went to the bag.

His mouth was already filling up with saliva. He’d been looking forward to this for a long time now. The only thing he had to look forward to. If they really wanted to hurt him, they would have brought this in and showed it to him, pushed it into his face — then taken it away. Left his stomach jumping like a stuck puppy.

Sonny opened the sack and quickly unwrapped the big, soggy burger. He took it in his thick fingers and bit in quick — and the taste exploded in his mouth. It was perfect, made just the way he liked it. He chewed through half of it before realizing that this was it, there wasn’t anymore, and maybe he should slow down.

He lifted out the fries and napkins and set aside the coleslaw. He smiled at the cartoon burger with the “EAT ME” sign on the napkin. It put him right back inside Best Burger: the front counter with the busted stools and the meat cooked in front of you by the grill man with fast, mechanical hands.

Sonny opened a napkin to tuck into his collar the way his grandmother taught him. He saw the wet wrinkle first, and realized that this was a used napkin. Somebody had already swiped their dirty mouth on it. Then, unfolding the napkin further — he saw the writing.

He recognized the penmanship right off. He knew it from the court papers. Sonny read the girl’s name and then his eyes lost focus.

Everything went bland as he wondered how that goddamn cop got to his food. The rumbling in his stomach continued, but the wanting was like a distant thunder now. He had cotton all wadded up in his mouth. His eyes were wide and blank as he faced the green-painted wall, on the other side of which was the last room he would ever see.

The detective drove home, his gut full, the rare meat roiling. A wave of nausea raised a sheen of sweat over his skin like condensation forming on glass. He kept swallowing to put out the fire. He would keep the burger down. He had to.

Prostate cancer had turned him into a vegetarian. Nuts and grains and kale and okra. Three-plus years without red meat, until today. Three-plus years cancer-free.

The meal burned like a cancer in his belly. It bloated him, his stomach acids hitting it with everything they’d got. Turmoil and torment: his gut the final circle of hell.

Tomorrow he would deliver it where it belonged and be done.

He went into a sort of trance as he drove. Something like a fever dream — only, it was real. A memory. One he returned to willingly now.

He was inside the girl’s bedroom again. The mother had left it untouched, as grieving mothers do. He asked for a minute alone. She went out without questioning it and he gently closed the door. He pulled on his gloves and looked around. Everything was in pink and yellow — a dead girl’s room decorated in fringe and frill. He scrutinized every windowpane. He breathed on the mirror glass, raising prints, none of them pristine. He had to be very careful now. He had just found Mossman’s abandoned car in the woods. Nobody else knew yet. He stood underneath the still ceiling fan, full to bursting with this knowledge, eyeing the soft toys, the dolls, the figurines. He needed a surface that was flat and hard and smooth. He found a china tea set on the top shelf of her bookcase and pulled it down. Tiny little finger cups done in a fine, glassy finish. Using a prepared strip of tape, he lifted one perfect print. He held it to the sunlight. Graceful hairpin whorls, unbroken by crease of injury or wrinkle of age. It would transfer faintly yet true. He then selected a hair bow from a drawer full of ribbons and clips and used tweezers to unwind from it two strands of fair hair. He slipped them into a manila coin envelope, which he then slipped inside his jacket pocket. He did this lovingly. He made the case. He did his job.

Sam, the grill man, lay on his side on the back-room cot, listening to Conway Twitty on the clock radio. His shift had ended at ten, but the diner stayed open all night, the grill never going cold. Sam was back on the clock at six A.M., and it was easier just to crash there than drive all the way home and back.

He felt weird about the detective. That was what had him still awake near midnight — that and his empty stomach, for which the smell of the burgers cooking suggested no cure. He couldn’t get it out of his mind. Did the detective blame Sam for having served somebody he didn’t know was a killer? Sam didn’t feel real good about having fed a guy who had a little girl locked up in the trunk of his car — but then, who knew what the detective had locked up in his? Who knows what anybody has locked away?

Okay — tonight he knew. He had figured out what that takeout burger was, who it was for. He supposed he could’ve spit on it. Would that have made the detective like him better? He could’ve not finished cooking it. Thrown it into the trash — made a great big show.

But he did cook it. He wrapped it up and sold it to the man from the prison. He put the money in his cash register.

And he served the detective his. Grilled it for him and served it up like his own enemy’s heart.

A killer would die tonight with one of Sam’s burgers in his belly. Be buried with it in the morning. Packed up together with his earthly remains in a to-go pine box.

Sam rolled onto his back. He pictured the detective finishing his burger, wiping the juice off his empty hands. Sitting still awhile at the counter, disappearing into himself. Then standing, laying money next to the empty Coke, heading home. The bell jingling on his way out the door.

The radio cut out first, before anything else. Going to static — a disruption over the airwaves.

Then the lights flickered. The rattling air conditioner unit outside the back door clicked off, shutting down.

Lights dimmed, surging off and on for ten seconds... fifteen seconds... twenty seconds. A deep draw on the grid. Sam imagined an aerial view, lights dimming all across the county in one long, complicit blink.

They flickered once more, then came back on. The air conditioner kick-started again, whirring back to life, and the static cleared and the radio music resumed playing, the same song, the glowing red digits of the clock now blinking 12:00 like a sign urgently advertising midnight.

Two thousand volts.

Sam rolled over and hoped his appetite would return in the morning.

(c)2007 by Chuck Hogan