The Best American Mystery Stories Part 22

I gave him more brandy. I had him describe his unit and the names of his comrades and officers, his family, his town, his school, the subjects he'd studied, even the marks he'd earned. As the May evening darkened, the firing began to slacken. I cleaned my Luger as he talked. I took the flask from him now and again, but did no more than moisten my tongue. He hadn't slept for two days. I kept him awake with questions. The flask was almost empty. I handed it to him, and as he tilted it for the last swallow, I shot him through the heart.

I stripped his uniform fast, to avoid more blood on it than I could readily explain. He looked different in the smart boots, and with the SS lightning flashed on the helmet and the collar patch of the jacket. Within hours, the Russians would overrun his unit. He'd end in a ma.s.s grave, and no one was going to examine the body; nevertheless, I fired another bullet so that there would be an appropriate hole in the SS jacket.

I was now Tomas Landsberger. Complete with identification disk, pay book, photographs of my family, and a detailed life history. I had become three years younger. Along with the uniform, I had left behind Captain Helmut Schlosser of the SS Security Police. An officer who had worked with Heydrich, and had once shaken hands with Adolf Hitler. After the a.s.sa.s.sination of Heydrich in Prague, our a.s.signment had been to eliminate the Czech intelligentsia - academics, clergy, journalists, artists, historians, musicians, psychiatrists. I specialized in academics. Before they died, many of them had much cause to regret their choice of career.

I had hidden a motorbike a short distance away. The American lines were almost three hundred kilometers to the west, halted by Eisenhower's order to allow the Russians to take Prague. To avoid SS patrols, I rode at night, mostly cross-country, and without lights. 1 detoured south of Prague, where a savage battle was in progress between the SS and a popular uprising. The next day I surrendered to a unit of Bradley's Third Army near Pilsen. Three days later, the war ended.

Like Clausewitz, who was captured at the Battle of Auerstadt in 1805, I was sent to a POW camp in France. All the prisoners were Wehrmacht. There were no SS; the Allies had declared the entire SS war criminals, and they were imprisoned in separate camps. I had managed to conceal a small amount of gold on my person, and I used some of this to bribe other men to take my place whenever there was a physical inspection that would have revealed my SS tattoo. Years later, I had the tattoo removed by a surgeon in Brazil.

I kept my distance from most of my fellow prisoners, especially any from Saxony. There were almost no veterans of Army Group Center; its remnants had been surrounded and captured by the Soviets outside Prague. I spent much of my time learning English. As soon as I was released, I registered at the University of Stuttgart. I studied incessantly, and was viewed as a recluse, traumatized by the war and separation from my home and family, which were now in East Germany. My single aim was to get either to Australia or to the United States. One of the many foundations that came to Germany with the Marshall Plan offered me a graduate scholars.h.i.+p at the University of Wisconsin. I completed my doctorate in three years, obtained residence status, and got a tenure-track position at O'Connell State.

The day after the president announced my appointment as department head, the phone rang in my office.

"You son of a b.i.t.c.h!" Through the static on the line from Germany, Doug Wisnesky's voice rang in my ear. His former student and lover, Belinda Segal, had just left my office.

"I'm sorry you're taking it that way, Doug," I said.

"How could you do that to Anna Scheinberg?"

"You must be misinformed, Doug. It wasn't I -"

"Don't try to tell me you didn't put Jonas up to it! Listen, Landsberger, your troubles haven't even begun. I'm going to make your life h.e.l.l on earth. You're going to wish you'd never seen O'Connell State."

"I don't think so, Doug. I don't think so at all. By the way, Belinda Segal sends her regards. "

There was a momentary pause. Then, "You b.a.s.t.a.r.d!" and the line went dead.

The axioms of von Clausewitz continued to guide me as I rose through the administrative ranks of academe: It is the destiny of the weak to serve the will of the powerful, and war is the means by which we compel them to do so. Strike only when you have the probabilities on your side. Surprise is the most powerful element in victory. The best strategy is always to be very strong. I ended, as I had planned, as a university president. Von Clausewitz spent most of his later years as director of the Prussian Military Academy in Berlin, and I like to think that his reflections on war came out of his experiences in the academy as well as from his military service. For what is academic life, after all, but a continuation of war by other means?

JOSEPH RAICHE.

One Mississippi.

From The Baltimore Review.

IF FIRED CORRECTLY, a bullet can instantly kill whatever it is intended to kill. When fired incorrectly, it can still kill quite handily, it just takes a little longer. Sometimes it can take a lot longer. It can take days and even weeks to achieve its full potential. Truthfully, there are those bullets that are fired with no intention of coming into contact with a living thing. A firing range might be a good example. Yet, when we examine it further, we see that the targets are silhouettes with the highest points awarded, of course, for a shot to the heart, or the head.

I try not to watch the news. There are only cosmetic differences from one night to the next. "A shot B! Tonight at seven" or "A arrested in connection with whatever! Tonight at seven." The radio or local paper isn't much better, but a person needs to stay current. I usually skip the front page or tune out the late-breaking stories. The fringe is where most of what I need to know is anyway. I never thought that I would be part of the news. Not the "tonight at seven" part anyway, but then there I was on a subway car that had come to an unexpected stop.

It seems a twenty-four-year-old man named Mathew Hunstad filed a grievance at his job stating that he wasn't adequately compensated for his travel expenses to get to and from certain job sites. This forced him to take all of his materials with him on the crowded subway rather than allowing him to drive his own car. Oftentimes the subway would be too full for him and all of his things, requiring him to wait for later runs. This caused him to be late for jobs, costing him money, and as the grievance stated, credibility. Well, his employer told him that if he wanted the luxury of driving his own car then he would have to pay for it, either that, or he would just have to make more s.p.a.ce on the subway.

It couldn't have been eight o'clock yet when the subway appeared from the tunnel and breathed to a halt, pus.h.i.+ng me back a step. It was already crowded from the stops that it made further out in the city on its way in. My wife, Jennifer, and I went to work together every day except Thursdays, when I have the day off. We stepped onto the near full car and luckily found seats next to each other. Usually one of us ends up standing so that we can talk. Usually that person is me. That day we were just lucky.

The doors closed and the engine started to pull us forward to the heart of the city. Then, halfway through a rather long tunnel the whole subway came to a stop. Since most people riding were regulars like Jenny and me, a few people stumbled, not expecting the stop. The lights in the car stayed on, helping people to stay calm. One other time I had been stuck on a subway car. The lights went out, though, and people started to panic. A few individuals had cigarette lighters that they would flick on from time to time just to make sure nothing was going on until we started moving again. This time the lights stayed on. Besides the slight irritation of possibly being late for work, no one complained very much.

From the front of the train we heard a single shot. I dismissed it as something else, but it was quite clearly a gun being fired. No more than ten seconds later, the sound of a second gunshot popped into my ears, followed by a third, and a fourth, and a fifth. Excluding the first shot, the subsequent ones were very rhythmic. I counted to myself: "one mississippi, two mississippi, three." Each time I got to three, the gun would go off. Each time the gun went off, it got louder. People started to panic. Looking through the window at the end of the car into the next, I could see a man walking down the center isle. Every few steps he turned and fired a shot at one of the pa.s.sengers. He wasn't doing it randomly though. After watching for only a few seconds, I could see he was shooting every other pa.s.senger.

He made his way into the car next to ours and began his routine. "One mississippi, two mississippi, three." Of course, a few people tried to stop him. They would come at him from behind and try and wrestle one of his guns away. They tried, and failed. Every other person, "one mississippi, two mississippi, three." He was almost to the end. The doors slid open and he stepped onto our car. He would reload in the short time it took the doors to close behind him and open in front of him. Some people tried to escape, but the door to the next car was barricaded and the walls of the tunnel were too close to escape out the window. The people in the next car had taken an old man's cane and wedged it so that the door wouldn't automatically slide open.

The first good look I got of him was when he stepped through the door. He didn't hesitate, but my mind took a still picture of him. Nothing stood out. It was frightening to think that there was no discernible trait that separated him from anyone else, including me. Yes, he was a man. Yes, he was white. Beyond that I could just as well describe myself.

His first step was met with screaming, and then it began. "One mississippi, two mississippi, three." He was going back and forth across the rows. The first person on one side followed by the second on the other. "One mississippi, two mississippi, three." First, a secretary that worked for some law firm that specialized in mortgage foreclosures. I had talked to him a few times during the morning commute. "One mississippi, two mississippi, three." Next, a black woman who worked in a department store downtown who kept to herself most mornings. "One mississippi, two mississippi, three." Then, some woman who I never really talked to, but Jenny told me that she . . . Jenny. I was so terrified I had completely forgotten about Jenny. Counting out the seats, I realized that I was sitting in a "safe" chair. For a moment, I felt relieved.

Jenny had grabbed my arm and buried her face into my back. I pulled her toward me and tried to sneak to her other side. She hadn't been watching the shootings and so wouldn't know why I was doing it. My hope was that I hadn't been noticed. No sign made me think I hadn't been successful. The shootings went on. "One mississippi, two mississippi, three." Only a few people away now and the sound had grown to deafening claps against my ears. "One mississippi, two mississippi, three." Two people down from me, a body went limp and slid to the ground. Turning to the other side, another three seconds pa.s.sed. He turned to me. "One mississippi, two mississippi," I just closed my eyes.

Nothing happened. No feeling of pain. No loud explosion. Nothing. I opened my eyes and he was just staring at me. He could tell that I was scared, and now confused on top of that. A soft grin appeared on his face as he leaned into me. His lips were almost touching my ear. He whispered, "There's no switching places." He stood back up and turned the gun at Jenny. He fired a single shot. It wouldn't kill her instantly. It would take almost four and a half days to do that. She would never regain consciousness. A single shot that stole all the color from the world. He turned to the other side of the car. "One mississippi, two mississippi, three."

Someone from one of the front cars had made their way to the engine and started the subway back up. The sudden jerk sent everyone falling, including the lunatic on his rampage. Once on the ground, a man and a woman jumped at him, holding his arms. Another stepped on his hands until he let go of the guns. She broke two of his fingers in the process. All in all he had shot seventy-three people. Sixty-eight of them died. Most never made it off the subway.

His name was Mathew Hunstad. He would admit that after his employer refused his request for traveling expenses, he got mad. He said he was taking a suggestion to make more room on the subway literally. Thinking that if he killed half the people who rode at the same time he did, there would be plenty of room for him and all of his materials. He wasn't insane, he was just angry, and now faced five counts of attempted murder, on top of the sixty-eight counts of murder for those he had successfully executed.

The trial was nothing to speak of. More than a hundred people watched him methodically a.s.sa.s.sinate one after another of his fellow citizens. Hunstad never even hinted at an insanity plea, and when it came time for sentencing, he fully accepted, and expected, the death penalty. He made no mention of an appeal, making it very easy to feel relieved it wouldn't drag on and on. He was sentenced to death by lethal injection. The date was set by the court, and for the first time I could look beyond Mathew Hunstad.

I didn't mark the date on any calendar, or call my family to tell them. It was all absurd to me. I hoped that I could forget it altogether. His execution was front-page fodder, real headline news. The stuff three-part series are made of, but for me it was already over. Then the phone rang.

The voice on the other end of the line asked for me and gave me condolences when it was confirmed that I was, in fact, myself. She told me she represented the state prison at which Hunstad would be executed. She asked if I was aware of the lottery taking place to be a witness to the execution. I hung up the phone.

It rang again, and the same sweet voice a.s.sured me that she did represent the prison. The only way I would talk with her was if she gave me her number and extension and then I would call her back. When I did, the man at the switchboard routed me through to her. I asked why she was bothering me. She said that they had held the lottery and my name was chosen as one of the twenty-five individuals who would be able to see, in person, Hunstad's execution. I told her that I had entered no such lottery and just about hung up on her when she said that someone else must have. The lottery had only been open to those on the subway and the immediate families of those killed. Someone must have known me from the train and entered me. I told her I didn't want it. She told me that was none of her business and that she was only responsible for informing me I had been picked. The last thing she said before she hung up was that I was the very first pick, which meant I would be in the front row, the center seat.

Somehow my name got out to the public. Instantly, my phone began to ring. Some were calls relaying their envy because I got to be right there when the "sick b.a.s.t.a.r.d eats it," as one person put it. Most calls, though, were from those people asking if they could have my seat. Some offered money, others offered season tickets, home electronics, anything. It seemed everyone had become obsessed with watching a man die. One individual, who had no relation to anyone on the subway that day, called offering me three ounces of hash. I turned off the ringer and unplugged the answering machine. The daily newspaper was sitting by the sofa, so I picked it up. I crumpled up the front page without even looking at it. Nothing much seemed to be happening in the world. Maybe it only felt that way.

Jenny had always done the grocery shopping. There was nothing left in the apartment by this time and so I had to go out to get something. Down a few blocks from where we lived was a sandwich shop that we always used to go to. I hadn't been there in some time, but it was the closest place where I knew I could get something good. Inside the shop, I could smell wild-rice soup simmering in the back. The lighting was low with soft, unintelligible music playing. I always thought they kept it that way so that a person's sense of smell would take over. Jenny always said it was to save on electricity.

I got in line at the counter behind a tall man that looked to be in his early thirties. He didn't notice me come up right away. Once he recognized who I was, there was no way to get him to stop talking. He kept telling me how lucky I was. The condolences for my loss came after this, showing the importance of lost life to people fixated on the potential loss soon to come. He kept talking even after he had ordered. Telling me about how the execution works. The chemicals they use. The pain the body feels. Then he told me that from the time Hunstad is injected it will take about three seconds, and then his body will start to die. When I asked him to be quiet he looked at me like I had insulted him. In a way, that's what I had hoped to do.

A week before the execution, hundreds of family members of the deceased demanded their right to watch Hunstad die. What law gave that right I didn't know. It's like saying I want to be able to sit outside the cell of the man who robbed my home for his entire sentence. Regardless, the people demanded their right, and the state gave it to them. The prison would send a live feed of the execution to a closed-circuit television set up in the prison's common area so the people could watch. There wouldn't be just one television. There would be several, all around the room. All of them far bigger than any I've ever owned.

Hunstad was to be executed on a Sat.u.r.day. This was to allow for most people who wanted to be there to not have to worry about work. On the Thursday before, I got a call from the prison asking if I could come down and take a look beforehand at how security would work, and where I would be sitting. Also, they said if I wanted to take a look at the room itself I could. Although I never worked on Thursdays I told him that I couldn't and asked him if he could just tell me over the phone. I felt bad for lying, especially because I hadn't been to work at all since it happened. They didn't know that though. So they went through it over the phone. What gate I needed to come to. Identification I needed to bring. To make sure not to bring any weapons with me. I thought this last rule was a little strange until I realized that there will be hundreds of people in a single building who are all there to watch someone die. I asked if you can go to prison for killing a man who is about to be executed. He said yes. Finally he described the room where the execution would take place. The room, as it was described to me, is no bigger than a bedroom of a cramped apartment. In it sits five rows of five chairs, each row a small step up from the one in front of it. On the wall that the chairs face is a large window that looks into another room of about the same size. In it there is only one chair. It sits on a round platform maybe a foot or so off the ground. About the arms and legs, various straps and locks are attached. To me it sounded like a theater. After flipping through some papers he said in an impressed tone that it looked like I was front and center. I thought the way he said it was in poor taste. We said goodbye and hung up the phone.

Sat.u.r.day morning came and I got dressed. I didn't want to put on anything too fancy to make people think that this was an event, as if I were going to the opera. I gathered the two forms of identification that I needed. There were a few news cameras outside the building, but I figured most of the reporters had already found their way to the prison to watch the witnesses stroll in. The taxi that I had called for was parked on the street. The meter was probably running, so. I tried to hurry. Once in the back, I told the driver I needed to go to the prison. He looked in the mirror and apparently recognized me from the papers. He said it was a shame about my wife, and that he felt just awful for what had happened. He said that he and his family had been praying for me ever since they saw it on the news. It was such a strange feeling to hear someone not talk about the execution, and rather about what had already happened. I thanked him, and for the first time in a long time I could force a smile on my face.

As we approached the prison, there were cars everywhere. The lot had overflowed onto a field where people just started making their own rows. The news vans lined the street with their towers reaching into the sky. Some protesters stood near the entrance to the prison. They were protesting for the execution, though. It seemed strange. Large groups of people stood around as if they were waiting for the last few tickets to a sold-out rock concert. The taxi driver started to slow down. He put on his blinker and waited for oncoming traffic to pa.s.s. When they had, I told him to stop.

I told him not to turn, and to just keep going. After a few seconds, I gave him a new destination. It was a small park near the center of town. He looked at me in the mirror. Not with a confused look. He knew who I was. He knew that I was supposed to be back there in the front row. He just looked at me for a second and kept driving.

The wind had picked up a little from earlier in the day. It felt good to feel it through my fingers. I sat on a bench where Jenny and I met for lunch as often as we could when we were working. I sat and just stared down one of the avenues. Time pa.s.sed, I couldn't be sure how long, I made it a rule never to wear a watch. Mathew Hunstad was dead, though, that was for sure. It would be a lie to say it brought me any relief. I always knew that it wouldn't. Loss doesn't die. I thought of the man in the sandwich shop, how he said that it takes about three seconds for the body to start to die. I counted it in my head, "One mississippi, two mississippi, three."

JOHN SAYLES.

Cruisers.

From Zoetrope: All-Story.

EMMETT TOSSES HIS BREAKFAST CRUMBS off the jetty and watches the s.h.i.+tfish rise to check them out. Blue-green, almost translucent, they wiggle listlessly in the shade of the hull all day and congregate at the surface near the vapor lights at night. "s.h.i.+tfish got no 'urry," the locals say. "Just weat for somebody flush."

He hands the plate back to Muriel onboard. "I'm going to see if Roderick is there yet."

"He never comes in till eight." Muriel drops the plate into the plastic suds bucket to soak.

"I thought maybe because of this Whitey and Edna deal -"

"He'll probably sleep late. They called him down, it must have been what - ?"

"Four-thirty."

"See if the paper is in yet. And don't make a nuisance of yourself."

They get the Sunday edition of the St. Augustine paper once a week - news, want ads, employment, real estate, and funnies crammed into their little PO box at the marina office. Emmett needles Muriel for reading the obits first.

"There are people dying now," he says, "who never died before." Muriel pretends to ignore him.

They are moored in the section Emmett likes to call the Lesser Antilles, where most of the smaller liveaboards are concentrated and the walk to the security gates and harbormaster's office is farthest. The shadow of the Ocean Breeze Lifestyles complex barely reaches them in the morning. The buildings went up rapidly, replacing the funky collection of waterfront businesses that had stood since before Emmett and Muriel came to stay, let the fun begin! says the banner strung up on opening day, still hanging a year later. There are several units left unoccupied. The marina itself is only two-thirds full, peak season a few weeks off, and many of the boats lie sheathed in blue vinyl, owners off the island or sleeping in town.

Bill and Lil are up on the Pen.o.bscot though, Bill prepping the cedar decking while Lil pries open a gallon of goldspar satin.

"Ahoy."

Lil nods. "Morning, Emmett."

"Still working this varnish farm, eh?"

Bill, grimly sandpapering the foredeck, snorts something like a h.e.l.lo. Bill and Lil are in their late fifties, small, sun-baked to a tobacco-stain brown with nearly identical short-cropped gray hair.

"You're at it early."

"Got to stay on top of these babies," says Lil. "Lot of nasty stuff floating out there." Emmett had seen them take her out only once, and then just for a two-hour shakedown. Lil had been a registered nurse and was still handy with a remedy if you had something more than a headache, while Bill taught high school and had nothing good to say about it.

"You folks up for the ruckus?"

"Slept right through it. Bill heard voices but thought it was those party people in the motor cruisers."

"There were a dozen of them out there. Lights, stretchers -"

"We were dead to the world. Some wild stories were flying in the Crow's Nest this morning. But you know rumors on this island."

"It was the lights woke me up, not the sound," says Emmett. "Of course Muriel says I'm deaf as a post."

"I should be so lucky. This one" - Lil jerks her head toward the Scavenger, a daysailer owned by one of the locals - "has got his radio on all weekend. Rap music or whatever their version is called here. Makes Bill grind his teeth."

Bill wraps fine-grade sandpaper around a wooden dowel and goes to work on the mahogany trim. He and Lil wear the same brand of T-s.h.i.+rt and shorts, Topsiders, matching hooded wind-breakers when they sit out at night. Emmett wonders if they swap clothes.

"I never figured - Whitey and Edna -"

Lil lays out her brushes. "I know. Edna was telling me just last week that they were looking into a condo here."

"My wife is convinced you can't live on a sportfisherman," says Emmett. He can see the tuna tower of the Silver King, Whitey and Edna's old Bertram, over the forest of masts. "Suppose they'll auction it right away. Unless Whitey paid their mooring through the year."

Lil frowns, staring at her varnish. "Condos. They must have been desperate."

"Well - storm season comes around, some folks like solid ground under their beds. What do you hear about this Cedric?"

Cedric is the tropical storm curling in from the Atlantic, possibly mutating into the first hurricane of the summer.

Lil glances out over the channel. Clear blue sky, flat water. "It'll blow itself out. Peaked too early."

"It does. .h.i.t, it's gonna ruin your finish."

Lil shrugs. "Best way to protect the wood." She chooses a brush, riffling the bristles with her thumb. "No, you buy into that condo life, you're ready to throw in the towel."

"They've put up some real luxury boxes in the last few years."

"The ones we looked at, that Pelican Cove outfit? They'd blow down like a stack of cards."

Bill grimaces. "Pelican Cove."

Lil jerks her head toward her husband. "Says he'd just as soon ride it out in the marina."

"There's gonna be a big one hits this island sooner or later, Cedric or no Cedric. I can't say they've knocked themselves out preparing for it."

"Cyannot stop de wind, mon," mutters Bill, mimicking Roderick's island lilt. "She come, she come."

Lil dips the edge of her brush into the varnish, careful to avoid dripping as she starts to apply it. "We've been thinking about Curacao."

"Dutch people."

"A lot of them speak English. And the prices are right."

"What's a rum collins?"

"Less than here, I can tell you that."

"I suppose. Muriel and I talk about Mexico now and again."

"Mana.n.a.land."

Emmett shrugs. "The peso just keeps falling. Our checks could go a lot further -"