A Hard Rain Part 22

In the distance a s.h.i.+p's foghorn wailed, sending its sad-sounding cry echoing over the city. The smell of the docks was strong tonight, thick with fish and seaweed and salt. A familiar smell, like the scent of a mother to a child.

The click of his heels on the pavement was like the beat of a heart, sometimes lost in the rain, other times clear, constantly there with him. Dixon Hill took a deep breath of the night air and stared ahead through the rain, always watching where he was headed.

Somewhere out there, in this city by the bay, was a murderer. And he would not rest until the case was solved. And tonight he had a lead. Not much of one, but a lead.

Which might turn into a better clue, and then more and more clues, until finally the murderer of the man in the wall sat in jail where he belonged.

Again the s.h.i.+p's foghorn echoed over the buildings.

Dixon Hill was on the case.

Around him the city slept, peacefully resting for another day.

It was raining in the city by the bay. A hard rain.

Clues from Dixon Hill's notebook in "The Case of the Man in the Wall"

The man has been in there for at least fifteen years.

Someone killed him to threaten Dixon Hill.

But if the man was killed as a threat, why was the body boarded up behind a wall that might never be opened?

All this is a loose end from another case and it might never be tied up. Sometimes it is just better to let skeletons from a person's past stay in the closet.

(Author's note: "The Case of the Man in the Wall" remains to this day Dixon Hill's only unsolved mystery.)