“You can’t—”
“Write I can’t stand it any longer. This time I won’t fail, and sign your name.”
“I won’t do it.”
“Yes, you will, Edward.” He pressed the gun against the back of Edward Wright’s shaking head.
“You wouldn’t do it,” Wright said.
“But I would.”
“You’ll hang for it, Mark. You won’t get away with it.”
“Suicide, Edward.”
“No one would believe I would commit suicide, note or no note. They won’t believe it.”
“Just write the note, Edward. Then I’ll give you the gun and leave you with your conscience. I definitely know what you’ll do.”
“You—”
“Just write the note. I don’t want to kill you, Edward. I want you to write the note as a starter, and then I’ll leave you here.”
Wright did not exactly believe him, but the shotgun poised against the back of his head left him little choice. He wrote the note, signed his name.
“Turn around, Edward.”
He turned, stared. The man looked very different. He had put on false eyebrows and a wig, and he had done something to his eyes, put makeup around them.
“Do you know who I look like now, Edward?”
“No.”
“I look like you, Edward. Not exactly like you, of course. Not close enough to fool people who know you, but we’re both about the same height and build. Add the character tags, the eyebrows and the hair and the hollow eyes, and put them on a man who introduces himself as Edward Wright and carries identification in that name, and what have you got? You’ve got a good imitation of you, Edward.”
“You’ve been impersonating me.”
“Yes, Edward.”
“But why?”
“Character development,” the man said. “You just told me you’re not the suicidal type and no one will believe it when you kill yourself. However, you’d be surprised at your recent actions, Edward. There’s a policeman who had to talk you out of jumping off the Morrissey Bridge. There’s the psychiatrist who has been treating you for suicidal depression, complete with some classic dreams and fantasies. And there’s the doctor who had to pump your stomach this afternoon.” He prodded Edward’s stomach with the gun.
“Pump my—”
“Yes, your stomach. A most unpleasant procedure, Edward. Do you see what I’ve gone through on your account? Sheer torture. You know, I was worried that my wig might slip during the ordeal, but these new epoxy resins are extraordinary. They say you can even wear a wig swimming, or in the shower.” He rubbed one of the false eyebrows with his forefinger. “See how it stays on? And very lifelike, don’t you think?”
Edward didn’t say anything.
“All those things you’ve been doing, Edward. Funny you can’t recall them. Do you remember buying this shotgun, Edward?”
“I—”
“You did, you know. Not an hour ago, you went into a store and bought this gun and a box of shells. Had to sign for it. Had to show your driver’s license, too.”
“How did you get my license?”
“I didn’t. I created it.” The man chuckled. “It wouldn’t fool a policeman, but no policeman ever saw it. It certainly fooled the clerk, though. He copied that number very carefully. So you must have bought that gun after all, Edward.”
The man ran his fingers through his wig. “Remarkably lifelike,” he said again. “If I ever go bald, I’ll have to get myself one of these.” He laughed. “Not the suicidal type? Edward, this past week you’ve been the most suicidal man in town. Look at all the people who will swear to it.”
“What about my friends? The people at the office?”
“They’ll all help it along. Whenever a man commits suicide, his friends start to remember how moody he’s been lately. Everybody always wants to get into the act, you know. I’m sure you’ve been acting very shocked and distraught over her death. You’d have to play the part, wouldn’t you? Ah, you never should have killed her, Edward. I loved her, even if you didn’t. You should have let her go, Edward.”
Wright was sweating. “You said you weren’t going to murder me. You said you would leave me alone with the gun—”
“Don’t believe everything you hear,” the man said, and very quickly, very deftly, he jabbed the gun barrel into Wright’s mouth and pulled the trigger. Afterward he arranged things neatly enough, removed one of Wright’s shoes, positioned his foot so that it appeared he had triggered the shotgun with his big toe. Then he wiped his own prints from the gun and managed to get Wright’s prints all over the weapon. He left the note on top of the desk, slipped the psychiatrist’s business card into Wright’s wallet, stuffed the bill of sale for the gun into Wright’s pocket.
“You shouldn’t have killed her,” he said to Wright’s corpse. Then, smiling privately, he slipped out the back door and walked off into the night.
The Dettweiler Solution
Sometimes you just can’t win for losing. Business was so bad over at Dettweiler Bros. Fine Fashions for Men that Seth Dettweiler went on back to the store one Thursday night and poured out a five-gallon can of lead-free gasoline where he figured as it would do the most good. He lit a fresh Philip Morris King Size and balanced it on the edge of the counter so as it would burn for a couple of minutes and then get unbalanced enough to drop into the pool of gasoline. Then he got into an Oldsmobile that was about five days clear of a repossession notice and drove on home.
You couldn’t have had a better fire dropping napalm on a paper mill. Time it was done you could sift those ashes and not find so much as a collar button. It was far and away the most spectacularly total fire Schuyler County had ever seen, so much so that Maybrook Fidelity Insurance would have been a little tentative about settling a claim under ordinary circumstances. But the way things stood there wasn’t the slightest suspicion of arson, because what kind of a dimwitted hulk goes and burns down his business establishment a full week after his fire insurance has lapsed?
No fooling.
See, it was Seth’s brother Porter who took care of paying bills and such, and a little over a month ago the fire-insurance payment had been due, and Porter looked at the bill and at the bank balance and back and forth for a while and then he put the bill in a drawer. Two weeks later there was a reminder notice, and two weeks after that there was a notice that the grace period had expired and the insurance was no longer in force, and then a week after that there was one pluperfect hell of a bonfire.
Seth and Porter had always got on pretty good. (They took after each other quite a bit, folks said. Especially Porter.) Seth was forty-two years of age, and he had that long Dettweiler face topping a jutting Van Dine jaw. (Their mother was a Van Dine hailing from just the other side of Oak Falls.) Porter was thirty-nine, equipped with the same style face and jaw. They both had black hair that lay flat on their heads like shoe polish put on in slapdash fashion. Seth had more hair left than Porter, in spite of being the older brother by three years. I could describe them in greater detail, right down to scars and warts and sundry distinguishing marks, but it’s my guess that you’d enjoy reading all that about as much as I’d enjoy writing it, which is to say less than somewhat. So let’s get on with it.
I was saying they got on pretty good, rarely raising their voices one to the other, rarely disagreeing seriously about anything much. Now the fire didn’t entirely change the habits of a lifetime but you couldn’t honestly say that it did anything to improve their relationship. You’d have to allow that it caused a definite strain.