He went to an all-night Denny’s, suddenly ravenous, and ate a hearty breakfast. He read the morning paper as he devoured a stack of pancakes, syrup, and bacon, food he usually never ate. There was nothing more in the paper about the murder except a short paragraph and a telephone number, asking that anyone with information call Crime Stoppers.
At precisely 7:28 a.m. he was parked near the expressway entrance ramp three blocks from Karp’s rancher. Karp passed by behind the wheel of the blue Cherokee at 7:31 a.m., on the way to his first jobsite stop of the day.
Harvey’s next step was more tricky. Neighbors were up and about, getting their children off to school. He approached on foot from the block behind the house and pushed through a thick hedge into the backyard. The back door lock was a good one, an inch-long solid steel dead bolt that would take a lot of tedious time and work. He skirted the house and was thrilled to find the kitchen entrance, an old-fashioned jalousie door. It takes no smarts or training at all to simply remove a jalousie, reach in, and turn the knob. The kitchen was a mess. Dishes in the sink, a cardboard pizza box, empty except for a few gnawed crusts, a nearly empty Jack Daniel’s bottle on a counter. The garbage can was overflowing. The living room was no neater. Neither was the bedroom. Harvey took the remaining high-heeled red sandal from inside his shirt, tucked it between the rumpled sheets of Raymond Karp’s unmade bed, then left the way he had come, replacing the jalousie on the way out. He left Karp’s tools just inside the door, still wrapped in plastic.
He called Crime Stoppers from a roadside pay phone.
“I believe I have some information,” he began. He told the volunteer he had overheard a stranger in a bar brag to a companion about the murder. The stranger also commented that he had to get rid of some evidence he had hidden in his vehicle. Later, he saw the man drive off in a truck. Just this morning he had spotted the same man, in the same truck, at a construction site. Harvey gave the address and a description of the truck and its driver. He was only a good citizen doing the right thing, he said, and was uninterested in any reward. Being a family man, he was reluctant to become further involved. Harvey hung up and went home.
As he heated some tomato soup for lunch, the Channel 7 news on the tube, a bulletin announced a breaking story, a police chase in progress. Harvey stepped away from the stove to watch. Police were in hot pursuit of a man they had approached at a building site that morning. The newsman said the suspect had given police permission to examine the contents of his truck, but when they found something suspicious, he had struggled with them, broken away, leaped into his truck, and fled. The station’s eye-in-the-sky chopper crew was bringing live coverage from Interstate 95, where it was now reported that the fleeing driver was the suspect in a homicide.
Harvey turned off the burner under the soup and watched. How lucky, he thought, that Karp had made a run for it. How incriminating.
The chase was frightening. Other motorists were being forced off the road. Harvey’s heart was in his throat. It looked to him as though the fleeing driver was headed home. Sure enough, the Cherokee sailed down the exit ramp into his neighborhood, trailed by wailing police cruisers. More were waiting. Karp’s Cherokee skidded into a patrol car, then sideswiped a cement truck.
Harvey couldn’t stay away, he had to see for himself that it was over. Galvanized into action, he dashed out to the rental.
The scene was chaotic, traffic was jammed. News choppers throbbed overhead, on the ground were sirens, camera crews, and a growing crowd. Just like an action movie, but this was real life.
Thrilled, he watched from a distance as Karp, dazed and bleeding from a gash on his head, was led away in handcuffs, Justice had triumphed, Harvey thought, justice for Sandra Dollinger. The police spokesman had convened a press conference and was addressing reporters. Microphones bristled, cameras zoomed in. Harvey edged up front, into the crowd.
The man arrested, the spokesman said, was the chief suspect in the murder of Sandra Dollinger. Physical evidence had been discovered that detectives believed would not only link him to the homicide but to a frightening rash of assaults on women — and identify him as the notorious serial shoe thief. Reporters gasped.
“Another classic case,” the public-information officer said wisely, “of a deviate whose sex crimes continue to escalate in violence until culminating in murder.”
Puleeze, Harvey thought as he walked away. Whatever. He was free, he thought jubilantly. It had all worked. He smiled, safe at last, no cops, no killer on his trail. No drinking in his future, no more women’s feet. This experience had turned him off both for good. He was free at last.
His smile lingered and caught the eye of a passing police officer. She smiled back. “Helluva story, ain’t it?”
“It sure is,” he said. “What a town.”
She turned to direct traffic away from the scene. She wore the crisp dark-blue uniform of the department and was attractive, in an athletic sort of way, her sandy hair pulled tightly back from her fresh scrubbed face. But that was not what caught his attention. Harvey’s eyes were focused on her thick, shiny leather gun belt and holster. He heard it creak faintly as she walked. He breathed deeply and imagined how it smelled. Clipped to one side were an intriguing pair of black leather gloves, probably for manhandling suspects when necessary, he thought, and little leather compartments probably full of shiny metal bullets.
Harvey followed, longing to stroke the smooth leather and bury his face in her belly to inhale its aroma mingled with her perspiration. His face flushed, his knees felt weak. She turned, still smiling, and motioned the vehicles forward with a broad wave, raising her right arm, giving him the perfect opportunity to read her name off the metal tag pinned to her shirt pocket.
Tahiti Junk Shop
by Les Standiford
North Miami Beach
(Originally published in 1999)
“It’s bad news, isn’t it?”
Guerin didn’t have to look up to see who was speaking. It was a favorite trick of Adele’s, shadowing him down to the mailboxes. He stood in a peeling little alcove off the shabby main lobby of their Hallandale building — a testament to the better intentions of another South Florida era. He studied the wall cracks that radiated out from the bank of brass boxes in the pattern of a giant spiderweb. In a moment, she’d deliver one of the incessant invitations to her apartment, for coffee, for cake, for a “little chat,” as if they’d just happened to bump into one another.
He folded the letter and put it in the breast pocket of his coat, a smoking jacket he’d salvaged from the effects of his father decades ago. Adele watched him, practically gloating. Maybe she’d been reading over his shoulder.
“Investments,” he said, affecting a philosophical tone. “One accepts the bad with the good.” In truth, his heart had turned to lead.
“Sinking good money into a snow pea farm in the desert is not an investment,” she said.
So she had been looking. He glanced about the tiny mailroom. Adele, no giant, nonetheless blocked his way to the door.
“You look a little gray,” she said in a softened voice. “How about some chicken soup?”
“I have business,” he said.
“There’s always time to file bankruptcy,” she sniffed. “Besides, I wanted to tell you. The Centurion Village representative is coming to talk today.” She produced a colorful brochure from behind her back. He’d seen it before, littering the tables of the common rooms. It was full of pictures of oldsters biking, swimming, dancing, and shuffleboarding, cavorting in the Florida sun and enjoying the “golden years.” Just looking at all the activity made him feel tired.