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  Alfred Hitchcock's Mystery Magazine

  April 2006

  Vol. 51, No. 4

  On the Cover: The Poltergeist 1941 (oil on canvas) by Conroy Maddox (1912-2005). Collection Israel Museum, Jerusalem / Whitford & Hughes, London / Bridgeman Art Library

  CONTENTS

  FICTION

  THE MASTER OF ANIMALS by Anne Weston

  PAST LIFE by John C. Boland

  THE CASANOVA CAPER by Beverle Graves Myers

  CHAPTER 82: MYRNA LLOYD IS MISSING by Robert S. Levinson

  DAI THE POTTER by Ann Woodward

  FUMES by Kristine Kathryn Rusch

  THE COMMUTER by Janice Law

  POLICY FORBIDS ... by Thomas Morrissey

  AHMM CLASSIC

  PUT YOURSELF IN MY PLACE by Clark Howard

  DEPARTMENTS

  EDITOR'S NOTES

  BOOKED & PRINTED by Robert C. Hahn

  MYSTERIOUS PHOTOGRAPH

  THE MYSTERIOUS CIPHER by Willie Rose

  REEL CRIME by Steve Hockensmith

  UNSOLVED Logic Puzzle by Robert V. Kesling

  SOLUTION to the March Dying Words

  THE STORY THAT WON

  CONTENTS

  Editor's Notes: EXPOSED TO CRIME! by Linda Landrigan

  The Master of Animals by Anne Weston

  Past Life by John C. Boland

  Solution to the Mysterious Cipher

  Booked & Printed by Robert C. Hahn

  The Casanova Caper by Beverle Graves Myers

  Mysterious Photograph

  Chapter 82: Myrna Lloyd Is Missing by Robert S. Levinson

  The Mysterious Cipher by Willie Rose

  Reel Crime by Steven Hockensmith

  Dai the Potter by Ann Woodward

  Fumes by Kristine Kathryn Rusch

  The Commuter by Janice Law

  Unsolved Logic Puzzle by Robert V. Kesling

  Policy Forbids... by Thomas Morrissey

  AHMM Classic: Put Yourself in My Place by Clark Howard

  The Story That Won

  The Dead Ride Free by Dale L. Baker

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  Editor's Notes: EXPOSED TO CRIME! by Linda Landrigan

  I bet it's safe to assume that many of AHMM's readers are curious to know the underlying motives that inspire crime—and mystery fiction often satisfies the need to see and experience, how-ever remotely, the darker side of human nature. Our authors offer numerous revelations of base motives and forbidden desires, illuminating some of the darkest recesses of the soul. As readers, we don't just want to know, we want to feel, and that's what fiction offers us.

  Our line up this month does just that. Anne Weston returns with her endearing inhabitants of the Costa Rican rain forest, Efraín, his wife Sulema, toddler son Epifanio, and their friend and neighbor Catalino, in a story that explores the hubris of an American survivalist in the rich but strange environment of a foreign land in “The Master of Animals.” John C. Boland's “Past Life” looks at a spiritualist hoax and the lonely, gullible (and coincidentally wealthy) widows and widowers who buy into it. We have two historicals this month: Beverle Graves Myers's eighteenth-century private eye Nicco Zianni is employed by a famous lover in “The Casanova Caper,” while Ann Woodward's serene and thoughtful Lady Aoi, a lady-in-waiting to a princess in ancient Japan, retreats to the countryside, only to find a murder is stirring up local sentiments. Janice Law probes the evolution of a stalker in “The Commuter,” and Kristine Kathryn Rusch looks at pyromania in “Fumes.” Robert S. Levinson offers up another tale from the life of Augie Fowler in “Chapter 82: Myrna Lloyd is Missing.” And we welcome Thomas Morrissey, the author of “Policy Forbids...” Mr. Morrissey is a bartender and college student whose first published short story, “Can't Catch Me,” in the Akashic Books anthology Brooklyn Noir, won the Robert L. Fish award for Best First Published Story at last year's Edgar Allan Poe awards banquet sponsored by the Mystery Writers of America.

  In continuing our year of celebrating AHMM's history of great storytelling, we bring you another tale from the back issues, Clark Howard's “Put Yourself in My Place” (April, 1962), in which a con's ruse to get out of jail free works too well. Mr. Howard is a prolific and award-winning short story writer, but he has also garnered praise for his novels and true crime books.

  [Back to Table of Contents]

  The Master of Animals by Anne Weston

  The two friends were walking home when they came upon the strange sight.

  "This hill gets steeper every year,” the shorter, square-built one was saying.

  "We'll rest at the river crossing, Catalino,” the younger man said. “I'm tired too. It's the heat.” He hitched up the rope belt that held his pants, their blue faded nearly to white.

  The river rippled ahead, glittering in narrow sunbeams that found their way through the leafy branches of the rain forest. Lush ferns crowded the banks, spilling into the water.

  "You're kind, Efraín, but my age is catching up with—” Catalino stopped in mid-sentence when he saw the strange sight.

  A boy, five or six years old, crouched at the river's edge. He clutched a stick as long as his body, holding it over the water with hands clenched so tight the knuckles showed white. Eyes wide and fixed, he stared into the clear water.

  No boy that age lived within an hour's walk. Odder still, this child was a foreigner. Ragged blond hair framed his grimy face. Sweat streaked his sunburned forehead. Infected scratches burned angry red on his thin arms. His shorts and T-shirt were torn and dirty.

  Efraín's mouth dropped open.

  The boy didn't glance up. Catalino walked over and squatted beside him. “Buenos días,” he said.

  The boy stayed frozen. His eyes flicked to a minnow-sized fish darting through the clear water. His hands made a minuscule movement toward it with the stick. No line dangled from the pole; it was just a stick, something broken off a bush.

  "Maybe he doesn't understand Spanish,” Efraín said to Catalino. “Do you think he's one of those foreigners that settled on the other side of the hill? The newcomers?"

  "Could be. I haven't seen them yet."

  "I saw them once, from a distance, when they were passing my house on the trail. I was going to say hello but they were too far away,” Efraín said.

  The boy continued to ignore the two men. After a while Catalino said to him, “How's the fishing?” He made a fish shape with his fingers.

  The boy's head jerked. His grubby hands tightened on the stick.

  "They'll settle down soon,” Catalino told him. “Right now those fish are busy eating breakfast."

  The boy peered harder into the water. He rocked forward on his ripped tennis shoes. Catalino reached out a hand, ready to grab him if he overbalanced.

  "The thing about fishing,” Catalino went on, “is sometimes you have to sit back and wait for the fish to come to you. Like this.” Catalino made a show of stretching his legs out in front of him, leaning back on his elbows, releasing a long breath, and looking around at the jungle. “See over there, that coati, with its tail straight up in the air.” Catalino nodded at a furry ring-tailed animal prancing along a mossy log on the far side of the river. In Catalino's experience, a coati's long
pointy nose, bright black eyes, and dainty steps never failed to make children laugh.

  The boy ripped his gaze away from the river for an instant but pulled it back to the water at once. The coati hopped off the log and hid behind it.

  A powerful voice rang through the forest. “Son, son!” An English word Efraín had learned when his cousin had chosen it for her baby's name. The boy gripped his pole tighter.

  "Son!” The voice came again, closer this time. Then a tall man stepped out of the trees. His light brown hair and blue eyes matched his foreign voice. He blinked when he saw Efraín and Catalino. Then he strode over to the boy, swept him up in his arms, and hugged him.

  The boy didn't let go of the stick. His gaze remained on the water.

  A dozen more foreigners straggled out of the woods and clustered behind the tall man. Most were young. They wore pants and shirts mottled in shades of green, dark with sweat. A few had small backpacks. A skinny man with a wispy beard and a bad complexion, still a teenager, had a rifle slung awkwardly across his chest.

  The stranger released the boy and turned to Efraín and Catalino. “My name is Luke,” he said in Spanish. He reached out and took Efraín's hand in both of his, then Catalino's.

  "We must be neighbors,” Efraín said. “My friend and I live farther out on the trail. Are you the people who came to live on the other side of the ridge?"

  "Yes, we are.” Luke smiled. “I guess everyone for miles around has heard about us. I'm sure you're all wondering why a bunch of people from a faraway country would decide to move to the middle of nowhere."

  "Well...” Efraín would never be so rude as to ask.

  "We're just looking for a better life, a purer way of living. I know it sounds ambitious, but we're going to create it here. The earth will give us all we need."

  Catalino touched the little boy on the shoulder. He pointed toward the fallen tree. “Watch the end of the log. That coati keeps peeking around it. See?” The coati's foxlike face popped around the log and gawked at them.

  The boy kept his eyes on the water but the other foreigners looked. A ripple of laughter moved through the group.

  A woman with disheveled blond braids stepped over to the boy. She bent down and spoke softly, pointing at the coati.

  The boy lifted his gaze and focused on the animal. Its shiny bulging eyes blinked at him as it raised itself on slender catlike legs for a better view. The boy smiled. The woman spoke some more, the coati chirped a comment of its own, and the boy giggled.

  Luke clapped his hands. The coati flinched and ducked behind the log. “Time to get back to camp,” Luke said. He turned to Efraín and gestured at a pack one of the men carried. “We've been out collecting food. Roots, leaves, and so on. My son wandered off. I knew he'd be here at the river, though. He never goes far."

  Efraín glanced at the jungle roof to gauge the sun's position from the brightness glowing through the leaves. “We should go too. My wife will be wondering what kept me at the store."

  "Store!” Luke said. “I didn't think you'd need a store. Aren't you Indians?"

  "My friend Catalino is."

  "But you're not,” Luke concluded. “I'll bet he didn't buy anything at the store.” He smiled to take any offense from his words.

  Efraín was curious. “Are the roots and leaves you collected this morning the same as what you find in your country?” he asked.

  "Not exactly. But I found some things that looked similar."

  "Catalino knows a lot about which plants are good to eat."

  "Good for him. We'll have to compare notes sometime. But right now my friends and I need to be on our way."

  The boy was sitting on the riverbank again. He watched as the coati poked its nose around the end of the log. “Good luck with your fishing, niño,” Catalino told him. The boy didn't move.

  Efraín glanced back as he and Catalino waded into the river crossing. The foreigners had gathered around the man. The child hunched forward, fingers still clenched around the stick, staring hard into the river.

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  With it being the dry season now, they didn't even have to take off their rubber boots to cross. The water would stay below the boot tops as long as they kept to the side, staying out of the deeper pool where the river curved. Even there, though, the water was barely waist deep.

  "Good thing the foreigner didn't get a look in your pocket to see what you bought at the store,” Efraín said to his friend as they emerged from the river.

  "I do like a sweet now and then,” Catalino admitted. “Why shouldn't I go to the store and buy it?"

  Efraín and Catalino hiked on. A big rainbow-colored parrot perched on a tree limb, filling the air with raucous shrieks and whistles. The cicadas’ drone rose and fell. Delicate lavender flowers tumbled from a vine high above and drifted about them on the light morning breeze.

  Suddenly a rifle shot cracked through the forest. The parrot snapped off its song and the cicadas hushed. A faint small cry came after.

  The two men stopped. “Maybe a nice fat agouti came along and they shot it to stew with their roots and leaves,” Efraín said.

  "Possibly so."

  Neither man moved forward. “Shall we go back and see?” Efraín asked.

  Catalino nodded. They retraced their steps.

  The crossing was empty of people. They heard far-off fragments of Luke's calm voice and the sound of people crunching through dry leaves on the trail.

  Efraín shrugged. “I guess everything's all right."

  Catalino stood still, his gaze searching their surroundings. He walked to the fallen tree and bent down. He straightened up, holding the coati by the scruff of its neck. The animal hung limp, its chest gobbed with dark blood.

  Catalino flung the coati as far away from the river as he could, so it wouldn't contaminate the water. He and Efraín returned to the trail and walked toward their homes.

  They paused at the side path into Efraín's yard. “I don't understand,” Efraín said.

  Catalino adjusted his palm-leaf hat. “Neither do I. Who can afford to waste a bullet on something you're not going to eat, that can't hurt you?"

  Efraín shook his head. “Stop for a glass of coffee before you walk home, Catalino."

  The men threaded their way among squash vines and banana plants, winged beans and papaya trees, toward Efraín's palm-thatched hut in the center of the clearing. A small child dressed in purple shorts tottered through the yard, grabbing at the tail feathers of a strutting red rooster that stayed just out of his reach. A gray filly ambled after the toddler.

  "Hey, Epifanio!” Efraín called to him. “You've started a parade!” The toddler laughed and lunged again at the elusive rooster. “The store had lime, Sulema,” Efraín continued. “You won't have to use ash to make the tortillas."

  A young woman with long black hair peered into an iron pot that simmered over the outdoor cooking fire. Her flower-print dress reminded Efraín of the parrot, green and yellow, crimson and turquoise. She looked up and smiled. “Good, taking ashes out of the fire is messy. And you're just in time, the corn's starting to boil."

  Efraín pulled a newspaper-wrapped parcel out of his bark-cord bag and handed it to his wife. “Is that other pot of water on the fire for coffee?” he asked hopefully.

  "Yes, I just roasted some. I'll stir the lime into the corn and then bring us coffee. Sit down, Catalino.” Sulema picked up a big wooden spoon that Efraín had carved.

  "Ah, coffee.” Catalino walked to the water bucket, took the dipper, and rinsed his hands and face. Then he settled himself on the split-log bench under the rose-apple tree while Efraín washed up.

  Sulema brought glasses of hot coffee, creamy with milk fresh from the cow. She sat in the rocking chair that Efraín had made her. “Now tell me about your trip to the store,” she said. “What's new in the community?"

  Efraín took a long drink. “Nobody was at the store but the storekeeper, so we didn't hear much gossip. He did say that those foreigners sti
ll haven't come to shop. He thinks they're trying to live without buying anything from a store."

  "We've all done that,” Sulema pointed out.

  "Of course, all those years before Lencho started the store. But I wonder if these people know how to go about it. We met them this morning at the crossing. Some of them looked awfully thin. I wanted to see the roots and leaves they'd collected, but I was afraid they'd think I was nosy."

  Catalino frowned. “I hope they don't poison themselves."

  "I forgot to tell you,” Efraín went on. “You know Enrique, who lives beyond the store. I saw him the other day. He and his wife went to the foreigners’ place to welcome them to the neighborhood. They took pineapple sprouts and sweet potato cuttings, and offered to show the foreigners how to plant them. A man—it must have been the one who calls himself Luke—thanked them but said he knew how to farm. Enrique said they hadn't even built a proper house to live in, when there were palms all around with fronds perfect for a roof, and plenty of sturdy cane growing nearby for siding. They were living under pieces of canvas tied to the trees."

  "Hmph.” Catalino reached into his pocket and offered everyone a small puffy store cookie, pink as a tropical sunrise.

  Sulema took one and leaned forward in her rocking chair. “And today you actually met these foreigners. Tell me about them."

  Efraín explained about the little blond boy fishing with a pole but no line, how he finally laughed at the coati, and how they came back and found it dead.

  "That is odd,” she said. “Only the one young man had a gun?"

  "Yes.” Catalino wrinkled his forehead. “I can't figure out why he shot it. It reminds me of a story my grandfather told.” He drained his glass. “But I'm keeping you from your chores, Sulema. I know you have to grind that corn once it's cooked, so you can make the tortillas for lunch. I'll go on home."

  "Don't you dare!” Sulema said. “Not without telling us the story.” She grabbed his glass and refilled it from the tin pot that perched on a rock by the fire.