Blood on Their Hands
Lawrence Block
Blood On Their Hands
A Mystery Writers of America Classic Anthology
Brendan DuBois
Noreen Ayres
Shelley Costa
Tom Savage
Tracy Knight
Aileen Schumacher
Elaine Viets
G. Miki Hayden
Elaine Togneri
Henry Slesar
William E. Chambers
Stefanie Matteson
Charlotte Hinger
Dan Crawford
Rhys Bowen
Mat Coward
Marcia Talley
Elizabeth Foxwell
Jeremiah Healy
Edited by
Lawrence Block
Mystery Writers of America
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the authors’ imaginations or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
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BLOOD ON THEIR HANDS
Copyright © 2003 by Mystery Writers of America.
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A Mystery Writers of America Presents: MWA Classics Book published by arrangement with the authors
Cover art image by Roberts Vīcups
Cover design by David Allan Kerber
Editorial and layout by Stonehenge Editorial
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PRINTING HISTORY
Mystery Writers of America Presents: MWA Classics edition / March 2018
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All rights reserved.
This book, or parts thereof, may not be reproduced in any form without permission. The scanning, uploading, and distribution of this book via the Internet or via any other means without the permission of the publisher is illegal and punishable by law. Please purchase only authorized electronic editions, and do not participate in or encourage electronic piracy of copyrighted materials. Your support of the authors’ rights is appreciated.
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Mystery Writers of America gratefully acknowledges the permission granted to reproduce the copyrighted material in this book.
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Every effort has been made to locate the copyright holders or their heirs and assigns and to obtain their permission for the use of copyrighted material, and MWA would be grateful if notified of any corrections that should be incorporated in future reprints or editions of this book.
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For information contact: Mystery Writers of America, 1140 Broadway, Suite 1507, New York, NY 10001
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Contents
Foreword by Lawrence Block
Introduction: It All Started with Poe by Lawrence Block
Her Last Gift by Brendan DuBois
Jojo’s Gold by Noreen Ayres
Black Heart and Cabin Girl by Shelley Costa
One of Us by Tom Savage
A Trail of Mirrors by Tracy Knight
Along for the Ride by Aileen Schumacher
Red Meat by Elaine Viets
The Maids by G. Miki Hayden
Guardian Angel by Elaine Togneri
The Day of the 31st by Henry Slesar
Another Night to Remember by William E. Chambers
The Trouble with Harry by Stefanie Matteson
Any Old Mother by Charlotte Hinger
Guile Is Where It Goes by Dan Crawford
Doppelganger by Rhys Bowen
Bloody Victims by Mat Coward
Safety First by Marcia Talley
No Man’s Land by Elizabeth Foxwell
The Lady from Yesterday by Jeremiah Healy
About the Authors
About the Editor
Afterword
Foreword
I am, as they say across the pond, not half chuffed at the republication of Blood on Their Hands. This excellent anthology, which Publishers Weekly liked almost as much as I do, made its first appearance in 2003, and it’s good to have it back in print.
These are excellent stories, nineteen of them in all, and I’m glad you’ll have to opportunity to read them.
In fact, I’m glad I’ll have the opportunity to read them again myself. My own copy must be somewhere, but the same can be said of the Lost City of Atlantis, and I’m about as likely to come upon one as the other.
I wish I were able to point to Blood on Their Hands with pride and tell you that I chose these stories myself. It was in fact the brilliant and tireless anthologist Martin H. Greenberg who selected the stories from among the generous contributions of members of the Mystery Writers of America. Then Marty put the book together and asked me to write an introduction.
First, he allowed me a look at the book’s contents. “It’s your name that’ll be on the cover,” he said, “so you ought to have a chance to see what you’re fronting and decide whether you approve.”
I read the stories. I approved, and with enthusiasm. I wrote an introduction, which you’re welcome to read, as it’s included in this new edition. (You’re also perfectly free to skip it and get right to the stories. My feelings won’t be hurt, as I won’t know about it.)
As much as I enjoyed having a second look at Blood on Their Hands, the experience was not without a touch of sadness. Three friends of mine were a part of the book’s excellence, and they’ve since moved on from this life to whatever follows it.
Henry Slesar, whose story “The Day of the 31st” appears midway through the book, died between the time he sent in his story and the book’s publication. Henry was a friend I never met; we exchanged a couple of emails when I picked a story of his for another anthology, but he became an unwitting friend of mine years before that, through my admiration for his writing. He was a frequent contributor to Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine, and whenever an issue arrived with a story of his in it, it was the first one I read. (Unless Jack Ritchie also had a story in that issue; then I was like that donkey in the fable, positioned between two bales of hay and consequently frozen in place, unable to decide which way to turn.)
Henry wrote voluminously, more for television than for print media, and I suggest you consult his Wikipedia page to learn more about him. One thing I never knew is that it was he who added the phrase “coffee break” to the language. Who’d have guessed?
Also gone is Jeremiah Healy, who was a good friend of mine for years. We had many dinners together, and at more than one of them he asked my counsel as to whether he should give up his secure position as a tenured law professor for the far less certain life of a full-time writer. I served mostly as a sounding board, and he eventually made the leap, and as a result we have several more superb books from him than we would otherwise have had.
Jerry and I were both on the board of the International Association of Crime Writers, and consequently attended several of IACW’s meetings overseas. I recall his good company in Vienna and Bulgaria and other European cities I can’t call to mind.
For all of that, I never knew that Jerry suffered greatly from depression, or that he tried to drink his way out of it. He kept all of that entirely to himself, and died by his own hand in 2014.
There is, for all of us who write, a sort of afterlife right here on this plane of existence. The work lives on, at least for a while. Jerry’s series featuring the thoughtful and introspective John Francis Cuddy made a mark in the field of private-eye fiction, and I can’t think they’ll be quickly forgotten.
Jerry’s fine story, “The Lady from Yesterday,” is this book’s final story.
Finally, the book’s real editor, Martin H. Greenberg, died in 2011 of that relentless killer, glioblastoma. I knew Marty had put together hundreds of anthologies, but have just learned the actual count is 1298
. (He brought out 127 books “by Isaac Asimov” alone.) Often the books don’t bear his name on the cover or title page. He never cared about the credit; he only cared about the books.
We worked together on several anthologies, ones in which I took a more active role, selecting the stories and in some instances corresponding with their authors. As you might expect, Marty was a joy to work with, and I miss him.
Well, that’s enough of Memory Lane. You’ve got some wonderful reading to do. I’ll leave you to it. And remember, I won’t take it the wrong way if you elect to skip my introduction...
—Lawrence Block
Introduction
It All Started With Poe
If you want to blame someone, try Edgar Allan Poe. He’s the guy who started it. Or did he? Maybe this would be a good place to mention Mauritz Christopher Hansen. A Norwegian writer, born 1794, died 1842. In 1827 he published “Novellen” (“The Short Story”), an armchair detective mystery concerning a case of murder and revenge. So he got there first, well ahead of Poe’s “The Murders in the Rue Morgue,” but he wrote in Norwegian, with the result that nobody ever heard of him. Well, nobody outside of Norway. Matter of fact, you wouldn’t have heard of him either, if your Norwegian friend Nils Nordberg hadn’t told you about him. Memo: E-mail Nils, suggest he translate Hansen for Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine. Either “Novellen” or his short novel, Mordet paa Maskinbygger Roolfsen (“The Murder of Engineer Roolfsen”).
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Still, what did Hansen start? If a tree falls in a forest, and only Norwegians can hear it, it’s not exactly the shot heard round the world, is it? Poe started it, but who cares? I mean, how many lame introductions have already trotted out poor old Poe? Think of something else, will you?
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It’s a rare pleasure to introduce Blood on Their Hands, the latest collection of stories by members of Mystery Writers of America. MWA, as its name implies, is an organization of American mystery writers who...
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Duh. Who write American mysteries, and they hammer them out one inspired word at a time, even as you are attempting to pound out this introduction. Do you really want to bore everybody with the history of the organization, explaining how a handful of hacks and drunks banded together, adopted the motto “Crime Does Not Pay. Enough!” And, when they weren’t busy hacking and drinking, got on with the serious business of giving one another awards. You can fill space this way, but do you want to?
It’s a fine organization, MWA, and virtually every crime writer of distinction is proud to be a member of it. But everybody knows that, so why waste their time telling them?
Start over.
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The stories you are about to read...
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...Are guaranteed to cure cancer, ensure world peace, and solve once and for all the problem of global warming. They’re excellent stories, as it happens, but what can you say about them that will make them more of a treat than they already are?
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It’s my great pleasure...
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Yeah, I can tell. You know something? You’ve done too many introductions, my friend, and you’re getting worse at it, and you were never that good in the first place. You always used to start out by decrying the whole idea of an introduction, urging readers to get on with it and read the stories themselves, and now you seem determined to prove how dopey an introduction can be by mumbling and stammering and generally behaving like an idiot. You promised them an intro. Write it, will you? Just spit it out!
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It all started with Poe.
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Great, just brilliant. “It all started with Poe.” And here’s where it stops.
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—Lawrence Block
Her Last Gift
Brendan DuBois
In the darkness of her car, Laura Tyson sat in the stillness, holding the 9mm Smith & Wesson in her right hand. In the past two months she had become quite familiar with the heavy piece of weaponry, visiting her brother twice a week at the police station, where he allowed her to use the shooting range in the basement. Her brother Jake was a detective, and the first time she told him she had bought a pistol, he had said—only half-jokingly, she was sure: “You don’t plan on shooting anybody soon, do you?” She had smiled at her younger brother and said, “Of course not.” So over the weeks he had demonstrated the pistol’s safety, how to load the magazine, how to clear a jam in the action, and how to hold it correctly while firing. And each time when she left, he had looked at her with his pale blue eyes and said, “You doing okay?” She had always lied, saying, “Yes. I’m doing the best I can.”
She shifted the pistol from one hand to the other, looked up the driveway on the hill where the lights marked the home of Hank Zamett, where she planned to go in a few minutes. She remembered what her brother had said, about shooting anybody soon, and she sighed. Aloud she said softly, “I guess it depends on what your definition of soon is, Jake.”
She placed the pistol down on her lap, again marveling at how heavy a small object could be. Not only the weight of the metal and plastic and lead in the cartridges, but just the heaviness of the potential, she thought. Each little cartridge had the potential of changing everything, of wounding someone severely, of taking away somebody’s life and livelihood. Among the many things the pistol represented, it was a thieving instrument, able to take so much away with the single pull of the trigger.
Laura rubbed her rough hands together, suddenly flinched at a memory of Jess, kissing her fingers, gently moving the rough skin against his face, laughing: “My dear one,” he sometimes said. “I thought artists were such delicate creatures. You have hands that could smooth down a plank.” She had laughed and had never taken offense, since it was true. Her hands were always rough and chapped, from working at the potter’s wheel in her tiny studio, playing with the clay, manipulating it and firing it and working with it, day after day. But she had never minded what he had said about her hands. Jess had always said that they had a perfect marriage: he had the brains, she had the brawn, and with that, they would have a long and happy life together.
She wiped at the tears forming in her eyes. Jess had been dead for more than two months now, taken away by the man up on the hill, and she wondered how that thief would react when he came face to face with the thieving tool now in her lap.
The pistol was then moved, from her lap to her open purse. She closed the leather purse and stepped out of the car, slinging it over her shoulder, and she started walking, up to the lights.
They should have never been attracted to one another, never mind becoming husband and wife. She was tall and angular, with long legs and a skinny chest, and he was short and squat, built like a fireplug. Her politics leaned left, his leaned right. She was nearly a vegetarian, while he loved to eat meat at least once a day. They had met at—of all places romantic and loving—the local library book sale, when both of their hands had reached for an old paperback of H. P. Lovecraft short stories. That had led into a discussion of Lovecraft and his works and Arkham and Miskatonic University, and that had been followed up by a lunch, dinner, and a movie, and a year later, a small wedding ceremony in the Congregational Church in town.
She had a very small business making pottery, barely enough to keep her off food stamps, and he modestly said that he was a genius. Which was true. Jess knew computers, knew the Internet, and knew how to rig up little bits of technology that dazzled her, but she could hardly even keep up with him as he discussed fiber optics, webcams, sound files, infrared transmissions, and the like. Once he had rigged up a tiny camera at their door which was linked to the doorbell, so if somebody rang the doorbell, it would interrupt whatever program was being run on Jess’s computer and would show a photograph of who was at the door. She had been amazed at the pure uselessness of the idea. Why not just walk over and see who was there? Why had he done such a thing? And her husband had laughed and said, “Because I can,
that’s why.”
And she had gotten him back as well, making intricate little bits of pottery, statues or bowls, giving them to him over time, and once he had asked, why do you keep giving me gifts? She had laughed in return, saying, “Because I can, that’s why.”
Jess worked as a consultant, which meant long weeks away at corporations across the country, followed by equally fun weeks at home, when he didn’t have to work and they could go canoeing and stargazing at night and rent old movies and not move from their tiny house for days on end.
Things were fine, were wonderful, until he had met up with the man with the big house. Named Hank Zamett.
