A Minor Case of Murder Read online

  Morris, anticipating the call from his star writer, had already located the full report online. "I'll do the best I can, sweetie. Maybe in a day or two …"

  Cassie was shouting again. "Cut the crap, Morris. You already have a copy, don't you?"

  "Let me see what I can do, Cassie. In a coupla hours. Where are you, anyway?"

  Cassie knew that Morris would retreat into a funk if she told him about Andy MacTavish. Not that he had any right to, Cassie reminded herself, but still, there it was. "I'll be home later today. I want to find the damn report on my computer by the time I get there."

  Until she saw the newspaper, Cassie had been on a two-day vacation from her own life. Now she needed to return home. And she needed Andy to understand. During the last two days, she and Andy had not had a single conversation about her staying … or about her leaving.

  Cassie checked her clothes, damp and tumbling happily in the dryer, oblivious to Cassie's changing mood. They were dry enough, she decided, and pulled them from the machine, dressing for the drive home to Doah.

  Cassie set out first for the ballpark, rehearsing her explanation in the car, constructing the explanation as if it were one of her stories, agonizing over every word. By the time she pulled into the parking lot, Cassie knew what she wanted to say. But approaching Andy's office, she heard angry words being exchanged. Peeking into the office suite, Cassie was struck by the ramrod-stiff posture of the woman in Andy's inner office, by the tweed business suit that fit her like an exoskeleton.

  Wanting nothing more than to kiss Andy goodbye, Cassie waited in the outer office, the combination of dead deer and doo-wop causing her head to ache. Locating the controls to Andy's sound system, she reset his presets, switching the radio from oldies to jazz. Wayne Shorter on soprano sax. Andy winced when he walked into the office.

  "Cassie, is everything okay?" Andy had not expected to find Cassie at the ballpark.

  Cassie kissed him on the forehead. "You look tired."

  Andy shrugged. "I've had better days."

  "The dead woman?"

  Andy nodded. "Yeah. The dead woman."

  Cassie waited, letting Andy figure out how much he wanted to tell her. "For now, everyone seems willing to call it an accident. Except …"

  Cassie already knew what Andy was going to say. Still, she let him finish.

  "Except that Donna is still missing."

  Cassie and Andy sat in the office, Nicholas Payton on trumpet, Cyrus Chestnut sitting in at the piano. Cassie remembered what she had come to the ballpark to say.

  "I have to go home, Andy." She spoke quickly, trying not to think about the words.

  There was so much Andy wanted to say, but he barely knew where to begin. "When are you leaving?"

  Cassie couldn't make eye contact. "Today. Now." Andy swallowed hard. "Can I call you tonight?" "You just better." Cassie smiled. Andy saw his future reflected in Cassie's smile. "I love you, Cassie O'Malley." "And I love you, Andy MacTavish."

  A Renewable Natural Resource

  Driving home to Doah, Cassie felt good to be back on the familiar country roads, Dizzy Gillespie riding shotgun, the pygmy pines, the cranberry bogs, the same familiar signs for small appliance repair, for barbecue, for Cheyenne Harbrough, independent candidate for mayor.

  Cassie sucked in the familiar Pine Barrens air. Somehow, she had expected that everything would be different, or maybe everything really was different; Cassie wasn't certain anymore. The car rang out with a dizzying display of bebop, but Cassie's head overflowed with the cappella harmonies of doo-wop. She thought about dead deer and dizzy bats, about mayoral campaigns and minor league mascots, but mostly she thought about Andy MacTavish. Cassie pushed the Mustang hard, churning up the miles, heading home.

  Booting up her computer, Cassie was pleased to find an E-mail from Morris: no message, just a link to the DEP report. Waiting for the document to download, she pulled on her ancient black sweats and poured herself a Jameson and water. The full report was more than fifty pages, filled with pie charts and trend lines, with bar graphs and data tables, cholesterol clogging the arteries of her default browser. Cassie sipped her whiskey and scrolled through the computer file, until she found the summary:

  Deer are a renewable natural resource, Cassie read, of great importance to the state of New Jersey and its residents. The New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection, through the Division of Fish and Wildlife, is committed to its Deer Management Program. The goal of the program, according to the report, is to maintain the state's deer population in harmony with the needs and desires of the citizenry.

  Between, April 2001 and October 2003, numerous complaints were received by the New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection regarding deer fatalities in the Pine Barrens. As habitats shrink, it is not uncommon to find deer carcasses on New Jersey roadways. However, these complaints were atypical, and it soon became apparent that a comprehensive review of the dead deer phenomenon, as it came to be known, was indicated. The mayor of Doah Township, the Honorable James T. Donovan, appointed a blue ribbon panel to investigate. When the blue ribbon panel was unable to unravel the mystery, the mayor requested the involvement of the DEP. The present report, according to the DEP, is the result of that involvement. In preparing the report, the DEP set out to address three specific issues:

  1. the unusually large number of sightings as well as the unusually large size of specific sightings;

  the sudden appearance of deer carcasses; and

  the reports of puncture wounds to the deer's necks.

  It has generally been reported that there were an unusually high number of deer carcasses found in the Pine Barrens, specifically in DoahTownship, between April 2001 and October 2003. The DEP reviewed deer fatalities for the past ten years. We have considered average annual mortality and morbidity statistics. We have scatter plotted the data, with special emphasis on outliers. We have computed the analysis of variance and have compared actual data to the levels anticipated by trend analysis and we have come to the inescapable conclusion that the phenomenon is not statistically remarkable. That is, the number of dead deer reported, although atypical, falls within acceptable mathematic parameters.

  Next the DEP examined claims that the deer carcasses were materializing suddenly on otherwise empty roadways. Our review indicates that these sightings typically occurred on small back roads before sunrise. Several points seem to be of importance here. The roads in question are in remote sections of the Pine Barrens and are lightly traveled, especially at night. It is probable that the drivers who made the various sightings were the first vehicles to pass by these locations for several hours, and in some cases, for days. Furthermore, visibility before dawn on these back roads is limited at best. Although the deer carcasses may have appeared suddenly to the drivers who were involved, there is no basis to jump to the conclusion that the carcasses themselves materialized suddenly on the roadway.

  Finally, the DEP examined the claim that the deer carcasses were all marked with mysterious puncture wounds to the neck. This is the most troubling element of the rash of sightings, for this observation, if true, raises the specter of some sinister cause of death. After thousands of hours of research, the DEP cannot identify even one sighting in which independent corroboration of this claim could be established to a scientific certitude. It seems that this claim can be traced back to a series of stories that appeared in a certain magazine with a track record of questionable reportage.

  In summary, the DEP finds no legitimacy to the outlandish claims which have surrounded the dead deer of Doah Township. Previous efforts to solve the mystery have failed, largely because those efforts were built on a faulty premise. The faulty premise was that the deer fatalities were not explainable as natural events. This faulty premise, fueled by an irresponsible media, led to efforts to posit the impossible and to prove the improvable. However, the conclusions now reached by the DEP are not open to debate or interpretation. There is no mystery (according to the Department o
f Environmental Protection). There is only dead deer.

  Cassie poured herself a second Jameson and water, and dialed the telephone. "Morris," she yelled into the receiver. "I want to get those assholes at the DEP!" Morris chuckled. "You read the report?" "Don't you be laughing, Morris. This is serious." Morris assumed his serious face. "Okay, Cassie. What do you want to do?" Cassie had it all figured out. "A couple of thousand words about the DEP should do the trick." Morris knew it was a long shot, but he tried anyway. "No."

  "What do you mean, 'no'?" Cassie was shouting again. "They as much as said I made up the whole dead deer phenomenon. My reputation …"

  "… will be fine, Cassie. You know what our readers will say. 'Government cover-up' is what they'll say. You'll be a hero."

  Cassie wasn't listening. "I can't let the DEP report sit out there as the last word. Our readers rely on us for the real story. They read us because, in an unimaginably bizarre universe, we give them answers."

  "Cassie, sweetie … I can't believe I have to tell you this. Our readers don't rely on us for answers. They read us for the questions."

  Cassie was not ready to drop the subject. "But …"

  Morris was adamant. "Let it go, Cassie. Say goodbye to the dead deer. It's time to move on to new stories."

  "But our readers want …"

  Morris knew exactly what their readers wanted. "They want the same as me. They want us to finish the next issue."

  Russian Vodka and Beluga Caviar

  Cassie poured herself a Jameson and considered her options. She understood that some people dismissed her stories and the magazine for which she wrote as disreputable. She earned her living by writing about improbable events.

  Cassie took great pride in the research base for her outlandish claims. She didn't make up her stories; she didn't have to. Instead, Cassie juxtaposed unlikely events to create an alternate reality. She never made the claim that her stories were true, only that they might be true. Now the Department of Environmental Protection had accused her of fabricating the dead deer story. The DEP had crossed the line. Cassie wondered whether it might not be possible to satisfy her editor and still get even with the DEP.

  Cassie dug deeply into her files, retrieving seemingly unrelated news items, piecing them together like a jigsaw puzzle. She found stories about mysterious tunnels underneath the state capitol in Trenton. She read news items about Cold War bomb scares. She stumbled on a state budget report outlining a series of unexpected state purchase requisitions. She sipped her whiskey and began to construct an alternate reality. And then she began to type.

  Soviet Spy Ring Infiltrates NJDEP?

  At the height of the Cold War, ordinary Americans from coast to coast were building bomb shelters. Determined to preserve our way of life, underground if necessary, families were lying in stores and preparing for the apocalypse. Young children went to school and practiced for an attack, kneeling in the halls, head down (thereby protected from nuclear radiation). Young mothers went to the market and bought extra toilet paper. Young fathers worked overtime to pay for their backyard bomb shelters. Quietly, government agencies did the same, justifying their place in a post-apocalyptic America (the surface world might be uninhabitable for tens of thousands of years; still, America would need its interstate highway system).

  Faithful readers will know about the unexplained network of tunnels that has been found beneath the state capitol in Trenton. We now have reason to believe that one or more of those tunnels led to a secret government bomb shelter. No state agency will admit to operating a bomb shelter. There is no official record of such a shelter. But we have reviewed New Jersey budget and expense reports line by line, year by year. In 1960, with Soviet-American tension at its peak, the New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection was making highly unusual bulk purchases—canned beans and vegetables, beef jerky, iodine, toilet paper, bottled water … The list goes on.

  Is it not possible that a highly secret state government bomb shelter was being provisioned, the expenditures hidden as completely as the shelter itself, deep within the NJDEP budget? If only the story ended there with a top-secret bomb shelter for state bureaucrats.

  Recently we discovered several boxes that we believe may have come from the shelter's stockpiled supplies. We found dehydrated meals, first-aid kits, flashlights and paperback books. We found cans of lima beans, pinto beans, peas and carrots and fruit cocktail. We found transistor radios and portable generators. But as we unpacked the boxes, we also found Russian vodka and beluga caviar. We found Soviet military supplies—pea coats and hats, pistols, knives and codebooks. We have had these artifacts examined by experts who tell us that these objects are authentic.

  We cannot as yet claim with a scientific certitude that these objects were found in a bomb shelter located under the state capitol. Nor can we assert as a matter of fact that the New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection operated this bomb shelter. Certainly we cannot as yet prove that a Soviet spy ring infiltrated the NJDEP.

  But we believe it is possible. We believe there is sufficient evidence to call for an official inquiry. We believe it is our responsibility as patriotic Americans to ask the tough questions. We have our concerns, but we want to be fair. We will give the NJDEP every opportunity to respond. And we will let our readers draw their own conclusions.

  Cassie finished her whiskey, typed in her editor's address and hit send. She pushed her chair back from the computer screen and smiled.

  A Zen Thing

  Andy MacTavish marveled at people who saw subtlety in the workings of the universe. Andy lived in a digital world, a world of stark choices and powerful consequences, a world of ones and zeroes, of absolute zero.

  It had been an outstanding first season of Sand Skeeter baseball, he told himself, and then a young woman died on the pitcher's mound and it wasn't such a great season anymore. It had been a romantic two days with Cassie O'Malley, and then she was gone, leaving a hole where his life had been. When Andy said goodbye to Cassie, he took comfort, at least, in the knowledge that his day had bottomed out. And then he answered the telephone.

  "Mr. MacTavish?" Andy didn't recognize the woman's voice. "Yes?" "This is the morgue." There was an uncomfortable silence on the line. Finally the woman continued. "I believe you are

  aware that Ms. Dean's death has been ruled an accident … heat stroke." Andy's attorney had confirmed the finding during their meeting that morning at the ballpark.

  "Yes." "We are making arrangements to release the body to the family later today." Andy had no idea where the conversation was heading. "Yes?" "We'd like you to come get your mascot costume."

  Andy tried not to think about the dead woman as he drove to the morgue. He tried not to think about the dead woman as he pulled into the lot, parking alongside the grieving family. He tried not to think about the dead woman as he marched into the morgue to retrieve his costume and again, leaving the morgue, as he loaded the costume into a duffel bag and loaded the duffel into the trunk of his Lexus. He tried not to think about the dead woman as he drove back to his oceanfront home. Of course, he explained later that night on the phone with Cassie, he could think of nothing but the dead woman the entire time.

  "I can't think about Skeeter anymore without seeing the dead woman. And as hard as I try, I can't not think about Skeeter."

  "You can't not think about Skeeter," Cassie explained, "by trying to not think about her. It's a Zen thing. You have to stop trying and then you can stop thinking."

  Andy took a moment to untangle Cassie's grammar. "I'll try. I mean I'll try not to try … I mean I'll not try to not try … oh hell, you know what I mean."

  Andy tried to stop trying; still all he could see was the dead woman on the pitcher's mound. "I don't know if I can get past this."

  Cassie had an idea and trusted that Andy might be ready to hear it. "Maybe you need to retire the mascot. Can you really imagine the fans frolicking with Skeeter next season?"

  Andy had been asking himself
the same question all day. "Maybe you're right."

  "Of course I'm right." Cassie laughed. "I'm always right."

  Andy chuckled. "Always?"

  Cassie left no room for doubt. "Get used to it."

  That night Cassie dreamt of her late husband Rob. In her dream, Cassie and Rob were twenty. In her dreams, they were always twenty.

  It was sunny and warm, a beautiful spring evening, and they were at the ballpark. Sitting in the bleachers, watching the game, sitting among thousands of screaming fans, they were strangely, silently, alone. Rob wanted to talk, but Cassie turned away. She would not speak to Rob; she was still mad at him for dying.

  Finally Cassie relented, turning to look at Rob, to look beyond the terror frozen in his sad blue eyes. "It's not fair."

  Rob nodded in agreement. "Life's not fair, Cassie."

  Why didn't he understand? "No, Rob, not life. Death. It's death that's not fair."

  Rob knew better. "No, Cassie. You're wrong. Death is the one fair thing." Rob wished he could do something to diminish her pain. "Can I get you a hot dog?"

  Cassie watched Rob as he headed off for the concession stand, following him with her eyes until he gradually disappeared in the crowd. She watched for his return, eternity in the form of the seventh-inning stretch.

  But Rob did not return, not before the end of the seventh-inning stretch, not before the end of the ball game. Rob did not return and Cassie did not move on. She watched as the bleachers emptied and still she sat there waiting for Rob to reappear. Eventually Andy MacTavish walked up to Cassie and handed her a note. Cassie could not bring herself to read the note. "Read it to me, please," she begged.

  Carefully, Andy unfolded the note and read, "They ran out of hot dogs. I'm sorry." Andy folded the note and handed it to Cassie, repeating again, "I'm sorry."