The Miskatonic Manuscript (Case Files of Matthew Hunter and Chantal Stevens Book 2) (8 page)

Thibodeau the negotiator told the subject Johnson no one was going to shoot him. Then he asked the subject Johnson if he owned a pistol. Johnson said yes, and fetched it. He held it up, holstered, for Thibodeau to see and then set it aside, again raising his hands over his head. He offered to let Thibodeau come into the house and retrieve the weapon.

He asked for permission to scratch his nose, and did it slowly, then raised his hands again. He asked to reach into his pocket for his phone; Thibodeau asked him not to, and he obeyed.

“He said ‘I know if I reach down or drop my hands I can get shot,’” Thibodeau had told detectives later. “I said, ‘Hey, nobody’s going to shoot you.…’”

But the subject Johnson pointed to one nearby officer in particular: Sgt. Phil Robichaux, who kept raising his pistol from the “ready” position (pointed at Johnson’s legs) to aim at Johnson’s chest.

“Please ask him not to point his gun at me,” the subject Johnson had begged Thibodeau the negotiator. Johnson even offered to come out and be handcuffed voluntarily if Robichaux and the patrolmen would agree to move “way back.”

Then he asked to scratch his nose again. The negotiator Thibodeau consented. Which is when Phil Robichaux shot him in the chest.

Johnson, grabbing his wound, screamed in pain and stepped back, slamming his door.

“And I’m like, who the fuck shot him?” Thibodeau told detectives later. “I kinda got a little pissed.”

But Sturm Wolfson saw no need to present that kind of detail to the coroner’s jury, nor the fact that Sgt. Phil Robichaux at that point had admitted firing the shot and blurted out to negotiator Thibodeau he’d had a fight over the phone with his wife just before arriving on the scene.

Thibodeau and the three other officers who’d been present told investigators the subject Johnson had never made any move toward his waist, nor toward any weapon. So did two civilian witnesses. But prosecutor Wolfson never brought any of that up; the coroner’s jury would never hear about that. Why confuse them? After all, prosecutors and cops were on the same team.

“And why did you discharge your service pistol, Sergeant Robichaux?”

“The subject Johnson made a furtive move toward his waistband, sir. We knew he was in possession of firearms, and he made a sudden move towards his waist.”

“You felt your life or the lives of the other officers at the scene were in danger?”

“Yes sir, absolutely.”

“You’re aware that the subject Johnson bled to death before a tactical team arrived to storm the house — before they broke in his door with their armored vehicle some hours later?”

“Yes, sir. I’m very sorry that was the outcome from his actions.”

“You’d never met the subject Johnson before, you had nothing against him?”

“No sir, absolutely not.”

And that was it. Judge Crustio reminded the coroner’s jurors that they’d sworn in advance to follow his instructions — anyone who’d refused to take such an oath would have been dismissed and replaced — and he then instructed them the only way they could find Sergeant Phil Robichaux at fault was if they believed he’d gone to the subject Johnson’s home that day “with the express purpose aforethought, that is to say with an express plan and wish,” to kill said negro gentleman.

With that as their only other option, the hand-picked jury of course unanimously ruled the shooting of local business owner Leroy Johnson on his own doorstep to have been fully justified, Judge Crustio thanked them for their service, and Sgt. Phil Robichaux automatically went back on active duty with full back pay and accrued benefits.

“Congratulations,” the union rep shook his hand.

“Fuckin’ waste of time,” Phil Robichaux responded.

“All in a day’s work, Phil. You got to go through the motions.”

“Yeah, yeah, yeah.”

“Second time for you, right?”

“Yeah. That a problem?”

“No, no. Just as long as it’s in the line of duty, Phil.”

“Always.”

Cops killed thousands of people in America every year — not in shootouts, but unarmed people walking down the sidewalk or standing in the doorways of their own homes. Not one cop in a thousand ever saw the inside of a jail cell, and the FBI didn’t even count those deaths as homicides in their uniform crime statistics. You could ask ’em.

* * *

Marian spoke to Matthew as he came in the front door of the shop, jingling the merry little bell.

“Your note says to plug this thing in with the computers, but Chantal said to double-check with you. Neither of us knows anything about a homing device.”

“A … homing device?”

“This thing. Your note. That is your writing, right?”

The thing was heavy and looked like a glorified steel two-gallon paint can with a plug and wire coming out the side, though obviously it had been finished off with some fine machine work. And yes, the note was in Matthew’s handwriting, simply identifying the gizmo as a long-range homing beacon and recommending it be plugged into the same circuit as the computers.

“My handwriting, yes, but I don’t remember writing it.”

“That’s weird. I’m glad I waited.”

“At least, I don’t think I’ve written this
yet.
”

“That’s even weirder, Matthew.”

“Marian, surely you know quantum physics tells us events today can be impacted by things we’re not going to do till tomorrow. We’re only vibrations in a temporal matrix, after all. Every action launched here has to have a receptor waiting in the future, and vice versa.”

“In other words, you don’t have any more idea what this thing is than we do.”

“Chantal, babe?”

“Yes, dear.” Chantal poked her lovely brunette head around the corner of Science Fiction, which she was putting back in order by author. The customers for some reason insisted on putting Asimov back under “I” and Heinlein under “R” … when they showed any signs of grasping “alphabetical order,” at all.

“Do we still know some electronics genius down in Newport?”

“Cory? Yeah. You going to send him the long-range homing beacon?”

“If you think he’d be willing to check it out.”

“I’ll call him.”

“Ask him, if Skeezix can wrap this up and hand it to one of our favorite bus drivers, whether he can meet the bus in Middletown.”

“Can do.”

“I wonder if you can help me.” Customers always seemed to sneak up on Matthew when he wasn’t looking.

“I can try.”

“It’s my grandson. He wants books about the Titanic, absolutely anything about the Titanic.”

“You’re in the right section, ma’am. Those are our shelves for ships and trains, but I can see from here the two books I was going to recommend are gone. We had a nice large-format book with cutaway drawings of the various deck plans, and Robert Ballard’s book on the discovery of the wreck, but they’re both large format books, quartos, and I can see from here they’ve both sold. We’ll stock them again if they turn up, but it’s hard to say when.”

“Oh no.”

“But I think we have something else that might work. Over here in fiction I think we recently put in — yes, here it is,
A Night to Remember
, by Walter Lord. This is a novel about the sinking of the Titanic, in fact it was the basis for the film version back in the ’50s, starring Walter Pigeon, no, Kenneth More, I think. Roy Ward Baker directed, and Eric Ambler wrote the screenplay, which a lot of people don’t know. This copy is from the Roy Ward Baker estate, actually.”

Matthew held out the book — in a nice dust jacket and presumably a first — so the woman could take it from him. She didn’t, even though accepting something that’s held out to you is the more natural thing to do.

“No,” she said. “No, I don’t think so. I’ll keep looking for something about the Titanic.” And she turned and briskly walked away.

Matthew stood for a moment, wondering if there were some parallel universe in which encounters like that one — it wasn’t the first — might make some kind of sense. No peace for the wicked, though. A seller had brought Marian a box of books at the front desk, and
now here she was at his elbow, telling Matthew in low tones that she’d appreciate his input, which was a little unusual. He crossed over, gave the lady a reassuring smile, opened each book to the title page, and froze.

Matthew grasped the problem immediately. Marian did the monthly accounts. She knew better than anyone that Books on Benefit managed a modest profit based on their online sales and Matthew’s occasional high-dollar finds. Buying books for $5 or $10 that you hoped to sell for $40 might sound like a road to wealth to the uninitiated, but the problem was what the economists called “velocity,” which in the used book business in the Internet age could be glacial. A smaller profit margin was fine for a supermarket that might turn over an entire shelf of tomato sauce in a couple of days, but it wasn’t unusual for the store to sit on a book for years, literally years, before it sold. Years of lighting that book and heating it in winter and keeping the roof repaired and making sure someone was guarding the front desk every minute they were open.

They already showed red ink in the ice-and-snow months of January and February; no one wanted to be held responsible for spreading red ink over more of the calendar by paying too much for acquisitions, eliciting from Matthew the dreaded Squint of Concern. They both knew the lady would probably be perfectly happy to walk out with $40 or $50 in her hand, which meant what Matthew was about to do he was doing primarily for the benefit of Marian and Les and Chantal, reassuring them of the reputation he wanted the store to have for its treatment of the Lost, the Clueless, and the Befuddled.

“You’re wanting to sell all these books, ma’am?”

“Well, yes. I just have no choice but to start thinning things out, now. I’m not getting any younger, I’m afraid. The house will have to be sold eventually. Is there some problem? The young woman seemed upset.”

“No problem. She wanted to make sure she was right about a value. Did you have an asking price?”

A high asking price would indicate she knew what she had, which would require a little more caution about the provenance. Even graying matrons could turn out to be book thieves. A medium asking price he could meet, as long as it allowed them to make their four-bagger. They were in business to make a profit, after all. But she gave the most typical response.

“No, I really have no idea. Whatever you think is right.”

“You’ve owned these books for some time?”

“Oh, forty years, I would think. Some were my late husband’s.

“Charles.”

“Yes. How did — oh, it’s written in some of the books, isn’t it?”

“It is, ma’am. Particularly in this one.”

“That would decrease the value?”

“Not usually. An unobtrusive Previous Owner’s Name is quite common. Did Charles know this author, by any chance?”

“Oh yes, we knew Mario. One summer he stayed in the cottage next to ours on Long Island. Is that the problem, that he wrote in the book?”

“In a manner of speaking, ma’am. It’s why our manager wanted to double-check on this one. A book like this we could take on consignment. We could hold the book till it sells, in which case you’d have to wait for a payment, less our commission. Or we could buy it from you for cash, right now. Putting it on consignment might net you more in the long run, but it could take months, even a year or more. Hard to tell. And there’d be no guarantee. Whereas if you’d prefer cash or a check today, we could settle up right now and you’d have the money in hand, at which point the risk is ours. In either case, a short written note from you, explaining how the author knew your husband, would help. Buyers of a book like this enjoy knowing a little something about its history.”

“Goodness. It’s just an old novel, although they did make a movie out of it, didn’t they?”

“Yes they did.”

“And I’m afraid the dust jacket is a bit frayed. How much is it worth?”

“Ma’am, for this first printing of Mario Puzo’s
The Godfather,
with this author’s inscription directly to the page, thanking your husband for the story about the cannoli, I’d be happy today to give you two thousand dollars. If you could write that little note I mentioned, a little more.”

“Oh. Oh dear. I didn’t know …” And, of course, she began to cry. Marian, back in charge, had the box of Kleenex handy.

* * *

Les had asked to talk to Matthew in his office, where progress pricing and thinning out the backed-up stacks of new acquisitions proceeded slowly, but did at least enable them to clear the second chair.

“What’s up, Les?”

“I think I’m dying.”

“You’ve been to the doctor?”

“As in, ‘I asked my family doctor just what I had’?”

“Ah. So you know what it is.”

“I’ve lost weight; I’m falling asleep on my feet; look how I pale I am.”

“Les, you refuse to go out in the sun. You’ve spent most of your life trying to convince people you’re a vampire. Of course you’re
pale.
The point is, you know what it is.”

“It’s Marian. She’s draining my life force.”

“She’s a vampire?”

“A succubus.”

“You’re not getting any sleep?”

“She’s insatiable.”

“Les, you need to be clear, here. Do you want to break it off with Marian? It won’t cost you your job, I can make sure of that.”

“I realize any other guy would think it’s a dream come true. I mean, the first couple of nights, she wants to go three or four times,
that’s amazing. But you’d naturally expect that after some time the level of activity would drop back to —”

“Do not use the word ‘normal.’”

“— to something more … measured.”

“Les, you’re the only one who can really ask her, it’s not my place, but I’m going to go out on a limb here and guess that Marian has been kind of saving it up, that her body needs this now, a lot of it, and yes, assuming you find her acceptable with her clothes off, most guys would say you’re nuts and would gladly trade places with you. If it was me making her smile the way she smiles these days, putting the color in her cheeks, I’d be very gratified.”

“So there’s no hope?”

“Les, we’re friends, but I’m not a doctor; I can’t give you strictly medical advice.”