Kzine Issue 20 Read online

  KZINE MAGAZINE

  Issue 20

  Edited by Graeme Hurry

  Kzine Issue 20 © January 2018 by Kimota Publishing

  cover © Dave Windett, 2018

  Critical Need © Mike Adamson, 2018

  The Commonwealth Turn © William Delman, 2018

  A Talk With Tom © Nathan Driscoll, 2018

  Backstory © Max Christian Hansen, 2018

  Out Into A Sea Of Fire © Russell Hemmell, 2018

  Invincible? © Edward Turner III, 2018

  Alpha And Omega © Subodhana Wijeyeratne, 2018

  Slaves To Entertainment © Matencera Wolf, 2018

  Note: An editorial decision has been taken to retain the spelling and vocabulary from the author’s country. This may reduce consistency but it is felt it helps to maintain authenticity and integrity of the story.

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced in any form by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without prior written permission of the copyright holder. For editorial content this is Graeme Hurry, for stories it is the individual author, for artwork it is the artist.

  CONTENTS

  BACKSTORY by Max Christian Hansen (19)

  CRITICAL NEED by Mike Adamson (3)

  OUT OF A SEA OF FIRE by Russell Hemmell (9)

  THE COMMONWEALTH TURN by William Delman (4)

  SLAVES TO ENTERTAINMENT by Matencera Wolf (21)

  ALPHA AND OMEGA by Subodhana Wijeyeratne (15)

  A TALK WITH TOM by Nathan Driscoll (10)

  INVINCIBLE? by Edward Turner III (2)

  Contributor Notes

  The number in brackets indicates the approximate printed page length of the story.

  BACKSTORY

  by Max Christian Hansen

  - - - KATE - - -

  I’ve let some go in my day. Both in my private work and earlier as a cop. I’ve almost never regretted it.

  Teenagers fooling with drugs, for example. Selling small quantities—that’s what passes for fooling around now; using doesn’t even count. Now why should you mess up a kid’s life for something like that? Send him to juvi, they turn him hardcore and he’ll have a hell of a time leaving the life. But scare him a bit—or her, I don’t mean to exclude anyone here—and give her back to good parents, and she / he / they have a decent chance of coming around.

  So, yes, I’ve let some go, and I’m not ashamed of it. A kid should have a chance.

  Frank Duran was no kid, yet I let him go for the very same reason. And to this day I wish he hadn’t gotten away.

  I keep looking back and wondering if I could have done anything else. He confused the hell out of me. Even these many years later I think about it and I get addled. I think how I didn’t keep track of time. How I loved hearing his voice even when I wished he’d move the story forward. How I owed him for helping me solve the Ehrmann murder case. How I appreciated the way he respected me, never using the term “lady cop” which everyone else in Coneyville did, as if a detective with breasts and no chin stubble was a freak of nature.

  I think about that kiss that I didn’t expect. That and the coffee—eighteen years later I can still taste both.

  And then the gunplay, also unexpected. And the fact that a kid should have a chance. To this day it’s all too much for me to sort out. You’d’ve thought those few years on the NYPD, before I moved to Coneyville, would have prepared me for anything. But no. Not for Frank Duran.

  Saturday, October 19, 1992. He called me early and said he needed to talk. Today? Now. Phone okay? No, come over. I said I had plans, and I did. I planned to stay in bed another hour or so. Weekdays I’m up when I need to be. But weekends, well, I’m as fond of 6AM as the next gal, but only if 6AM and I are meeting to fetch home trout or whitetail. But Frank said he knew who killed Kraut Ehrmann and when I told him I was pretty sure I knew he said I needed to hear this right away. Please, Kate. So I strapped on my duty gun under a lightweight coat and drove over.

  When I pulled up across the street from his house he came out right away, but not from where I expected. He came straight out of the house next door, from the side door at the driveway, the far side from his own place. He was carrying an armful of stuff, which when he got close I saw was a big Thermos and two coffee cups.

  I took off my watch and stuffed it in the glove compartment. The dash clock was broken, which was fine. A detective never, ever goes out without a watch. But when you want to let someone talk, you don’t let them catch you looking at the time.

  He climbed in the passenger side and said good morning. I didn’t have to ask why he didn’t invite me in, or even why he’d made coffee at the neighbor’s. I knew Laurie never wanted to see me in her house again. She’d said so, after the first time he made coffee for me. When, to Laurie’s mind, I was either too appreciative or too good-looking or both.

  We had a little writers’ group, people working on fiction or screenplays. Five of us. All the writers and ten percent of the readers in Seneca County. Frank and Laurie had the whole group over for an evening, spouses and all. Frank made a hundred flavors of coffee for us, including one that turned out to be catnip for Kate. Laurie pretended to enjoy our company but mostly just watched. She must have decided the two women in the group were too attractive, not to mention one of them being single. Me. Frank dropped out of the group.

  In my car that Saturday he poured a cup for me and a skosh for himself. It was the special stuff—strong French roast, Carnation, coconut cream and cinnamon. So good, God! I sipped it and probably made some noise of pleasure I’d never ever want his wife to hear. I forgave him for getting me out of bed.

  “The size of that Thermos, Frank, you’re loaded for bear. How long you plan to have me sitting here?”

  “As long as it takes.”

  He seemed nervous. I said what I say to a lot of nervous people who need to tell me stories. “Just start at the beginning.”

  He took me literally. “As you know, Kate, Fredrik Ehrmann, a.k.a. Kraut, was found in his cabin on Tuesday, dead of a gunshot wound to the head.”

  I smiled and hoped I didn’t roll my eyes. “Yes, I know. I found him.”

  I’d found him after work. Jake Clemson had said I could hunt his land this doe season, up on the other side of that same hill, and I’d gone up to scout it out.

  Frank reviewed this for me. “You were up there looking at Jake Clemson’s land because he’d said you could hunt there.”

  “Yes. That’s right.”

  “And you heard a gunshot and you walked over to check it out. You saw the door of Kraut’s cabin open and found him in there dead.”

  “I did that, didn’t I?”

  He gave me a look that said stop picking on me so I stopped. He was really nervous about something. I figured it was his wild-eyed wife who might look out the front window any minute and see us. I said “Listen, should we move the car? Go talk somewhere else?”

  “No, we should stay here.”

  “You know what I’m thinking, right? Laurie, windows.”

  “She won’t look.”

  “Busy with Brianna?”

  “Brianna’s at her grandparents’. Laurie told them ‘Keep her all day, I need a break from the little monster.’”

  “Such a mom. Why won’t she look?”

  “She won’t. We can stay. I brought plenty of coffee.”

  “True enough. Okay then. Why don’t you go on?”

  And go on he did. For a while after that I let him; it’s what you do for any jittery witness, just let ’em talk. He went on telling me a hundred things I already knew. I determined I’d let him do it for a while before I pointed it out again.

  - - - FRANK - - -

  So, Kate, you found your first suspect right there on the hill. Cliff Morton, walking toward his car in a sweat, holding a few ginseng plants. His story was that he’d heard American ginseng was bringing a good price and he’d come to hunt some up. When you asked him why he hadn’t taken anything to dig with, he said he’d only scouted for a good patch and was on his way back to his car for the shovel when he ran into you. He was nervous as hell, which you put down to the guy’s lifetime of trouble with cops.

  He had a little blood on the front of him and a smear on his forehead, but he showed you how he’d scratched the daylights out of his right hand wading through blackberries. One cut was pretty deep. You went with him to his car and there was a shovel in there. You offered some iodine and a bandage but he said no and you let him drive off.

  You’d radioed down and two patrolmen came up. They said they’d seen a car going down the hill with Doug Block in it and Doug became another suspect.

  You went in the cabin and looked things over. You took pictures, looked around, dusted for prints. Some cupboard doors were hanging open and drawers out, but there was no sign of a struggle. You looked over the body. Put up some yellow tape and left.

  You went to the two bars Kraut had frequented and you asked questions. Doug Block was a suspect indeed. Kraut was fond of classic cars—had six or seven at his place in Erie—and Doug had just sold him a sweet ’63 Impala that he’d picked up in Pittsburgh. Kraut had taken the car to Erie and then stiffed him for payment. Tried to give him a thir
d of what they’d agreed on. Doug had been grousing about it in Eddie’s Roadhouse that afternoon. Then he’d left the place half-potted and said he was going up the hill to get his money out of the sumbitch. Some guys at Eddie’s tried to stop him. Kraut was not somebody you wanted to mess with on his own turf, they said. But Doug Block said Kraut had shown him a wooden box with fifty grand in cash from his drug dealings in Erie. Block wanted to get up the hill and get his money while it was still there. When he peeled out of the bar’s parking lot somebody said it was a shame the coffin would have to be closed and they wouldn’t be able to mourn his pretty face. Laughed their butts off, but not because they weren’t serious about the danger.

  Your tour of the bars turned up one other person of interest: Gretchen Larson. Kraut’s local squeeze, the one they call Shiny because she might have been that a couple decades back. She was mad as a nest of pissed-on hornets after finding out Kraut kept a girl in Erie. Monday it was the talk of Sleepy’s Tavern how she’d howled about it in there. Of course she was the only one surprised. She hadn’t bothered to ask why he never took her into town, only ever saw her here in Coneyville. Well, maybe she’d asked, but if so she’d settled for the kind of lame answers women seem to put up with in these parts. Okay, other parts too.

  You heard Shiny’s alibi, and figured while it might not bring home the tiara at an alibi pageant, it wouldn’t get laughed offstage either. She’d been in Sleepy’s on Tuesday afternoon, but had left early and almost sober. She’d told people she’d gotten a little money from Kraut and was going to buy a carload of food while she was flush. She’d been seen at the grocery, in fact had bought quite a lot of food. She had no alibi for the exact time of the killing, but it made sense when she said she’d been home. She put away the food and then enjoyed a nice steak and a bottle of wine all by herself. When asked if she’d seen Kraut that day, she said no. She’d been up there the night before and told him he was a scumwaffle and she never wanted to see him again. She said he’d waved some money in her face as a peace offering. She’d told him to commit an unnatural act with himself but took the cash.

  None of her neighbors reported having seen her at home next afternoon. But she was known to keep to herself and keep her drapes closed. Also, one neighbor recalled smelling steak.

  Most people thought Shiny was innocent. In more ways than one, somebody said, and it got a little laugh, even though most people in Coneyville don’t know there’s more than one way to be innocent. Those who discussed the case, which was everybody, were about evenly divided over whether Doug or Cliff had done the deed.

  So, next day, Wednesday, I ran into you in the library. I was there with Brianna for our regular library night…

  - - - KATE - - -

  … and thank God the two poor creatures got one evening a week away from Laurie. After she cut Frank off from the writers’ group, the library was the only place I saw them, except in passing. I made Wednesday my own library night, and Frank and I would say hello and not much more. But I used to find a chair close to the children’s section and listen to him read to her—The Very Hungry Caterpillar. Goodnight, Moon. The Carrot Seed. A Very Special House. He kept his voice down, very polite man, but I could hear. I used to steal glances at Brianna. And I fell in love. Not just with her, but with him too, a little. With the package, I guess.

  I’m supposed to be typing this story but I just sat here for fifteen minutes staring into space. Remembering.

  Okay, back to it.

  They walked by as some people were asking me about the case. I was telling as little as I could. Just what might get people to offer any new information. I had photos the Captain said I could show, and folks were gawking at them. Frank sent Brianna to the kiddie section on her own to pick out books…

  - - - FRANK - - -

  … and I came back to where you were and I looked at the pictures and I listened. And I said the killer couldn’t have been Shiny. People asked why. I pointed out the trajectory of the bullet, where it had entered Ehrmann’s face, where it had come out, and where it had plowed into the door jamb.

  I told everybody “Shiny is tiny. If it had been her, that hole in the jamb would have been a foot or so higher, unless she was standing on something.”

  You already knew that, Kate. But now people latched onto it and repeated it. They wanted Shiny to be innocent. More precisely, they hoped the killer was Doug Block, whom nobody likes. Or Cliff Morton, whose name is loathed as far as it’s known. The only reason he’s never been stoned out of town is that he’s Ken Morton’s nephew. Ken. My father-in-law. Ken is highly respected in town, a good farmer and a good electrician. People take it as somehow acceptable in the grand scheme of things that every once in a while a good family produces a bad apple. Like Cliff Morton…

  - - - KATE - - -

  Or Laurie Duran. Abner Snopes himself crosses the street when he sees either of those two coming.

  That last line was mine. I didn’t say it in the car. Up to that line I was quoting Frank. Nice vocabulary, a little prolix, maybe. But dammit I knew all this, and I had to say something.

  “Frank, do you still want to be a screenwriter?”

  “Yes.”

  “Well, please don’t be offended, but you are writing the worst screenplay in history.”

  “I’m not writing a screenplay.”

  I smiled to show my criticism was only half serious. I was more amused than annoyed. But, yes, annoyed too, a little.

  “Frank, you’ve just done exposition the way everybody in Hollywood says not to. You tell another character what she already knows. For page after page after page. ‘As you know, Mr. Spock, the tribbles are really into reproduction.’ Say, Captain Kirk, if Spock, who knows freaking everything, already knows that, why are you telling him?”

  “More coffee, Kate?”

  “Yes please. I’d also like you to get on with some part of this story I don’t already know. What is it, noon already?”

  I didn’t take my watch out and look at it. Frank poured out a half-cup of coffee, my fourth. If nothing else, my bladder would eventually put an end to this godawful backstory.

  When I took it from him I saw his hand shake. That wasn’t coffee—he hadn’t had much. He was agitated, and talking hadn’t calmed him.

  He put on the bravest face he could, though. When he launched in again he started with, “As you know, Kate…” in an artificial voice that joined in my mockery. We laughed. I was relieved he hadn’t been too offended, and he, well… I don’t know. What the hell was up with him?

  - - - FRANK - - -

  Word got around town that I had “proved” Shiny was clean. It was an exaggeration, and I hadn’t said anything you didn’t know. But I got the credit and word reached my father-in-law. He summoned me to his house Thursday after work and grilled me. I had nothing to say but the bit about the bullet’s path, but Ken said I’d do well to get more involved with the case.

  “Why’s that?” I asked.

  And Ken said, “Because if you could prove Shiny didn’t kill Ehrmann you can prove Doug Block did.”

  “But what if he didn’t?”

  “He did. I just know it.”

  “How do you know?”

  “I know because Cliff didn’t do it.”

  “Well, Dad” I said—Ken insists I call him Dad—“maybe you know more than I do. Maybe you should talk to Kate McFarland.”

  “I don’t know the details. Those are for you to dig up.”

  I suppose I stayed quiet too long, or in some other way suggested I was dubious, and Ken leaned in toward me and said, “Look, Frank. My nephew is not a murderer. Cliff’s mixed-up but he’s no killer. I know it in my bones. So you go out and prove it.”

  “But what if I prove Cliff did do it?”

  “Then you keep your mouth shut.”

  I sat there and thought it out. I was pretty sure I couldn’t go nosing into this without your blessing, Kate. Might even have you right beside me. Which presented two problems. The first being if I spent a minute alone with you Laurie would have a cow and two canaries. She’d already called me at work that day to demand chapter and verse about why I’d talked to you for ten minutes in the library with a crowd around us. And that was after she said I’d tried to get Shiny off the hook because I was sleeping with her. With Shiny. Shiny Larson, dear God help me.