Wicked Deeds

“Well, Monica is convinced her husband was murdered,” Vickie said.

“And she’s probably right,” Griffin murmured.

“Sorry!” Carl Morris called, his voice deep, rich, loud—and extending to the different officers and detectives in the room. “Answer all calls—do your best to sort the wheat from the chaff.”

“You’re going to love this one, Detective!” an officer called out, holding up one of the police station’s yellow crime-tip forms. “The Martians are here. They learned how to beam people places by watching Star Trek reruns for hours and hours. They killed him because they had to suck out his brain.”

Morris waved a hand in the air. There wasn’t much laughter. There were far more sighs.

Morris motioned to Vickie and Griffin. They followed him into his office.

There was a monitor screen at the side of his desk. Morris picked up a remote control and hit it. “Maybe you can see something I missed. I’ve gone over the digital video or whatever the hell it is from the front-door cameras a zillion times.”

Nothing happened on the screen. Morris swore softly. “Hang on,” he told them. “I have to go find a kid.”

The kid—Officer Benedict, who appeared to be about twenty-five—hurried in after Morris stood at the door and yelled out.

“Here, sir!” Benedict said to Morris, glancing at Griffin and Vickie with a grimace. “This, sir, turns it on. Then just hit this arrow, and it will play. The arrow is Play. But the device must be powered on.”

“I got it this time, I got it!” Morris said. “Hey, these things are new. We just got them in a week or so ago. Thanks, Benedict.”

“Yes, sir,” Benedict said.

“Stay, will you? These special agents might want the footage slowed down.”

There was only one real agent there at the moment—Griffin. But he didn’t say anything and Vickie kept quiet as well.

“We have footage from the opening at eleven o’clock all the way through the night,” Benedict explained. “So, it would take hours to watch it all.”

“Go ahead, start at the beginning,” Griffin told him. “I’ll have you speed it up—but please, Detective Morris, Officer Benedict, please let us know if you see someone coming or going that we should know about.”

“Of course,” Morris told them.

They began to watch the footage. They saw Gary Frampton, the owner, opening the door and looking out on the day, then closing it again. His daughter, Alice, arrived. A small cluster of men and women who’d been identified as kitchen staff showed up. Then later, Lacey Shaw, the Poe lover/gift shop manager, and then their waiter from the night before, whose full name was Jon Skye. More staff ambled on in. Then came the customers.

“There! Stop it. Back up a bit!” Morris told Benedict.

The young officer did as he was told. Morris leaned in to the screen, pointing at people as he said, “There. Naturally there is a major Poe literary society here, a national Poe society and others. Among them is one actually called the Blackbird Society, and they’re dedicated to all things Poe. Franklin Verne belonged nominally to a number of societies, and among them was the Blackbird Society. That woman there, Liza Harcourt, is the president. The man at her side is Alistair Malcolm, vice president of the society, and with them is...” He paused, staring at the screen.

“That’s Brent Whaley,” Office Benedict said. “Another writer. He’s probably best known in science fiction circles, but he loves horror and Poe. Oh, and he belongs to several societies, the Poe one here, and also an H. P. Lovecraft one up somewhere in the northeast, probably Rhode Island, where Lovecraft was from and where he’s buried.”

They all looked curiously at Officer Benedict.

“You have great information,” Griffin told him.

Benedict flushed and shrugged. “My parents are kind of armchair members. They pay their dues and they love to read all the different stories and articles that go out. They’re just kind of homebodies.”

“They all went in together,” Morris noted. “I’ve met Liza and Malcolm, just not Brent Whaley.”

“Well, they must be friends. They’re society friends, at least,” Benedict said.

Other diners came and went. Benedict sped up the recording, and people on the screen began to look like little ants.

Liza left the restaurant at about three thirty in the afternoon.

Malcolm left a few minutes later.

Brent Whaley didn’t seem to leave.

“Take it all the way to the next morning,” Griffin asked.

They watched as the evening diners—including Vickie and Griffin themselves—came and went. They watched as the staff left, including their waiter, Jon Skye, gift-store maven Lacey Shaw and finally Alice Frampton with her father, Gary. Then nothing. Just a few late-night stragglers walking past, but the front door didn’t open again, and the time stamp on the video rolled into the next day.

“Did you see Brent Whaley leave?” Griffin asked, looking at the others.

“Let me run the footage back,” Benedict said.

Morris pointed at the screen when a large group was leaving together. “Is that Whaley there? I think it’s the same man—the top of his head appears to be the same. But maybe not.”

“You have to be right,” Benedict said. “Yeah, that has to be him. He’s just surrounded by that big crowd—looks like it was a rehearsal dinner for a wedding. Guess Brent got into the middle of it.”

“Maybe—or maybe not,” Griffin murmured.

“We’ll find out. Because if he was still in the restaurant... I guess we’ll pick up Brent Whaley. If he tells us he walked out in a crowd...we’ll know for sure. But even with the cameras, there are things that can be missed. And there is the delivery door... Oh, we’ll be really nice. We’ll ask for help from him,” Morris said wearily. He shook his head. “Would one writer kill another? Out of jealousy, anger or a perceived insult?”

Griffin looked at Vickie. “I don’t think it involved writers, but... ‘The Cask of Amontillado,’” he said.

“Oh, yeah, man! I read that one,” Office Benedict said, enthused. “So cold! So precise... But our victim wasn’t walled in.”

“Poe liked to wall people in, huh?” Morris asked, shaking his head. “‘The Black Cat.’ He liked burying people alive, too. ‘The Premature Burial’—and others, I’m sure.”

“Everyone is a Poe expert,” Griffin murmured, looking at Vickie a little bit baffled. She had to smile. “Detective, Mrs. Verne said that you took her husband’s desktop computer. Have you been able to find anything on it, any references to him planning to meet up with anyone—anything at all?”

“Our tech people are on it—and they’re good,” Morris assured him.

“I’m sure they are,” Griffin said. “We’ll be in touch then,” he said. “Will you let me know if you’re able to find Brent Whaley?”

When they left a few minutes later, Vickie whispered to Griffin, “That really was a great rendition of ‘The Raven’ you gave earlier.”

He laughed, squeezing her hand and smiling at her. “Yeah? Well...”

He looked away. Something was bothering him, she thought. “My turn,” she said. “What? What’s going on?”

“I saw him.”

“Him—who?”

“Him—Poe. Edgar Allan. He was at the burial ground.”