Shred of Evidence

At sixty-two, Orson Roddenberry was now giving occasional thoughts to retirement, but not because he was unhappy with his work as a private investigator. On the contrary, his thirty-seven years at that stint, almost twenty of them with his own company in Southern California, had been satisfying if not exciting. A fan of all TV-PI shows, he enjoyed seeing the myths the public was exposed to when it came to his profession. What a contrast!

Orson had never so much as touched a gun during his entire career. The most serious physical danger he’d ever been close to was when he’d been sideswiped by a drunken driver while on stakeout. Much harm done to the car, none to Orson.

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gunmen

The four gunmen were in a black Chevrolet Suburban. The Suburban had tinted black windows and was parked on Front Street ten meters south of Wahie Lane. The Lahaina, Maui waterfront. One street block from the Molokini Cafe. The waves out to the west looked peaceful in the moonlight, and the four men inside the Suburban watched Rio leap over a knee-high brick wall in front of the Molokini Cafe. They watched him stand stock-still, his eyes hammering over the tabletops. He looked nervous.

One of the men leaned forward from the back seat, rubbed his mouth with the palm of his left hand and said, “That’s him?”

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The second best thing about driving to work this early in the morning was that the DJs still played music. It wasn’t until the commute really began that the radio personalities decided they were the real entertainment, musicians mere filler.

And last but not least, the third best thing about driving to work this early was arriving four hours ahead of everybody else. Half of my work day I didn’t have a single interruption. Then, while my coworkers were deciding to eat lunch at their desk, I was locking my desk drawers and heading home.

It was a pretty good setup if I did say so myself.

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“If you gotta be down,” I said, “might as well be in a place like this.”

My voice seemed to come from far away. The guy on my right raised a shot glass. Flip the barkeep said, “Claro que si.”

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The unknown fate of the little girl missing since ‘93 tore at your heart. How did it happen? I sighed to recount her strange, sad story. She and two pals had played hiding-go-seek one mid-July evening in her parent’s front yard. While one six-year-old, eyes shut, counted to twenty, her two giddy playmates fanned out to disappear. Trouble was the little girl, Nancy Henshaw, hid too well—she’d yet to been found. So, on the search went for Nancy from Quarry, Indiana.

I was only the latest in a string trying to pick up her cold trail.

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I must have asked my uncle about that chest a thousand times. He said it contained the bones of a leprechaun saint, or a pair of nylons once worn by Marilyn Monroe, or the silver lining of a cloud, or the best ham sandwich of 1953, but he never told me the truth. It was a treasure chest, and I was sure it held diamonds or emeralds he had picked up during the war.

And it was mine. I deserved it. Who spotted the cancer on the back of his neck, and sent him to the doctor? Who sent him to the nursing home, and held the bucket when he couldn’t keep anything down? His own children pretended nothing was wrong. My cousin Elizabeth told him he would live forever, and shut her eyes to his approaching death. But I didn’t. I was the only one who was really there for him. The rest of the family came around to play games or sing songs. I was the one who took care of him.

But, dammit, Uncle Rubin liked to jerk me around.

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Stacey Cochran may be reached via stacey@theriver.com and at www.staceycochran.com.

Gerald So is Fiction Editor for The Thrilling Detective Web Site. Read more about his life at http://geraldso.blogspot.com.

Andy Miller’s fiction has appeared in Fortean Bureau, Happy, and elsewhere.