Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine. Vol. 48, No. 1, January 2003

“Yes,” Judy said. “I feel lucky. I... well, I’ve had a chance to apologize to Frank, for one thing. And I know, R. J., that you and Ginny — I’m so glad to meet you, Ginny — have worried over me and worked overtime to figure out what was wrong at Speedway. I care about Speedway. And I met an old friend, too, that I hadn’t seen for years.” She paused, not looking at Sammons, then went on, “But how did you find out how the shoplifting was done? I haven’t even been told that.”

“Ginny figured it out,” I said.

“Not so — not at all. What I said was simply that the thefts were in some way connected to the Christmas shopping season, that some factor was different at Speedway Mall because of it. R. J. discovered what it was.”

“The Christmas Temps,” Judy said.

“Right. I ran into Barb Becker, you see, and in our discussion of Florence Siwinski the Christmas Temps program came up. I tried not to let my mouth fall open too wide when she told me about it, because even though it fit right into Ginny’s theory, that might have just been happenstance. But a little later I saw Barb having a public argument with a young man, and later still Frank pointed out the same young man as one, a new mall employee, and two, a person he suspected of a criminal past. At that point, with absolutely no evidence to support it, I formed the working hypothesis that Barb was being... used emotionally, let’s call it, to manipulate the Christmas Temps program for her boyfriend’s criminal gain.

“In order not to excite suspicion — and also because I had to play the organ at church that evening — I made arrangements with Frank for us to look through the employment records of the Temps at nine thirty, after the mall was closed. I arrived a few minutes early and spotted Cooksey at work hauling the trash barrels from the problem stores, which told me the method used to remove the stolen items. Cooksey spotted me as well, though, and socked me with a mop handle. Luckily, your night loading man saw him do it and chased him away with a forklift before he had a chance to beat my brains in. Frank never did show up, but Ginny came over to help me, and when we found the Temps files, they gave us everything else we needed. I called Jim right away with names and addresses, and he led a sweep to pick off the thieves at their homes. And that’s most of the story. Frank?”

“Must be my turn, eh?” he grumbled. “Okay — I’ll make it brief. That night, just as I’m about to get out of my car by the loading dock to meet Ray, I see Mike Cooksey come running scared out through the dock security door, and he keeps on running, looking back a couple times, till he’s across the outer circle to the employees’ parking area. Then he hops in his car and burns rubber halfway to the north exit. I’m facing north, and my gut instinct says to me, ‘Screw Carr — let him find his own records. I got to follow this punk.’ So I start up and I’m lucky — he comes to his senses once he’s out on the street and keeps his speed down near the limit.

“He drives around in circles for a while, then he gets over to Narragansett and heads north. And he keeps going north, which is okay with me. I expect him to turn off on the Kennedy, but he doesn’t, and when we get up to Devon, he turns east. I end up running a light to keep close, but what the hell, by this time I almost don’t care.

“Anyway, you know how you go about a mile through the forest preserve there on Devon? Well, I’m doing fifty-five to keep his taillights in sight, but then he slows down so quick I have to go by him or blow the tail. But I catch what he’s doing. Just east of the woods there are some commercial buildings before the light by the Northwestern tracks. He turns in and pulls to the back. I get turned around in time to see him coming at me on foot. I pass by, turn around again, and follow him across the tracks, then back through some side streets. Finally he goes in a door on the side of a building. I drive by, and it’s a big auto body shop.

“Then I do a dumb thing. I park, I get my .38 out of the glove compartment, and I walk up to the door and try it. It’s unlocked. I step inside and the place is lit up like Christmas, and it’s full of chopped up cars. The only guy I see, though, is Cooksey — by a phone thirty feet away. He sees me, too, and Jesus God, does he come at me. He’s a wild man. So I put a bullet in his kneecap.

“A couple of ugly guys turn up about then from the front of the building. Cooksey’s done screaming and passed out, so when these guys see the gun and Cooksey, they decide they aren’t quite tough enough, and well — that’s about it. We all got together later and exchanged notes, and what I did was smarter than I knew.”

“You couldn’t have done better, Frank,” said Jim Sammons. “You got Cooksey, with the chop shop as a bonus, and we got the rest.”

“Yes,” said Judy, peering at Sammons. “But did you really have to arrest Barb Becker? It’s not right.”