Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine. Vol. 101, Nos. 3 & 4. Whole Nos. 610 & 611, March 1993

If Mac had been right, and Shannon had proved to be a McCauley, Katherine would have had a formidable competitor for Charles’s unavailable love. Mary Jane would have known if Mac was right.

So, Why? Two reasons, really.

Silence Mary Jane, and no rival sister.

Kill Mary Jane, and avenge the original betrayal, the original rejection, that had propelled her from the comforting hug of her unskilled but affectionate foster-mother to the cool efficient accounting world of her newly acquired father. Mary Jane had given her up.

Both barrels.

Katherine had quieted. She heaved a deep, ragged sigh, didn’t move or look up as outside, sirens dying, two cop cars pulled into the driveway.

File Number Eight by Avram Davidson

As those of you who were with us in 1991 for the reprinting of the Golden Thirteen will know, an Avram Davidson story was one of the thirteen winners of the worldwide short-story contests EQMM ran between 1945 and 1956 and resumed for one year in 1961. Mr. Davidson is also a recipient of an Edgar Allan Poe Award from the Mystery Writers of America and a Hugo award from the World Science Fiction Convention. From his home in Washington state, he continues to be active in both the mystery and science fiction fields, often writing pieces like the following, to which you’ll have to give a little thought...

* * *

The sign on the door said FINGERPRINTS.

Captain Luper was standing in the doorway.

The files were kept next door nowadays, in the Annex, but old Luper of course wouldn’t move and so they had to come over and check routine matters out with him.

It had been Captain Luper’s habit, as far back as anyone was able to remember, that he would stand in his doorway and ask of the world at large, “Any coffee?” The Police Officers’ Association had been known to receive complaints such as that it was not a police officer’s duty to be at some higher-up’s beck and call: but, always, someone went and got the coffee.

And now here came Sergeant Novak with one of the new men on the force. “Captain Luper.” Luper didn’t look at him. After a minute he said, “Yeah, whaddaya want?” His eyes were like oysters.

“Captain, this is Kovacs, Jerome T. for Theodore, one of the new—”

Luper turned and walked back into his office. Sitting next to the desk with the paper folded was Old Tim Flint, retired, but always coming back. Luper said, “Who you got in the third?” Tim said he liked Ranger. Luper snorted. “Ranger, Ranger. That palooka.”

“Yeah. But look who he’s racin’ against.”

Luper said, “Whaddaya want, Novak? — Kovac, Novak,” he said, pronouncing the names the same. “All the bohunks in the state tryin’ ta get on the force. What’s a matter, the coal mines close?”

Novak gave a polite little laugh. Kovacs said, “Excuse me, Captain, it’s pronounced Ko-votch.”

This time Luper looked at him. For a long while. Then he said, “You want it pronounced Ko-votch, you spell it Ko-votch. Whaddaya want—”

Novak said, very quickly, “Well. Homicide? Om. This old woman? Mrs. Fisher? Found D.O.A. in her home, 33-A Lombardy? Multiple contusions, lacerations, and—” He stopped. Luper was looking at him.

“He thinks I don’t read the reports,” Luper said.

“Oh I know you read the reports, Captain, it’s the—”

Old Tim said, “Look who he’s racin’ against. Corvette and Stamina. Corvette, I lost five on him before I retire, even. Ready for the glue factory. And Stamina, STAMina, for cry-sake, is a mudpuppy. You see any rain today, Lupe?”

Luper said, “Aaa.” He cleared his sinuses and spat in the spittoon.

“Well, they, uh, Homicide didn’t turn up nothing. Or nobody. So, om, Captain Blaine, he thinks—”

“Captain Blaine thinks. Last time Captain Blaine had a thought he took an aspirin and it went away.” Sergeant and new man didn’t say a word. Flint sighed, coughed, scratched his armpit, shook his head, shook his folded paper.

“Stamina,” Tim Flint said. “Corvette.”

In the silence a buzzing was heard. A fly thudded against the window.

“All right. The File Number Eight, then, right?”

“Right, Captain.” Novak looked slightly relieved. “They all been checked out, Captain. And, om—”

“And?”

Somewhere downstairs a drunk began a loud litany of curses. There was a slight sound. The noise stopped.