Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine. Vol. 133, Nos. 3 & 4. Whole Nos. 811 & 812, March/April 2009

By evening she was calm enough to go to dinner with me at a beachfront restaurant. After the meal, she wanted to walk on the beach. The last hemorrhage of twilight lay off the horizon, and screeching gulls soared on the currents of salt air blowing off the surf in the cool dusk. Karen had already slipped off her heels, and now she unpinned the gleaming coil of blond hair behind her neck and shook it loose.

We strolled in the windy silence, lulled by the beat of the surf. A few low dunes, planted in sea oats, vaulted back from the beach. Later, Karen stopped walking, her head bent so that shadows blotted out her features. Then she glanced up in the blue darkness, eyes ablaze, and a domineering smile curled into her lips. Wordlessly, she slid her arms around my neck and ground her mouth viciously against mine. The kiss overheated swiftly on some erotic compulsion. I dragged her arms away, staring at her upturned face in the shadows. It was a stranger’s face, and I said, “Karen?”

“Don’t call me Karen,” she cried. “Karen’s a weak, inhibited fool who plays with dolls. I only let her come out when I feel like it. I’m Eva.”

The combustible heat in the violent eyes was as turbulent as the Atlantic swells flaring in against the coast behind her, and at that moment I had the whole psychiatric picture.

“Why did you attack Sara Jane?”

She twisted her wrists out of my grasp and flung back an antagonistic laugh.

“I warned her. She’s been interfering in our lives for a long time. Trying to come alive. Trying to take my place. Karen would have let her. So I cut her throat and let her drown.”

The contorted smile on her mouth was crazy enough for three people, maybe more. Probably the nightclub performer with the bawdy act was one of them. In my practice, I’d diagnosed only one patient with dissociative identity disorder — multiple personality — though it was a condition criminals often tried to fake. I knew she wasn’t faking.

It took some doing to coax her back to the car, and by the time we returned to the hotel, she’d let Karen come out to say goodnight.

“Thank you for staying with me today,” she murmured, holding out a chaste hand. “I’ll be all right.”

But walking back to my room, I knew she wouldn’t be all right. There was some suicidal ideation in her fragmented personality, along with a lot of anger, and quiet terror in the form of a stalker trapped in her mind.

In the suite, I called the desk and asked for the nearest crisis intervention center.

Desert and Swamp by James H. Cobb

James H. Cobb’s latest novel (from Grand Central Publishing, January 2009) forms part of a series that several thriller writers have contributed to, based on a concept of the late Robert Ludlum’s. Entitled Robert Ludlum’s (TM) The Infinity Affair, the novel centers on a crashed Soviet aircraft from the 1950s, discovered in the Arctic. For EQMM, Mr. Cobb puts on a very different hat, continuing his series of hot-rodder puzzle mysteries featuring the likeable Kevin Pulaski.

* * *

I was wandering around a swap meet with my friend and hot-rodding sage, Kevin Pulaski. As we poked around the displays of intriguing, obsolescent automotive junk, the topic turned to things that aren’t there anymore.

“There’s some things from the Fifties that I wish were still around,” the former L.A. County deputy said, “like Exner body designs and real chrome. But there’s a bunch of other stuff, like bias-ply tires, that’re no great loss to anybody.”

He paused before a tarp spread with old car parts. Among them was an odd-looking rusty cylinder with a set of mounting brackets and a louvered vent on its side. He tapped it with the toe of his boot and a reminiscent gleam came to his eye. “Yeah, my man, there are some things I definitely don’t miss.”