Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine. Vol. 105, Nos. 3 & 4. Whole Nos. 640 & 641, March 1995

I sipped coffee at McDonald’s until a little after eight, then strolled down Harrington Street with the three albums under my arm. Orange lights glowed from the windows of the little colonials, but number twenty-nine was dark and there was no Toyota sedan in the driveway. I took the key from behind the shutter, unlocked the back door, and went in.

I headed directly upstairs and put the albums back where I found them on Billy Bascomb’s little green desk. I suddenly felt very tired. I sat on Billy’s bed and shone my penlight around his room. It was too neat for a room that a boy actually lived in. I figured Billy’s mother had straightened up everything for the day he came home from the hospital.

I had the urge to leave Billy a note. “I hope you come back to this room,” I wanted to say. “I hope you get to shoot hoops again. I hope these baseball cards fund your college education. I hope you have a long and wonderful life.”

But, of course, I left no note. I switched off my penlight and sat there in the dark for a while, part of me wishing I had a boy of my own, and part of me grateful that I didn’t have to experience what Billy Bascomb’s father was going through. Then I stood up, sighed, and went downstairs.

When I got to the pantry I turned off my penlight. I paused inside the door for a minute, the way I always do, then quietly pulled it open and stepped out onto the back porch.

And that’s when the floodlight suddenly came on and the bullhorn voice said, “Hold it right there. Put your hands behind your head and come down the steps slowly.”

I did as I was told. A pair of cops approached me with their revolvers drawn. One of them cuffed me. “So, Manny,” he said. “How’s it going?”

“Have we met?” I said.

“Your reputation precedes you, tough guy.”

“So what’s the squawk here?” I said. “Reverse larceny? Breaking and exiting?”

“A funny man,” he said. “You got the right to remain silent—”

“Yeah, I know,” I said. “I won’t say anything until I call my lawyer.”

“You better have a good one this time, pal.”

“I do,” I said. “The best. He’s a partner with a big State Street firm.”

The Butcher of Seville by Edward D. Hoch

Edward D. Hoch takes Michael Vlado on a Spanish odyssey this time, where he finds intrigue in the pageantry of Holy Week. Spain is renowned for its festivals; not least of which (from the perspective of crime readers) is Semana Negra — Black Week — funded by the Spanish government and designed to celebrate crime fiction in all its forms...

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In anyplace but Seville it would have been a bizarre sight. Dozens of red-robed figures, wearing conical gold hoods with eyeholes and carrying five-foot-tall candles like shepherds’ staffs, moved slowly in a long single line toward the cathedral. It was Holy Week — Semana Santa — all over Spain and the Christian world, but only in Seville was the pageantry so elaborate. Wearing the colorful costumes of penitents, usually masked, members of fifty-two religious brotherhoods converged on the cathedral where the Spanish cardinal would conduct services. Each of the brotherhoods represented a local church, and each carried a richly bedecked statue marking the passion and death of Christ as they paraded to loud music more martial than sacred.

Now, as the gold-hooded procession came upon another group wearing rich purple hoods, they slowed to let the others past. Eyes went to the heavy golden figure of Christ being scourged, carried on the shoulders of a team of volunteers. “A burdensome task in this heat,” one of the hooded penitents remarked to his companion. “Though well worth the effort.” Enrique did not answer him, and Juan Diaz took the other’s silence as an admonition at this holy time. They continued on for another block, reaching the intersection where the procession made its final turn toward the gaping front doors of the cathedral. His companion whispered something that Juan Diaz didn’t catch. “What? What did you say?” he asked.

As they passed through the cathedral doors Enrique pulled him aside, out of the line, as the others made their way down the center aisle to the assigned seating section. “This way, Juan Diaz!”

He followed Enrique into the shadows as the remaining penitents passed them by. “What is it? Why do you lead me here? My place is with the Lord.”

“You will be with the Lord soon enough,” the figure in red and gold said. “Soon enough.” A hand came out from beneath the robe and then Juan Diaz saw the ugly steel bayonet.

“You are not Enrique! Who are you?”

He felt the blade break through his skin as he wrenched off the other’s conical hood and looked upon the face of his murderer.