= Negative Identification
  by Laird Long


The Sheriff and I were slinging the shod pretty good when there was a knock on his office door. I peeled my eyes off the tight-sweatered Rita Hayworth hanging from the 1947 calendar and ogled the door instead.

Sheriff Janner pulled the fountain pen he used as a chew-toy out of his mouth and yelled: "Yeah?"

The door creaked open and a cop head filled the crack. It spoke: "Mrs. DeWheeler is here to identify her husband, Sheriff."

"Yeah?"

Janner had used up his entire vocabulary on me.

"She's waiting outside, sir."

"Yeah."

"Mind if I tag along, Ed?" I asked, just for the hell of it.

Janner threw me a quizzical look. "Digging up clients in the morgue now, Charles?"

I shrugged. "Cemetery doesn't open for another couple of hours."

Janner grinned. He pushed his massive bulk out of the tiny wooden chair and made for the door. "Let's go," he said.

Mrs. DeWheeler was sitting on the edge of a narrow bench in the hallway. She stood up as we approached, as if to defend herself. She was almost perfectly round. If you drilled three holes in her head you could have used her to throw a strike. She was solid, though, and her moon face, curly blue hair, and wire-rim glasses bespoke a kindly, grandmother-type.

"Follow me," Janner ordered, with just a small side-dish of sympathy.

We three marched to the morgue downstairs in the basement. A white-coated test tube jockey ushered us into a meat locker and pulled a long drawer out of a stainless steel filing cabinet. A blue man lay at the bottom of the drawer.

Janner put a hand on Mrs. DeWheeler's plump shoulder. "This your husband, ma'am?" he asked, knowing the answer.

Mrs. DeWheeler bent down to take a close look at the icy face. "No," she said.

That wasn't the answer.

Janner's bushy eyebrows struggled to stay rooted to his face. "Um, uh, you sure?"

"Yes," she said, definitively. She turned to leave.

"We-we found your husband's wallet in his overcoat pocket." Janner was getting desperate. "Your husband's birth certificate was in the wallet."

"This man must have stolen the wallet," Mrs. DeWheeler replied matter-of-factly.

Janner wasn't giving up. "You reported your husband missing a week ago, and last night a body shows up with your husband's identification." Janner's face was turning apoplectic now. "If you take another look you-"

"That man is not my husband," Mrs. DeWheeler stated emphatically. The granny routine was fading faster than Billy Conn in the fourteenth versus Louis. "Maybe if you find something out about that man, you'll find something out about my husband. Can I leave?"

"Do you have a picture of your husband, Mrs. DeWheeler?" I asked, politely enough.

She fastened her beady eyes onto me. They flashed anger and contempt. I got the feeling she wasn't going to offer me cookies. "Who are you?" she demanded to know.

I smiled, thanking my lucky stars I had brushed my teeth and cleaned under my fingernails that morning. "I'm Charles Sydney," I said. "I'm a private investigator."

Her piggish nose oscillated with disgust. She stared at the flustered Janner. "Can I leave?" she asked again. She knew the answer.

"I guess you, um, sure," Janner replied. He was staring at the corpse. His mug had a confused and angry expression. There was thinking to do beyond the routine.

I checked in on Janner a week later. He was at his desk sucking on his fountain pen. Time stood still in his office. I wondered if he'd heard that the war was over. And we'd won!

He looked up but didn't get up as I entered the office. He put the fountain pen down. It was even more heavily chewed than last time. There were equal parts saliva and ink in that pen. He pushed a puffy hand through his flaming red buzzcut and groaned in greeting. Then his hands came together on his desk blotter and his thumbs began to twiddle on their own volition.

"Identify the stiff yet?" I asked, taking a chair in front of his desk.

He sighed. He turned red in the face. His jowls began to quiver. I fingered my handkerchief in self-defense.

"No," he said.

"What's the story?"

He twiddled while his face burned, then spoke in his usual truncated English. "DeWheelers live on an isolated farm ten miles outside the city. Moved there a year ago. No relatives. No friends. No one around here has ever seen Mr. DeWheeler. There are no pictures of Mr. DeWheeler. Mrs. DeWheeler reported him missing two weeks ago. Body turns up a week later with his wallet. She says it isn't him. No way to identify body."

I hesitated five seconds to make sure the fact file was closed. Janner stared at me, his big brown eyes crying out: 'Help me!' "Any dental records?" I asked.

Janner's head sunk down between his shoulders like the sun on the British Empire. "No teeth," he bleated.

"How did the guy-"

"Struck on the back of the head with a blunt object. Appears to be about seventy to seventy-five years of age. Good physical shape, if slightly dirty. Fingerprints don't match up with the records."

"Where was he-"

"Body discovered in a ditch alongside a dirt road just off Cedar Street, in the North End. No one lives in the area - just mice in the empty fields. Was an industrial park that went bust. No witnesses."

"Hmm," I said. "Have you tried displaying him in the front window?"

Janner's smile was sick at birth and died in seconds. "Laugh it up," he said. "She was just in here asking if we had found her husband yet." He wagged his head like a dog that has lost the scent and is getting ready to curl his tail between his gams. "Asking if we had found her husband yet," he repeated.

I stuck my pipe in my maw and lit fire to it. "So, either that stiff is Mr. DeWheeler or it isn't. If it is, then Mrs. DeWheeler had something to do with his death and is covering up by refusing to identify the body. If it isn't, then our frosty friend somehow stole DeWheeler's wallet, maybe croaking him in the process, and then later got conked himself. Seems simple enough."

Janner nodded sarcastically. "Where do we start?" he squealed.

"Any money in the wallet?" I asked.

"No."

"Does the stiff match the description Mrs. DeWheeler gave of her husband when she reported him missing?"

"No."

"Was Mr. DeWheeler's life insured?"

"No."

My pipe went out with my ideas. "Are you watching the DeWheeler homestead?"

"Yes."

"Any luck?"

"Sure. The boys are getting fresh-baked muffins and cookies every morning. Gained ten pounds."

I left Janner to stew in his own sweaty juices. I actually had other work to take care of.

A week later, the cops pulled the plug on the DeWheeler surveillance, and the unidentified body was planted in the city cemetery. He had a number, but no name. The police had a case file, but no case.

I had some time on my hands, so I decided to take a late-night jaunt in the country via the DeWheeler place. I got there about ten p.m.. The homestead was a two-story brick house built in the middle of a large dirt field. A small wooden barn stood near the house. I had to park my jalopy on the highway two miles away and leg it through the muddy ditches to keep from being spotted.

When I finally reached the joint, I crept up to the lit kitchen window and peered inside. It was the kitchen all right. Mrs. DeWheeler was preparing a snack of crackers and cheese. There was enough to cheese to build a second moon. She set the vittles on a tray, picked it up, and rolled out of the room.

It was a cold night, and the wind took pleasure in slapping my face with an icy hand. The moon was shining down on me with a cool smile on its pockmarked kisser. I hadn't come all this way and ruined a ten-dollar suit, just to go back empty-handed. I quietly pulled the old cow and horse out of the barn and then watched as they waddled a safe distance into the barren field. Then I set fire to the barn.

The wooden building, packed with dry firewood and hay, exploded in flames like the Hindenburg. The inferno soon lit up the night and the house. Just as I had hoped, a man came running out of the house, made a beeline for the water pump, and started filling a bucket. Mrs. DeWheeler, a shawl coiled around her linebacker shoulders, huddled in the doorway watching the barn-burning.

I yelled at the man's back: "Jan DeWheeler!"

The old coot kept pumping the water. He didn't even turn around. So much for that theory. Mrs. DeWheeler, however, responded to my shout - she charged me like an enraged sow. I ran towards the geezer with the bucket of water, praying that my geometry was kosher and I'd reach him before Granny DeWheeler tore a chunk out of my leg.

I did.

I spun the old guy around, then slipped behind him and wrapped my arm around his neck. He became a human shield. I pulled out my .38 and showed it to the charging DeWheeler. Flames flickered off the nickel-plated barrel. That was good enough to slow Mrs. DeWheeler to a trot. She dug in her heels six feet from me and the old timer and snorted.

"What about Myrtle and Rosie?" the old guy squawked from under my arm.

I had started to worry about Mrs. DeWheeler's sisters, when I remembered the cow and the horse.

"I let them loose in the field," I said.

"Eh?"

"I let them loose in the field!"

"Eh?"

"I let them loose in the field!!!" I screamed.

"Oh," the old guy said. I felt his skinny body relax. "Good."

"He's not wearing his hearing aid," Mrs. DeWheeler said to me.

"Let's take this sideshow indoors," I suggested through a shower of sparks from the burning barn. There wasn't much left of the structure. I had to wave the gun around, however, to get Mrs. DeWheeler to agree with the validity of my statement.

Once we were ensconced in the warm living room, I took a look around. The house was post-Confederate, and the furnishings were turn-of-the-century. Mrs. DeWheeler and her male friend were seated on the threadbare couch, while I occupied an overstuffed chair by the fire. I had put the gun away.

"So, who's the loverboy?" I asked Mrs. DeWheeler, jerking a thumb at the skinny guy with the clod of white hair. I felt stupid even saying it.

The two looked at each other. Mrs. DeWheeler nodded grimly and significantly and then let him do the talking.

"I'm Jan DeWheeler," he said.

My mouth fell open. My theory about these two murdering Mr. DeWheeler so they could be together on his chintzy estate fell onto the hardwood floor and shattered into a thousand pieces.

I shook my head. I stared at Mrs. DeWheeler. "So you really didn't know that stiff in the morgue?"

"I did," she replied.

My head was spinning. Or was it the room? I felt hot and bothered. "But why did you report Jan missing? And who was the guy on the slab?"

Jan grinned like a pumpkin with a candle missing. "I know you can go to the cops whenever you want, Mr. Sydney, so I'm goin' to tell ya." Mrs. DeWheeler closed her eyes and sighed. Jan looked at her, patted her hand, and went on. "I stole me a lot of money from a bank back there in Nevada about a year ago. That dead man you seen was Josh Ambrose, one of my so-called partners. He showed up here to try to blackmail some money outta me. He had gotten his cut of the loot way back when, 'course, but he'd gone and blowed it in a matter of weeks. The Missus and I had hightailed it to this joint after the hold-up. Danged if I know how, but Josh tracked me down and put the pinch on me. He said he was gonna turn me in if I didn't come up with some dough. I told him right then to go to Hades, and we scuffled a bit. He pulled a blade and Audrey knocked him on the crock with an axe handle. She only tapped him, and only in my defense you understand, but he had a soft head and a bum ticker and he done died on the spot. We stashed him in the barn while we figured on what to do, and then Audrey reported me missin' and we tossed Josh in a ditch - where he belonged."

I took a sip of Audrey's tea, but it didn't clear my head any. "Why'd you put your wallet in the guy's pants?"

"So it'd look like Josh stole it from me and maybe killed me to get it," he replied. "As if he could," he snorted. He adjusted his hearing aid with a bony finger.

"That's why Audrey reported that you were missing?"

"Shure. To put a stop to any more blackmail attempts. I had me other partners, you know. 'Sides, Josh has some friends in the city. Friends who might've ID'd him. So Audrey couldn't likely claim it was me in the morgue. We figured that if Josh's friends, and my former partners, got wind of Josh's been dug up with my wallet, and that I was missin', they'd figure that he gone and killed me. That'd put the kibosh on any one else lookin' to put the bing on me. Know what I'm sayin'?"

"I'll need a day or two," I replied. I got up to leave.

"You sure you don't want some cookies, Mr. Sydney?" Audrey asked. She smiled and held out a plate.

I took a couple and left.


LAIRD LONG: weekday numbercruncher, weekend wordsmith. Big guy. Born in the sixties, attitude from the fifties. Previously published in: 'Classic Pulp Fiction', 'Blue Murder', 'HandHeldCrime', 'Plots With Guns', and 'Judas-ezine'.

Copyright (c) 2001 Laird Long