When Eric Valence was ten years old, he read all of the Sherlock Holmes books. He walked around in an imaginary world fancying himself Dr. Watson and carrying on intricate conversations with the great detective. In high school he fell in love with Agatha Christie. He read all of her more than eighty murder mysteries word for word, and in over half of them he figured out who the villain was before the master herself revealed the truth.
After graduating from high school, he had his heart set on becoming a hotshot homicide detective. The problem was he’d had serious ear infections as a child, and as a result he was totally deaf in his right ear and had only fifty percent normal hearing in his left. Half a working ear was plenty to keep him from being seriously handicapped. He could enjoy movies and talk comfortably on the phone, as long as the other person spoke directly into the mouthpiece. Unfortunately he couldn’t pass the physical to enter the police academy. He had tried three times and had even attempted unsuccessfully to bribe the administering physician. But the men in blue didn’t want him, and it was difficult to study by himself to be a competent private eye. He’d planned to become a PI after he had honed his skills on the force. Not that he had given up on his dream. He would be a PI someday. It was just going to take longer than he hoped.
Eric had an uncle who was a cop with the LAPD—Sergeant John Valence. The man was neither a detective nor much of a police officer. He was basically a nice fat guy who had passed a civil service exam when he was twenty-four years old and out of work. Uncle John had driven around in a black-and-white for a few years and eventually found himself where he really belonged, behind a desk pushing papers and talking about all the great crimes other men had solved. Surprisingly, though, the man had done a brief stint with the homicide department, and the stories he could tell were wonderful. All the bodies and the coroners’ reports and the smoking pistols—they made Eric’s trigger finger twitch just to listen to the man.
But even better than all the talk was the fact that in his position as desk sergeant at the West Covina branch of the LAPD Eric’s uncle had access to the computers where the files of literally hundreds of unsolved murders were stored. In a weak moment Eric’s uncle had given him the secret codes that tapped into the files, a serious sharing of confidences because there existed tons of information in the files that had never been made known to the public. From that moment on, Eric was in heaven. He would drive to the station from night classes at Claremont College—Eric was majoring in computer science, which he felt was the future for detective work—chat with his uncle for a few minutes, then plug himself into a terminal at the back of the station. Some nights Eric stayed at the terminal until the sun came up and the morning crew came on. People had done so many horrible things to each other in L.A. over the past twenty years—it was wonderful.
Eric Valence was on such a late-night vigil with the police computer when he came across the file on the late Neil Hurly. Eric almost skipped over it. The file didn’t appear to be that of an unsolved murder case. But a sentence did catch his eye. One from the county coroner. Apparently this Neil—he was only eighteen at the time of his death—had perished in a fire in his home. His body had been so badly burned that identification of his remains had been difficult. The situation had been further complicated by the fact that there were no current dental records available on Neil. In summary, the coroner wrote that an emerald ring on the victim’s left hand had been used to substantiate that it was Neil Hurly who had gone up in smoke. The matter was further verified by the mother’s testimony that her son had been sleeping alone at home when the fire broke out. In other words, case closed.
The thing that got Eric about the report was that it had been an emerald ring that had gone through the fire. Eric was no expert when it came to jewelry, but it just so happened that the year before he had been seriously involved with a girl named Meryl Runion, who had an expensive appetite for emeralds. Naturally, because he thought he was in love at the time, and because Meryl twisted his arm about the matter, he tried to buy her an emerald ring for her birthday. Being a practical man on a limited budget, however, he did a little research before making his purchase. One of the things he discovered about emeralds was that they did not make good stones to set in rings. They were soft, and they chipped easily. An expensive emerald could be ruined just by forgetting to remove it before washing the dishes. Eric decided that he should buy Meryl an emerald set in a necklace or a bracelet. But then Meryl met this young lawyer who drove a red Porsche and forgot to return his calls. Eric didn’t buy her anything.
Eric was instantly suspicious of the identification of Neil Hurly’s remains. If Neil Hurly had been wearing an emerald while lying in a burning house, the emerald should have been destroyed. Yet the coroner’s note indicated the emerald had survived the fire intact. How many coroners knew of the softness of an emerald? Eric was only familiar with the gem’s fragile nature by chance. It made him wonder if the ring had been placed on the body’s hand after the fire. If that was so, it raised an even more startling question.
Was it Neil Hurly who had died in the fire?
The file contained X-rays of what was left of Neil’s skull and teeth. As stated, the X-rays had done the coroner no good because he had no dental records for comparison. Eric doubted that the man had tried hard to find records. Why should he? The mom was probably right down the hall saying, “That’s my son who died, I know it.” Eric studied Neil’s history. He had moved to Los Angeles from Canyon, Arkansas, at the age of fourteen. Canyon was listed as Neil’s place of birth. In all those fourteen years Neil must have gone to the dentist at least once.
Eric sat back from the terminal. He had no idea where Canyon was in Arkansas. It was probably a small town, and that fact should help him. He didn’t waste time speculating on the matter. He looked up the area code for Arkansas—it had only one. Then he called Information there. Canyon was tiny. All told, the information assistant gave him a list of three dentists, and two of those were a husband and wife team who shared an office. Eric jotted the numbers down on a notepad. He was already opening his own file on Neil Hurly. There was something not quite right—he could sense it. “Something’s afoot,” as Holmes might have said to Watson.
Eric was not able to call the dentists until morning. He did so from his apartment identifying himself as an assistant coroner with the LAPD. The lie went over well because he was able to use his uncle as a reference, calling him the officer in charge of the case. Eric had yet to tell his uncle what he was doing, but he doubted that the dentists would check. As it turned out the couple had no Neil Hurly in their files. But the secretary of the third guy, Dr. Krane, remembered the Hurlys well. She sounded about eighty years old but very bright.
“Of course I knew Neil,” she said. “He was such a sweet young man. They moved to Los Angeles when Neil was about to enter high school. Would it be all right to ask why you need his X-rays?”
It was clear the woman knew nothing about Neil’s supposed death. Eric made his voice sound older. “I’m afraid, madam, we have reason to believe that Neil Hurly has been the victim of a fire at his house. There are few remains, and we need the X-rays to make a positive identification.”
The woman sounded distressed. “That’s horrible. Was the mother killed as well?”
Eric didn’t want to complicate the matter by having the mother alive. It was always possible Dr. Krane’s secretary would want a permission note from the mother before releasing the X-rays.
“I’m afraid she perished in the fire,” Eric said, feeling like a jerk.
“That’s so sad,” the woman replied. “Do you think it was an accident?”
“The case is still open.” Eric cleared his throat. “Could you please mail the X-rays overnight express to the following address? It would be much appreciated.”
“Of course.” He could hear her reaching for a pen. “I’m ready.”
Eric gave her the address of the West Covina police station in care of Sergeant John Valence. Then he got off the phone quickly. His heart was pounding, but he was feeling good.
· · ·
He walked into the station the next evening beside his uncle. John was surprised when Eric snapped the overnight mail envelope out of his box before he could go through it.
“What are you up to?” his uncle asked with a twinkle in his eye. At the station Christmas party Sergeant Valence was always the first choice to play Santa Claus. There was a jolliness about him that Eric found endearing.
“I’ll tell you when I know something exciting,” Eric promised.
His uncle shook his head. “Just don’t get me in trouble. I have only a year before my pension.”
Eric hurried back to the computer and compared the dentist’s X-rays to those of the coroner. The coroner’s photographs of his X-rays did not have the high-quality resolution of the dentist’s X-rays, but it didn’t matter. Eric was no specialist, but even he could see at a glance that the X-rays were from two different people. Neil had had a series of fillings on the lower right side of his mouth when he was thirteen. The guy who had burned to death in Neil’s house had no fillings on that side.
Neil Hurly had not burned to death in the Hurly home. But someone had wanted it to look as if he had.
Who?
The questions of an unfolding mystery. Eric was bursting with excitement. This was better than sex with Meryl Runion. Well, he wouldn’t know that for sure. They had actually never done it. But it was better than making out with her. Meryl had always had bad breath.
Eric went in search of Mrs. Hurly’s new address. He couldn’t find it. She wasn’t in the phone book. But he did have her old address, the place where the house had burned to the ground. If he went to the neighborhood and asked around, he should be able to find out where she was living. He had already decided that when he got her new address, he’d drop by the house rather than call her. He’d show the woman the evidence and see how she reacted. For all he knew, she might have been the one who set the whole thing up.
Eric briefly wondered if Neil would answer the door.