A Million Places to Hide

by

John H. Dromey

          “Our work is cut out for us,” the medical examiner said, “so to speak. This guy must have been really unpopular. Based on a quick, preliminary count, there are well over a dozen stab wounds in his upper body alone.”

          “Shades of Murder on the Orient Express,” the prison librarian commented.

          “Exactly,” the ME agreed, “except each one of these wounds was inflicted with a different shiv.”

          The warden immediately ordered a thorough search of the prison for the murder weapons, but a shakedown of the cells turned up no bloody instruments of death.

          “How is that possible?” the doctor wondered.

          “I have an idea,” the warden said. “Floodwaters are threatening to break through the levees just outside of town. Thirty convicts left before dawn on a sandbag-filling detail.”

          “Which way did they go?”

          The warden pointed. “That-a-way. What difference does it make?”

          “I’m not a lawyer, but sending them ‘up the river’ might be considered a violation of their civil rights.”

          “They were all volunteers.”

“That’s okay then. So, your theory is that the work detail carried the homemade knives away and disposed of them in the sandbags. Don’t the guards have metal detectors?”

          “Sure they do, but they use them to prevent weapons being smuggled into the prison, not out. I guess we’ll have to rely on DNA evidence.”

          “Good luck with that,” the doctor said. “There are indications that CPR was performed by more than one person. The guilty parties will claim the trace evidence—if any is recovered—proves they were trying to save a life, not take one.”

          “Arrgh. Fifteen men on a dead man’s chest?”

          “Ay, matey. Maybe one of the conspirators will snitch.”

          “And risk becoming the next victim? That’s not very likely to happen,” the warden said. “Any suggestions, Doc?”

          “Yeah. If I were you, Warden, I’d find the second-most-hated inmate, congratulate him on his promotion, and then isolate him from the general population for his own protection. That murder crew may have developed a taste for blood.”

John H. Dromey was born in northeast Missouri. In the past he had a byline (for brief, humorous items) in more than one-hundred different newspapers and magazines. His short fiction has appeared in Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine, Gumshoe Review, The Literary Hatchet, Mysterical-E, Woman’s World (a mini-mystery), Thrillers, Killers ’n’ Chillers, and elsewhere, as well as in a number of anthologies.