Black Cat Weekly #97

Chapter 5-2

Mertz grabbed the ice cream and began eating it himself. “Delicious,” he told his partner. “It’s melted to where it’s that perfect consistency.”

“This isn’t fair!” Creasley cried. “I answered your questions!” His small eyes became piggish as he fixed a death stare at Mertz. “I wish I had had another minute with you before you were rescued. I would’ve scooped you good.”

Mertz interrupted his snack to tell Creasley, “If only wishes were rocky road ice cream, huh?”

Green arranged for Creasley to be taken away and Scott Filken brought in. Tall, scrawny, and shaggy, Filken was physically the opposite of Creasley. He was also far less a pain-in-the-a*s. Without any coaxing he volunteered to tell them what they wanted to know. He insisted he had worked solo, didn’t confide in anyone about his murders, and that nobody suggested his peculiar methodology for killing his victims.

Green was more than just curious when he asked him, “Why’d you kill them that way?”

“It started after I tried buying a blond bimbo a drink, and she told me no thanks,” Filken explained with a wistful smile. “I joked, asking her if I was chopped liver, and she said yeah, that’s exactly what I was. Well, that was the wrong thing to say to me, and I decided to show her which one of us was really chopped liver.”

“This was Amelia Bollington?”

“Yeah.”

Mertz asked, “What about your other victims? Did they all reject you?”

“No, only the first one. But I could tell the others would’ve if given the chance.”

Albie Green asked, “How about my daughter?”

Filken gave a halfhearted shrug. “She was a special case, but to be honest, my heart was never in it with her. Which is probably the only reason your partner was able to save her.”

There was no point in asking the Chopped Liver Killer anything else. Later while they were driving back to the precinct, Green grumbled that they had wasted a day chasing after Mertz’s imaginary mastermind.

“Something funny is going on,” Mertz insisted.

The next morning Green was eating a bagel smeared with cream cheese when Mertz dropped a paperback the size of a doorstop on his desk, the book making a thud when it landed. From the razor smile etched on Mertz’s face, Green could tell something was up. He groaned when he picked up the paperback and saw the title. The Ice-Cream Scoop Killer. Books had come out about all three of the serial killers they had chased over the last two years, all written by the same author. So far Green had refused to look at any of them.

“You bought this piece of trash?” he said.

“You bet I did,” Mertz said. “And I bought the other two as well. I also called the author’s editor this morning. While these books all came out six months after we caught each of the killers, this one was submitted to the editor three weeks after the first murder happened, and the same with the other two.”

Green scowled as he picked up the book and flipped through its 413 pages. He didn’t know how fast someone could write a book, but that seemed like a lot for three weeks.

“I was only able to skim through it,” Mertz said, “but take a look at what I highlighted on page ninety-three.”

Green found the page and his skin color paled as he read what was highlighted, which was a private conversation he and Mertz had had that no one else should’ve known about.

“I never spoke to the author,” Green muttered, dumbfounded. “Could he have bugged us?”

“I don’t know what’s going on,” Mertz said. “I highlighted other stuff where it’s like he’s right in the room with Creasley when he’s killing his victims. He’s giving details we never gave to the press. All I know is we need to talk to this guy.”

Green’s cheeks burned red when he came across a page detailing an intimate moment he had shared with his wife the night after the Ice-Cream Scoop Killer’s second murder.

“Where does this Seltzerberg character live?” he asked in an unnaturally tight voice, referring to Dan Seltzerberg, the author of the serial killer books.

“A suburb of Boston. I got the address.”

“Let’s get plane tickets to Boston then,” Green said. “This joker’s got some explaining to do.”

* * * *

Green and Mertz took a taxi from the airport to the small cape-style home where Seltzerberg lived on a pleasant tree-lined street. It was a little after eight in the evening when they rang the bell, and a petite and very pretty, dark-haired woman answered the door. Green demanded to know whether Dan Seltzerberg was home.

“What’s this about?” the woman asked, flustered.

They heard the clacking noises of someone typing. Mertz flashed his badge and pushed past the woman who he assumed was Seltzerberg’s wife, and Green followed his partner into the house.

They found Seltzerberg in a small room in the back. He was in his fifties, gray unruly hair, with several days of stubble on his face. It wasn’t a good look, especially with him wearing pajamas and a bathrobe. Even with the robe closed, Green could see that Seltzerberg could stand to lose ten pounds. Seltzerberg stopped his typing to give Green and Mertz confused looks.

“Are you Dan Seltzerberg?” Mertz demanded.

The author looked too startled to speak, but he managed to squeak out a yes.

Mertz slammed his copy of The Ice-Cream Scoop Killer on Seltzerberg’s computer desk. “Did you write this?”

Seltzerberg appeared even more confused as he asked, “Do you want it autographed?”

Green said, “A wise ass.”

Seltzerberg’s wife had followed Green and Mertz, and was standing in the doorway, now furious instead of flustered. “Dan, these two jerks forced their way into our house. Should I call the police?”

Mertz growled at her, “We are the police.”

Seltzerberg tried smiling, but it only wobbled without sticking. “What are your names?”

Green said, “Detective Albert Green, LAPD. My partner, Stewart Mertz. As if you didn’t know.”

Seltzerberg looked from Green to Mertz, blinking several times. “Whoever put you up to this did an amazing job,” he said. “Both of you look exactly the way I wrote those characters.”

“No kidding,” Green said. He handed Seltzerberg his badge, and the author looked at it as if it were a joke.

“This looks real,” he said, bemused.

“Because it is,” Green said.

During the flight, Green had skimmed The Chopped Liver Killer while Mertz had done the same with The Fruitcake Killer, and as with the book about Creasley, there were details the author couldn’t possibly have known about unless he had bugged their homes and was in communication with the killers. What particularly irked Green was Seltzerberg knowing about his wife’s secret tattoo.

Mertz demanded, “How’d you know the things you did about us and these killings?”

Seltzerberg bit his thumbnail, his eyes glazing into a faraway look as if he were in a trance. He mumbled something about all he did was write books. “If this isn’t an elaborate prank—”

Green said, “It isn’t.”

“I can’t explain it then,” Seltzerberg said. Embarrassment flushed his face as he became aware of what he was wearing, and he apologized for it. “When I get out of bed, I start writing and don’t shower and dress until I meet my quota for the day, and today’s been a slow day.”

“I don’t care what you’re wearing,” Green said. “I want to know how you knew what you did.”

Seltzerberg looked past Mertz and suggested to his wife that he talk to the officers alone. After she closed the door, he told them that he was writing a thriller series.

“This is all supposed to be fiction, stuff I’m making up. If any of this is actually happening, I can’t explain it.”

Green snorted in exasperation. “You expect us to believe these murders are going on in LA and you don’t know about them?”

Seltzerberg showed his palms in a helpless gesture. “I have to deliver these brick-sized thrillers every six months,” he said. “My life the past two years has been waking up, writing, maybe catching an hour on Netflix, and going to bed. Then the next day doing it all over again. So no, I wasn’t aware of any of this happening.”

Mertz flinched as an odd idea popped into his head. “Did you write a book called The Matzo Ball Killer?”

Seltzerberg smiled in amazement. “I finished that one five days ago. I haven’t shown it to my editor yet. After I type The End, I’ll let a book sit for two weeks before going through an editing pass and sending it over.” His smile weakened as he realized why Mertz had asked him that. “Was there a matzo ball killing?”

“Monday.”

Seltzerberg said, “The day after I typed The End.”

“Who’s the killer in your book?”

“A thirty-two-year-old woman named Rebecca Hauser.”

“Why’s she killing her victims?”

Seltzerberg shrugged halfheartedly. “Not the most original motive,” he said. “She picks out victims who cut in front of her at the deli she goes to. A place I made up called Sam’s on Vine.” He gave Mertz an apologetic smile. “She planned to make you her last victim, but Detective Green saves you in the nick of time.”

Mertz didn’t bother to point out that Sam’s on Vine was real or that there seemed to be a lot of rescuing in the nick of time in Seltzerberg’s books. Instead, he asked, “Why did she want to kill me?”

“You cut in front of her when you went to Sam’s to test their matzo balls. This was after you’d had lunch, and you went back to the register to buy halvah.”

Mertz remembered a pretty redhead giving him the eye when he did that. He had thought it was because she had romantic interest in him. He had even given her his phone number, and he shuddered as he realized her interest was only murderous.

“She’s a redhead,” he said.

“That’s right,” Seltzerberg agreed. “You said the first murder happened Monday? If these murders follow my book’s timeline, the third murder will be happening soon. Five thirty LA time. The third victim’s name is Duane Babcock.”

“Do you have an address for Babcock?”

Seltzerberg squeezed his eyes tight as if he were trying to dredge a stubborn fact from his memory. “I never use specific addresses, for obvious reasons, but give me a minute and I’ll tell you what I can.”

He brought a document up on his computer, and after searching for Babcock, told Mertz and Green that the next victim lived in an apartment in West Hollywood.

Green used his cellphone to call his precinct, telling them to send officers to Duane Babcock’s apartment in West Hollywood and his reason why. He felt foolish doing this, but at eight thirty Boston time he got a call to tell him that the Matzo Ball Killer had been arrested.

Green told Mertz, “Rebecca Hauser had Babcock tied to a chair and was about to pour chicken soup on him when officers broke down the door.”

Mertz turned to Seltzerberg. “You can’t write any more of these books.”

“I’m thinking the same thing,” Seltzerberg said. “But I’ve got to write something to make a living.” He tapped his pursed lips with an index finger and made a long hmm noise. “I could turn this into a romance series,” he said, a brightness lighting his eyes. “There will be danger, but only bad guys getting hurt. Detective Mertz, are you single like I wrote you?”

“Yeah.”

“Do you also work with detectives named Larry Trimble and Caitlin Grant?”

“We do.”

“Does Trimble pine away for Caitlin like he does in my books?”

“He does, although he doesn’t think any of us have been noticing.”

“You can tell him he won’t be pining away much longer, at least as long as this unexplainable phenomenon continues. No longer than six months, anyway. Less if I can write romances faster. One last question, Detective. Your preference, blonde, brunette, or redhead?”

“Blonde,” Mertz said sheepishly.

“Do you write anything other than these thrillers?” Green asked. “If you do, we need to look into those books also.”

Seltzerberg said, “This is a bit ironic under the circumstances, but there’s a Boston PI named Julius Katz, and I’ve been editing transcriptions of his cases that his assistant has been providing me, and I’ve been publishing them in a magazine under a pseudonym. Outside of Boston everyone thinks they’re fiction. I’ve even won several best short story awards for them even though I keep telling the award committees they’re true crime.”

“Maybe you’ll be able to get a good story out of this,” Mertz suggested.

The two detectives bid adieu, and Seltzerberg started working on his new romance series. Four months and three weeks later, which was six weeks after he typed The End for the first book in his series, a package was delivered. Inside was a bottle of expensive bourbon and a note from Mertz thanking him and asking if he could slow down on the romance action a bit in book two, that otherwise Seltzerberg would be wearing him out.

Seltzerberg could sympathize but he had already sent his editor the detailed outline for the second book in this new series and she had approved it. He was now three weeks into the writing, and once he finished it and typed The End, Detective Stewart Mertz was going to be kept extraordinarily busy for the following five weeks, at least if this strange phenomenon continued to follow the timeline of this next book. He did, however, make a note to add to several of the upcoming chapters for Mertz to get Vitamin B shots. That was the best he could do.

Dave Zeltserman lives in the Boston area. His short mystery fiction, which is published frequently in Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine and Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine, has been nominated for numerous awards and has won a Shamus, Derringer, and two Ellery Queen Readers Awards. His crime and horror novels have been named best of the year by NPR, Washington Post, ALA, Booklist, and WBUR. His noir novel, Small Crimes, has been made into a Netflix film starring Nikolaj Coster-Waldau, and his novel The Caretaker of Lorne Field is currently in film development. Look for the k****e release of his horror fantasy crime novel Everybody Lies in Hell this August 23rd.

Ellery Queen’s Mystery MagazineAlfred Hitchcock’s Mystery MagazineWashington PostSmall CrimesThe Caretaker of Lorne FieldEverybody Lies in Hell