"What's your brother up to these days-Bertrand?" Pinero asked, changing tactics. "You talk to him since his release?"

"I talk to that b.u.m like I talk to Lenny and you b.u.ms!"

The detectives exited the flophouse with the exact same thing they'd entered it with-one flimsy cyber link between Lenny Laymon and Matthew Kolvin that would vaporize in the ether of a court of law, without plenty more supporting evidence.

"Maybe we should brace Bertrand?" Pinero suggested, as the two men sat in their unmarked and stared at the constant drizzle. "He knew and hated Lenny, was in on the BRDM job, too."

"Maybe . . ." McGrath mused.

Matthew and Bertrand Kolvin were, in fact, identical twins, but that's where the similarities ended. Matthew was a muscle boy, Bertrand a finesse man an accountant gone bad, writing a ticket to the easy life through cheque kiting, money order doctoring, credit card fraud, and embezzlement. He wore his blond hair long, usually in a ponytail, build: slender.

The two brothers hated each other with a pa.s.sion reserved for only the overly intimate, since their teen years. They'd nonetheless worked together on a number of jobs since graduating from young offenders status, business being business the last one the BRDM job. They'd demanded separate trials, then jails, and been granted both by the accommodating Canadian judicial system.

"But how do we explain Lenny walking into a mall presumably robbing a jewelry store, presumably with Matthew Kolvin's help-eighteen hours after he's supposed to be dead?" McGrath continued.

"Reincarnation?" Pinero suggested. "He picked right up in the new life where he'd left off in the old? Or maybe it was a guy in a Lenny Halloween mask, like bank robbers wear Nixon masks and cheating husbands wear Clinton's?" Pinero laughed.

McGrath didn't. "A mask . . ." he pondered, sucking the last drops of life out of his latte. "Did you happen to notice all that computer equipment in Kolvin's apartment?"

"I noticed. What about it?"

"The mall surveillance system is digital-computer-controlled. I wonder . . ."

"Wish upon a star while you're at it," Pinero growled. "I'm gonna grab me some gym time then sack out."

"Good idea," McGrath said, eyeing a street-corner Sally Ann that served all-night joe. "I think I'll log some sleep myself. Then first thing tomorrow morning, I think I'll consult with a high-placed friend of mine. A friend who sees all, knows a thing or two about subterfuge." He winked a pouchy eye at his partner.

Pinero snorted.

Early next morning, Pinero dropped McGrath off at the Defence Department Building downtown, then proceeded to Lenny's bungalow for another look-see. He lifted the yellow tape, ducked inside the squalid digs.

Everything was just as crummy as before, the dust settled back to where it had lain for the fifty years before Forensics had disturbed things. Pinero went into the bedroom, looked at the dirty clothes strewn on the floor, the unmade, sheet-soiled bed, the battered nightstand with the "barely legal" skin mags on top, the splintered garage sale card table where Lenny's powerful stolen computer had sat.

He walked over to the doorless closet, fingered through the tie-dyed and BC Bud T-shirts, the Manitoba Moose jerseys, getting nothing more out of it than a probable skin rash. Kristal had told the detectives that lover-boy Lenny was nutso over the Moose, a minor league hockey team playing in the frozen tundra of Winnipeg, Manitoba-Lenny's birthplace.

And as Pinero stared at the jerseys, something suddenly tumbled inside his skull. He retraced his steps, to the front door of the rathole, where a Manitoba Moose jacket hung on a hook. He examined the bulky jacket, fingered the sewn on crest a smug-looking cartoon moose holding a hockey stick, a frozen pond in the background. He plucked the jacket off the hook and took it with him.

When Pinero entered the Squad Room he found Sergeant Bugler hanging over one of McGrath's bony shoulders, their eyes glued to something on the computer screen. Pinero admired Bugler's tight, round bottom for a moment, then said, "Found another good Jimmy Neutron site?" He flung his leather jacket over the back of his chair.

Bugler glanced up, annoyed. McGrath's pavement-hued face tinged slightly red.

Pinero took up position behind an unoccupied shoulder.

"The lab technicians have finished stripping Lenny's computer equipment," McGrath told his partner. "They found enough child p.o.r.n to put the Thailand Bureau of Tourism out of business, but look what they found in his webcam history." The detective took a long, suspenseful slurp of fresh-brewed coffee.

"Why would a rat like Lenny even have a webcam?" Pinero asked no one in particular. "To see him is to hate him."

McGrath finally swallowed. "Lenny was technologically armed, like all professional criminals are getting these days." He looked up at Sergeant Bugler meaningfully. "Like all law enforcement officials need to be to keep up with them."

Bugler nodded vaguely, squeezed his shoulder.

McGrath stroked the keyboard, and Lenny's ugly mug popped up on-screen, wispy whiskers framing a buck-toothed mouth. McGrath dragged the bar at the bottom, and Lenny went all fast and jerky. Then his jaundiced face suddenly turned mouse-white, his beady eyes registering panic. McGrath lifted his finger, returning the action to normal speed.

Lenny leaped out of his chair and skittered to the bedroom door. Someone was yelling at him from the hallway: "You put me away and I'm going to put you away, Rat!"

Lenny backed away, paws up and out in supplication, and a face briefly appeared in the shadowy doorway. McGrath froze the picture, cleared away some of the shadow, locked onto and enhanced the face: Bertrand Kolvin, delicate features twisted with rage, ponytail in a knot.

"Hmmm," Pinero commented. "So Bertrand Kolvin threatened Lenny's life. Who hasn't? I heard the Doukhobors even put out a contract on the guy once."

McGrath's brown-toothed grin was a thing of triumph for everyone but the BC Dental a.s.sociation. He restored the full picture, pointed to the timeline at the bottom of the screen. It read: 14 Nov 2005, 21:45:24. He said, "We know Bertrand Kolvin threatened Lenny Laymon on Sunday at 9:45 p.m. Now, let's just see if he followed up on that threat. There's nothing more of interest on the webcam, but remember that high-placed friend I was telling you about? Well, he CSIS's all. Take a gander at this video, and note the time and date again."

Pinero cracked his knuckles. Bugler sighed. McGrath clicked. The computer revealed a black world inhabited by white images, a timeline reading: 16 Nov 2005, 01:47:38 PTZ. The view was from on-high, way high, the white figure emerging out of a parked car a thermal image. The figure crossed a street with the jerky movement of time lapse photography, paused at the door of a house, and then went inside.

"Location?" Pinero asked.

"Two hundred block of Alexander Street," McGrath crowed. "That bungalow," he pointed, "is Lenny's place-right around the time of his death."

"Lenny coming home after a hard day's night of working the back pockets of the bar crowd?" Pinero suggested.

McGrath shook his head, replayed the sequence. "See how the figure dips to the right when he walks? Do you know what that is?"

"A limp," Bugler breathed.

McGrath beamed. "A limp is right. A noticeable limp. Lenny didn't limp. But-"

"Bertrand Kolvin limps," Pinero admitted.

The three police officers watched some more, watched a figure come skulking down the sidewalk, pick something up out of the gutter along the way, slip into Lenny's house at 02:15:52 PTZ-Lenny returning home? Watched the limper exit Lenny's house at 02:30:21 PTZ, get in a car and drive away.

"Like I said before, we should brace Bertrand Kolvin," Pinero stated. Then added, "Too bad none of this is admissible in court, privacy laws and Charters of Rights and Freedoms being what they are."

"It's all strictly on the qt," McGrath agreed. "I have to delete everything in an hour. But . . . the show's not over yet." He pointed and clicked and dragged some more, seemed to replay the scene of the limper exiting a car and entering Lenny's house. Only now the timeline read: 17 Nov 2005, 02:02:13 PTZ. A full day later.

"What!? Why would Kolvin risk returning to the scene the next night?" Bugler asked.

"Good question," McGrath replied, as they watched the limper leave Lenny's death trap at 02:06:37 PTZ.

Bugler straightened up, her back cracking, head shaking. "But if Lenny was actually b.u.mped off by Bertrand Kolvin early Tuesday morning, then how in heck did he partic.i.p.ate in a jewelry store robbery Tuesday night?"

"Another good question," McGrath responded, browning his nose still further. He looked at his partner. "Did anyone think to bring in Lenny's jacket, by any chance?"

"Yeah," Pinero replied, blowing a bubble. "I did just now. It's in the Lab, undergoing intense comparison with some surveillance video."

McGrath nodded, grinned, tried to wash back the rising tide of his excitement with a shot of coffee. "My friends at the Canadian Security Intelligence Service also provided me with some useful information about making faces-false faces."

Bugler glanced at Pinero as McGrath cackled, choked and coughed up some coffee. Pinero just shrugged.

Search warrants were issued, served, and executed on Bertrand Kolvin's sw.a.n.k Port Coquitlam condominium, Matthew Kolvin's downtown dump, that afternoon. McGrath and Pinero happily split up so they could cover both searches, and two hours and ten phone calls later, they felt they had enough evidence to bring the Kolvins in for questioning.

The twins were placed in Interrogation Room 104. It was the first time they'd met since they'd been busted five years earlier, and much like that time, it didn't go well. They attacked one another on sight.

"Sit down and behave yourself!" Pinero commanded, shoving Matthew into a wooden chair, sending him and it skidding into the wall.

The brothers glared at each other, twin faces of hate.

Pinero kicked off the proceedings, talking about Lenny "The Rat" Laymon's fateful tumble in the tub. "It looks like an accident, it smells like an accident a guy taking a shower makes a wrong step and one-and-one-half-gainer later, he's cold as a Coho. Happens all the time, right? No signs of forced entry, violence, lube on the porcelain, nothing incriminating like rat poison lying around." He paused. "But does it sound like an accident? You didn't know Lenny had a hearing aid installed two years ago, did you, Bertrand? Because you were doing five for a crime Lenny stooled you on."

Bertrand folded thin arms across a bony chest, tilted his fine, blonde head up in a haughty manner that would've done the CEO of a Crown Corporation proud. "I didn't know, and I don't care. I'm glad the little rat's dead, but I had nothing to do with it."

"Then how come your face shows up on Lenny's webcam-your voice threatening to do him bodily harm-only a couple of days before the guy's soft head met hard surface in a love embrace?"

"What!? That's preposterous!" Bertrand wailed.

"What!? That's preposterous!" Matthew mimicked, an octave or two higher.

Bertrand lunged at him. Pinero, McGrath, and Bugler wrestled the two siblings apart, planted them firmly back in their chairs again.

McGrath struggled to catch his breath, mop up and strain into a cup his spilled coffee. Then he said, "We have surveillance pictures of a man entering Lenny's house-easily picking his lock-Lenny coming home, the man exiting, right around the time of Lenny's death. A man limping rather badly. That puck to the knee back in junior hockey put a permanent crimp in your stride, didn't it, Bertrand?"

"Thanks to my brother, yes," the man sniffed.

"I was aiming for his b.a.l.l.s," Matthew gritted. "But they were too small a target."

Bertrand ignored him, said to McGrath, "I was home in bed when Lenny died, nowhere near his rat hole."

"And what about the mystery of a man caught on a surveillance camera, entering a mall, eighteen hours after he's supposed to be dead?" Pinero intoned. "How's that possible?"

The Kolvins went stone-faced.

Pinero leaned into Matthew. "You emailed Lenny about a 'job' Meatman. Was it the Zammy Jewelers job at the Centre Mall? A diamond ring was found at Lenny's place a down payment maybe, before the loot was fenced?"

Matthew snorted. "I told you d.i.c.kheads already I had nuthin' to do with that job."

"Funny thing about that surveillance video, though," McGrath interjected, tonguing the rim of his coffee cup. "Detective Pinero noticed something strange about the jacket 'Lenny' was wearing in the video. It's got a Manitoba Moose logo on it the new logo, that is: a stylized angry moose baring its teeth, set against a background of trees."

Pinero held up Lenny's jacket, fingers covering the logo.

"But Lenny hadn't bought the new one yet," McGrath went on. "It only came out in September, just before the start of the season. The jacket we found at his house still has the old logo on it . . ."

Pinero moved his fingers aside.

". . . a smug-looking cartoon moose holding a hockey stick, a frozen pond in the background."

Matthew glanced at Bertrand; Bertrand glanced at Matthew.

"It's like the man in the video knew Lenny wore a Moose jacket, but when he recently purchased one, he unknowingly got a slightly different moose than the one Lenny sported," McGrath said. "It's tough to keep track of all these marketing gimmicks, isn't it?"

"And while I was taking note of Mick E. Moose's facial expression," Pinero clocked in, "Detective McGrath was taking note of the zipper on the jacket the zipper tongue, specifically. It looked wider, shinier than the narrow black one on Lenny's jacket. Reason?" He plucked it out of McGrath's shirt pocket, held it up.

Everyone looked at the glinting tongue, waiting for it to speak.

McGrath interpreted. "We ran it through the Lab. It can be used to mesh metal teeth together alright, but it's also a device used for what's called 'facial provocation'. A device developed by a certain spy agency which shall remain nameless, that can be purchased on the black market or rigged up at home by a real tech expert. A device that when triggered throws up a preprogrammed, made-to-specs image-almost like a hologram, except more realistic. In this case, a preprogrammed image of Lenny Laymon's face, masking the face of the real man who entered that mall and hid in it until after closing, then shut down the Zammy Jewelers security system and the mall security cameras just long enough to rob the store and make his escape."

Gum chewing. Foul, ragged breathing. Twin sets of teeth grinding.

"Someone wanted to pin the robbery on Lenny; someone with technological expertise. Someone who didn't know The Rat was already dead when he was supposedly knocking over a jewelry store."

Pinero said, "I talked to the warden at Stony Mountain, Matthew, asked how you spent your five years. He said you were a royal pain in the a.s.s the first three, until you discovered the computer lab your last two. They had to almost drag you out of there when your sentence was up. Boning up for crime in the new millennium, eh, Matthew?"

A single finger the middle one in the upright and locked position, was the Kolvin response.

Pinero slapped it aside. "And guess who was doing exactly the same thing fourteen hundred miles away in the William Head pen? Your twin brother Bertrand. You guys might hate each other, but you still think alike, like identical twins will."

"You're the one tried to frame me and Lenny for the jewel heist," Matthew snarled at Bertrand, "hacking into his computer and planting that phony email, his ugly mug on your stinking face, that ring at his place!"

"You're the one tried to pin a murder rap on me," Bertrand snarled back, "hacking into Lenny's computer and planting my face in his webcam, your voice-our voice-threatening him, limping around like you were me!"

They launched themselves at one another. Mutually a.s.sured destruction.

Sergeant Bugler walked into the Squad Room. Detectives McGrath and Pinero were at their desks eating, yammering, the crumbs and insults flying. "Well, Bertrand Kolvin just signed his confession to the jewelry robbery," she informed the pair, "admitting to trying to frame his brother and Lenny Laymon for the job. Apparently, he doesn't want to face a possible murder charge."

Pinero stuck a pencil behind his ear, chewed corned beef and said, "Lucky we found that zipper tongue in his condo, along with enough computer equipment to stock a Radio Shack. He tossed the Moose jacket, but I guess the tongue was just too valuable for other jobs and other frames."

"You think Matthew will confess to murdering Lenny?" Bugler asked, hands on her hips.

"Maybe, once we break his alibi. We know where he was the morning Lenny was killed-faking a limp in front of Lenny's house to implicate his brother, just to be on the safe side in case there were any witnesses around. Like ones in the sky that he may or may not know about."

"How do you think he killed Lenny?"

McGrath fielded that one in a spray of coffee cake. "We're guessing he just caught Lenny in the bathroom and overpowered him, slammed his head against the tub, killing him instantly. He worked it out to look like an accident, but he set his brother up to be the fall guy just in case it was ruled foul play. There's no such thing as a perfect crime, after all, Sergeant."

Bugler nodded. "But it was actually Bertrand going into Lenny's house the night after the murder, right? He says so, anyway."

"Right," McGrath confirmed, picking his teeth. "He was planting that diamond ring to really tie Lenny into the jewelry heist. He never even saw the body just heard the water running and a.s.sumed Lenny was taking a shower. That two man limping oddity, along with the 'dead' Lenny going shopping mystery, of course, is what made us realize there was a frame going on-in this case, a double frame."

Bugler gave her head a shake. "Instead of working together, like good twins should, they were working at cross-purposes and didn't even know it."

Pinero nodded, belched. He interlaced his fingers behind his head and propped his feet up on his desk, almost toppled over backwards. "Yup. They were going to fix The Rat for what he did to them-each in their own way so why not kill two jailbirds with one stone by framing each other for their crimes at the same time?"

Bugler let out a sigh. "Well, thank goodness that unlike the Kolvins, you two work so well together."

McGrath spluttered Java. Pinero untangled hands and feet and shot upright. "Huh!?" they gaped.

"So well, in fact," Bugler continued, smiling, "that I've canceled your transfer out of Homicide, Detective Pinero. This is one pairing that's just too valuable to split up."

Death and the Rope Trick John Basye Price The legendary Indian Rope Trick is such an obvious choice for an impossible mystery that I'm surprised it hasn't been used scores of times. In fact, I'm only aware of this one story which in itself has been tucked away in the pages of the London Mystery Magazine for over fifty years and never reprinted.

I have been unable to trace much information about John Basye Price, who was born in 1906. He followed in his father's footsteps in his interest in zoology and was for many years a biologist and science teacher at Leland Stanford University. He published several learned papers on his chosen subject, but just once or twice dabbled with mystery fiction, of which this is a particularly cunning example.