A Tale of Stamps

A Tale of Stamps

D. A. Ratliff

A Detective Elijah Boone Mystery

The letters, stamped and postmarked and bearing no address, arrived in a large manila envelope addressed to me. Detective Elijah Boone, New Orleans Police Department. I stared at the letters where I had dropped them on the desk, wondering what unaddressed envelopes could mean.

I rummaged my desk for gloves and a couple of evidence bags. I carefully slipped the letters and the manila envelope into separate bags, sealed, signed, initialed, dated them, and then headed to forensics.

Carrie Evans was at the intake desk. “What ya got, Detective?”

I tossed the bags to her. “Need these checked for prints and no idea if anything is inside. Put a rush on this, please. I want answers now.”

When I returned to the squad room, the captain waved me into his office. “Boone, what’s this about letters?”

I caught him up on the incident. He barked. “We have a councilman missing, and some idiot is jerking us around with games.” He motioned me to leave.

I stared at the photos. What could these envelopes mean? The stamps were strange, and the postmarks were different. I rubbed my forehead as a headache was building, and I had bigger problems. Councilman Maurice Clumbers had disappeared from his home six days ago—no trace or clues.

Forensic director Dennis Foret arrived just before noon, handing me a report including enlarged photos of the stamps. “Eli, the good news—no foreign substance inside any of the envelopes. No fingerprints or watermarks, and the envelopes are cheap, made of common rag paper, and sold in packets of pastel colors, but I haven’t verified the manufacturer. The stamps appear to be laser printed directly onto the envelope. They don’t match any postal sets we’ve looked at.”

“The postmarks?”

“A quick look says they are old-style postmark stamps, used with ink pads, all different. None in common use today.”

“So, what the heck does this mean?” I waved the photos at him.

“No idea, Eli. Sorry. We’ll analyze the ink on the stamps and the handwriting and ink on the outer envelope. Fingerprints on it all came back to postal employees.”

I thanked him and went to lunch for lack of anything better to do. Returning to the office, I found my partner Hank Guidry had returned from re-interviewing people in the neighborhood. I handed him the forensic file and caught him up on the letters.

We reviewed the latest information he had gathered, and I picked up the photos of the councilman’s home after his disappearance. The house, newly landscaped, had a new koi pond. Something snapped.

I grabbed the photos of the stamps. “Frank, come here.” He joined me. “Look, one envelope has a man walking a dog. And here,” I showed him another photo. “The dog is looking for a bone, the gardener is planting, and there is a fish in a fishbowl.”

“Eli, forensics didn’t dig around the house. Landscapers had finished the day he disappeared.”

“We haven’t released the crime scene yet, so no need for a warrant. Call forensics. I want a team there now.”

When we arrived, an onlooker stood on the sidewalk overlooking the scene—a man walking his dog. He nodded to me. I nodded in return, and he walked on.

Two hours later, forensics found the councilman’s body buried next to the new Koi pond. Five hours later, his wife and her lover confessed to his murder.

A tale of murder well told in stamps.