“Mr. Boatwright? I’m Judy Keszler, from Channel Ten.”

            “I know who you are, Miss Keszler.”

            She lifted her chin and studied him a moment. “This had better be good, you know.”

            He smiled. “Won’t you come in?”

            The living room was small but neat, with books and plants and family photographs covering every flat surface. The air smelled of Pine-Sol. On the far side of the room an elderly woman sat in a blanketed wheelchair, her eyes closed in sleep.

            “My wife,” Boatwright said. “Multiple sclerosis.”

            Judy Keszler gave the old lady an impatient glance.

            “We can talk in the back yard,” he said. He led Keszler through the house and out the back door. A long metal swing and a lawn chair stood near the center of a fenced lot. Boatwright waved a hand toward the swing, waited while she was seated, and picked up the folding chair. He took his time positioning it, then sat down and faced his guest.

            Just as she was opening her mouth to speak, he took a small device from his pocket and pointed it at the back fence. A hidden sprinkler system began peppering the long flowerbed that bordered the rear of the property.

            Judy Keszler raised one eyebrow.

            He shrugged. “I’m a scientist. It’s my hobby as well as my profession. In addition to this”—he tipped his head toward the hissing sprinkler—“I’m working on a wristwatch roadmap system for motorists, a portable air-conditioning unit, a pocketsized device for the filtering of secondhand smoke—”

            “Mr. Boatwright,” she said, “this is not what I came here to discuss.”

            For a moment he studied the remote control, turning it over and over in his hands. “I wasn’t sure you would come at all.”

            “I started not to. I mean, all this mumbojumbo about keeping everything secret and taking the bus and not bringing anyone with me . . .” She picked a speck of lint off her skirt. “Rather strange requests, don’t you think?”

            “So why did you come?”

            “Three reasons. One, you sounded fairly safe, on the phone. Two, even if you’re not, I carry a gun in my purse, and I know how to use it. And three, I couldn’t resist the chance—the chance, mind you—that you might actually have some worthwhile information about this case.”

            The old man nodded. “Tell me, Miss Keszler—”

            “Ms.”

            “Tell me, are you always this . . . abrupt?’

            She gave him a cold stare. “What I am, is a professional. I have no time for pleasantries.” She shifted position in the swing. “And I’m not looking for anyone’s approval.”

            “What are you looking for?”

            She seemed to consider that. “Illumination,” she said.

            He smiled again. “Illumination?”

            “That’s right.”

            “By camera lights, I suppose.” He leaned back in the lawn chair, watching her. “Or should I say limelight?”

            “I am referring, as I think you know, to the constant quest for answers, and knowledge, and enlightenment. But in my case, yes, it has led me to my share of the limelight.”

            “Has it also led you to harass the relatives of innocent victims?”

            “What do you mean?”

            “I saw your report last night. On the freeway accident.”

            She glared at him. “And?”

            “I saw you ask a woman how she felt about the fact that her child was decapitated. How can you do such a thing?”

            A silence passed. Her dark eyes glittered like chips of coal.

            “You’re pretty abrupt yourself, you know.”

            He sighed. “Frankly, Ms. Keszler, there are two types of people I have no respect for. TV news reporters are one of them.”

            “And is that supposed to bother me?”

            “Not at all. I just wanted you to know. In the interest of—”

            “Illumination?”

            He smiled.

            Judy Keszler leaned forward, unsmiling, her elbows resting on her gleamingly stockinged knees. “Let me give you some advice. There are hundreds of reporters in this city. There’s only one of you. Save your breath.” She raised up again, her face flushed. “And just for the record—was there any truth at all in what you told me on the phone?”

            He frowned. “What?”

            “I came here for information, Mr. Boatwright. Remember? You said you knew something about the two missing journalists.”

            “The missing TV reporters,” he said. “Not journalists.”

            “Do you know something about them?”

            “Of course I do. I know why they’re missing.”

            The words seemed to linger there in the sudden silence. Slowly, without taking her eyes off his face, Judy Keszler removed a notepad from her purse, flipped it open, and uncapped a pen.

            “Then tell me,” she said, “why they’re missing.”

            “They disappeared,” he answered.

            Her face darkened. “I know that. I want to know why they dis—”

            “I don’t mean they disappeared in the usual sense. I mean they vanished.”

            She narrowed her eyes. “What?’

            “I’ve studied that kind of phenomenon, you see. Under certain conditions, light that has been focused and reflected through a perfect convex prism in a unique way can cause what appears to be a deterioration—a vaporization, almost—of the basic materials that make up—”

            “In plain English,” she said.

            He shrugged. “They vanished. Poof. Body, clothes, shoes, everything but the rings on their fingers. One minute they’re here, the next they’re not.”

            She sat and stared at him, her notebook and pen apparently forgotten in her hands.

            “Abra,” he said, “cadabra.”

            Her features hardened. “And this is what you said would be ‘exclusive information’ for Channel Ten News?”

            “That’s about it, yes.” His voice had turned bored and distracted. It was a warm, clear day; he tilted his face skyward, squinting at the progress of the sun across the heavens.

            She watched him a minute longer, then snorted. “You’re a fool, Boatwright. And you’ve wasted enough of my time.”

            She replaced her pen and notepad, and started to rise.

            “Just a moment.” Still staring up at the sky, he raised the remote control and aimed it over his shoulder at the house. With his other hand he again repositioned his lawn chair. “I want to show you something,” he said, and pressed a button. Behind him, in a sunlit window on the upper floor of the house, a tall mirrorlike device began to glow like a hot ember. A high-pitched whine filled the air. A second later, a beam of reflected white light passed within a foot of Boatwright’s left shoulder and lit up the swing and the woman sitting in it.

            For an instant she sat frozen in the eerie spotlight, her mouth open in wonder. Then she was gone.

            Once again, he pressed the button on the remote. The device in the window went silent and dark. The beam winked out.

            The empty swing moved slightly in the breeze. Scattered in its curved metal seat were a pair of earrings, a wristwatch, a keychain, a small black revolver, and a single gold filling from a tooth. The old man gathered them up and dropped them into a plastic bag he had taken from his pocket.

            The air smelled faintly of ozone.

            As he walked back to the house, Boatwright thought of something Keszler had said earlier:

            There are hundreds of reporters in this city.

            She was probably right, he decided.

            It was time to move on to lawyers . . .

THE END

John M. Floyd’s work has appeared in more than 350 different publications, including Alfred Hithcock’s Mystery Magazine, Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine, Strand Magazine, The Saturday Evening Post, and four editions of Otto Penzler’s best-mysteries-of-the-year anthologies. A former Air Force captain and IBM systems engineer, John is also an Edgar Award finalist, a Shamus Award winner, a five-time Derringer Award winner, a three-time Pushcart Prize nominee, and the author of nine books. In 2018 he was the recipient of the Short Mystery Fiction Society’s lifetime achievement award.