Kevin Egan returns to AHMM for the 25th time in our Sept/Oct issue with “Report Card Day”! Learn all about how this story came together in this insightful post from the AHMM regular
“Report Card Day” is my 25th story to appear in Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine. Of these stories, 19 are set in the New York County Courthouse in Manhattan, and 15 of those feature a continuing character—the court officer known simply as Foxx. Having worked in that courthouse for 30 years, I draw on an extensive factual and psychic database to construct these stories. As for the other six AHMM stories: Two are part of a second series reprising the characters and setting from my three pseudonymous golf mystery novels published in the 1990s; the remaining four stories are pure standalones.
As refreshing a “break” as writing standalone stories may be, I find that writing them is difficult. Get me out of the courthouse or off the golf course and I have little to say and even less to write. Ideas come to me, but not very easily and not very often. “The American Professor” (AHMM Nov. 2011) developed from an anecdote I heard while traveling in Ireland in the mid-1980s. “Becoming Ian Fleming” (AHMM Sept.-Oct. 2022) and “Italian Alzheimer’s” (AHMM July-Aug. 2023) evolved from childhood memories set down years later in my writing journals.
But then there is “Report Card Day.”
I can point to the exact moment that the idea for “Report Card Day” popped into my head: chancing upon the obituary of a grammar school classmate in the local newspaper. This classmate was not a close friend; actually not a friend at all. In fact, he and I never crossed paths after the class split up forever at the end of 8th grade. But his name summoned vivid memories—both visual and auditory—of grammar school report card days. A priest would pop into the classroom and distribute the report cards in alphabetical order—first to the boys, then to the girls. The deceased classmate was just ahead of me in alphabetical order. Six times a year, for eight years, the sound of the priest calling his name meant I was next.
Seeing that obituary and recalling the routine of report card day prompted the inevitable “what if” question. What if, many years later, a former student realizes that his male classmates are dying in alphabetical order? And what if he is convinced that he will be next?
My stories don’t spin; they don’t tumble out from my brain and onto the page. They grind. They suffer through countless revisions and endless edits. But once I opened the mental box where my parochial school memories reside, the story took shape.
The circumstance I conjured was the 57th reunion of St. Gregory the Great School’s Class of 1966. Why the 57th? I wanted the classmates to be approximately 70 years old, and the reunion committee (really only one person) was persuaded by another classmate to hold reunions in prime number anniversary years rather than the more customary five or ten year intervals.
With these parameters established, the characters began to reveal themselves. (More precisely, my memory of actual classmates who could serve as characters in the story revealed themselves.) There was Nick, the smartest boy in the class, now a retired lawyer. There was Kathy, the prettiest girl in the class who survived a chronic case of the cooties to become a doctor. She is Nick’s wife. There is Janice, boy-crazy as a girl and now the grande dame who organizes the reunions. She is Kathy’s best friend. There is Bobby Smith, accountant, actuary, and 4th grade times table champion who suggested the prime number scheduling of the reunions. His expertise temporarily allays Nick’s fears. And there is Richie Diamante, not a classmate but the town’s police chief. He and Kathy were childhood neighbors and confidantes during the depressing days of her cooties affliction.
The reunion festivities kick off, as always, with the bustling arrival of Janice and her many suitcases of reunion paraphernalia. As with all prior reunions, Janice stays with Kathy and Nick. This time, however, the newly retired Nick is dragooned into helping Janice set up the parish hall for the reunion. One of his assignments is to arrange the portrait gallery of deceased classmates. This is when he sees the “evidence” that he will be the next to die.
Nick confesses his fears to Kathy, who pooh-poohs them, then to Richie Diamante, who reluctantly agrees to look into the five previous deaths, and finally to Bobby Smith, whose expert opinion is that the sampling is too small for any statistical extrapolation. Nick, finding no satisfaction from anyone, resigns himself to attending the reunion, come what may. His fears retreat to the back of his mind during the reunion’s rather banal recapitulation of 8th grade social dynamics, highlighted by that staple of parochial grammar school: the passive-aggressive competition—often fostered by the nuns/teachers—between the boys and the girls.
At home after the reunion, Nick, Kathy, and Janice stay up late to drink wine and reminisce. Janice and Kathy begin to lambaste him with observations he was too obtuse to recognize at the time. Nick is shocked to hear how sharply the girls’ parochial school memories differ from his own. Chastened, he goes to bed, only to wake up the next morning, feeling as if he is on death’s door. Luckily, Kathy intervenes and phones Richie Diamante, who dispatches his detectives to arrest the classmate who, yes, has been killing the boys in alphabetical order, just like on report card day.
Trace Evidence 