by The Mysterious Bookshop Presents the Best Mystery Stories of the Year 2021
It was here that Rebecca Markle had been murdered.
He peered down at the floor. She’d lain in her blood after the killer had attacked from behind, reaching around her, plunging a knife into her chest.
Plunging repeatedly.
Footsteps made him turn toward the only entrance to this area.
Howard appeared.
“You followed me?” Ben asked.
“Didn’t need to.”
“Oh?”
“If you’re researching Rebecca’s murder, the logical place for you to be is here, at 3:30 when the medical examiner estimated she was killed,” Howard said. “I watched the library entrance from the far side of the English/philosophy building.”
“You could have been a detective instead of an English professor.”
“Or someone in a movie you wrote. Do you seriously think I killed her?”
“I never suggested that.”
“Like hell. You set me up last night. ‘Did they ever find who killed that female student?’ you asked. You must have enjoyed listening to me pretend I didn’t remember who Rebecca Markle was. Then you forced me to admit I’d gone out with her. It wasn’t a date. I was trying to help Wayne.”
“Okay,” Ben said. “It wasn’t a date.”
“I can play your game in reverse. Last night, you gave all sorts of reasons for me to believe you killed her. Maybe she threatened to tell the police how you earned your money. Maybe you couldn’t bear the thought of USC finding out and canceling your scholarship.”
“That would have been a powerful motivation,” Ben agreed.
“It would have made more sense than any motive you tried to invent for me.”
“I don’t believe you killed her.”
Howard looked surprised.
“But role playing helps me write stories,” Ben said. “If this were a detective movie, you’d be a suspect until somebody else seemed likely.”
“So you’re convinced Wayne did in fact kill her?”
“He had a sort-of alibi because a few people remembered seeing him at the football game. But according to the rumor, he slipped out the same way I did. I bet when I go back to the game, no one will realize I’ve been gone.”
“He’d need to have brought a knife,” Howard said. “I can’t imagine him cold-bloodedly planning to murder someone.”
“If only there’d been cameras in the library twenty years ago,” Ben said. “They might have shown someone following Rebecca, just as today they showed you following me. But I don’t believe she was followed.”
“You think the attack was random?” Howard asked. “A predator saw her alone in here? An attempted rape turned into murder?”
“Or perhaps someone was already waiting.”
“I don’t understand.”
“Perhaps Rebecca came here to meet someone.”
“Now you’re back to Wayne. No one else had a motive,” Howard said. He took a step forward. The tiny space felt even smaller.
“I shouldn’t have come back,” Ben said.
“Maybe not,” Howard told him.
“Would you like to know how my script would end?”
“Never make your audience impatient.”
“The audience would suddenly realize that seemingly casual remarks made earlier were actually clues. There’d be a quick cut to a previous scene. ‘How’s your family?’ the detective asked. ‘Our daughter graduated from here two years ago,” the apparent suspect answered. He meant his stepchild. ‘And your wife?’ the detective asked. ‘Depression isn’t anybody’s friend,’ the apparent suspect answered. A quick cut to another scene would show the apparent suspect talking about spending time with the assistant professor, his wife, and their three-year-old daughter.”
Howard stepped even closer.
“Yes, I spent a lot of time with Wayne and his family,” he said.
“And with his wife and his daughter after Wayne died,” Ben said.
“Dammit, somebody had to. People assumed Wayne was the killer. They avoided his wife. Their little girl wasn’t welcome at the nursery school any longer. I was the only person who showed them kindness. She wanted to leave town, to take her daughter and live with her parents in Minneapolis while she tried to recover from Wayne’s death and figure out what to do next. I told her if she ran, people would believe they were right to suspect Wayne. She had to stay, to show them they were wrong.”
“You were in love with her?” Ben asked.
“From the first time I saw her.”
Ben peered down at the floor where Rebecca Markle had lain. “Yes, I shouldn’t have come back.”
“So how is your screenplay going to end?” Howard asked.
“Wayne’s wife . . .”
“Yes? What about her?”
“. . . could have asked Rebecca to meet her in the library. Rebecca wouldn’t have expected any trouble there. Afraid for her family, Wayne’s wife begged Rebecca to leave her husband and child alone. When Rebecca refused, when she turned and walked away, Wayne’s wife . . .”
“Pulled the knife from her purse?” Howard asked. “She planned it?”
“As a last resort. After she saw Rebecca at the day-care center, she was desperate.”
“In the story,” Howard said.
“Yes. In the story. Then maybe Wayne suspected what she’d done. Maybe he saw blood on the sleeve of a blouse or a sweater his wife had been wearing. Maybe he became so distressed he couldn’t concentrate until a week later he lost control of his car and . . .”
“In the story,” Howard repeated.
“Yes. In the story.”
“What’s that movie where everybody sees the same thing but every version is different? It’s Japanese.”
“Rashomon.”
“I remember we watched it together. Your story could be like that. Different versions of what happened. None truer than the other. Me killing her, you killing her, Wayne killing her, a predator killing her.”
“But not Wayne’s wife?” Ben asked.
“She couldn’t have done it. She had an alibi. She was at home, taking care of their little girl.”
“Yes, to meet Rebecca, she’d have needed a babysitter,” Ben said. “Someone she trusted. Someone who maybe saw blood on a sleeve when she returned home. Someone who never mentioned it to the police or contradicted her when she told the police she’d been taking care of her little girl at the time of the murder.”
“Hard to find someone she could depend on that much,” Howard said.
“Yes, hard to find.” Ben peered down at the floor again. “I think I talked the story to death.”
“When we were students, that used to happen to you.”
“I’d better get back to the game. The college president has a lot more donors he wants me to convince to be generous.”
“Good luck with them.”
“I’ll do my best since this is my last homecoming.”
*For much of my life, I balanced fiction writing with being in academia, first as an American-literature graduate student at Penn State, then as a professor in the English Department at the University of Iowa. When Lawrence Block asked me to write a story for his university-themed anthology, The Darkling Halls of Ivy, I didn’t think twice, so eagerly did I wish to return (in my imagination, at least) to that fulfilling classroom environment. Of course, outside the classroom, academia isn’t always an ideal place—office politics can be especially annoying. I briefly considered a story about that topic or about plagiarism or about student political demonstrations. There are many dramatic aspects to the university world. But my memory kept taking me back to a murder that traumatized a university and threatened its innocent belief that it could indeed enjoy the protection of an ivory tower. “Requiem for a Homecoming” shares a few parallels with an actual event but is otherwise a work of my creation and is in no way intended to suggest a solution to the original, long-ago mystery.
Joyce Carol Oates is the recipient of the 2021 Pepe Carvalho Prize for N
oir Fiction (Spain) and the 2020 Cino del Duca World Prize (France) as well as the National Book Award and the President’s Humanities Medal. Among her recent novels are Pursuit and Night. Sleep. Death. The Stars and the story collections Beautiful Days and Night, Neon. Stories of hers have appeared previously in The Best American Mystery Stories and The Best American Noir of the Century edited by James Ellroy and Otto Penzler. She is currently teaching at Princeton and at Rutgers University.
PAROLE HEARING, CALIFORNIA INSTITUTION FOR WOMEN, CHINO, CA
Joyce Carol Oates
Why am I requesting parole another time?—because I am penitent.
Because I am remorseful for the wrongs I have inflicted upon the innocent.
Because I am a changed person.
Because I have punished myself every day, every hour, and every minute of my incarceration.
Because the warden will testify on my behalf: I have been a model prisoner.
Because the chaplain will testify on my behalf: I have welcomed Jesus Christ into my heart.
Because I have served fifty-one years in prison. Because I have been rejected for parole fifteen times.
Because I am seventy years old, I am no longer nineteen years old.
Because I cannot remember who I was when I was nineteen years old.
Because I regret all that I was commanded to do in August 1969.
Because the person I hurt most at that terrible time was—myself.
Why am I requesting parole?—because (I believe) I have paid what is called my debt to society.
Because I have completed college while in prison. I have a community college degree, Chino Valley Community College.
Because I have taught generations of inmates to read and write.
Because I have assisted the arts and crafts instructors and they have praised me.
(I love the thrill of power, making lesser beings my slaves.)
Because I have goodness in my heart that yearns to be released into the world.
Because I would make amends.
Because I am an example to the younger women.
Because I am the oldest woman prisoner in California, and there is shame in this.
Because the other prisoners are all younger than I am, and they pity me.
Because I am not a threat to society.
Because I was a battered woman and did not realize.
Because all that happened in 1969 happened because of that.
Because it was not fair, and is not fair.
Because the person I hurt most was—myself.
Why am I requesting parole?—Because Jesus has come into my heart, and He has forgiven me.
Because Jesus understood it was the Devil who guided my hand to smite the innocent with evil intent.
Because the Devil whispered to us—Do something witchy!
Because I had no choice, I had to obey.
Because he would have punished me if I did not.
Because he would have ceased to love me if I did not.
Because he has passed away now and left me with this (swastika) scar on my forehead.
Because, seeing this scar I have borne for fifty-one years, you will judge me harshly.
Because the person he hurt most was—me.
Because I was abused by others.
Because I was trusting in my heart, and so I was abused by others.
Because I was abused by him.
Because I was weak-willed. Because I was a victim of what the therapist has called low self-esteem.
Because I was starving, and he gave me nourishment.
Because he asked of me—Don’t you know who I am?
Because I dissolved into tears before him at such words. Because all my life I had been awaiting such words.
Because the Family welcomed me, at his bidding.
Because soon they called me Big Patty. Because they called me Pimply Face. Because they made me crouch down and eat from the dog’s dish.
Because they laughed at me.
Because he did not protect me from them.
Because I gave my soul to him.
Because I am begging understanding and forgiveness from you, on my knees.
Because I am a good person, in my heart.
Because you can see—can’t you?—I am a good person, in my heart.
Because it was easy to hypnotize me.
Because it was easy to drug me.
Because I could not say no.
Because very feebly I did say no, no—but he laughed at me and made me serve him on my knees.
Because I was ravenous for love—for touch.
Because stabbing the victims, I was stabbing myself.
Because sinking my hands into the wounds of the victims, to mock and defile them, I was mocking and defiling myself.
Because tasting the blood that was “warm and sticky,” I was tasting my own blood that spurted out onto walls, ceilings, carpets.
Because, at my trial, prejudiced jurors found me guilty of “seven counts of homicide,” not knowing how I was but his instrument.
Because you who sit in judgment of me have no idea of the being I am in my innermost heart.
Because you gaze upon me with pity and contempt, thinking—Oh she is a monster! She is nothing like me.
But I am like you. In my heart that is without pity, I am you.
Because it is true, certain terrible things were done by my hand, which was but his hand.
Because it is true, these were terrible acts and yet joyous, as he had ordained.
Because it is true, I showed no mercy to those who begged for their lives on their knees.
On my knees for all of my life, I did not receive mercy, and so I had no mercy to give.
Well, yes—it is true, I stabbed her sixteen times. The beautiful “movie star.”
And it is true, each stab was a shriek of pure joy.
And it is true, in a frenzy I stabbed the baby in her belly, eight months, five weeks old. For a mere second it crossed my mind, I could “deliver” this baby by Caesarean, for I had a razor-sharp butcher knife, and if I did this and brought the baby to Charlie . . . But I could not think beyond the moment, I did not know if Charlie would bless me or curse me, and I could not risk it.
For the baby, too, that had no name, I showed no mercy. For no mercy had been shown me.
Because for these acts that are so terrible in your eyes, I have repented.
For these acts and others, I have repented.
Because in this prison I am a white woman.
A pearl in a sea of mud. A pearl cast before swine.
Amid the brown- and black-skinned, my skin shines, it is so pure.
He entrusted us with the first battle of Helter Skelter.
He sent us on our mission, to pitch the first battle of the Race War.
He kissed my forehead. He told me—You are beautiful.
Because I had not known this!—in my soul I believed that I was ugly.
Because at school, in all the schools I had gone to—there were jeering eyes, cruel laughter.
Because, when I was not yet twelve years old, already dark hairs grew thick and coarse on my head and beneath my arms and at the pit of my belly. In that place between my legs that was sin to touch. On my legs that were muscled like a boy’s, and on my forearms. Wiry hairs on my naked breasts, ticklish at the nipples.
Yet of my body Charlie declared—You are beautiful.
Except: blood, like sludge, oozed between my thighs. A nasty smell lifted from me.
Go away, you disgust me, Charlie said.
Because you are saying—The poor girl!—she was abused, hypnotized.
Because you are saying—She wasn’t herself.
Because none of that was true. Because love is a kind of hypnosis, but it was one I chose.
Because Charlie favored the pretty ones, even so.
Because I hated them. Because I had always hated them—beautiful women and girls.
Because it is not fair th
at some that are sluts, are beautiful like Sharon Tate, and some are ugly like me.
Because when we were done with her, she was not so beautiful.
Because I would not do it again!—I promise.
Because I stuck a fork in a man’s belly and laughed at how it dangled from the flab of his belly, but I can scarcely remember.
Because I have been washed clean of these sins through the grace of Jesus.
Because I am a Christian woman, my Savior dwells in my heart.
Because I was not evil, but weak.
Because I was a “criminal” in the eyes of the law but a “victim” in the eyes of God.
Because the swastika scar between my eyes calls your eye to it, in judgment. Because you think—She is disfigured! She bears the sign of Satan, she must not ever be paroled.
Because the scar is faded now. Because if you did not know what it was, you would not recognize it.
Because I was a battered woman—a therapist has told me.
Because my case should be reopened. Because my incarceration should be ended. Because I have served my time.
Because sin has faded in my memory.
Because where there was the Devil, there is now Love.
Because in the blood of the dying I wrote on the walls of the fancy house—DEATH TO PIGS HEALTER SKELTER
Because it was not to be that I would have a baby—so it was fitting, she could not have her baby.
Such a big belly! Big white drum-belly! Screaming, like they say a stuck pig screams, and squeals, and tries to crawl away—so you must straddle it, knees gripping her slippery, naked back to wreak the greatest vengeance.
Because she was so beautiful, the sun shone out of her face.
Because she was so beautiful, she did not deserve to live.
All of them, strangers to us—they did not deserve to live.
Do it gruesome—Charlie commanded.
Because that was the address he’d given us on a winding canyon road in the night—Leave no one alive there.