by Rod Kackley
We are amateurs, Amanda had to admit to herself.
“Okay. We are professional reporters, but we are not cops. We are not detectives,” Amanda said, watching Joy nod affirmatively with every word that had become a mantra between the pair.
“So what do we do next?”
Amanda took a deep breath and prepared herself to say the words she hated.
“We go to the cops,” she said.
“And?”
“We ask them what they have heard, tell them what we think, and go from there.”
“Magnificent, my young protege,” Joy said, reaching out to give Amanda’s hand a short, furtive squeeze.
“Let’s go talk to the cops,” Amanda said.
“Let’s go.”
If they hadn’t been at work, Amanda and Joy might have walked down the hall arm-in-arm. They were on another mission. Amanda couldn’t have been happier. They were off on another quest for the truth. Joy couldn’t have been more nervous.
On their way out of the kitchenette, they ran into Beatrice, the seventy-year-old matriarch of human resources. She was as much a fixture in the St. Isidore Chronicle as the pipes that rumbled under the building.
“Guess what now?” Beatrice said.
Amanda and Joy raised their eyebrows as if wondering why they should care about the answer to Beatrice’s riddle. The answer was obvious. Now, Joy and Amanda were both wondering how to get out of this conversation as quickly as possible.
“David Van Holt just emailed his resignation. He quit. Just like that,” she said with a snap of her fingers in the air.
“No kidding?” Joy looked at Amanda.
“Is he going to come in for his last check?”
“No need for that,” Beatrice told Amanda. “We all get paid by direct deposit. His check will go out to the bank with all the others. Besides he said in his email that he had money saved and just got tired of working 9-to-5, Monday through Friday. Wrote something about going on an adventure.”
“He just quit. No notice. No anything?” Joy said.
“And we’ll never see him again,” said Beatrice, as she walked down the hall, going back to her office to start the job search.
“And we’ll never see him again,” Amanda said.
“He quit.”
“Isn’t that convenient?”
ACROSS THE STREET, Mary Eileen leaned back in the chair at her dining room table and smiled. Now she was glad that David had always used her computer to do his freelance work at the Chronicle. His password couldn’t have been easier to hack.
Eleven
Joy hadn’t forgotten her apartment keys in a long time. But this morning she was so wiped out that she could forgive herself for this mistake.
The problem was that her car keys were on the same ring as her apartment keys so she’d have to see Russ, the apartment manager and ask his assistance.
Russ was an okay guy. Overweight, never able to tuck in his t-shirt — it was always some rock ’n roll shirt with a band from the 1970s or 80s screen printed on the front — and he was starting to do a combover on top, but Russ had turned out to be a decent human being.
A few years ago before Joy and Amanda made a name for themselves, he’d been a real prick to Joy. Russ seemed to relish the mornings when she’d have to ask him to let her into the apartment to retrieve her keys. But one morning when she was with Amanda, both of them delayed by her forgetfulness, Joy had seen the light — with Amanda’s help.
“He’s hot for you,” Amanda said as Joy started her 2006 Kia Rio, bright red when it was new, dingy and dinged up now, but it was reliable, as long as the door locks didn’t freeze in the winter.
“Oh, be real!”
“I am not kidding.”
“He’s a fucking jerk,” Joy said as she blew the Kia’s horn at one of the idiots who was driving too slow. Everybody slower than her was a moron. People who drove too fast were jackasses. That was Joy’s rule of the road. The guy who was the recipient of her horn blast of the moment was not driving all that slow, but the horn made a nice punctuation point for Joy’s frustration with Russ.
“You’re right, he is. But he’s only a jerk ‘cuz he’s trying too hard.”
It turned out, Amanda was correct. Russ was still kind of a nerd, but wasn’t Joy all about that? Believe it or not — oh God, Joy could sense Amanda’s smirk if she admitted this — but Russ was a decent guy. He might even make an interesting remodeling challenging for a woman someday, Joy thought. Those t-shirts would be the first thing to go and forget the combover Russ; it doesn't fool anyone.
Of course, she hadn't gone that far, yet.
Russ smiled when Joy came into his office door. They hadn't seen each other for months. It had been a long time since she had forgotten her keys and Russ had run out of excuses to bump into her at the apartment complex. They had seen each other a couple of times at St. Isidore Gamer, the game shop downtown, and had spoken, but Russ wanted more.
So rather than acting the jerk — he’d been reading some self-improvement books that would be better categorized as ‘wishful thinking’ — Russ felt like he was ready when Joy walked into his office.
She didn’t say a word. They both smiled and laughed as Russ got his master key set out, opened his office door for Joy and walked her back to her apartment.
The silence was comforting. Joy felt good walking beside Russ. It wasn’t like they had any relationship besides that of tenant-apartment manager. Still, there was something about this guy, Joy thought, that was warm and cozy. And she liked warm and comfortable,
“Here you go,” Russ said as he opened her door. He did it very gallantly, Joy thought. It had been eons since any man had treated her like this. It is the little things that count, right?
She hesitated for a moment, standing in the doorway, with Russ’ arm stretched out, still holding the door knob. They were standing face to face, Joy breathing a bit heavier than she would have liked, as she licked her lower lip and said, “Coffee?”
Russ smiled and said, “Thank you." His encounter with Joy was going much better than he had imagined. Russ had wanted to talk to her for some time. There was something on his mind.
He’d never been comfortable with the girls in school or the women in the apartment complex. Russ had never been smooth with anyone, male or female, but he felt good with Joy. It wasn’t a warm, cozy, comfortable feeling like it was when his mother came to visit. No, this was different. It was toastier than warm, nearly hot, as a matter of fact. For the first time in almost forever, Russ didn’t feel like a fat boob.
They sat at the small, three-chair breakfast nook table in Joy’s apartment and made small talk. Russ told her what it was like growing up in St. Isidore, she talked about her dreams, and he spoke of his.
But there was an awkward pause in the conversation. After the recitation of each other's resumes, it was time to talk about something more important; at least that’s how Russ felt.
“I guess you’re looking into David Van Holt, the guy who used to hang with that woman who runs the Coffee Shoppe,” Russ said.
Joy had been hoping for more. She too had felt like the pause in their sentences should be the opening of a new chapter. You don’t always get what you want, Joy realized.
She shifted into a semi-reporter mode, smiled, and waited for more.
“You know, he loved her, David did,” Russ said speaking in a machine gun, rapid fire cadence that caught Joy’s interest. She sat up straighter and touched Russ’ hand. Joy sensed that Russ had something important to share.
“Everybody in town was laughing at David because he was refusing to leave Mary Eileen’s apartment after their divorce. But, he couldn’t leave. He had no one else. David loved her so much that he just thought if he hung on, if he toughed it out, she would fall back in love with him.”
Joy squeezed Russ’ hand. They were talking about love. She knew that Russ must want love as badly as David had desired Mary Eileen’s affection. To want something so b
ad, Joy understood completely, yet never have a chance to win it, could burn a brand on your heart. She felt it almost every day.
“What do you think happened to him?”
Russ shrugged.
“He didn’t just leave on his own, that’s for sure. David would never leave Mary Eileen Sullivan. She was all he had.”
Twelve
Neither Joy nor Amanda believed David had gone off on an adventure, at least not of his volition. It was all too convenient. First, the guy disappeared, then an email mysteriously appeared complete with his resignation and an explanation of his vanishing act.
“Come on, Chief Doolan, doesn’t this make you just a little suspicious?” Joy said.
Lumpy Doolan felt like he was on another quick trip to nowhere. He’d been down this road before with these two reporters. Joy and Amanda had been sure one of St. Isidore High School’s most beloved teachers was a serial killer. Doolan had given them one of his oldest detectives, who’d died for his trouble, and they had come up with nothing but a basement that might or might not have been a BDSM dungeon of death.
Joy and Amanda followed that up with a three-part shock series of articles about the Suicide Forest and all of the women who had wound up swinging from the trees for the past three decades or more. And then the crap they stirred up came tumbling downhill right into Chief Doolan’s lap.
Now they expect me to get into bed with them again; Doolan thought and stewed at the sight of the two reporters on the other side of his desk.
“And what do we have to go on besides your suspicions?” Doolan said. “I mean is this going to be anything but shaking up a hornet’s nest like you did last time? I got stung in the ass plenty over that fiasco.”
“Fiasco?” an outraged Amanda yelled as she rose from her wooden chair in front of the Chief’s desk.
“The only reason your investigation flopped was that you pulled back. The Chamber of Commerce started quaking in their boots about the Suicide Forest and what it would do to the town if there was a serial killer loose.”
“Hold it right there, young lady,” Doolan said as he pointed a fat index finger Amanda’s way.
Joy put a hand on her ace reporter’s wrist and not so gently led her back to her chair. The last thing they needed to do was to piss off Doolan again. It was bad enough they had to remind him of the shit storm that rained on his parade the last time they had all gotten together.
“Oh, no,” Amanda said, refusing to sit down even though Joy’s grip on her wrist was tightening.
“Oh, no, nobody wanted to admit a serial killer was targeting young girls, women and even some boys and men. Oh no, it was so much easier to make believe that all of these people, especially the teenage girls, had been killing themselves.”
“You need to sit down,” Doolan said as he rose from his chair, a troubling sign, and Joy knew it. Any time Doolan got his 300-plus pounds of muscle encased in fat moving there was going to be a conflict. The man did not waste energy.
“Okay hold on, everyone,” Joy said as she rose to the rescue of her young protege.
“Chief, nobody is saying you or anyone in your department shirked their duty or anything like that. But what we are saying is whatever happened in the Tim Sheldon investigation is history. This is new. Let’s move forward.”
Doolan would have loved to have tossed these women out of his office. Hell, he’d like to have thrown them out his sixth-floor window. But the Shapiro family that had been publishing the St. Isidore Chronicle for years had too much weight in this town. If there was one thing Doolan had grown adept at over his past thirty years in office, it was dodging storms that rained down hail shaped like turds.
“Okay, granted this is new. But where is the evidence that anything is wrong here? The guy, this David what’s-his-name, sent an email explaining he was resigning and going off on some weird quest. He’s a millennial for Christ’s sake. That’s what they do.”
“He was in love with Mary Eileen.”
“And you think she killed him.”
“Could have, that’s all I am saying, Chief Doolan,” Amanda said.
“And if there is a ‘could have killed’ in this case, why not help us investigate?” Joy said.
“Why would she kill him?”
“They were divorced,” Joy said.
“So, what? Lots of people get divorced. Most of them don’t wind up dead. Hell, if more marriages split up quicker the murder rate would probably be a lot lower.”
“Everybody in town knows David was refusing to leave Mary Eileen’s apartment,” said Amanda.
“And he got killed for that? Because he was, I don’t know, what? Eating her food?”
“She was having an affair with Hans Mueller,” said Joy. “They are still together.”
“Again, ‘so what?’” Doolan said. “Half of the people in this town are sleeping with the other half.”
“They don’t all have guns,” said Amanda.
“Mary Eileen Sullivan has a gun?” Doolan asked.
“And she is trained to shoot to kill,” said Amanda.
Doolan eased back in his tilt chair, looking at the suspended ceiling. Amanda held her breath. Joy counted the seconds clicking by on the wall clock.
Chief Doolan leaned forward as slowly as any large, powerful man would who knows he doesn’t need to move quickly for a couple of female reporters.
“Ladies, think about this from my point of view, the point of view of a professional,” Doolan said in his most condescending, authoritarian voice.
“You have a motive; I will give you that. I can believe that Mary Eileen might have wanted David what’s-his-name dead. Okay. Means? You say she knew how to shoot and had a gun. Granted. So there’s motive and means. Opportunity? Well, yeah. They lived together, whether they wanted it or not.”
“That’s just what I have been saying since Day One,” Amanda said raising her fist in victory as she jumped out of her chair.
“But what we are still missing something,” the Chief said in a stage whisper building tension and easing Amanda off her victorious cloud-nine.
Amanda and Joy were on the edges of their chairs.
“We don’t have a body,” Doolan roared. “Bring me a body, and we have a murder. But don’t get me a body and as far as I am concerned, nobody got killed.”
Amanda and Joy shrunk in their chairs.
“Now ladies, that’s the door,” Doolan said, pointing over their heads.
“Please don’t let it hit you where the Lord split you.”
As soon as Joy and Amanda left, Doolan reached for his buzzing smartphone. State Police Commander Jack Hart was calling.
Thirteen
After the murder of David Van Holt, Mary Eileen and Hans Mueller tried to keep their May-December relationship a secret. However, they could only keep it quiet so long in a town like St. Isidore.
Not long after she cut up David’s body, encased its pieces and parts in cement, and planted him in the cellar, but not so soon that the neighbors became suspicious, Hans moved in with Mary Eileen.
“Unsere Liebe wird ewig dauern,” Hans said to her as they lay in bed, their bed, for the first time.
“What does that mean?”
“Say it after me.”
“No, what does it mean?”
He put his fingertip on Mary Eileen’s lips. She laughed as she pulled back and bit Hans’ finger.
He laughed.
“Unsere.”
“Unsere”
“Liebe”
“Liebe”
“wird”
“wird”
“Ewig dauern”
“Ewig dauern.”
Mary Eileen looked at Hans and raised her eyebrows as if to ask, “What’s next?”
“That means, ‘our love will last forever,’” Hans said.
“Our love will last forever,” she repeated, “unsere Liebe wird ewig dauern.”
Hans laughed at her clumsy attempt at German. But Mary Eileen didn’
t care.
She was as happy as a teenager in love. Mary Eileen had fallen under this older man’s spell. He wasn’t all that much her senior, only a decade. But still, those ten years made a lot of difference to both of these not-so-young lovers.
For one, it meant he finally had a woman who would be truly submissive to him. Or at least, that is what Hans believed.
As for Mary Eileen, the age difference gave more credence to what she wanted to believe — that she had finally found a father figure who would make her happy and be completely devoted to showing her a more comfortable life.
Why shouldn’t she be pleased?
Not only had she found a man to love, Mary Eileen finally had someone to share her life.
And their days together started out as a good life. St. Isidore County was filled with small thumb lakes. Hans had a cottage on one of them, and Mary Eileen was amazed to find out, he also had a boat.
The cottage was right on the lake. It was actually waterfront property that was isolated enough that Han and Mary Eileen could make love in the cabin, in the woods or even on the sand of the beach at night without anyone seeing or hearing them.
St. Isidore might have been a minor league city that screamed average, but the town did have a couple of community theaters, music halls, and even some top-name talent would perform at the Van Andel Arena on Sundays as a stop between the real cities.
There was also the Suicide Forest. Mary Eileen had driven by it, but never had the courage to go inside even though she’d been totally up close and personal with the murder and disposal of one, David Van Holt.
Hans was afraid of nothing. Together, they spent a night in the Forest, part of a guided tour that included actors playing the parts of some of the famous people who had died in the Forest.
Hans had even found two new dead bodies that earned him a slot on the St. Isidore Famous Deadies List, the people who had discovered fresh corpses in the Forest.
Looking around the Forest, Mary Eileen wished she had been able to get David’s fat-ass body into the trunk of her car. She would have loved to have dropped him off under one of these giant trees.