Silenced

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Silenced Page 25

by Nicole Kurtz


  She turned around to face me. The corner of her mouth twitching in earnest aggravation.

  “And Aunt Belle?” Jane said, her voice calm and somewhat neutral. “She’s innocent in all this?”

  “I guess that’s up to Hanson,” I said. “She didn’t do anything but neglect her child and put her own ambitions before Amanda’s welfare. If the story breaks, it won’t go well for her plans to be governor.”

  Jane snorted as she turned away from the fireplace. Although her face crinkled in worry and anger, the smile revealed her true feelings. “That’s enough, isn’t it? Let’s go.”

  The ride back to Roger’s rental rooms went fast. As soon as we entered the room, I clicked on the telemonitor, needing noise to fill in the emptiness in my chest. Before I could dial Hanson’s number, the screen lit up, and a robe-clad Hanson, a pair of glasses resting precariously on his nose, waiting patiently until I answered, popped up instead.

  “I was going to contact you,” I said, a brief smile on my face. “Listen, about Nathan…”

  “We found Derrick,” Hanson said, interrupting my beginning spill on Nathan.

  “Where?” I whispered.

  Hanson took in a deep breath. “In the Mississippi, down the river a bit from where Mandy was found. I’m going to his autopsy right now. What to join me there?”

  “Sure, I’ll be right there.”

  Jane had come into the room and stood behind me. “Why do you care about Derrick? Nathan probably killed Mandy and killed Derrick to keep the secret quiet.”

  An excellent question and one this p.i. couldn’t answer. Why did I care about Derrick? I know the answer, knew it as sure as whose name the initials tattooed into my lower back belonged. I didn’t like people murdering others. And Nathan had killed Derrick out of revenge, and out of anger. Two reasons that weren’t justifiable to me. You can’t take matters into your own hands—I mean, without reason. I’ve killed many people, but all in self-defense, to save my own, or someone else’s life.

  “This isn’t about Derrick,” I said, and Jane’s eyebrows rose in question. “I’m going to tell Hanson everything, anyway. Why not over a drowned, decaying corpse?”

  She laughed.

  Despite the advances in technology our society had accomplished since the fall of the United States, the one area to which a human is still important is the role of coroner. A waif of a woman, named Thomasena, carved up Derrick for us to view. Hanson and I stood behind the observation room’s double paned windows, while down below in the autopsy room, stainless steel and polished chrome shined. The cause of death had been two laserbeam blasts to the heart. Derrick had struggled against his attacker and lost. Bruises on both hands, around the knuckles confirmed that he punched and fought against someone.

  Thomasena spoke into her microphone, describing how much Derrick’s liver and heart weighed, his last meal contents and other gruesome details I will leave out, for you may be eating your own meal right now while reading this. Wouldn’t want you to get too sick.

  Meanwhile, I told him about Nathan’s explanation of events leading up to Amanda’s death. I left out where we found Nathan and whom we found him with. I didn’t want Hanson armed with that knowledge, any more than I would a reporter. Did Mayor Christensen deserve to have her name dragged through the proverbial mud? I didn’t know and I wasn’t going to be the one who decided. If during Hanson’s own investigation, he found out her lover’s name, then he may divulge it.

  The woman did pay my fees.

  And folks don’t think I got standards.

  “Do you believe, Cybil, that Nathan murdered Amanda?” Hanson asked after my tale was over, his eyes sad and watery.

  Perhaps he did love the girl.

  “I don’t know, Tom,” I said. “If I had to place down a bet, I would bet he didn’t kill her.”

  Hanson nodded, face a bit grave. “I will have the morning regulators pick him up and book him until they complete their investigation. Now that he’s told you, I don’t want him skipping town.”

  “Captain Hanson!” Thomasena shouted into her microphone. “Sir, you-must see this. There’s something in Derrick’s throat!”

  Hanson cursed silently and left the room. He took the stairs down to the actual autopsy room in quiet steps, his face a blank mask of indifference. I went with him too, even though he didn’t ask me to tag along. My abnormal-size curiosity getting the better of me.

  The aroma of rotting flesh forced me to gag. I coughed repeatedly as I stumbled to the table. Placing my hand over my mouth didn’t seem to help. The odor was lodged into my mind, my nostrils, my mouth and I couldn’t rid myself of it fast enough. Hanson seemed immune to the smell or else he was used to it.

  Thomasena had Derrick’s mouth pried open. Using tweezers, she stuck them into his oral cavity and pulled fabric out of his mouth. She winced as she did so, even though he was very dead.

  She held them up toward the bright overhead light.

  Hanson grunted. “Underwear.”

  Indeed, a nice, black lacy pair of underwear, stuffed in his throat. A woman’s pair of panties, unless someone was dressing up in drag.

  “It was definitely put there postmortem. He died almost instantly from the blasts. There’s no blood on these either, but I’ll send them over to the DNA lab for testing. We might get lucky.”

  April in D.C. was a cornucopia of cultures. Diplomats from the various territories, the prime ministers from Canada and England, as well as hoards of generals swoop down on the city to collect, exchange and accelerate their political goals. The Old Montgomery college kids were finishing up exams and packing into bars like flies on a dead body. Yes, spring time in D.C. was a haven for violation and slime.

  The showers washed most of the visible filth down into sewers and into puddles of murky garbage, but the invisible kind, the kind that lurks a sliver beneath the handsome face of a stranger passing by, that couldn’t be reached by rain, snow or hail. That remained.

  I sat alone at Big Mike’s downtown jazz club. A fat guy in a too tight purple suit was sucking on a saxophone and converting the air into wet, damp unhappiness. The song’s sorrow seeped into every pore of my body, resurrecting feelings of grief and loss that I preferred stay locked away in the back corners of my mind. But sometimes, just sometimes, I come to Big Mike’s to feel, to be stripped down to my raw, bare emotions. The music provokes, pounds, and perverts my feelings, making me cry and yes, sometimes, making me feel as if I could love again.

  Sometimes.

  I thought of Trey and wondered where he was…who he was with….

  “Thought I’d find you here,” said a throaty voice with a slight hint of amusement.

  Jane pulled back the chair and sat down in the seat across from me. A tall bottle of Perk clutched in her fist and an already smoking cigarette posed between her fingers.

  The waiter came around, and I ordered another margarita.

  “Fruity? That’s not like you,” Jane said quietly as to not drown out the solo.

  I nodded. My eyes still on the fat guy at center stage. “Trying something new. It is spring after all.”

  We listened to two more, slow, steady songs and when the soloist took a break, Jane said to me, “Aunt Belle’s ratings are still high amongst the voters. She’s definitely going to be governor in November.”

  “The story about her and Nathan’s relationship?” I asked, not really interested, but filling the air until the saxophonist came back on.

  “Swept,” Jane said with a shrug. “She called couple days ago. Told her to take the attorney general position and bury it with Mandy. I hear Hanson is being talked up to take the spot.”

  “He’s a natural choice,” I said, thinking back to Hanson’s polished good looks and political know how. As regulator captain, he was in position to be the next attorney general. A smart move on Christensen’s behalf to present him as an ally, when in fact they hated each other.

  “Here anything from the T.A.?” Jane asked cauti
ously. She directed her eyes to now, empty stage.

  “Maria never found out the connection between the mayor and the Raymen Cartel. With Amanda dead and Nathan in the cradle, there’s no one to fill in the blanks. Mayor Christensen isn’t going to suddenly tell anyone…”

  The waiter dropped off a fresh, new margarita.

  I shrugged and sipped my margarita. Besides betraying the little nugget of Susan’s trust could get her killed by the Raymen Cartel. The T.A. had enough leaks to sink the Titanic.

  “I got this today,” Jane said, taking her handheld out of her backpack and sliding it over the table’s scarred surface to me with all the cool of a professional private inspector.

  I picked it up and read. The DNA on the cigarette I picked up from my stalker was none other than Nathan Martindale. Now a convicted thief, murderer and accomplice, his DNA was no longer protected by the Memphis Regulators.

  “That’s how your aunt kept tabs on us,” I said, with a knowing smile.

  Puzzles were great, but only if all the pieces came together. That didn’t always happen. Sometimes there were clues I had unearthed and never figured out how it fit into the puzzle. Most of the time, a partial picture is the best I could hope for.

  Jane nodded as she lit up a fresh cigarette. “Yeah. He reported us checking in. Probably flashed that stupid reg badge to get our room number and stuff.”

  We were both silent for a while. Watching the people in the bar. Investigating lends itself to excessive people spying. It was difficult to turn that habitual practice off.

  “I didn’t know her at all. I thought we were close and, and…we weren’t,” Jane said to her beer. She took a long drink and slammed the bottle on the table making her handheld leap into the air from the impact. “I didn’t know her in the least. And I should’ve…I should’ve listened…”

  She didn’t have to say who. Every since we’ve gotten back from Memphis some two weeks ago, Jane’s sulkiness and long periods of silence grew shorter each day, but the questions. They remained.

  “Does anyone really, truly know anyone?” I said, thinking back to Trey and how I trusted him to tell me the truth, and realizing that I didn’t really know him at all. “We all have our secrets,” I continued, my eyes meeting hers. “It didn’t mean she didn’t know you or you didn’t know her. You were close to her, Jane, which is why she kept some things from you. To protect you. She didn’t want to hurt you.”

  “Got a message from Hanson today,” she said, switching the subject. The moodiness and sadness still lingered despite the change in topic. “Couldn’t get you on the telemonitor.”

  “No,” I said, sipping my drink and trying to avoid a brain freeze. “I’m taking a break.”

  “Hanson said that the DNA on those underwear found in Derrick’s mouth were Mandy’s,” she said. She took a deep drag of her cigarette. Its butt burned into a bright orange in the darkened bar. “Looks like Derrick really did kill her. Took the underwear as a trophy.”

  I figured Nathan had killed Derrick when he found out that Derrick had raped Amanda. Their argument at the benefit was a foreshadowing of things to come. I had no proof, only my gut. The proof was up to Hanson and his crew of regulators to unearth. I’d done my part.

  “At least they found him,” I said with a half-hearted shrug.

  Jane stared at me a few moments before moving her eyes back to the stage. “I can’t get over it. She’s gone…”

  She switched back to Amanda.

  “If it’s any comfort, Jane, she didn’t die as a part of larger, more sinister scheme. A desperate man with a lot to lose struck her down. He silenced her, but your love has spoken volumes to her memory. In the greater scheme of things that surrounds the mayor, Amanda’s death was a tragedy.”

  Jane blew smoke rings into the air, frowning through the haze. The foghog greedily sucked it from the air.

  “That doesn’t make me feel better…”

  The spotlight on the stage flickered on and the solo saxophonist was back. He heaved himself onto the stool, placed the reed into his mouth and did what he did best.

  Strip out pieces of my soul.

  I watched Jane across the table from me. She kept her eyes closed, hearing the music without the distractions of sight. A gentle sway to the raw rhythm, Jane was coiled up tight. Was she still thinking of Amanda? Grief sometimes held on like a nasty cold, defying all remedies.

  My mind flipped and recalled memories of past loves, Stephen and Trey, a short few on my casualty list of lovers. Most of them were dead. How long before Trey went from the active to the deceased list?

  I couldn’t think about that right now.

  Hearing the peaceful notes of muted sorrow, I closed my eyes and enjoyed the sensation of being silent.

  SILENCED

  THE END

  Catch up with Cybil online at

  http://www.cybillewisseries.blogspot.com

  NICOLE GIVENS KURTZ writes science fiction, fantasy, and horror. Her most popular work, futuristic pulp series, Cybil Lewis blends whodunit mysteries within futuristic, post-apocalyptic world-building. Her novels have been named as finalists in the Fresh Voices in Science Fiction, EPPIE in Science Fiction, and Dream Realm Awards in science fiction. Nicole's short stories have earned an Honorable Mention in L. Ron Hubbard's Writers of the Future contest, and have appeared in such noted publications as Crossed Genres, Tales of the Talisman, and Genesis Magazine as well as numerous anthologies.

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  Other Worlds Pulp-http://www.nicolegivenskurtz.com

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