Murder Feels Crazy

by Bill Alive

  Murder Feels Crazy

  Bill Alive

  The Empath Detective Mystery Series

  NOVELS

  Murder Feels Awful

  Murder Feels Bad

  Murder Feels Crazy

  Murder Feels Deadly (forthcoming)

  FREE NOVELLA!

  Origin Story: Mark Falcon, Akina, and the Condo Killer

  (This backstory novella is best read after Murder Feels Awful, but it does stand alone.)

  Click here to get this novella for FREE.

  MURDER FEELS CRAZY

  An Empath Detective Mystery

  Book 3

  by BILL ALIVE

  Villette Press

  Back Mosby, VA

  Murder Feels Crazy Copyright 2018 Bill Alive. (v1.1)

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form without permission in writing from the author. Reviewers may quote brief passages in reviews. Please do.

  Super-official disclaimer in the back.

  For more information, visit:

  https://billalive.com/empath

  But not now. Read the book first.

  For Ceci

  PART 1

  Chapter 1

  I should have known there’d be trouble. Those ominous picketing furries, the astonishing Incident with Ceci, and craziest of all… Mark had been in a good mood for days.

  Of course, you might well argue that Mark had earned a breather.

  Wasn’t it time that this secret Empath Detective took a break? Instead of vibing every random stranger’s hidden rages and fears, not to mention their back pain and awkward crushes? Did he really have to keep feeling everyone else’s pain?

  Trust me. Pain doesn’t leave so lightly.

  Especially when it comes to murder.

  But on that warm November evening, as we roared over to the hospital to pick up Ceci after her shift, I wasn’t thinking about pain or murder or even the karma-tempting perils of Mark’s newfound cheer. I was thinking about… the Incident.

  The Incident with Ceci had occurred only two days before, after the festive Jivanta wedding that closed out Murder Feels Bad. (Which you really should read first.)

  (Actually, no, read Murder Feels Awful first, then join the email list to get Origin Story for free, then read Murder Feels Bad, THEN read this.)

  (Okay, if you insist on jumping in here, doing an icy cannonball into our crazy lives instead of a gentle gradual toe dip, then fine. This book right here is a complete story. But I’m just going to say once and for all that I OFFICIALLY GIVE UP ON PROTECTING YOU FROM SPOILERS. That did not go so well last time. Read on at your own peril.)

  (Parentheses. I’m a fan.)

  Anyway. So now it was the Monday after all that, and one side effect of this Incident I keep hinting at, rather than telling you, (because I forgot how embarrassing it is to have to freaking write all this out) is that we had to take Ceci to and from work, because her car was sort of, well, totaled.

  So Mark parked Thunder across from the hospital, on a slope with a fantastic view of both the town spread below and the Blue Ridge mountains turning pinkish gold in the sunset. When we got out, I expected him to lead the way in, but instead, he leaned his muscular six-foot frame against his ancient, muffler-impaired car, and then he just… watched the sunset.

  His bright blue eyes, normally sharp as a searchlight, were soft, and his implausibly studly red-gold mustache rested above a hinted smile. Even his freshly shaven head seemed somehow mellow.

  Mark never used to chillax like this. Ever.

  When I’d first met him, the guy had been a grumpy hermit, hiding out in his mountain cabin to avoid vibing everybody’s pain.

  And now this? I was super happy for him, sure, but still… what was happening to this man?

  I reminded myself that, for one thing, we’d recently almost died. Especially Mark. And the near-escape seemed to have spattered the guy with a certain Life Is Beautiful pixie dust.

  But that wasn’t all. Ever since that wedding reception two days earlier, Mark’s new verve for life had ratcheted up to levels never seen before, at least by this historian. It was very mysterious. Or so I tried to tell myself.

  I mean, watching a sunset? Mark? That’s like, something Ceci and I would do.

  Or would have done. Before the Incident.

  Which made me think… was that weird or something? Watching sunsets with a friend? After a long mountain hike with just the two of us, pouring out our hopes and dreams and rants about this new hair gel that has total structural failure in the slightest breeze?

  (Okay, maybe the rants tended to be mostly me.)

  I mean, yes, Ceci was the only friend I did that kind of thing with. But then, she was the only college friend I was really keeping in touch with anyway, here a year out into the deep waters of supposedly being adults. Although, why was I only keeping in touch with her, if we were really “just friends”?

  These were not the sorts of thoughts to soothe my strangely palpitating solar plexus.

  “You going in?” Mark said.

  I startled. His big blue eyes were back on full Searchlight Mode, boring into me, questioning and quizzical.

  “I was hoping to stay out here,” Mark said. “Hospitals… you know.”

  Shoot. I’d forgotten.

  I’d really been counting on having Mark as my wingman when we went in there to fetch Ceci. I know it sounds silly, but I hadn’t seen her since it happened, not alone. And now that we were here, I was even more churned up and confused and, okay, excited maybe, then I’d expected.

  But for an empath, walking into an emergency room is like inviting a college football team to use you for practice tackles.

  “Right, of course,” I said. “No worries.”

  I really did fully intend to spare him. But I guess my legs didn’t cooperate fast enough, or maybe my trademark poker mask failed me. Not that it’s any good against him anyway…

  Mark gave me his hard empath vibing squint, and he sighed. Then he jaywalked toward the hospital entrance.

  And that, dear reader, is true friendship.

  In the emergency waiting room, I did a quick scan for anyone in urgent agony, but there were only a couple people and they didn’t seem to be bleeding or anything.

  Beside me, Mark winced anyhow. Crap.

  He nodded toward a woman with short black straight hair and a thin black shirt over a bulging baby belly. She was turned away and I couldn’t see her face, only that she was about my age and very, very pregnant.

  Mark muttered, “You have any idea how weird it is to feel contractions?”

  He winced again, and my heart quivered with a stab of ache. Because his face was creasing with not only the pain, but the memory of pain… as if, in a few short days, he’d started to forget what it was like to hurt.

  “Sorry,” I said. “Dude, just go.”

  “It’s fine. I can always shield harder. Where’s Ceci?”

  I checked the intake window at the front of the waiting room. The desk was empty… no, there she was, just sitting back down…

  If I’d hoped that seeing Ceci again would bring clarity or closure, my beleaguered body begged to differ. My pulse was pounding, but I couldn’t figure out what the heck the feelings meant… was I taking her to prom or facing the principal? Overwhelmed, I flicked away my glance before she saw me.

  Which landed my gaze on the pregnant woman.

  Her face was still turned away, but on this second look, I registered that she was super attractive; she was one of these women who can make even the most late-term pregnancy look like simply an alternate state of hotness.

  Then I reminded myself, with a stern admonition, that I was here to pick up my friend (or “friend”?)
Ceci, not succumb to yet another random attack of meaningless attraction.

  If you’ve read Murder Feels Bad, you already know that I’d recently managed to look like an idiot over not one, but two, separate women that I didn’t know at all. I thought of them now… one had turned out to be a cultist (yep, right here in podunk Back Mosby) and the other… ugh… thinking of what had happened to Vanessa made me cold with dread… and so, so sad.

  That sadness somehow changed my visual filter. I forgot that this pregnant woman was even hot, and I realized she was sitting here, wincing with contractions, all alone.

  Where was the baby’s father? Or her mom? Or a girlfriend… somebody?

  A wave of compassion melted all my silly “troubles” about Ceci. I couldn’t imagine having to give birth, period, let alone all by myself. I wished I could help somehow.

  Even my mom hadn’t had to have me completely by herself. It’s one of our more contentious family stories, how my dad managed to be off on a business trip the one time she gave birth. But she’d still had her mom with her, plus two sisters.

  Not that I really wanted to remember Mom and Dad just now. As far as I could tell, they weren’t doing super great.

  Anyway, I couldn’t do anything about them, and I couldn’t do anything about this lonely mother here, being a strange young dude and not, say, a huggy grandmother, or my awesome boss Vivian. Vivian is super spiritual, and it occurred to me that she would have said to at least send the woman some “good energy”.

  So that’s what I tried to do. Send good energy. Which is not as easy as it sounds.

  Especially if, like me, you’re vague on the details, and also honestly still unsure about the whole spiritual realm thing, despite living with a practicing empath. But I did my best, which meant I was looking right at her when she suddenly showed me her face.

  What is it about eye contact?

  Was I just saying something silly about doubting whether spirit is real?

  Not that there was anything spiritual about the surge in my chest, or the tingles rushing up the backs of my arms, my neck, even the top of my head… or my vision going all tunnel…

  The beauty rush. So much for my good intentions.

  And so much for worrying about my parents, or Ceci, or even this woman herself. That’s the thing about the rush. It obliterates everything. Especially pain.

  An elbow dug into my side. Its owner, Mark, cleared his throat.

  I tore myself away, still buzzing, and also trying to parse the woman’s mysterious expression, and I followed Mark’s nod toward the front desk.

  Ceci was staring at me. Oops.

  Was she mad? Jealous? Devastated and sad? No, none of the above… she just looked… uncertain.

  That made two of us.

  Mark shoved past me and strode to her window. “Let’s go,” he said. “This place is killing me.”

  “I can’t leave yet,” Ceci said. Her voice was polite… too polite, verging on the crisp, even the Arctic remote. I came up next to Mark, and she gave me a smile to match the voice. That hurt.

  “Your shift’s over,” Mark said. “Look, you’re missing the sunset.”

  “Really?” Ceci blurted, with her true Southern longing lilt. She hopped up and craned to see past Mark to the wide windows in the outside wall. As I think I mentioned earlier, Ceci loves sunsets.

  But she forced herself to sit back down. “I’m not free to go yet,” she said. “Not until the next nurse shows up to take the desk.”

  Mark eyed a clock behind her. “Aren’t they late?”

  “I can’t just ditch, Mark.”

  I hoped Mark wasn’t seriously considering trying to talk Ceci out of her nursely duties. Someone might get hurt, and it wouldn’t be Ceci.

  But before he could reply, there came a furry.

  A furry holding a sign.

  By which I mean, a person walked in wearing a giant panda suit.

  It was like a demented sports mascot, or a possessed stuffed animal massively come to life. The suit seemed a bit baggy and cheap, and the cloth cuffs of the legs drooped open onto old sneakers. But the face was hidden in a grinning cartoon mask, and the hands were hidden in bulky paws, and the paws gripped a red posterboard that gleamed as bright as blood.

  I cringed. It was just like those furry protesters at the wedding…

  Chapter 2

  Not that, back on Saturday, the furries had been protesting the actual wedding.

  No, we’d seen a cluster of them, at least five or six, as we walked along the busy road from the church over to the reception. Back Mosby only really has two roads that get actual traffic, and this one was sporting a brand new clinic that had only opened in the last few months… a clinic for managing pain.

  I’d barely noticed the clinic back when it opened, although Ceci had told me how her sister Gwen and the other cops were super suspicious because of the whole “opiate epidemic” thing. But I’d been pretty oblivious about that too… until Roxanne had overdosed on heroin.

  You remember Roxanne, right? She was this red-headed veterinarian in Murder Feels Bad who was obsessed with her ex-husband Ed, and was framed for poisoning him with drugged milk. We’d proved she was innocent… but by then she’d already killed herself.

  It was super tragic. Although, I admit, I still had mixed feelings at her passing. Even though she hadn’t killed her ex, Roxanne had nearly shot me in the face. Maybe you’re used to that kind of thing, but for me, it’s hard not to get a little judgy.

  Even so, I wouldn’t wish death by overdose on anyone, no matter what they’d done… especially death by heroin.

  Because of the timing of Roxanne’s death, Gwen had been freaked, because it wasn’t clear how Roxanne could have gotten all the way from Back Mosby to Baltimore for her fix so fast… and if she’d gotten the heroin here in town, that was very, very bad.

  All the West Virginia horror stories of towns descending into mass opiate madness were lurking a mere half hour across the Virginia state line. So far, Gwen had kept the opiate dealers out of our town. She hoped.

  But those furry protesters at the clinic had begged to differ.

  They’d been clustered outside the pain clinic, five or six fursuits, each a different animal, and led by a man-size raccoon with a bullhorn. It might have been more funny than creepy, if it hadn’t been for the signs.

  The signs were dead serious. Like “PILL MILL” and “OPIATES KILL” and “REMEMBER ROXANNE.”

  They’d been calling on the clinic to shut down.

  Roxanne hadn’t died of opiate pain meds; she had died of straight heroin. But they were both opiates, the same kind of drug and the same kind of high. For these protesters, opiate pain meds were the addictive gateway to cheap heroin, and Roxanne never would have started if she hadn’t first come to the new pain clinic for relief.

  What I couldn’t figure out, then or now, was… what the heck was up with the fursuits? Why would that kind of person even care about the clinic?

  Not that I really knew what “that kind of person” meant… not beyond a childhood furry encounter which might have left me somewhat biased…

  Here and now, in the hospital waiting room, I tried to read the panda furry’s sign, but a bulky security guard had bustled up and was blocking my view. He began to berate the intruder, and the furry cowered and raised a paw, holding the palm before his fake face like a shield.

  “Oh, Lord,” Ceci grumble-prayed, and she got up to intervene.

  “Don’t,” I said.

  She looked at me in surprise, so surprised we both forgot to be weird.

  “That guy’s got a bad vibe,” I said.

  She raised her eyebrows. “You get vibes now too?”

  “Not like that,” I said, which was true, I hoped. “I just mean…”

  I looked to Mark for confirmation. But he shrugged. “I’m shielding, remember? This is pain central.”

  “He’s wearing a panda suit!” I pleaded.

  “And he still
deserves care,” Ceci said. “Or she.” And she huffed off.

  When she nudged the guard aside, I finally got a clear view of the sign:

  I NEED PAIN MEDS.

  “What the hell?” I said, as a prickly premonition iced my back. “I thought those furries were protesting against the meds.”

  Mark frowned. “They were.”

  In her Loud Nurse Voice, Ceci was saying, “Sir, we are no longer authorized to dispense pain medications. They are strictly regulated. I suggest you make an appointment at the new pain management clinic…”

  She had made the guard stand back, and she was frowning right up into that furry face, her triceps flexing with her hands on her hips, trying to sound respectful as she asked the panda to leave.

  But he (or she?) kept shaking his cheap panda head and folding his huge paw in the universal sign for “Gimme”.

  “Mark, for real,” I said. “This guy is deeply creepy, you’ve got to see what his deal is.”

  “And lower my shields?” Mark said. He had that concentrated look he sometimes gets when he’s visualizing a golden forcefield, or a castle wall, or whatever it is he’s imagining to “shield” the outside world and its pain. “That pregnant woman’s still having contractions, and the first room down the hallway has a guy with a broken leg—”

  “But Ceci’s right there! What if he’s dangerous?”

  He scoffed. “Dangerous people don’t dress like pandas.”

  Then his eyes went wide.

  I whipped back to see, but the furry had already shoved her, the impact almost silent, with the horrible silence of those damn lethal furry paws. She fell, straight back, like that trust game where someone catches you turned into a torture device. She hit the tile with a sickening crack.