Three Ways to Die

by Lee Goldberg

  I was sad, of course, and deeply depressed for days afterwards, but I felt a whole lot better after I received $250,000 from Carly's life insurance company, $75,000 from the State Crime Victim Fund, and $150,000 from a studio that optioned my tragic story for a TV movie. I was even hired to write the script.

  The truth is, I'm happier now than I've ever been. And I owe it all to Jack Webb's star, which has given me a thought: He's buried in Forest Lawn Cemetery in Hollywood, plot #1999. I wonder how hard it would be to steal his tombstone?

  THE END

  BUMSICKLE

  Detective Bud Flanek used a plastic knife to scrape the last bit of strawberry jelly from a tiny Smuckers tin, smeared it on his hot, cheddar cheese bagel, and took a big bite.

  He didn't really like the bagels in this place much. The only way he could eat them was to smother them with anything that had some flavor, which is why he ordered a bagel that was covered with cheddar cheese to start with. What Bud Flanek liked was the hot, heavy, onionized air that filled the tiny shop all winter long.

  Every morning, he left his city-owned Crown Vic idling at the curb, and while the worthless heater struggled to warm the icy, cracked-vinyl interior of the car, ate his breakfast at one of the chipped linoleum tables. Just for the heat and the smell.

  It was pathetic, Bud knew that. But it wasn't like he was squandering any great promise. By his own reckoning, he wasn't much of a cop and even less of a man.

  Bud became a cop because the perky recruitment officer who visited his community college had the best pair of breasts he'd ever seen. He thought he might get laid if he signed up and showed some enthusiasm.

  He didn't, and twenty years later here he was, a pot-bellied, 38-year-old Spokane homicide detective with thinning hair and nicotine-stained teeth, hemorrhoids and perpetual rhinitis, all packaged in a polyester suit from Wal-mart's distinctive Perry Como collection.

  Bud accepted the gradual hair loss, learned to live with the sore butt and runny nose, and didn't care about his suits, as long as they were cheap, didn't wrinkle easily, and didn't cut off his circulation. The only clothes he really shopped for were Hawaiian shirts because they had some artistic merit.

  He gave up the cigarettes when he and Diane were trying in vain to have kids, and managed to stay away from them even after the divorce, but couldn't bring himself to have his teeth bleached, or whitened, or whatever the hell they called it. People would know immediately what he'd done, and figure he did it to get laid, which would be true, since he hadn't had any action in a couple of years and his prospects weren't good.

  As far as being a cop went, Bud had managed to achieve mediocrity. He cleared cases, but nobody was going to mistake him for Lt. Columbo. Luckily for Bud, in reality very few murderers had the smarts of Patrick McGoohan, Robert Culp, or even a reasonably intelligent goat. Catching killers was easy. It was the paper work that was difficult.

  Bud's cell phone chirped. He didn't have to answer it to know that someone was dead.

  * * * * * *

  Every winter Bud Flanek inevitably found himself stomping through the snow in the park, taking off his nice wool mitts and swapping them for a tight, thin pair of plastic gloves to examine a frozen corpse.

  More often than not, they were natural deaths, the natural result of being broke and homeless in a big city with brutally cold winters and even colder politicians.

  The deaths were sad but simple cases, nothing that could qualify as a homicide, not unless the laws were changed, and the city council members who voted to slash shelter funding could be arrested for premeditated murder.

  The park was virtually deserted; it was too early and too cold for anyone to be out, except for a couple of uniformed officers and Erno Pender from the coroner's office. Erno was the only person Bud knew professionally who made him feel superior by comparison, if only because Erno weighed thirty pounds more than Bud, had half as much hair, and the pock-marked skin of a kid who picked his face through adolescence.

  "Did you think to bring me a bagel?" Erno asked.

  Bud pulled a cheddar cheese bagel out of his jacket pocket and dropped it into the evidence bag Erno held open in front him.

  "Thanks," Erno said.

  "You gonna eat it or analyze it?"

  "I'm saving it for later," Erno waved towards his meat wagon. "I'll eat it in the car on the drive back."

  "Too bad. I was hoping you could tell me what passes for cheese on those things."

  "You bring any cubes of butter, maybe some breakfast spread?"

  Bud shook his head no, shivering in the icy wind. "What's breakfast spread?"

  "The stuff that's not butter or margarine." Erno sealed the bag, stuffed it inside his coat, and led Bud off the jogging path into the shrubbery.

  "I appreciate you putting that in layman's terms for me," Bud said. "Can you do the same on this stiff?"

  "A bumsickle."

  "I'll need a little more than that."

  "Female Caucasian, mid-to-late-30s, no apparent signs of trauma. Looks to me like she just curled up under a bush with her bottle and froze to death."

  The woman was bundled up in a ratty, men's overcoat that was at least two sizes too big for her, hugging herself, her face turned to the ground. An empty bottle of Scotch lay at her feet.

  "Any ID?" Bud asked.

  "Pockets were empty," Erno replied. "We'll roll her prints when we get back to the morgue."

  Bud leaned down and looked at her face. She didn't die peacefully, she died defiant, her eyes closed and lips drawn tight in an expression of stubborn refusal. Her skin was chalky white and perfect, her black hair short and ragged, like she'd cut it herself in a frustrated hurry with a pair of rose shears. It was probably the kind of thing she'd do.

  He hadn't seen her in two years. Nobody had.

  "You know her?" Erno asked, reading his face.

  Bud nodded, overwhelmed with sadness and dread and unanswered questions. Where had she been? Did she just come back from somewhere else, or had she been living in the city all along, managing to hide from them all?

  "I got to give the Chief a call," Bud said, his voice a barely audible rasp.

  Erno looked at the corpse, then at Bud. "She's somebody that important?"

  Bud turned up his collar against the cold, shoved his fists into his pockets, and trudged off towards his car, mumbling into the wind.

  "Just his wife."

  * * * * * *

  When Lissy Masters woke up during the night, wanting a smoke and not finding one, she'd get out of bed, grab some change off the nightstand, and walk a couple blocks to the Stop-and-Go on the corner.

  It wasn't the hour, or the walk, that unsettled people on the streets. It was that Lissy didn't bother getting dressed to do it.

  The first time she showed up naked at the Stop-and-Go, demanding a pack of Marlboros, the startled clerk didn't know whether to sell her the cigarettes, call the cops, or drag her behind the counter for his interpretation of how the market got its name.

  He sold her the cigarettes and let her walk out, a decision all the more astonishing considering the clerk was a paroled sex offender who only took the job so he'd have free access to girlie magazines.

  When the clerk found out later that she was the wife of the deputy chief of police, he considered her naked, nocturnal visits a divine test of his character, proof of God's hand at work. Later, sometime after she disappeared, he would credit her for leading him to Jesus.

  Lissy was blessed in that way. She didn't have to adjust to the world; it twisted itself all out of shape to adjust to her.

  At least, it used to.

  Bud Flanek sat in Chief Masters' office, trying to look anywhere but at Fred Masters, who stood with his back to him, staring out the window in deep contemplation.

  Chief Masters was a big, muscled man in a tailored suit who looked like he'd be much more comfortable in a loincloth, letting his abs and glutes flex in unfettered glory. No matter how well-fitted his suits were, Ma
sters' body always seemed to be straining at the seams to break out.

  But if Chief Masters was uncomfortable, he didn't show it. He was a man who prized control, over others and over himself, which was why it was so important for him to hide his pain from Bud, and why it was so important for Bud not show he saw it.

  So Bud concentrated on the badges, awards and commendations on the walls and the one, small photo of Lissy Masters on her husband's spotless desk.

  There was something disturbingly erotic about the picture, although it was nothing more than an innocent head shot. It was a rawness to the smile, and a mischievousness in the eyes, that seemed to promise trouble, and a lot of fun making it.

  Lissy often disappeared for days at a time, only to show up again in a big way, like the time she took a Mercedes Benz on a 230-mile test drive, abandoning the car and the salesman on the side of the road in Idaho when she finally ran out of gas. Masters ended up buying the car, taking out a second mortgage on his house to pay for it, just to smooth things over as fast as possible.

  At the time, even the officers who were snickering behind Masters' back at his embarrassment felt sorry for him.

  Once, Bud picked her up at a McDonalds, where she was sitting naked, casually eating a Happy Meal, at 3 am. Bud sat across from her, sharing her fries, before he drove her home and dropped her off outside her door. He didn't want the Chief seeing him.

  A few hours later, she walked back out into the sunrise and wasn't seen again. That was two years ago.

  "You know I tried to help her," the chief finally declared. "I put her into rehab three times, though drugs and alcohol were never her problem. I wish they were, at least I could have understood that."

  "I'm afraid you'll have to come down and identify the body, sir."

  The chief turned around and looked at Bud, who immediately straightened up in his seat.

  "I'm aware of what I have to do, Flanek," the Chief said.

  Bud swallowed. "Yes, sir."

  During his entire career, such as it was, Bud was careful to go unnoticed, a feat he accomplished by showing absolutely no ambition or initiative whatsoever. Everybody took him for granted, a familiar piece of squad room furniture, and he liked that. Now here he was in the Chief's office, where he couldn't help but make a resoundingly bad impression. Why couldn't some other cop have found Lissy Masters?

  "Any idea where she's been," The Chief asked, "or how she ended up in the park?"

  "No sir," Bud replied, "but I've got officers questioning the homeless to see if any of them knew her."

  "She wasn't homeless," the Chief snapped. "She had a home, a good home."

  "Yes, sir." Bud felt beads of sweat rolling down his back.

  "If she was living on the streets in my city, don't you think I would have known about it? That we all would have?"

  "Of course, sir."

  There was no way this could turn out well for Bud, but at least it would be over soon. He thanked God that it was clearly an accidental death, something that could be wrapped up in a day, as opposed to a protracted murder investigation, which could drag on for weeks and give the Chief ample opportunity to be dissatisfied and disgusted with him. With luck, in a couple days the Chief would forget Bud Flanek ever existed.

  "You're sure about how she died?"

  "There's nothing at this point to indicate a homicide, sir. The coroner is pretty certain she froze to death, but we'll have the results of the autopsy this afternoon."

  The Chief nodded, as much an acknowledgement as a dismissal. "Go down to the morgue, wait on that report, I don't want the press getting it before I do."

  "Yes, sir."

  Bud rose from his seat and gathered his overcoat from the adjoining chair. "I'm very sorry, sir."

  "So am I." The Chief turned back to the window.

  Bud glanced one more time at Lissy's picture and left.

  * * * * * *

  He had no desire to see someone he knew dissected, so Bud waited in the hall, eating a bag of chips and staring at the diagram of the building's emergency exits on the opposite wall.

  By the time Erno Pender finally emerged in his blood-streaked lab-gown, Bud had memorized the ingredients of Nacho Cheese Doritos and knew how to get out of the building in any situation.

  "How did it go?" Bud asked.

  "As hard as I tried, I couldn't revive her," Erno held his palm out to Bud. "You got some change for the vending machine?"

  "I meant were there any surprises?"

  "Low blood sugar makes it hard for me to recall."

  Bud dug into his pockets and scowled. "You make at least twenty grand more than me."

  "But you have pockets and I don't."

  He handed Erno a handful of assorted change.

  "Thanks," Erno shuffled up to the machine. "She froze to death."

  "Is that all you've got to tell me?"

  "I thought you'd be relieved."

  "I am, but with the Chief involved, I need all the details."

  Erno scrutinized the selections. "Besides being a little drunk, there were no drugs in her blood stream, no needle marks, no suspicious cuts, bruises or abrasions. All that's left are corn-nuts."

  "What corn nuts?"

  Erno wrapped a knuckle against the glass. "Those corn nuts. Nobody wants to eat corn nuts. You cleaned the machine out. You ravaged it. If you gave a damn about any of us down here, you'd have the courtesy to leave at least one bag of chips."

  "Does that mean I can have my change back?"

  Erno angrily jammed coins into the slot. "She had sex before she died."

  Bud immediately looked at the nearest emergency exit. "She was raped?"

  "I didn't say that." Erno punched a button on the machine. "There was no physical signs of force, but I got enough seminal fluid for a DNA match if you think you'll ever need it."

  Bud wondered if this was information the Chief really needed to know, because if he did know, then he probably would want the poor guy hunted down, and he'd want Bud to do it. That wouldn't do anybody any good, particularly Bud, who knew he'd never be able to find the guy.

  All of this ran through Bud's mind in the time it took for Erno's bag of corn nuts to drop from the shelf into the slot. Bud was working out a way to ask Erno to do him a big favor, and omit the semen findings from his report, when Ermo spoke up.

  "Whoever he is, he never has to worry about child support."

  "What do you mean?"

  Erno shook his little snack. "There are more corn nuts in this bag than sperm in his, if you catch my meaning."

  Bud did and immediately wished he didn't. "Can you tell me the time of death?"

  "No."

  "Can't you take a guess?"

  Erno tore open the bag of nuts and spilled a few into his hand. "A few months ago, a couple of hikers in Spain found a guy frozen in a block of ice. They called the police. Turns out the guy had been missing for a while. A couple thousand years, in fact. Maybe it was more like a hundred thousand. I don't know. The point is, they wouldn't have known how long ago he froze to death if wasn't for certain evolutionary changes, and the clothes and tools they found near him. Since we haven't evolved much since Lissy Masters died, and we had a pretty warm summer, I'd say she died sometime this winter."

  Erno popped the nuts in his mouth and crunched on them, using the loud crack they made to punctuate his point.

  Bud thought for a long moment and decided to ask Erno to do him a big favor before sending the autopsy to the Chief.

  * * * * * *

  It took the security guards fifteen minutes to respond to the break-in, hardly the instant, armed response promised on the sign in the front lawn. But Bud Flanek was thankful for the extra time, it gave him a chance to find the freezer in the basement and a comfortable chair to sit in.

  The two rent-a-cops appeared in the open door way at the top of the stairs striking dramatic poses they learned from TV. One stretched his arm straight out, twisting his wrist so his gun was aimed sideways, a grip t
hat looked cool, but was about as useful as trying to shoot the weapon with his foot. The other security guard held his gun straight up, right in front of his face, a stance that might be effective if his target happened to be levitating directly over his head.

  "You guys ever fire those guns, you're gonna hurt yourselves worse than the person you're trying to shoot, so why don't you put them away?" Bud sat at the bottom of the stairs in a folding chair, one arm resting on top of the padlocked freezer, the other holding up his badge to Crockett and Tubbs.

  "Bud Flanek, Homicide."

  "Where's the perp?" Tubbs asked, reluctantly holstering his gun.

  "In the time it took you to get here, he could almost be at the airport. In another five minutes, he could be on a plane to Jakarta," Bud said. "But as luck would have it, the perpetrator is right here."

  "He's in the freezer?" Crockett asked.

  "No," Bud replied. "He's sitting in this chair, putting his badge back in his pocket."

  "You broke into the house?" Tubbs asked. It was more of a statement than a question. Bud nodded. "I assume you've got a search warrant you can show us."

  "I couldn't get one, even if I'd tried, which I didn't, because whether I have a warrant or not isn't going to matter," Bud glanced at his watch. "What I really need is for the two of you to wait here with me for a while."

  "Wait for what?" Crockett asked suspiciously.

  "Assistance in a homicide investigation. Did your dispatcher notify the homeowner that there'd been a break in?"

  "Yeah," Crockett replied.

  "Then it shouldn't be much longer," Bud motioned to some folding chairs propped against the wall. "Take a seat, relax. You might learn a few things."

  The two rent-a-cops shared a confused look, then went over and took some seats, unfolded them, and sat down.

  Bud glanced at his watch again and felt the two guys staring at him. "So, you guys ever try to join the police department?"

  "I didn't meet the height requirement," Tubbs groused. "Or the weight."

  "And you?" Bud asked Crockett.