EQMM, Sep-Oct 2006

by Dell Magazine Authors

  He was lying there with most of the pillow over his head, not getting up, hating the potty little job that was all he'd managed to get. I know he was feeling awful. And I did sympathise. I really did. You couldn't not if you loved him, and I did. But I wished he'd just pull himself together a bit. I mean, the rest of us had to. Anyway, the brick. Well, it wasn't so much the brick as the bits of glass. One of the bigger splinters sliced through my forearm, you know, the one bit of one that stays looking reasonably firm even when the rest begins to go scraggy. It was such a shock. I was still reeling from the noise. You can't imagine how much noise one of those plate-glass windows makes when it's broken. And then there was a kind of stinging down my arm; that's all it seemed to be at the beginning, a sting. And I looked down and there was this great long red line, getting redder and wider all the time. Spreading. It was about six inches long, I think, and the lips of it opened as I looked, like a cut in a bit of steak.

  Anyway, for a while I just sat and looked at it. Then when the blood started dripping down onto the beanbag—it was natural canvas, so it showed—and the planks we'd spent so long sanding, I knew I'd have to do something. It was hurting by then, too. And I felt like a child. Perhaps that was why I let her in. I felt wobbly and pathetic, nothing like Penny-who's-such-a-brick, Penny who's always kept everything going even when her husband cracked up like that and both the children went so peculiar.

  She rang the bell just as I'd got to the hall, gripping the sides of the cut with my other hand. Well, it would have to be the other hand, wouldn't it? Honestly, sometimes I forget I've ever been a copyeditor. Where was I? I know, trying not to think too much about her. She'd have said I was in denial and she'd have been right. I sort of thought it must be whoever'd chucked the brick through the window who was ringing the bell and I wasn't going to answer. I was leaning against the hall wall—we hadn't painted that yet, just stripped off the awful old spriggy paper we'd found when we came—and feeling faint, really. Anyone would have. And then she called out:

  "Are you all right? I saw them throw it and tried to catch them, but I was just too far away."

  She did sound breathless, as though she'd been running. And she had a nice voice, rich and deepish, and very warm. It sounded so safe and sure that I came over even more wobbly than before, which was barmy. Children always do it if you're too sympathetic when they've bumped themselves, but I was old enough to know better.

  "Hello? Are you all right? My name's Sophie Allen. I live just round the corner. I'm perfectly respectable. Can I come in? Give you a hand? There's a very good glazier I know who does our windows whenever we're burgled. I can give him a ring for you, if you'd like. Are you there?"

  So then I stammered out something idiotic and opened the door. And there she was, just about my age but much younger looking. She wasn't having to hold down all that fury, for one thing. Or not by then. I found out later that she'd been through the same sort of thing in a way, but she'd got over it. People do. Or so they say.

  "You poor thing,” was all she said. But she came right in, put an arm round my shoulders, and nearly pushed me towards the kitchen. I'd hated that, too, being able to see into the kitchen from the front door. It really drove the downshifting bit home.

  She knew all about the house because hers was exactly the same. They all are in those little streets between the commons. She had my arm under the cold tap in seconds. The firmness of her was lovely then, just as safe-making as her voice. The brick and the malice of it were washed off just like the blood. They came back. But for a bit they'd gone. She kept on talking and I didn't really listen to the words, just the sureness of her voice.

  It sounded as though she knew everything that mattered and would always help but never ask the sort of questions you didn't want to answer. She always did see a lot, and she knew what you could take and what you needed—and offered it straight off. Always.

  When she'd got me bloodless and dried out and bandaged up, she called the glazier she knew and swept up the glass, found the Hoover and sucked up the splinters from the beanbag, too, and even Hoovered my jeans. I wouldn't have thought of that, but she was right; there were chips of glass caught in some of the seams. I saw them gleaming as she sucked. It was a weird sensation, that powerful pull all down my thighs and her lovely, warm, matter-of-fact voice, telling me what she was doing and why and what the shock of it all was doing to me, and why I was feeling so awful, and who she thought the children were who'd thrown the brick and how it wasn't me they were throwing it at but the old bat who'd lived there before us. She'd been a bit of a witch, apparently, always complaining about ordinary noise and making a great fuss about children playing in the street. They still do that round here. I couldn't believe it at first: roller-blading in the middle of the road, chucking balls about. As though they weren't ten minutes’ walk from two huge open spaces. And they always did make a bit of a row. I saw what she meant: the old bat, I mean, who in a way caused the trouble because if she hadn't upset them in the first place, they wouldn't have chucked the brick and none of the rest of it would've happened.

  "But there's a SOLD sign outside,” I said at the time. I remember that. It was nearly the first thing I'd said in the torrent of all the comfort she'd poured out. I'd meant to say something about how amazing it was to find a friendly neighbour in a place where I'd never expected to, but all that came out was that peevish little protest. “Can't they read?"

  "Probably not. Lots of the more delinquent ones can't. I'm a woodentop, and I see a fair amount of children like them."

  "A woodentop?” I thought I hadn't heard properly, but she smiled, a great huge smile that showed off her perfect white teeth. Mine aren't like that: crossed over at the front and a nasty grubby colour like stale clotted cream. Ugh.

  "Magistrate,” she said, laughing. She had a lovely laugh, too, and none of us had laughed for ages, not happily like that. “No one calls us that these days, but in the old days they did and I like it. Now, you're glass-free. You'd better have something hot. Tea? Coffee? God! I sound like an air hostess, don't I? Shall I put the kettle on?"

  And so she made herself at home. I liked it, which I'd never have let myself do if it hadn't been for the brick and the blood. I sat on the beanbag, looking at the jagged great hole in the window, and thought about the violence of South London and how much I hated it and how scared I was even though I couldn't afford to be. They say it's changed now, but in those days it was pretty rough. So there I was, thinking how amazing it was that she was there, and perhaps even in South London there would be people to meet and like and talk to. Damn! I'm forgetting the copyediting again. But I can't stop once I've started. Sorry. I don't often talk as much as this. Well, I do, actually, but it feels new each time I do it and I always mean not to afterwards.

  There was one little bit of glass she'd missed. Even she'd managed to miss one and it lay on the scrubbed board just near a stickying puddle of my blood, glinting. It was a sunny day. All the days that summer were sunny. It seemed unfair in a way.

  She came back with the tea, very strong tea-bag tea. It tasted like her, strong and warm and helping. Then we just talked. She was still there when the woman who was doing the school run to the local comprehensive dropped my two off and she stayed to tea and made them laugh and helped with their homework. Then she went, giving me her number and telling me she'd drop in again. She only lived round the corner.

  It wasn't for weeks that I got round to asking her for supper so that John could share in it all. I suppose in a way I'd wanted to keep her as my treat. But then it seemed selfish, so I fixed it so that he could meet her, too.

  When he took one look at her and said, “Sophie?” in that surprised but blissful voice, I suppose I knew what was going to happen. I was angry with her for not telling me she knew him, but when I looked at her I saw that she was just as surprised as he'd been. She knew my married name, of course, but I never talked about John because it would have been disloyal and so she'd never made the conne
ction; she'd been married, too, for about ten years, and so he hadn't recognised her name when I'd talked about her.

  That was it, really. They tried not to, I think. They really did try, but she was just so much better at making him feel all right than I was. I understood that. She did it for me, too, when he could only make me feel miles worse. In a way it wasn't what they did that made me so angry. It was what he said when he'd made his decision, as though I'd be pleased to hear it, as though he was giving me something again after all.

  "If it wasn't for everything you've taught me I'd never have been able to love Sophie as she deserves. I couldn't do it when I first knew her because I didn't know enough. It was you who taught me how to know people and let them know me. It's all your doing, Penny. You've shown me how to be all the things she wanted me to be then and I couldn't. We owe it all to you and we'll never forget it."

  I won't either. Not ever. You see, that was when I did want to kill him. But even then, if I hadn't been jointing the chickens when he said it and had a sharp knife in my hands, we'd still have been all right. I know we would.

  Copyright © 2006 Natasha Cooper

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  * * * *

  "Sorry, regime change."

  * * * *

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  KARAOKE NIGHT by David Knadler

  A 2003 Department of First Stories author, David Knadler continues to write intelligent fiction, full of keen observations and with evocative settings. This is his third story for us, in a series in which crimes are solved not through the use of science but through the use of science but through the detective's insights into character.

  The body was just inside the bar, surrounded by a puddle of blood and beer. Four guys were thoughtfully regarding the dead man in the same stance they might take around the open hood of somebody's new pickup: one hand in a jeans pocket, the other holding a drink.

  "About time,” George Wick said. “Christ, I'm surprised they ain't had the funeral yet."

  "Yeah? I'm surprised you're not going through his pockets yet. Get back. Ever hear of a crime scene?"

  Deputy Sheriff John Ennis stepped gingerly in next to the body. The bloodstain was huge, black in the bar light, blooming across the right half of Dean Jackman's snap-button shirt, merging the vertical stripes. Jackman himself stared at the ceiling, looking slightly amazed at the way the evening had turned out. Ennis could have pronounced the big realtor dead from twenty feet away, but he checked for a pulse.

  "Sandy already tried CPR,” Wick said. “I think he was dead when he hit the floor."

  Sandy West, the barmaid, was seated behind him on a barstool, rubbing at her hands with a stained handkerchief. She had been crying. The knees of her jeans were wet, and there was blood on her blouse.

  Ennis leaned in and examined the bullet wound: big slug, a few inches below the left armpit. The bullet had come through the Cadillac's door. Couldn't have struck the heart directly or Jackman wouldn't have made it in from the parking lot, but the bullet had definitely torn through something vital. Ennis was slightly relieved. He'd been caught on the wrong side of a Montana Rail Link freight train when the call came and it was probably better that the five-minute delay would not have made the difference between life and death.

  There was a chiming sound, which resolved itself into a tune Ennis recognized as the opening bars to “La Bamba.” Startled, he looked around, then realized it was coming from the little phone clipped to the dead man's tooled leather belt. He looked at Wick and his friends, who were looking back at him. Two more rings. He reached for the phone, but by then it had gone silent. Ennis flipped it open and made a note of the local number.

  He stood, keyed his shoulder mike: “No hurry on the ambulance, Debbie. 10-55. Call Libby; coroner and crime scene."

  Wick and company had repaired to the bar to refill their glasses from a new pitcher of beer. Ennis stared at them.

  "George? What I said about the crime scene? The bar is closed. Now what happened?"

  Wick scowled, tilted his glass toward the body. “Only thing we saw was this dipshit diving onto our table."

  Ennis had his notebook out. “He say anything?"

  Wick nodded. “Music was pretty loud, but it sounded like, ‘Bitch shot me.’ Then he kind of twisted to one side and knocked over my table. Two pitchers gone. Pissed me off. I was going to kick his ass, but then..."

  "He said ‘bitch'? Who do you think he meant by that?"

  Wick smirked. “Well, he's been boinking Alana Winnett."

  "Works at Ace Hardware?"

  "Used to. Heard she got her real-estate license.” Wick nodded at the dead man. “Went to work for Dean. Seen ‘em in here a couple times."

  "She's married, right?"

  "Yep. So's Dean. That ain't considered a big obstacle to romance in these parts."

  Wick and his friends chuckled at that, but their smiles faded in the presence of Jackman's cooling corpse. Maybe they were remembering they were married, too.

  Ennis contemplated the body. He knew Dean Jackman only slightly, just as he knew Alana Winnett and most everybody else in Worland: enough to greet them by name with a nod or a smile, enough to share casual observations about the weather. This was a change from Philadelphia, where he'd worked as a beat cop for a few years before moving West. There most of the victims had been anonymous. Which was a good thing, he now knew. It was somewhat harder to deal with a shattered life when you had a recent picture of that same life whole.

  Dean Jackman had a wife, Mary Ann, who sat on the school board, and a teenage daughter who had graduated high school last year at the top of her class. Alana Winnett had a husband, Roy, who was currently unemployed, and a couple of kids still in school: a little blond girl of eight or nine, and a boy who must be fifteen now—small for his age, but he'd already come to the attention of the authorities, as Ennis liked to put it.

  "You see Alana around here tonight? Roy? Mary Ann?"

  All four shook their heads, but again it was Wick who spoke. “Nah. Last couple weeks, they been in here. Karaoke night. Jackman and Alana, coming in at different times, trying to make like they're just running into each other, but you know how that goes. He'd actually get up and try to sing Springsteen, ‘Dancing in the Dark.’ Didn't see ‘em tonight."

  Ennis closed his notebook. Outside, the keys were still in Jackman's Escalade, and it was not unthinkable that at ten-thirty on a karaoke night somebody out there might now be drunk enough to take it for a spin. He shepherded Wick and friends out the door and keyed the mike as he stood in the doorway. “Where's Twenty-nine?"

  Twenty-nine was Kevin Heibein, the fresh-faced Worland city cop who looked as if he should be starting his sophomore year at Kootenai High. He was supposed to have been here by now.

  "Twenty-nine has a hit-and-run,” Debbie answered. “Half-mile west on Gypsy Lake Road. One injured. I sent the ambulance there instead. Can you manage by yourself?"

  Ennis guessed he'd have to. It would take the county help at least another half-hour to get here and there were no other officers in the greater Worland area.

  A chill wind had come up, but the bar crowd was still milling around in the parking lot, chatting and laughing as though they were out there for a fire drill instead of a homicide. Despite Ennis's earlier admonition, some of them were also edging closer to the Escalade: He recognized Ray Esposito and a few of his skateboard buddies, who had reached legal drinking age this year and were making the most of it. They backed away at the sound of his police radio, trying to appear casual about it. Ennis gave them a hard look.

  "Nobody picked up any brass, right? Anybody see what happened?” Getting shrugs, he walked around the SUV, studying the gravel. If there had ever been evidence here, it was ruined now. He examined the bullet hole on the driver's side. It had punched through below the window, which had been rolled down. He could picture Jackman sitting in his SUV, his elbow up on the sill. Talking to someone. Which would explain why
the slug hadn't hit his left arm. There was another bullet hole on the far side of the cab, just above the window on the passenger side. This shot had come through the open driver's window, he guessed, maybe meant for Jackman's head. The rising angle meant the shooter was probably a bit lower than his victim. Maybe somebody sitting in a car?

  No shell casings, so the weapon was probably a revolver. Big bullet holes, so it was a large caliber—in short, the sort of weapon occupying nightstand drawers in about half the households in Worland. There wasn't a lot of violent crime in the town, but people around here liked to be ready for anything.

  "Looks like he got hit out here, you know, then went inside.” This deduction came from Esposito, who had again approached and was now standing behind Ennis. Like everybody else, he was still holding his drink. Icehouse, Ennis noted: Twice the alcohol so you could get drunk in half the time. In Ray's circle, this was considered a significant bargain. It was maybe 35 degrees out and the kid was wearing enormous cargo shorts riding just above his crotch. Like his friends, he wore his cap backward.

  "Very shrewd, Ray. You notice this before you walked through the trail of blood, or after?"

  The kid's face fell.

  "I told ‘em not to walk in it,” he said. “Just trying to help."

  "Yeah, thanks. You see who did it?"

  He shook his head. “No, man ... but I did kind of hear it."

  "Heard what?"

  Ray lifted his bottle, tilted it toward the far corner of Westy's, beyond the illumination of the bar signs.

  "I was over there, taking a piss."

  "And?"

  He seemed embarrassed. “Would have used the can, but it gets rank in there. There was a line, and I had to go, you know?"