MOSTLY MURDER: Till Death: a mystery anthology

by Lawrence Block

  What was it, amnesia with him?

  Faith sighed. His need to hug her even now was a bit selfish, it occurred to her. Shouldn’t he be calling 911?

  Strangely, it didn’t matter much to her now. It was probably too late.

  That the kids—Shannon—would see her like this… well, that was awful. But nothing for it now. Faith could feel a sort of liquid peace replacing her usual need to fix everything for everyone. It was kind of nice, this helplessness. Let someone else do it, for once.

  Suddenly Frankie dropped her and stood up.

  “Jesus, Faithie, what am I gonna do?” He ran his fingers through what was left of his hair. “I can’t call anyone. You understand.”

  His eyes met hers for a moment. “You understand, I know.”

  He leaned down and pulled some hairs away from her face. Her face was sticky. “Always my biggest fan, Faith. What am I gonna do without you?”

  Faith wanted to say something. She opened her mouth, but words would not come out.

  She thought of the story she’d heard in religion class, years ago. About one of the saints being beheaded… John the Baptist? One of them.

  Kind of a gory story, actually. As his head bounced away from the chopping block, his mouth said, “Jesus, Jesus, Jesus.” She wanted to do something dramatic like that. Something to mark the end.

  She wanted to say, “I love you,” or just, “Frankie.” But nothing would come out.

  She thought of what was to come. Her in Heaven… what would that be like? Frankie in jail, probably. And then… in Hell?

  She didn’t like to think of him in Hell. She wanted him to be with her. After all, if they were in Heaven or Hell or anywhere together, he couldn’t hurt her any more. She wouldn’t have a body, right? So he could punch her or stick a knife in her gut and twist it while he was throwing a Mr. Hard tantrum and he wouldn’t ruin anything.

  Faith looked at Frankie as he backed out of the bathroom, giving her one last injured gaze.

  If she could have laughed, she would have.

  He was mad at her.

  He was mad at her. For dying.

  Jesus. Jesus, Frankie.

  Jesus.

  Q&A with Patrice Fitzgerald

  This one sort of creeps up on you. Did you know what the story was when you started?

  I did. The whole family and the entire scenario sort of unfolded. I think I actually had a stomach ache myself, and I started thinking about this woman who felt the same way… that’s what we writers are like, always thinking, “what if…?”

  Have you written a lot of mysteries?

  No, actually! I’ve written a few short stories that are suspenseful in flavor, especially in the science fiction realm, but no true mysteries. Although there is one book I started that’s supposed to be the first volume in a cozy mystery series, and I may get back to it someday. I do publish another author (she’s in this collection—Jerilyn Dufresne) and she writes a fabulous mystery series about Samantha (Sam) Darling.

  You’re a publisher too?

  Yes. I publish books for a couple of authors—one is Anne Kelleher, who writes the Tilton Chartwell mysteries and has a story in this anthology—through my niche publishing company. I’m the producer and editor for this new Mostly Murder suspense anthology series as well as a space opera series, Beyond the Stars. And of course I publish books under my own name plus a couple of pseudonyms I use for the steamier stuff.

  I’m an attorney as well, though I don’t practice any longer… I got so good at it that I don’t have to practice. Ba dump bump!

  And I’m an actual diva—I sing opera, jazz, and Broadway in shows with my husband, who is also a singer.

  Are you asking yourself these questions?

  Why yes! Yes I am. One of my many duties as the editor. Fortunately, I find myself very amusing to talk to, so it’s no problem.

  What are you working on now?

  As soon as I publish this anthology, I will be looking at submissions for the fourth volume of my space opera anthology, Beyond the Stars: New Worlds, New Suns. I have a short story due next month for a WOOL-based anthology to be produced by Samuel Peralta, and I’ve made a good start on the first book in my space pirates saga, O Captain. Lots percolating!

  Where can we find you?

  I have a slightly neglected website at www.PatriceFitzgerald.com and you can find me under my real name on Facebook at all hours of the night. If you do, tell me I should stop posting and go to bed.

  In Sickness and in Murder

  by B.A. Spangler

  My wife is a murderer.

  She’s not a bad person, but she is a killer. I’d come to learn that painful truth while investigating the death of a homeless man. As the lead detective on the case, I broke every rule, every promise, every law I’d vowed to uphold. After all, up until then, the greatest thing I’d ever done in my life was to love my wife, and we have vows too.

  I was convinced she’d killed the homeless man in self-defense. Only, she didn’t stay at the scene like you’re supposed to. She didn’t scream for help or call the police or wait to tell her side of the story.

  Instead, she ran.

  At some point, she’d even gotten rid of whatever evidence there might have been. But she missed some of it—she just didn’t know it at the time. It was the way the homeless man had died that clued me onto the fact that something was off. The Captain and my colleagues didn’t see what I did. They looked uncaringly at the crime scene, missing it, dismissing it much the same way the homeless man had been dismissed. In my career, I’d seen dozens of murders—a hundred maybe. I’d seen mortal wounds, self-inflicted wounds, and I’d seen my share of defensive wounds. But what I saw in the alley that night told me a very different story. What might have started as self-defense had ended up a murder.

  Later, when I discovered my wife’s involvement, I turned a blind eye. For the first time in my career, I saw what I wanted to see, lying to myself, convincing myself that she’d done what she had to do to survive. So I guess I shouldn’t have been all that surprised when she killed again. But I was, and now another man is dead.

  My name is Steve Sholes. I’m a detective, a husband, and a father. My wife is Amy Sholes. We met in a romantic, storybook fashion, finding one another amidst a sea of stirring lights and sweaty bodies, rocking and thumping to a hard dance-club beat. Seeing her was like having a taste of honey—sweet and wanting me want more. The world disappeared around us, and we played a flirty game, swaying slowly and talking softly. Before I knew it, we’d found ourselves in an intimate bubble where we quickly fell in love. We fit. We were the puzzle pieces that completed the picture we both wanted to see. And it was a beautiful picture.

  Then came the day when she walked into our home, her face flushed a deep crimson red, her clothes torn, her hands and knees scuffed and blood-stained in a way that triggered alarms in my head. She’d told me she’d had an accident, she’d tripped and fallen while leaving the library. She laughed sheepishly at her own clumsiness, but I could hear her forcing the tone and trying to make light of the scene in front of me.

  I wish I’d been more careful then, but the detective in me came out like a Dr. Jekyll to his Mr. Hyde. I barraged her with question after question, prodding and probing, unable to stop myself in searching for an answer she refused to reveal. She held to her story, though, and the intuition that told me she was the victim of a robbery or maybe an attempted rape was dismissed. Thinking back, if I hadn’t been home, if I hadn’t seen her walk into our kitchen in the state she was in, I would never have been able to place her at the scene of the murder. Amy did a good job of cleaning up after herself, but in her haste, she left the buttons from her blouse that the homeless man had seized in his hand, clutching them in a death grip as his life spilled from his neck. The image of Amy stayed fresh in my mind for days. Her hair pulled out, the scratches, her torn clothes. There are some images that remain forever.

  Being the lead detective, I got a call from the
coroner, asking that I meet him at the morgue. I had no idea what it was he wanted to show me, but if he was calling, then he had to have found something worth a look. I was eager to prove to the Captain, and to everyone else, that the case was more than just a few homeless caught up in a knife fight over a bottle of rotgut.

  The memory of that day is as cold as the air that had rushed past me when I entered the room where the dead speak. I remember how I jumped at the sound of the doors shutting behind me and how the coroner held back his laughter. To him, I had to have looked out of place—I rarely visit the morgue, preferring to read the reports rather than stand in a room and stare at dead bodies. I was a tourist in a strange city, and I hated the smell of the place too. I hated the refrigerator cold even more.

  “Put this on,” Walter Nolan had instructed and handed me a small container of what he called an odor inhibitor cream. He spoke with a slight lisp and dabbed his upper lip, adding, “It makes the room smell like vanilla.” I waved off the cream, deciding to breathe shallowly. I was eager to see what he’d found and didn’t plan to stay long.

  “Did you find something?” I’d asked.

  “Well, I heard from the Captain, and the thinking in this case is it might be a robbery gone bad… maybe two homeless fighting?” he began as he opened the morgue’s refrigerator door. The handle clanked, and one of the hinges protested before the dark interior revealed two blue feet through a frosty vapor. A toe-tag hung limply like an ornament from the dead man’s left foot, showing the date and time of death as best estimated by our findings at the crime scene.

  “A robbery, yes,” I answered, watching him take the body out of the refrigerator. I heard the squeal of metal as the tray carrying the homeless man slid into place, locking with a loud clack.

  The man had been dead two days, and even with the refrigeration, the smell made my stomach lurch. A taste of bile rose into the back of my throat. I clenched my jaw and nearly gagged, but held it back. He was an older man, and the dirt on his face made him look like some kind of ancient refugee, but the paperwork identified him as being in his early fifties. My eyes shifted to the wounds on his neck which had already turned as black as road tar, save for a few spatters of blood on his face and chest that had dried thin and showed a hint of red. His skin was paper thin and riddled with a heavy traffic of bluish veins that branched in long sweeps from his head to his toes. But what was most surprising was how frail the man was. Beneath the heap of shirts and coats he’d worn, he was as thin as a rail.

  I stepped around the body, taking to the other side so that Walter and I were facing one another.

  “I kept the evidence as is, wanted you to see it,” he told me as he slipped on a pair of latex gloves, snapping the rubbery lips against his wrists.

  “Help me out Walter,” I said and reluctantly leaned closer. “What am I looking at?”

  “They’re right there,” he answered with a light guffaw. I frowned, uninterested in the humor. His smile waned as he turned the homeless man’s hand to face the ceiling. The joints in the dead man’s wrist hollered in protest like the refrigerator door. “You got an evidence bag on you?”

  I showed Walter the plastic evidence bag—the space left to write in the chain of custody still blank. I’d learned early in my career to carry a few spare bags whenever investigating a case.

  Walter pried apart the dead man’s fist, pulling away the fingers and filling the room with another set of grating pops. In the homeless man’s palm I saw two buttons. The sight of them was almost bizarre, and I had to blink away the shock, believing my mind must be playing tricks on me. I recognized the buttons. My heart stopped then, the evidence bag slipping from my fingers. An image rushed into my mind like a kick in the head. I saw Amy standing in our kitchen, telling me she’d fallen. This had to be a mistake.

  “Sorry,” I managed to mutter and picked up the bag, pitching it open like a hungry mouth. He plunked the blouse’s buttons into the evidence bag like ice cubes into a stiff drink and then closed the dead man’s hand for a final time.

  “Your evidence,” he said with a smile, handing over the buttons. “Doubt there are many homeless wearing a woman’s blouse. I betcha didn’t expect to see that. Huh?”

  “Nope,” I answered, sealing the bag, my voice gravelly. “I suppose that does change things a bit.”

  “Well, that’s for you to figure out. I just write the reports and send them over.”

  “Thanks, Walter.”

  The picture of what had happened was suddenly becoming very clear—the images of the library and the alley piecing together. I rushed out of the morgue, escaping the cold and the smell, the truth about Amy’s accident chasing me like a predator. I heaved my breakfast, throwing it up onto a corner wall. Walter followed me out of the room and put his hand on my back.

  “Just need a minute, please,” I told him, hoping he’d leave and take the smell of the dead with him. “I’ll be okay.”

  “Everyone picks this corner,” he said. “Always this corner. I’ll get it cleaned up. And if I find anything else, I’ll let you know.”

  I heaved again, giving him a cue to leave. He mumbled a few more words, but my ears were thumping with the sound of my heartbeat.

  Knowing my wife had been there, knowing that she’d nearly sawed the man’s head clear off his neck, knowing that she’d lied about it all... the truth tore me up.

  I spent the next five minutes trying to catch my breath and clear the sting from my eyes. I also spent the time justifying what Amy had done. Maybe what she did and the way she did it wasn’t all that bad. Was it?

  I had come up with a dirt-simple plan. I had the buttons from her blouse in my breast pocket. The evidence that could convict her was close to my heart, and it was there they’d stay. The normal procedure to follow is for us to submit all evidence to our forensics lab for analysis. There’s a lot that we can’t see, but those sciency nuts with their scopes and million-dollar pieces of equipment, they see everything.

  When I got back to my desk, I swiped errantly at the sweat on my forehead and forced myself to breathe. And for the first time in what might have been minutes, I did breathe. I almost broke down and cried too, but held it in long enough to sit before my legs gave out. I also did something I thought would end the homeless man’s case forever, closing it like Walter had closed the dead man’s clenched hand. I stuffed the bag with the bloody buttons deep into my desk drawer, where nobody would ever go looking.

  Had this been the murder of someone else, questions about the recovered evidence would have come up. But this was a homeless man, and nobody was going to miss him. Charlie, my boss and the Captain of our small police department, had stopped by my desk a week or so later to ask about the evidence. By then, the coroner’s report had been written, read and processed along with the ton of other daily reports that flow through our small police station. I remembered feeling nervous, tapping my foot beneath my desk while he leafed through a collection of ratty case files. But I also remembered feeling confident about handling any inconvenient questions.

  “That homeless man... evidence is still not showing up at the lab. You gonna take care of that?” he’d asked, slipping his finger into a folder. I gave him a quizzical look, even though I knew exactly what he was talking about. “Dead guy in the alley. You know, the one that effed up our dinner plans with the wives at Romeo’s.”

  And it had. Amy and I were supposed to have a dinner date that evening. But across from the restaurant there was the dark alley, and in that alley were the remains of what Amy had left behind.

  “I’m on it,” I told him.

  He flipped open another case folder and rocked back and forth the way he sometimes did when waiting impatiently.

  “Anything else?”

  “Nah. Suppose not. It’s not like there’s a rush on that one anyway,” he answered, depositing three new case files onto my desk. “Get on these too, when you can. And tell your missus we’ll reschedule that dinner.”

 
; “Got it,” I answered—a sigh of relief leaving my lips unnoticed. But the buttons remained where they were, and the homeless man’s body was later cremated and disposed of. Nobody came forward. Nobody called the station. Nobody asked about the homeless man. It was as I expected: nobody would miss him.

  * * *

  After a few weeks, the homeless man, his murder, and any evidence were all but forgotten. Amy’s wounds healed, scabbing over and then flaking until her skin turned a bright pink. Her scars eventually faded and disappeared like a memory, but I didn’t forget. I couldn’t forget.

  I realized I’d made myself an accomplice—a partner in her crime. I’d broken the law. Scratch that, I’m breaking the law with each day that I continue to sit on the evidence. Obstruction of Justice means an immediate release from my position. It also means I’d lose my badge and gun. My career would be ruined. If convicted, I could go to prison. And prison is no place for a cop.

  I protected Amy by hiding the truth, but I should have pushed the issue, should have pushed her to do the right thing. I should have shown her the buttons, the evidence she’d left behind. I could have convinced her to come forward and explain how she’d been attacked and had been forced to defend herself. She’d say it was her life or the homeless man’s—nobody would have questioned her. If I’d done what I was supposed to, she would have walked away from it all, free.

  I’d never be able to explain why I held onto the evidence, though. A detective at my level just doesn’t forget about evidence sitting in his desk drawer. How would Charlie and the district attorney react? I think they’d see through any of my excuses. At best, my career would be over, and I’d face a light prison sentence. But if the DA wanted to, he could put me away for a long time, using me to make an example of some zero-tolerance corruption bullshit.