Missed Connections

by Alexandria Clarke

  “She was unconscious at the time of Honey’s death.”

  “Or so she says.”

  “What about the wife?” Kaminsky said. “Say Honey was cavorting with the nanny. Wife gets home early, sees them together, clocks the nanny over the head, and kills her husband.”

  Sutton, who apparently worked the homicide, consulted his notes again. “The wife has an alibi. She was at the Waterfront Restaurant with three of her friends. A number of people saw her, including the table’s server. She didn’t return home until eleven o’clock, well after SCPD already showed up.”

  “So the wife’s out,” Dumas said. “Anyone else got beef with Honey? This guy used to be a playboy, right? Any psycho ex-girlfriends out there? Wronged women?”

  “Of course, it always has to be a psychotic wronged woman,” I muttered as the detectives continued their discussion. “Bunch of misogynistic asshats can’t come up with another theory.”

  “What the hell are you doing?”

  I jumped. Payne had snuck up behind me. I drifted away from the conference room. “What are you doing back here?” I said. “I thought I asked you to get our mutual friend to booking.”

  “And then you asked me to report back to you,” Payne reminded me in a grudging tone. “Which is what I’m doing now.” He looked over my head into the conference room. “Are you eavesdropping?”

  I pushed against his chest to shove him out of the detective quarters and down the hallway, but he didn’t budge. “No. Mind your own business.”

  “Wait, wait, wait. Is that everyone in there?” He laughed. “Are they meeting without you?”

  “No! They just—”

  “Just what? Sent you on a coffee run?” He doubled over, wheezing with laughter. “Oh, man. This is too good. You know, I’m glad I didn’t get that promotion. At least I’m actually working. You’ve basically been demoted. Tell me, Arden. What’s it like going from beat cop to secretarial assistant?”

  I stormed past him. “I fucking hate you.”

  “Oh, don’t go!” he said, still laughing. “Captain Dumas needs you! How fast can you type, Arden?”

  I left the office in a huff. I needed a break from it all. Payne’s stupid laughter echoed in my head. I wanted to deck him in the face, but it was the underlying embarrassment of not being included in the detectives’ meeting that really bothered me. Why did Dumas promote me if he wasn’t going to let me work on the important cases that landed on his desk? I thought I’d already proved myself worthy of this job, but maybe Dumas didn’t see it that way. What more could he want when he kept assigning me the shittiest cases?

  I got in my car, turned off the radio, and just drove. I cruised around the block a few times, passed by the shops at the waterfront, and stopped at a food truck to pick up a pint of mint chocolate chip ice cream. Ten minutes later, I found myself parked outside my mother’s house in Vesta. She lived in one of the less Stepford-ish neighborhoods, in the same house that I’d grown up in. It was small but cute, with yellow paint and a swing on the front porch. When I arrived, she was sitting on the swing, using her foot to propel herself back and forth.

  “This is a nice surprise,” she said, patting the empty seat next to her. I sat down, opened the pint of ice cream, and handed her a spare spoon. She let me have the first bite. “Mint chocolate chip, huh? Must have been a hard day.”

  “It’s been a hard two weeks.” I shivered as the ice cream melted on my tongue. In the shade beneath the porch, the spring temperature was quite cool.

  “You mean ever since you got promoted?”

  “Yup.”

  She tucked my hair behind my ear and patted my cheek. “I was wondering why you never came over for that celebration dinner we talked about.”

  I jabbed at the ice cream with my spoon, not eating it so much as destroying it. “I didn’t feel like celebrating.”

  “What’s going on?” Mom asked. “You should be over the moon about this job. It’s what you’ve been working for since you were seventeen.”

  Twelve years. That was how long it had been since I’d strolled into my mother’s bedroom at this very house and declared to her that I wanted to be a detective. Not just a cop, but the person in charge of hunting down criminals who thought they could get away with the hurt and the pain they inflicted upon others. I graduated from high school early, went to college to get a degree in criminal justice with a minor in psychology, and got right into Simone City’s Police Academy by the time I was twenty-one. I had been with the force, working with the same guys, for eight years. Now, all of a sudden, I was a pariah. This wasn't what I had worked so hard to accomplish.

  “Honey?” Mom said, patting my hair again. “You still with me?”

  “Yeah, just thinking.” I handed her the pint of ice cream. “How did you deal with the church when you got pregnant?”

  She chuckled. “Are you comparing detective work to an unplanned, sinful pregnancy?”

  “It wasn’t sinful.”

  “According to them, it was,” she reminded me. She dug through the ice cream to collect a spoonful of chocolate chips. “At first, I was ashamed. I felt enormously guilty for betraying my promise to God, but I had to stop worrying about that stuff and start worrying about you. The health of my child was my number one priority. My order also cared for you before you were born.”

  “But they kicked you out.”

  She nodded and went in to hunt for more chocolate chips. “They did, and rightly so. My relationship with your father was ongoing. I exhibited a pattern of behavior that implied I was no longer dedicated to the church. Originally, they gave me the option to return to the order after giving birth to you, but that also would have meant giving you up for adoption.”

  “Do you ever regret not doing that?”

  “Not a day in my life.” She capped the pint and set it aside. “You are my religion, Sheila. I love you every day. Just because something doesn’t work out the way you expect it to doesn’t mean it’s the end of the world. You’re living proof of that. So what’s going on at work that feels like the end of the world?”

  “It’s not quite so dramatic,” I said. “There’s a big homicide investigation going on, and Captain Dumas has intentionally kept me out of it. I guess he thinks I can’t handle it yet.”

  “Do you think you can handle it?”

  “Absolutely. Cases like this are why I became a detective in the first place.”

  Mom smacked my thigh. “Then put on your big girl pants and get yourself in the ring.”

  “It’s not that easy.”

  “Who says?” she pushed. “If you’ve got enough time to come visit me in the middle of the day when you should be at work, then you’ve got enough time to put in a couple hours on that homicide case. Get your hands on the information and get to work.”

  “None of the guys have found any leads on either murder,” I told her. “I’m just starting out. How am I supposed to do this without their help?”

  “Honey, you keep forgetting the most powerful weapon in your arsenal.” She leaned forward, as if she were about to impart some great secret, winked, and said, “You’re not a guy.”

  Chapter Seven - Vee

  James Honey’s murder was so clean that I arrived home without a speck of his blood on my hands. Literally. Like before, I felt free and alive. I slept through the rest of the night without waking once. Two of my mother’s torturers were dead. There were eight more to track down. I didn’t remember much from that night. P3n173nc3 knew more than I did. If he was telling the truth, he knew all ten names of the men who were there that night. Whoever he was—if he even was a he—he had inside knowledge of the Bauer family tragedy. Did I trust him? Not entirely. That’s why I fact-checked the names and dove into my murky memories to root out physical markers of the men I intended to kill. This wasn’t a blind revenge scheme. It was an odyssey, one without a finite finishing line. The ten were a personal crusade, but there were other men in Simone City repeating the same crimes. T
hey, too, needed to face justice. In the morning, after cleaning the karambit to make sure nothing remained of James Honey on its blade, I logged in to the message board.

  P0lt3r6315t: Success.

  P3n173nc3 was away from his computer, but he was never far. I lay back on my bed and tossed a knife into the air to practice catching it by the handle. The moonlight caught its reflection in the shiny blade, sparking with every revolution of the knife. I dropped it twice, rolling to one side of the mattress or the other to avoid the sharp edge. It thumped harmlessly against the bedspread.

  My computer chimed. P3n173nc3 sent a file, then immediately went dark again. I frowned. He wasn’t a chatty fellow, but he was usually good for a quick conversation. I tried not to dwell on it, hoped he wasn’t in trouble, and downloaded the file. This time, I recognized the name as soon as it was decrypted. Karl Murphy. My stomach turned. I clenched my torso, containing the queasiness. I remembered Karl Murphy. He was one of my father’s investors and a close friend of the family. His wife was my mother’s best friend. I used to babysit their kids, Charlie and Lindsey, when I was a teenager. I’d been to their house. I’d eaten dinner at their table. I’d prayed with them before the meal was served. Karl Murphy bowed his head, took his wife’s hand in one and his son’s in the other, and delivered a prayer to the Lord in thanks for the food on the table and the money in the bank. The hypocrisy of it all made me sick. Did Karl Murphy go to church the day after he helped rape and murder my mother? Did he ask for forgiveness? Did God come through?

  I consulted my hard drive and found Karl Murphy next to my father in multiple photos. His wife, Christina, was always at his side, and he always had a gentle hand on her waist or elbow. They were a good couple. They complemented each other. Each of Karl’s bow ties matched the color of Christina’s dresses. Occasionally, they brought the kids along if the event was age appropriate. I found a picture that was taken at Simone City’s concert hall, where the city orchestra played famous scores from various movies while the actual scenes were projected on a giant screen behind the band. There were Karl and Christina with my father and mother. There I was, holding Charlie, who was about two years old at the time, in my arms, and Lindsey, who was four, by the hand. Karl Murphy had his hand on my shoulder. I dragged the photo to the trash bin, almost dumped it, and thought better of it. This was fuel for my fire. I zoomed in on Karl’s face. The longer I stared at it, the more I hated Karl Murphy. I hated his half-smile, the way his lips only turned up at one corner, as if he couldn’t muster the energy to complete the expression. I hated the gray streak through his sideburns in his otherwise black hair. I hated the minuscule patch of stubble he’d missed near the corner of his mouth whilst shaving. But most of all, I hated that, when I searched his name for recent information, he was still living in the same enormous house in Vesta with his happy family and his happy life and had not faced any retribution for the pain he’d caused to his supposed best friend. Tonight, that would change.

  It was the longest day of my life. That included the day after my mother’s death. I couldn’t wait two weeks to kill Karl Murphy. I didn’t have the patience to space out my targets like that. The only reason I’d waited that long between Beatnik and Honey was to refine my process. All of this was easier than I thought it would be. Maybe it was because these men never expected for their deed to come back to haunt them. Their privilege kept them safe, but that was coming to an end. Privilege wouldn’t protect them from me.

  I trained for most of the day, throwing knife after knife at a corkboard that I’d hung on the wall. Some of them stuck, but most of them clattered to the floor. I picked them up or pried them loose and tried again. Hours later, when the sun began to sink toward the horizon, ninety percent of the knives embedded themselves in the corkboard. Satisfied, I finally collected them all and locked them away. I hadn’t eaten all day, too consumed by my practice. It was six o’clock. Around seven, the Murphy family would sit down to pray and eat dinner. I bet Karl Murphy never forgot to eat.

  I waited until dusk turned the night purple. Then I got dressed, pocketed the karambit, and left the usual way through the fire escape. I left the throwing knives at home. Until I could throw them with one hundred percent accuracy, I wouldn’t employ them. Accidentally leaving a weapon behind would give Simone City’s incompetent police department a clue to my existence.

  Karl Murphy and his family lived in one of Vesta’s wealthier neighborhoods. In Vesta, the closer you were to Juno, the more expensive your mortgage was. The richest people lived right on the border of Slickwater Lake with private docks and enormous speedboats. As you made your way outward, away from the city center, the income level dropped. The quality of living steadily declined, but the rundown houses at the edge of Vesta were palaces compared to the places people called home in Minerva.

  As usual, I kept to the shadows and the alleys, where I belonged. With each passing night outside my apartment, I grew stronger and more confident in my ability to go unnoticed. I slipped around corners and ducked into doorways to avoid anyone out late. For those who were too quick, I hid my face beneath the hood. From afar, I looked like the average motorcyclist running a late-night errand. Minus the motorcycle. A motorcycle, though, was an interesting thought.

  Naturally, Karl Murphy lived in one of the giant houses on the lake. It was too big for four people. I stopped playing hide and seek with the kids when I lost Lindsey for two whole hours, only to find her in the closet of a guest bedroom I hadn’t known was there. The yard was enormous too, bordered by the picture-perfect white picket fence. Years ago, the Murphys owned a dog called—wait for it—Murphy, a purebred German shepherd who was fiercely protective of the property but gentle with the children. As I vaulted over the fence and encountered no resistance, I assumed Murphy had retired. However, the Murphys had installed motion-activated outdoor lights that sprang to life as soon as my boots touched the lawn. If any one of them looked out the window, they would see me highlighted in the high beams. Crouched over, I dashed along the fence line and darted behind a row of bushes in the tastefully arranged landscaping. With my hands and knees in the dirt, I crept toward the house, where two windows were lit along the side yard.

  The first window showed an after-dinner scene in the Murphys’ kitchen that was too cookie-cutter, after-school special to be true. Christina washed dishes in the sink while Karl dried them. Every so often, Karl attempted to swat Christina with his wet dish towel. She giggled and flicked soapy water at him in her defense. They were the same people from twelve years ago. Karl put on the same charade as the happy husband with no hidden skeletons in his closet. Their children, more than anything else, symbolized the passage of time. In the next window over, Charlie and Lindsey lounged in the living room. Charlie, now fourteen, played a video game on the big screen, reclining on the floor, while Lindsey did her homework on the sofa, her laptop perched on her knees.

  The scene shifted in the kitchen. Christina finished up the last of the dishes, dried her hands, and pointed her husband to the trash can. He rolled his eyes, collected the overflowing garbage bag from its home, and tied up the ends. Christina poured herself a glass of wine and joined her kids in the living room. She tapped her cheek as she passed her husband, and Karl placed a kiss on the requested area. Christina passed from window to window and sat next to Lindsey on the big leather couch. She smoothed her daughter’s hair as Charlie took down a squadron of enemy soldiers in his game. For the Murphys, it was a normal, peaceful night with the family. For me, it was a tear in my soul. Karl deserved his impending fate, but his family didn’t. Christina was seconds away from losing her husband. Charlie and Lindsey would lose their father. They would face a mental pain that could not be rivaled by much else, and they wouldn’t sleep until the killer was caught. That pain would be on my conscience, but my conscience was a quiet presence compared to the vindication that would follow.

  The front door opened and shut, signaling Karl’s exit from his home. He would never return t
o it. He dragged the trash bag around to the side of the house with one hand. The white plastic stretched and bulged, threatening to tear as it bounced across the grass. Karl, busy with a phone call, didn’t notice.

  “I can’t come tonight,” he said in a hushed whisper. “No, I can’t. My wife wants me to spend time with her.” He paused to allow the other speaker time to reply. I strained to catch the voice, but the rustle of the breeze through the bushes disguised the other end of the conversation. “What am I supposed to do, baby? She’s my wife.”

  I rolled my eyes. Were any of the men in Simone City loyal to their spouses? Karl pried the lid off the garbage bin with his elbow and began to lift the bag inside, but it tore before he could get it there and spewed trash across the impeccable lawn.

  “Mother fucker,” he said. “No, not you, baby. I have to go. I’ll see you later. Yeah, tomorrow night. Maybe.” He hung up, pocketed the phone, and bent over to gather the trash, tossing it into the bin with ferocious annoyance. “Piece of shit bags. Why don’t they make them sturdier?”

  I stepped out of the bushes, the karambit in hand. With one slash, I took out both of Karl’s legs from the back. He fell, clutching at his hamstrings, blood pooling amongst the trash. When he rolled over and saw me, his mouth opened to yell, but I stuffed a wad of balled-up paper towels between his teeth. I yanked him upright and dragged him to the living room window.

  “Do you see that?” I hissed in his ear. Inside, Christina, Charlie, and Lindsey enjoyed their evening. “Do you think you deserve the very thing that you deprived me of, Karl?” He choked on a gasp through the paper towels, confirming his guilt. I traced the knife around his throat. “You squander the thing you should value most. A loving family. Remember that as you’re bleeding out.”

  The karambit slashed, and I dropped Karl in the grass. I fished his phone out of his pocket and dialed 911. When the operator answered, I left the line open but didn’t say anything. They’d show up anyway. I didn’t do it for Karl Murphy. He was already dead. I did it so that Christina or Charlie or Lindsey, whichever one of them came to check on him first, didn’t have to be the ones to find his body. This was his retribution. Not theirs.