A Coin for Charon: A Marlowe Gentry Thriller (Detective Marlowe Gentry Series Book 1)

by Dallas Mullican

  He removed a revolver from his pocket and cradled it in his hands. A rifle or shotgun felt right at home in his grip, but he had never been comfortable with handguns. He had bought the .38 on a whim a few years back, but never fired it. Max knew his plans would frighten Dr. Drenning. Brandishing the gun should prove enough to encourage her cooperation…he hoped.

  Anticipation made him jittery. The sun seemed fixed in the sky, never moving an inch toward the western horizon. He thought of the last time he ventured into the woods. The memory unsettled him and caused his eyes to seek out the slightest sound.

  All in the past, he told himself. Seraphim changed everything. He longer needed to fear. With this one courageous act, the past would melt away. Maggie and his boys could smile when they thought of him.

  The cops did not return. He gazed into the sky again. The sun had dipped behind the trees. Max smiled.

  Not much longer now.

  CHAPTER

  26

  Marlowe left Becca’s at sunset and arrived home to the dark and cold. He found Paige in her room, stone-faced as always. She sat on the floor in her pink nightgown with a doll in each hand, making the man stab the woman in the neck. Marlowe rushed in and scooped her up, carrying her to sit on the bed with her in his lap.

  “Oh, Paige…what are you doing?”

  She stared at her lap.

  “I’m sorry.…” Marlowe pulled her close, sniffling. “I should’ve shot him.”

  Paige didn’t move. She felt lighter. He worried she’d not been eating enough. The red crayon marks on the female doll’s shirt tore at his heart.

  “Come on, sweetie. Talk to me. Please…talk to me.” He kissed the side of her head. “If I could go back and take Mommy’s place, I would.”

  She leaned toward him, a half-hearted attempt to snuggle.

  An hour passed. Paige sat impassive no matter what he said or how he tried to reach her. Not until he set her on her feet and told her to get ready for bed did she do anything more than stare into nothing. Once she returned from brushing her teeth, Marlowe tucked her in. She gazed up at him from the bed. Those blue eyes could have held fatigue, sadness, anger, loneliness, or nothing at all.

  Marlowe saw blame. Blame for letting Mommy die.

  He stiffened. “Good night, sweetie. I love you.”

  Not expecting any sort of reaction, he didn’t wait and walked out, headed down to his study. Alone with the quiet, he could no longer avoid the pain eating away at him. He knew his passion to apprehend Seraphim had grown into an obsession having little to do with the actual killer. Why attempt to deny it?

  In this house, surrounded by memories, denials were useless. Reality obliterated all imaginings that life existed as anything but dark and horrible. No happy ending waited, only a chance to remove one tiny speck of evil from the world. In a year, no one would remember, new horrors would rise to take Seraphim’s place. It did not matter. Seraphim had become Marlowe’s white whale—the only thing keeping him going. He clenched his hands into fists atop his knees, thinking about Paige’s dolls. She was trapped in that moment too. Frank Brumbeloe hadn’t just killed Katy, he had murdered his daughter’s innocence.

  Becca distracted him, maybe even gave him some measure of contentment, but she was not here now. Here, only ghosts kept him company. The Marlowe Becca saw did not live here. No, in this house only a husband to a dead wife, a father to a near catatonic child, existed.

  This isn’t you. You’re better than this. You’re better than this….

  Spence’s words echoed through Marlowe’s brain, growing louder, he could not shut them out. Even ol’ faithful Jim Beam, two-thirds gone, seemed unable to quiet the chastisement. The words came to life bearing steely eyes, glaring with disappointment. Their fingers pointed out his failures, his shame.

  Your family would be ashamed of you.

  Faces floated in the darkness—mouths moving in silence hurled accusations and broke down his defenses. Why couldn’t they understand? He acted, did the hard thing. Standing still, frozen with indecision, playing it safe or by the book, what did that gain him?

  The faces drifted closer, their words garbled whispers in his mind.

  This isn’t you. This isn’t you. You’re better….

  “What do you want from me? I did what I had to do!”

  He did not do anything bad. The job got done, that’s what counted—the ends justified the means, only the ends mattered. So he lost it in a vic’s house, big deal. A bad day, everyone had them.

  He hung a slime ball tweaker out a window and made sure a dirty cop went to prison. Good deeds. Anyone going to cry over those two? No.

  Maybe he played fast and loose with the rules. Rules…fuck ’em. Rules did nothing but get in the way. They interfered with getting the job done, the hard things, the things that must be done. Didn’t people admire Dirty Harry, his type? People wanted protection and safety, if he bent a law here and there in order to provide it, so what.

  Michael got what he deserved. A drug-pushing cop. A wife beater. He’d have killed Becca eventually. Marlowe felt no guilt over Michael’s incarceration. So why did he feel so goddamn guilty?

  This isn’t you. You’re better than this.

  What if he wasn’t better? The man Spence spoke of died long ago. He died with Katy. He died each day watching Paige plod through life like a zombie. Spence, and the rest, needed to start accepting the new Marlowe, because no one else existed. The old Marlowe was gone…and good riddance. Weak—unwilling to do the hard things, the things that must be done—the old Marlowe got his wife killed, his child fucked up beyond healing.

  This isn’t you. You’re better than this.

  Your family would be ashamed of you.

  “Shut up! Leave me alone!”

  Marlowe screamed into the silence of an empty home. No, not a home…not anymore. Only a house now, a meaningless structure of wood and brick, no life left in it. The ghosts of the past dwelt here now. They claimed all he once held dear, changing him.

  A door creaked in the hall. Marlowe scowled. His yelling must have awakened Mable. Hopefully, she wouldn’t be dumb enough to complain right now.

  He took another swig and sat staring at his distorted reflection in the amber liquor. Nothing appeared the same anymore. The world shifted into a version of itself he no longer recognized. Marlowe closed his eyes, hoping to find the quiet void. Somewhere distant came the soft thud of a shot glass falling to the rug. For an instant, a flash of pink moved in the corner of his eye.

  Images flashed. Some sped by too quickly to grasp, leaving only a residue of the emotions they carried—joy and pain, hope and disillusionment, love and loss. Others fell on him like great birds of prey, talons stretched wide, sinking into his flesh. Memory after memory assaulted him, vivid with reality…impossible to deny:

  “But I don’t want Butters to be dead. I want him back,” said Paige. Her bottom lip quivered, tears filming her eyes, as she stared down on the little black dog’s still form.

  “Sweetie, Butters is in heaven now. He’s playing with the angels,” said Marlowe. The words sounded silly even in his own ears.

  “I want him back. The angels can get their own puppy.”

  Marlowe had reluctantly allowed Paige the dog—reluctant for this very reason. She was not ready to learn about death. An understanding of death killed a little piece of childhood. Nothing could ever be quite as carefree again.

  He would have hid this to protect her from that truth, if he had found Butters first. But every morning, Paige shot out the door to play with her pup. She would run with Butters hot on her heels and roll on the ground as the tiny furball licked at her neck. The sound of her giggling lit up Marlowe’s world.

  A stray, Butters had wandered into their yard one day. A cute little thing with big, sad eyes and floppy ears, he could not have been more than a year old. Marlowe planned to build a pen, but with his work schedule, he simply never got around to it.

  The rural highway running in
front of the house doled out pet death on a regular basis. Teenagers racing home before curfew, delivery vans nearing quitting time, a free roaming pet did not stand a chance. Marlowe should have built the pen.

  They found Butters’s body lying in the ditch. Poor thing must have died on impact to remain so close to the road. Marlowe had heard Paige scream and rushed from the house, fearing she was injured. When he saw the motionless black lump, he knew, and his heart sank.

  Marlowe retrieved a box large enough to contain the body and wrapped it in Butters’s favorite blanket. They picked a spot high on a hill behind the house beneath a sprawling oak tree. With Paige and Katy looking on, Marlowe dug the grave.

  After placing the last shovel of dirt, he hammered a cross made from two by fours into the ground and carved the dog’s name into the wood. Paige hung Butters’s collar on the cross. Along with Katy, the three stood solemn, holding hands.

  “Why did Butters have to die, Daddy?” asked Paige. The pain and loss in her voice broke his heart.

  “Listen, Sweetie, death is just a part of life—the last part. It’s the period at the end of the sentence. The important thing is to write the very best sentence you can. So, when it’s time to put the period on it, you’re ready.

  “Butters’s sentence was too short, and that’s sad, but he still wrote one. One you get to read anytime you think of him. Your sentence is what you do in life, all the good stuff… and the bad stuff too. That’s why you want to write the best one you can, filled with as much good stuff as possible. Understand?”

  “I think so. Daddy…” said Paige, looking up at Marlowe.

  “Yes, Honey?”

  “I think you’ll have the best sentence.”

  * * *

  Marlowe and Spence searched Matthew Young’s home looking for anything that might give them a lead on Seraphim. Spence proceeded to the rear of the house, leaving Marlowe with the living room and kitchen. Marlowe walked to a series of shelves near the television set. Several photos lined one level. They depicted Young with his wife and daughter.

  A happy family, standing on the beach, wrapped arm in arm…happy together. Fury built inside him and exploded outward. He shattered the photos, raked the knick-knacks and trophies to the floor. He tore through the room snatching items from drawers and flinging them into the air.

  A madness seized him. He wanted to obliterate everything, erase the memories of Matthew Young from this home. Erase the pain Young’s absence would bring his family. Marlowe wanted to destroy the illusion of happiness. He broke what could be broken, until every item and fixture reflected the turmoil raging within him.

  When Spence returned, Marlowe collapsed, his frenzy exhausted. He stared at the upheaval he created. No photos of Matthew Young, his wife, or daughter remained intact or recognizable. Yet, an image still burned in his mind’s eye—a man, his wife, and his daughter…despair…alone.

  * * *

  “The police? You’re really thinking of joining the police?” asked Katy.

  “What else am I going to do? I have no desire to practice law. Nothing much you can do with a BS in psychology,” said Marlowe.

  Katy laughed. “I’m sorry…I’m not laughing at you. Well, I am, but…I just can’t see you as a cop.”

  “And why is that, pray tell?”

  “No offense, Honey, but you aren’t exactly a manly man. You loathe violence. You’ll scoop up a spider rather than kill it. Marlowe, you have a favorite opera for crying out loud. How many policemen do you think have even heard of La Traviata?”

  Marlowe feigned hurt. “How dare you. I’m as he-man as the next guy. I simply choose to suppress my primitive nature. It’s in here, don’t you doubt it missy.”

  He dashed forward, hoisting Katy over his shoulder. “Me Tarzan, you Jane.”

  “Put me down, ape-man,” said Katy, laughing and pounding at his back.

  “You don’t think I can cut it?” asked Marlowe, once they both caught their breath.

  “That isn’t it. You can do anything. Maybe I’m not giving cops enough credit, but you’re so smart. Almost as smart as me,” she said with a sly smile. “When I think police, I think former high-school jock or class bully.”

  “A pretty disparaging generalization.”

  “It is, isn’t it? Okay, remember that frat party our senior year? The one where Kap almost drowned? Drunk as a skunk, someone dared him to jump off the balcony into the pool. Fully clothed, he looked like big jellyfish floating on the bottom. You jumped in and pulled him out. He pushed you away and said he had everything under control.”

  “I remember,” said Marlowe, grinning at the memory.

  “Well, do you also remember the other drunk? The not so cute or funny one?”

  “Hmm, I don’t think so…”

  “Really messed up guy. I don’t recall now what caused it, but he went off. He took out a knife, started threatening people, and then said he would kill himself.”

  “Oh yeah. Depressed and drunk, not a good combination. Not a bad guy though, I took a chem class with him.”

  “See that’s what I mean. You see the good in people. If someone does something bad, you always think their circumstances caused it. You think if you can understand their situation, you can help them. No one is really bad or evil in your mind.” Katy kissed him on the cheek.

  “He was drunk. Who doesn’t do stupid stuff when they’re drunk?”

  “But how many people would have stood there talking to him for an hour until he calmed down and sobered enough to surrender the knife? Not one other person at the party, and I’m doubting very few anywhere else. You did, though.”

  “See, I’m a natural hero.”

  “Hmm. What if talking didn’t work? What if he attacked you and tried to kill you? Or hurt someone else while you were trying to talk sense to him? I’m not sure you have the heart for doing the hard things. You want to save everyone. Darling, I hate to tell you this, but not everyone can be saved.”

  “I know. I do. But shouldn’t they have a chance to prove it before I decide they’re beyond saving?”

  “That’s why I love you. Well, if it’s really what you want,” she said with a wink. “I do love a man in uniform.”

  * * *

  He held Raze out the window, wanting to drop him. Marlowe wanted it so bad he could taste it. In his mind, he saw the little bastard splatter onto the pavement four stories below. The image felt…good.

  Raze deserved it. He fed the poor girl junk, shooting poison into her veins, and then pushed her to fuck strangers. All to keep her under his thumb. All to feed his ego, and his desire to be a player in the drug world. Nikki’s life meant nothing to Raze. Why should his life matter to Marlowe?

  One less parasite in the world, who would cry? Marlowe loosened his grip, feeling Raze’s weight pull him downward. Gravity. Just let go. So easy. Raze deserved it.

  “Jesus Christ, I said I don’t know anything.”

  I don’t care.

  “Oh god, man. I didn’t do it. I wasn’t even here.

  It doesn’t matter.

  “I swear, I didn’t see nothing.”

  You deserve to die.

  * * *

  Marlowe lay in bed with Becca nestled against him. It felt nice to have someone to hold again. He liked that she needed him. Marlowe wanted to protect her and keep her safe. He needed to do this one thing right—keep her safe, keep her alive.

  Sheer curtains waved gently, stirred by the breeze from an open window. Moonlight cascaded across the floor, casting soft illumination into the room. In the shadows near one wall, he saw a figure take shape, the outline of a woman’s form posed in inky tones. As she stepped into the moon’s glow, Marlowe’s breath caught, tightening in his lungs. His heart beat in a slow, thunderous rhythm.

  The figure emerged from the shadows. Marlowe’s mind struggled to find substance in the apparition. Features solidified, leaving the ethereal plane, and merging with his reality. He could see her face now. Tears coated hi
s eyes. Katy.

  I’m so glad you have found someone, my love. I want you to be happy.

  “Katy. I’ve betrayed you. You are the only one I ever wanted—will ever want.”

  No, you must live. Live and love.

  “I can’t. I will never try to replace you.”

  But you have. See her there, lying in my place. You have forgotten me.

  “No, never. I can’t forget. You are with me every day.”

  Liar. Liar.

  “Please Katy. You must believe me. I’m so alone without you.”

  I know you are, darling. I only want you to be happy. I’m glad you have found someone.

  Marlowe’s mind split in two—the betrayer and the man in need. The man capable of love and the man lost to all emotion but despair. Katy stood before him, her expression blank and inscrutable. In one breath, she intoned love and encouragement, and in the next lashed out, blaming him for not taking the shot. He failed her.

  * * *

  The memories and nightmare images ceased like flicking off a television. The screen in his mind went black. Marlowe opened his eyes. His palms bled from nails digging into flesh through clenched fists. The tears flowed free, and he let them come.

  In truth, the best part of him died that day with Katy. Now, he walked the earth sucking in the air rightly belonging to the living. A thief and a trespasser, violating a realm that had forsaken him…that he had forsaken. Paige would be better off without him. Every time she saw him, he made her think of watching her mother die. Every time he saw those eyes, he felt the accusation burn into his heart. She would go to live with her grandparents up north—a fresh start. Marlowe should not be here.