Crazy Make-Up Lady kicks me in the ribs. “Where is my son, you disgusting whore?” She shakes the large knife at me, like she doesn’t know what to do with it.
I gasp and point to the balcony.
She keeps the large knife raised and her eyes on me as she walks to the glass doors. “Christopher?”
With the ache of falling fourteen stories and landing on my back, I manage to get on my hands and knees and crawl to the front door, which is now open.
Crazy Make-Up Lady, aka Mrs. Chandler, screams and sets off a bomb in my head that makes my eyes water.
I feel her foot press down on my butt and flatten me to the floor.
“You killed my son,” she screams over and over.
Her foot stomps on my back as if she’s killing a thousand roaches. I flop like a fish and do my own screaming, trying to find a break in her pounding so I can roll away. But she’s too fast, too determined to snap my spine. After a while, I feel my body go numb with defeat. She won. She promised to kill me and it looks like she’ll do just that. God, why can’t she stop stomping me and just stab me with the knife?
“Put the weapon down NOW!”
I recognize the voice. Detective Otto.
The stomping stops. All is quiet but heavy panting. Is it from me?
I roll onto my side, but not able to bend my back just yet.
Mrs. Chandler backs away, keeping the knife raised. Her fear-filled eyes dance around in her heavy eye-shadowed face. Otto and an officer keep their weapons aimed at her.
“She’s a filthy whore,” she screams. “She deserves to die just like the others. All they want to do is take the ones I love away from me. Why do they want to take them away?”
“I said put the knife down,” Otto screams.
She slams the blade onto the hardwood and releases such an animalistic roar that a shiver overwhelms the pain in my back.
As Otto keeps his gun trained on her, the other cop sends Mrs. Chandler to the floor and cuffs her hands behind her back. As he recites the Miranda Act, Otto kneels down next to me and places his hand on my wet cheek. His fear breaks through his cop mask. He takes his radio out and calls for an ambulance.
“Miki, are you all right?”
I look into the handsome face of the man who saved me again.
“Next time, let me save you, okay?” I whisper. “This is getting embarrassing.”
Otto smiles.
ALL CLEAR
I lower the back of my shirt as the EMT sits down on the coffee table. “You really should get some X-Rays,” she says.
“I’m fine.” I place a blue icepack to my ribs. “No more hospitals. Not now anyway.”
I sit on the couch while the crime scene team works behind my back. Mrs. Chandler was taken away a half hour ago. She kicked and screamed and threw me a lot of evil looks. But I didn’t start crying because of how she acted. The tears broke out when I thought about poor Chris who fell to his death. I cried because I murdered him.
“She okay?” Otto asks. He stands next to the EMT who nods and packs up her med box. When she leaves, Otto sits down next to me on the couch. He places his hand on my knee.
“So how are you really?” he asks.
I stare at him. My face feels like a fragile jigsaw puzzle. He wipes the tears from my cheek. “Are you going to arrest me?”
“No,” he says. “From what you said it sounds like self-defense and an accident. Coroner confirms the wounds to his face. Whenever someone gets their nose smashed twice like you did to him they are not going to go out and walk a high wire. He probably didn’t even realize he was falling.”
“I wish that would make me feel better.”
“You’ll be okay. With forensics, your testimony, and her confession, she’s going to probably get life. Plus, there’s the fact that she was under suspicion for her husband’s murder a few years back.”
“Why didn’t they arrest her?”
“Dunno. Haven’t spoken to the investigating officer yet. But when we interviewed Christopher about Katherine, he said that he was home studying that night. Mrs. Chandler confirmed it. Maybe, when Mrs. Chandler murdered her husband and mistress, he lied for her and said she was home with him.”
“Okay, so Mrs. Chandler killed Katherine Moore fearing that she was going to take Chris away from her like some other woman stole her husband away?” I ask.
“Most likely.”
“I can’t believe how stupid I’ve been this week. I should have just stayed home and watched TV.”
Otto smiles. “Not easy being a cop, huh?”
“No easy being human.”
He pats my hand. “C’mon. Time for you to go home. You can give me a statement tomorrow.” Otto walks off. With the sleeve of my shirt I wipe the tears from my face, suck snot back up my nose, and straighten my aching back. I make a promise to myself that I am not ever going to search for killers again. I’m just going to stay home, avoid the world, and paint. Can there be anything better than that?
“You ready, miss?” the officer asks.
I stare up at him and smile. “Take me home, jeeves.”
HOME
I come home to the welcoming arms of Corey and Grandpa. They say nothing about Chris. No expression of shock or dismay that he didn’t turn out to be the greatest guy in my life. They just hold me and offer to make me tea or get me food.
“I just want to be alone,” I say, then smile.
They smile back and watch me as I enter my bedroom. Not able to take standing or walking, I drop down on my bed, curl into a fetal position and release the aching pain that has been hiding in my heart. I sob and pound the mattress and whine Chris’s name a few times.
And no matter how many times I beg his ghost to forgive me for killing him, I don’t get an answer.
TWO CALLS
I sit on the bench of Pier 26. The whiskey in a brown paper-bagged bottle fills me with shots of warmth. I stare out at Jersey City and the coasting boats. I feel so good out here all by myself. The temperature is almost 20 degrees today and I’m the only one crazy enough to be out here. But I had to leave the condo. I’ve been sketching and painting all day. I think I may make the deadline Marvel gave me for tomorrow. I take another sip to celebrate that fact and the fact that it has been two days since I cried about Chris. I often wonder what might have happened if he didn’t fall over the edge. Would we still be together? Could I still love a boy who’s mother was a killer? Then again, there’s my family, who’re not a bunch of saints.
I just don’t know.
My cell rings. Otto’s name shows up on the ID screen.
“Detective Otto.” I smile. I think my voice may be slurred.
“Ms. Miki. How are you feeling?”
“Pretty good. Bruises are going away. Doctor didn’t find any broken bones.”
“Glad to hear.”
“So what do I owe the pleasure of your sexy voice?”
Okay, I may be drunk.
Otto chuckles. “Um, I’m afraid this is a business call.”
“Oh, God. Devlin Straub didn’t escape again?”
Police found Devlin Straub trying to sneak out through the Lincoln Tunnel. He was hiding in the trunk of a family’s car. He threatened the parents that he would shoot the kids through the back seat if they gave him any trouble at the police checkpoint that was set up outside the entrance. The family played it cool. Devlin almost got away except for the unfortunate fact that the trunk was broken and the door opened right as they passed the cops. Before he could harm anyone, he was arrested and brought back to jail.
“No. He’s locked up tight. He isn’t going anywhere this time.”
“Good.”
“This has to do with Valerie Chandler.”
“She escaped?”
“No. She died last night. Suicide.”
A tsunami of depression crashes my heart.
“Miki?”
“Yeah.” I sigh. “I’m here.”
“They found her this morning,
” Otto says. “Her wrists were cut with the plastic casing of a pen. She was on suicide watch, but…no one knows how these things happen.”
“Yeah. Okay.”
“You don’t sound okay.”
“Listen, I have to go. I need to get back to work.”
“Okay, Miki. Take care of yourself.”
We hang up. I swig a few gulps of whisky down to keep from crying. What if Valerie Chandler killed herself because her son is dead and she couldn’t live anymore? That would make me responsible, right? Or maybe she couldn’t live with being a murderous psychopath. I don’t know. Maybe I don’t want to know. Everything is so fucked. How could this day get any worse?
The cell rings again. I have a new email. It’s from an undisclosed recipient. Maybe it’s from Sharon. Sometime she emails me PDF contracts to look over. But it’s not a PDF. It’s a JPEG. I stare at the blank email as dread replaces my depression. I open the file and the evil old man face from my paintings stares at me. Like the last one that was sent, this is also in stippled pen and ink. The date and time the email was sent is for a few minutes ago. If Valerie Chandler died this morning and she didn’t email me the first picture, then who sent this too me?
November 2010 – April 2011
To be continued in
In A Blackened Sky Where Dreams Collide
Acknowledgements: Thanks to Dave Symonds, Bliss Kern, Nathalie Mvondo, Catherine Ferguson, Stacy Mozer, Lisa-Liza-Liz who have helped me shape this novel. And most importantly Neen and D.
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BIO: M.E Purfield was raised in the Jersey 'burbs. At 18 he moved to Jersey City to attend The School of Visual Arts in NYC. He has never returned to the ‘burbs.
He is the author of the Young Adult Noir Fantasy Miki Radicci Series and the Tenebrous Chronicles.
A Black Deeper Than Death (Miki Radicci Book 1) Page 13