A Study in Sin

by August Wainwright

  “Did you find anything in the room?”

  “Nothing. This place is like a model home.”

  “What about in the other rooms?”

  “No, nothing. Nothing that could help us at least. There was a glass of water on the coffee table, and a bottle of prescription pills, but other than that –”

  Remy started to laugh.

  “What the hell is so funny?” Arruda growled.

  “The pills, do you have them?”

  “They were bagged.”

  “Excellent job, Arruda. Seems you’ve gotten at least one thing right today,” she said, still laughing to herself, “You know, I have to thank you Watts.”

  “Me? Why?”

  “Because if you hadn’t pestered me into looking into the Capitol Hill matter, I would have missed out on such a fun little case,” she said.

  “Fun?” Lambert said, turning to look down at Remy.

  “Absolutely. And, I’ll tell you what, since both of you were off on your first guesses as to who the killer is, why don’t you give me your second choices. Then I can tell you which is more wrong and the other walks away the winner of the bet. How does that sound?”

  “And I suppose you have all the answers?” Lambert asked.

  “As a matter of fact, I do. It was quite simple really.”

  “Fuck you,” Arruda snapped.

  “Ok. How about a new bet then? I’ll bet you a hundred dollars each that, not only do I know who the killer is, but I’ll personally deliver the person to you before the end of the day.”

  “You three can jerk each other off all you want, I’ll be outside.” Apparently, Detective Arruda was done wagering for the day.

  “Do you really know who did it?” Lambert asked after Arruda had had exited.

  “Take the bet and find out.”

  “Damn it, Remy!”

  “Yes,” she shot back. “From the time the two split up at the airport, until Cormack’s body was found; from the beginning until this very moment, I can see the entire thing as if I was there when it happened. And I will tell you all of it, so there’s no need to get upset.”

  Lambert stood staring back at her, waiting for her to continue.

  “The prescription pills, the ones Arruda found on the table, that’s your murder weapon in the Cormack case. Have the lab run tests and compare them to toxins that come back from Cormack’s autopsy. They’ll match, I promise. Your partner was actually pretty close when he blurted out that it was a suicide back at the original scene. Except, this was more of a forced suicide. I believe our man stood there and made Cormack take the poison. He probably attempted the same thing here, but found a less willing participant.”

  “How?” Lambert asked, more under his breath then aloud.

  “How what?”

  “How can you possibly know who did it? We have all the same information; I’m more confused now than I was at the start.”

  “I can see how this new murder might be disorienting, but your confusion stems from the fact that you failed, from the beginning, to latch on to the one key piece of information that really mattered. What you missed, I saw. And because of that, every additional step has thrown you more off course, where it has only solidified my hold on what I knew to be the truth.”

  “What was the key piece of evidence?”

  “Patience, Ian, I’ll get to that,” she said, quickly getting back to her point. “People panic when faced with too many options. Go to a restaurant and present two different menus to two different groups of guests; the first with only three choices, while the second has page after page of options. The first group will always leave happier and with better reviews, since they will feel more content with a well-made decision. The latter group will spend the rest of the night wondering if they shouldn’t have chosen another dish. You fell prey to the same phenomenon; I don’t blame you, it’s just what people do. I have faith that in time, you may learn to see through to that which truly matters, and disregard everything else. What I find amazing is that, in instances like these, it is the shear absurdity of the crime that makes it so simple to solve. Had you called me to help with a case where you found a man stabbed in the park, his wallet stolen, I’m afraid I would be no better to you than your chain-smoking partner.”

  By this point in Remy’s lesson, Lambert had moved past confused and dumbfounded to steaming and pissed.

  “Look, we all get it, you’re some kind of savant. You’re smarter than all of us. So stop with the lectures and tell me who I need to be looking for so we can put this guy behind bars before he kills someone else.”

  “Oh, don’t worry, there won’t be any more murders. He’s finished; it was just these two he was after.”

  “Who? Who is he?” Lambert asked, clearly frustrated.

  “The question of who is definitely an important one, but the question you should be asking is how, as in how do we actually find and arrest him. I suspect that our killer is a very smart man, and that he’s not working entirely alone; both of which have been clearly demonstrated. If that’s the situation we find ourselves in, any sudden movement on our part will most likely alarm him and send him fleeing,” Remy said as she started to move towards the front door.

  Lambert and I followed her out onto the front porch and down the steps. She spun on her heels to face us.

  “Let me attempt to apprehend this man for you?” she said.

  “No, absolutely not. I’ve had enough of this bullshit Remy. Look, I appreciate your perspective, I always do –”

  “I know.”

  “Now it’s time you let me do my job. Tell me who this guy is and I’ll take it from here.”

  Remy stood on the concrete path, looking back at Lambert.

  “I’ll think about it,” she said, as she turned her back on us and walked towards the street.

  “Remy, I swear to God, I’ll charge you with interfering with an investigation.”

  “You asked me here, Ian, how do you think that will work?” she called back, never stopping to turn around.

  “Remy!”

  “Ah, my cab is here,” she said, passing Arruda.

  I hurried down the path to catch up. “Remy, what are you doing?” I asked once I was by her side.

  “I have a very important matter to handle,” she said, smiling at me, that same coy grin I had become accustomed to seeing.

  “Where the hell do you think you’re going?” Lambert yelled. The anger in his voice had piqued the interest of his partner, who was now moving in our direction. He looked like an old trained dog, ready to attack, waiting for the slightest hint of a command.

  Remy leaned into the passenger side window of the cab. “Can you come around and open my door,” she said to the driver.

  I still couldn’t believe the two detectives were ever going to let her leave, but based on the way Arruda was approaching, I thought it might be better if she did. I went to open the door for her, but Remy stomped down on my foot and shot me a “back the hell off” look. The cab driver, a tall well-built man, slowly rose from behind the wheel and made his way around the car to Remy’s door. She spun around to face the three of us.

  “And this, boys, is where I leave you. But, before I go,” a devious look stretching across her face, “please allow me the pleasure of introducing you to Mr. Aiden Clery, the man responsible for the murders of Finton Cormack and James McKeague.”

  All of us froze for a moment, suspended in time. I watched Remy grab the cab driver’s arm in some ridiculous attempt to commandeer him. I can recall the man looking down at Remy, and then his eyes meeting mine, a sudden look of pure and maniacal evil set upon his features. He shrugged her off with ease and sent her sprawling onto the curb. That was all it took for me to snap back to reality and I instinctively dove on to the man’s back. Lambert and Arruda weren’t far behind, and it was good thing, because this specific cab driver fought with a ferociousness I had never experienced before in my life. I’m no small guy, but I’m fairly convinced that
, if it weren't for the help of the two detectives, I might not have emerged from that scrap. The four of us rolled around on the ground in a heap of limbs, the cabbie throwing me off over and over again in fits of superhuman rage. What actually took a matter of seconds seemed to drag on to no end. Eventually, the other officers at the scene ran to our aid and Arruda finally planted his entire weight on the man’s back, holding him down as Lambert cuffed him.

  After being restrained, our suspect in custody let out a roar that would have rivaled any from the animal kingdom. But his yell quickly degraded into a cry of defeat, and his head sunk to his chest. The sound of it sent chills down my spine.

  “Yell all you want, buddy, not going to help you now,” Arruda said, inches from the man’s face, spit sprinkling his cheek. It elicited no response.

  Remy was wiping off the grass and dirt that stuck to her from being thrown to the ground.

  “You both owe me a hundred dollars,” she said stone-faced. “Now, are there any questions?”

  Part 2

  The Land of Saints and Scholars

  The night sky burned a bright red-orange as flickering embers floated above the dark tree line. Aiden Clery ran towards the glow in the sky, forgetting the fire in his lungs, focusing on the flames that lay ahead. Deep within his seared and black thoughts was what he knew to be the truth, what he fought not to acknowledge; that he was running towards death, towards destruction, and towards the inevitability that, with every step, his grip on goodness would loosen more and more, until there was nothing left for him to grasp.

  Chapter 1

  Spring, 1985

  A wise man can find beauty in the most desolate views. Show him a rocky wasteland, and he’ll marvel at the age of the stones, how the wind and water have changed them over millions of years. Show him a sulfur spewing volcanic landscape, and he’ll smile at the beauty of the Earth’s engine, churning away, out in the open for all to see. Show him a barren desert, and he’ll see the life that keeps it going; he’ll see solitude and space, a place where the mind can be free of its confinement.

  Now show these things to an ignorant man, and he’ll see only the ugliness and the death.

  But even an ignorant man who can’t see the magnificence of time when it’s staring back at him, even he can look out onto the Irish countryside on a clear, bright morning and see it for all its brilliance. The rolling expanses of green spotted with cold, clear lakes; the grass and wildflowers as they bend and sway in the winds that come down over the rocky hillsides; the deep valleys and the lapping streams that split them in half; the smell of dew and sweet wetness that hangs in the air.

  No man is blind enough to ignore the perfection of such a place.

  Jim Ryan stood on his front porch, taking in the splendor of the vastness that lay before him. He looked at his land, at what he owned, and he wondered to himself if the thought of a man claiming to “own” such beauty wasn’t a completely ridiculous premise.

  He sniffed the air and decided it was good; better than good.

  The farm-land that stretched out in front of him was his. He had given the land his name, much in the same way he had given it to his only child eight years ago. He had chosen the land amongst many options because it felt more like home than anything he had ever seen.

  When he first laid eyes on it, thoughts of his wife had sprung to life in him in a way he would have thought impossible. At that point, all that was left to do was sign the deed.

  His daughter Claire loved the land too. It was the mother she had never known.

  She would wake up early in the morning and yawn and pull on her shoes. Still half-asleep, she’d stumble down the stairs and pass Jim on her way out the front door. She would wander in her pajamas through the grass until she was completely awake, the early day sun gently kissing her young skin. Jim would follow her out into the morning and watch her from the porch he had built. He watched as his baby girl would lie down on the side of a hill and stare up at the sky above her. He would look out on the life he helped create, the life he helped nurture. And he would smile.

  As the years had passed, it became easier for Jim Ryan to smile. An action once so foreign was becoming commonplace.

  One day, much like every other in the spring of 1985, Jim was working on his land, his boots muddy and his hands callused. He pulled hay from the back of his truck and piled it in the barn. He tended to his goats, shaved two of his sheep, and looked over the small little apple orchard he had planted near the back of the house.

  The sun was warm that day, and sweat built up on his brow as he worked.

  He walked through the row of trees, and looked out across his fields, spotting his daughter Claire, now eight years old, sprawled out on the side of a hill, her arms stretched out away from her as she read one of his books.

  Jim made his way across the field, feeling the dampness of the soil, each footstep lightly sinking into the grass and dirt beneath him. As he approached, Claire shifted her position on the hill, and for a moment, Jim saw his wife laying there with a book in her hands. She looked so much like her mother that sometimes he had to catch himself from calling her Fiona, letting his wife’s name live for a second on the tip of his tongue before it fell away.

  Jim had tried late one night to figure out who he loved more, his wife or his daughter. He sat in front of the fire with a whiskey by his side and tried to imagine what he would do if he’d been forced to choose. Sometimes when men have lived longer than they ever thought possible, and they find themselves all alone on a cold winter night, their minds wander to dark places. So he allowed himself to think about unthinkable things. He thought of kidnappings and assaults, of murder and rape – of sickness and disease. His expression never changed as he stared into the fire. In the end, though, it was just an exercise; a morbid, unnecessary exercise. He was never given a chance to decide; the choice had been made without his consent.

  He walked up to Claire and smiled down at her, waiting to be noticed. She tossed the book onto the grass beside her and returned his smile with a giant grin.

  “Which one are you reading today?” he said.

  “To Kill a Mockingbird.”

  “Don’t you think that’s a little serious? It’s about racism and…” Jim trailed off instead of finishing his sentence. “Wouldn’t you rather read those Nancy Drew’s I bought you?”

  “No, I don’t like Nancy Drew. They’re so boring. And I don’t think it’s too serious. I like reading about serious things.”

  Jim wondered to himself why he ever tried to tell Claire what to do; it never worked.

  “And it reminds me of us. I’m Scout and you’re Atticus,” she said, proud of her analogy.

  “I’m no Atticus,” Jim said.

  “Yes you are. Atticus is strong, just like you. Plus, he thinks he’s funny and he really isn’t.”

  Jim laughed. “You know, you need to make some friends. You spend too much time out here with your face buried in those books.”

  “I like being with you,” she said.

  Why do I try? he thought to himself; exactly like her mother.

  Claire must have sensed her father’s mind wandering.

  “Will you sit with me for a few minutes?”

  Jim lowered himself to the soft earth as Claire shifted to be closer to him. She reached over and put her little hand in his and the two sat in silence for a while.

  Claire laid back and pulled Jim down with her. She stared up at the thick gray clouds that passed by overhead, smiling.

  “I like to look at the clouds,” she said. “I like to pick one out and watch it move across the sky and see what it will look like. Sometimes it will look like a goat, then it will blow apart and look like our truck; then it won’t look like anything at all.”

  Jim said nothing, but he let himself stare up at the passing clouds.

  “I bet mom liked clouds,” she said.

  “Why do you think that?”

  “I just know she would have. If I like clou
ds, then she had to like clouds too.”

  Again, Jim said nothing.

  “I think about her a lot,” Claire continued.

  “You didn’t know her,” Jim blurted out, surprised by her comment. Claire turned and scowled at him. He didn’t know why he had said that. “I think about her a lot too.”

  Claire started to say something, but paused. Her mouth sort of hung open in an odd frozen look as her young mind raced. Jim knew she couldn’t hold back, so he waited patiently for her to say whatever she was thinking.

  “I don’t think I had to know Mom to know what she was like,” she said a second later. “I mean, I am her. So whatever I’m like, she must have been like that too.”

  “I suppose so,” Jim said, “But you’ve got some of me in there too; the stubborn part at least.” Claire smiled at that. “You are like her, though. A lot like her. I’m sure that she’s smiling down on us, and that she’s very proud of you.”

  Claire made a sound that was half laughter, half just a puff of air.

  “Mom’s not in Heaven. There is no Heaven,” she said.

  “Claire, don’t say that.”

  “But it’s true. There’s no Heaven just magically up in the sky. That’s ridiculous. There’s just space, and past that is more space. I mean, at least that’s what I think.”

  Jim wanted to say something, anything. He wanted to be horrified at what he was hearing from his young daughter; instead, he found that he couldn’t take his eyes off the clouds overhead as they moved across the soft blue canvas above him.

  “I think that when Mom died, she just died. Like sometimes when I go to sleep and I don’t have any dreams. I fall asleep and then I wake up. There’s nothing in the middle. I think that’s what happened to Mom.”

  Claire waited for her Dad to tell her to stop talking, but he didn’t.