by Mike Omer
Bernard stayed silent.
“But my mom… she thought this neighborhood was real. She loved the people. And they loved her. Who would have done this?”
“That’s what we want to find out,” Bernard said.
“What do you need?” Sophia asked, her voice drawn and weary.
“Just a few details about the last days.”
“Okay. Ask away.” She sighed.
“All right. Just a few technicalities. Thompson—is that your husband’s name?”
“Yes.”
“How long have you been married?”
“Four years.”
“And before that, your name was Sophia Mune?”
“Yes… why is that relevant?”
“It’s just something that I have to put in the report,” Bernard lied smoothly. The people closest to the victim were always the prime suspects. He needed all the details he could get. “Did your mother seem nervous about anything lately? Was she tense?”
“Not particularly,” Sophia said slowly.
“Did you know that she had purchased a gun?”
“A gun?” Sophia looked at him aghast. “You’re wrong. My mom never held a gun in her life.”
“She was worried enough to buy one. Do you know why?”
“No,” Sophia said. “That’s completely insane.”
“You say the last time you saw her was yesterday?”
“That’s right. Yesterday afternoon. I come by almost every day, to help her cook her oils and ointments and extracts.”
“Did she sell many of those?”
“Quite a few,” Sophia said. “She sold a lot to the locals for pennies, but I was in charge of the online store, and we made good money there.”
“So this was a family business?”
“Yes,” Sophia said. “Some of it was. We shared the store. But we both did our readings separately.”
“You’re a fortune-teller as well?”
“I’m a psychic and a tarot reader just like my mother is… was. And like her mother was before her.”
“So you had private clients, and you shared the store,” Bernard said.
“Yes.”
“And the online store made more money?”
“Much more.”
“Did your mother do anything else to earn a living?”
“She cast some spells.” Sophia shrugged. “But not a lot. It was mostly readings and the store.”
“What kind of spells?” Bernard asked, not sure if he was asking for the case, or just for the sake of his own curiosity.
“Love spells, protection spells, a spell to bring joy… it depended on what the client needed.” Her face changed, and there was something new there. Skepticism. She didn’t entirely buy into it herself.
“What time did you see her yesterday?”
“I went home at around… six-thirty.”
“Did you talk to her on the phone afterward? Messaged her? Anything like that?”
“No.”
“And this morning, what did you do before coming to see your mother?”
“I took my son to kindergarten, and then I did a few readings.”
“So you met some clients?” That could be a pretty good alibi right there.
“Not exactly,” she said. “I chatted with them. I do most of my readings online.”
“Oh. How does that work, exactly?”
“It’s just the same as a face-to-face reading, except I do it online, and I pick the cards for them.”
“Did your mother do it as well?”
“No. She believed that tarot reading should be done face-to-face.” Sophia rubbed her temples. “Detective, no offense, but I’m exhausted, and heartbroken, and I really just want to go home. Can we please finish this at some other time?”
“Just a few final questions,” Bernard said, moving on. “Was your mother married?”
“Not really. My dad left when I was three years old. I don’t think they ever divorced, but they’re not married either.”
“Did she have a boyfriend?”
“No.” She looked at him sharply, her eyes narrowing.
“Any enemies she ever mentioned? Any unpleasant encounters?”
Sophia hesitated. “Not anyone that would resort to… this.”
“Mrs. Thompson, we need to investigate all leads. Even if only to eliminate them.”
“Well, my aunt, Ginny, she and my mom had a few arguments lately.”
“What about?”
“My aunt is a real estate lawyer. She felt that Mom was dragging our family into a dead-end business. Her daughter—my cousin—she began doing readings online as well a few months ago. My aunt wasn’t happy about it. But she loved my mother. She would never harm her.”
“Okay, thanks for—”
“And my mom had a rival.”
Bernard blinked. “What?”
“There’s another psychic—she lives nearby. And she came to my mom’s home screaming one day, said that my mom stole all her clients. But… but she would never kill her.”
“I’m sure she wouldn’t,” Bernard said. “Can you give me her name and address, please?”
As he walked back to the crime scene, Bernard mentally created an image of the information they knew. Hannah always preferred to collect all the data on one of the squad’s whiteboards. She’d draw a timeline, print out images of the suspects and witnesses and connect them with lines. Though he loved watching her do it, seeing the spark of excitement in her eyes as she filled the board, it never really helped him. He had his own whiteboard in his mind, where the suspects, witnesses, victims, alibis, and motives constantly shuffled. This was for the best, because he did his best thinking in the shower. He suspected that if he took Hannah’s whiteboard into the shower with him, she might be miffed.
Jacqueline Mune had been murdered that morning in her home, shot twice. According to Malik, two weeks ago, she had purchased an unregistered gun on the street, for protection. The names of the people involved so far blinked into his mind. There was the daughter, Sophia Thompson; the sister, Ginny; and the rival, whose name was Loretta Chinmayi. Sophia had an alibi of sorts—she’d been giving an online reading. It was far from iron-clad, but he resolved to check it later. And of course, there was Malik, or one of his gang members. Malik might have invented the story of a purchased gun to throw them off the scent. Bernard thought it was unlikely, but it was best to verify the story about the gun.
He took out his phone and selected Alex from his contacts. The man answered after a few seconds, his voice high-strung and tense.
“Hello, Mom?” the man said.
Bernard wondered if Alex was really with someone who would kill him if he knew who was calling, or if he was simply being his paranoid self. With Alex the Snitch, it was impossible to tell.
“Hey, Alex,” he said, still walking toward Mune’s home. “I need some info regarding an illegal gun.”
“Sure, Mom,” Alex said. “I’d love to meet after lunch.”
Bernard slowed down a bit. “The gun was purchased by a Two Four Two gang member named Malik two weeks ago.”
“Uh-huh. Yeah? I’m glad you’re feeling better, Mom. What did the doctor say the medicine was called?”
“It’s a Ruger LC9s. I want to know if he bought it, and what he did with it. Also, I want to know if it turned up somewhere today. It might be a murder weapon.”
“Absolutely. I’ll see you at the Hildegarde in one hour. Don’t forget to bring some money for the ticket.”
“Yeah, yeah,” Bernard said, irritated. “I’ll see you there, son.”
“Bye, Mom.”
Bernard hung up, shaking his head, and slid the phone into his pocket. He was a couple of minutes’ walk from the crime scene. The street was silent, most people either at home or at work, and perhaps the gunshots from earlier had made people wary of leaving the safety of their houses. The only one on the street was Jenna Terrel, the woman who had called in the shooting. She was out walking her l
eg-molesting dog. As they got closer, the dog leered at Bernard and pulled on his leash, trying to get within humping distance. Bernard quickly got off the sidewalk, circling around the woman as her dog half-choked itself trying to get to the detective’s sexy leg. Jenna yelled angrily at Oscar and gave Bernard a dirty look, as if it was all his fault.
He nodded at Kate and Noel as he got back to Jacqueline Mune’s home. He liked them both, they were decent cops, but lately he’d felt slightly uneasy around Kate. He had dreamed about her several times in the past year. A couple of those dreams were intricate sexy dreams, a fact that gave him a strange twinge of guilt whenever he saw her. He wasn’t sure if he was slightly guilty because he felt like he’d cheated on Carmen, or because it felt, in some way, like an invasion of Kate’s privacy. He didn’t even know her that well, and though she was good-looking, she wasn’t exactly his type.
In a different dream, she’d kidnapped his cat, and he didn’t know what to make of that either. He had never owned a cat.
“You think it’s going to be much longer, Bernard?” Noel asked. “I’m starving.”
“I’ll ask Matt,” Bernard answered, and strode inside. He heard Hannah and Matt talking in the kitchen and joined them there. Matt was lying on his back under the sink, fiddling with its pipe with a wrench. Hannah crouched by him. Violet was there as well, dusting the knob of the door to the back room.
“Kate and Noel want to know how much longer,” Bernard said.
“We’re just finishing up here,” Matt answered, his voice tight with effort as he turned the wrench. “Twenty minutes.”
“Did you find the victim’s gun?”
“No,” Matt said. “Also, the victim’s handbag is clean of fingerprints, even the metal clasp.”
“So it was wiped as well.”
“Right…” The pipe loosened, pouring some sludge on the floor by Matt’s head. Hannah leaped backwards, and Matt quickly shimmied away, cursing and spitting.
“Argh,” he said as he stood up. “Some of it went into my mouth.”
“A plumber you’re not,” Violet said dryly, carefully applying tape to the door handle.
“No,” Matt agreed, wiping his mouth on his sleeve. “Hang on.”
He pulled a large paper sheet from his kit and placed it on the floor under the pipe. Then he carefully emptied the pipe’s content onto the sheet.
“More glass shards,” he said. “Bigger than the ones in the sink. I think this was a broken mug.”
Bernard looked at the sludge on the floor. “So… someone washed a mug in the sink, dropped it and broke it, and then they threw away the large pieces and washed the smaller ones down the drain?”
“Sounds right.” Matt shrugged. “But they didn’t do a good job of it, because some shards were still in the sink.”
“The victim could have been washing it down as the murderer walked in, and she stopped before she was done,” Hannah said.
Bernard nodded. “Either that, or the murderer cleaned up after himself.”
“Any fingerprints on the faucet?” Bernard asked.
“Haven’t checked yet,” Violet said. “Give me a minute.”
“I’ll collect the shards, see if I can get a DNA sample from them, though I’m not hopeful. Now, check those spatters here, here, and here,” he said, pointing in turn at the wall, the floor, and the row of cupboards under the counter. “High-velocity spatters, all of them, probably from the impact of the bullet. I checked earlier, and they converge about…” He walked over to the doorway to the back room and pointed at an area four feet from the floor. “About here. Chest level.”
Bernard avoided mentioning that four feet was neck level for Matt. The man got enough daily reminders about his height without Bernard’s help.
Matt took a breath and pushed on. “So I’d say that the victim was standing in the doorway, facing the kitchen, as the shooter fired, hitting her in the chest. She might have been moving. And I’m not sure about the shooter’s position yet, but I’d say he was pretty close.”
“Okay,” Bernard said. “Also, no signs of forced entry. So maybe… the victim was washing a glass mug, and it fell into the sink. She was cleaning up as someone knocked on the back door. She opened the door, saw who it was, bolted to the back room, turned around, the killer shoots, then takes something from the handbag, wiping it clean after himself. He goes to the door, opens it with a rag, wiping the doorknob, maybe gets some of the victim’s blood smeared on the handle, and walks out.”
“That’s not what happened,” Hannah said.
“No, probably not,” Bernard agreed. “There’s no reason why the victim would run to a back room with no exits. No good explanation for the blood on the killer’s hand.”
“So… option two. The killer is already inside, drinking a cup of tea. The victim goes to the back room to get something.”
“She either gets it and returns, or he calls her when she’s in the doorway and she turns around.”
“He shoots her. Then he gets something from her bag and cleans up after himself. Maybe he checks the victim, gets some of her blood on his hand. He washes the mug, but he’s trying to hurry up—”
“Or maybe he’s just shaken—he just killed a woman,” Bernard said. “He drops the mug into the sink and cleans up after himself…” Bernard looked at the sink and then at the back door.
“Gets out of the house, wiping the doorknob off, smearing some blood on it while he’s at it.”
“It isn’t perfect.”
“But it’s good enough for a start,” Hannah said.
Chapter Four
The Hildegarde was an art gallery on Clayton Road, and Bernard had been inside only once, when he had been summoned to escort a drunken artist outside. The man had sputtered angry curses at the gallery owner, who had apparently refused to display his art. As he was led outside, he had explained to Bernard that he was a genius, misunderstood by the ignorant public. He’d then proceeded to piss himself and throw up on Bernard’s shoes.
Bernard went to meet Alex the Snitch alone, while Hannah preferred to do a quick door-to-door in the area of the crime scene to save time. It was probably for the best anyway, since Alex always insisted that the detectives avoid meeting him in pairs to avoid suspicion.
The current exhibition on display was called Fragments of Spring. As far as Bernard could tell, it consisted of a series of paintings of naked women hugging fish. He located Alex the Snitch standing in front of a large piece in which a fat Asian woman snuggled with an unhappy-looking trout. Bernard stood next to him.
“Did you find anything?” he asked.
Alex stared ahead, his eyes bulging, a sheen of sweat on his forehead. Bernard always wondered why the man did what he did. His nerves clearly weren’t built for it, and the money definitely wasn’t the reason; the Glenmore Park PD had a very low budget for snitch payoffs.
“It’s a marvelous piece, isn’t it?” he said, glancing around frantically. “I feel like the artist really captured the essence of the… uh…”
Bernard grinned. The gallery was empty except for a ninety-year-old woman who seemed to have fallen asleep. “I don’t know,” he said. “I’m more interested in the gun.”
Alex sent him a furious look. “Quiet!” he hissed. “Do you want to get me killed?”
Bernard tried to imagine the old woman suddenly pulling a machine gun from her flower-patterned handbag and spraying Alex with bullets. “Sorry,” he whispered, trying to keep his face serious.
Alex quickly walked over to the next picture, in which a catfish was being squeezed by a woman with unreasonably large breasts. Bernard sighed, waited a moment and then followed him.
“Well?” he asked.
“Your guy did buy a Ruger on the street a few weeks ago,” Alex mumbled. “He got it almost for free.”
“Why?”
“According to my man, Malik bought this gun for a woman that he and the seller both knew,” Alex said. “A Mrs. Mune. I was also told that she
was shot this morning, is that right?”
“You tell me.”
“Okay, she was shot, and you’re investigating her murder. So let me tell you, it’s not someone from the Two Four Twos.”
“How do you know that?”
“Because that’s what I do,” Alex said irritably.
Bernard nodded. “Who did he buy it from?”
“You don’t pay me enough to tell you that.”
“Okay, what else?”
“This gun hasn’t shown up again on the streets so far, but I told my people to keep an eye open,” Alex muttered, his voice barely audible.
The old woman unexpectedly sneezed, and Alex nearly fainted. “This painting in particular, I think, is magnificent!” he squawked.
Bernard rolled his eyes. His phone rang and he fished it out of his pocket, looking around uncomfortably. He had a feeling that answering a phone call in an art gallery was frowned upon. But the old woman didn’t seem to mind, having fallen deep into slumber again. He answered the call.
“Yeah?”
“Bernard.” Hannah’s voice crackled, a bit unclear. There was low reception in the gallery. “I just finished questioning the fifteenth neighbor. No one saw anything. Several of them heard the gunfire and have confirmed what Jenna Terrel told us. So nothing new here.”
“Okay, fine,” Bernard said.
“Any luck with Alex the Snitch?”
Bernard lowered his voice. “He said that Malik bought the gun for Mune, so looks like Malik’s story checks out. He also thinks that the Two Four Twos aren’t behind the murder.”
“Yeah, okay,” Hannah said. “I think we should talk to Jacqueline Mune’s rival.”
“Sounds right. I’ll come pick you up from the crime scene.”
“Okay,” Hannah said, and hung up.
Bernard turned to face Alex, pulling several bills from his pocket. He tried to hand them to Alex, who visibly recoiled, as if Bernard was holding a plague-infested rat.
“You don’t want it?” Bernard asked.
“Not like that!” Alex whispered frantically.