“Well, there’s that. But otherwise, you’ve done as well as anyone could. In the circumstances.”
I nodded. Took another pause.
“Just for the record, okay? Even if the D.A. had agreed to a deal, a reduced sentence, you wouldn’t have taken it. Right?”
“Right.” He sighed heavily. “A man like me wouldn’t be able to tolerate prison. Not for one single day. Besides, accepting a deal would mean admitting guilt.”
“Not necessarily.”
He held up a hand. “Don’t get me wrong. I have plenty to feel guilty about. But not for killing Debbie. It’s my fault she’s dead, no question. I left her alone. Defenseless. But I didn’t kill her.”
Andrew gave me a sad, almost forlorn look. “Because, as I told you, as I kept telling the police, I couldn’t kill anyone.”
“Except yourself.”
“Exactly. See, you do understand me, Doc. It’s a real comfort at a time like this.”
His relaxed, almost disinterested manner caught me off guard. Suddenly he turned, took two steps toward the lip of the roof, and sat down. Feet dangling over the side.
Hesitating only a moment, I joined him on the roof edge. Sat right beside him, shoulder to shoulder. Hand still in my pocket. My own feet hanging over the edge.
I risked glancing over the side. The crowd below was like a living thing, undulating, people moving about in clusters. Pointing up at Andrew and me. Or aiming their cells and mini-cams. Hoping for something, anything, to happen.
I also noted a number of TV news vans parked just beyond the growing throng. By now, too, an ambulance had arrived on the scene.
“We’re building quite an audience,” Andrew said, peering over the edge as well. “I suspect I’ll end up on YouTube.”
I said nothing, leaning back a bit. Trying to keep my own anxiety under control. To stay focused.
Andrew turned then, his face as open as a child’s.
“Like I said, I appreciate your coming up here, Doc. But I’m going to do it. I’m going to jump. I hope you believe me.”
“I do. But I was an idiot to believe what you said at the end of our session yesterday. About hoping for a plea deal. About how you’d never try to commit suicide again because of how you’d botched it the first time.”
“Tell you the truth, I was kind of surprised you bought that myself. But other than that, I’ve never lied to you during our sessions. About myself, my marriage, anything. I’m guilty of many things, Dr. Rinaldi, but lying isn’t one of them.”
“I know that, Andrew. That’s why I believe you when you say you’re willing to commit suicide.”
“I am.”
“But you also said something else in session. Something you said you wouldn’t do. Couldn’t do.”
“And what’s that?”
“Kill someone.”
And, with that, I took my hand out of my pocket. My wrist encircled by one half of a pair of handcuffs, the other half dangling. Before Andrew could register what was happening, I snapped the free cuff around his own wrist.
His eyes widened in shock. “What the—?”
“We’re handcuffed together now, Andrew. So where you go, I go. Including over the edge of this roof. To splatter together on the pavement below. If that doesn’t get us on YouTube, nothing will.”
He couldn’t stop staring. “You…you’re crazy…”
“That may be. But I’m not the one with a decision to make. See, if you really want to kill yourself, go ahead and jump. But you’ll be killing me, too.”
I met his incredulous gaze.
“Now, personally, I’d like to live. But it’s up to you.”
He could barely form words. “But…but why? Why in God’s name would you do this?”
“Because I believe in you, Andrew. I believe you didn’t kill Debbie, just like I believe you can’t kill me. A belief whose price I’m willing to pay.”
He squinted down at the handcuffs binding us. “Come on, Doc. I know you have the key for these things…”
“Actually, I don’t. It’s probably still in the pocket of the cop I borrowed them from.”
A long, agonizing minute of silence followed as a dozen conflicting emotions seemed to flicker across his face.
At the same time, my own resolve began to weaken. The mad, searing reality of what I’d done flooding over me. All because I knew in my gut that Andrew Morrison wasn’t a killer. Or thought I knew. Believed it.
Sweat beaded my brow, but not from the heat. My mouth gone dry, heart banging in my chest. I felt my panic rising…Then suddenly, as though from far way, I heard Andrew’s deep, heavy exhalation. His voice a whisper.
“I…I can’t do it, Doc. You’re right. I can’t kill you. Not just because of something I want. Something that would take my pain away. I can’t let you die because of that…”
I gave out a long, relieved sigh of my own.
“Then would it be okay if we went down now?” I met his gaze. “Or do you want to sit up here a little longer?”
He considered this carefully.
“Would you mind if we stayed up here just a bit longer? As you know, there’s nothing down there I’m looking forward to.”
“I understand. But you won’t be alone. I’ll be with you as much as I can. Every step of the way.”
He nodded slowly. “Guess it’s my turn to believe you.”
We stayed that way, handcuffed together, side by side, on the edge of the roof until it got too hot, and Andrew said he was ready to come down.
***
“Jesus, Rinaldi, I knew you had a screw loose, but that was off-the-charts crazy.”
Harry Polk was walking with me toward his unmarked, after having arrested Andrew Morrison and sent him off with some uniforms. Meanwhile, a disappointed crowd of onlookers noisily dispersed, as a pair of equally disgruntled news crews packed up their gear and drove off, their hopes for something exciting on a slow news day dashed.
“I’m just glad the cop I borrowed the cuffs from hadn’t gone off duty.” I rubbed my wrist. “I never got his name, and he was the guy with the key.”
Polk grunted. “Yeah, well, it woulda served ya right to be handcuffed to that nut-job for the rest o’ the night. Sharin’ a cell with him mighta put some sense in your thick skull.”
I stopped him at his car door. “Just make sure you keep an eye on him at the jail, okay? He’s still a suicide risk.”
The sergeant gave me a baleful look. “Listen, Doc. After what you just did, so are you.”
I got similar criticism from Angie on the phone that night.
“Jesus, Danny, everybody knows you have a hero complex. Who the hell knew you had a death wish, too?”
“What can I say? It seemed like a good idea at the time.”
It was a flippant, facetious remark and she wasn’t buying it. She grumbled something unintelligible and hung up.
***
Less than a week later, a woman in Monroeville was attacked by a home invader with a serrated blade. He’d been dressed as a gas company employee, and had knocked at her door to let her know he’d be in her backyard, checking her meter. As soon as she’d opened the door, he pushed his way in.
To his surprise, the woman raised German shepherds, and her current four-legged live-in companion tore the hell out of the guy. Thinking fast, the woman locked her assailant in a closet and called the police. Under interrogation that night, he admitted to killing Debbie Morrison as well. Using the same ruse, he’d entered the house and savagely butchered her. He gave no explanation for his actions, and showed little remorse.
The next day, Andrew Morrison was released from jail, with all charges dropped. After which he returned to therapy with me. Still traumatized by the brutal murder of his wife, as well as tormented by feelings of guilt and self-recrimination, he had a l
ong therapeutic journey ahead of him.
And, as I’d promised, I was willing to accompany him all the way. His would be a difficult path, but I believed I could help guide him through it. I guess I had to. I couldn’t do my job if I didn’t.
Still, for some months afterwards, I had a recurring dream about Andrew and me, handcuffed together on the edge of the roof. The heat of the day pouring down on us. The crowd below waiting expectantly.
We exchange the same words. I make the same argument.
And, in my dream, he always jumps.
The Stranding
Sulari Gentill
Years ago, I set off to university to study astrophysics and came out with a law degree. I’m not quite sure how it happened. Whilst practising law can, on occasion, be creative, they don’t like you to simply make things up. Writing fiction seemed liked a better way to indulge my growing fondness for fabrication. Although I came to writing late, and on a whim rather than an epiphany, it soon became as natural as breathing and the thought of stopping as dire.
I was first published in Australia (where I live) in 2010 with the first book of what has become a long-running series. There are now eight Rowland Sinclair Mysteries. The series was picked up for publication in the U.S. by Poisoned Pen Press, which released the first two novels in 2016, with a novel due for release every six months thereafter.
I continue to live with my husband, Michael, my boys, Edmund and Atticus, and several animals on a small farm in the foothills of the Snowy Mountains of New South Wales, where I grow French black truffles and write…a lot. With each book I fall more deeply in love with the craft of storytelling.
—S.G.
***
First light reached shyly across the bay. Her embrace was gentle, as if she knew, as if she cared. He was still, stark against the movement of dawn on the water, dark against the distant wound of a bleeding horizon. His thoughts were lost and he within them—frantically, breathlessly lost. And yet he was still.
The world receded and he struggled once more in mud and blood and terror. But the touch of daybreak was warm. And gradually, the rhythm of the swell soothed the rattling, hammering clatter of artillery and the screams of dying men. It led him back.
A young woman called out to him from the beach. “Ernest!”
The smile began before he turned. It was not for her as much as a response to her, the thought of her, the knowledge of her. May Clarke stood barefoot on the sand, her dress damp with spray, her hair blown wild by the salt breeze. She’d been a child when he’d gone to war. He’d been barely more than a boy himself.
He’d written to her when Jack had died with condolences for the loss of her brother and she’d replied in her careful childish hand, but with such strength and compassion that he had kept the pages close through the mire and hell of the years that followed. She’d written to him regularly after that—the letters she might have written Jack, and somehow they had kept him sane. He’d spent his war looking for stories he could tell her in return, funny little accounts of some small thing that wouldn’t frighten her, or reveal the horror of what they faced, of how her brother had died. That much he could do for Jack.
She’d met him on the dock when he’d come home—an unexpected bloom, a beautiful curved transformation of the braids and freckles and awkwardness he’d watched Jack embrace good-bye. May Clarke worked for The Mosman Daily now—reporting on society parties and debutante balls—and kept her own small flat at Rushcutters Bay. She cajoled him out of his darker moods, seduced him back to the world, reminded him that he was alive and young and a man.
“Ernest!” May beckoned him quite urgently now.
He ran down from the rocks expecting she’d found a hermit crab or some other treasure in the sand. “Where’s the fire?”
She grabbed his arm tightly and pointed down the beach. “Look.”
The shape was dark, washed up on the smooth glistening wake of the retreating foam. He tensed. Even from this distance he could make out arms splayed from the crumpled mass.
“Stop here, May,” he said moving toward it.
She ignored the direction, following, though she stayed a step behind him. When they were close enough to see, to realise, she laughed. He smiled as she giggled at their fright, their foolishness. It was just an overcoat.
“Oh, we are idiots!” She embraced him in the exuberance of relief.
He heaved up the coat. Soaked, the heavy wool resisted the strength of his arm, clinging to its place on the sand.
“What do you suppose it’s doing in the bay?” May mused as she tried to wring the sleeves. The coat was well cut, expensive, at least originally.
“Who knows?” It wasn’t the kind of garment one would expect to be left on a beach.
“Ernest—” May pulled his arm again and pointed. Several yards further on…a woman’s mantel this time, with a saturated fur-lined collar, and then another, and another. It was the child’s coat that troubled May—that unnerved her: a red frock coat with white buttons.
“We should notify the police,” she whispered. “This isn’t right.”
“They’re coats,” he replied, though the strange stranding perplexed him too.
“Maybe there were people in them once…perhaps the fish have eaten them!” May clutched the child’s coat to her breast, distressed by the thought.
He placed his arms around her and kissed the top of her head. “You’re getting carried away, sweetheart.” Still, he, too, was uneasy. “Perhaps they were cargo that fell overboard.”
May shook her head, pulling away to show him the label on the silken lining of the child’s coat. Anna Rosenbaum in neat, black stitching. “What do you suppose happened to her?”
Ernest frowned. He had no idea, no suggestion to assuage the notions of murder and tragedy that now gripped May.
Two more coats were deposited by the tide, limp empty shadows of the people who might have once walked in them. Ernest dragged the salt-sodden overclothes into a pile while May ran to fetch the police. He waited with his gaze fixed out to sea, struggling to avoid the recollection of more grisly heaps.
Kings Cross station sent two constables. The younger immediately extracted a notebook and licked the lead of a stubby pencil. “You question the duffle,” he said grinning broadly at his partner. “I’ll get a statement from the tweed.”
“We thought…I thought…” May stuttered, colouring. Ernest glared at the young policeman.
“Two bodies found on Sydney beaches in the last week, Kendall.” The elder officer frowned, clearly irritated.
“Yeah, but…” Kendall began.
“You can be funny once you’ve been on the job a month…until then you’d do well to shut-up and listen.” Constable O’Reilly introduced himself. May smiled at him and he straightened a little.
“Might these coats be related to—?” Ernest began.
“I really couldn’t say, Mr.…?”
“Alden, Ernest Alden.”
“The bodies on Manly Beach?” May persisted. The newsroom had been full of the corpses which had washed up within a day of each other. A man and a woman…generally thought to be victims of a suicide pact.
But O’Reilly would tell them nothing more. He despatched Kendall to inform the Criminal Investigation Bureau, took their names and addresses and sent them on their way.
***
May opened the door before he’d had a chance to knock, dragging him into the small flat and kissing him with such force that he stumbled back against the papered wall. He laughed as she loosened his tie.
“My God, you’re shameless,” he said, dropping his briefcase and wrapping his arms about her. “Marry me.”
“Stop trying to make an honest woman of me,” she whispered, unbuttoning his shirt.
“You can be as dishonest as you like…I’ll help you rob a bank if you want,” he r
eplied. “Just marry me.”
May smiled, turning away from him and walking into her bedroom. “Are you going to stand around proposing or do you want to hear what I found out about our coats?”
“Our coats?” He watched as she unbuttoned her dress and let it fall away.
“Well, yes…they’re ours in a way.” May stepped toward him, a tantalising nymph in a cotton chemise.
Ernest forgot about the coats, giving himself over to her seduction. May led him to her bed. He followed in awe that fate would have given him something so beautiful, so completely unspoiled. There was a time when he’d thought everything spoiled. Ernest made love to her then, slowly, immersing himself in her. She welcomed him into her body and her self, and the dark recollections which tormented him seemed illuminated and repelled for a time.
It was not until they lay together spent and languid, that May raised the coats again. “Darling,” she said lacing her fingers with his, “those bodies they found at Manly Beach—they didn’t have coats.”
“What?” He kissed the hollow at the base of her throat.
She sighed. “The bodies, Ernest. They didn’t have coats.”
He groaned. Apparently she was not going to allow him to have her again unless they talked about corpses first. “How do you know?”
“I tracked down one of the journalists who covered the story…I asked him.”
“Perhaps they simply weren’t wearing coats, May.”
“It’s July, Ernest.”
“Still—”
“What if their coats were among those we found on the beach?”
“You’re suggesting someone murdered them for their coats?” Ernest smiled, running his hand along her thigh.
“Who knows?” She pushed his hand away and rolled onto her elbows. “But what if those coats were a murderer’s hoard? What if there are more bodies that just haven’t yet washed up?”
“Then the police will have their work cut out for them, I expect.”
“You know a story like this would make them take me seriously at the paper.” May bit her lip.
Ernest frowned, sensing something. “What’s happened?” He brushed the hair from her face so he could see her eyes.
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