A Murder of Crows

by K. J. Emrick

  Marla smiled thinly. Darcy recognized the venom behind it. She didn’t think the man saw it. From the pocket of her suit jacket she produced a cell phone. Holding it below the table so that Robert couldn’t see it, she deftly typed out a text message without looking down and then sent it out. She continued talking for a few minutes about monetary funds and how secure her company was from electronic fraud and so on and on.

  Then someone else rushed into the home, into the field of the vision. The man’s back was to Darcy, but she recognized him even without being able to see his face.

  “I just heard,” Jeff said. “The First National Bank had a computer hacker break into their records. More than half of their clients lost everything.”

  Robert’s bushy eyebrows flew up. “Really? That bank’s just down the street from mine.”

  Marla nodded, pursing her lips sadly. “Unfortunately this is the world we live in. Your bank could be next. If you aren’t willing to take a risk with us, I wish you the best, but…”

  “No, wait.” Robert held his hand up as Marla started to stand up. “Wait, please. I can’t lose my money. I’ve saved or so long so that I’ll have something to pass on to my son. I can’t lose his inheritance. Please. I’ll sign the forms.”

  Marla smiled like a cat who had just eaten a canary, and slid her way back into the kitchen chair. She passed Robert a pen. “Very good. I’m so happy you changed your mind. You won’t be disappointed.”

  Jeff picked something up from a dish on the table and held it up to the light. It was a coin, as big as his palm, with a clover on one side and a crow on the other. “This is nice. Yours?”

  “Yes,” Robert said, looking over the papers again. “My family crest is the crow. From back in the middle ages. I had dozens of them made up. Why don’t you keep that one? For good luck.”

  The old man smiled at Jeff, and he put the coin in his pocket.

  “All right,” Marla said. “Just sign here, and here, and we’ll take care of transferring the money over, Mister Phillips.”

  Phillips! Darcy looked at the old man, and could see the resemblance now. It was in the cheekbones, and the set of the jaw. This was Officer Mark Phillips’ dad.

  ***

  Darcy gasped for air and fell back against the toilet before she caught herself. Her legs were numb, and her head throbbed. Jon was with her immediately, holding her, trying to get her up.

  “No, not yet,” Darcy said, tasting the gummy inside of her mouth. “I can’t stand up yet. Oh, Jon. This is awful.”

  She fell against his chest, waiting for the feeling to come back into her legs. Jeff peeked out through the shower curtain at them but with one glare from Darcy, he fled so far away that she couldn’t feel his presence any more.

  “Yeah, you’d better run,” she whispered.

  Jon pulled back to look at her. She sighed. “My ex-husband, as it turns out, was a total jerk. Apparently, he took up with Marla for more than just her, you know, company.” Her face heated and she hated herself for even caring. It was long in the past, like Jon had said, and both Jeff and Marla were dead.

  She sucked a deep breath and finally levered herself up enough to sit on the lid of the toilet seat. In halting words, she quickly told Jon what she had seen. “So that’s why Mark Phillips killed Marla. It all makes sense now. He recognized her. He must have seen Marla back when she was scamming his dad. Seeing her again, now, he wanted revenge for what had happened to his father.”

  “We don’t know that,” Jon pointed out.

  Turning her face up to him, she tilted her head and glared.

  “Okay, okay, understand me,” he said. “I know what you saw is the truth. Jeff and Marla scammed Phillips’ dad. They used the man’s fear of banks and technology to get him to turn over all of his money, and then probably disappeared the next day. Fine. I get that. But you didn’t see the murder. It would have been nice if Marla had done that for us.”

  She made a noise in her throat. “Marla isn’t exactly being helpful.”

  “Well, with everything we know, we can see that Phillips had good reason to kill Marla. But, my point is that we don’t know if it was an accident or intentional.”

  “Jon, he’s arresting the wrong man to cover his tracks! That’s intentional.”

  He nodded, chewing on the inside of his cheek. “You’re right. So I guess the only thing to do is go and ask him why he did it.”

  ***

  The desk sergeant at the Ryansburg Police Department wasn’t as nice as Sergeant Fitzwallis back in Misty Hollow. He was gruff and sour and barked at them that Mark Phillips had gone home and they should, too.

  “Wonderful,” Darcy said as they walked down the front steps of the police station. The sun was still warm on the city streets, but it didn’t make her feel any better. “Now what?”

  Jon looked around them. “Wait here,” he said.

  She didn’t know what he was up to. He rushed up to a knot of officers standing over on the sidewalk, laughing and talking. She watched him slap a hand on the back of one of them and insert himself in the conversation. He was there for several long minutes before coming back to her.

  “Okay, let’s go. We’re going to need Marla’s car. It’s outside the city.”

  “Wait,” she said, but letting him tug her along by the hand. “What’s outside the city?”

  “Mark Phillips’ house.” He winked at her surprised expression. “Cops have their own language. Lucky for you, I speak it.”

  Chapter Ten

  Marla’s car smelled like Marla. At least, Darcy thought it did. It was probably all in her mind, but it still bothered her.

  She had asked him why they couldn’t just use his car. A little sheepishly, he’d explained that after getting here to Ryansburg he’d forgotten to gas up. He was almost on empty. So, Marla’s car was the best choice. Under the circumstances, they both agreed Marla probably wouldn’t mind.

  Jon drove them through the city streets and out towards the suburbs. Tall buildings that crowded next to each other slowly thinned out and then were gone altogether in favor of small, cookie cutter houses of pale red brick or white siding. Manicured lawns were boxed in by low fences. Dogs barked from a few of them as they passed by.

  Jeff sat in the middle of the back seat, his arms crossed over his chest. After Darcy had ignored him completely for the first ten minutes of the car ride, he had started to sulk. Now he just sat quietly. She decided to be thankful for small miracles. After all, she hadn’t asked him to come along.

  “We’re looking for ten Aubrey Lane,” Jon told her.

  It was just after the dinner hour, and the sun was starting down towards the horizon. Children played in front yards and in the windows televisions flashed images of whatever shows the families were watching. Darcy thought it was a nice place. A good place to raise a family.

  Probably the exact place where Robert Phillips had raised Mark. She wondered if they could talk to Robert, too. That would help confirm what Marla had shown her.

  Winding around a curve on a narrow two lane street Jon found the place they were looking for. It was a one story home of brick and stucco, the number ten in black letters on the white mailbox. In the driveway sat an older blue car with a few dents on the driver’s side. Jeff pulled in behind it and parked.

  They got out together and went around to the little walkway that led up to the front door. Jeff got out by fading through the car door and started to follow them.

  “Oh, no,” Darcy said to him, raising a finger in his face. “You are not coming with us. I am not going to try to put up with you dancing around my head while I’m talking to someone. Not this time!”

  “Uh, Darcy,” Jon said to her, taking her arm and pointing to the house next door. Two little children were watching them closely, their eyes wide to see the crazy woman screaming at the air in front of her face.

  “Oh, for Pete’s sake,” Darcy muttered, turning away with her head down. “He better not follow us, Jon, or so he
lp me I’ll find some way to bind his soul into a rock and then I’ll toss it into the nearest lake.”

  She was sure Jon was laughing at her, but she let it pass.

  Jon pushed the little round doorbell and they heard it buzz inside. They waited, and then he pushed it again. This time they heard footsteps coming. The curtain in the window next to the door moved and Mark Phillips peeked out at them. The look of surprise on his face was there and gone again as he pulled the curtain back down.

  The door opened a moment later and there he stood, changed out of his uniform into casual clothes, wiping his hands on a white cloth. The crow tattoo was very prominent on his arm. Its eye was a paler circle in the black, and it seemed to be staring at Darcy.

  “Well, hi,” Mark said to them. “I sure didn’t expect to see you two here. I was just making some supper. Want to join me?”

  “Actually,” Jon said to him. “We need to talk. Can we come in?”

  “Sure, sure,” Mark said, stepping back for them to enter. He seemed overly cheerful. “Nice to have company. Let me get you guys a drink, at least. Coffee? Soda?”

  Darcy and Jon followed him into the kitchen and Darcy lost a step. It was the same kitchen that she had seen in her vision. Same table where Robert and Marla had sat while Robert was being politely robbed of his life’s savings. The linoleum was a little more scuffed, the table a little more cluttered, but otherwise it was unchanged from what she had seen. She nudged Jon and pointed to the table. He nodded his understanding.

  Mark filled a teakettle with water and put it on the stove to boil. “I’m afraid all I have for coffee is the instant stuff. A lot of people don’t like it but it works for me. You know how it is, right Jon? When you’re a police officer you don’t have a lot of time in the mornings. You have to just grab your breakfast and go.”

  “True enough,” Jon said in agreement. “Lots of things about being a police officer that people don’t realize. Like how we aren’t paid a whole lot of money.”

  Mark dropped a coffee cup in the sink. It clinked and clattered before he caught hold of it. “Oops. Clumsy of me. Anyway. What brings you guys by? You find out something about Marla’s case?”

  “Uh, in a way. Yes.” Jon came around the table, closer to Mark. “I was wondering if we could talk to your father. I believe his name is Robert?”

  Something flashed across Mark’s face. “My father isn’t here.”

  “Where is he?” Darcy asked.

  Mark leaned back against the sink and faced them with a stony expression. “My father died a year ago. He was an old man.”

  Darcy sighed. So much for that. “I’m sorry to hear that.”

  Mark shrugged. “He was in bad health. See, he never recovered from losing all of his money in a bad investment. It ate away at him little by little, and I think it was the guilt that ultimately killed him.”

  Darcy looked over at Jon. That bad investment Mark was talking about was the swindle that Jeff and Marla had played on Mark’s dad.

  “I think we understand,” Darcy started to say.

  “There’s no way you could understand that kind of loss unless you had experienced it,” Mark was quick to tell her. “I was here when my dad was promised his money would be safe if he handed it over. He was lied to, and he was such a trusting soul that he didn’t even know what those two had done to him until he tried to get his money back. Then it was too late.”

  “Those two?” Jon said. “You mean the two people who stole your dad’s money?”

  “Sure. Those two. But then, you already knew that, didn’t you Jon?”

  Darcy knew they could have denied it and played dumb but there wasn’t any point. This was what they had come here for, to learn the truth. “We do know about it,” Darcy said. “We know that Marla was one of the people who stole your dad’s money.”

  “So, Mark,” Jon said, “what we’re here to ask you, is what happened when you saw Marla in that bar?”

  “What do you think?” Mark nearly yelled at him. “She stole more than my dad’s money. She stole his life! He died because of what she did. Her and that other guy. I told her I knew who she was, and that I knew what she had done. I told her my dad’s name, and you know what she did? She laughed at me. Laughed, and said she didn’t remember anyone by that name.”

  He shook his head slowly. The kettle boiled, and he turned to lift it off the burner.

  “What happened then?” Jon asked him.

  In one swift motion Mark turned and threw the kettle at Jon. He tried to duck it but it glanced off his forehead and he fell to the floor. “Enough of this,” Mark muttered. “I am not going down for killing someone like her. She deserved it. She deserved it!”

  He started advancing on Darcy. She tried to get to Jon, to see if he was all right, to look for his chest rising and falling, but then Mark was lunging out to grab her. She ducked and turned and ran deeper into the house.

  “Come back here!” Mark yelled at her. “You can’t tell them what I did! Neither of you can leave here!”

  Darcy ran down a hallway, to a set of stairs, and then up into the second floor hallway. She picked a room at random and rushed inside. A bedroom. She looked for a place to hide. Under the bed? No. Stupid. He’d look there first. She opened the sliding closet door and went in there instead, pulling the door closed behind her.

  Now what?

  She heard footsteps on the stairs. Mark, rushing up after her. “What are you doing?” he called out. “You can’t hide from me in my own house. If you leave, I’ll just tell everyone that you broke in here and admitted to killing Marla and I was trying to arrest you. Who do you think they’ll believe? I’m a cop!”

  Darcy looked around her in the closet. She couldn’t see much. The door blocked out most of the light with no slats or openings in it. She felt over clothes hanging on their rack and fishing poles and boxes until she settled her hand around something long and thin and metal. A golf club. She hefted it up and waited.

  She didn’t even dare breathe.

  There wasn’t any sound in the house. Nothing. Was he in the room already? Was he still looking for her? Oh, dear God, did he go for his gun? Was he getting a gun to kill her with? What was she going to do?

  She stood there, terrified in the dark, trembling.

  Beside her, a form appeared. She nearly screamed before she recognized Jeff, holding a finger up to his lips. Shh. Quiet.

  “What?” she whispered.

  He held four fingers up. Then he tucked one away. Then another.

  He was counting down, she realized. Four, three, two…

  One.

  She was ready for it when the closet door opened and she swung the club with all her strength. It took Mark in the side of the head. He spun like a marionette on strings, comically falling face first across the bed. Blood welled at his temple. He didn’t get up.

  Still, she stood over him with the club up raised over her head, ready to wail it down on him if she needed to. Jeff floated around to lean down over Mark. When he looked at Darcy, his ghostly face smiled.

  “Good job,” he said to her.

  “Is he alive?” Darcy asked. She didn’t want him to die. Just…not kill her.

  Jeff nodded with a smile. Still alive. “Good job,” he repeated.

  It was probably the nicest thing she could remember him saying to her in a long, long time.

  ***

  Jon had found her there, standing just like that. He was holding a dish towel to the side of his head and it was already stained red with his blood. He had to drop it as he took fishing line out of the closet and used it to tie Mark’s hands behind his back and then tie his feet together. Only then did Darcy drop the golf club.

  The cut to Jon’s head bled a lot, but didn’t look that bad. It would probably heal over without stitches. They held each other tightly and told each other how scared they had been. Then they laughed together.

  “We have to stop going on dates like this,” he told her. “Okay? Next dat
e, we go to the movies.”

  Darcy dearly loved this man. How could she possibly think being with him for the rest of her life would be a bad thing?

  The ambulance and the Ryansburg Police Department showed up about fifteen minutes after Jon made the call to 911. Mark was waking up by then, just in time to have the fishing line cut off his hands and replaced by handcuffs. He was still screaming that Marla deserved to die when they took him away.

  Jeff had disappeared. Darcy figured he wasn’t gone yet, though.

  She and Jon were driven down to the police station after Jon’s head wound was bandaged. An officer was detailed to bring Marla’s car for them. They gave their statements and all of their information, and then the Ryansburg Police Chief came to speak to them privately. He personally apologized to them for what had happened. No one had ever known what was going on in Mark Phillips’ life, he said. Nothing like this should ever happen at his department.

  Jon thanked the Chief and promised there were no hard feelings. He winced and touched his head as he said it, though.

  They were invited to watch part of the interview of Mark through a two-way glass. The detectives doing the interview looked grim, having to do this to one of their own. Darcy guessed she could understand that. Still. Mark was a murderer. No matter what reason he might have had for doing it, he had still killed someone. He had tried to kill them. He wasn’t a cop anymore.

  They listened to Mark go through his story, about how he had demanded Marla give back the money she’d stolen and how she’d laughed and tried to walk away. After that, Mark claimed not to remember much. At least not until he had been grilled on the same question a few times, and then he admitted to having a vague memory of knocking Marla’s head into an alley wall. Repeatedly.

  Then Mark shook his head and he slumped back in his seat, defeated. “I knew those two had figured it out. That out of town cop and his girlfriend. When she showed me my father’s good luck charm, I knew it. You don’t know how hard it was for me not to snatch it back from her right then and there. It was probably the only thing that was taken from my dad that I would ever be able to get back.”