by A. E. Howe
“Larry, get out of my way,” Marcy said through gritted teeth. Then she shouted, “Don’t move!” I turned my head slightly to see that Andrew had started to sidle away from everyone else.
“Everyone stay where you are,” I said. “Marcy isn’t going to hurt anyone. Are you?”
She seemed to take a long time to consider her answer. “What are you doing here?” she asked, and I wasn’t sure who she was directing the question to.
“She’s been lying to us,” was the answer from Joel. “I came to find out why.”
“When were you going to tell me?” Marcy asked him. They were talking around the rest of us.
“Deputy, you need to put an end to this. Arrest these two,” Jane said to me.
“He’s not arresting me. At least not until I’ve done what I came here to do,” Joel said.
I’d figured out that Marcy must have followed Joel here. I was really kicking myself for telling Darlene that she could go home.
“Tell him what you did,” Marcy said.
“That was an accident…” Joel started.
“Not you, you idiot, her,” Marcy said disdainfully, jerking her head toward Jane and waving the shotgun around indiscriminately. I knew from our earlier years together that she knew how to use a shotgun, not that the pump shotgun needed a genius-level IQ to operate. I tried to keep one eye on Marcy’s trigger finger which, so far, was staying safely outside the trigger guard.
“I don’t know what you are talking about,” Jane stated flatly.
“Liar!” Marcy screamed, and I watched her finger move closer toward the trigger guard. But it stopped before it got there and went back to resting on the side of the gun.
I really hoped that Marcy wouldn’t shoot anyone. But as a deputy and as someone who wanted to protect the lives of everyone in the room, I had to consider the option of trying to stop her with deadly force. I thought about my Glock resting in its holster under my arm and wished I had worn my belt holster. I wasn’t as proficient drawing from a shoulder holster and I was still ten yards from her. If Marcy went to shoot, I’d need to make a difficult headshot.
Most people watch movies and TV and believe that all an officer has to do is shoot the bad guy and the fight is over, but that is far from the case. In order to stop someone from shooting more people, you have to make that very difficult headshot. The small triangle formed by the eyes and nose is the kill switch. Shoot him just about anywhere else and a bad guy still has options. The only reason most criminals stop when they’ve been shot is because they are frightened and want the other guy to stop shooting at them. But if they want to, even with several mortal wounds, they can fight on for minutes.
So my calculation as I stood there was whether I could draw and fire a round from a holster I hadn’t practiced with, and hit an area the size of a notecard on a possibly moving target, before she could shoot me. I doubted it. Shooting would have to be my last recourse.
“Marcy, listen to me. We can talk this out,” I said, trying to keep a calm and reasoned tone.
“You bitch,” she said to Jane, completely ignoring me. Marcy reached into her jeans pocket and took out an envelope, tossing it in Jane’s direction. Envelopes don’t fly very well, so it went only about ten feet before falling to the floor in the middle of the aisle. It landed face up, and I took my eyes off of Marcy just long enough to see that it had gone through the mail.
“What is that?” I asked, as much to get Marcy’s angry eyes focused off of Jane as to find out what was in the letter.
“The truth that that lying, scheming bitch screwed us over!” Marcy yelled, but I took it as progress that she actually heard my question and answered me.
“How did she screw you?” I asked.
Marcy hesitated. She obviously wanted the truth to come out and I hoped she wanted that more than she wanted to throw Jane’s guts all over the chapel.
“What did she do?” I prodded.
“Go ahead and look at it.” She waved the shotgun from me to the letter.
Cautiously I moved forward, wondering if I should take the opportunity of being within ten feet of Marcy to rush her. If I got inside the swing of the barrel of the shotgun, I could control it enough to ensure that she couldn’t point it at anyone while I wrestled it away from her. But no sooner had that thought occurred to me then she started to move back, keeping the distance between us at a range that would make it impossible for me to cross it before she was able to fire a load of birdshot, buckshot or a slug into me.
I settled for picking up the envelope. Everyone was watching me. I looked at the front. The letter was addressed to Marcy at her parents’ address. There was no return address and the postmark was Monday. Jane was nervous, shifting from one foot to the other as I opened the envelope and took out a piece of paper.
I don’t know what I expected to find, maybe a handwritten letter, but what I pulled out was a screen capture of the confirmation of a winning bid on eBay. The auction was for a gold-plated two-mark silver coin. The picture showed a Nazi eagle holding a wreath that encircled a swastika. The winning bid was by queenb222.
I turned to Jane and held the paper up to her. “Queenb222, I presume,” I said.
Jane’s face morphed into an excellent copy of the Wicked Witch of West’s face as she went after Dorothy and her little dog too. “She’s out of her mind,” Jane growled, and I saw Andrew move away from Jane. The look on his face was clear evidence that he had absolutely no idea what Jane had been up to.
I turned back to Marcy. “So she bought a fake gold coin. Well, a real Nazi coin that had been gold-plated. What did she do with it?”
“She told us that it was part of the treasure. She said that she knew how we could find all of it.”
“She told you this?”
“She told Hank and he told us.” Marcy didn’t like explaining things and I could tell that her patience was wearing thin.
“I’m just trying to understand all of this.”
“He knew it wasn’t real!” Jane yelled. I thought, You are going to get yourself killed if you don’t shut up. “He was more than happy to use it to trick you into helping him hunt for his stupid gold.”
“No, he believed you! But then he found out you lied to him and that’s why he sent me this,” Marcy screamed back and rattled the shotgun at Jane. “He wanted me to know that you were behind all this.”
“Jane killed Hank Senior?” I asked, with the twofold purpose of getting information while staving off the moment when that shotgun got used.
“No, he did that,” Marcy said and, to my surprise, pointed at Joel, whose mouth fell open while his head swiveled from side to side, looking for allies or enemies.
“No, I didn’t,” he finally managed in a very unconvincing performance.
“You shot him with Hank’s crossbow. Hank told me.”
“It was an accident,” Joel shot back. “I told you, it was a freaking accident! Who even knew you could kill someone with one of those medieval contraptions?” he said and I was reminded of the fact that he was a city boy at heart.
“I pointed it at him and the damn thing just went off,” Joel continued, using the classic “inanimate object did the killing” defense. Suddenly he stopped and looked at all of us, realizing that he’d just confessed to killing someone. “I really didn’t mean to hurt him. I swear! I was there and Hank had told me to keep a lookout. He gave me that stupid crossbow. He even loaded it. I wouldn’t have known how. I was walking around when I heard a tractor. I went to look, and I guess the old man had seen or heard something. I pointed the crossbow at him and told him to stop, but… I… Before I knew it, the thing had gone off.” He deflated like a bouncy house when the power is turned off and stumbled, reaching out to catch himself on the back of a pew.
“What did you do after that?” I asked Joel.
“I ran and told Hank that someone was coming, and we rushed back and tried to load the backhoe. But that got screwed up so we unhitched the truck and drove off
.”
“You took a shot at me by my gate.”
“I wanted the book. We needed to find the gold to make it all worth it. I wouldn’t have shot you,” he said, but since he hadn’t intended to shoot Hank Senior either, that wasn’t much comfort to me.
“So who killed Joe?” I asked to the crowd at large.
“She did,” Marcy said, pointing at Jane again with the gun. Jane was shaking her head and staring daggers at Marcy.
“How do you know that?” I asked Marcy.
“You’re the detective, look in the damn envelope,” she said. Sure enough, I hadn’t noticed the small handwritten note left inside when I took out the eBay confirmation. I opened it now and read aloud: “The lead pipe she used is in the well. I’m so sorry. I had to protect her.” The note was signed by Hank Junior.
“I didn’t kill him,” Jane said as though she was giving the opening remarks at her trial. “I hit him, but Hank was the one who crushed his head in with that alligator.” The calmer her voice became, the more unhinged she sounded.
“Hank Junior loved Jane. He told me once that she was the only one in his family that understood him. She used that. She never really gave a damn about him,” Marcy said with such venom that I realized she had actually cared about Hank Junior. What a sad, toxic pair, I thought.
“Marcy, I understand your anger,” I said and began to ease down the aisle toward her, always aware that her mercurial personality could change in an instant. “You have every right to be mad. I swear to you that I’ll help you,” I said it and meant it. There are two types of people that are easily manipulated—those that have very weak personalities like Hank Junior and those who are volcanos of emotion like Marcy, and Jane had taken advantage of both of them. In the end, Hank killed himself with drugs and Marcy exploded. I felt sorry for both of them.
When I was about six feet from Marcy, her instinct for freedom kicked in and she turned and ran. I lunged for her, but missed. Regaining my footing, I started after her, but the door opened and Darlene was standing there. Marcy couldn’t stop and Darlene, in one continuous move, took the shotgun from Marcy, threw it aside and grabbed Marcy into a bear hug.
“What’s going on?” she asked, holding onto the struggling Marcy. I turned to see Joel suddenly come to his senses and leap at Jane.
“Hold her,” I said to Darlene. “Stop!” I yelled at Joel and Jane. “You two break it up,” I said, trotting over to where Joel was trying to strangle Jane as she attempted to claw his eyes out.
Clive, who’d been standing quietly with his eyes wide open throughout the whole ordeal, seemed to wake up and headed toward the two rolling on the ground. I saw what was going to happen and cringed, unable to stop it. Joel and Jane tumbled into the bier that Joe’s coffin was resting on. It teetered and I thought for a second, as I grabbed ahold of Joel, that it might stay upright. But as Clive reached for Jane, she jerked away, hitting one of the legs of the bier again.
Seemingly in slow motion, the casket tipped over and fell to the floor. The lid opened and the headless body of Joe Parrish rolled across the floor and came to rest against the podium. I heard a cry of anguish from poor Marge just before she fell to her knees, crying, and a shout of “Oh, no!” from Mr. Marshall, who almost ran over the top of us trying to catch the body.
Clive managed to get the upper hand on Jane. With me pulling Joel back and Clive tugging on Jane, we managed to get them apart. I didn’t have any handcuffs, but of course Darlene did. She got Marcy cuffed then came over and helped me cuff Joel and Jane, then I called dispatch and asked them to send backup. As I hung up, I noticed I had several missed calls from Darlene, since I’d turned my phone off once the viewing started.
Once Marcy, Jane and Joel were all in handcuffs, I took Darlene aside.
“The deputy we had keeping an eye on Marcy called and said that he’d had to answer a call and, when he was coming back, Marcy’s car passed him going the other direction. By the time he got turned around, she was out of sight. I tried to call you, but after the third try I thought I ought to come back and see what was going on,” Darlene explained.
“Thanks,” I said sincerely.
Darlene and I talked to Marcy while we were waiting for backup. She had just found the letter that night. It had been tossed in with her parents’ mail, and her mom had been too wrapped up in taking care of her dad to notice.
Marcy seemed genuinely shocked that we were going to charge her with a laundry list of offenses. She became a lot more cooperative when I said that the State Attorney would probably be willing to waive some of the more serious charges like assault with a deadly weapon and kidnapping for her cooperation in prosecuting Joel and Jane.
“But I didn’t kidnap anyone!” she argued. I had to point out that the law defined the confining of someone in a controlled space as kidnapping. Holding us all at gunpoint in the chapel more than qualified.
I felt a little sorry for her so I agreed to hook her up with a halfway decent attorney that would work for cheap.
We watched as Mr. Marshall tried to calm Marge and convince her that they could go ahead with the funeral the next day if she was up to it. Clive had helped Marshall put Joe back inside the coffin. When I asked Marshall why the lid came open, he said that it was their practice to leave the lids unlocked until the funeral in case a member of the family wanted to place something in the casket with the body.
“We’ll be reviewing the policy,” Mr. Marshall said in his most solemn voice.
Dad had heard about the ruckus at the funeral home on his radio and came by to get the details.
“Crazy people. But why did Jane set all this in motion?” he asked. I knew that the criminals that bothered him the most were the ones that were just evil for no reason.
“What I got out of her after we had her in cuffs was that she started it just to screw with Hank Junior, who seemed to be getting back in his father’s good graces. Then, when her dad was killed, she saw it as an opportunity to cash out the farm. She knew that Joe wanted out of the farm in order to invest in a machine shop. So she was all excited that they’d be getting a cash windfall that could be used to clear up some of her debts, but when she went to talk to him about it, she learned that he’d had a change of heart and wanted to fight for the farm to honor their father. She got so mad that she hit him with a lead pipe that was lying in the garage. Then she didn’t know what to do so she called Hank and begged him to help her. His solution was to crush Joe’s skull and get rid of the pipe, hoping that we wouldn’t be able to come up with a murder weapon or a motive. Without those, he figured it would be hard to prosecute anyone.”
“You told me he left his DNA on the statue.”
“He wasn’t thinking very clearly, but it still would have been a hard case to prove.”
Darlene walked up. “But he found out that she’d faked the gold coin thing and that pushed him over the edge,” she filled in.
“Exactly,” I said. “Hank must have searched Jane’s computer, found the eBay receipt and realized that his beloved sister had been cruelly playing with his mind.”
“Evil,” Dad said.
“Pretty much,” I agreed. “So he sent that note to Marcy, probably because he was really an okay guy and felt bad for getting her involved in everything. Then he took the pipe from wherever he’d stashed it after the murder, threw it down the well, then took a bunch of happy drugs and went off to die in the woods,” I summed up the sad tale.
Dad congratulated us both on finally closing the case, and I thanked Darlene again for coming to my rescue. We agreed that we’d meet at the office on Sunday to begin the long process of writing reports and organizing everything for the prosecution.
When I finally got home, I almost tripped over a large cardboard box in the living room. There was a note on it that said: I hope you don’t mind. I’ve been spending so much time over here that I thought I’d bring a few of my things. The box contained some clothes, shoes, a few books and an assortment of other pe
rsonal items. Doesn’t mean anything, I thought, smiling in spite of myself.
I found Cara curled up in bed with Alvin and Ivy asleep beside her. I undressed and slipped in quietly next to her, trying hard not to disturb them. It felt good to be between the covers, even though I knew I’d be dreaming of crazy women with shotguns and headless corpses. I sighed contentedly, thinking how winter would officially be over in just a couple of days. I was looking forward to a quiet spring.
THE END
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Larry Macklin returns in:
April’s Desires
A Larry Macklin Mystery–Book 6
Read it now: AMAZON AMAZON UK
The peace of spring is shattered for criminal investigator Larry Macklin when his best friend, Pete Henley, is accused of brutally killing his daughter’s ex-boyfriend. Larry knows that Pete is innocent, but the evidence is heavily weighted against him.
Before Larry can even begin to clear Pete’s name, he is pulled off of the case to investigate a another murder where the prime suspect is the local chief of police. As Larry investigates the latest death, it soon becomes clear that the murders may be related, part of a string of killings stretching back almost two decades.
In order to solve the case, Larry will have to risk everything he holds dear—his ethics, his friendships, his loyalty to the sheriff’s department… and his life.
Here’s a preview:
Chapter One
I was on call Sunday when dispatch sent me out to the crime scene that would ruin my day. A body had been found in the backyard of a house in one of the older and seedier parts of Calhoun.
It was a beautiful morning, pleasantly warm with just a hint of the summer heat to come. April is one of the best months in north Florida. I tried not to think about the gruesome scene that was waiting for me and rolled down the window, enjoying the moment.