AHMM, September 2008

by Dell Magazine Authors

  And what she had done herself.

  * * * *

  She came with me in the end. I took her to a hospital.

  Called her father.

  Then Sandy.

  I didn't say much other than I had found her, that something had happened. Figured she could tell the police the rest if she wanted to.

  Davey arrived at the hospital, looking like he'd gained decades in the space of a few days. His eyes were red raw, supported by bags. He saw me in the reception at Ninewell's A and E, came over and said, “Tell me."

  I shook my head. “She's been through some ... I won't lie and say she's fine, Davey. But she's alive and she'll pull through this."

  "Oh, Jesus."

  I grabbed the attention of a nurse. Davey insisted on seeing his daughter. I waited until she relented, then slipped outside.

  My mobile started to ring. I looked at the number.

  Sandy.

  He could ask his questions later.

  I made sure I dumped Fosty's mobile in the Tay before driving home.

  * * * *

  Ros was asleep on the sofa, the light from the TV illuminating her gently. Graham Norton on the BBC fawning over whatever celebrity he could get his hands on.

  I clicked it off.

  Ros stretched. “Hon?"

  I kissed her on the forehead, told her I needed a shower.

  She was already in bed when I got out. I slipped beneath the sheets, draped an arm around her waist, felt her body heat, and took comfort in the simple fact of her presence.

  She turned over so that she could look at me. “There's something—"

  "This is me,” I said, trying it with a smile.

  "Yeah, guess there's always something, huh?” That Alabama accent usually sounded so comforting, and yet there was a sting behind it, something I couldn't quite identify. “Always.” She held it a moment. “Sandy called."

  "Aye?"

  "I know what your work is, Sam. I know who you are. And I accept it all ... but sometimes I worry."

  I was silent for a moment. “I know. Lately, I've been—"

  She finished for me. “A little intense. That's how I'd say it, hon."

  "Really?"

  She waited a while before saying, “I love you, babe."

  "I love you too."

  "You know what that means, hon? That sometimes, you have to let me in."

  * * * *

  The phone woke me around three o'clock.

  Davey said, “What'd they do tae my girl?"

  I felt confused and sluggish, his words taking a moment to register. “Davey, what the hell?"

  "What'd they do tae her?” His voice was slurred with drink.

  "We'll talk in the morning."

  "We'll talk now."

  I slipped out of bed. Ros, awake now as well, looked at me and her brow creased gently with concern.

  "You need to get some rest, Davey. We'll talk in the morning."

  "We'll talk now!” He sounded like a cornered animal, snarling at me down the line, then he pleaded, “Christ, Sam, please, we need tae..."

  I said, “Davey, tell me where you are."

  * * * *

  Mick the Mick's door had been heaved off its hinges. Like a tornado had swept through the building with deadly intent.

  No one else around. The neighbours maybe thinking it better to keep themselves to themselves. Or else they were so used to the sounds of violence in the night that none of them even thought about calling the police.

  I walked in.

  Mick the Mick was on the floor, his body shuddering gently, tears mixing with blood on his face. A right mess. Worse than I'd left him. And—this made me stop in my tracks—a look of gratitude when I walked in.

  Davey was on the sofa, smoking a cigarette. His fingers and hands stained with Mick's blood. He was bright red, a nice sweat worked up. Dressed in a white T-shirt and tracksuit bottoms. If it wasn't for the location and the blood he could have been relaxing after a workout.

  "Irish here wouldn't have lasted long in the ring, aye?"

  "Aye, maybe there's that."

  "Any one of my lads couldae killed him. One blow. Knocked that sorry head ae his right off his shoulders.” He looked meaningfully towards Mick, who whimpered and ducked his head into his chest. “That mean I'm getting sloppy as I'm getting on?"

  "No,” I said. “It means ... it means you know what you're doing."

  "Nah,” said Davey. “I want tae kill him. Knock his block right off."

  "Then why call me?"

  "When I've had a few drinks, like, I get emotional."

  "Don't we all?"

  "Chrissakes,” Mick whimpered, “I don't want to die!"

  Davey flicked his cigarette at Mick. Caught the poor sod in the face with the ash end. Mick screamed. “Christ, lad,” said Davey, “Keep your gob shut!"

  "You called me,” I said, “because you don't really want to kill him."

  "That so?” Davey laughed hard.

  "Aye, it's so.” I stepped forward. “I know you feel like you could do it. Like you should do it. And a prick like Mick, thinking about what he did, aye, he'd deserve it too."

  "Aw, Jesus."

  I turned on the lad, snarled at him. “Shut your bloody mouth, or Davey's the least of your worries!"

  Mick whimpered.

  Davey laughed.

  I stepped forward again. Taking it slow. “But, Davey, this isn't how the world works."

  "Aye, what, I call the police?"

  "Sure, you call the police."

  "And they slap him on the wrist?"

  "I give you my word, they'll feed him to the bloody lions."

  Davey looked at Mick. His body was shaking, his muscles bunching. “Jesus, Sam, if only it were true."

  "Kirsty's alive, Davey. She'll talk, in her own time, and the police are going to lock this bastard up."

  "Room and board and three square bloody meals a day?” Davey sounded like he couldn't quite believe it. “What kindae punishment is that?"

  "Aye, that's it,” I said. “Tell yourself how cushy it is in prison. That he's going to be treated like royalty. Because it's all crap, Davey. He's going to be screwed over in there. Even if I have to use my own connections to make sure of it.” I was right in front of him now. I caught his eyes with mine and hoped he wouldn't see any weakness. “And what good does it do Kirsty if you end up inside instead of this worthless bag of shite?"

  Davey tried to look past me. I stayed on the way.

  He got to his feet. His muscles kept bunching. I thought of springs uncoiling, wondered if I'd even have time to get out the way.

  And he moved.

  I'd seen him knock young lads on their arses. Not even trying. In this state, I wondered if he'd prove how serious he was about knocking my block off.

  But the punch never landed.

  Instead, he pushed himself against me, his head against my chest. I thought of boxers in the ring, getting close to the other guy so he couldn't get in a punch. How sometimes they could look like they were embracing each other.

  Davey roared.

  The sound was muffled.

  It hurt worse than any punch.

  * * * *

  Three days later Davey was on bail, pending trial, facing, as he'd said, a slapped wrist. I told him time and again he was a lucky bastard.

  Every time, he gave me this look that was somewhere between accepting and pissed off.

  Mick the Mick, on the other hand, was facing a number of charges. If they couldn't get one to stick, they'd get another. Sandy told me he wouldn't give up on this one till Mick got what was coming.

  The lass herself was still in hospital. Her face was pale and puffy, and every so often she would shiver uncontrollably beneath the tightly tucked sheets like someone had turned the heating down past freezing.

  I would watch her from the end of the ward, but never approach her. The nurses would watch me in turn, perhaps wondering what I was doing, but always enough doubt in
their minds to leave me alone.

  * * * *

  Davey was allowed to visit her.

  At first, he kept his distance from her bed, watching her, his body screaming impotence—a need to act and no ability to do so.

  And then she said something. The first words I had heard in days. I couldn't hear them from where I stood, but I saw her lips move and her father stagger like he'd received the worst sucker punch of his life.

  But he pressed on towards her. Reached out and took her hand.

  The touch seemed to steady him.

  And for a moment—just a moment—I felt a strange elation. Like maybe things could work out after all. And in a world like this, any chance of redemption or resolution or even the smallest of happy endings is a minor miracle. Cause enough for celebration.

  I watched them for a moment more, before I turned on my heels and left the hospital.

  Copyright (c) 2008 Russel D. McLean

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  Fiction: FIRST COUSIN, TWICE REMOVED by John H. Dirckx

  At four A.M. the birds started waking up. Willy Kennebaugh, who had been dozing fitfully through much of the night, also jolted abruptly awake. Somewhere in the house a creaking of wood and a muffled thump had thrown him into a sudden sweat of almost superstitious terror.

  The sounds had come not from the direction of his mother's room but from the main staircase leading up from the front hall. Having lived in this house all his forty-four years, Kennebaugh was well familiar with every nocturnal snap and groan of its ancient timbers. For five minutes he lay motionless, perspiring ice water from scalp to toenails, and heard no further noises. At length he mustered enough courage to sit up on the side of his bed and pull on his slippers in the dark.

  Uppermost in his mind was the fear that some of the vagrants from the colony in the woods at the bottom of the hill had gotten bored with carousing on wine and whooping like savages in the middle of the night and had decided to launch an assault on the nearest house. This was an abiding dread of long standing that returned nightly to beset his timid soul as the shadows began to fall.

  Kennebaugh shuffled along the shadowy passage toward the head of the stairs. After arriving there he peered with elaborate caution around the worn newel post. A faint glow of breaking day, straggling through the grubby, uncurtained window on the landing, showed him a vague motionless shape huddled there. With mounting horror, his heart slamming in his throat like a truck engine missing on two cylinders, he started down the stairs.

  It seemed to him like hours before the EMTs arrived. Then they swarmed into the house, deployed a mountain of paraphernalia, and carried out a series of lifesaving maneuvers with maddening slowness, while Kennebaugh kept hovering and getting in their way. Finally they assured him, with crisp and impersonal tokens of sympathy, that his mother had expired and that further efforts at resuscitation would be futile.

  * * * *

  Nick Stamaty had barely settled himself behind his desk in the coroner's office when the first call of the day was passed on to him by a secretary. Fire and Rescue was calling to report the death, at home, of Iris Kennebaugh, widow, age sixty-four, around four A.M. that morning. “Too late for homicide and too early for suicide,” quipped Stamaty. “No signs of foul play?"

  "No, sir, we're just making a formal report. Deceased was on a couple of heart medicines and the next of kin is the one who called us.” Stamaty took down the information, entered it in the departmental computer, and got on with the next item on his agenda, which was to boot up the espresso machine.

  Several cups later, in the middle of the afternoon, he received another call about Iris Kennebaugh. This one came from Petra Bothnerby, of Neighbors and Bothnerby Funeral Homes, Inc. Ms. Bothnerby was obviously in a terrible dither, her usually beguiling Scandinavian accent so muddy this afternoon as to render her words almost unintelligible. At length Stamaty got the message that, in the case of Mrs. Kennebaugh at least, four A.M. hadn't been too late for murder at all.

  He instructed the undertaker, quite unnecessarily, to cease and desist from embalming the body, summoned the mortuary squad to transfer it from the funeral parlor to the coroner's mortuary, and alerted the forensic pathologist, Dr. Valentine. Then he called the Department of Public Safety.

  At five P.M. that day four men convened at the mortuary for the postmortem examination of the remains of Iris Kennebaugh. Stamaty and Detective Sergeant Cyrus Auburn, deep in conversation, paced the parking lot, enjoying the magnificent spring weather, until Dr. Valentine drove up. When they all went inside they found that Julius, the attendant, had positioned the body on the stainless steel table and laid out the instruments.

  Valentine, sixtyish with a waxed mustache, pulled on gown and rubber gloves and plunged into business with more energy than most people can muster at the beginning of the workday. With a magnifying glass in one hand and a millimeter rule in the other, he went carefully over the exterior of the body, dictating his findings to a pedal-activated recording machine.

  As often happens within a few hours after death, the decedent had the ageless and inscrutable appearance of an image carved in marble or ivory by a master hand, rather than of someone who had once walked and talked, loved and suffered. Of principal interest was a clean bullet hole in the upper abdomen, surrounded by the unmistakable surface charring and powder tattooing characteristic of a point-blank gunshot wound. Dr. Valentine took several photographs before gently inserting a probe to explore the tract bored by the projectile and determine its direction of travel.

  "The wound is in the midline of the epigastrium,” he told the machine as well as his live audience, “eight and one-half centimeters below the xiphoid. It appears to have been made by a medium-caliber bullet fired from below at a distance of less than ten centimeters from the skin surface and at an angle of approximately forty-five degrees from the vertical."

  Since the deceased's somewhat threadbare two-piece flannel pajamas showed no corresponding hole and no evident traces of powder, the assumption was that the gun had been fired at her bare midriff, between pajama tops and bottoms.

  By this time, Auburn and Stamaty were eager to get to the scene of the death, interview the decedent's son, search for a weapon, and resolve the fundamental question whether this was suicide or homicide. But they stood by patiently while Valentine proceeded in his brisk but meticulous fashion to open the body and carry out each step of the forensic autopsy, preserving specimens of organs and fluids for laboratory study.

  The bullet had grazed the undersurface of the heart—a somewhat timeworn heart with a leaky valve and coronaries full of sludge—slashing a small artery and causing a fatal internal hemorrhage. Eventually Valentine removed a .32-caliber lead slug from the victim's spine, working it loose with rubber-shod pliers so as not to deform it further or disturb its surface markings.

  "This will be available for examination as soon as we run it through the autoclave to kill off any resident aliens,” he told Auburn. “Just let us know where you want us to send it."

  "That'll depend on whether or not we find a .32 caliber weapon at the scene,” said Auburn.

  He and Stamaty left as Valentine and Julius were preparing to take off the top of their patient's skull with a power saw.

  Dene Hollow Road sounded more picturesque than it looked. It zigzagged through barren, rocky heights alternating with boggy valleys, a region which apparently had never lent itself to agriculture and for similar reasons had thus far escaped the attention of residential developers. Here and there a ramshackle house stood on a random piece of level ground amid a jungle of tacky lawn ornaments, scrap iron, and weeds. The few larger flat zones had been put to commercial purposes—a body shop, an appliance warehouse, a remodeling and construction company. Of sidewalks or streetlights there was no trace.

  The Kennebaugh place, evidently a combination of residence and business premises, was largely screened from view by a straggling thicket that ran alongside the road. The driveway led
to a graveled parking area, where a pickup and a much heavier truck laden with ladders on racks stood in front of a big aluminum structure that might have been a barn but evidently wasn't. A narrow track led farther back to the house, a very old two-story redbrick with four chimneys, two gables, and a roof that was long out of warranty.

  Auburn and Stamaty had driven separately. They parked side by side just off the road in the graveled lot and got out to reconnoiter. The evening shadows clustered thickly back around the house, which lay buried among ancient trees just coming into leaf.

  "I don't see any lights back there,” said Stamaty.

  "You almost never do,” said a voice from the gloom almost at his elbow. With a rustling of dead leaves and a crackling of underbrush, an elderly man emerged from the thicket. Even in the twilight Auburn recognized him as a retired newspaper reporter who had given him a few headaches in years past.

  "They're too cheap to turn on the lights,” continued the newcomer. “Or too poor, I could never figure out which. We were just wondering what happened over there last night.” “We” included a much younger woman in a running suit, with a dog on a leash—too long a leash to suit Auburn's taste. “I guess somebody died, since you guys are here?"

  "Aren't you Stu Byron?” asked Auburn.

  "Right. The old nose for news, you know. Can't break the habit.” Byron's laugh was an irritating chatter, like three golf balls rattling around in a cocktail shaker. “This is Monica Norgel."

  Monica, trying half-heartedly to control the carnivorous tendencies of her dog, managed a tired wave.

  "What happened over there last night?” asked Auburn.

  Stu Byron shifted into the tabloid mode. “Around four or five this morning an ambulance came howling out of the night at about ninety per and stopped there in the gravel like a supersonic jet trying to land in a sand trap. By the time I got my glasses on and my brains in gear, they drove away again. No siren, no red light."

  "Where do you live?"

  Byron twisted in his tracks and pointed vaguely toward higher ground. “Up there on top of the hill. Monica lives a little farther along around that bend to your left."