The Murderer

by Paul Smith

  The officers took a few notes and asked a few more questions. Michelle answered them all, and they then left.

  Michelle was left with nothing but her own thoughts, which were not as jumbled up as she'd expected them to be.

  She washed the dishes from breakfast, and then sat on her couch to think.

  Although she still felt no sadness about Adam's death, a different feeling was beginning to grow within her: curiosity.

  She wanted to know who had killed him. No, she needed to know.

  Who on earth would want to murder someone like him? He was successful, but not successful enough to have rivals that desired his death.

  He was wealthy, but, according to the police officers, nothing had been stolen from him. Apart from his life, of course.

  He had had many women, and Michelle wondered if one of these nameless women could have had some sort of grudge against him.

  Thinking about it only made Michelle more and more curious.

  She got up from the couch and went to her bedroom. She opened up her bedside table drawers and pulled out some old photo albums, the ones which contained pictures of herself and Adam from before they were even married, up till the divorce.

  The first few photos in the album were from when they had still been happy, still been in love. Their eyes shone, their faces glowed.

  As Michelle continued to flip through the album, she noticed that both of their expressions were growing more and wearier as the years progressed. Their smiles were stiffer, and their eyes were colder.

  Michelle took a deep breath, hoping to find a clue in these photos that would tell her who had killed Adam.

  The very last photo in the album was from a barbecue that they had held just a few weeks before the divorce. They held one every year and invited all of Adam's colleagues, as well as all of their neighbours.

  Michelle stared at the picture. She and Adam were standing at a considerable distance from each other and were barely smiling at all.

  Everyone else was busy eating or talking. They hadn't realised that a picture was being taken.

  One person, however, caught Michelle's eye. It was Lara--a long-time neighbor and friend of both herself and Adam.

  Lara was not looking at the camera, but was staring straight at Michelle and Adam, her face calm yet oddly focused.

  For some reason, Michelle sensed something unusual about this.

  She flipped back to the older pictures in the album and stared at the picture from the barbecue that they'd held the previous year.

  In this photo, once again, Lara was staring straight at Michelle and Adam with the same expression.

  While most people would consider this to be a mere coincidence, and not something that needed to be given a second thought, Michelle continued to dwell on those pictures for the rest of the day.

  There was something eerie about it, and Michelle needed to know more.

  Chapter 4: Lara

  Michelle found herself unable to sleep that night. All she could think about was Lara and those odd pictures.

  She revisited the conversations that she'd had in the past with Lara, trying to think of anything that she'd said that might have been a little bit off.

  Even though there was no concrete evidence that hinted towards the fact that Lara might have secretly had a grudge against Adam, Michelle felt strangely cold every time she thought of the photos from the barbecue. There was something so chillingly matter-of-fact about the expression that Lara had worn while staring at Adam and herself, in both of the pictures.

  At about 3 a.m that night, Michelle decided that she would visit Lara in the morning. They hadn't met ever since Michelle and Adam had gotten divorced, so it might be a little awkward--but Michelle felt that she needed to talk to her and try to figure out if the inkling that she was having might, possibly, be true.

  Michelle got out of bed at 9 a.m and felt wide awake in spite of the fact that she hadn't slept a wink.

  She got dressed, washed up and made herself breakfast. The same as yesterday, she made toast and scrambled eggs that--as usual--she managed to burn a little.

  Michelle eagerly scarfed down the food, and then looked at the clock. It wasn't even 10 a.m yet.

  Michelle bit her lip. Was it too early to spontaneously appear at an old neighbour's house? It was a weekend, after all. People were probably still sleeping.

  My ex-husband just died, Michelle suddenly reminded herself. Isn't it weird for me to be going out and meeting people at all?

  Michelle exhaled loudly, realising that it was ridiculous that she had to think about such things. A normal person would still be shocked by the news that she'd received yesterday. A normal person would be mourning, would be depressed.

  Then again, Michelle was convinced that she was not quite a 'normal' person, anyway.

  Forget societal norms, she finally decided. I'm going to meet Lara, and I don't care if it's weird.

  She promptly got up, washed the dishes and put on her shoes.

  Only once she was out of the apartment complex did Michelle realise that she didn't have her car. It had been parked outside 'Dan's Bar' for the past couple of days.

  Too eager to get to Lara's house, Michelle decided to take a taxi. She'd pick her car up later.

  Thankfully, there were always plenty of taxis in her area. It only took her a minute or so to hail one down, and she was soon on her way to Adam's neighbourhood--to her own old neighbourhood.

  As they got closer to the area, Michelle started to feel a little nostalgic.

  It felt strange to be back in the place where she'd spent a considerable chunk of her life. This was the neighbourhood where she'd lived with someone whom she'd loved, and someone who had loved her back.

  This was also the neighbourhood where she'd gotten her heart broken. The neighbourhood where the person she'd loved had slowly drifted away from her, in spite of living in the same house.

  It was in this neighbourhood that Adam had, many times, told Michelle that he hated her. It was also here that they had agreed to get divorced.

  As the taxi drove down the road where Adam's house was, Michelle recalled all the times that she'd driven down this very road on her way back from work.

  "This the place?"

  The taxi driver's gruff voice interrupted Michelle's thoughts.

  She glanced outside and, sure enough, her old home was there.

  "Ah, yes," she said. She paid the driver and got out of the vehicle.

  For a moment, Michelle simply stared at the house. The large red-brick building looked cold and lonely to Michelle, although that might have been because of the many unpleasant emotions she'd experienced while living in that house.

  The whole place was surrounded by tape that read 'do not enter'. It was, after all, a murder scene.

  The house itself, however, was not damaged whatsoever. All the windows were intact, the door was unscathed, and Michelle could tell that the silver door handle was still sparkling, even from the distance that she was standing at.

  It was somewhat unsettling to see a house looking so immaculate, even after its owner had been killed in such a horrific manner.

  After staring for a few more moments, Michelle blinked rapidly and turned towards the house that was just a few steps away from Adam's. It was a similar looking building, but a little bit smaller. Lara's house.

  Michelle took a deep breath and started to walk towards the house, heart racing in anticipation and nervousness.

  She rang the doorbell, and then clenched her sweaty hands. This was it.

  What seemed like an eternity passed, and Michelle reached her hand out to ring the doorbell again. Before her hand made contact with the button, however, the door was opened.

  "Michelle?"

  Michelle stared at Lara. The blond pixie cut, the big dark eyes, the flushed complexion. She looked exactly the way Michelle remembered her--the most innocent looking person you could imagine.

  "Hi, Lara,"

  "Oh, wow. Mic
helle. It's been so long," Lara said, gesturing for her to come in.

  Michelle entered the house and nodded. "It has. I'm so sorry for not keeping in contact with you."

  Lara just shook her head. "No, I totally understand. I'm sure you heard about Adam...It's so horrible."

  Lara's voice cracked a little as if she were extremely horrified, but Michelle couldn't help but wonder if Lara was faking it.

  "Yes, I did," Michelle said, trying not to sound nonchalant about it. "In truth, I came here because I wanted to talk about Adam."

  Lara's eyes widened.

  I have to tread cautiously from here on, Michelle realised.

  "With me? What about Adam?"

  Michelle might have been imagining it, but she thought that Lara's voice might have gotten a little bit higher.

  "Nothing, in particular," Michelle said with a sigh. "I just felt horrible about not meeting him or talking to him after the divorce, and I wanted to know how he was doing before...before yesterday."

  Michelle was lying through her teeth, but she couldn't raise Lara's suspicions.

  "Oh. That's right, you guys parted on pretty bad terms," Lara said as if she had just remembered. "You must have been shocked by the news of his death."

  Michelle nodded, and there was a pause.

  "W-well, we didn't meet that often while you were married, and we didn't meet often after you divorced. From what I heard, though, he was doing okay."

  She had stuttered. Michelle stared, trying to decipher the expression on Lara's face, but she couldn't figure it out.

  "You didn't meet at all?" She asked.

  Lara frowned.

  "Well, I suppose we did meet once. There was a dinner party at his house, and all of the neighbours were invited."

  "Did anything out of the ordinary happen?" Michelle blurted out, without thinking. After the words had been said, she realised that a question like that would immediately make a guilty person wary.

  Lara's eyebrows shot up. She stared at Michelle with an odd look.

  "Are you...accusing me of something?"

  "No, of course not," Michelle said smoothly.

  Lara pursed her lips apprehensively.

  "Listen, Michelle, I have to run some errands. I'm sorry, but can we talk some other day?"

  Before she could even reply, Michelle was being shown to the door.

  It has to be her, Michelle thought. It must be.

  Chapter 5: Stalking

  Once Michelle had been practically kicked out of Lara's house, she meandered down the streets, deep in her thoughts.

  The fact that Lara had instantly become defensive when Michelle had only asked a very vague question was definitely not normal.

  In addition to that, her demeanour had been slightly off the whole time. Her manner had seemed somewhat affected and fake in Michelle's sharp eyes.

  The more Michelle thought about it, the more convinced she became that Lara was not entirely innocent.

  But how can I prove it?

  No matter how strongly Michelle believed that Lara was involved in the murder of Adam, there was no way she could report her suspicions to the authorities without some strong evidence to support her claims.

  For some reason, Michelle felt as if it was her duty to get her ex-husband's murderer locked up behind bars. Perhaps it was because she felt guilty about how unemotional she was regarding his death.

  Because Michelle had not mourned, because she had felt no sadness about Adam being killed, she felt as if she had done something wrong, and she wanted to make herself feel like a good person by finding out who had murdered him and getting them punished by the law.

  Whatever the reason was, Michelle was becoming more determined by the minute. She needed to know the truth, and she would need to take some extreme measures to figure things out.

  Lara had said that she'd needed to run some errands. Michelle assumed that this meant that Lara would be leaving her house in a little while.

  I'll need to follow her around, Michelle decided. While there was a possibility that Lara would do something completely ordinary and would simply go to the grocery store or the car wash, there was also a slight chance that she would do something that could clue Michelle in about her involvement with the murder.

  It was a very slim chance, of course, but Michelle was prepared to stalk Lara for as long as necessary. She would follow her around for months if that was what it would take to find something out.

  Upon deciding this, Michelle sprinted back to Lara's house. The car--a shiny red Mercedes--was still parked in the garage, so it was likely that Lara was still home.

  Michelle crouched down behind the hedge that surrounded Lara's house, and then patiently waited.

  She waited for an hour, and then another.

  Her calves were sore from crouching for so long, and her back was aching, but she refused to budge at all.

  After what seemed like ages, she heard someone open the door. She heard the sound of high heels clacking against the ground--it was Lara.

  Michelle shrunk back into the hedge so that she was completely obscured from Lara's sight, and she waited until the footsteps had faded considerably before peeking out of her hiding place.

  To Michelle's surprise, Lara was now walking down the sidewalk. Her steps were rapid and long as if she were in a hurry to get somewhere.

  Why didn't she take her car? Michelle wondered.

  Michelle slowly began to follow Lara, keeping her steps as quiet as she possibly could.

  Please don't turn around, please don't turn around, Michelle silently prayed.

  Thankfully, Lara seemed to be too lost in her own thoughts to bother turning around. She kept taking long strides until she had reached the main road, in which there was, as usual, an incredible amount of traffic.

  Once she was there, Lara immediately hailed down one of the many taxis on the road and got into the car.

  Michelle quickly did the same with another taxi.

  "Follow that taxi, please," she said to the taxi driver, pointing towards the vehicle which Lara had gotten into.

  I wonder if she chose to take a taxi because she's worried about someone following her? After all, an ostentatious car like hers is pretty easy to tail, Michelle suddenly realised, her eyebrows shooting up.

  It made complete sense. Everything was slowly coming together, like puzzle pieces, and it was becoming more obvious by the second that Lara was feeling guilty about something.

  Michelle kept her eyes firmly fixed on Lara's taxi, prepared to inform her own taxi driver about any sudden turns that Lara might make.

  To Michelle's relief, however, Lara did nothing of the sort.

  She must be pretty convinced that no one is tailing her right now, Michelle thought with a smug smile.

  After about a ten minute drive, Lara's taxi stopped in front of a pawn shop.

  Lara got out of the taxi and briskly walked into the pawn shop without pausing for even a split second.

  Michelle stared, feeling both surprised and excited.

  What was Lara, a sophisticated woman that lived in a luxurious neighbourhood, doing at a pawn shop?

  Michelle knew for a fact that Lara was the type of woman that shopped at Tiffany's on the daily, a woman that never wore a single item of clothing that was worth less than five hundred dollars.

  The only possible reason that Lara could be at a pawn shop would be if she had to make a run for it and leave the city as soon as possible.

  And that was exactly what Michelle thought she was trying to do.

  After realising that Michelle knew about her involvement in Adam's murder, Lara must have decided to sell of as many of her valuables as possible and leave the city, or the country, even, to live in some far off place where she would be out of the reach of people that had suspicions against her.

  Of course. Of course! Michelle nearly gasped out loud. But...no. I can't let this happen.

  "You gettin' out or not, lady?" The taxi driver interrupted M
ichelle's revelation.

  "Oh, no, not yet. You'll need to follow the other taxi back home, too," Michelle said, keeping her voice sweet and friendly to prevent the taxi driver from becoming suspicious.

  He gave her an odd look but shrugged and looked away when Michelle promised him a large tip.

  The adrenaline was rushing through Michelle's veins, and her heart was racing faster than it had ever raced.

  I'm not going to let her get away with her crimes.

  Michelle waited until Lara exited the shop, looking wary and tired. Lara got back into her own taxi, and Michelle's taxi continued to follow it.

  Lara made no other stops that day. The taxi dropped her off at the exact place that it had picked her up. Michelle exited her own vehicle shortly afterwards, making sure to give the driver the promised tip, and then followed Lara to her house from a distance.

  Once Lara had closed the door of her house, Michelle sprinted over to the door and slowly turned the handle. To her surprise and delight, the door was unlocked.

  She peeked into the hall, and Lara was nowhere to be seen. Michelle could hear her chatting on the phone, probably in the living room.

  Breathing heavily from the physical exertion of running to the door, as well as from the adrenaline rush that accompanies actions like what Michelle was doing--such as trespassing--Michelle entered the house and quietly closed the door behind her.

  There was no going back, now.

  Chapter 6: Guilty

  Michelle inhaled sharply, wiping her sweaty palms on her jeans.

  Should I go ahead and confront her? Should I wait a little longer?

  Michelle listened to Lara talking on the phone.

  "Oh, I know, I know," she was chirping, her voice exaggeratedly cheerful. "You're a sweetheart. We definitely need to meet up, soon. Uh-huh. Okay, doll. Bye!"

  Michelle heard a clack as if Lara had set her phone down on a table.

  She heard Lara's footsteps moving away, so Michelle slipped into the living room where Lara had just been.

  She spotted the small, silver cellphone on the table and pocketed it.