EQMM, June 2010

by Dell Magazine Authors

  Her face looked miserable and sympathetic.

  Finally, the sound of footsteps became audible in the hallway. Time was running out so quickly. The words blaring from the radio, announcing the Orioles’ batter watching the fourth ball sail wide and taking his base, didn't even faze me. Her eyes half wild, Ashley stumbled toward the nightstand like a drunk, slid the drawer open, and fished in it until her hand brandished a little nine-millimeter pistol. She walked up and slapped the grip into my palm.

  I shook my head, telling her flatly, “You're out of your mind."

  "He will kill you. He will. You know he hates you. No team will touch him because of you. He will kill you."

  It was insane, but she was right. And if his only weapon was a baseball bat, I would have happily taken my chances against the man who led the National League in strikeouts. But odds were, he'd have a gun. Ballplayers tend to be paranoid that way. “It'll be self-defense,” she whispered as the footsteps got so close to the door my head wanted to explode.

  I fingered the trigger and looked down at the sleek steel of the barrel, glinting in the darkness. Ashley took my arm and pulled me in line with the door and I raised the gun and waited.

  At last a lazy pop-fly to right field got snagged and the torturous top of the first inning was brought to an end. My hand was shaking, my heartbeat was as rapid as a hummingbird's, and I counted the approaching footsteps that seemed impossibly endless. Like a cruel joke. I turned my head to Ashley and saw her, fingers knotted, face bunched in a nervousness that seemed half-terror, half-ecstasy. With a belch of thunder, the rain picked up, making a sound as though all the beach sand was boiling over the description of Derek Jeter's on-deck practice swings.

  It was then that my brain at last sorted out the situation, the coincidences and the lies, and calmly reported that the entire day had been a setup for my murder. I'd been lined up in front of the door for an easy shot. Danny I'd-prefer-to-throw-underhand Doyle would walk in, smile at me, and then calmly unload a bullet in my belly and get to claim self-defense because I was holding a gun. A gun that I would bet a million dollars wasn't even loaded.

  Acting quickly, since I didn't have so much as a spare half-second, I tossed the gun to the ground and sprinted to the wall just beside the door frame. Lining myself up so that as soon as the door opened a crack, I'd be able to spring on him. I forced myself to visualize exactly how I'd do it a dozen times over, as he would almost certainly have a gun and when you jump someone with a gun you only get one go at it. I'd throw my arm around his neck and jump on his back, forcing my forearm into his throat with whatever force I could muster.

  Jeter struck out, swinging away, and I wished I'd had more of the Champagne as the knob finally started to turn.

  A deafening peal of thunder exploded. I jumped slightly but tried to steady myself as the door was just on the verge of opening. But I couldn't. I couldn't even stand still. A hollow, breathless ache in my gut was expanding with such heat that it folded me in two. I forced my head up to find Ashley, the gun she'd just fired still aimed at me.

  And suddenly I knew how Vic Harris felt. The Texas player from the seventies I mentioned who got duped by the hidden ball. Only instead of the pitcher, I'd had my attention diverted to the door. And I wound up tagged by something worse than a baseball.

  I hardly noticed when Danny opened the door. Getting shot in the belly is funny that way. My attention was locked on the gun that had delivered my fate, not on the shortstop who had tried so hard to sabotage my beloved Yankees.

  He walked into the room just dripping with that disgusting Midwestern aw-shucks charm his defenders had all drooled over, gazing down at me with a self-satisfied grin.

  Which pretty much brings us back to the present. Me only a few precious seconds from slipping out of consciousness for a very, very long time, which doesn't even seem so bad compared to having to suffer the indignity of having your nearly dead body gloated over by the same guy who holds the Yankees record for unforced errors in a single game.

  I should know. I was there heckling him that night.

  "What are you smiling about?” I wheezed. “You didn't have the guts to do it yourself, Doyle. Too bad you couldn't have had her fill in for you at shortstop, too."

  "Don't be angry,” he said, crouching as I eased myself into the pose I suppose I'll be holding for the next few millennia. “Sure, maybe you're dying, but because of you I'll never play baseball again."

  "Hell,” I coughed, the metallic taste of blood riding up my tongue, “even when you were getting paid to stand between second and third, you weren't playing baseball."

  His face soured with the frustration of anger that's already been as satisfied as it ever can be. That is to say, you can only kill a guy once. And even though I'd be dead in another couple seconds, I couldn't help smiling.

  "What's so funny?” he fumed.

  "Oh nothing, Danny,” I said, my words slurred and weak. “Just that this time tomorrow, this pain in my stomach isn't going to be bothering me anymore, but you're still going to be the worst ballplayer I ever saw."

  At that moment the radio delivered the sound of a screaming stadium as Teixeira pounded one over the right-field wall. With Johnny Damon already on first, the homer brought the score up 2-2.

  And that's what they call a tie game.

  Copyright © 2010 Patrick Glendon McCullough

  [Back to Table of Contents]

  Fiction: THE GIFT by Phil Lovesey

  * * * *

  Art by Allen Davis

  * * * *

  Phil Lovesey studied art and took a degree in film and television studies before finding work as a freelance advertising copywriter and, later, as a teacher. He managed to find time, in intervals between copywriting and teaching jobs, to write four crime novels: Death Duties (1998); Ploughing Potter's Field (1999); When the Ashes Burn (2000); and The Scream-ingTree (2002). He's also a short-story writer of note, and as he's back to writing full time, we'll have more of his stories for you soon.

  Everyone always told Mary she had “the gift"; family, friends, even astonished strangers. And in the face of such relentless, overwhelming pressure, who was she to doubt it? Right from the start, in those first few moments when she'd picked up crayons and pencils and began scribbling on just about any surface that would take an infantile image, the shocked praise and quiet admiration had begun. But only “infantile” in terms of Mary's age—the pictures themselves, whether rendered on paper, walls, old envelopes, even white household appliances, were really quite something; special, accomplished, far in advance of her tender years.

  Mary's parents, quick to recognise such an early blossoming talent, encouraged their daughter as best they could, making frequent trips to the local art shop to buy paint sets, felt-tip pens, pads, and boards for the youngster to use. As an only child, they could afford to spend a little extra on her, and besides, as Mary's father often said, the art materials were an investment. Who knew how famous she might be in the future? Paintings sold for thousands of pounds. If Mary continued to excel artistically, she could keep all of them very nicely indeed. Already they were saving a fortune on Christmas and birthday cards, Mary's handmade efforts easily better than the shop-bought options.

  Plus, word was getting round. One or two neighbours already had framed Mary Collins pictures in their houses, and her art teacher was quick to recognise and encourage Mary's talent in secondary school, resulting in a series of first prizes in local and regional art competitions.

  Art college followed, together—unfortunately—with Mary's first re-jection. The Slade and the RCA didn't want to know. This was the mid nineties, and pop stars, East End barrow boys, and drunks from seaside towns were being propped up and supported by the media as the blossoming new face of Brit Art. Mary Collins just didn't fit the bill, didn't have the necessary depressing childhood, the wild and experimental adolescence deemed necessary at the time. Mary Collins, it was decided, although a talented artist in herself, was just
too boring, dull, and suburban for a world increasingly peopled by the bizarre, ridiculous, and outrageous.

  At twenty, Mary met Steve, a decorator from Slough, and a little over a year later, the two of them moved into a small starter-home they could just about afford, with his decorating work and her job as a sales assistant in a local art shop. She still painted, but as Steve was sometimes a little too quick to point out, he made far more rolling vinyl-silk onto walls than she ever did painting “poxy little flowers” on canvas.

  As the credit-card debts grew, Steve helpfully suggested Mary get another part-time job. He'd seen an ad in one of the local newspapers, something about “them wanting arty people to help prisoners."

  That word “arty.” Mary shuddered at it, with its connotations of all things vapid and sensational that she'd come to despise about her talent.

  However, a few days later, intrigued and more than a little bored with simply selling watercolour sets to pensioners, Mary sought out the ad and began thinking that maybe this really was one area in which she could use her skill and earn some extra money, too. The following day, she applied for the post, was accepted, underwent six months’ paid training, and became—as her lapel badge now proudly declared—"Mary Collins—Visiting Art Therapist" at the nearby prison.

  Even though HMP Berryfield was a women's open prison, housing mainly low-risk, category C prisoners at the end of their sentences, for Mary this was a dangerous, yet strangely fascinating new world. Often teased by Steve for her “wide-eyed, bloody naiveté,” Mary looked upon the new job as much as an education for her as it was to provide therapeutic help for the inmates. Indeed, Mary's only previous encounter with anything remotely unlawful had been when she'd shoplifted a sable brush as a shamefaced teenager. The shopkeeper at the time, confronted with the crying girl, had let Mary off with a stern warning, making her promise never to break the law again, or the police and her parents would be informed. It was enough for Mary, and ever since she'd led the perfect law-abiding existence.

  But now, approaching her mid twenties, with little sign of Steve ever going to pop the question, marry her, have kids, and settle down, Mary Collins was getting increasingly restless, as her suppressed adolescence pushed its way through the constraining veneer of respectability that had held her prisoner for so long. Now was the time to experiment a little, live a bit, pull the blinkers away, search and use new experiences, and—who knows?—maybe even kick-start her art again after so many years.

  Those first few sessions at HMP Berryfield couldn't be counted as an instant success, by any means. Mary had more yawning prison wardens in her class than inmates, as she struggled to combine the elements of comfortable conversation with artistic expression.

  "The point,” her training instructor had told her, “isn't to create some kind of exhibition of the prisoners’ work. No, it's to gently lead them to explore their own feelings, emotions, and fears through a combination of experiential therapies and artistic interpretation."

  "But what if,” Mary had countered, “they simply want to paint?"

  "I'm sorry?"

  "I mean,” she'd continued, feeling slightly stupid, “suppose they're really good artists, and they simply want to paint again? Just for the joy of it?"

  The instructor had given Mary the same look Steve so often did, usually as she asked him to explain a particularly disturbing news item to her. “My dear,” she was slowly informed, “it's vital that you always remember that these people broke the law. They're inside to pay a debt to society, not to be indulged with whatever creative whims they have."

  The next session, however, proved more fruitful. Whether word had simply got round the female prisoners that doing art on a Wednesday afternoon was a good doss away from the otherwise mundane prison routines that merged one dull day into the next—or that Annie Morgan was going to attend—is up for debate. The result, however, wasn't. When Mary arrived in the brightly lit recreation room that particular afternoon, there were eleven new classmates smiling expectantly. Most sat in pairs behind the uninspiring tabletops, either with friends or wardens; all except Annie Morgan herself, a solitary, glowering, imposing figure who sat by herself in the far corner of the room.

  Imposing mostly because of the sheer physical size and condition of the woman. Close on twenty stone, Mary reckoned, lank grey hair hanging like a pair of musty plastic shower curtains on either side of her face. A formidable pair of cold blue “stay well away from me” eyes seemed to stare right through Mary as she introduced herself and the aims of the classes to the others. For the rest of the afternoon, however, as Mary got to know the other inmates, gently guiding them through the rudiments of pencil sketching a tabletop still-life of some seashells, Annie Morgan simply busied herself with her own painting, using her own paints in the far corner of the room. Whenever Mary approached, those steely eyes warned her well away.

  "Well,” the chief warden asked her as she helped put tables and chairs away after the session finished, “what did you make of our Annie, then?"

  Mary paused, then said, “She's quite scary, isn't she?"

  The warden smiled. “What, our Annie? Harmless, she is. Keeps herself to herself, mostly. Won't talk to the others. Just stays in her cell. Paints most of the time. Guess that was what made it so special this afternoon, having her here with the others. Quite a big step for our Annie, was that."

  Mary recalled the woman, the scowling glare, and wondered just how “harmless” she was. “What's she . . . ?"

  "In for?” the warden replied. “Double murder."

  Mary almost dropped the chair she was carrying. “Murder?"

  "A double. Two of them. Her old man and her sister."

  "Her sister?"

  The warden nodded. “Annie came back from work and caught the two of them at it in bed. Her bed. Caved their heads in, then covered them in petrol and burnt the bodies right there. House went up in flames."

  "My God."

  "Then she went straight to the police and confessed. Famous case at the time. Early seventies, it was."

  "Before my time,” Mary apologised, feeling slightly nauseous. The room felt too hot now, the thought of that monster woman sitting in the corner, just silently painting, the revelation of what she'd done . . . just dreadful.

  "Got two life sentences, she did,” the warden continued. “Served the first fifteen years in a maximum-security psychiatric unit. Then another ten years as Category A in Hull, before finally, they sent her down here to us. Didn't think she was a risk anymore. They wanted to let her serve out the last of her time in a more productive environment."

  "What do you mean, not a risk anymore?” Mary asked.

  "The shrinks in Hull assessed her, took her previous conduct into account—she's been the model prisoner, has Annie. Never caused any trouble, just likes to paint, that's all.” The warden walked to the door, then stopped, turned, paused. “Only weird thing about Annie,” she said, “is that bloody picture of hers."

  "What about it? She wouldn't let me get close enough to even see it."

  "She needs to trust you,” the warden explained. “She's nearly seventy, spent the last twenty-five years inside. She's not going to suddenly let you see her closest possession. They reckon she's had that painting with her ever since she was on remand awaiting trial. Part of Annie, it is now. But give it time, Miss Collins, and who knows, maybe one day she'll let you see it."

  * * * *

  Steve was watching the match on Sky when Mary got home. She cooked, and over supper, told him about Annie Morgan. To her surprise, he didn't go and watch the finish of the game afterwards, instead booting up the computer and spending up to an hour on the Internet as Mary dutifully tidied the small house.

  "Gotcha!” he finally exclaimed, as she set down a cup of tea beside the keyboard. “Annie Morgan."

  Mary looked at the screen, saw the news article from the archive Web site, a younger, slimmer Annie Morgan being led in handcuffs from the Old Bailey into a waiting police
car after sentencing. A crowd of photographers and jeering passersby filled the background of the grainy news photo. “That's her, yeah?” Steve asked. “Your murdering pyromaniac?"

  "I think so,” Mary replied. ‘''I mean, she's much younger. But, sure, I think that's her."

  Steve was scrolling down, busy reading the text. He gave a low whistle, then turned to Mary. “Oh my love,” he said, smiling. “We could have really hit gold here. Big-time."

  Mary pulled up a chair, sat beside him.

  "Says here,” he went on enthusiastically, “that Annie Morgan was one of the coldest-hearted killers the judge had ever met. Says that in all the people he tried, he'd never come across a defendant who was so calculating or vicious.” Steve pointed to a paragraph. “Seems that she had this job cleaning up at this big country house in Derbyshire somewhere. Been doing it for years. Well thought of, she was. The owner of the place couldn't praise her highly enough."

  "Only when she was up there . . . “

  Steve sniggered. “Her husband was doing a bit of French polishing of his own."

  "With her own sister,” Mary quietly added.

  He turned to her, gave her the “look” again. “What, you feel sorry for this woman? God's sake, Mary, thousands, millions of folk have affairs. Point is, most people don't murder them and burn the bloody house down, do they? Woman's a nutcase. Says here she bludgeoned them both to death with a hammer, then set fire to the place. Psycho, she is."

  "Not anymore. She just paints,” Mary replied, lost as to why she felt it even remotely necessary to defend the woman. After all, Annie Morgan had hardly been the perfect student with her hostile attitude, and no one could deny that she'd done the most heinous thing. Maybe Mary did it simply to annoy Steve, his cocksure bloody know-it-all attitude, the way he was practically salivating over the monitor screen. She'd seen him like this before, most often when he had another one of his “schemes” in mind.