by Sean Dexter
If I left then they’d attack me outside where there were fewer witnesses. My only hope of safety was to stay put until Sarge came. With Sarge at my side outside with them was exactly where I’d want to be. ‘I’m not finished my drink.’ I pointed out.
One of the others grabbed my glass and threw the remaining inch of bourbon into my face. Perhaps it was the sting of alcohol in my eyes or anger at good sour mash being wasted that took the lid off my temper, but they’d crossed a line as far as I was concerned. There was no going back, outside or anywhere else now.
‘Okay guys. Let me wipe my face and I’ll be on my way.’ I turned to the bar as if reaching for a napkin. Instead of a napkin, my hand grabbed the back of a collar. Throwing my weight behind my arm I ran the bozo’s face into the hard edge of the counter with a satisfying crunch of bone as his face imploded under the impact.
By reversing my thrust and leading with a cocked elbow I reshaped the jaw of the one standing next to victim number one.
Two down and they hadn’t even had time to react. When they did it was with the indiscipline of men who have never really had to fight a superior opponent. Instead of rushing me en masse and using their weight and strength to overpower me they came one by one. Granted there were only seconds between each arrival but seconds in a fight matter. The speaker came next and he went down with a coupla jabs and a sweet right hook. Next up was the smallest of the remaining three, He fancied himself a boxer and he actually raised his dukes. A feinted left jab moved his guard high and wide allowing me to send a pile driver into his exposed kidney.
That left the other two. They’d stopped in their tracks and the uncertainty in their eyes told of their intentions. While they didn’t want to let their friends down they were too scared to actually take a step forward. One actually took a step back before bolting towards the door. The other followed shortly behind him.
Even for me this was an excellent result. Seven perfectly executed blows had defeated six foes. I apologized to the broad for the blood I’d spilt in her fine establishment only for her to wave my apology away and furnish me with three fingers of Kentucky’s finest. I took a healthy slug before grabbing the one I’d kidney punched by the collar and hauling him into the bathroom. He was still doubled up from the blow and would probably be passing blood for a few days.
I removed his belt and laid him face down so I could tie his hands together. Next I flipped him back over and pulled his trousers down to his ankles. Taking a large wad of toilet tissue in my hand I stuffed copious amounts into the front of his shorts, leaving a tail lying as far as his knees.
‘Tell me what happened to Chet Hamilton.’
There was fear etched onto his face as he tried to play the innocent. ‘I don’t know who you’re talking about.’
I pulled my cigarettes from my pocket and when I had one between my lips I flicked my lighter open and lit the end of my smoke.
‘The kid who was with Rosie when you pulled him from the car and took him away.’
‘We took him up to Kangles Reach. We were gonna just leave him there but he took a swing at Duane so we all gave him a pasting.’
‘Then what did you do?’
‘We just left him. We figured the lesson would be better learnt that way.’
I took a long deep draw of my cigarette before dropping the glowing tip onto the paper tail which lay between his legs.
As I exited the toilet I could see Kathleen busying herself with a mop and bucket, my erstwhile assailants having decamped towards the nearest emergency room.
Sarge arrived and I quickly filled him in as to what I’d learnt.
‘It doesn’t look good does it Harry?’ His voice had dropped in timbre and he now looked properly defeated. ‘I’ve got to find him. Even if it is to give him a decent burial.’
A scream rang out from the gents causing Sarge to raise a questioning eyebrow.
‘War games, Sarge. Just some war games.’
Morning
We re-hired Kenneth and went up to Kangles Reach and scouted around looking for any signs of Chet. We worked with discipline as we searched grid like along each side of the access road and around the main parking area. Nothing caught our attention until we were a mile from the main parking area.
There was a stench of rotted flesh growing ever stronger in our nostrils. Like a couple of bloodhounds we followed the smell until we found a body. To get within ten feet was an achievement as the all pervading odour seeped through held noses and invaded our bodies through every pore. The cadaver was a decayed mess with bite marks on every exposed surface. As the foul smelling corpse was lying face down I reached into the bulging back pocket and removed a wallet. Sarge’s gasp told me what I’d expected, but I opened the wallet anyway. There written in the front was the name Chet Hamilton.
No matter how I wash or what I drink. I’ll never lose the smell of Perfume.
*****
Graham Smith is the General Manager of a busy hotel and wedding venue. He has been a reviewer for the well respected crime fiction site www.crimesquad.com for four years and has conducted face to face interviews with many stellar names, including Lee Child, David Baldacci, Dennis Lehane, Jeffrey Deaver, Stuart MacBride, Simon Kernick and Mark Billingham.
He has been published in several Kindle anthologies including True Brit Grit, Off the Record 2: At the Movies, Action Pulse Pounding Tales: Vol 1 & 2 and has three collections of short stories out on Kindle. They are Eleven the Hardest Way (long-listed for a SpineTingler Award), Harry Charters Chronicles and Gutshots: Ten Blows to the Abdomen.
Rage
A Jim Wolf Mystery
by
Tim Wohlforth
Tim Wohlforth has been putting out quality PI fiction for many years, first on the web and in anthologies, later via Krill Press. I love his Jim Wolf series and so I’m thrilled to publish this story that has him coming to the aid of a tiny middle-aged woman who is accused of the brutal murder of her controlling psychiatrist husband.
Sandra Jacobs and I stood looking over an Olympic-sized swimming pool situated behind a palatial redwood ranch home in Baldwin Creek, a wealthy suburban sprawl west of Oakland. No, we were not about to take a plunge. Sandra was not the athletic type. But she was a hell of a defense lawyer and now my employer. At least for the moment.
Let me explain. I’m Jim Wolf, a private eye who lives on a boat at a berth off Jack London Square in Oakland. I hang out at Big Emma’s, a Victorian bar which doubles as my office. I do a lot of insurance stuff. Rarely do I work for lawyers. But for Sandra I make an exception. Even if she isn’t paying me – and she is – I would work for her. I owe her. She once saved me from a murder rap.
We stood still absorbing the scene. A large redwood pool house and attached storage sheds dominated the side of the pool opposite the house. Potted plants were scattered around the expanse of brick. I heard finches chirping in the large oaks and eucalyptuses that hung over the area from behind the pool house. A squirrel scampered along an overhanging branch as a gentle breeze blew leaves along the surface of the water. Peaceful.
“Hard to visualize this as the scene of a horrific murder,” said Sandra. A tiny middle-aged woman with straight black hair, her large gray eyes swept the area missing nothing. A pair of reading glasses with half lens hung from an elastic band that went behind her neck. She wore a navy flannel pants suit. She didn’t look formidable. Many an assistant DA had made the mistake of underestimating her.
“Where did it happen?” I asked.
She handed me a small stack of crime scene photos.
“Right there.”
She pointed to the edge of pool directly across from us. The top photo showed the blood-spattered body of the noted and very wealthy psychotherapist, Henry Platt, husband of her client Carol. He lay face-up beside the pool, one hand dangling in the water. A startled, vacant look was frozen by death onto his face. A handsome man, muscular, trim, only his curly gray hair suggested his age. He wore a blue Speedo swimming b
rief. I looked from the photo to the spot on the pool’s edge where it had been taken.
“He was swimming?”
“Presumably.”
“Alcohol in his system?”
“Some. He was not drunk.”
I flipped to the next photo, a close-up of a knife, with a ruler that had been placed next to it on the brick patio about three feet from the man’s chest. The murder weapon.
“The knife? Have they said where it came from?”
“Matches a cutlery set in the kitchen.”
“How did it get out there by the pool?”
“Good question.”
“Prints on the handle?”
“Wiped clean.”
I asked, “Good or bad for you?”
“Not good. Tends to suggest premeditation.”
“What does Carol say?”
“You ask her.”
“Me?”
“You will be visiting her in prison. I need your impressions. May suggest to you a line of investigation.”
I then flipped through a series of detailed shots of Platt’s body covered with knife wounds – chest, neck, arms, groin. Yes, there, too.
I said, “Looks like more than a dozen stab wounds.”
“Fourteen.”
“Any on her?”
“No.”
“Doesn’t fit,” I said.
“What doesn’t fit?”
“The violence, the rage, out here in this peaceful suburban setting. In East Oakland, maybe, but even there a shot to the head is more common and efficient.”
“You’d be surprised what goes on in the suburbs,” Sandra said. “Anything else strike you?”
“He’s a pretty big guy. How about Carol? A powerful woman?”
“Quite the opposite. Petite, the bookish kind.”
“Now Sandra,” I said, “why did you drag me all the way out here to see what you have already seen. You’re paying the bill but I have a feeling this case will not be settled on the basis of the facts.”
“I know. That is why I hesitated bringing in an investigator. What’s to investigate? Carol admits to killing him. But she insisted.”
“Why?”
“Said no stone should be left unturned. Couldn’t deny her. It’s her life that is at stake and she has the money. What strikes you about this scene?”
“I can sum it up in two words: Wealth and Rage.” I gestured to the luxurious surroundings. “A spread like this is worth three-five mil. But look at these photos.” I handed them back to her. “Rage trumps wealth.”
“That’s it?”
“A feeling. Whatever actually happened could have been spontaneous. Yet such a rage must have a history behind it. Like a large boil that grows slowly, maybe over a year or more, and then suddenly bursts open spouting puss.”
Sandra said, “Over thirty years.”
*****
Carol Platt sat opposite me enveloped in gray – the color of the plain metal table between us, the interview room walls at the West County Detention Center, and her prison dress. She wore a plastic identification bracelet similar to the ones used in hospitals.
If the aim of all this gray was to destroy Platt’s individuality, it wasn’t working. Carol Platt stood out. Her hair was part of it. Brunette with highlights, short, a wisp almost covered an eye. The affect made her appear younger than her 47 years. A sculpted face and high forehead also helped. A pair of glasses lay on the table in front of her. Had she removed them in a touch of vanity? Would explain the slightly dazed look. An attractive woman, her green eyes opened wide, searching for some contact. I smiled back warmly. Carol looked away. Carol would be in charge. Smile when she wanted to smile. On her terms, not mine.
“I understand you work for Sandra Jacobs,” Carol said. “I’ve already gone over everything with her. Why did she send you? You should be out there investigating.”
“She thought talking to you I might discover some line of inquiry worth pursuing that might help you.”
“Good. Check my story, when Jonah, my son, arrived, when I arrived, all that kind of thing. Probably won’t help. Nothing will help me. The jury’s the public and they already have decided against me.”
Her eyes told a different story, and her sardonic smile. This lady had not given up. She was playing with me. Carol sat for a moment, those green eyes appraising me. “So what do you want to hear? A confession?”
“A story.”
“Ah, I like stories. Hearing them, telling them. Where shall I start?”
“At the beginning. What led up to Henry Platt’s death?”
“It was preordained.” A frown formed on her brow and her hand reached up tugging at a strand of hair behind her left ear. “It started wrong so it could only end in tragedy. I was fifteen at the time. Kind of screwed up. Okay, very screwed up. I went to see Platt. So handsome, knowing, sympathetic, in control. He took over.” She was no longer looking at me, just staring over my head at the gray wall, returning in her mind to her past. “And he never let go. He was married. By the time I was sixteen he had me in the sack. Me, his patient. Talk about professional ethics. In time he divorced his wife, married me when I was twenty-one. He controlled me, manipulated me, owned my mind. Went on for thirty years. I finally filed for divorce.”
“How were you able to break with him after so many years?”
“I’m not really sure. Sometimes I think it was just a growing awareness of how he ran my life. Other times I think he changed. He’s twenty years older than me. Like he couldn’t face getting old so he took it out on me.”
“Were you both still living at the Baldwin Creek home at the time of…,” I searched for a neutral word, “his death?”
“No. He lived there with Jonah. He’s in high school and we didn’t want him to have to change schools. I had been living for some time with my girlfriend in Lafayette.”
“So what were you doing at the house?”
“I had called him. Told him I needed him to sign the divorce papers. He had been stalling. We set up an appointment.”
“Then what happened?”
“We got in an argument over the divorce. He said he would never let me go. He went after me with a knife. I fought back. Kicked him in the balls. Grabbed the knife and stabbed him.”
“Fourteen times, I understand.”
“I didn’t count.”
“How did the knife get out there? It’s part of a kitchen set.”
“I really don’t know. Suddenly there he was standing over me, holding it.”
“Why did you wipe the handle clean?”
“Some kind of instinct of self-preservation. I was even thinking about hiding the body in the shed. But then Jonah showed up. He had just gotten off the high school bus. He called 911.”
“You have two sons?”
“Yes, Daniel, the oldest, was away at college. Stanford. He likes me.”
“Jonah doesn’t?”
“He was closer to Henry. He’s testifying for the prosecution.”
Great, I said to myself. Sandra has got a real challenge with this one.
“Do you remember anything else?”
“One thing. Really weird. He stood over me, staggering, blood dripping from his chest, and said, ‘I am dead.’”
She spoke softly, without betraying any emotion, twisting that strand of hair behind her left ear. A highly intelligent woman, she seemed physically weak, proper, suburban. Suburban? I was beginning to learn a bit too much about suburban living…and dying. Made Oakland’s mean streets seem like a Disneyland village.
Carol had completed her story, her eyes focused on the table between us. She next mouthed words in a voice so low I couldn’t make out what she was saying. I leaned towards her and said, “Didn’t quite get that.”
“He is…,” she repeated.
“Dead?”
“Yes. I am free, even here, because I am free of him.”
“But you were going to get a divorce. Then you would have been free of him and
not be in jail.”
“You don’t understand,” she said in a trance. “You didn’t know him. He would never have let me go.”
Then she looked straight at me for the first time in the interview. She pushed that wisp of hair away from her eye and smiled. Seductively? Was I reading too much into that smile? Yet, I felt the pull of her personality, her sensuousness. I felt what Henry Platt must have felt.
*****
Sandra Jacobs sat opposite me in my favorite booth at Big Emma’s. It was three in the afternoon and the place was largely deserted. The lunchtime crowd had staggered back to work and it was too early for the after work mob. Lori Mazetti, who owns the place, had dropped off our lattes – neither of us were into drinking in the middle of the day – and retreated to cover the bar. Two suits talked at the end of the bar. A real estate deal? Good luck to them. Otherwise we had the place to ourselves.
“So what do you make of her?” Sandra asked.
“I’m not quite sure.”
“Do you believe her?”
“I thought you were the one who once told me that belief was for preachers not defense lawyers.”
“I ask because I’m not being allowed to proceed with the defense the way I would wish. My client insists on taking the stand in her own defense. So belief in what she says definitely comes into play. She won’t allow me to cut a deal. I had hoped to plead her out for manslaughter. The fury of the stabbing certainly suggests a lack of premeditation. She insists on self-defense. Not going to fly. Once she gets on the stand the prosecutor will destroy her.”
I said, “There were moments in the interview when I really wanted to believe her. The fifteen-year-old girl controlled and bedded by her psychiatrist. Possessed really. That part of her story I believe and so will the jury. But then she said she did not believe she would ever be free as long as he was alive, divorce or not. If she told me that, I suspect the prosecutor will get her to say it in open court.”