Cole stared at the words on his monitor. “Annie Clark, 81, shot and killed Trevor Varney, 29, a police negotiator.” Those are the facts, he thought, but they don’t tell the story. Eighty-one years, and it comes down to one article in the paper? All over a damn cat? When does a person step across the line between sanity and this kind of madness? Cole glanced up at the sound of laughter in the next cubicle.
“He just snapped. Started throwing stuff at the City Council. Binders, blueprints, yellow pads, then his briefcase!” The voice in the cubicle again broke into laughter. “Yeah, yeah, cops and everything. Hauled him out screaming and swearing. Walker banging the gavel, what a riot!” Cole recognized the voice as that of Lionel Chun, one of the three who had been at the water cooler earlier.
Why is slipping into madness so amusing, Cole pondered. How close was he? Maybe he wasn’t at all if he had the presence of mind to wonder about it. Chun irritated Cole, always did.
“Hey Chun, you want to keep it down! Some people actually work around here!” Cole shouted toward the florescent lights.
“Gotta go, Uncle Grump is feeling grouchy again. Okay. I’ll see you later,” Chun hoarsely whispered into the phone. He never thought Cole could hear his little barbs and slurs, but Cole always did. “Having a bad day...again, Sage?” Chun said in an affected, bored tone.
Cole ignored Chun’s sarcasm. He repeatedly hit the delete key on his keyboard and watched the cursor methodically remove the letters on the screen. There was so much more to say than just reporting the shooting. The TV news would handle all the gory details just fine. He wanted to tell the other story: the story of the old widow who, losing her cat, let slip her last thread to reality. The woman who lost her husband and couldn’t let him go.
There were no words to explain how she pulled the trigger. None to explain how she went to a closet, and got the “nasty old gun” that had terrified her for so many years, and in one inexplicable moment, took away someone else’s husband; someone’s father, son, uncle, and friend. All the years of cookies and banana nut bread, all the little Christmas presents for the neighborhood kids, the Easter candy, the Halloween treats and graduation gifts, blown away forever. The little lady in the funny straw hat working in her beloved flower garden was gone, born anew as a murderer. A crazy killer with a shotgun, a babbling old woman led away by the police. Did she even know what she had done?
Cole began to type. Slow at first, then with feverish intent. The story began to flow, the people came to life, and the old Cole was coming out. He began with the young hostage negotiator, father of three little boys, who had such pride in his job at being able to defuse volatile situations. He told of Paula the wife, her torment at the thought of losing the husband she loved and the unresolved disagreement of the morning. He wrote of Stan, the good neighbor, who, in trying to help, killed a cat, and nearly himself. He’s taken hostage, then becomes the hero who stopped the madness. He told of the policeman who looked beyond the tragic violence and saw a little old lady much like his own grandmother. Then Cole began to describe the loneliness of age and the frailty of the mind. He danced around the fine line between Annie as victim and murderer. He couldn’t excuse her deeds but was compelled to open a window on an explanation. On a pad next to the keyboard, he was jotting down ideas for expert witnesses, psychologists, social workers and advocates for the elderly when the phone rang.
Diamonds and Cole: Cole Sage Mystery #1 Page 4