Murder Old and New

by Chet Williamson

  “Oh, thanks,” I said. “Now I’m gonna be up all night, coming down to check the walls.”

  “Well…it might not be dumb. Better safe than sorry, after all. If there’s any problem, give me a call and I can come over and we can move stuff where things aren’t dripping. Believe me, I’m not going anywhere tonight. Look, do you want me to go up on the roof now and check?”

  “God, no. What could you see except snow? No, I’ll keep an eye on things tonight. And believe me, if I need help, I’ll give you a call.”

  After Ted left, I locked the door and went through the store, looking carefully at the ceiling of each room, but saw nothing except the ghostly water stains from where we’d had the previous summer’s leak. Then I headed upstairs, Fudge hot on my heels.

  As I dug his processed chicken out of its can, I thought it looked almost tasty. My arctic expeditions and snow shoveling had made me hungry as a polar bear, and I thought about getting a little something for myself, but then remembered the spread that would be laid out before me at the volunteer dinner and had a cup of chai-flavored green tea instead.

  Then I got a shower and washed the hat hair that my snow-loaded hood had created, and had another luxurious cup of tea. With a packet of artificial sweetener, yum. I thought about Dave, and considered calling him, but decided against it. Don’t be pushy, Livy, my mother always told me. Men don’t like pushy women. Let them come to you. Okay. Okay, Mom.

  I got dressed, trying not to think about Dave and the night I spent with him. It had been too damned long since I’d had a man in my life, and while I liked the way it made me feel, I also hated that feeling of wondering where he was and what he was doing and why hadn’t he called me and why hadn’t he been more affectionate the last time I saw him.

  Love was a pain in the ass, though I wouldn’t necessarily have called what I felt for Dave love. Still, that was my major problem with relationships. I’ve always been a romantic, and whenever I’ve gotten involved with a guy, I’ve always gotten involved. I’ve never hooked up, I’m not a casual sex kind of gal, and I can’t imagine sleeping with a man that I don’t feel some connection with beyond just the physical. The whole concept of one-night stands is incomprehensible to me. Sex is great, yeah, but sex with someone you love, or at least love to be with, is so much better.

  And that’s just how I feel about it, Oprah.

  I chose slacks over a skirt when I got dressed. I knew the snow was going to be deeper than ever, and I doubted that every other owner of properties along the fifteen blocks I was about to traverse had been as anal as Ted regarding shoveling. My Uggs would have to do, and I could always dump the snow out of them once I arrived. Wrapping a wool scarf tightly around my throat and raising the hair-destroying hood once more, I ventured out into the dark, snowy night.

  There was no traffic now, and the streets remained unplowed. The town looked like one of those lost cities in an old 1930s science fiction pulp magazine, buried under centuries of Antarctic ice and snow, harboring aliens from the dawn of time that would eventually creep out upon an unsuspecting earth and crush mankind beneath their oozing tentacles.

  Or maybe I was just reading too much H. P. Lovecraft.

  I ran into a few pedestrians negotiating the streets, mostly young people, and they unfailingly grinned and said hey, as if being out in this kind of storm was the absolute coolest thing anyone could ever do, and to tell the truth, it was kind of cool.

  Freezing, actually. As one pair of young lovers, tightly bundled and arm in arm, passed me, I thought how nice it would be to have Dave’s large insulated bulk to cuddle with as I walked, though it was really more like bird stepping than walking, pulling your foot up so your knee was level with your waist with each new step.

  By the time I got to the Gates Home, I was pretty tired, and the warm hospitality of the meeting room in which they’d set up the dinner was more than welcoming, it was lifesaving. There weren’t many people there, and I didn’t expect there to be. Most of the resident volunteers were present, as well as a handful of outside volunteers who live in the city and had walked to the gathering. All in all, maybe two dozen people were there.

  I sat next to some of the residents I knew, who chirped away like little birds, talking about the snow, about each item of food as it was served, and about the thank you gifts that we all received after the dinner. They were snow globes, heavy and fairly well made. Snow globes are the kind of kitsch that I’ve always enjoyed, and this one had two hands holding each other as the snow fell around them. The base said, “Thanks for Your Helping Hand!”

  The little ladies shook their globes and watched the snow settle over the hands, then shook them again. They seemed fascinated by the drifting flakes of…whatever it was in China that passed for snow, and the gift seemed especially fitting that night.

  Doris spoke a few more words about how much volunteers meant to the Gates Home, and then it was over. I chatted for a while longer, then looked at my watch. It was just after nine o’clock, and I wondered if my mother would still be awake. I walked to the residence wing and found to my relief that her door was shut.

  I listened, and thought I heard some voices and music from inside, so I knocked lightly on the door. In a moment it opened, and she looked out. “Oh, Livy,” she said, “come in, I was just watching television.”

  I joined her and showed her my snow globe, which she took and shook so that the snow fell. Fascination with snow globes, it seems, encompasses all demographics. After a while our conversation flagged, like it always did, and we just sat and watched TV. It was one of those police procedurals that I never watch at home, and I found it slow going. Mother seemed dully hypnotized by it, however, and I stuck it out just to be with her. After all, where else did I have to be on this snowy night?

  The only interruption was when my phone tweeted. I scurried to open my purse, thinking that maybe it was a text from Dave, but it was only a battery status warning. Crap.

  Finally, the show was over, and Mother said that she supposed she should take her pills and get ready for bed. I took the hint, kissed her goodbye, and closed the door behind me, making sure it was locked. My coat and boots were nice and snow free, but wouldn’t stay that way for long.

  As I left the residential wing and headed for the front door, I had to pass by a TV lounge off the lobby that was usually open until midnight or so. There were a few night owls among the residents, and you might find one or two in there after the local news, but tonight there was only one, Martha Myers. And she wasn’t watching the TV, but had her eye on the lobby where I passed.

  When she saw me, she held up her hand and waved. “Livy!” she cried, pushing herself up to nest within the framework of her walker. “They said you vas visiting your mama, so I set here till you come by. I have that thing for you about vhat I vas telling you, yah?”

  “Oh, right, Martha. You remembered what it was?”

  “Ach, yah. Here now…” She fumbled in the pocket of her jumper and brought out a small white envelope with my name handwritten on it. Though it was in block letters, I thought I had seen the writing before. I could feel something small and hard inside. “He give me to give this to ya. He said if anything happened to him, I should.”

  “Who, Martha?” I asked, taking the envelope.

  “Oh, that vun, you know, that sour-lookin’ vun.” In Martha’s mouth, sour became sahr. “The vun vhat died.”

  I opened up the envelope and found a micro-cassette inside. Tom Drummond.

  “Did Mr. Drummond give you this?” I asked. “Tom Drummond?”

  “The vun in the vheelchair? I can’t remember names so good.”

  “Yes, the one in the wheelchair. And yes, he was pretty sour-looking. And he did just die, yes.”

  “Vell, there ya go now. Something happened to him all right, so I remembered I vas to give you this. And now you have it, I’m goin’ to bed now…” And, her job done, she turned away and clumped on down the hall with her walker.

 
A tape for me from Tom Drummond. I thought about taking it to the police right away, but it was late and the police station was blocks out of my way. Besides, I wanted to hear this for myself. I didn’t know what was on it, but I was betting it wasn’t any big band tune that he had recorded during my sessions in the social hall.

  Maybe, I thought with a thrill, it would be a confession. I killed Enid and Rachel, I’m planning to kill Mary Hamilton, and I was the Hangman Killer because I couldn’t live with the knowledge that my father was Jack the Ripper…

  Hey, a girl can dream, right?

  Chapter 20

  My trip home was a surrealistic trudge through a world of white. There had to be two feet of snow on the ground, and most of the sidewalks were unshoveled, so I felt as though I was walking in the thick jelly of dreams.

  It appeared that plows had finally made their way through the streets, though their labor seemed ineffectual. Every car that had the misfortune to be parked on the street was now completely plowed under. You could see car roofs and a fender here and there, but they were mostly white lumps that appeared to be cocooned until the first big melt.

  The street surface itself was an uneven, treacherous layer of packed snow and ice, and a single 4x4 that I saw hazard the street was skating more than driving, slipping from side to side, and coming dangerously near to the cars disguised as igloos. Still, it kept moving, fishtailing its way down Walnut Street, its taillights finally disappearing in the curtain of falling snow.

  When I looked up, the power lines had become white highways in the sky. The wet snow was clinging to them, piling up on top of itself, flake grasping intricate flake by the thousands. They glimmered in the streetlights’ glow. It seemed magical.

  Looking up at the falling snow, I suddenly thought of the snow globe I’d been given, and realized that I didn’t have it. Mother had been holding it in her lap the whole way through the TV show, and I didn’t take it afterward, so it still must be there. I’d get it the next time I visited, or, better yet, I’d just let her have it. She was at the age where she didn’t get many toys, and I could spare one.

  What I did have, however, was Tom Drummond’s tape, and I pressed my hand against my thick coat until I could just feel the shape of the microcassette in the envelope that I’d slipped into my inner coat pocket and zipped shut. I was taking no chances with that one-of-a-kind, limited edition.

  It was after midnight when I got home, and I had to scrape about a foot of snow away from my outside door that opened onto Water Street before I could even open it. Once inside, I stamped the snow off my Uggs, took off my coat, shook off the snow through the open door, and locked it behind me.

  I hung up my coat to let it drip, took the tape from the inside pocket, and headed up the stairs. I really wanted to hear the tape, but decided to check the store for leaks first. Tom Drummond was dead, and whatever he had to say could wait another five minutes.

  The store was as snug as a bug in a rug, as Mother used to say, with not a sign of a leak or a drip anywhere. I turned out the lights and headed up to my apartment. I thought I knew where my microcassette recorder was, and I was right, in the bottom drawer of the desk in my bedroom. I took the tape out of the envelope, snapped it into the slot, closed it, and pressed play.

  And nothing happened. No power.

  I opened the back to make sure there were batteries inside, and there were, two Energizers that read “2003.” Okay, undoubtedly as dead as Tom Drummond.

  There had to be some double-A’s around somewhere, and I ransacked the top desk drawer, rifling through the paper clips, business cards, Post-It’s, and address labels, many of which read “Mr. Oliver Crowe,” sent to me by a dozen different charities. But the only battery I found was a single triple-A with “2013” on it. Lotsa juice, wrong size.

  I bounded into the kitchen, thinking that surely the junk drawer wouldn’t let me down. The junk drawer, a deep and capacious drawer just off my breakfast counter, held everything that I didn’t know what to do with but didn’t need at the moment. There were tools, old cell phone rechargers, scissors, yarn, wire, pens, staplers, those felt thingies you put on the bottom of chair legs so you don’t scrape the floor, dried-up Krazy Glue, and…batteries. A four-pack of double-A’s from which two had already been taken, but that was okay, since I only needed two.

  I quickly plucked them from the blister pack, slicing my finger in the process, but not enough to slow me down. Just as I slammed the junk drawer shut…

  The lights went out.

  The refrigerator stopped humming, and the humidifier that I run to get a little moisture into the air in winter shut off and bubbled once, then was quiet.

  Okay, I thought, the weight of the snow, or ice and snow, or whatever combination, brought down some power lines. That was just great. The heat in the building was oil, not electric, but the thermostat was electric, as was the fan, so that meant no heat until the power came back on, and the power wouldn’t come back on until the crews were able to get out and fix the lines, and with the weather the way it was, who knew when that would be?

  There was nothing to do but try and stay warm. And find a flashlight, that was important.

  I keep a flashlight under my bed in case of emergency, so I felt my way back to my bedroom. Normally I would’ve been able to see from the glow of the street lights through the window, but they’d been knocked out too.

  There among the dust bunnies and a few stray tissues was the flashlight, an emergency jobbie Daddy had given me years before. It had a radio and even a mellow siren which I occasionally used to scare Fudge out from somewhere I didn’t want him to be. It lit my way back to the kitchen, where I rummaged around in some other drawers until I found several used candles, which I wedged in a few decorative candlesticks and then lit.

  That was better. It made the place feel cozier and even a little warmer. I turned off the flashlight and went back to my boudoir again, feeling like the beautiful Barbara Steele in one of those Italian horror movies from the 1960s. All I needed was a flowing silk negligee and another two feet of equally flowing black hair.

  Once there I set the candles on my night table and put the new batteries in the recorder. I pushed play, and was glad to see the red power light come on. In the glimmer of the candles I could see the little hubs turning, but I couldn’t hear anything. I rolled the volume wheel to max, but there was still nothing except the ambient hiss of the tape itself.

  What the hell? Was Tom Drummond’s final statement to go unheard because he hadn’t pushed the right goddamned buttons?

  Then it occurred to me that maybe he simply hadn’t rewound the tape, so I pressed the rewind button and heard it whir into life. While it rewound, I went over to the window and looked out.

  The city, or at least as much of it as I could see from my window overlooking the street, was dark. The street lights were out, the traffic lights were all off, and the only miniscule touches of light anywhere were a few yellow glows from a couple of windows of what I assumed were apartments across the street. Night owls, the same as me, who were staying up just a little later with the help of dusty old candles pulled out of drawers and put to use again.

  In the heavy silence I could hear the tape hit its end and the machine stop, and I picked it up, lay on the bed, sitting up with my shoulders against the headboard, pushed play again, and held my breath.

  “I guess this is on…it’s goin’ around…” I heard Tom Drummond’s voice say, and breathed a sigh of relief. I settled back into the pillows and listened.

  “This is for Livy…Olivia Crowe, or for the police, or for whoever. It won’t really matter to me much when you hear it, because I guess I’ll be gone. But it’s important that somebody knows. Knows everything, I guess. It’s a long story, and there’s no rush, so I guess I’ll just tell it. Tell how it all started with me.”

  There was a pause, then a gurgling sound like Tom Drummond was clearing his throat, and he went on.

  “I liked this girl when I was
back in high school. But she liked this other fella. And that woulda been okay. I’da just…forgot about her, maybe found somebody else. But she got pregnant. And what we heard was that it wasn’t this fella she liked, but it was her father…. That was bad. Real bad. I mean, girls got pregnant back then, sure, it happened, but not like that.

  “She disappeared then. Some people said she ran away, but I don’t think that. I think she either killed herself like her mother did, or he killed her…I mean her father. I don’t know. But if it wasn’t for him, she’d a been alive. I hated him because of that. Because of what he’d done to her. Then there was one day I saw him alone. I was in the woods with my .22, not really huntin’, just out shootin’, maybe some birds or something, and I saw him. But he didn’t see me. He was walkin’ up into the woods, walkin’ hard, like he knew right where he was goin’. And he was carrying a bag with something in it.”

  A rope, I thought. Oh, please let it be a rope. My heart was pounding so hard I could hear it in my head.

  “I followed him, and he didn’t go too far back in, and I really thought about shootin’ him. I could always say I was shootin’ at a rabbit and hit him by accident, but the thing was, it was just a .22, and I woulda had to get pretty close to make sure I killed him. So I just hung back and watched.

  “He got to a big old tree and stopped, just like he’d planned to come there, and he looked at it good, went all around it, reached up and grabbed a limb, started pullin’ on it, tuggin’ like to see if he could break it but he couldn’t. Then he opened his bag and I saw what he was gonna do. He took out this rope…”

  Yes! Slamdunk for Livy Crowe!

  “…and he threw it up over this limb and then he tied it around. And I thought oh good god he’s gonna hang himself. And that was just what he had in mind. So I decided to just stay there and watch. Save myself a bullet and a whole lotta trouble, ’cause I really was gonna shoot him, I’d decided that, whether I got into trouble or not.