Murder Board

by Brian Shea

  “It’s not my fault,” Aleksander Rakowski pleaded.

  “That is the problem with you, my son. You don’t accept responsibility. You never have. Your brothers have never failed me, and their responsibilities to the family business are far more volatile and exposed than yours. They do not bring detectives to my home.”

  “The lawyer said we’re in the clear. He said there is nothing linking us directly to any of it. The house the girls were found in isn’t traceable to us. You made sure of that when you bought it.”

  “Do you think the detectives will stop there? If you are that naive then it further proves my point.”

  “There must be something I can do.”

  “There is.”

  Nadia Rakowski pushed her chair back and stood. She leaned in, cupping his face in her strong hands. She pressed her lips hard against his forehead. Aleksander longed for this affection every day of his life and resented it now for coming to him at this time. He wanted to reach out and hold his mother in a tight embrace, but the restraints locking his arms to the chair prevented him from acting on his desire. A well of repressed emotion rose up. A man unaccustomed to such feelings, he wasn’t sure if he was on the verge of tears or bursting into a fit of rage.

  “My regret is I failed to raise you to handle this life. It’s my burden, and I will carry it forward.”

  “Matka, please don’t do this. I’m family.”

  “Our family business will outlive all of us.”

  A tear fell. His mother wiped it from his cheek. Her eyes softened but she didn’t weep for him.

  She abruptly turned and walked away. The door opened and his mother disappeared from view as she shut it behind her without ever looking back.

  Aleksander was swallowed in the dim light of the room, a room he’d used many times before. Too many, in fact, to count. He knew he was not alone. Making a fruitless effort to shift his position to catch sight of his executioner, he did nothing more than scrape the chair leg along the plastic drop cloth.

  Radek Balicki stepped into view. He pulled the cart with him. On it was a single tool, a silenced .22 caliber pistol resting on the metallic tray. Alex sighed at the sight of it, taking solace in the knowledge his death would be quick.

  “You don’t have to do this, Radek. We can figure something out.”

  Radek held up his left arm, now minus the hand, and put the bandaged stump to his lips. “Shh.”

  “Your hand was just business. Nothing personal.”

  “I know,” Balicki said. “Neither is this.”

  Aleksander Rakowski clenched his jaw. “Then get it over with.”

  “Not my job. I’m just here to supervise.”

  “Supervise?”

  The geeky face of sixteen-year-old Jakub Balicki appeared out of the dark. The shadows cast on his acne-covered face and deep dark circles under his eyes gave him a menacing look. His nose, broken from the impact with the airbag, had medical tape across the bridge. He was deep breathing, nervous about his assignment.

  “Why him?”

  “Like you said. It’s his rite of passage into the family.” Radek picked up the gun and handed it to the boy. Then Radek stepped closer and whispered in Aleksander’s ear. “You brought him in against my wishes. Now here he is.”

  Radek stepped back and let his youngest brother step forward. Alex looked into the boy’s eyes. He recognized the commitment. The first was always the hardest. The cold metal pressed against his forehead in the same spot his mother had kissed.

  Aleksander leaned in, pushing against it, accepting his fate.

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  The story continues in Bleeding Blue, be sure to check out the following excerpt. But first I’d like to ask you to join the my Newsletter. Just enter your preferred email to receive updates.

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  BLEEDING BLUE

  A BOSTON CRIME THRILLER NOVEL

  With two street gangs on the brink of war, Detective Michael Kelly must solve a murder before the entire town goes up in flames.

  Boston Homicide Detective Michael Kelly just took his latest case.

  It seemed simple enough: a convenience store clerk gunned down in cold blood.

  There’s just one catch...the store was under the protection of the Irish mob.

  When all evidence points to an up-and-coming street gang, the mob closes in. But after a second shooting occurs, the city is set on a course for all-out war—unless the shooter can be brought to justice.

  Kelly is in a race against time to solve the murders and prevent further bloodshed. But his investigation leads him down a dark path...and exposes a greater level of corruption than he ever thought possible.

  Click here to purchase BLEEDING BLUE now

  Turn the page to read a sample —>

  BLEEDING BLUE: Chapter 1

  For some, hardships are but bumps in the road. And for others, struggle comes with such frequency, a person knows nothing but. Muriel Burke would be categorized as the latter.

  She worked two jobs and had done so for the better part of her life. Her family had immigrated to the United States just before she was born, sixty-two years ago. This decision was made by her parents so she would be born a citizen. Her parents sought to give her a better life. To gift her with the American dream. What she’d learned over a lifetime of toil is that dream, while grand in theory, did not prove fruitful to all who sought it. Her mother died due to complications in childbirth. Muriel’s father did his best not to blame her for the tragedy, but his battle with resentment was a daily one and more times than not, it won over his resolve.

  Fortune never found the Burke family. Her father worked seven days a week on the docks of the Boston harbor, and Muriel found herself dropping out of school by the age of twelve to help earn money. Over the past fifty years, she’d done about every job imaginable for an uneducated girl growing up in the Upham’s Corner section of Dorchester. She currently divided her time between the Kang’s Laundromat, where she folded clothes eight hours per day starting at five in the morning, and Tyson’s Market.

  Muriel ate her lunch everyday on a bench outside of the Dorchester North Burying Ground, built in 1634 and a historical landmark of the city. The boneyard was home to many interred historical figures, but most interesting to Muriel was William Stoughton. He’d been the presiding judge over the Salem Witch Trials. When she’d been young, it was one of the few stories her father had told her. She had a pleasant memory of sipping tea and listening to her father, a man of few words, recount the tale of that most preposterous of trials. She never quite understood his fascination with it, but reveled in the fact he’d been willing to share anything with her.

  Muriel hadn’t the money to afford a proper funeral and burial service when her father died twenty-seven years ago. She received state aid to have him cremated, and now the ashes sat in a cheap urn above the mantle in her small apartment next to a weathered photo. She never married. Never moved forward. Her only real connection to the world was found in the memory of her dead father. She always envisioned getting enough money so that he cou
ld be buried in a proper grave. One that she could visit and place fresh flowers at the foot of the headstone. In lieu of that, Muriel had pretended her father had been buried within the historic grounds of the cemetery she passed every day. Many years ago, she had taken a bit of his ashes with her during her afternoon commute and scattered the dusty remains through the black rod iron bars near the large oak on Columbia Road. So, in truth his remains were now buried among the dead contained within the graveyard’s boundaries.

  Every lunch was spent eating a ham and cheese sandwich on white bread dressed in a thin coat of mayo. She would allow herself thirty minutes to sit and eat. Muriel would nestle her narrow frame onto the concrete lip near the gated entrance. It was the only time she allowed herself to sit during her workday. Her favorite spot caught the shade of an overhanging tree’s branches and the cool concrete was always a welcome refresher. As awkward as her makeshift bench was, it served to give her legs a much-needed break. Afterward, she would begin her commute to her second job at Tyson’s Market, a small corner store located off Everett Avenue. She stocked, organized and cleaned the store. Eight hours pay at half the current minimum wage. Muriel had never complained.

  Muriel Burke was closing in on her last hour of work. The store closed at nine, but she would remain until ten to straighten up before she departed. She’d recently replaced the insoles in her shoes with one of those fancy gel types, but her sixty-two-year-old legs and back still ached. The pain served as a reminder that her nearly sixteen hours of standing were coming to an end. She looked at the clock above the cooler she was restocking. Its red digital light flickered 8:56 P.M. Four minutes and the store would be locked to the outside world.

  Muriel didn’t communicate with people regularly and avoided human contact at all possible cost. A speech impediment had gone uncorrected and caused her great anxiety when talking with others. The social anxiety developed into a full-fledged phobia after her father’s passing. She kept to herself, long since giving up delusions she would find a boyfriend or even a friend for that matter. She hadn’t said one word to the young man working the register tonight. He was new, only started a few weeks ago. The only reason she knew his name was because of the nametag he wore. Tucker. She hadn’t yet formed an opinion of him.

  Muriel tore at the plastic covering shrink-wrapped over the case of Monster energy drinks, peeling it back and exposing the tops of the tall cans. She opened the fridge door and began loading the cans into their place. The cold air seeped out into the humidity of the store, creating a misty plume that coated her skin. She was grateful for the refreshing blast, beating back the summer’s heat and drying some of the sweat pooled around her neck.

  She shut the door. The magnetized rubber stripping sealed the cold air back inside, leaving Muriel in the humidity. Sweat immediately began to seep from her skin as she bent to retrieve more cans from the packaging. The chime rang out from the front door. The ding was hit and miss, working less than fifty percent of the time. The owner had made a comment about getting it replaced but never had. Much needed fixing around the store, and one would figure at her meager wages, he could use the surplus saved to invest in some repairs, but Muriel knew better. Even though this store belonged to Mr. Costa, there were unaccounted expenses that needed to be paid to operate such a business within an area of the city run by Conner Walsh.

  Muriel had overheard Mr. Costa on one occasion complain about the extortion. It had been a very brief conversation with one of Walsh’s employees. And she spent the better part of the following hour scrubbing the blood from the floor. She distinctly remembered the gash left above the kind-hearted store owner’s right eye. Mr. Costa never spoke of the incident and neither did she. He also never again argued about the weekly extortion. Muriel Burke had a keen eye and an even keener memory. She’d seen Mr. Costa’s assailant numerous times after the assault but never spoke about it. And never would.

  Muriel peered from around the chip aisle and eyed the last-minute customer who had just entered. The man wore a dark colored baseball cap, plain with no lettering. The visor was cinched down on the man’s head to the sunglasses. Odd. Who wore sunglasses at night? She noticed the man had a blue bandana around his neck. He walked, head down, until he came to a stop in front of the register. The man’s movements were almost robotic. He spun to face Tucker. As he did so, his left hand pulled the bandana up to his face, shrouding it from view. In his right, he held a black pistol.

  Muriel almost shrieked but controlled her panic. She’d been in the store on three separate occasions when it was robbed. During the first, she’d actually wet herself. But by the third time, she learned these crooks were there for money, booze, or cigarettes. Sometimes all three. She just had to wait out the few minutes of chaos until it was over. On all three occasions she’d seen the robber but lied and told the cops she hadn’t. She had told Conner Walsh’s men who came after the truth. She knew not to lie to them. Muriel never saw any of the robbers again, in the store or elsewhere around town. She may not have been educated properly, but she was a quiet observer of the world around her and knew very well what had befallen the men that took from a store under Walsh’s protection. She was rewarded with an envelope containing one hundred dollars each time she assisted the men. And she also understood its meaning as well.

  “Give me the money!” The gunman commanded. His voice, somewhat muffled by the cloth covering his face, was clear enough there was no doubt about the seriousness of his command.

  The gun looked real too. The second time she’d witnessed the store being robbed, she could see the orange tip of the BB gun. This time there was no such tip. The man holding it was more menacing than the others. An engorged vein along his neck rippled and Muriel found herself staring at a tattoo on the right side of the man’s neckline. From what she could see in her crouched position, it looked like the letters CB. She instantly committed the image to memory with the hope of another hundred-dollar payout for her keen observation.

  Muriel watched as Tucker fumbled with the register. This obviously was the first time a gun had been pointed in the boy’s face.

  “Open it or you’re dead!”

  “I’m trying!” Tucker’s voice crackled when he spoke. It was though he was just entering puberty. With spotted acne and a gaunt face, the boy looked the part as well.

  “Three—Two—”

  Tucker’s fingers hammered at the register buttons. The drawer responded, sliding open with a metallic thud. The noise, coupled with the intensity of the countdown, caused Muriel to startle and she stumbled backward, knocking loose a bag of Funions to the floor. She held her breath and waited for the angry gunman to turn his sights on her, but it appeared he didn’t take notice.

  The armed man with the tattooed neck put a brown paper bag on the counter. “Fill it! And keep your hands where I can see them.”

  Tucker pulled the entire drawer out from the register and dumped the money into the sack. Coins and loose dollars spilled out onto the counter and floor around the man. Somehow in the madness, the cashier managed to get the majority of the cash into the bag.

  The gunman snatched the bag from the counter and turned to leave. Tucker was breathing heavily as if he’d just finished a race. He placed both hands on the counter for support and looked as though he were about to collapse. His face dripped with sweat and his skin had gone a shade paler.

  The gunman turned to leave and began walking toward the door. He suddenly stopped in his tracks and looked over at the terrified clerk. “Thank you.” The man’s voice, only moments before crazed and energized like a bobcat on crack cocaine, was now steady and calm. Almost as if he were a different person altogether. The transformation was odd. Something about the calm in his voice was terrifying. “I’m going to need you to do one more thing for me.”

  Tucker gave a quizzical look, raising his sweat-covered eyebrow. “What’s that?”

  “I need you to die.”

  The shot rang out. It was a deafening noise and one Mur
iel had never heard before. She watched as Tucker’s head rocked back. He didn’t fall right away. The shot’s impact staggered him backward into the cigarettes and lottery tickets behind him. His body was suspended for a moment before sliding down, snapping the plastic rack and burying him in a tidal wave of boxed Newports and Marlboros.

  The robber then did something odd. He looked at the ground around him. His movements were frantic like a woman who’d just lost her wedding ring. Tucking the gun into the front of his pants, the man got down on all fours and crawled around wildly. He bent down and put his head low to the ground. He found whatever it was he had been looking for because he stopped searching. But in lowering himself, he was able to see Muriel curled in her hiding place along the chips.

  She couldn’t see his eyes through the dark colored glasses, but what she did see scared her to the point that she stopped breathing. Although the man’s face was obscured by the dark blue bandana, she could make out the upper part of his cheeks. She saw the rise along the cheekbone form into tiny creases at the base of his eye. He was smiling at her.

  She closed her eyes, paralyzed with fear, and waited for the next shot to ring out.

  Muriel sat in a silence broken only by the intense drumming of her heartbeat. She refused to open her eyes and covered her hands in her face. Too scared to cry, she rocked in a fetal position.

  The she heard a sound, but not one she’d anticipated. It was the chime of the front door and the swoosh of it opening and closing.